Murder at Schaupp's Store

I recall a murder that took place at a store/service station just north of Crystal Cave on Highway 65 about halfway between Springfield and Fair Grove when I was growing up at Fair Grove. There was a little buzz around Fair Grove about it at the time, and I think my dad might have even pointed out to me the place where it happened during a trip to Springfield not long after the incident. Up until a day or two ago, that's about all I could have told you about the crime, but I happened to find a news story about the event in a Springfield newspaper.
Come to find out, the incident happened on August 13, 1956, when I was nine years old. A young man came into the store with a high-powered rifle about ten o'clock that morning and shot two people: Leonard W. "Bill" Murrell, 61-year-old owner of the nearby Avalon Club, who was in the store as a customer; and thirty-eight-year-old Miss Myrtle Schaupp, who was operating the store at the time for her father, C. B. Schaupp. Shot in the head, Murrell was killed instantly, and Miss Schaupp had her right arm practically blown off by a shot just below the shoulder. She was admitted to the hospital in critical condition and had to have the arm amputated, but she survived.

The killer fled, but he was soon identified by eye witnesses, including the teenage granddaughter of the store owner, from police photographs as Robert Lee Popejoy. The girl said the killer just started shooting for no apparent reason, and officers could offer no motive for the crime, except that the suspect had a history of mental illness. He was tracked down at his father's farm north of Strafford on Highway 125 later the same day. Officers from several different law enforcement agencies surrounded the house and demanded his surrender. When he refused, they laid siege to the place. The young man still refused to surrender even after his father went up to the house and pleaded with him to give himself up. Late in the afternoon, authorities finally employed an armored car to get close enough to the house to fire a tear gas canister through a window. Popejoy emerged moments later and surrendered, laying down his Winchester rifle. Bullets recovered from the scene of the crime were later positively identified as having come from Popejoy's rifle.
Popejoy had been taken into custody several times on relatively minor charges, and authorities had recommended to the father that the young man be committed to a mental institution. His mother was already a resident of the state hospital at Nevada. Sheriff Glenn Hendrix said he'd told the father that something like this might happen if his son was not committed, and now it had. Asked about his mental condition as he was taken into custody, Robert Lee Popejoy told officers, "I'm not crazy, you are." He admitted being in the vicinity of Schaupp's store at the time of the crime, but he said he had no memory of having even gone inside.
At his trial in December, Popejoy was acquitted on the grounds of insanity, but he was ordered committed to a mental institution for the dangerously insane.