WICKED GAY
WICKED GAY
Please Thank Me For Not Calling This Episode Something Corny Like "Deadly Communion": Father Francis Craven and David Leitner (Ep.53)
Send J. Harvey a text! (Try to be nice, but I get it, everyone's a little cranky sometimes...)
Father Frank was loved by his congregation, and known for his generosity and supportive nature. But he had his secrets.
One of them, his increasingly uneasy relationship with an odd, makeshift "family" in his congregation, might have gotten him killed.
Music by Pixaby.
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January 7, 1989 Northport, Alabama in Tuscaloosa County
Harold O’Quinn Senior found the body during his Saturday walk. It was an odd coincidence that he had chosen that day to venture off his usual beaten path, and take a detour down a hill to amble beside the neighborhood lake.
His son, Harold Jr., a veteran of Northport’s police department, had been doing yardwork when his dad suddenly appeared, looking spooked, which was unusual for him. He said something about finding a dead cow that had been set on fire by its owner.
It was a person. Harold Jr. summoned colleagues. State investigators eventually got involved. The victim, who was male, had been bound with rope, gagged and blindfolded with duct tape, and then dragged from a car to the space beside the lake before being bludgeoned to death and his body set on fire, It was determined that this was only an hour before Harold Senior stumbled upon him. Also, the victim’s head appeared to be propped up on some prayer book, almost like a pillow. There was also a steel dog collar and leash near the body, also burned.
Who could have committed such a senseless, brutal murder, and why? Especially when the victim was a Roman Catholic priest?
You’re listening to Wicked Gay, a true crime podcast about gay people doing awful things.
Hello! I’m your host, J. Harvey, and it’s a new year. 2025. A year so far in which aviation disasters are being blamed on diversity, douchey billionaires can get away with giving Nazi salutes in public, and people are way more concerned about Beyonce winning a Grammy for her country album rather than the first two things I mentioned. It’s a good time to be a straight white guy!
One positive thing about this year is that Wicked Gay is still around. And Wicked Gay isn’t that positive, so you know shit looks dire.
I’ll be here spinning tales of the malicious and macabre every month, or close enough, to keep your mind off the crazy, Or at least hear stories about queer people doing nasty things which will make you say - hey, could be worse, I could end up being mistaken for a dead burning cow. Yikes.
Oh, and 2025 is also the year that Wicked Gay just might make it on YouTube, apparently people like to watch podcasters speak into microphones which is insane to me, but, hey if it brings in listeners…or viewers. Maybe I’ll become an influencer!
Oh, and if you want even more Wicked Gay, traipse on over to patreon.com/wickedgay for exclusive episodes and bonus content. And if you’re unsure if you want to be a subscriber, the first two Patreon exclusive episodes are now available for purchase! So you can dip your toes into the lake known as J. Harvey and see if the water’s lovely. That’s a line from the Golden Girls.
Tonight’s episode is about the brutal 1989 murder of Father Francis Craven in Alabama. My sources are a series of articles on Patch called What’s Done In the Dark by Ryan Phillips and the entry about the case on law.justia.com. Yeah, I guess I’m giving Wikipedia and it’s sinister sibling Murderpedia a rest on this one. And trigger warning here for violence and murder and sex the usual dark-sided Wicked Gay stuff.
Oh, wait, and one more bit of Wicked Gay business. We’re in Season 6, but this is Episode 53. Yeah, I’ve been counting wrong. There’s a shock because mathletics is very much my strong suit. That’s a joke.
So, yeah, back when I said it was the 50th episode, it was actually the 49th. Cuz I went back and counted, and yes - S6Ep53 is the one here. It might be the fault of the legendary lost episode of Wicked Gay, which maybe I’ll post to Patreon or make it available to buy for a couple of bucks. That’s the one i took down because the dude I was telling a tale about got out of prison, and someone who I actually spoke on IN that ep got in touch with me to tell me that he was out and mad as a hatter, and frankly, downloads aren’t worth some looney tune driving from Texas to murk me in my home. Anyway, yeah, I think the lost episode threw me off numerically, and so did the Pop Whatever’s, which I don't number on my hosting platform, and then I also think I wasn’t counting the dog eulogy as an actual episode at one point, but it is, really. Anyway, enough already, Jay, this is episode 53 You Should Thank Me For Not Calling This Episode Something Corny Like ‘Deadly Communion’: Father Francis Craven and David Leitner.
Tonight’s episode is about the brutal 1989 murder of Father Francis Craven in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. My sources are a series of articles on Patch called What’s Done In the Dark by Ryan Phillips and the entry about the case on law.justia.com. Yeah, I guess I’m giving Wikipedia and it’s sinister sibling Murderpedia a rest on this one. And trigger warning here for violence and murder and the usual dark-sided Wicked Gay stuff.
