The Ballad Of Ada And The Doc Poem by Bill Wright

This is the story of Ada and the Doc,
A tale of love and passion,
Of a treacherous and murderous deed,
And a trial that enthralled the nation.

Jim Le Boeuf and Tom the Doc,
Were friends from long time past,
Staunch pillars of Morgan City,
But friendship doomed not to last.

Jim's wife Ada was taken ill,
Doc Tom came to ease her pain,
Various potions he dispensed,
And then went away again.

But Ada didn't seem to improve,
So she called for the Doc once more,
Till pretty soon, the townsfolk said,
'He was seldom away from her door.'

More and more the tongues did wag,
Doc claimed his visits were purely vocational,
But the gossips and rumours maintained,
'They were impurely recreational.'

The lovers carried on their affair,
Trying their best to be discreet,
But pretty soon their secret tryst,
Was the talk of every street.

Tom and Ada decided that Jim,
Was getting in their way,
He would have to be disposed of,
And Tom would pick the day.

Tom hired a trapper called Beadle,
To help him kill poor Jim,
They took Jim on a hunting trip,
Little knowing the prey was him.

Who shot Jim, we'll never know,
Beadle first said it was he,
Then very quickly changed his mind,
Saying, 'It was Tom, not me.'

Doctor Tom was a smart man,
Or so he liked to think,
He slit Jim's stomach and filled it with lead,
So into the flood he would sink.

July the first nineteen twenty seven,
Was the day they did the deed,
Tom was not as smart as he thought,
Nine days later the floods recede.

Poor Jim's bloated body was found,
Washed up on the river shore,
And very quickly the case was made,
Tom and Ada were free no more.

All three of them were put on trial,
Beadle alone was given life,
But the court was not so lenient to Tom,
Or to Ada, poor Jim's wife.

The verdict was met with uproar,
Even the jurors pleaded for leniency,
Louisiana had never hanged a white woman,
It offended their sense of decency.

The townsfolk appealed for a pardon,
To Governor Huey Long,
But to this day nobody knows why,
He wouldn't play along.

On February first, nineteen twenty nine,
This story comes to an end,
As the state of Louisiana,
To the gallows Ada and Tom send.

But is this story all it seems,
There still exists a conspiracy plot,
That although Ada Le Boeuf did surely hang,
Doctor Tom perhaps did not.

Several witnesses saw Ada hang,
To be sure her fate was met,
But why was nobody there for Tom,
Making sure he paid his debt?

When savage Justice had its way,
In an open coffin Ada reposed,
But why oh why was her coffin open,
While Tom's was tightly closed?

Did Tom survive, was he owed a favour,
By someone in Morgan City,
But why on Tom alone and not Ada,
Did they dispense their pity?

I guess we will never know the truth,
Of how this tale did end,
A savage and brutal murder,
And a man killed by his best friend.