Charles K. Wolfe gives a somewhat differing account of the murder in an article appearing in Rural life and culture in the Upper Cumberland (ed. by Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson), chapter 15, p. 274 and following. He also says that Mayberry (his spelling; he also gives the wife's name as Gilbraith) was arrested and tried at the time of the killing, but first the jury hung, then there was a mistrial and then Mayberry escaped and traveled the country for 25 years before his return. When he landed in jail on some minor charge, he was extradited and retried for the murder, receiving a life sentence.

Mayberry wrote the song during his incarceration (therefore, sometime after 1909, not in the 19th century, as someone asserted above). He taught the song to another inmate at the Tennessee State Penitentiary, an itinerant minstrel named Booger Gilbreath (no relation to Amanda and Tom), who sang the song on his travels. Since Mayberry was himself a good singer, it is doubtful that the song was first set to music by someone else, even Booger Gilbreath. It makes one wonder what other poems or songs he may have composed. Mayberry "died on the poor farm in Knoxville in 1925".

Wolfe also wrote that Warren Caplinger and Andy Patterson (mentioned in preceding posts for their unreleased recordings) were the first to publish the song, in 1934: they included it in their custom-printed songbook, which was sold from West Virginia radio stations.    Wolfe posited that Patterson learned the song during his stint as a prison guard at Brushy Mountain Prison during the early 20s; hence the reference in their version to "Big Brushy", where Mayberry never did time. If so, it narrows the date of the song's creation to about 12 years and probably less (allowing time for the song to travel to Big Brushy).

Wolfe included both a common text and the Caplinger/Patterson text in his article.