Marcia Trimble

Most Nashvillians know her name even if they were not alive when Marcia Trimble was murdered in 1975…Nashville was never the same again.

I saw it all happen on the news when I was 8 years old. That is when I learned that the world wasn’t a nice safe place. I’ve seen it written many times…1975 is when Nashville lost its innocence. It was never crime free…no city ever is but this changed people forever here. It became high profile and went national.

Marcia Trimble was a 9-year-old Girl Scout selling cookies on February 25, 1975, and disappeared where she lived in Green Hills…a very affluent part of Nashville then as well as now.

My Uncle Fulton was a Sergeant in the Vice Squad at that time. We were at my grandmother’s for Easter and I saw his car pulling up the drive and his three girls looked shocked. I saw him walking over to my mom so I walked over also. I remember he looked at my mom and then me and said…we found her and it’s beyond bad. He didn’t have to say who or what…we knew what he was talking about.

Marcia was found murdered and sexually assaulted under a tarp in a garage near her Green Hills home 33 days after she was declared missing.

The prime suspect was Jeffrey Womack…a then 15-year-old neighbor who had told the cops that Marcia had been by his house but he had no money and didn’t buy anything. The police later thought he kill Marcia…and he was suddenly the prime suspect… until 2008.

There has been plenty of crime here before and after this murder but none had the impact of this horrible event. I live north of Nashville but it affected everyone around middle Tennessee.  At the time parents were obviously more on guard and kids would stick together while out.

From the Nashville Scene…about the neighborhood it happened in.

Former homicide Lt. Tommy Jacobs, who investigated the murder, says that for whatever reason, many of the children in the neighborhood stagnated in the years after the killing. “We interviewed the kids when they were 9 and 10 years old and went back and interviewed them 20-some-odd years later,” he says. “You won’t believe how many of the kids wound up in a mental institution or working at a gas station. Several of the kids were still living at home.”

60-year-old Jerome Sydney Barrett was convicted after DNA was examined in 2008 and he was sentenced to 44 years in prison in 2009…Barrett had killed more people in Nashville in 1975 and was finally connected to Marcia.

Jeffrey Womack, the kid that was falsely accused, was finally free of suspicion after 33 years.

For more of the details…  https://www.insidehook.com/article/action/city-shadows-1974-murder-marcia-trimble-changed-nashville-forever

 

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

27 thoughts on “Marcia Trimble”

    1. First time I ever saw anything ever get to that man. I was talking to one of his daughters about this not long ago and she said things got really strict after this happened….and it took a while for things to get back to normal.
      He was a big boxing fan and him and I would talk boxing through the years and other things…but I never brought this up.

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      2. He was a Marine, a drug Narc, and had black roses delievered to his door…and this did bring him down. He would talk about everything but this…
        He also had 3 beautiful daughters…a couple of them looked like Heather Locklear… he had his hands full. He always half joked to my single mom at the time he wanted to adopt me…my mom told me he was serious.

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  2. Whose garage was she found in? I can’t believe they didn’t arrest the 15 year old. So that poor kid had his life ruined because everyone thought he was guilty, while the real killer was out there killing more. I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone could find the poor girl and not be haunted by the image. We had a serial killer loose here in a nearby county for a number of years. He only killed 2 — that we know of — but one of them could have been saved, but the killer’s cousin helped him dispose of the first body and never told anyone. The area was shook up bad by this and actually we still are, to think he lived among us. They found some terrifying material at a house he kept his stuff at (he was a married man with a family!)

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    1. They arrested him in 1980 but with no evidence they let him go. It was terrible that his name was put out there. He never said much because his lawyer told him not to talk until the killer was found…he did write a book…it would be interesting reading. It’s not right that is for sure.

      It was the most publicized crime in Nashville’s history.

      That is terrible…yes you never know…it’s usually not who you think…look at Ted Bundy.

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      1. I think you should read that book! It sounds like it still bothers you. I had a guy try to pull a Ted Bundy on me once out in the parking lot at work. Employee parking lot was across the street. As I walked towards my car he was headed towards me and said something like he needed some help at his car. I headed in an opposite direction and felt for my phone to get ready to dial 911. He saw that and disappeared pronto.

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      3. That makes my blood run cold. They finally caught the serial killer here when he had picked up a little 16 year old in his van. I forgot what she saw in the van but she ended up jumping out while it was moving also. Evidence she gave led to him I forget all of the details.

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  3. This would shake up anyone. She was a beautiful little girl, out doing what girls that age all looked forward to doing. It’s a relief that they eventually got the right guy, but for the wrong guy to be suspected for all of those years is an additional tragedy. That man was robbed of his life.

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    1. Every kid at that time knew that name…It got the most coverage of any local event ever I beleive.
      Yes and the cops harrassed the guy for decades without evidence…

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  4. Sad story for sure, one unfortunately repeated in too many cities. Toronto had its own equivalent in 80s, cute tween girl who was abducted & killed by a pervert posing as a newspaper photog wanting to profile her track & field competitions. Took about 10 years for the killer, an early suspect to slip up & get caught. The whole thing was documented on one of those A&E tye crime shows I saw a few months ago which pointed out how saddened the city was but probably overdid the ‘Toronto the safe city’ aspect a bit.

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    1. Yea, no city is without it …I’m glad with modern technology that people are getting caught easier now and innocent people are not getting jailed as much.
      That crime like this one is just so awful…in both cases it’s great they caught the killer but the victims are gone no matter what.

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      1. Yep, the DNA advances as well as all the surveillance cameras on stores, stretlights etc do help a great deal but it’s still tough to track down ones where they aren’t obvious suspects (like family members or people with ongoing ‘beefs’) . For a number of years I worked with a pro camera store & lab which had the contract for the regional police . It was terrible in some ways (I saw more dead bodies at crime scenes and on autopsy tables , in photos, than you could shake a stick at) but also fascinating because I got to know a lot of the CSI type cops and detectives and saw how they worked and also, got their reaction to the Hollywood style shows (like ‘CSI’) which they usually despised … since they make it all seem so simple!

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      2. I would not envy you with that job. It had to be a fascinating world to be in though and talk to those people.
        Yea if they are a person not already in the database you have to get the DNA which can be hard. Waiting to see if someone drinks something and throws the can away where you can get it etc.

        Plus in that line of work if you don’t go by the book a mistrial can be made and all the work go down the drain.

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    1. It was true….Nashville was never the same after that. I remember as a kid it was shocking. I’m glad they finally got the bast**d. It doesn’t bring her back though.

      It really affected that neighborhood….the kids then.

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    1. Thank you Pam…Parents changed immediately after this happened.
      Those kids on that street did not turn out too well partly because of this.

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