Francis Craven was from Lynn, Massachusetts, and if you’re from around here and of a certain age, LOOK, I DIDNT CHOOSE TO BE 50, it just happened….if you’re old enough, your grandparents or parents, about Lynn, they would say Lynn Lynn the city of sin, you never come out the way you came in. I looked this up, but the poem is a little problematic. Did Robin Thicke write this?
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin
You never come out, the way you came in
You ask for water, but they give you gin
The girls say no, yet they always give in - wow
If you're not bad, they won’t let you in
It’s the damnedest city I’ve ever lived in
The eff was going on in Lynn to deserve such a rep.
Francis Craven, who would eventually go by Frank, was born on Sep 6, 1935. He was 53 yo at the time of his death. He was the second-oldest of eight brothers and sisters. When he was young, he was a good student and in drama, debate, and the school newspaper.
Frank reportedly knew he wanted to be a priest from a young age. He was fully committed to doing so two years after graduating high school.
His path to joining the clergy was all over the place, and he studied at three different seminaries before being ordained as a priest in May of 1963.
After spending his first five years in three different parishes in Indiana, he reportedly had some trouble acclimating; he enlisted in the Navy in April of 1968, where he served as a Navy chaplain for 5 years in places like the Philippines and Vietnam.
After his stint in the Navy, he spent some time bouncing around and ended up at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, in 1982. It seems he was still having trouble with acclimating, and a certain tendency had got him in trouble with his newest flock. And it's not the tendency you’re thinking of. (Not yet, at least.)
As a local journalist wrote, those who knew the priest said he was "long on humor and spiritual guidance but short on fiscal responsibility."
It was the biggest congregation he’d ever been tasked to shepherd, 500 families, and he suddenly found himself in over his head regarding the church's limited finances.
Because my husband and Father Francis Craven have/had something in common - a BIG thing for tech. Electronic gadgets. Expensive ones!
So, as a church official later explained, Craven’s church was on the verge of bankruptcy during his time there. The parishioners had grown to resent Father Frank because they were in the red, and despite this, he’d remodeled the church's rectory in his first year there as well as purchasing thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment for his personal use, including telephones, televisions, stereos and video equipment. The angry people went to the Birmingham, Alabama, diocese with their issues. Oh oh.
But the concerns over Craven being a tech shop-a-holic was seemingly the only blemish on his professional record (pre-being murdered, it would turn out)
Despite this, the congregation complainng about Father Frank’s spending habits got him moved to St. Williams Church in Guntersville, Alabama in 1985.
"I'm sure Frank was buffeted by all the tensions that haunt the priesthood — the constant struggle for holiness, the temptation to compromise one's ideals, the tightrope walk between the call of the Gospel and the seduction of the marketplace, the cost of discipleship and the resurgences of selfishness," the current said during his homily at Craven's funeral. "Like all of us, he probably had his triumphs and his failures."
Father Francis reportedly told a parishioner how much he loved his new home in St Williams and could never leave the parish of his own volition. This was proven tragically true.
He settled in well, probably with a really expensive stereo system, and aside from his usual body of Christ duties, he did a lot of extra-curricular priestin’ like directing spiritual retreats, moderating for the Council of Catholic Women and was known as being excellent with married couples in the parish's Marriage Encounter program. Ugh, monogamy. Father Frank Craven seemed to have found a forever home. And now he was gone.
It was Father Frank’s smoldering body that Mr. Quinn Sr. had happened upon during his Saturday constitutional. He was eventually ID’ed by his dental records. Police looked into his final day.
Father Frank had been visiting friends in Florida for Christma, a married couple he’d been friends with for many years who affectionately referred to him as the Pope. He landed at Birmingham Municipal Airport at 10 AM on Jan. 7, 1989.
A friend of his left him his 1987 GMC Safari van, which he had left the airport in. It was nowhere to be found. The Murphys and some other friends he phoned knew he planned to conduct the 5 pm Mass at St. Williams that night. But he never showed up. It was unknown as to precisely what happened to Father Frank after his leaving the airport a little after 10 AM and his body being found later that day, an hour’s drive away.
He reportedly made some phone calls with the mobile phone in his van. The most significant being to Jean, the wife and mother he’d just bid farewell to in Florida. He’d told them he’d make this call so they’d know he landed safely. It’s important to know that they were old friends and had an established mode of communication.
So Jean, who spoke with Father Francis at 11 AM, thought something was very off about her short conversation with her friend.
For one thing, he was usually very jovial and happy-go-lucky around her and her family. That's not how he sounded on the phone that day.
