WHAT'S DONE IN THE DARK | Part III: Revelations

Editor's Note: This is the third installment of a four-part investigative feature series looking back on the 1989 murder of Rev. Francis Craven in northern Tuscaloosa County. Be on the lookout for the fourth and final installment next weekend on Tuscaloosa Patch.

A Cast Of 'Drifters'

"I'm going to write a book about this. All of this should be told."

- David Thomas Leitner

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The late Dennis Levins, a Vietnam combat veteran and longtime Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's deputy, was removed from the murder investigation of Father Francis Craven early on after repeated public disagreements with his superiors and colleagues.

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It was a transitional era in law enforcement but at the local level, it just so happened to come in the wake of three high-profile and incredibly nuanced murder investigations in less than two years that had yet to be cracked.

The pressure on authorites was immense and, despite a figurative dead-end road paved with good intentions, I'll go ahead and tell you that the murder of Father Craven would never be solved by investigators in Tuscaloosa County.

As Patch previously reported in Part II of this sprawling series, Levins leaned hard on his hitchhiker theory in the murder of the Guntersville priest after receiving a tip from a police chief in Walker County.

The operative word used at every turn, though, was "drifter."

Amid the partly justified hysteria due to the prevalence of active serial killers, while coupled with overburdened homicide units across the state of Alabama and other states, it seemed as sound of a lead as any up to that point.

Levins saw his theory shot down by hard evidence after he went all-in on a public campaign in the newspapers and the courtroom to pin the murder on a drifter named Jerry Wayne Taylor who later proved to be an easy target for investigators and prosecutors looking for a suspect they could convict.

Never mind that Taylor was charged with three different murders around this time but was never convicted of one.

Levins even argued Taylor's guilt after evidence presented by the accused's shoe-leather public defense team that showed it would have been nearly impossible for the chronic alcoholic who made a living collecting scrap aluminum to have been responsible for such a brutal killing that appeared to be noticeably personal and premeditated in its execution.

Keep in mind, dear reader, we have the benefit of hindsight over 30 years later and this reporter can't help but insist that Levins might not have been completely errant in hyper-focusing on the broad profile of a "drifter."

When looking at this aspect of the case through a very specific kind of lens, a deep dive by Tuscaloosa Patch collecting verified backgrounds for the players in this series can definitively confirm that ALL of the most relevant characters came from different upbringings but all seemed to have had problems settling in one place their entire lives.

To put it simply: They were all drifters in their own way.

And, to Levins' credit, maybe he was onto something and just took a wrong turn as he pulled on the numerous threads of such a complicated case.

'A Man Of Many Faces'

As mentioned in Part I of this series, Tuscaloosa metro homicide unit investigator Joe Pearson was the junior detective under his partner Dennis Levins when he processed the scene where Craven's still-smoldering body was recovered in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon in January 1989.

It was a crime scene far too vivid and complex for Pearson to ever forget.

While only assigned to the case during its first few months, you'll remember that Pearson received a crucial tip in the form of a phone call from a panicked parishioner at St. Williams in Guntersville two days after Craven's body was found — all while investigators worked to identify the charred remains recovered from a kind of burn pile on Old Bull Slough Road.

"Someone in the homicide unit office tells me we had a guy on the phone asking about the murder and I just kind of rolled my eyes or something and said I'd take the call," Pearson told Patch years later walking around the original crime scene just feet from his driveway. "He said he was sure the burned-up body was Father Craven and even gave me the name of his dentist, which turned out to be a pretty good lead that got his body identified."

This was still roughly a month or so before Jerry Wayne Taylor was first mentioned as a suspect and Pearson thought little of the call.

After all, a helpful tip is a helpful tip when you don't have anything else, especially given that the caller from Marshall County was a professed parishioner at the church who seemed genuinely concerned about the missing priest.

The caller even offered up information that aided investigators, so why would that be any reason for suspicion?

At any rate, I teased this exchange early on in Part I of this series and intentionally spent over 15,000 words up to this point to tell you now that the voice on the other end of the phone was a complicated and troubled man named David Thomas Leitner.

Tuscaloosa News reporter Doris Flora has not responded to multiple requests for comment but we at Tuscaloosa Patch hope she knows the reverence we hold for her incredible writing and reporting years later.

I say that to mention that Flora was an undeniably talented storyteller and used an artistic stroke and literary approach to paint pictures using words as she chronicled the otherwise dry or ugly court proceedings in the murder trials for Father Craven and countless others.

To this end, she once penned that David Leitner was "a man of many faces."

Indeed, Leitner's mother said he "had a heart of gold" and "would take in any old dog."

Leitner's blind, octogenarian common-law wife called him "her eyes," and some of his neighbors in places like Guntersville and Atmore said he was a sensible and generous man, if not a little quirky.

Former Tuscaloosa News reporter and columnist Robert DeWitt told Patch years later that his first impression of Leitner was that he was "way too big of a sissy" to have committed such a brutal crime based on the way he carried himself during an extensive and quite candid one-on-one interview.

Members of St. Williams Catholic Church in Guntersville, where Craven had been its head pastor since 1985, said Leitner was a visible and active member of the parish and well-known in the small Catholic enclave in Marshall County ... but not always for the best reasons.

They also recalled how he and his "family" were at evening mass the night Craven failed to show and how Leitner got in his pickup to drive the highways looking for any sign of the missing priest or his van.

Roughly four years after working as a 16-year-old male prostitute in downtown Atlanta and getting into that same truck with Leitner for $200, Gregory Scott Little was quoted in the Tuscaloosa News as saying Leitner had "about five different faces."

"He can be mean or generous, kind and caring or jealous and violent"

Indeed, he told state investigators he thought the much older and physically imposing man — who had legally adopted him and referred to him as "a son" in court and to homicide investigators — was going to kill him if he talked about what they did on Jan. 7, 1989.

Retired Tuscaloosa Police officer and former metro homicide unit investigator Joe Pearson put it simply when asked for his overall assessment of Leitner.

"By the end of all of it, it was clear he just knew too much," Pearson told me.

