Mount Airy, North Carolina is known for a lot of things.
Foremost in my mind, it’s been the site of a massive granite quarry for over 160 years. A quarry that is actually the largest open-faced granite quarry on the planet, even being visible from space. Stone from there has found its way into cities, memorials, and structures all over the world. It also gained Mount Airy the nickname “Granite City”.
More recently, Mount Airy has embraced its legacy as the probable inspiration for the town of Mayberry as seen in The Andy Griffith Show. Mount Airy’s most famous son might not have been able to predict the impact his television show would have on a little town in Surry county, but the results are evident now. Businesses named after those from the show, an Andy Griffith museum complete with life-sized bronze statues of Anthony and Opie, a “Mayberry Days” festival. The list goes on and on.
Today’s story begins during Griffith’s childhood, and I would imagine (though I can’t prove it) this is a story he would have heard about and remembered years later. It’s a story that would have probably been a little too risqué to have been used as a plot for Griffith’s tv show.
It begins in April 1939. Weather that spring was looking a lot like it does right now. Lows around 40 or 50, highs in the 60’s and 70’s with an occasional 80 degree day. Minimal rain and storms, tolerable humidity. The perfect spring before the really hot days of summer set in.
With that kind of weather it wasn’t uncommon for people to be out on the streets in the late afternoon, coming out of movies, looking for a bite to eat, or otherwise just enjoying the temperatures. In short, the idyllic sort of evening you might see in any other small North Carolina town at the time.
The evening of Wednesday April 12th, that changed. The safety and peace that most people took for granted was interrupted by something no one would expect to see.
Over the course of the evening, 5 groups of women would report being “accosted” in the same way. A man in a dark blue Chevy sedan would pull up and get out of the car to approach them, using indecent language, completely in the nude except for a pair of prescription glasses. It would be the first of a string of serial indecent exposure incidents the man would precipitate over the coming weeks.
The next well-documented case would be reported by J.C. Laughlin, who told police the man had actually knocked on the door of his home. First at midnight in pajamas asking for a drink of water. The second time a half hour later the man returned and requested to borrow a dollar. The third visit at 1:30 AM it’s assumed the man had shed his pajamas, as Laughlin called the police and the man made a quick getaway.
At first, the police thought it might all have been part of some “drunken prank,” but as the incidents continued, it was made very clear that was not the case, with police chief R.E. Lawrence hypothesizing that it may instead be someone of “maniacal tendencies.”
The newspapers began calling him the “Nude Terror,” the “Nude Phantom,” the “Nude Strutter,” and ultimately, the “Nude Rider.”
As the incidents continued, police dragnets and routine patrols were instituted in an attempt to net the slippery streaker, but all failed. Notably, even local citizens began a investigations of their own, with one city resident discovered by the police standing in public wearing women’s clothing as bait for the Rider.
For weeks the incidents seemed to increase. The Rider even expanded his area of operations and set up shop in the town of Pilot Mountain where he terrorized a number of private homes, knocking on their doors in his birthday suit. One woman even found him laying naked on her porch.
Despite his flurry of activity, the Rider managed to stay ahead of the authorities, always making his escape before anyone could show up to arrest him. But his luck ended May 8th. That afternoon, about three miles outside Mount Airy on the highway to Winston-Salem, the Rider decided to accost a group of women. Unfortunately for him, since this incident wasn’t at night, the women were able to make out and record his license plate number and reported it to the police.
Chief Lawrence was quick to contact the state automobile license bureau and learned that the car was registered to a 24 year old man named “N.B. Spainhour” and determined where Spainhour worked as a bookkeeper at the R.J. Reynolds estate.
So, along with patrolman Albert Staley and county sheriff Harvey S. Boyd, Lawrence set out to apprehend the Nude Rider at his place of employment. But they never made it there. On the way, the found Spainhour’s car sitting in front of the Mount Airy Public Library, and decided to see if they could catch him returning to the vehicle. They didn’t have to wait long, and Spainhour was arrested as he walked back to his car. He claimed he was coming from seeing a movie. He was wearing clothes at the time. The Nude Rider had been captured.
At first, Spainhour admitted to being the Rider. He claimed in police interviews he didn’t know what made him ride around naked, harassing women. He claimed he didn’t even know what he was doing when he was riding the county roads sans clothing. It was as if he were in a trance.
Chief Lawrence was at a loss to explain it as well. Spainhour had a good job, came from a “respectable” Moravian family in Bethania. He was not the type of man anyone would have expected to commit such lascivious acts.
Bond was set at $1,000, which Spainhour was able to post with help from family on May 10th, when his parents came to pick him up. At some point between May 8th when he confessed, and May 22nd, when he went to trial, Spainhour would recant his confession completely.
Trial began in recorder’s court on May 22nd and Spainhour took the stand not only to deny the charges, but to also deny ever making any confessions regarding the charges.
In response, the prosecution was able to call 4 local officers who all heard confessions from Spainhour after his arrest.
In addition, a Mrs. W.E. Gilley testified that Spainhour had exposed himself to her and her daughter at their home on the very day he was arrested. A Ruby Pfaff, Lillie Worrell, and Margaret and Hazel Chandler all also identified Spainhour as the Rider, and recounted how he had exposed himself to them in public places.
Spainhour was found guilty and was sentenced by Judge Harry Llewellyn to serve 18 months on the public highways of North Carolina (or what you might think of as “chain gang” work today). Newspapers say the courtroom was packed to capacity with spectators.
Spainhour appealed the decision immediately and the trial was reheard in January of 1940 in the Surry county superior court. The jury took only 15 minutes to once again find Spainhour guilty. The judge in that case, J. Will Pless, decided for some reason to be much more lenient with Spainhour, and handed down a sentence of only 12 months “on the road” suspended upon payment of $500 in “fines and costs.” As best I can tell, Spainhour paid the fine and was never actually forced to do hard labor for his antics.
People do dumb things when they’re young. Many a man or woman has done something in their youth they aren’t proud of and wish they could take back.
I don’t know how Numa Benson Spainhour Jr. felt about his notorious month in 1939, because it seems he never talked about it publicly after the last trial.
The remainder of his life was not anything one would expect from the type of person who would be on a sex offender registry today.
He ended up being drafted into the army in 1942 and would be processed in at Fort Jackson and trained at Gulfport, Mississippi. Because of his college education and career as a bookkeeper, he was tasked with much of the same kind of work as a solider that he had done as a civilian.
Spainhour was eventually posted to Northern Ireland in 1944 with several hundred thousand other American soldiers in preparation for the invasion of continental Europe. As best I can tell, because of his logistics/finance position in the service, Spainhour never actually made it to the continent. He met a woman from Waterford named Julia Murphy and the two must have hit it off. They were married in Belfast on November 24th, 1945.
Spainhour returned to the states after the war with Julia and they lived in the Winston area where he continued to work as an accountant. He died in 1990 and Julia passed away in 2000.
Spainhour’s month of rabid nudity is not something that could likely happen today. I don’t think a person could get away with it as easily or as long. We live now in a time of prolific cell phone use, doorbell cams, and license plate readers.
We also live in an era when these sorts of crimes are taken more seriously, and a month’s worth of indecent exposure charges (some instigated towards minors) would not be settled with a $500 fine. Spainhour would have made a shipwreck of his life and future chances if he had pulled these kind of stunts today. He would have been added to the sex offender registry, blacklisted from certain careers, and essentially ruined his life and reputation.
But it was a different time back in 1939. Mount Airy was different.
It sure as heck wasn’t Mayberry though.