A Staffleback Footnote

I've written before about the notorious Staffleback (aka Staffelbach) family of Galena, Kansas, both on this blog and in my Ozark Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents book. I mentioned in the book that the Stafflebacks already had an unsavory reputation before they ever got involved in the murder of Frank Galbraith in Galena in the summer of 1897, the incident that made them notorious throughout the country. For instance, Johnny, oldest son of Michel and Nancy Staffleback, got into trouble for breaking some furniture and general going "on the warpath" in Joplin in July of 1878, and at the time Johnny, who was considered insane, already had a reputation for causing disturbances. I also mentioned in the book that Nancy "Old Lady" Staffleback and/or her boys were suspected of murdering an old man in Joplin around Christmas of 1895, about a year before the family moved to Galena.
But the Stafflebacks had several other run-ins with the law, both before and after the notorious Galbraith case, that I did not mention in the book.
Sometime after 1880, the Stafflebacks left Joplin and moved to Lawrence County, Missouri. In February of 1887, Nancy Staffleback was among a group of people who got baptized in Mt. Vernon, but judging from future events, the religion apparently didn't take very well. Just a few months later, Nancy sued her aged husband for divorce in Lawrence County Court, and a divorce decree was granted.
In early December of 1889, Nancy and her son, Michael, were arrested in Lawrence County for stealing clothes off of clothes lines in Mt. Vernon. Both Nancy and her son pleaded guilty. Nancy paid a ten-dollar fine, while Michael was sentenced to eight days in jail.
Then in the summer of 1894, Michael got arrested for burglary and larceny and tossed in the clink to await trial. He pled guilty to the larceny charge and was sentenced to two years in the state pen, while the burglary charge was dropped. He was escorted to Jeff City in early September 1894. He was released in early February 1896, after serving three-fourths of his term, and he immediately joined the rest of the Staffleback family, who'd gone back to Joplin and then moved across the state line to Galena during his incarceration.
According to the later testimony of Cora Staffleback, wife of another Staffleback brother (George), Mike Staffleback got involved in another crime very soon after his arrival in Galena, this one more heinous than the petty crime he'd been convicted of in Lawrence County. Cora said that Mike and Ed Staffleback (yet another brother) invited two prostitutes to stay at the Staffleback place in early 1896. Apparently the brothers considered the girls their own private whores, because they got jealous of the attention the girls were paying to some other men and ended up killing the girls and dropping their bodies in a deserted mine shaft.
The bodies of the girls were never discovered; so Mike Staffleback never paid for this crime, if indeed he committed it, but a year or so after this purported incident he was again arrested on a charge of larceny, this time in Cherokee County, Kansas. He was in jail at Columbus awaiting trial when Galbraith was killed. So, Mike avoided getting drawn into that case as well. He was sentenced to seven years in the Kansas State Pen on the larceny charge, however, at the same time his mother and brothers were convicted and sent up for murdering Galbraith.
Mike was released from the Lansing prison shortly after the turn of the 20th century, and he went back to Jasper County, Missouri, where he soon returned to a life of crime. In May 1908, he was again convicted of larceny and sentenced to two years in the state prison.
Released in November 1909 (about the same time his mother died in the Kansas Penitentiary), he once again returned to Jasper County and once again resumed his old ways. In early 1914, he served a brief sentence in the county jail on a charge of petty theft. He had just been released when he got arrested again in May of the same year on a charge of stealing chickens. He was considered an habitual offender and stealing chickens was his "long suit," according to a Webb City newspaper. I have yet to ascertain what the outcome of this case was, but suffice it to say, that Mike Staffleback left a long criminal trail throughout southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas in the late 1800s and early 1900s.