With Little as the state's star witness in two trials, Leitner was convicted twice for the murder of Craven in one of the most complicated and publicized series of courtroom battles in Tuscaloosa County history — one that leaves nagging questions to this day that no one can seem to answer with any degree of confidence.

Through independent interviews, extensive research of public records and newspaper archives in multiple states, Tuscaloosa Patch was able to piece together the most extensive and accurate narrative ever published of a man that some today still aren't fully convinced was guilty.

Like many of the relevant players in this story, Leitner isn't around to give his side.

Leitner died in an Alabama prison in 1996, just a few years after his second conviction, and professed his innocence until the end.

Little On Facts

Greg Little presents an interesting contrast to David Leitner.

An inconsequential arrest report for one of his many minor drug charges listed Little at 5'4" and weighing barely 100 pounds.

Compared to the extensive paper trail left by his much older lover and later his legally adopted father, Little was later referred to as "scared," "small" and "having the intelligence of a 7- or 8-year-old" when he had to take the stand to testify against Leitner.

Little was never tried as a suspect in Craven's murder and as of the publication of this story, he remains a bit of an elusive and enigmatic figure in the case when trying to tell his story.

Using specific biographical information found in numerous court records, Tuscaloosa Patch confirmed that Gregory Scott Little died almost two years ago in Saraland at the age of 53.

Apart from a 2004 arrest for running a meth lab and endangering a passenger in a car crash, little else has been gleaned about the rest of his life and death.

And, like Leitner, he's no longer able offer his side of the story.

"Another investigator and I went to the memorial service for Father Craven," Guntersville Police Department Captain Carl Fulmer told the Birmingham Post-Herald in 1990. "Leitner and Little were there, and they took communion. I just keep thinking about that."

Other than spending his youth and later dying in Saraland, it's as if Greg Little appeared from the ether when he got into that truck with Leitner sometime in the mid-1980s, most likely around 1986.

It's also unclear how he matriculated to Atlanta to work in the sex trade and Leitner later said under oath that the much younger Little developed a serious drug problem after the two first met during one of Leitner's frequent "cruises" through the parts of Atlanta where male prostitutes could be found.

SIDE NOTE: Patch previously reported in Part II of this series that Atlanta was arguably one of the busiest hotbeds for serial murderers and violent sexual predators in America, which led many to be suspicious of Leitner's presence in Georgia.

Even after Greg Little testified against Leitner, the much older man rarely, if ever, spoke negatively about Little and, instead, focused his public ire toward the merits of Little's story and his regrettable habits that led him down a life of sin, petty crime and substance abuse.

One newspaper account said that when times were good, Leitner affectionately called Little "Monchhichi" — a reference to the Japanese monkey dolls with rosy cheeks that became a popular toy when the product made its way to the United States in the mid-1970s.

This obscure fact takes on a different connotation, though, when considering Tuscaloosa News reporter and columnist Robert DeWitt's first impression of Leitner during an extensive in-person interview with the suspected killer.

Objectively speaking, DeWitt produced arguably the best on-the-ground journalism during the most tense moments of the entire saga and is a bit of a gruff outdoorsman who made it a point to tell Tuscaloosa Patch that he was unapologetically conservative — a fact well-known and already established to those who read his columns for years.

Politics aside, though, DeWitt used the word "boy toy" throughout our interview to describe his interpretation of Little's relationship with Leitner. He was even quick to say that this term was much more of an honest observation than a personal opinion based on the men's supposed homosexuality, which became a favorite talking point throughout the case, both in court and in the media.

DeWitt was matter of fact in saying the complicated romantic relationships were pretty much on display for the world to see.

"Leitner loved that boy and probably loved him to a fault," DeWitt told me. "At first and, for a while, I had it in my mind that maybe it was possible that Greg Little had a relationship with Father Craven and enlisted Leitner to help kill him for some reason. Since it was obvious Leitner loved that boy as much as he did, he seemed capable of taking the fall for him and maybe hoping that Little would have a change of heart seeing him do it."

As DeWitt later gleaned from his and others' reporting, he explained that serious doubts were cast on the aforementioned theory when the courtroom drama finally reached its climax.

After nearly a year of resources and energy spent trying to convict an innocent man, the failed case against drifter Jerry Wayne Taylor left many to question every new detail and suspect that emerged in the case. As I've said at several points in this story, it must be reiterated that if we're treating this feature series as a work of forensic history and a case study on the evolution of the criminal justice system, the Jerry Wayne Taylor chapter of this odyssey must be underscored for how its numerous missteps reverberated throughout the legal proceedings.

"You run the danger of somebody losing their life if you do that," longtime defense attorney and former Tuscaloosa County District Attorney Jim Standridge told Patch of the consequences of the courtroom proceedings where he was appointed as Taylor's public defender and built a case that saw his client cleared of the murder charge in the Craven case. "Everybody wants to cut corners but all that does is hurt the credibility of the case you're trying to make and, if you're a prosecutor, it runs the risk of you getting an innocent person convicted."

Much more acceptable by today's standards, even in some places in Alabama, Greg Little was an admitted marijuana smoker who later developed a habit for harder drugs and was arrested numerous times for manufacturing methamphetamine and possession of other illegal narcotics.

Despite newspaper accounts from the time saying only that Little had a minor criminal record, nothing suggests that he was ever considered a violent offender in any other cases.

Scores of articles were written in the years that followed Leitner's arrest about his sexual relationship with Little after the two men moved in together in a trailer at Guntersville Lake in Marshall County a year or so before a new priest was reassigned from Tuscaloosa to St. Williams Catholic Church.

A short drive from Leitner's first Alabama hometown in Huntsville, Guntersville is a quiet and picturesque little city with a population of less than 9,000.

As Leitner shows throughout this saga, though, if he wanted to have a good time in the big city, away from the judgmental eyes on the sleepy city streets he walked every day, he was less than an hour and a half from Birmingham and less than a three hours drive to Atlanta if he was going the speed limit in his maroon and silver pickup truck.

It's impossible to calculate the number of Guntersville residents who offered up mixed opinions to the gaggle of descending media after Leitner was named as a suspect. Parishioners from St. Williams confirmed he was an active member of the church during Craven's tenure and, at one point, said he even led a youth program for roughly a year.

