Joan Herring looks at newspaper clippings about the 1989 stabbing that nearly took her life. Her assailant left her for dead.

THOMASVILLE — Joan Faye Herring does not remember the knife entering her throat on a cold Saturday morning more than 29 years ago.

“He cut me from ear to ear,” Herring said. Her carotid artery was severed. Her assailant left her for dead.

Herring, now in her early 80s, was working at her brother’s country store at U.S. 19 South and New Hope Road on Jan. 7, 1989, when a man entered the business about 9 a.m. and asked Herring to cut bologna for him.

“I went to cut the meat. When I turned around, he had a knife by his side. It was a large knife,” Herring recalled. “He said, ‘If you give me the money, nothing bad will happen to you.’ Of course, I remember the exact words.”

Herring walked to the cash register at the front of the store. The man grabbed her arm before she reached the cash register.

“He said, ‘Just like in the movies, don’t do anything stupid,’ “ Herring said.

When Herring told the man about $100 was in the cash register, he uttered a sound of disgust and took her to a back room.

“He told me to get down on the floor,” Herring said.

Herring refused to follow his command and shoved the man — the last thing she remembers.

“He just went crazy,” she said.

The man cut the back of her neck, resulting in a chipped vertebrae. He also cut the back of her head and her left cheek.

Herring regained consciousness.

“I stood up. I went to the phone to call my sister. I told her to get help,” she said.

A customer Herring knew entered the store and lay Herring on the floor and used a sweater he was wearing to try to stop the flow of blood from her wounds. The customer told her, “ ‘Oh, my God! Somebody has cut you to pieces!’ “

Herring tearfully recalled how the customer held her hand.

“He didn’t have to do that,” she said. “He was so brave.”

Justice was swift in case: An indictment on suspect James Keaton Jr. was returned Feb. 16. The trial was in March.

The jury deliberated 30 minutes. Keaton was found guilty on all eight counts with which he was charged, said James E. “Jim” Hardy, who prosecuted the case as chief assistant district attorney and is now a Superior Court judge.

Hardy said Herring was “stabbed to the hilt” with a six-inch hinting knife. She required 46 pints of blood, he said.

She received 20 wounds above the clavicle.

“All the arteries, all the veins were severed.” Hardy said, adding that Herring’s brain survived on two arteries.

Her carotid artery was severed, Herring said, pointing to a scar on her neck.

“I don’t remember the knife going into my throat. He cut me from ear to ear,” Herring said.

David Breese, then a Thomas County Sheriff’s Office investigator, was on call that weekend. Breese was interviewing an assault victim when dispatch called about a stabbing at New Hope Grocery.

“I pretty much knew who it was. It was (Joan) Herring,” Breese recalled. “I stopped in the store frequently.”

When Breese arrived at the store, he saw Herring lying on the floor.

“There was blood everywhere,” the lawman said.

Breese, who is retired from the US. Marshals Service, said he talked to a transient standing across the road from the store and interviewed someone who had been in the store earlier that morning. Over the course of several days, he interviewed numerous people who had been in the area that morning.

The man who found Herring, along with another man, had seen a blue truck — “probably a Chevy” — parked in front of the store. The truck was gone, and Herring had been attacked when her rescuer returned to the business.

Breese learned the name of a Monticello, Florida, air-conditioning company’s name was on the truck.

“That was our first really good break in the case,” said Breese, a Thomasville resident.

A man who lived in the area had been at the store the night before at closing time and saw a blue service-type truck parked across the road.

“He stayed with me and helped me lock up,” Herring said. “It was dark.”

Breese pointed out that in 1989, law enforcement did not have the Internet or Google to search for information.

An officer with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Monticello told Breese he was aware of someone who might know the identity of Herring’s assailant.

“This person was bragging about killing a woman,” Breese said.

Keaton’s’ name was developed from the information. He has been released from the Florida Department of Corrections less than a year earlier after serving 17 years on a rape and kidnapping conviction.

Breese and the late Ken Collins, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, spent many hours surveilling Keaton’s residence. He eventually was picked up by Jefferson County authorities two days after the stabbing, put in jail and confessed to the attack.

Keaton told authorities “step by step” what he did and seemed almost proud of the vicious crime.

According to Herring, Keaton went to a Monticello pool room and bragged about the stabbing.

“He told his sister, who told the law,” Herring said.

Said Breese, “He had a tremendous hatred of women.”

Keaton said he was abused by women in his family. He told investigators his grandmother heated coat hangers in a fireplace and beat him with them.

“He had scars on his back,” Breese said.

Breese does not think Keaton was at the store to commit a robbery. He thinks Keaton left Herring for dead.

“He was there to kill a victim,” Breese said.

Herring’s surgeon said he had never seen anyone stabbed so severely and survive, according to Breese.

A large hunting knife was recovered.

“Every stab wound was to the hilt of the knife,” Breese said.

The late Judge George A. Horkan Jr. sentenced Keaton to life terms on armed robbery and kidnapping with bodily injury, 20 years on a charge of aggravated battery; and five years on one count of possession of a knife during the commission of a crime.

The sentences are being served consecutively. Jurors also returned guilty verdicts on a count of aggravated assault and three other counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a crime.

According to a Times-Enterprise story about the trial, Keaton admitted to the assault, but not the robbery or kidnapping and said he was high on crack cocaine, marijuana and beer at the time of the attack.

“He had nothing to lose, so he went to trial,” Breese said.

Prefacing the sentences, Horkan told Keaton the case was the “worst, the most heinous” he had heard in his 16 years on the bench.

Horkan also said the law limited the length of the sentence for each offense, but “I would sentence you to the electric chair if I could.”

Keaton, now 65, entered the state prison system on July 31, 1989, and remains behind prison bars.

Herring, who testified at the trial, saw Keaton sitting with his lawyer. Feeling sick, she let the courtroom.

“I did not want to hear what he had to say,” she recalled.

Keaton told the court he did not know why he attacked Herring “because she really was a nice lady.”

Almost three decades after the attack, Herring’s right shoulder and arm are not totally functional. Her right ear lobe is numb. Nerves in her right eye are damaged.

Herring lives in her late parents’ home in rural Thomas County.

She does not have nightmares about what happened to her, but has suffered from anxiety several times. Afterward, she would think about “being back in the world.”

Herring recalled that as she was sinking physically and mentally from the injuries, she thought “I can’t die today. I have to take care of Mama.”

She had returned home in 1983, to care for her mother, who was in failing health.

One of eight children born to the George and Christine Herring, Herring grew up in Thomas County. She attended boarding school in Aiken, South Carolina, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

She taught in South Carolina public schools. After recovering from the attack, she taught 11 years at what is now Southern Regional Technical College before retiring.

Hardy and Breese, obviously deeply touched by Herring and the brutality of the crime, will always remember her.

Breese said the case “just kind of stuck with me all these years.”

“Some things you don’t forget,” Hardy said. “It had a just ending. The only way she survived was Divine intervention, no doubt about it.”

Herring said she would say to Keaton today:

“I am sorry you had the kind of life that let you have a life like this.”

Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 1820