Man-Killer Hazel Needs New Coffin

From the July 17, 1960, Nashville Tennessean

By Julie Hollabaugh

Luther W. (Buddy) Brooks is faced with a grave dilemma. He needs one coffin, satin lined, in which to resurrect Hazel Farris.

Hazel it seems, is a red-haired mummy whose penchant for fast living and faster guns caught up with her in 1906.

Now a dehydrated, perfectly preserved mummy, she is the property of Hurricane amusements. She is also booked for an Antioch carnival, and her present coffin is a little worse for the wear.

“My family always was interested in unusual things,” explains Brooks, 22, a towering giant who stands six feet eight.

Brooks, of 211 Blackstone place, printer for a local firm, is the sole owner of Hazel. In partnership with Ed White, employe of a Nashville meat packing firm, he shows Hazel at civic clubs, school and church carnivals four and one half months out of the year, from May to mid-October. Between shows, Hazel rests in state in her own leased four-room house in a back yard off Franklin road.

“Hazel,” explained Brooks, “had red hair. She also had a temper. It’s said she was young, beautiful and admired. But one day she saw a hat in a department store. And wanted it.”

“Hazel was just a little wicked, so they say,” said Mrs. Lula C. Brooks, mother of Hazel‘s owner.

When Hazel’s husband became enraged at such extravagance as a new hat, Hazel also became enraged. She shot him. Thereupon in equally short order she disposed of four policemen, including a deputy sheriff, who came to his rescue. Hazel, it seems, was a crack shot.

Escaping to Bessemer, Ala., she again fell in love, only to be betrayed by her lover to authorities. In despair, she took poison.

“What she took is the key to the whole mystery,” said Brooks. “But medical specialists, physicians and morticians who’ve examined her think it was a combination of poison and alcohol that did the trick.”

Hazel fared better in death than she did in life. Claimed by Brooks’ great-uncle Orlando Clayton Brooks, Hazel was displayed at carnivals from 1911 to 1943, traveling to 48 states. When O. C. Brooks died in 1950 he left only – Hazel.

Young Brooks started showing Hazel two years ago and is convinced, “She’s a good old gal.”

There is no case of jealousy between Brooks’ wife and Hazel. He made enough money showing Hazel to get married.

“I started in it as a side line, then it just kind of grew,” said Brooks, with wry wit. He also owns two carnival rides playing [the] Nashville circuit.

Brooks is planning to have some of the original playbills reprinted. Orlando Brooks was no slouch when it came to promotion. He offered a $500 reward to any viewer proving it was not a real mummy. “Hazel Farris in dehydration,“ read the posters. “Hazel is not petrified nor made to order, but a genuine human body, with the beautiful suit of long flowing hair.”

The circulars also offered free lectures every half hour, “moral exhibit for benefit of science,” and declared “questions answered while inside exhibit only.”

There are comical moments when your star attraction is a mummy.

“One night we had a group of four portly women in the tent when the power blew,” recalled Brooks. “They took one side of the tent, my partner and the ticket booth with them getting out of there. Another night a visitor stole her gold tooth.”

There are also storage and timing problems.

“You have to keep Hazel good and dry or she mildews, and we had a little trouble when the snows came in the window this year,” said Brooks. “We kept her locked in a pine box when I was in school and one day I jumped on the box catching a ball—broke her nose.”

Another rain-slick night, Hazel, pine box and all, slide from the trunk of the car onto the highway, “but we just slid her bak in and went on,” he added. “They wanted us at the Italian street fair last year but I was already book at a school, and I just have one Hazel.”

After a thorough cleaning job, with embalming fluid, dry wash and a hose pipe shower, Hazel is ready for a season’s run. Brooks, who is building another home on Old Hickory lake, plans to take Hazel with him.

“She’s all right, I love her, even fixed her up with fluorescent lighting and artificial grass around the casket,” he said.

The other mummy, also purported to be impervious to open air display, is said to be a “Marie O’Day,” a one time dance hall entertainer who was stabbed in the back. Owned by carnival man Charles Campbell, she is also red haired.

“One thing sure,” sighed Brooks, “Hazel’s one woman who won’t talk back to you.”

(Newspapers .com)

Editor’s note: According to historian George Zepp in the July 5, 2008, Tennessean: “Lots of fiction and a few facts surrounded [Hazel Farris’] post-mortem travels. … Accepted now as truth is that ‘Hazel Farris’—even her name remains undocumented—died most likely of pneumonia in 1906 while in her mid-20s and was embalmed in Bessemer using arsenic. Her body apparently went unclaimed at a furniture store where caskets were then supplied. The late Luther ‘Buddy’ Brooks of Franklin told a Tennessean reporter in 1984 that his uncle gave the Bessemer furniture store $25 for her corpse in 1907 and took her back to Nashville, first exhibiting her at the old Princess Theatre. … Brooks inherited her in 1950 and showed her himself from 1954-64. He later had her at the craft store his daughter managed in Donelson.…”

Hazel’s final moment in the spotlight came in 2002 when she was examined by the TV program “The Mummy Road Show” on the National Geographic channel. “After the autopsy,” wrote Zepp, “at the request of Brooks’ daughter, Hazel was cremated and her ashes were laid to rest in a Madison crypt.”