For every one person who complimented him, though, another was sure to call him a weirdo.

In one interesting example, a neighbor told the the Tuscaloosa News that he loved his pet cat so much that when the ailing and elderly feline died, he took it to a taxidermist and had it stuffed so he could put it on display.

Leitner and his much younger companion, Greg Little, were regularly seen attending services together and, in the months that followed Leitner's arrest, their fellow parishioners provided candid views on the possibility of the two being in a sexual relationship, along with the possibility of a love triangle involving the two and the slain priest.

Leitner's common-law wife, Vivian, was over 80 years old, nearly blind and walked with a white cane by the time her much younger husband was put on trial for murder in Tuscaloosa County in the summer of 1990 and became a regular fixture in the courtroom in the few years that followed.

One of his only public advocates as the case was built against him, Vivian regularly gave her thoughts on Leitner's innocence and insisted upon his gentle nature when speaking to the scrum of reporters who lingered around the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse.

Leitner reportedly met the much older widow at St. Williams after taking in Greg Little and the two began a relationship that lasted the rest of their lives. This is an important detail in the story and one that leaves many unanswered questions more than three decades later.

Nevertheless, after a brief courtship, Leitner and Little moved out of the trailer at Guntersville Lake and into one side of a white, wood-framed duplex on Carlisle Avenue that still stands to this day. Vivian Young soon followed and lived in the other side.

It's a dynamic that persisted even after she and Leitner were supposedly wed.

It was widely reported that Vivian told reporters she and Leitner exchanged vows in 1984 in Iuka, Mississippi — a detail that noticeably conflicts with the verified paper trail and timeline left by Leitner that was eventually debunked by reporters when records in Mississippi failed to yield a marriage license.

Nevertheless, she made public declarations of their sincere romantic love for one another and Leitner said shortly after her death that she'd spent nearly $200,000 on his defense over the years.

A Willing Victim?

A cross-reference of numerous records confirms that Vivian B. Hudson was born the oldest of nine children on a farm in the Blue Mountain community of Logan County, Arkansas, on March 29, 1907.

Despite clawing her way out of the life she was born into, Vivian's life came full circle nearly a century later when she died alone and with very little to call her own after facing tragedy after tragedy.

As was common for rural women around the turn of the century, Census records show Vivian received little formal education during her most formative years and, instead, spent her time keeping house or lending an extra set of calloused hands to chores around the farm.

Those same records saw her report that she could read and write but that's about the extent of her cultural and intellectual background in her early years. And such a modest and hardscrabble upbringing seems to have set her eyes to wandering and heart to yearning for a better life.

According to a marriage license obtained by Patch from the Arkansas state archives, Vivian was 18 years old when she married Phineas Allison "P.A." Young in Sebastian, Arkansas in April 1924.

P.A. Young was only 21 when the couple wed, but the native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was already quickly climbing the ranks of the L&N Railroad Co. and a 1930 U.S. Census record listed his occupation as a foreman with the major railroad firm.

The couple traveled around for a brief time with P.A.'s work, which provided them with a comfortable standard of living as they moved back to Grand Rapids, Michigan to live for several years.

At the close of World War II, the couple moved in 1945 to the small Alabama town of Flomaton — a city of less than 1,500 that hugs the state line with Florida in Escambia County.

Pensacola, Florida, is the nearest metropolitan area and the town of Flomaton was reportedly named after officials decided to combine the words "Florida, Alabama and town."

To add context to the Young family's quality of life at this time, Flomaton's role in the extensive L&N Railroad network came as it operated as a terminal for trains heading as far south as New Orleans to as far north as New York City. Given the importance of this kind of work at the time, P.A. Young would have been considered something of a man of status in his community.

These were surely some of Vivian's happiest years as her husband found success in his career and local politics.

The couple had two boys — Gene and Jack — and were regular fixtures in the small-town society pages of the local paper, where they were often mentioned for hosting the town's most prominent citizens for dinner parties or the family's travel as part of P.A.'s job.

However, the Young family got its first taste of tragedy in the spring of 1948 when the couple's oldest son Gene "died instantly" at his home in nearby Century, Florida, according to an obituary printed in the since-defunct Flomaton Journal, which said the 20-year-old was popular among local young people and his brother, Jack, was serving in the United States Navy.

This also came less than a decade after both of Vivian's parents were buried and the year after her only living sibling died, which also followed the deaths of two of her siblings in less than three years.

Gene's death wasn't made clear in the public record until six years later when his parents penned an open letter to the community that said the young man died from complications of a cancer operation.

The letter reads: "When we later placed a head stone on the grave, we had a picture of him attached to the stone. About six months later, this picture was removed from the stone by unknown persons or person. We had it replaced and yesterday when I visited the Cemetery, I found it had been removed by force again. It is not our intention to replace it at this time, as it appears it would be useless, when anyone so stupid and mean to do such a disgraceful trick might remove it again. We feel like we have many friends in Flomaton, but at least one enemy, who has our sympathy as he will have to live with his own conscience."

The family continued on, though, and things seemed to have gotten back to normal for an extended period, during which P.A. Young entered elected office on the town council after retiring from the L&N Railroad. He was also elected chair of the legislative board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

Like his oldest son, P.A. Young was also a popular figure around the railroad town and was regularly lampooned in the satire section of the local paper before he was diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer around the time that Gregory Scott Little was born.

Phineas Allison Young died in a Flomaton hospital on May 11, 1972.

He was 67.

Instead of retreating to a life of mournful solitude, though, Vivian Young accepted an appointment to fill out the remainder of her late husband's term on the town council and went on to be elected to two more terms without any competition at the ballot box, according to a report years later in the Tuscaloosa News.

This is where one of the biggest gaps in her story presents itself.

Indeed, sometime after the end of her second elected term in office, the records and coverage of her life go dormant until she resurfaces again in Guntersville in the mid-1980s as a parishioner at St. Williams Catholic Church.