He identified himself as “Father Craven” and not Frank, which was weird for a longtime friend. The conversation was short, and he got off the phone with her rather quickly. He said he was calling to let her know he landed safely and was hurrying to make sure he’d be home and then ready for the 5 pm Mass at St. William’s that night. Before Craven hung up, Jean could tell from the crackling connection that the priest was calling from a mobile phone. She also noted that Craven referred to her as "Jean" instead of his usual "Jeanee." They thought about the call for a while afterward and came to the conclusion that Father Frank might have been trying to tell them something was off.
His funeral was held on Jan 14 at St. Paul's Cathedral in Birmingham. Over 300 mourners gathered, with 500 mourners having attended the wake the evening before.
Coincidentally, the same day, the missing van was spotted by a police helicopter on a logging road in northern Tuscaloosa County. Roughly 12 miles from where Father Craven's body was found.
Copus said the van appeared to have been stuck in the mud before being set on fire. The gas cap for the van had already been recovered from the crime scene, with investigators speculating that whoever was responsible had tried to siphon fuel from the van to then use in setting Craven's body on fire.
The police were initially convinced that Father Frank had picked up a hitchhiker who had turned out to be a psycho who murdered him. Jeanne Murphy later disputed this, chiefly because when Father Frank had been visiting them in Florida, the Murphys and Frank had been out as a group, and Murphy’s son noted someone hitching on the side of the road and asked his parents to pick him up, and Father Frank had later kindly admonished Jeanne to teach her kids to NEVER pick up hitchhikers, as it was a dangerous thing to do.
Also, if this was true, Father Frank had picked up TWO hitchhikers. Investigators had found two separate pairs of footprints at the crime scene. One looked to belong to the person who dragged the bound and gagged Father Frank out of the van to be murdered, and the other appeared to have gotten out of the van as well, but stood near the vehicle and watched the horrific events going on by the lake.
So, things got especially interesting and salacious when, during the investigation, police discovered a twice-locked closet in his room at the rectory.
Here’s where I am going to get into a situation in which I feel like -this isn't only a gay guy thing, right? Ok, so every gay guy I know, well, the single ones, they have one designated friend, who…well, help me here. What's the word for a friend you designate to clean out your sex toys or any sex stuff and clear your internet browsers in the event of your death so your family or your straight friends dont find out you're a super freak? This is a real thing. I feel like it's sort of specific to gay guys; we've all got someone to clean out our sex toy or kink tools chest or drawer or gallon bucket.
Because, even though you're dead, you don't want your straight brother or your niece, or a neighbor from church finding your fisting gun, or your Cinderella dress, or even your sling.
I know you're dead and sexuality is a big spectrum and as long as consensuality is there and no one’s being hurt in the bad way, it's all on the table, deal with it. You want to feel that way; however, society is shaming you, and so on. I’d also like to add before you jump to the conclusion that I'm in a sling, dressed as Cinderella, or getting ravaged by a fisting gun; I own NONE of those things. I don't have room in our apartment for a sling. I KID. Anyway, especially if you're a single dude, maybe you want to avoid scandalizing people if you die suddenly.
And if anyone in the metro boston area needs a guy to do that i think it's a worthy cause, and i'll help you out. Just ensure everything is cleaned and sanitized with bleach before you suddenly die. Thank you.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that Father Francis could have used a designated sex stuff remover. Poor guy. So, the cops snipped the lock and pearls were clutched cuz there was a bunch of kinky stuff in there.
It all eventually came out later in court via this closet that Father Frank had a lot of freaky secrets (you oldheads name the song and the artist), but what showed an entirely new light on the case was the large stack of spiral-bound notebooks in there that seemed to be function as Father Frank’ journals but most of the content was erotica he had written about his kinky sexual fantaies. This is before you could publish this shit anonymously online. His fantasies were very BDSM, and there was a lot of degradation involved in some rather unappetizing and rather violent forms, cops suddenly had an idea that Father Frank’s kinky fantasies might have gotten the better of him. Remember, he was found bound and gagged and there was a dog collar and a leash near him, this stuff matched up to some of his writings.
A lot of it were written in the form of letters to someone he referred to as “Troy”, and what this Troy character had done to him or what he wanted Troy to do to him. Was Troy a real person? The plot thickened.
So they figured Father Frank had fantasized about being (or liked to be) degraded and brutalized in certain ways, and this was an instance where his fantasy came true, but it went awry and, and it led to his death. That was a theory.
