A "Tangled Romance" Claims Two Victims

A headline in the January 1, 1962, issue of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat spoke of a "tangled romance" resulting in the deaths of two people. The first sentence of the report told the story in brief: "Two women...were shot to death and the husband of one was wounded Saturday in a series of events involving a love triangle in Jefferson County."

It seems 33-year-old Juanita Smith, a pretty blonde who taught elementary school at Hillsboro, had been having an affair for a couple of years with 40-year-old Ralph Patton, former school board president at Richwoods, where Mrs. Smith had previously taught. On Tuesday, December 27, 1961, Patton left his wife, 37-year-old Esther, and went to stay at the Arlington Hotel in DeSoto. When Juanita Smith told her husband, Clarence, that she also planned to leave him, he grew extremely angry and jealous. He met Patton later that evening (the 27th) at a tavern in Richwoods, where the two men had a heated argument.

On Saturday, December 30, Esther met with her husband and his lover at the hotel to try to iron out the marital difficulties in her family, but Patton informed her that he did not intend to return home unless she became sick and needed him.

The two women then left together about mid-afternoon and drove to the Smith residence at Fletcher a few miles west of DeSoto. After Esther Patton talked with the Smith couple for a few minutes over coffee, she left with the stated intention of bringing her husband back with her so that all four parties could hash out the situation.

Instead of retrieving her husband, however, Esther drove to a spot about two and half miles west of DeSoto, pulled off the side of the road, and shot herself with a .32 caliber pistol. Gravely wounded but still alive, she drove into DeSoto, where she fell out of the car into the street. The pistol was found lying in the car seat. Esther was rushed to a hospital in Festus but died shortly after arrival.

Meanwhile, as Smith and his wife were waiting for Mrs. Patton to return, they got into a quarrel about Juanita "messing around with Patton." After waiting for some time with no sign of Esther Patton's return, Juanita took an aspirin and went to bed, and Smith took two aspirins and two "nerve pills" (i.e. tranquilizers). He later claimed that was the last thing he remembered.

What police were able to reconstruct from the evidence, however, was that Smith called Juanita's brother, Lloyd Nickelson, about dusk and told Nickelson and his wife that he was going to kill himself. They rushed to the Smith home and saw him standing in the doorway with a shotgun. As Nickelson approached the house, Smith retreated from the doorway, and a shot came from inside the house. When Nickelson and his wife entered the house, they found Juanita Smith lying on the kitchen floor dying from a shotgun blast and Clarence Smith on the floor, on the opposite side of a table from his wife, dazed and suffering from a wound across his face, apparently self-inflicted in a suicide attempt.

Juanita Smith died on the way to a hospital, and her husband was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. After his wound, which proved superficial, was treated, he was taken to the Jefferson County Jail at Hillsboro.

Tried at Hillsboro in late May 1962 on a reduced charge of second-degree murder, Clarence Smith was found not guilty after a jury deliberation of only about 45 minutes.

Note: Photo from the Crystal City Jefferson County Press-Times

A Series of Eternal Triangles--Part 3

The climactic act in the three-part tragedy of early 20th century love triangles in the southwest Missouri/southeast Kansas area took place in 1928 in Baxter Springs, Kansas.

Lee Nutt was acquitted of murder for killing his wife's lover in Joplin in 1908, and John Cole was first found guilty and then acquitted on retrial for the 1917 killing in rural Granby of two men who were paying attention to his estranged wife. After Nutt's acquittal, he moved to Granby, where Cole lived, and the two men became close friends. Sometime in the 1920s, Cole, who was now single, started boarding with Nutt and his second wife. He went with them when they moved to Neosho in 1927 and again when they relocated to Baxter Springs a few months later. Both men went to work in the mines there.

In September 1928, Nutt told Cole he could no longer stay with him because he thought Cole was paying too much attention to Mrs. Nutt. A couple of months later, Nutt's wife left him and took their kids to Oklahoma, but Nutt came after her a week or so later, and the couple reconciled and returned home to Baxter Springs.

Another month later, on December 11, 1928, Nutt and his nineteen-year-old son, D. W. Nutt, came home from work and found John Cole and Mrs. Nutt there alone together. The three men started fist fighting and struggling with each other. Cole broke away from the elder Nutt, who had only one good arm, but his son clung to Cole as the latter bolted from the house and started down the street.

Lee Nutt caught up with other two men half a block away, brandished a .41 caliber revolver, and fired three shots at Cole at close range, two of which took effect. Cole died almost instantly, and Nutt promptly turned himself in, readily admitting that he'd killed Cole.

The younger Nutt, who was still holding Cole when his father started shooting, was also arrested, and both were charged with first-degree murder. Tried in Cherokee County Circuit Court in January 1929, the father again pleaded the "unwritten law" and was again acquitted, as he had been over twenty years earlier. The charges against his son were later dropped.

