The Shot in the Dark: A Charleston Mystery

Mrs. Mary Mack Ravenel of Charleston, South Carolina, was practically a stereotype of the vintage Southern matron.  Although she was born in Detroit, after her 1892 marriage to William Martin, a plantation owner in Shirley, South Carolina, she spent the rest of her life in the South.  William died in 1905, and two years later his widow married a Charlestonian named John Ravenel.  Ravenel was rich, thanks to inheriting his father’s successful phosphate company, and very well-connected socially.  After marrying Ravenel, Mary became a leading figure in Charleston high society.  She was a popular hostess who was active in many charitable and social organizations.  Her husband’s death did little to slow her active life.  She had four loving children and was liked and respected in her community.  In short, she seemed to have a charmed existence.

You guessed it.  Things did not end well for Mary.

On the night of November 1, 1933, the 64-year-old widow was walking home after having dinner with a friend.  Around 10 p.m., two women were driving past Ravenel’s mansion, when they were shocked to see the body of a woman slumped on the sidewalk.  It was Mary Ravenel.  When the women approached her, Mrs. Ravenel murmured, “A man hit me.”  The women flagged down two men who were passing by, asking them to help load the stricken lady into their car.  They assumed she had been the victim of a hit-and-run accident.  As they drove Ravenel to the hospital, she screamed, “Let me out of the car.  I know I am going to die.  The pain hurts me so!”

When doctors asked Ravenel what had happened, she weakly repeated, “A man hit me.”  When they suggested she had been hit by a car, she replied, “No, I don’t know what it was.”  Without knowing what had struck her down, the hospital staffers were helpless to aid her.  By morning, Mrs. Ravenel was dead.

"Greenville News," November 4, 1933, via Newspapers.com

It was not until she was autopsied that the coroner discovered what had killed her: she had been shot with a .38 caliber bullet which passed through her right forearm, upper arm, and into her chest.  There were no powder burns, which indicated that her murderer had been some distance away.  The trajectory of the bullet suggested that at the time Ravenel was shot, she was raising her arm, possibly to ward off a blow.

The mysterious murder of one of Charleston’s leading citizens was, naturally, a great shock to the community, and people--very, very important people--demanded the police catch her killer immediately.  After all, if an inoffensive widow like Mrs. Ravenel could not be safe walking the streets, no one was safe.

Unfortunately, this was one of those murders where the police had absolutely nothing to work with.  There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting.  The murder weapon was never found.  Nobody could think of any reason why anyone in the world would want Mrs. Ravenel dead.

Perhaps Mrs. Ravenel was the victim of a mugging?  However, her purse and jewelry were untouched.

Did she, against all logic, have someone in her life deliberately murder her?  But if so, who?  And why?  If she was shot by someone she knew, why didn’t she name him, instead of merely saying “a man” struck her?

A third theory is the quirkiest of the lot:  That she was shot accidentally.  Detectives found witnesses who stated that on the night Mrs. Ravenel was killed, they heard the howling of a cat, followed by a gunshot and a woman’s scream.  It was proposed that someone fired at the cat, only to strike poor Mary instead.  However, this scenario does not explain why Mrs. Ravenel said “a man hit me,” and the evidence that at the time she was shot, she was raising her arm in self-defense.  (For what it’s worth, a friend of Mrs. Ravenel’s indignantly told police “We don’t shoot cats down here!”)

So that was that.  As no evidence surfaced to prove or disprove any of these possibilities, Mrs. Ravenel’s death gradually drifted into that netherworld of “cold cases.”  However, it is still remembered as one of Charleston’s strangest murders.