Another was that some rando serial killer had gotten him. It was the 80s, and there weren’t as many cameras around, so there was a lot more serial murder. Cops theorized that Frather Frank had somehow run across one of the evildoers in custody or someone they hadn’t caught yet. This was the hitchhiker theory,
They did settle on one guy for quite a while. And they were pretty keen on him. So eager that there are accusations that the cops, one in particular, manufactured evidence to make sure a man named Jerry Wayne Taylor went to jail. Taylor was a shady figure in the area, described as a regional vagrant, small-time criminal, and county jail frequent-flyer. He was also a suspect in other murders besides Father Craven’s. In fact, he had served a suspended sentence for manslaughter some years before.
However, it looked like Tayor was sorta being crammed into the role of Craven’s killer, especially when it was finally determined he was in jail the day before and the day after Father Frank’s murder. So, he was eventually found not guilty, although it reads like he might have been involved in other crimes. Lots of crimes are going on!
Before I get into this next part, I’m going to note here that police received what was described as an emotional phone call from one of Father Frank’s parishioners at St. William’s two days after Craven’s body was found but still not identified.
The caller told police that he’d seen the news story about the body. Father Craven was currently missing, and this caller was convinced that the body was Frank’s that he knew who Father Craven’s dentist was, and that they should check the dental records. Which they ended up doing, i'm sure it was on the docket before this phone call, well i hope, but that’s ultimately how Craven’s body was ID’ed. Store this call away for later.
Anyway, the Taylor guy was found to be innocent. And that’s when we come to two men who would ultimately prove to be the points opposite of Father Francis Craven in…maybe you could call it a love triangle. Or a rectangle because there was a lady involved, though. The sordid situation had some shape. I’m not sure you could attach the word “love” to it. Let’s meet David Leitner and Gregory Little.
At the time that Gregory Little met David Leitner, Little was a very young, 16-year-old sex worker learning the ropes on the streets and in the gay bars and nightclubs of Atlanta. The age of consent in Georgia in the late 80s was 14, it has since been upped to 16. So he was legal to be getting around, but hooking was still a no-no. One of the places Gregor plied his trade was an Atlanta gay bar named The Gallows, which is a TERRIBLE name for a bar, ESPECIALLY for a GAY BAR in the late 80s, but maybe that's what it was called when it opened as a medieval times type joint and they kept the name when they turned it into a gay bar? Jesus, the gays were dropping like flies, and these fools are calling their bar a place of execution.
It was there that Gregory, who was 5’4, met a much taller and, more importantly, much older man who seemed to have a lot of money and claimed he was a retired Army colonel. They adjourned to a nearby restaurant to talk, and they hit it off. This colonel, who wasn’t a colonel but had been in the military, although not successfully, was known by those in the know at the galleries as a frequent flyer when it came to the men and boys in the area.
And it got very Pretty Woman, basically cue Gregory on Rodeo being told by the ice bitch wait for, staff, that they didn't have anything to sell her in their snooty boutique. The colonel offered Gregory $200 to come and live with him in Alabama. Gregory was told he could leave anytime if he weren't happy. And if this was 1986, 200 was around 500-something, which is a good haul for a sex worker, plus room and board, and he could leave when he wanted. And Gregory was unhoused at the time. Welcome to Hollywood. What is your dream? And that’s why he ended up in David Leitner’s truck on the road to Alabama. And in a romantic and physical relationship. A relationship that saw David referring to Gregory as his son and professing a deep love for, but, well, he was shtupping his “son”, so this is gross all around.
Not a lot is known about Greg Little, his past, or how he came to be turning tricks to survive in Atlanta.
David and Greg moved in together, first in Huntsville, Alabama, a town David had grown up in after moving from Indiana with his family when he was a junior in high school, and then to Guntersville in Alabama’s Marshall County. In Guntersville, they shared a duplex with David’s common-law wife. Needle scratch. Wife? Yeah, I'll get to it.
David Leitner was born in 1937 in Cannelton, Indiana, and his father moved the family to Huntsville when he was a junior in high school. He graduated, got engaged to a girl from school who was a couple of grades behind him, and then went into the navy, serving in Okinawa, but he was eventually discharged for “failure to adapt.” This is the military- that could mean a lot of things. But Leitner would later state on a job application that he had undergone treatment at a stateside Naval hospital for a nervous condition before his discharge.
He returns home to Huntsville, and things go south for Leitner. He’s got some mental health issues, and his engagement was off very shortly after he and his fiancee were reportedly assaulted by a gang of teens; it was enough of an incident that it made the local papers. They were supposed to have been married in a month. Leinster was 19 at this point.
He ended up working at an army base near Huntsville called Redstone Arsenal. He was initially granted a security clearance there, but it was later revoked a year later, in April of 1959.
