VIDALIA — When Jackie Hudspeth pulled out old photos after the murder of her father, Clark Felton Jr., she stopped on one of him leaning forward, his mouth a wide grin in the middle of a laugh.

“This is what he will be remembered for,” she said, holding up the photo. “He was just funny, always telling jokes. If you called him, even if he was feeling bad he was going to tell you a joke.”

Felton was brutally beaten to death in his residence at 87 LaGrange Road sometime Tuesday night.

His wife, Annie Bell Felton, discovered him Wednesday, and she said she knew something was wrong when she arrived at the residence and the door wasn’t chain-locked. When his cane wasn’t next to the couch where he kept it, she became even more suspicious.

She had been trying to contact him by phone all day, and had gone to check on him. He had been ill for some time.

When she found him Wednesday, he was face up in a pool of blood in the dining room, and an autopsy revealed that Felton had received sharp trauma to his head, neck and throat before ultimately bleeding to death. Investigators said they believe the vicious beating was part of a robbery.

Eventually, the missing cane came into play, and investigators searching the LaGrange Road area Thursday afternoon found the victim’s cane and cell phone at the tree line of a wooded area near the intersection of LaGrange Road and Greenfield Road.

The investigators believe the cane was the murder weapon, Adams County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Ricky Stevens said.

“I will be taking it and all of the evidence we have gathered up to the state crime lab (in Jackson) early next week,” Stevens said. “We will see if they can match it there.”

Investigators have a suspect, Stevens said, but no arrests were made Friday.

The fact that her father was ill is what has made the fact of the murder all the worse for his daughter.

“Who would do this to him?” Hudspeth said. “He was so weak, they could have just pushed him over and taken what they wanted.”

And it’s not the first time the family has been struck by tragedy.

This month marks the 16-year-anniversary that Felton’s son Cedric was murdered in the same residence, shot in the back of the head.

“My husband said that when they killed Cedric, it took a part of him,” Annie Bell Felton said.

The family said their faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses is helping them cope day-to-day, and that they want to remember Clark Felton for the life he led.

And those memories include a generous man who wasn’t afraid to help out others, even if it would ultimately hurt him, his son-in-law Don Hudspeth said.

“(Clark) was a very giving person,” he said. “He would give you the shirt off his back.”

Annie Bell Felton said she will miss the daily routine the two had developed over the years.

“We lived at separate residences, but every morning he would call me and wake me up,” Annie Felton said. “I’m going to miss those calls. Sometimes I would be so groggy, and he would say, ‘It’s 6 a.m. You should be awake.’”

Their daughter had her own perspective on their relationship.

“They acted like they were still dating,” Jackie Hudspeth said.

“When my mother came to visit me, he called something like 20 times.”

Clark Felton was a long-time fence builder and trucker before his illness.