The Roanoker-November/December 2021 - 12

strange days of roanoke
The Back Creek Orchard
Company of J.D. Willett at
Bent Mountain.
Murder on the Mountain
written by Nelson Harris The brutal slaying of a high school senior in 1929 stunned the Bent Mountain community.
F
reeda Bolt awoke on a midDecember
morning excited. She
was eloping! Mary Gardner, with
whom she and her older sister
boarded in Willis in Floyd County,
was a bit skeptical, as Bolt put on her long
black coat with a grey fur collar. Bolt, 18, was
a senior at the high school in Willis, seven
miles away from her home, and like other
young people lodged near the school. She told
Gardner that in the evening Buren Harman,
of Floyd County, and she were heading to
Roanoke or possibly farther to be wed.
Days passed and the Bolt's parents grew
suspicious. They had not heard from their
daughter and offered a $100 reward for
anyone knowing of her whereabouts. Gardner
could offer little information other than Bolt's
announced elopement. Harman, who was
seen in Floyd the day after Bolt left, denied
that he and Bolt had met the evening prior
or had wedding plans. Nevertheless, Sheriff
D.P. Hylton decided to hold Harman in jail
for questioning until more was known.
Eventually Harman confessed to what the
Bolt family had feared. He had murdered
the petite Bolt (she was five feet, four inches
tall and weighed 135 pounds) along the road
descending Bent Mountain, dragged her body
thirty yards off the shoulder and down the hill,
and hidden her beneath leaves and logs. What
he stated next to investigators was chilling and
unthinkable - he had returned to Bolt the next
morning , found her still alive and then finished
her off. Bolt's body would lie in the woods for
six days before Harman confessed.
Hylton, along with Deputies Giles Harris
and J.C. Anderson, discovered the body where
Harman had indicated it could be found. A
heavy cord had been tied around the victim's
neck. Dr. G.A. Kolmer, county coroner, was
called to the scene. As dark had descended,
Bolt's body was removed to the Back Creek
Orchard building owned by J.D. Willett.
Hylton used Willett's phone to notify Bolt's
parents. The following morning, the body was
taken to Salem for an autopsy that eventually
concluded Bolt had been strangled.
The shock of the crime reverberated
throughout the small, tight-knit Bent
Mountain community and throughout Floyd.
Sheriff Hylton decided to move Harman to the
jail in Roanoke City for better protection of his
inmate. As the murder occurred in Roanoke
County, the county's commonwealth's attorney,
R.T. Hubard, would spearhead the prosecution.
Five days before Christmas, Bolt was laid to
rest in the Mayberry Cemetery. The funeral at
Little Flock Church was attended by a large
crowd, but the Roanoke Times noted " the girl's
mother and her sister, Opal, who have been
prostrated since the tragedy, were unable to
attend the services. "
NELSON HARRIS is a former mayor of Roanoke and author of a dozen books on the region's history. He is the minister at Heights Community Church in Roanoke and a past
president of the Historical Society of Western Virginia.
12 November/December 2021
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The Roanoker-November/December 2021

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