As a side note to reinforce the theme of drifters in this series, this was also around the time Francis Craven was reassigned from Tuscaloosa to Guntersville after his parishioners from Holy Spirit Catholic Church approached the leadership of the Diocese in Birmingham to express concerns over Craven's financial habits and spending on expensive electronics at a time when the church was on the verge of bankruptcy.

A few short and turbulent years later, Vivian Young reportedly died with little to no money after turning over her power of attorney to a man serving a life sentence for murder — a man who told investigators a few years earlier that their marriage was more of a business partnership to protect Vivian from her son Jack calling her mental competency into question to then have her involuntarily committed to an asylum or nursing home.

A Troubling Profile

By all accounts, David Thomas Leitner had a childhood far more idyllic than most, if not all, of the other players in this tragedy.

According to a birth certificate obtained by Patch from the state archives in Indiana, Leitner was born in 1937 in Cannelton, Indiana. The son of Ralph Leitner — a woodworker at the time — and his wife Gladys, David went on to attend parochial school and then Tell City High School.

Somewhat ironically, the small town of less than 8,000 on the Ohio River is roughly a three-and-a-half hour drive northeast through Indianapolis from the three Indiana parishes where years later a priest from Lynn, Massachusetts named Francis Craven pretty much flunked out on his first attempt at the cloth, before parish leaders said he became disillusioned with the church to the point that he joined the Navy to serve as a chaplain.

Former homicide investigator Joe Pearson understandably explained he didn't have much of a reason to do background research on Leitner after being taken off the case in the months that followed the murder and in an age before the internet. But he did point out at present that Leitner's accent was far different from someone who'd lived in the Deep South their entire life.

At any rate, after Leitner's junior year of high school, his family moved to Huntsville when his Dad got a job at Redstone Arsenal during the height of the Cold War arms race and the industrial boom that came with it.

Before he left Indiana, though, the Tell City School 1954 annual featured a section where graduating seniors "bequeathed" certain traits or privileges to the juniors coming behind them.

One student's entry proved somewhat prophetic when he said: "I, David Dooley, bequeath my ability to keep my mouth shut around bigger boys to David Leitner. He needs it."

Leitner enrolled for his senior year at Huntsville High School and even played tuba in the band.

An interesting side note that can be verified about his background can be found in a Tuscaloosa News story that quoted an elderly Ralph and Gladys Leitner during their son's murder trial, where Leitner's mother said he was his class president at Huntsville High School and received an award ahead of graduation for attending 12 years of school without an absence.

A Huntsville Times story confirms that Leitner did indeed receive an award for perfect attendance but a thorough examination of the Tell City High annuals showed that he was never involved in any extracurricular clubs or activities before his family's relocation to Alabama.

It was also noted in contemporary news coverage that Leitner was never class president at any point during his formal education and an independent analysis of the yearbooks from every year Leitner was in high school in Indiana and Alabama shows he was never an elected officer for any of his classes.

A 1955 yearbook from his senior year at Huntsville High School includes a photo of him in the band but, interestingly enough, his senior portrait was not among the headshot photos with their favorite quotes, superlatives and club affiliations.

Despite the aforementioned honor he received for perfect attendance that was mentioned in the big-city newspaper, Leitner was one of three seniors out of a class of 144 graduating students to be listed as footnotes in the 1955 annual as "camera shy."

Leitner also seems to have met a high school sweetheart in his lone year in Huntsville, Barbara Ann Sheely, who was a couple of years behind him in school.

Sheely's high school senior quote for the Huntsville High School yearbook in 1957 reads:

"Talk she can and talk she will; her tongue is very seldom still" — a quote fairly common across the United States among young ladies graduating high school in the 1950s.

She worked on the circulation staff for the annual, was in the Huntsville High Drama Club, played in the marching band with David and was active in numerous other clubs as she finished school.

Barbara Ann was engaged to marry Leitner the same year, per a formal announcement in the Huntsville Times.

As the couple was planning their nuptials, Leitner had been working at Center Drug Co. before enlisting in the Navy and reportedly serving in Okinawa, Japan while Barbara Ann readied for graduation in 1957.

Military service records and later court documents confirm that Leitner worked as an electrician's mate during his service in the Navy.

Indeed, the young couple planned to be married in June 1957 but never tied the knot after Leitner was discharged from the Navy that May for "failure to adapt."

This is where things begin to take a seemingly negative turn for Leitner, who Patch can confirm was the only person named in a Huntsville Times story the month before his wedding under a headline that read: "Teenager Says Youths Beat Him After Accident."

The brief story reads:

"A Huntsville teenager told police last night that five other teenagers beat him and his girlfriend following a minor accident at the intersection of East Holmes and Lincoln streets. However, the alleged assailants of David Thomas Leitner, 19, 1801 Daye Road, left before the police arrived.
David could not identify any of his alleged attackers, but did get the license number of the other car. However, the owner of the car said some other youths took his car while it was parked near a local drive-in restaurant. He did not identify who took his car."

It should come as little surprise following the purportedly violent encounter the month before their wedding that David Leitner and Barbara Ann Sheely went their separate ways as his mental state showed to have been in bad decline before he was even 20 years old.

Indeed, when Leitner filed a Civil Service application the following year to work at Redstone Arsenal as a store clerk, he disclosed that he had been treated for "nervous tension" at the Naval Hospital in Corona, California, before his discharge.

As proved the case with so many other ventures and relationships, this job was a difficult adjustment as court documents show Leitner didn't even make it a year before his security clearance was revoked in April 1959.

He was allowed to stay on at Redstone Arsenal without the security clearance, but records obtained by Patch show that Leitner had several reported occurrences of emotional outbursts and physical symptoms that eventually resulted in his being reassigned to a location in the sprawling Redstone Arsenal complex that allowed him to have only minimal contact with co-workers and others.

It should be noted here that a public records request made with the Alabama Department of Mental Health was acknowledged by a representative from the agency informing Tuscaloosa Patch of the standard protocol stating such records in its care were protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for up to 50 years from the date of death of the individual whose records are being requested.

Nevertheless, it was submitted as evidence at trial that Leitner, during this time, reported chronic headaches — both migraine and psychogenic — that resulted in a loss of time at work due to his periodic visits to doctors and "confinement" in local hospitals and Veterans Affairs facilities.

