Evelyn Smith

Evelyn Smith is Walter McMillian’s sister, a local minister, and one of the people whose account helped establish that McMillian was at home when Ronda Morrison was murdered. The church gathering at his house was not merely a family occasion: it placed him among relatives, parishioners, and customers during the hours when the crime occurred, giving the community’s alibi concrete witnesses and a remembered timeline.

Identity and Church Work

Evelyn was a minister in the local community. She and her family sometimes raised money for their church by selling food along the roadside. Because Walter’s house stood closer to the main road, they often used his front yard as their selling place. Their church work thus brought a regular stream of relatives, parishioners, and passersby to the same place where Walter was repairing his truck on the day of the murder.

The Morning at Walter’s House

On the morning Ronda Morrison was killed, at least a dozen church parishioners were at Walter’s home with him and his family. Walter had no tree-cutting job that day; he was replacing his truck’s transmission with help from a mechanic friend. By 11 o’clock, relatives had arrived and begun frying fish and other food to sell, while some church members reached the house later. The activity created a gathering that extended beyond the immediate family: people stopped at the yard to buy food, and church members remained present through the morning.

Evelyn recalled one member explaining a late arrival by saying, “Sister, we would have been here long ago, but the traffic in Monroeville was completely backed up. Cop cars and fire trucks, looked like something bad happened up at that cleaners,” The remark connected the gathering at Walter’s house to the news spreading through town about the crime at Jackson Cleaners. Police placed the murder at about 10:15 a.m., roughly eleven miles from the house, while Walter was there with church members and working on the dismantled truck.

An Alibi and Its Limits

The people who saw Walter that day included church members, relatives, and customers who continually stopped to buy sandwiches. A police officer also came to purchase food and recorded in his log that Walter and a crowd of churchgoers were present. Together, these observations gave dozens of people personal knowledge of Walter’s whereabouts during the murder.

Evelyn’s recollection belongs to this broader community account of the alibi. Black residents and others who knew where Walter had been urged Sheriff Tate to release him, but the sheriff refused, and law enforcement officials continued with the accusation. The contrast is central to Evelyn’s limited but consequential place in the narrative: the ordinary evidence of a church fundraiser, a truck repair, and a busy front yard could establish where Walter was, yet it did not persuade officials to abandon the case.