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Published Friday, September 09, 2011 in Close-Up

Photo by Winston Skinner

Author Dot Moore chats with Walter Schell after she signed a copy of “No Remorse” for him at Scott’s Bookstore.

Dot Moore to speak at Pine Mountain and at Expo Center

By Winston Skinner

The Newnan Times-Herald

Dot Moore, who held an audience spellbound in the Coweta County Courthouse last week, is making the rounds -- talking about John Wallace and her new biography of the Meriwether County farmer, "No Remorse."

Friends of the Powell Library are setting up a program featuring Moore at the Powell Expo Center on Temple Avenue in Newnan on Oct. 29. Moore's next talk, however, will be Monday at 10 a.m. in Pine Mountain.

Moore will be speaking at the Chipley Historical Center next to Pine Mountain City Hall. Wallace, who was convicted of murdering William Turner in 1948 in Newnan, lived in rural Meriwether County near the Harris County town of Chipley.

Chipley was renamed Pine Mountain about 40 years ago to appeal to tourists visiting Callaway Gardens. Representatives of the Chipley Historical Center attended Moore's Aug. 31 talk in the courtroom where Wallace was convicted.

Some of those coming to the program in Pine Mountain will know the woman to whom Moore dedicated "No Remorse," Dorothy Dunlap. "Dorothy Dunlap was a fine woman who only recently died," Moore said.

Dunlap and her mother visited Wallace during his final days of incarceration before he was electrocuted. They got Wallace's Bible and pocket watch. "He left her a cigarette holder. He left her four ties that had been made by Josephine," Moore said.

Josephine was Wallace's wife, and a photograph in "No Remorse" shows Josephine Wallace and Dorothy Dunlap standing together. Wallace's belongings were kept by Dunlap "in her home on Wallace Road for 60 years," Moore said.

As she grew older, Dunlap began to give some of Wallace's things to friends. "She had never married. She had no children," Moore related.

Dunlap also gave friends a stack of letters written by Wallace -- letters that gave Moore much insight as she put "No Remorse" together.

Some older folks from Pine Mountain might also remember Wallace's mother, Myrt Strickland Wallace, who died in 1941. "She died of cancer," Moore said.

John Wallace's sister, Jean, later wrote about "what a good son he was and how he cared for his mother" during her last illness, the author related.

At her talk in Newnan, which followed a signing at Scott's Bookstore, Moore brought a display case that held several of Wallace's belongings. Among them was a tie made by Josephine Wallace on which she stitched her pen name "Worldye."

"I have 85 poems Josephine wrote," Moore said.

Lisa Harrison, a publicist with New South Book, said "No Remorse" addresses the question: "Should a man be defined by his worst deed?" Harrison described Moore's book as "a modern-day true life 'Jekyll and Hyde' tale."

Moore said her book will not answer every question every reader might have about Wallace. She said Wallace was a complex man with different facets of his personality.

"You will know I did a lot of research. You will know forensic science as it exists now did not exist then. You will know the practice of law then was not what it is now," she said.

Moore did a lot of genealogical research on the Wallace and Barrow families, Wallace's father's family from Chambers County, Ala., and the Strickland and Davis family, Wallace's mother's family from Meriwether County. "They're all looking to get ahead," Moore said. "They did buy land, and they farmed."

The author related, "I'm telling the background -- all the way back to what's happening to the families in the Civil War."

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