The U. S. hasn't executed anybody for non-homicidal rape in over fifty years. In fact, I think it has been ruled unconstitutional. But such wasn't always the case, especially in Missouri and a few other states known for "rough justice." In fact, Missouri was the site of the last execution in America for rape without an accompanying murder when Ronald Wolfe got the gas chamber in Jefferson City in 1964. Prior to 1938, when executions in Missouri were still carried out by hanging in the counties where the criminals were convicted instead of by gas in Jefferson City, the death penalty for rape was even more common. The case of the Worden brothers serves as one example.
On Sunday evening, November 15, 1931, Norman Parks, George Mimms, and their high school girlfriends were parked northwest of Carthage when a strange car pulled up beside them. Three men got out carrying revolvers and ordered the young people out of their automobile.
One of the holdup men, thirty-one-year-old Pete Stevenson, escorted the two young men at gunpoint to a nearby chat pile, while his two accomplices, thirty-four-year-old Lew Worden and twenty-six-year-old Harry Worden, held the girls prisoner near the automobiles. The Worden brothers threatened to kill the girls if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. Lew then held one girl at gunpoint while Harry sexually assaulted the other.
After the attack, the girls, seeing no sign of their boyfriends, ran to a nearby farmhouse, and the farmer helped the girls get back to Carthage. The rape victim told her mother the awful news when she got home, and authorities were summoned.
Meanwhile, the highwaymen, an hour and a half after the first attack, held up a taxi cab near Carl Junction. They beat the driver and robbed him and two male passengers, but two young women in the vehicle were not molested.
Then, at ten o’clock the same evening, the desperadoes accosted another carload of young people northwest of Joplin. The young victims were Arthur Poundstone, Tom Wills, and their sixteen and seventeen-year-old female companions. All four were taken to an isolated spot near the present-day Joplin Regional Airport, where Harry Worden guarded the young men while Lew Worden and Pete Stevenson raped the two girls.
The Worden brothers, who’d previously lived in Joplin, were immediately suspected in the crimes because of their prior clashes with police. Shown a picture of Lew, the victims of the assault near Carthage identified him as one of the criminals. The license number of the bandit car was matched to a tag stolen from an automobile near Birch Tree, Missouri, 170 miles east of Carthage, and the Wordens were soon traced to nearby Mountain View. Lew Worden was taken into custody there and brought back to Carthage on November 25.
He admitted his and Harry’s participation in the holdups ten days earlier, but he denied they’d raped anyone. The next day, though, the four young people from the Poundstone vehicle identified Lew as one of their assailants, and he was charged with rape.
Harry Worden and Pete Stevenson were arrested in Illinois in early December and brought back to Missouri. Charged with sexual assault, Harry was transferred to Jasper County, while Stevenson was held in Carter County on a robbery charge.
Both Wordens pleaded not guilty at their initial appearances, but Lew changed his plea to guilty when his trial came up in Jasper County on January 27, 1932, throwing himself on the mercy of the court. However, Judge Harvey Davis was in no mood for clemency, and he sentenced Worden to hang on March 3 at Carthage.
The next day, Harry Worden’s trial began before Judge Grant Emerson. The victim of the Carthage sexual assault took the stand on the 29th and testified that she submitted to Harry Worden’s demands only because he and his brother threatened to kill her best friend if she didn’t do as they said. The girl’s testimony was confirmed in every detail by her companions.
Harry Worden was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but the verdict was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court and the execution date indefinitely postponed.
Pete Stevenson was finally brought to Carthage on February 18 and charged as the third assailant in the November 15 assaults.
Meanwhile, Lew Worden appealed to the Missouri governor for clemency, but the governor declared that the execution should proceed. Worden was hanged on the early morning of March 3, 1932, on a gallows just outside the county jail at Carthage. About 100 observers were allowed inside the stockade surrounding the gallows, while a crowd of about 500 thronged around the enclosure. Worden was buried in Joplin’s Forest Park Cemetery.
Pete Stevenson was granted a change of venue to Lawrence County. He pleaded guilty there in May and was sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary.
In December 1932, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision in Harry Worden’s case and reset his execution for January 20, 1933. On January 18, the Missouri governor issued a stay of execution until February 10.
After studying the case further, the governor declined to intervene again, and Harry Worden was hanged in the early morning of February 10 inside the jail building at Carthage in a room on the second floor with about 50 witnesses in attendance. He was buried in Hill Crest Cemetery at Galena, Kansas.
Pete Stevenson had escaped the death penalty, but he died in prison at Jefferson City in May of 1934.
This story is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.
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