A psychological evaluation to determine Leitner's competency for trial following his arrest for the murder of Francis Craven later said that during this time in his life he would become irritable during headache attacks and create disturbances among fellow employees "resulting in an adverse effect on morale, production and proper discipline."

Leitner's mental condition worsened over the years and court documents entered as evidence later said he was admitted to Crestwood Hospital in Huntsville in late 1966 before finally being fired from Redstone Arsenal.

A doctor noted after Leitner left against his advice that the troubled young man was "considered hazardous to self and/or others."

It was around this time that Leitner moved to New Hope and married a much older woman named Eleanor Melberg, whom he later "blamed for his troubles" when confiding in doctors and psychiatrists trying to understand him. Leitner's parents also later told newspaper reporters that this relationship with Melberg "soured" and did little to improve Leitner's mental state.

Medical evaluation records obtained by Patch from the original case file revealed that following testimony from a doctor and Ralph Leitner, Melberg signed the papers to have David Leitner involuntarily committed to Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa on May 17, 1968, where he was later transferred to the Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center the following June.

This stay at Bryce Hospital resulted in Leitner being diagnosed as suffering from "Schizophrenic Reaction, paranoid type," and it was also noted that he was exhibiting suicidal tendencies and expressing thoughts of self-harm. He would later dispute this diagnosis in court.

Medical records from this time also note that Leitner: "attempts to present a facade of adjustment through defenses of projection and intellectualization as well. When his tolerance for compulsive behaviors, stresses reached, those defenses break down, and he might be expected to react irrationally, displaying extremely poor judgment."

After reportedly undergoing three separate electroshock therapy treatments during this particular stay, Leitner then raised security concerns on June 17, 1968, when doctors noted he became even more paranoid and hostile, expressing the belief that he shouldn't be hospitalized before making threats to "get out one way or another."

This same day saw Ralph Leitner, his father who had testified in support of his son's involuntary committed, inform the administration at Bryce Hospital that he was having a difficult time convincing his wife that their son was mentally ill.

"The mother is the prime mover in demanding that the son be released," a Bryce Hospital physician's report stated. "He has no insight at all into his condition. The mother nags the father into demanding his release and when this was not forthcoming, she has made his life miserable. He has asked for help regarding this."

Leitner was eventually discharged to the Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center on June 18, 1968, but not before being referred to by state mental health officials as "not mentally competent" when he left Bryce Hospital.

This subsequent stay at the VA was short-lived and Leitner was released the following August after being re-diagnosed as having a "passive-aggressive personality ... with depressive features."

Dr. Octavio Delgado wrote in a competency evaluation later submitted as evidence:

"Psychological testing showed [Leitner] in adequate contact with reality. He is well-oriented and there is no significant depression or anxiety. Emotionally, he is unstable and explosive. He tries to manipulate others and engages in attention-seeking. He has a low frustration tolerance and tends to act out under stress."

For some reason, this turbulent chapter of David Leitner's life was followed by nearly two decades of relative quietus — at least as far as available public records, arrest reports, press stories and independent interviews conducted by Patch have found.

Medical records in the original case file show Leitner was prescribed Thorazine just before his discharge from the Tuscaloosa VA Medical Center and he didn't reappear in the accessible public record until 1987.

Instead of settling back down in Huntsville following a failed engagement and another failed marriage, he opted to move to Marshall County, where Father Francis Craven would take over as priest of the small Catholic parish in 1985.

Given his confirmed biographical information, Greg Little would have been living with Leitner during an interaction in 1987 between the priest and Leitner that went largely overlooked in court.

Relationships In Focus

This reporter searched high and low for the better part of a month to make sense of a detail mentioned at the end of a long and well-sourced story in the Tuscaloosa News written by reporter Harry Satterwhite.

The incident took place at Leitner's trailer in Guntersville and the details he reported are interesting for a reason that never seemed to have been raised at trial.

I examined all that's accessible of the now-ancient case file, most of which was produced on a typewriter and later photocopied out of focus. But one previously unreported detail caused my jaw to drop.

If you've made it this far in the longwinded series, and for the sake of giving you something similar to what I experienced in real-time, I'll offer it to you the same way I read it fresh and unedited from a court document submitted by the prosecution at trial:

"On February 23, 1987, at 10:05 a.m., Father Francis Craven called the Arab Police Department and reported that Leitner was attempting suicide at [Leitner's] residence. When the police responded, they were told that Leitner was taking several different medications and was inside holding a pistol to his head and saying that he was going to kill himself. During the four hour stand-off, Leitner told Father Craven what to do after he had killed himself, concerning personal business, etc."

There's also no public mention of this that has been found by Patch among the scores of comments offered up by parishioners to newspapers across the state and national wire services in the wake of Craven's murder.

For reasons we'll likely never know, it was either not read aloud in court or accessible to the media due to being sensitive evidence for the Tuscaloosa County District Attorney's Office.

The only mention of the incident was printed in the Tuscaloosa News on Aug. 9, 1990:

"But [Leitner] broke down again three years ago, barricading himself in a mobile home and threatening to kill himself. After a four-hour standoff, police used tear gas to extract him from his home just outside of Guntersville and charged him with attempting to maim himself. The charge was later dropped. [Vivian Young] said the incident stemmed from an overdose of medicine Leitner was taking at the time for congested lungs. She married him a short time later."

The Big Break

Longtime Tuscaloosa News editor Ben Windham — the talented son of legendary Alabama author Kathryn Tucker Windham — gave young reporter Robert DeWitt the assignment of a lifetime in the summer of 1990 and it would result in some of the best spot journalism he ever produced.

In the present day, speaking with Patch in a phone interview, the gruff outdoorsman with a steel-trap memory admitted he was a bit nervous when presented the task of being face-to-face with an accused killer when he's taken into custody.

Regardless, DeWitt made the drive to Atmore where media from across the state were quietly assembling inside a small town police station after being tipped off that there would be an arrest made in the Francis Craven murder investigation.

