Tom Dooley hangs down his headlines.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Weekly newspaper uses 1868 murder case to boost circulation - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Rupert Murdoch's Sun has its topless Page 3 girls. Ken Welborn, publisher of The Record, has Tom Dooley. Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., uses bare-chested models to boost circulation of his London tabloid; Welborn has seized on Dooley as a way to promote his upstart weekly in North Wilkesboro.

Nearly everyone in the town knows Dooley's story. His real name was Tom Dula. He was hanged in 1868 after the body of his pregnant girlfriend was found in a shallow grave. Depending on whose version you believe, she either left Dula for another man or gave him syphilis. In 1958, the Kingston Trio immortalized him in a folk song that became a No. 1 hit. "The story's got everything: love, sex, murder, an execution," Welborn says. He latched onto it to lure readers from the Wilkes Journal-Patriot, his crosstown competitor.

Since June, Welborn's two-year-old paper has run 10 articles on Dooley. And it has mounted a drive to have him posthumously pardoned, with T-shirts, banners and a petition. "The evidence was totally circumstantial -- no weapon, no witnesses, and no one who wasn't also a suspect could put him near the scene." Welborn...