Kidnapping and Murder of Baby Keet

Late on the night of May 30, 1917, fourteen-month-old Lloyd "Buddy" Keet was kidnapped from his home near the corner of Pickwick and Meadowmere in the exclusive Meadowmere Place neighborhood of Springfield, Missouri. About midnight, his parents, banker J. Holland Keet and his wife (Jenny), returned home from a country club dance to find the boy missing. He had apparently been snatched from his room sometime between ten and midnight while the nurse slept in an adjoining room.

Mr. Keet received a letter from the kidnappers the next day, and late that night he drove out into the environs southwest of Springfield on a presumed mission to deliver a ransom in exchange for his child. He came back empty-handed, however, and would not reveal the exact contents of the letter he had received. It was later learned that the letter had instructed him to drive south on National through Galloway to Ozark, then west to Nixa, then north on Campbell Street taking a circuitous route back to Springfield and then west toward Republic, driving twelve miles an hour the whole way. The kidnappers were supposed to flag him down or otherwise indicate where he was to drop the ransom, but no one ever appeared. Keet received a second latter a day or two later, but it, too, did not result in the return of the baby or yield any clues as to the identity of the kidnappers.
Over the next few days, however, clues began to emerge about a suspected kidnapping ring involving the family of Taylor Adams, who lived on Delmar Street, not far from the Keets, and a young man named Claude Piersol. Specifically, a taxicab owner named Walker said the gang had approached him a few months earlier about participating in a plot to kidnap Springfield jeweler C. A. Clement. Adams was arrested about June 3rd or 4th in Kansas City and brought back to Springfield on suspicion. He gave a statement admitting his part in the Clement plot, which was never carried out, but he denied involvement in the Keet kidnapping. He implicated his two sons, his wife, Piersol, and a man named Dick Carter in the criminal ring. Adams's wife, his two sons, and Piersol were arrested on June 5 along with another man named McGinnis. Carter was later arrested as well. Claude Piersol and the eldest Adams son, Cletus, both gave statements essentially corroborating what Taylor Adams had said--that they were involved in the failed Clement plot but not the Keets crime. Piersol, who was implicated as the ringleader of the gang, gave a sensational statement implicating a mysterious German agent named Riley and claiming that the criminal ring was part of a plot carried out in the interests of the German war effort.
Baby Keet was found dead at the bottom of a cistern at the Crenshaw mansion eight miles southwest of Springfield on the morning of June 9. (It was later learned the baby had first been taken to the Adams home before being moved out of town to the Crenshaw place.) Upon learning the news of the baby's death, angry mobs immediately formed, threatening vigilante justice against the prisoners.
Sheriff J. W. Webb whisked the prisoners out of Springfield to try to avoid the vigilantes, but they trailed him and his prisoners northwest into Cedar Couunty, where law officers finally agreed to the vigilantes' demands that Pierson be given the "third degree." The vigilantes took Pierson a couple of miles south of Stockton and strung him up to a tree until he was almost dead before letting him down. Still, he would not confess to involvement in the Keet kidnapping. Finally he was returned to law officers, and he and Cletus Adams were taken to Kansas City for safekeeping and then on to St. Louis. The other suspects joined them in St. Louis. Adams, his older son, and Piersol were charged with first degree kidnapping.
Brought back to Springfield in July 1917, the defendants got their trials moved to Marshfield on changes of venue. Piersol went on trial first, in October. Despite taking the stand in his own defense to deny his guilt, he was found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in the state prison. Taylor Adams decided to plead guilty, and he was sentenced to 15 years. His son also pleaded quilty and was given 10 years. Charges against all the others implicated in the kidnapping were eventually dropped. Before being taken to Jefferson City, Piersol finally confessed to Webster County sheriff B. Ward Mackey his participation in the kidnapping of Buddy Keet. He said that the little boy died after been dosed with laudanum to keep him quiet but that the death was accidental.