The situation was also a complex one, DeWitt wrote on July 29, 1990, as he reported that police feared trying to arrest Leitner at his home in the small city after neighbors told police that he always carried a gun and had heard that he once barricaded himself in his residence.

By this point, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI) was heading up the murder investigation with the assistance of local agencies on the ground while homicide investigators and police back in Tuscaloosa had their hands full trying to catch convicted murderer and serial rapist Roy Edward Perkins during his violent spree in the northern end of the county between New Lexington and Berry.

Meanwhile, in Atmore, police opted to lure Leitner to the station by using Greg Little as bait and it was around 11:30 p.m. that night when Leitner's pickup rolled into the parking lot.

It was a night where all hands were supposed to be on deck, but DeWitt reported that while Atmore was normally a sleepy little prison town, this particular Friday night was different.

Indeed, while the Atmore Police Department was digging in its heels for the biggest arrest in some time, APD still had to nab a man in an unrelated case who was believed to be armed and dangerous, before then having to respond to a car wreck, a burglary and a high-speed chase involving a tractor-trailer.

"To make matters worse, the burglary victim, Lance Phillips, drove up just as Leitner was en route to the station," DeWitt penned. "Law officers let out a collective groan as Phillips drove up."

DeWitt said Atmore Police Chief Glenn Carlee, upon seeing the local yokel, shouted "Lance, get the hell out of here," and the man peeled out of the police station parking lot not waiting around to be told a second time.

"I can walk into the damndest things," Phillips told DeWitt shortly thereafter with a laugh.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere around the little Atmore Police station was reportedly made to look as unassuming and quiet as possible, with DeWitt and other reporters sequestered to a side room and told to stay away from the windows.

A tail car then began reporting back to the station on Leitner's movements through town and DeWitt noted in his reporting that there was a "nervous flurry of activity" in the building when the observing officer said Leitner was crossing the railroad tracks in the center of town.

Things nearly went off the rails, too, when Leitner arrived at the station and likely made note of the numerous out-of-county tags in the parking lot, DeWitt reported. Leitner is then said to have turned heel back toward his truck as the Atmore police chief stepped outside and called him in.

"When the trap was sprung, everything went smoothly," DeWitt wrote. "Although Leitner protested, he didn't resist. Leitner's house had been searched by ABI agents about three weeks ago and Leitner was highly suspicious. [Atmore Police] used Leitner's apparent obsession with Greg Little, a 20-year-old man who moved to Atmore with Leitner, against him. Little had moved out of Leitner's home some time back and Carlee told Leitner that Little was down at the station."

By all accounts, obsession is probably the most accurate word to describe Leitner's documented and domineering hold on the much younger man that would ultimately be his undoing.

It can be said, and has by many, that had David Leitner backed off of Greg Little after the younger man left, things might've turned out differently for everybody, namely Father Francis Craven.

Indeed, Leitner, his 80-year-old bride and Little moved nearly 300 miles south to Atmore in the months immediately following Craven's murder in what can only be interpreted as a telling decision. The only explanation for the choice of location can be found in Vivian Young's connections to Escambia County.

During this time near the Florida state line, cats rivaled Little for Leitner's attention and obsession. Akin to the late Ernest Hemingway's stay in Key West, neighbors said he would often keep 10 to 12 felines roaming his property at any given time.

Leitner's neighbors in Atmore described him as a bit of an eccentric and gun nut to reporters, explaining that he'd had his favorite cat stuffed by a taxidermist when it died and after reportedly spending upwards of $1,000 on veterinary visits for the beloved pet.

"He told me, 'When I die, I want that cat cremated and his ashes poured over my feet,'" Leitner's neighbor Joyce Etheridge told the Tuscaloosa News.

As DeWitt pointed out in one newspaper account, Leitner was also known to collect guns and odd antiques, despite not having any job to speak of. To the young journalist, it seemed compulsive.

"He had this little half-assed antique business if I remember right," DeWitt told Patch. "He always struck me as kind of a weenie and duplicitous. There was nothing that ever rang out to me that this guy could beat a priest's brains in. Everything said, at least to me, that it's just as likely that a young male prostitute did this rather than an old man. And maybe there was no real motive for Greg Little, while there seemed to be for Leitner."

Those closest to Leitner throughout his life seem to have had a pretty easy time noticing when his mental state began to change and this certainly wasn't lost on his neighbors in Atmore who said when Greg Little left the area that summer to live somewhere around Century, Florida, it became all Leitner could talk about.

Neighbors at first noticed that only Leitner and Little lived in the house on Pensacola Avenue before later being joined by 83-year-old Vivian Young, who records show bought the home. Leitner, in his early 50s, first told neighbors in Atmore that his relationship with the elderly woman was "platonic," but later told them that they were married.

Judicial rulings on medical evaluations obtained by Patch and submitted as evidence in the original case file assert that Young was suffering from an "organic brain disease" during this time and was deemed incompetent to testify as a witness. Cited today as organic brain syndrome (OBS), this is a blanket term for a condition that can result in a broad spectrum of more acute and diagnosable neurological and cognitive diseases.

It was around this time that neighbors began noticing bombastic arguments in the front yard between Leitner and the much smaller Little. Some nights, Leitner would set out in his pickup to prowl the streets when Little didn't come home at an appointed hour.

"Greg — he couldn't stay straight," Atmore resident Billy Etheridge told the Tuscaloosa News in 1990. "He was doing things David couldn't cope with. He'd go out nights looking for him. ... [Leitner] came over here a while back. He told me, 'You know, I'm going crazy. I've got to find some help. I love that young'n (Little) and I can't live without him.'"

Nevertheless, things appear to have worsened and Little first seems to have left for Georgia, according to a letter written on March 4, 1990, by Leitner and mailed to Atlanta Judge Frank M. Eldridge. The letter detailed Little's alleged drug problem and asked the judge for assistance.

The subsequent May, Leitner filed a criminal complaint against Little in Escambia County for harassing communications, claiming Little pointed a finger at him and said "I'll kill you."

While a case was being built in Tuscaloosa County against a Walker County drifter named Jerry Wayne Taylor, this ended up being Leitner's fatal misstep that resulted in a case being built against him.

