A House with a History of Murder

6/9/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
The house was built in 1918, a hundred years after the establishment of Uniontown, Alabama. It's derelict and crumbling now, built in the Neo-Classical Revival style with its fluted Ionic columns, it's not difficult to imagine how splendid it once looked. Even now it's seems the perfect setting for a southern gothic mystery.

Allan Lucy, born William Allan Marvel c.1985

Originally known as the Hardie-Coleman House, it's death that made it notorious as the Allan Lucy Murder House.

In September 1985, local newspapers ran stories of a missing 14-year-old named Allan Lucy who disappeared on May 21, after he left for school. His mother described the intervening months as "agony".

According to his father Phillip Lucy, a Uniontown boy said he saw a "a tall, heavy-set white man with a short, black beard and mustache" take Allan by the neck and lead him away. Allan was in front of the Piggly Wiggly. The youth said the man marched Allan right by him but "Allan walked by like he didn't even known him." The police refused to consider it anything but a case of a runaway teenager, since the Lucys also gave them contradictory information. They feared he was kidnapped, but also said that Allan was being difficult and they feared he had run away to Florida to join friends.

The Lucys distributed flyers throughout town with Allan's picture, and gave his information to the missing children's bureau that served their area.

Allan was one of seven children. The older children lived out of state, so besides Allan there was a 13-year-old and 8-year-old at home.

To all appearances the Lucys appeared to be devastated parents, who believed their son had not run away, but had been kidnapped by a stranger.

Kelly Kirby before the hole where Allan's remains were found c.1985 (Source - The Montgomery Advertiser)

They even offered a reward for any information about him. It seems they felt sure no one would claim it, since Allan was neither a runaway or had been kidnapped. Instead he was dead, and had been buried under the front porch of the house.

In 1994, nine years after Allan's disappearance, skeletal remains were found in a crawl space under a front porch column. It was buried under less than a foot of dirt, and had been wrapped in a Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck bed sheets, and covered with two plastic bags.

The Lucys had sold the house 3 months before, and the new owners were digging in the crawl space when they came upon it.

According to District Attorney Roy Johnson, "The skull was split under an eye socket, but we're not sure what may have caused that."

The police found the parents who had moved to Lamison, but Phillip and Dayle Lucy refused to come to the police station and answer any questions.

The couple had taken Allan in as a foster child when they lived in Florida, and he was 8 years old. When he was 11, they adopted him.

The Lucys leaving the courthouse c.1994 (Source - The Montgomery Advertiser)

Then the Lucys were arrested and charged with arson in an unrelated investigation into a house fire dating back to 1989. They had tried to collect on part of a $119,000 insurance policy taken out only a month before. Further investigation found they had filed claims on two other houses that were damaged by fire. First in 1965 for a St Louis house, then in 1976 for a home in Baskin, Louisiana.

A report issued by the state fire marshal said the Lucy family was seen standing outside their Uniontown house after the fire started, fully dressed and making no attempt to put it out.

Mr. Bauman who was one of the new owners recalled that he once sat on the front porch with Phillip Lucy, and that he enjoyed rocking at one corner of the porch, just above where Allan's remained would eventually be found. Bauman said, "He kept saying that he felt the presence of ghosts where he liked to rock away."

Hardie-Coleman House c.1994

Authorities then brought a corpse-sniffing dog who indicated that a body was, or had been in the back yard of the house. An earth-moving vehicle was brought to the home, but no more bodies were discovered.

Uniontown Police Chief Robert Hester said there were reports the house may be have been constructed over a cemetery.

Two days later examination of the remains confirmed they belonged to Allan Lucy by a comparison of dental records

In the midst of the investigation, a self-proclaimed psychic from Marion showed up at the murder scene, and said that he had a vision of a little girl's body buried in the back yard.

Kelly Kirby, the new owner said the psychic told him he dreamed that a 5-year-old girl was buried near an evergreen tree. She had long dark hair and had been interred 12 feet from the tree.

Kirby paced off the 12 feet, and dug down about a foot and found only some bricks.

There were no missing persons reports for a 5-year-old.

Allan Lucy was finally laid to rest in 2002 (Source - The Montgomery Advertiser)

The police then sought out Phyllis "Tink" Lucy-Bouler, a teacher at Auburn University who was Allan's step-sister. They asked her about the boy's disappearance. She said she had no knowledge about what happened to him. She had married and left the home a year after Allan Lucy vanished.

The new owner of the home turned around, and sued the Lucys for $1.9 million for not telling them about the body. He said, "nobody will want to rent a room from (me) at this location."