Thus, the three-part drama involving Lee Nutt and John Cole, both of whom had previously killed as a result of separate love triangles, ended in a bit of bitter irony when one of the friends killed the other in a squabble arising out their own private love triangle.

A Series of Eternal Triangles--Part 2

Last week I wrote about Lee Nutt's killing of his cousin, Jake Nicely, in 1908 in Joplin, after Nicely and Nutt's wife had run away together a few months earlier. Nutt was acquitted, and he moved to Granby, where he made the acquaintance of John Cole, who is the primary player in the next chapter of the three-part drama of love triangles.

Cole had been separated from his wife, Eva, for several months when he went to the house of her sister, Mrs. George Corkel, on the evening of July 26, 1917, where Eva was visiting, to try to effect some sort of reconciliation with her. Cole was talking to his wife when two young men named George Kincannon and Ralph Lucas came to the Corkel residence to take Eva and her sister Lulu McCaslin, who was also visiting Mrs. Corkel, out for an automobile ride. Only Kincannon emerged from the vehicle, because Lucas was either asleep or hunched down in the seat, so that Cole did not know but what Kincannon was alone. Lulu left with Kincannon (and Lucas), and Cole remarked to his wife after they left that he should have slapped Kincannon's face.

When they returned a short while later, Cole again made a threatening remark. Kincannon had just shaken hands with Lulu and bade her goodnight when Cole noticed that someone else was in Kincannon's car, and he asked who it was. Kincannon said, "See for yourself."

Cole walked closer to the car, and when he saw that it was Ralph Lucas in the vehicle, he exclaimed, "That's just who I thought it was."

Cole slapped Kincannon with his right hand and drew a .45-caliber revolver. The two men started arguing, and Eva pleaded with them to go away from her sister's house if they were going to fight. A few seconds later, though, Cole fired a shot into Kincannon's chest. Kincannon fell, and Eva ran toward the house shouting for Lucas to run. Cole fired another bullet into Kincannon's head after he was already down and then turned and started shooting at Lucas as he was trying to flee. After Lucas was down, Cole also put another bullet in him for good measure.

Cole immediately turned himself in to authorities, saying only that he was sorry for the conditions that "made the shooting necessary." At his trial in June of 1918 for the killing of Kincannon, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was released later in the year, however, under a writ of habeas corpus issued by the Missouri Supreme Court, and, still later, a new trial was ordered.

While the Kincannon case was still pending, Cole was tried in June 1920 for the murder of Lucas and acquitted. The Kincannon case was then later dropped.

The reader might wonder how this case is connected to the Lee Nutt case that I wrote about last time. Admittedly, the connection is pretty thin--only that Nutt and Cole were friends. However, the connection will become much stronger next time when I chronicle the third episode in southwest Missouri's jealousy-driven three-act tragedy of the early 1900s.

  

A Series of Eternal Triangles--Part 1

A series of three related love triangles in the southwest Missouri-southeast Kansas area over a period of twenty years in the early part of the twentieth century resulted in the deaths of four men. The first act in this three-part tragedy was staged at Joplin in October of 1908, and the principal players were thirty-two-year-old David Lee Nutt, his wife, and his cousin.

About nine months earlier, Nutt and his wife, Blanche, were living on a farm near Neosho when Nutt's cousin Jake Nicely came to live with the couple and their three children. Nicely, who was of "prepossessing appearance" and about ten years younger than his cousin, "proved attractive" to the twenty-eight-year-old Blanche, and a friendship grew up between them.

In 1900, just two years after he and Blanche were married, Lee, as Nutt was usually called, had been involved in a mining-related dynamite accident that put out one of his eyes and blew off one of his hands. Whether Lee's disfigurement had anything to do with Blanche's disenchantment with her husband is unknown, but, for whatever reason, the relationship between Blanche and Nicely soon "ripened" into something more passionate than friendship.

One day in July, the clandestine lovers took off together, leaving Nutt to take care of the children alone. Nutt at first swore vengeance, but when the illicit couple was located in Kansas City, he and other relatives pleaded with Blanche to come home. "The efforts of the peacemakers were spurned," however, and the illegal lovers stayed together.

On October 25, 1908, Nutt came to Joplin on business and met his wife on the street that evening. He again pleaded with her to come back to him, but she still refused. He spent the night in a Joplin hotel ruminating over the treachery of his wife and his cousin. The next day, Nutt, who was carrying a revolver, again saw Blanche on the street and followed her into Church's shoe store. Discovering that Nicely was in the store with her, Nutt was overcome with anger. He fired several shots at Nicely, at least two of which took effect, and Nicely died almost instantly.

Nutt was arrested at scene without resistance. At his trial in 1909, Nutt pleaded self-defense, claiming that Nicely had physically assaulted him when he first entered the store and tried to speak to his wife. How much stock the jury placed in Nutt's version of what happened in the store is not certain, but they came back after only 45 minutes of deliberation with a verdict of not guilty, citing the "unwritten law" in addition to the self-defense claim.