He wasn’t fired, though, and he continued to work there, even though several reported incidents of emotional outbursts and physical symptoms resulted in his being reassigned to a location in the complex that allowed him to have minimal contact with co-workers and others. HR was pretty lenient then, huh? Several incidents?
Leitner missed a lot of work due to migraines, often being hospitalized at hospitals and veterans affairs facilities. Doctors sometimes diagnosed them as psuchosomaic.
After he was admitted to a hospital for one of these in late 1966, Redwood Arsenal finally let him go. Leitner checked himself out of the hospital at the time, against the advice of staff, one doctor noting that he considered David a danger to himself and others.
So Leitner moves to New Hope, Alabama, and gets married to a woman whom he later told doctors and cops he blamed for his exacerbating his troubles. Leitner’s parents also told reporters during his trial that his marriage turned bad, further messing with his mental state, which sounds like it was already bordering on DEFCON. Get back to the hospital, please.
The wife ended up having David committed involuntarily in May of 68, and he eventually ended up at a hospital in Tuscaloosa where he was diagnosed as a "Schizophrenic Reaction, paranoid type," and it was also noted that he was exhibiting suicidal tendencies and expressing thoughts of self-harm.
After reportedly undergoing electroshock therapy three times this particular stay, Leitner raised security concerns on June 17, 1968, when doctors noted he became even more paranoid and hostile, expressing the belief that he shouldn't be hospitalized before making threats to "get out one way or another."
So Leitner’s parents, who, along with the common law wife, became very familiar with reporters during Leitner’s tria, would later reveal that the dad had campaigned for David to be treated because he thought something was seriously wrong with him. It was the mom who thought David was fine and basically nagged the dad to death to start getting David released, which he was in June of 68, and it doesn't sound like much progress had been made in his treatment.
But then, lo and behold, Leitner disappeared from the public record. For two decades. He then settled in Marshall County, Alabama, where Father Craven became a small Catholic Parish priest in 1985.
Leitner, in his later years, would be described differently by different people. One reporter described him as "a man of many faces."
His mother said he "had a heart of gold" and "would take in any old dog." She sounds like a character and was probably talking about his three wives, including his blind, octogenarian common-law one who called him "her eyes,"
Gregory Little, the young man whom David legally adopted and whom he would refer to his as his son to homicide investigators and in court documents, and that’s not great seeing as they were in a sexual relationship, told reporters at the time that David had about five different faces."
"He can be mean or generous, kind and caring or jealous and violent" Greg said.
He also revealed that Leitner used to call him my Little "Monchhichi" for the young, they were like these stuffed animal monkey toy with rosy cheeks back in the day, and it would be cute if the circumstances weren't what they were when you legally adopt someone so you can fuck them no questions asked.
Many of his neighbors said he was a sensible and generous, if not a little quirky. It’s the South, though, aren't you supposed to be? Leitner was a visible and active member of the St Williams parish, where Father Frank Craven ran the show and was well-known in Marshall County. Fellow parishioners called how he and his "family," meaning Greg Little and the 80s year old common law one Vivian, was at evening mass the night Father Craven failed to show and how David got in his pickup to drive the highways looking for any sign of the missing priest or his van.
So, how closely did these four people know each other?
Let’s see, police records show that, on February 23, 1987, at 10:05 a.m., Father Francis Craven called the local police and reported that Leitner was attempting suicide at his own residence. When the police responded, they were told that Leitner was taking several different medications and was inside holding a pistol to his head and saying that he was going to kill himself. During the four-hour stand-off, Leitner told Father Craven what to do after he had killed himself, concerning personal business, etc."
Here’s the write up of the incident in the Tuscaloosca News, August 1990. This was an examination of Leitner’s past through the lens of him now being suspected of a particularly brutal murder of a priest.
"But [Leitner] broke down again three years ago, barricading himself in a mobile home and threatening to kill himself. After a four-hour standoff, police used tear gas to extract him from his home just outside of Guntersville and charged him with attempting to maim himself. The charge was later dropped. [Vivian Young] said the incident stemmed from an overdose of medicine Leitner was taking at the time for congested lungs. She married him a short time later."
So, about wifey. Vivian Young was a widowed parishioner at St Williams Church with a story that’s too long to get into. Suffice it to say, she was single, elderly, and had little money. Sort of prime for companionship, even if said companion was shady. A mostly blind Vivian, after loyally attending her common-in-law husband’s murder trials and defending him vociferously against those charges, would later die penniless after having signed her power of attorney over to her common-in-law husband David Leitner, who would later say his relationship with Vivian mainly was business, and she had given him power of attorney as a defense against her adult son trying to commit her so HE could get at her money.