Fast forward a year, and Phillip Lucy was charged with killing Allan Lucy, and Mrs. Lucy was out on bond for the charge of arson.

Jason, the Lucy's natural son, testified that he saw his father strike Allan in the kitchen of the house. Allan had fallen to the floor, and didn't move; his eyes were half open. Then a few hours later he saw his father carrying a shovel and some dirty clothes out in the back yard.

Investigators believed Phillip Lucy buried the body first in the yard, and then unearthed it a year later and moved it under the porch.

Authorities found that Allan Lucy died as a result of "blunt force trauma to the neck" and that Phillip Lucy inflicted the blow with his fists. Since Phillip Lucy was a former boxer, it was not hard to believe he could kill a teenager with one blow, or perhaps in a darker version, he buried Allan while he was still alive.

Eventually Phillip was found competent to stand trial for the beating death of his adopted son, however within a few weeks it was reversed when he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. He was once more ordered to go in for a psychiatric examination.

Dayle Lucy then testified that her husband vowed to kill her if she spoke out against him. She said that he physically abused her in the past, once breaking one of her fingers after she pointed it at him.

Dayle and her son Jason were charged the year before with mistreating an incapacitated adult, Donald Lucy, an adopted son who who was mentally retarded.

By March 1994, the Lucys had been indicted for arson, and Phillip Lucy was sent to be mentally evaluated again after it was found he hid the fact that he had serious mental problems.

Phillip Lucy, 61, and his wife Margaret Dayle Lucy, 47, both pled innocent to the arson charges.

It seemed that Mr. Lucy had been receiving disability benefits since 1977, for a "back injury", but in 1979, his benefits were being paid to him because he was afflicted with "paranoid-type schizophrenia."

Phillip had a history of violence, having been dishonorably discharged from the Army for beating a soldier during the Korean War.

It was not until 1997, that Phillip Lucy was found competent to stand trial.

In 1998, while he was awaiting his day in court, Phillip Lucy said the skeletal remains were taken from a cemetery as a Halloween "prank", and they did not belong to his adopted son. This was despite the fact that forensic examiners had matched the teeth from the remains to dental records for Allan, and later DNA taken from his biological mother confirmed the same.

The trial was delayed in 1998, because the district attorney was having a problem locating Jason Lucy for testimony at the trial. Soon after the the discovery of Allan's remains in 1994, he disappeared. A transcript taken during the preliminary hearing was used.

Allan's biological mother, Ardella Leasure attended both trials with her second husband.

In 1999, Phillip Lucy was released on $10,000 bond from the Perry County Jail where he had been kept for the last 5 years.

However the citizens in the neighborhood signed a petition presented to the Perry County District Attorney that they wanted him removed from the area, because they feared for the safety of their children.

Lucy was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison, however in 2000, he was given another trial because of problems with the jury pick.

In 2001, during the second trial, Roy Johnson the district attorney who prosecuted Lucy initially had died. So had Lucy's wife who divorced him following his arrest.

Luckily Jason Lucy who had not been available to testify against his father was found in Missouri, and held on a probation violation.

On November 29, 2001, Phillip Lucy was found hanging in his Perry County jail cell, 12 hours after a jury found him guilty of beating his adopted son to death. He fashioned a noose from bed sheets. Lucy had already suffered two strokes previous to the trial.

Ardella Leasure who was Allan's biological mother confronted Lucy after his conviction and told him from the witness stand, "I hope you die in prison." She and her second husband Robert Leasure attended both trials. They had been married for 23 years.

Allan's birth announcement c.1971

Allan Lucy was born William Allan Marvel to Willard D. Marvel and Ardella Mae Naragon in Lee County, Florida. His mother said the state took her son because of a dispute she was having with her ex-husband, and she never saw him again. She said the State of Florida took him into custody and placed him for adoption.

Ardella Leasure said she ran into problems from a lawyer who cared more about money than the child, and a judge with a reputation for making controversial decisions about child custody. The attorney said it would take more money to fight the judge.

She didn't know of Allan's disappearance until Phillip Lucy was scheduled for trial in her son's death.

Until 2001, Allan had remained unburied for seven years. Funds were raised by the county and he was laid to rest on January 30, 2002, at the Rosemont Cemetery in Uniontown, Alabama.

As of 2022, the Hardie-Coleman house is "owned by Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska and co-owned by the Raytheon/Cobra Dane Project, although it’s unknown as to why a military radar installation in Alaska would own an abandoned house in a small town in Alabama."