On May 10, 1900 in Savannah, Georgia, farmhand Thomas Wilson crossed paths with his friend, Dr. Sherrard Rutherford Tabb, a promising young physician who seemed strangely distant. When asked where he was headed, Tabb quietly replied that he was going to walk in the woods behind the cemetery.
The two walked together until reaching the McMillan farm, where Tabb said goodbye and went inside. Two days later, Wilson noticed vultures circling over the far edge of Bonaventure Cemetery and alerted the keeper. The keeper recalled seeing a man matching Tabb’s description entering the grounds earlier, around the same time police had begun searching for him.
Investigators discovered Tabb had been in financial trouble after lost a lot of money at a gambling hall. Following the vultures, the keeper found Tabb’s body in the thicket, alongside an empty poison bottle and a coat soaked in chloroform wrapped around his face.
His remains were later returned to Richmond, Virginia, where he was buried with family.
You can find a lot more great stories about Savannah in my new book, “Southern Ghost Stories: Savannah” available over at Amazon.