Police eventually had enough evidence to use Greg Little to lure David Leitner to the Atmore Police Department in July of 1990, where he was arrested and charged with Father Francis Craven’s murder. Leitner and Little had moved to Atmore together, but Leitner and his little Monchichi had broken up by this time, and Little had left him.
Now, I’d like to point out here that Atmore is 300 miles away from Guntersville. Leitner, Little, and Vivian Young had moved there in the month immediately following Craven’s murder, which didn't look great in retrospect. This is also around the time that Leitner legally adopted his young lover. Post-murder.
In Atmore, Leitner had become known as a cat lady (he had 10 - 12 cats running around his property at all times, and if that is not the gates of hell, I don't know what is), and he was known for having had his favorite cat stuffed by a taxidermist when it died and told a neighbor that 'When I die, I want that cat cremated and his ashes poured over my feet.’ I assume he meant when he was all set in the coffin. That would be a weird request for, say, where he dropped dead or on his hospital deathbed.
He was also known for liking guns and antiques, which I'm sure screamed VIOLENT HOMOSEXUAL to people.
So when Little and Leitner first moved to Atmore, Vivian Young joined them. Then, things took a turn between David and his adopted son. They started having arguments in their front yard, which im sure was a pull up lawn chair maw, moment for the nighbors, two queens a brawlin. And then Little stopped coming home at night, and Leitner, who was pretty open about being romantically with his “son” with certian people, told one friend that he was going crazy because of how much he loved Greg. Little left to move to Georgia first then eventually to Century, Florida. With a girl, no less. According to townsfolk, Leitner’s mental health took a nosedive after his son left.
This blew back on David because Little was arrested and charged, and that’s when Gregory started talking about what happened to Father Francis Craven. Or at least his version of it. He also dropped a dime on his ex because the cops said they’d release his girlfriend at the time, whom they were holding in jail because of a parole violation. And the next month, the harassment charges were dropped against Gregory Little, and David Leitner was in handcuffs, courtesy of his little monchichi.
Leitner tried to have his case tried in the court of public opinion. He gave numerous interviews and even had a psychiatrist on hand when he had someone administer truth serum to him and then revealed the results, not guilty, in a damn press conference. When he challenged Gregory to do the same, it was known by then that Gregory was going to be the star witness against David when he went on trial for first-degree murder in the slaying of Father Francis Craven.
And then more connections between Leitner, his common-law wife, his adopted son/ex-boyfriend, and Father Francis Craven came to light, either through Little’s talking to the cops, or David talking to them, or David talking to the press or Vivian talking to the press. These weren’t discrete people. However, it was eventually revealed that Vivian had a degenerative brain disease at the time, which precluded her from testifying. And at least SHE had an excuse for being mouthy.
As parishioners at St Williams, the public learned that the trio had become close friends with Father Frank, dining with him thrice a week. Leitner told the Tuscaloosa News that Father Frank convalidated his marriage to Vivian Young. For those who aren't Catholic or are unfamiliar with such customs, which I guess means giving the church's blessing to the couple as a couple even if they’re not married. So it that like a hall pass from Jesus to have premarital sex? Catholicism is weird (I can say that; I was raised Catholic, sort of…Easter Sunday catholic, and my mom made us get confirmed.)
Craven had reportedly baptized Gregory Little and even checked on Leitner's mother in Huntsville when she became sick while Leitner, his convalidated or whatever wife, and Little were overseas.
Leitner would say his relationship with the 80-something Miss Vivian was ultimately a business one, so i guess it was also business mixed with pleasure. In 1987 or 1988, while Father Frank looked after Leitner’s sick mom, David Leitner, his son Gregory Little, and Vivian Young vacationed in Europe — a jaunt financed by $25,000 of Viv's money.
It sounds like Leitner was often pushing poor Vivian off on Father Frank, who was driven around by the priest so much that he had strap mounted on his own van to help Vivian get in and out.
Leitner claimed he reciprocated Craven's gestures of kindness by buying the priest a $400 recliner, along with $1,500 worth of hymn books for the church, which I assume was with Vivian’s money because there’s not a lot in the source material about what Leitner did for a living. He was saying something about being in antiques but shrugged.
But according to Gregory Little, things became strained with the trio when David grew suspicious of Father Frank’s intentions towards his son, er boyfriend. This was especially clear when Craven asked Little to stay after Mass one day to help him clean the rectory. I’m shocked the notoriously patriarchal Catholic Church doesn’t force a nun to do that. Anyway, this freaked Leitner out; he saw it as a total seduction scene and forbade Little from going. It was at this point that Leitner began to grow insanely jealous of Craven’s relationship with Gregory Little, especially over things like Father Craven teaching Gregory Little how to drive and helping him get his driver’s license.
