I looked all over, and couldn't find a recording of "Lula Viers" available. I wish that Paul Clayton Bloody Ballads LP (Riverside) would be reissued. It's the only recording I could find listed.
Here is the version from Volume 2 of W.K. McNeil's Southern Folk Ballads, with tune.

Lula Viers

Come all you young people
From all over the world,
And listen to this story
About a little girl.

Her name was Luly Viers,
In Auxier she did dwell,
In the state of old Kentucky,
A place we all know well.

Lula was persuaded
To leave her own dear home,
And to board the morning train
With John Colliers to roam.

They went to Elkhorn City,
Not many miles away;
They remained there at a hotel
Until the close of day.

But when the darkness fell,
They walked out as the style;
It was in cold December,
The wind was blowing wild.

While standing by the river,
Cold waters running deep,
John, he said to Luly,
"In the bottom you must sleep."

"Oh, do you mean it Johnny,
It surely can not be,
How could you bear to murder
Poor helpless girl like me?"

She threw her arms around him,
Before him she did kneel,
And around her neck he tied
A piece of railroad steel.

He threw her in the river,
Great bubbles gathered around,
They burst upon the water
With a sad and mournful sound.

John hastened to the depot,
He boarded the train for home,
A-thinking that his crime
Would never on earth be known.

But Luly was soon missing,
No place could she be found;
But in the Ohio River
Her body at last was found.

They took her from the river,
They carried her up to town,
And the piece of steel around her neck
Weighed even sixty pounds.

They sent for a reporter,
His name was Orydent,
He printed it in the paper
And around the world it went.

It went to Luly's mother,
While sitting in her home;
She quickly left her chair
To reach the telephone.

She called to headquarters,
She said, "I'll come and see
Oh, if it is my darling
Oh, surely it must be."

And when she reached the place,
Described the clothes she wore;
And when she saw the corpse,
She fainted to the floor.

John Colliers he was arrested,
Confined in the county jail;
But perhaps the electric chair
Should bear him on to hell.

Collected 13 March 1974 from Norma Turner, Drift, Kentucky.

McNeil's Notes:

This ballad deals with a crime that took place in October 1917. John Coyer, a native of Auxier, a little mining community on the Big River in Floyd County, Kentucky, courted Lula Viers shortly before joining the Army in World War I. When he returned on furlough he found out Lula was pregnant, a situation he evidently found undesirable. Somehow he persuaded the girl to take the local train to Elkhorn City, where he tied her up with a piece of steel and threw her weighted body in the Big Sandy River. Her body was not found until several months later, by which time it had washed a hundred miles downriver to a site near Ironton, Ohio. Coyer was caught and put in the Floyd County Jail. Before a trial occurred, Army authorities came and gained his release. Coyer went back into service and never came back to Floyd County. Thus, the hope expressed in the last line of the ballad never came to pass.

This version of 'Lula Viers" was collected by William E. Lightfoot, March 13, 1974, from the singing of Norma Turner of Drift, Kentucky. Born in 1920, Mrs. Turner has always lived in Drift, which is located in Floyd County, the home county of Coyer and Viers. A folksinger with an extensive repertoire, Mrs. Turner learned many of her songs from her mother, including this version of 'Lula Viers." Her mother lived about four miles from Auxier and possibly knew both Coyer and Viers.

-Joe Offer-