A short time after this episode, Blanche divorced Nutt, and Nutt moved to Granby, where he remarried and where he made the acquaintance of one John Cole, who figures prominently in the next act of this three-part drama. (To be continued.)

Kingdom City

Most of the towns of Missouri and the Ozarks were founded in the 1800s or very early 1900s near bodies of water, mineral ore deposits, or mineral springs. A few were founded as county seats at the time their respective counties were formed.

Some towns, mainly small ones, were also founded in the early days at the intersection of two roads. This phenomenon of towns springing up as a result of road building continued well into the twentieth century, after automobiles had replaced horses and buggies as the primary mode of transportation and after most railroad building, mineral exploration, and other activities that provided the early impetus for the formation of towns had largely ceased.

I can think of several examples of towns in Missouri and the Ozarks that formed as a result of road construction during the first half of the twentieth century, but one the one I want to discuss today is Kingdom City, a small community in northern Callaway County.

When US Highway 40 and US Highway 54 were being built through Callaway County in the mid-1920s, Fulton in the central part of the county and McCredie in the northern part, both located along the planned route of Highway 54, hoped that Highway 40 would come through their respective town. Instead, it ended up passing a mile or two south of McCredie and intersecting with Highway 54 at that point.

The intersection soon had a gas station with more businesses likely to follow, but it had no name other than just the Y. The people of McCredie wanted to name the place South McCredie, while those from Fulton wanted to name it North Fulton. In November 1927, the Fulton Oil Company, owner of the service station, suggested naming the place Kingdom City as a reflection of Calloway County's nickname, Kingdom of Callaway, and Kingdom City it became.

The crossroads community grew rapidly after that. Within a year or so, Kingdom City boasted three filling stations, three cafes, a hotel, two garages, and a grocery store, and a department store was planned.

When I-70 was built through Callaway County in 1965, it passed a little bit south of the route Highway 40 had followed, but not far enough away to completely bypass Kingdom City, and the town still benefits from the patronage of travelers along I-70.

In 1967, Kingdom City was incorporated as a village, and the former unincorporated village of McCredie was absorbed into Kingdom City. The McCredie Post Office moved to Kingdom City near the same time.

Today, Kingdom City sports quite a few businesses and a population of about 145 people, while McCredie, as a separate place, exists mainly in memory.

The Fair Play Fire

Fair Play, a small railroad town in western Polk County (MO), had a population of about 250 people when it was visited on Sunday afternoon, September 19, 1887, by a fire that destroyed nearly all the business district.

Initial reports said the fire originated on the premises of S. L. North and Co. General Store and Bankers and could not be contained. Efforts were concentrated on removing all the goods that could be saved, and the North general store and adjoining bank, the lumberyard, and a millinery in the upper story of the North building were the only businesses that were unable to remove their stock.

A later report said that the only buildings to escape the fire were the McAckran and Co. Hardware store, a blacksmith shop, a small grist mill, and a few dwellings. Businesses, in addition to those mentioned in the previous paragraph, which were burned out were B. S. Brown & Son General Store; Brown and Hopkins Drugstore; Fox, Potts and Paynter General Store; Gordon & Drake General Store; P. D. Spraque Jewelry; W. Vanzant Hotel and Restaurant; and W. Robenstine General Store. Total loss was estimated at between $30,000 and $40,000.

Fair Play rebuilt rapidly after the fire, and today it is still a flourishing little town of about 450 people.

Marion C. Early High School

When I attended Fair Grove High School many years ago, we occasionally played Morrisville in basketball or baseball, but the school was called Marion C. Early High School, not Morrisville High School, and I remember wondering why. Why didn't the school simply have the name of the town in its title like nearly all the other small-town high schools I knew about?

I'm pretty sure I could have learned the answer if I'd been inquisitive enough to do a little research or even to ask a few people who might be in a position to know, but I did neither of those. Recently, though, I learned the answer without really trying. I was just scrolling through some Springfield newspapers when I came upon a 1925 article about Marion C. Early's donation of the land and buildings for the school.

Born in 1864, Early, a St. Louis lawyer, grew up on a farm near Morrisville. Although limited educational opportunities were available to him, he managed to obtain enough early schooling to enroll in Drury College in Springfield. After working his way through Drury, he studied law at Washington University in St. Louis, earned his law degree, and was admitted to the bar.

Although Morrisville did not have a high school during the early 1900s, it did have a junior college, Morrisville-Scarritt College, which was founded in 1909 with the merger of Morrisville College (previously Ebenezer College) and Scarritt College of Neosho. The deed to the land on which the college was located stipulated that it had to be used for educational purposes.

However, when the college closed in 1924, the people of Morrisville could not afford to purchase the land. Mr. Early, who had been a trustee of Morrisville-Scarritt College, bought the eight-acre tract of land and the college's four brick buildings for an estimated $100,000 and donated them to the town of Morrisville for use as a high school. A consolidated school district was organized, and the town's first public high school opened in September of 1925 as Marion C. Early High School.