After the murder, before the arrest, Little moved out and got into a relationship with a woman. And this enraged Leitner. A roommate of Little’s post-Colonel and Monchichi breakup told reporters that Leitner used to show up at their place trying to find Little, insisting that the police were after him. However, when the man agrees to help Leitner look for Little, he says Leitner starts talking about a priest being the reason Little is in trouble.
"He said Little struck him in the head several times, and they'd burned him. I told him to turn the truck around and take me home, and he did," the man said.
At Leitner’s first trial, Little first corroborated Leitner's testimony that the two men and Vivian Young were indeed close friends with Father Craven during their time in Guntersville, and parishioners at the church later noted that you could set your watch by the odd trio sitting in their regular pew when Craven was leading mass. Imagine the whispering when those three walked. Old blind lady with a cane. Tall, middle-aged, clearly troubled person. Very diminutive younger person hooker with a whispy mustache purporting to be the older guy’s “son.”
Little’s story of the day of Father Craven’s death was the reason Leinter was arrested and went to trial. Little claimed that he and Leitner both traveled to Birmingham in Leitner's truck the day of the murder but never talked about why on the hour-and-a-half drive from Guntersville. Leitner told Little to get in the car and he did. They both knew that Craven had been on a holiday visit with friends in Florida.
Little testified at trial as state's witness that they spotted Craven's van leaving the airport before getting his attention and, after a brief stop, convinced Craven to follow them in his van.
Little later, he said he had ridden with Craven in the van to Tuscaloosa County following Leitner’s vehicle. This would also have been the same time that Craven called his friend Jean Murphy, sounding odd.
Little told investigators and later testified that they arrived at a secluded spot in an open field off a dirt road; once all the men got out and were facing one another, Little claimed that Leitner immediately asked Craven if he was a homosexual and confronted him over his suspicions that the priest was in a sexual relationship with Gregory Little. Craven allegedly denied both accusations, Little later testified, and Little said he also denied being sexually involved with Father Frank. Little testified, and to his credit, in court, he was reported to be quite believably upset while relaying this horrible story, he went on to testify that Leitner went to his truck and retrieved a metal pipe roughly two feet long and wrapped in duct tape.
Little then said that Leitner walked up to the priest and brought the pipe down directly on his forehead, sending him to the ground.
Little said he was frozen, immediately fearing for his own life, and figured he would likely be on the receiving end of the next blow. Instead of attacking Little, though, Leitner bound the priest's hands and feet, with Little testifying that the two men left Craven on the ground and drove a short distance in Leitner's truck to Tierce's Store on Alabama State Highway 69.
Little testified that Leitner bought some gasoline and returned to the secluded spot on Old Bull Slough Road where they had left Father Frank bound, gagged, blindfolded, and bleeding. Little testified that Craven was conscious and trying to plead with the men, despite his mouth being covered with duct tape — the box for which was found discarded among the strewn garbage at the scene, much of which was determined to be from Craven's van, and determined to have been used as an accelerant for the fire which was about to be set, including the dog leash and collar that was found. Craven had a lot of trash in his car. Well, maybe not the leash and collar, he didnt have a dog as far as I can find out and his letters to Troy back in the locked closet in his room indicated he was into that sort of thing.
Craven's pleas were muffled, Little said, and he had tears in his eyes as he testified that Leitner grabbed the pipe a second time and struck the priest in the head at least two or three more times.
Leitner is then said to have demanded Little help drag the battered and bound priest to a spot to burn him, but Little was that he got scared and went back to the van, terrified and waiting to be killed.
Instead of clubbing his much younger companion to death, though, Little said Leitner dragged Craven some distance, doused him in gasoline, and set him ablaze on a makeshift burn pile made of dried brush and whatever he could grab from the priest's van that would burn. This must have included the prayer book, which looked like a pillow.
Little said they left the scene with Leitner behind the wheel of Craven's GMC Safari van and Little following behind in Leitner's pickup. They next ditched the van after setting it on fire with whatever gasoline was left over from burning Father Frank.
Little testified the two men then got back into the truck and made their way south down Highway 69 before taking a right at the busy U.S. Highway 82 intersection, where they stopped at "Wendy's Hamburgers" in Northport to wash up and get something to drink, before getting on Interstate 20/59 and back to Guntersville.
According to his story, the two men returned to Marshall County in enough time to shower, get Vivian dressed and find seats in their regular pew at St Williams for the 5 o'clock mass. They feigned distress when Father Frank didn't show, and Leitner even made a big show of going out in his truck that night to help search.
Little testified that there was no relationship between him and Father Frank beyond friendship, and he had no reason to believe Craven was gay but still drew laughs from Leitner's defense table as to why he decided to confess about his role in the murder a year and a half later.