Indeed, court records show Greg Little was charged and saw his bond set at $1,500 in Escambia County, which is when he began to cooperate with police and offer up a narrative about what he claimed actually happened that sunny Saturday when Francis Craven was killed in Tuscaloosa County.

Escambia County court records show the harassing communication charge against Little was dropped and, just a month later, Leitner was in handcuffs and being led out of the Atmore Police Department and transported to Tuscaloosa to be tried for murder.

"Even knowing what I know, I still miss that little fat man," Leitner later told reporters of Father Craven in 1991.

David Leitner: The Suspect

Ahead of his trial, David Leitner told Robert DeWitt of the Tuscaloosa News in September 1990 that he had been walking down the street in Guntersville after posting bond following his arrest and passed two women on the sidewalk.

Leitner, who insisted he'd already been tried and found guilty by the court of public opinion at the time of his arrest, explained to the young reporter in an extensive interview that he saw the women stop, before hearing one of them say "There goes that killer."

Throughout the entire courtroom chapter of this expansive story, Leitner portrayed himself as the victim at every turn and went on a very public campaign in the local news to profess his innocence and hopefully shift the narrative in his favor.

To this end, Leitner took lie detector tests and, in one highly publicized instance, was monitored by an attending psychiatrist under the influence of a "truth serum" and then held a press conference in Birmingham where he explained the results to the media.

Nevertheless, it was in the months ahead of the case making its way to trial that connections began to surface that showed incredibly complex relationships among Leitner, Little and Father Craven.

Leitner later explained to the Tuscaloosa News that Craven convalidated his marriage to Vivian Young. For those who aren't Catholic or are unfamiliar with such customs, DeWitt wrote that this basically gives the church's blessing to the union, which is a pretty succinct way to put it.

Despite the debunked claim that the couple wed in Iuka, Mississippi, sometime in 1984, Leitner later testified that the couple wanted the marriage to be secret, before saying that Craven consented and performed the traditional rites.

Leitner revealed that Craven had baptized Greg Little and even checked on Leitner's mother in Huntsville when she became sick while Leitner, his wife and Little were overseas.

Craven also kept in touch with Leitner about his mother's health, Leitner said, and anointed her during this time. It should be pointed out here that court documents later filed during one of his numerous appeals said in 1987 or 1988, Leitner, Little, and Vivian Young vacationed in Europe — a jaunt financed by $25,000 of Young's money.

Appellate documents filed by the Alabama Attorney General's Office asserted that while in England, the trio were joined by a friend of Leitner's and "all visited gay bars and nudist colonies."

It was also said in court that Leitner and Little stayed in accommodations separate from Vivian Young during this costly and extensive trip, which included travels through Holland, Germany, France, and Italy before returning again for another stay with Leitner's unnamed friend in England.

But apart from Father Craven tending to Leitner's ailing mother during the trip, Leitner also pointed out that the priest mounted a strap to his own van to help Young get in and out easily because she rode with him so much.

Indeed, Leitner claimed he even reciprocated Craven's gestures of kindness by buying the priest a $400 recliner, along with $1,500 worth of hymn books for the church.

"And this is the man I'm supposed to be so mad at?" Leitner asked DeWitt.

DeWitt later said in an interview with Patch that he didn't know what to make of the eccentric man but knew something didn't seem to set right about his approach in fighting to prove his innocence.

DeWitt also reflected on Leitner's imposing 6'5" frame in saying that he was scared to the point that he considered breaking protocol to sneak a small, concealed handgun into the interview in case the accused killer impulsively decided to make the newspaperman his next victim.

These concerns were all disarmed on first impression, though, and DeWitt began to question the accusations after considering the details of the violent killing.

"I knew he wasn't truthful — that much I could tell," DeWitt told me. "I just didn't know if he was capable of doing it or not."

Nevertheless, Little told ABI investigators that Leitner's accusation against him of threatening to kill him wasn't true.

Actually, Little said, it had been the other way around, accusing Leitner of making the threats of violence after Little had moved out of the house in Atmore and relocated to nearby Flomaton.

It was after this move that Little began a relationship with a woman in Pensacola that was said to have enraged Leitner.

Leitner insisted this was because of the rough crowd Little was associating with, while Little and others claimed Leitner was beside himself with jealousy.

A Flomaton man told reporters in 1994, after the two trials, that Little had shared a house with him for several months.

He claimed Leitner would show up to the house looking for Little, insisting that the police were after him. However, when the man agreed to help Leitner look for Little, he said the much older man started talking about a priest being the reason Little was in trouble.

"He said Little struck him in the head several times and they'd burned him. I told him to turn the truck around and take me home and he did," the man said.

Any at rate, these swirling overtures of sordid love and obsessive jealousy seem to explain why Leitner decided to press charges against Little.

After Little was taken into custody in Escambia County in the summer of 1990, ABI was immediately notified that investigators had potentially made a break in the Craven case.

Later on at trial, the Tuscaloosa News reported that defense attorney Michale Smith "laughed as Little was testifying about why, about a year and a half later, he decided to confess what he knew of the murder. Little said he began having nightmares about the crime."

Greg Little's Story

Little first corroborated Leitner's testimony that the two men and Vivian Young were indeed close friends with Father Craven during their time in Guntersville and parishioners at the church later noted that you could set your watch by the odd trio sitting in their regular pew when Craven was leading mass.

In the months and weeks leading up to the murder, though, Little told police that Leitner had grown increasingly jealous of the attention being shown to him by the priest.

Craven does seem to have had a special affinity for the complicated young man. By all accounts, it was the priest who taught Little how to drive and even aided in helping him get a driver's license.

A private investigator hired by Leitner later claimed at trial that a man named Jeff Bodine told him in a jailhouse interview in Marshall County that Little and Craven had been involved in a sexual relationship.

The private investigator also claimed Bodine's name was mentioned in the spiral notebooks written by Craven that were recovered from the closet behind two locks in the St. Williams rectory during a multi-agency search warrant carried out in the days after the murder.

As a parting thought for this subsection, it should be noted that at no point in any of the independent research by Tuscaloosa Patch or through testimony in court, was Leitner ever mentioned as having a sexual relationship with Craven.

At any rate, Little told investigators that he and Leitner both traveled to Birmingham in Leitner's truck the day of the murder but never expressed — not one time — the reason why he agreed to go along with Leitner on the hour-and-a-half drive from Guntersville.

This is where things begin to get fuzzy and inconsistent, beginning with how they subdued Craven.

Retired homicide investigator Joe Pearson's theory is as solid as any but remains just that ... a theory.

Considering Leitner was known to always carry a handgun, Pearson postulated years later in an interview with Patch that the two men likely cased the Birmingham Municipal Airport, spotted Craven's van in the parking deck and sat in wait. He then believes that it was likely Leitner stepped out with a gun once the priest was close enough and told him to get in the van.

Little would later tell investigators that on the day of the murder, he and Leitner drove from Guntersville to Huntsville and then to Birmingham. They also had knowledge that Craven had been on a holiday visit with friends in Florida.

Little testified at trial as state's witness that they spotted Craven's van leaving the airport before getting his attention and, after a brief stop, convinced Craven to follow them.

No other details were every offered up at trial or accessible public records that elaborated on this crucial interaction.

This brings us to our next unanswered question: Who was in the van with Craven as it detoured west toward Tuscaloosa County?

Little claimed at trial that he was in the van with the priest as they followed Leitner in his truck.

The testimony of Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's deputy and former homicide investigator Dennis Levins, who, during three hours of questioning on the stand at Leitner's first trial in August 1990, argued that he had spoken with a gas station manager a few blocks from Airport Boulevard in Birmingham who identified Craven and said he bought fuel on the day of his murder.

He then asserted that Craven was alone in his van and there wasn't another vehicle at the gas station at the time. Levins also claimed Craven spent roughly 20 minutes at the location before leaving.

Despite the star witness testimony from Little at trial that ultimately led to Leitner being convicted twice for the murder, this seems to be a question that was never definitively answered, with several contemporary national wire stories — likely going off of Levins' testimony — reporting to millions that Little and Leitner both followed Craven to the eventual site of the murder.

The possibilities are truly endless when considering this question but it seems unlikely that someone being abducted and led to their death would have driven alone while tailing their eventual killer for nearly an hour west to a heavily wooded dirt road in northern Tuscaloosa County.

As noted in Part I of this series, Craven had a mobile phone and citizens band radio installed in his van, so common sense would dictate that had he indeed driven the entire distance to Tuscaloosa alone under the threat of those in a pickup truck, he surely would have contacted authorities to notify them of his peril.

And if you'll remember dear reader, Craven also made at least one call from his mobile phone during this time that seemed overly suspicious to a family that knew him well.

Next unanswered question: What happened on Old Bull Slough Road?

Little told ABI investigators and later testified that once they arrived at the secluded spot in an open field off the dirt road, Leitner's truck was following Craven's van.

Once all the men got out and were facing one another, Little claimed that Leitner immediately asked Craven if he was a homosexual and confronted him over his suspicions that the priest was in a sexual relationship with Little.

Craven allegedly denied both accusations, Little later testified, before Leitner went to his truck and retrieved a metal pipe roughly two feet long and wrapped in duct tape.

The story told by Little at every turn goes on to accuse Leitner of walking up to the priest and bringing the pipe down directly on his forehead, sending him to the ground.

Little told police he immediately feared for his own life and figured he would likely be on the receiving end of the next blow.

Instead of attacking Little, though, Leitner bound the priest's hands and feet, with Little testifying that the two men left Craven on the ground and drove a short distance in Leitner's truck to Tierce's Store on Alabama State Highway 69.

Ironically, coincidentally or otherwise, this reporter can attest that the once-beloved country store and gas station was known at this time for its menagerie of taxidermized wildlife.

It's a fact I can't help but mention considering Leitner's decision to have his favorite dead cat stuffed and mounted.

Still, Little told ABI investigators that Leitner bought some gasoline and returned to the secluded spot on Old Bull Slough Road. He later testified that Craven was conscious and trying to plead with the men, despite his mouth being covered with duct tape — the box for which was found discarded among the strewn garbage at the scene, much of which was determined to be from Craven's van.

Craven's pleas were muffled, Little said, and he had tears in his eyes when Leitner grabbed the pipe a second time and struck the priest in the head at least two or three more times.

Leitner is then said to have demanded Little help drag the battered and bound priest to a spot to burn him but Little was emotional when he testified years later that he got scared and went back to the van, terrified he would be killed.

Instead of clubbing his much younger companion to death, though, Little said Leitner dragged Craven some distance, doused him in gasoline and set him ablaze on a makeshift burn pile made of dried brush and whatever he could grab from the priest's van that would burn.

As Patch reported in Part I of this series, Craven's charred head was found resting on a thick, hardback prayerbook of some kind — a detail mentioned in appeals and independent interviews in the present day but never in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court when Leitner was tried for murder.

Was it possible this was a ploy to confuse the cops? Was it something more sinister?

Or is it possible the religious text was just another piece of potential accelerant grabbed from Craven's van in the mad dash to build a makeshift funeral pyre?

At any rate, Little told investigators and later testified that they left the scene with Leitner behind the wheel of Craven's GMC Safari van and Little following behind in Leitner's pickup.

If the story is true, they would've then taken a left onto Tierce Patton Road, drove a minute or two before taking another left onto Alabama Highway 69. From there, it's alleged they pulled off on a logging road just north of Windham Springs Baptist Church and torched the van with what was left of the gasoline they had just bought at Tierce's Store.

Based on the timeline of events, this would have been around lunchtime or very early in the afternoon on a sunny and mild January day. Little testified the two men then got back into the truck and made their way south down Highway 69 before taking a right at the busy U.S. Highway 82 intersection.

Little later said at trial that they stopped at "Wendy's Hamburgers" in Northport to wash up and get something to drink, before getting on Interstate 20/59 and back to Guntersville.

According to his story, the two men made it back to Marshall County in enough time to shower, get Vivian dressed and find seats in their regular pew at St. Williams for the evening mass.

Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you're interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com