David Leitner was just as theatrical during the trial as he was before it. To what sounds like an annoying degree, His lawyers didn't exactly dissuade him. In the courtroom, Leitner’s defense attorney, on two occasions, could be heard laughing loud enough for the jury to hear the witnesses testifying.
Leitner also reportedly rolled his eyes numerous times, making animated, almost cartoonish, expressions to his attorneys with each new revelation made from the stand.
Leitner testified that neither he nor Little was in Tuscaloosa County on the day of Craven's murder.
He described himself as bisexual and testified he was still having sexual relations with his 85-year-old blind wife, "Vivian Young Leitner." He did admit under cross-examination that he and Gregory Little had been involved in a sexual relationship "at first," but claimed those feelings changed and evolved in the years after he had picked up Little in Atlanta.
As a result, Leitner said he "became more fatherly" after he legally adopted Little in the spring of 1990 — just months after Father Craven's murder.
A friend of Leitner’s sort of screwed him over in trying to help him, testifying that Leitner told him it had been Gregory Little who had bludgeoned Father Frank before the two of them had burned the body. This guy put Leitner at the scene despite Leitner’s claims he hadn't been.
This was disputed by the physical evidence as the authorities determined the much larger set of footprints at the scene belonged to the person n who would have dragged Craven's body to the burn pile.
Still, one cop told jurors during the first trial that Leitner had told him during an interview about Little's issues before the murder, "All my troubles started when that goddamn priest started giving presents to my boy."
As opposed to Little’s testimony and the testimony of people who claimed that Leitner had confessed to being at the murder but that Little had done it, David Leinter testified that he and Little had run errands all day up until they went home and got miss Vivian ready for church and then attended the 5 pm mass father craven was supposed to be presiding over.
It took the jury four hours and 20 minutes to come back with a guilty verdict. David Leitner was sentenced to life in prison, where in his first stint, he was reportedly beaten by other inmates, and after that he had healed, he then injured himself so he could stay in solitary so he wouldn't be released back to the general population. He also continued to proclaim his innocence.
After a little more than a year behind bars following his first conviction, Leitner saw the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rule that the "journals" recovered during the search warrant at the rectory should have been admitted as evidence during Leitner's murder trial because the judge in the first trial wouldn’t allow it.
The appellate ruling stated: "While the journal excerpt did not exactly describe the events surrounding Craven's death, some of the descriptions of various forms of humiliation, bondage, and sadomasochism are very similar. Craven's body was found in the woods with his hands and feet bound. There was an electric cord around Craven's neck that was connected to a dog leash. While the details of the sexual fantasies described in the journal are not identical to the state in which Craven's body was found, a jury might find a compelling parallel between the events described in the journal and the state of Craven's body when it was discovered. It is possible that given access to the journal excerpt, the jury could reasonably infer that the killing was the result of a sadomasochistic sexual adventure that went wrong when the sadist carried the event to the ultimate conclusion of murder." Translation and not from Leitner bludgeoning him to death out of jealous over the victim’s relationship with his “son”.
Translation: Death by freaky gay bondage shit gone wrong and not by bludgeoning via jealous migraine-suffering drama queen jealous over his adopted boy toy possibly getting after it with their family priest
So, In the spring of 1994, a new jury took only a little more than two hours to return a guilty verdict at his second trial, and a few days later, a judge once again handed down a life sentence for David Leitner.
Leitner's final appeal had been rejected three days before Christmas 1995. His convalidated wife, 89-year-old Vivian Hudson Young, had died just weeks before.
He was found hanging in his cell on Sept 5 1996 with his sucide note proclaiming his innocence to the end.
After his death, court records revealed that Leitner had made Greg Little the sole heir to his estate and that of his octogenarian common-law wife. I’m not sure if he received much of anything.
Gregory Little died in 2022 at age 53. After Leitner’s conviction, he claimed that the real reason he hadn’t come forward about Father Frank’s murder initially was because David threatened to kill him when he did.
One detail that strikes me about this case is that Leitner and Little both attended Father Frank’s funeral mass and took communion. Like I said, Catholics are weird.
That was the Father Francis Craven/David Leitner story. Thank you for joinng me this evening for Wicked Gay. I wish you a prosperous 2025, where you thrive and you flourish and you stay strong and you laugh a lot and you don’t give in, and tell despair to fuck right off. We’ll make it through this one, too, and if things are royally fucked at the end cuz of cowardly fools,its ok, we’ll unfuck them, the world only spins foward and love’s ALWAYS going to win. Not to get maudlin or anything. Now if youll excuse me, I gotta pick my Cinderella dress up at the cleaners. NITE.
