She Shot to Kill: A Very Merry Little Woman

On the evening of May 24, 1899, twenty-nine-year-old Robert Blunk, who worked as a switchman at the Frisco Railroad yards in Springfield, Missouri, came home drunk and started abusing his wife, twenty-eight-year-old Alice. Blunk, whose "reputation as a husband" was "anything but commendable," had often been known to mistreat Alice. This time he said he was going to quit his job and leave Alice, and he even threatened to kill her.

The next day, Alice made up her mind that, if Robert started abusing her again, she was going to do something about it, and she armed herself with a .32 caliber pistol. Wrapping the weapon in paper, she walked downtown carrying the pistol in her hand. She met her husband on College Street just west of the public square, and they started west together on College. Alice learned that Robert had quit his job and drawn all his pay, as he'd threatened, and the couple almost immediately started arguing over his refusal to turn over any of the money to Alice. Robert became more and more abusive as they went along, calling her vile names. As they passed Market Street, he noticed her carrying something in her hand and demanded to know what it was. She told him he'd find out soon enough. When they neared Main Street, he cursed her and struck her in the face. Alice took a step back, unwrapped the pistol, and fired two shots. One passed through Robert's coat without injuring him, but the other struck him in the hip. Still on his feet, he and Alice began wrestling over the pistol. Two firemen standing nearby then stepped in and disarmed the young woman. Decrying her husband's abuse, Alice beseeched the firemen to let her finish him off, but they instead called to a nearby police officer, who took Alice into custody.
Later on the evening of the 25th, a Springfield Republican reporter visited Alice in the calaboose. She told the newsman: "We have been married now for three years and how I have ever stood his abuse as long as I have I don't know. Why I have worked and done everything for that man, and a suit of clothes that I bought with money that I made by sewing he sold yesterday. Wednesday night he threatened to kill me and struck me several times.
"Yesterday," she continued, "I just got a revolver and thought that if he attempted anything of that kind I would take part in it myself. I carried my revolver in my hand, but hardly expected to meet him. When I did, he was in his usual condition. I asked him for money that he drew and he struck me. Stepping behind him, I fired twice, and am sorry that I did not kill him. And I swear I will," she concluded, "if I ever get a chance," even if she hanged for it.
After listening to Alice's story, the reporter opined that, because of all the cruelties she had endured, the shooting was "justifiable as well as in self-defense." He described Alice as "a very pretty little woman." Her maiden name was McCoy, and came from a respectable family of Ozark. Later the same night, Alice was released on $300 bond to appear in court the next day.
At her initial court appearance the next day, word arrived from Robert Blunk that he did not want to prosecute his wife. Although he was in pain and unable to attend the hearing, his condition was not considered serious. Blunk told a Springfield Leader-Democrat reporter that there was no one to blame for what happened but himself. He denied physically abusing his wife but admitted that he had given her plenty of provocations for her anger. He also denied that he planned to leave town once he was able. Despite Blunk's expressed desire that authorities go easy on his wife, her bond was continued, pending a preliminary hearing. In contrast to the Republican's description of Alice, the Leader-Democrat considered her appearance "careworn."
After her release on bond, Alice returned to her husband and took over his care, trying to nurse him back to health. She made it clear, however, that she was only doing so out of a sense of wifely duty and that once he recovered sufficiently, "their paths must henceforth lead in different directions." She said she regretted the shooting, but she still maintained that she was driven to it.
In early June it was reported that Robert Blunk had taken a relapse and, despite the fact that his condition at first was not deemed serious, "fatal results" were now feared. At the time, Alice was still "devoting all the wifely care within her power" to nurse her husband back to health but still declaring that she would not live with him once he recovered. The Republican concluded that Mrs. Blunk would no doubt be prosecuted as a routine course of law but that much sympathy was expressed for her and she would probably not be convicted.
A day or two later, another report circulated that Blunk was not dying after all and that Alice was continuing to care for him.
After a couple of more weeks of care, Blunk was able to appear in court, and Alice's preliminary hearing was held on June 19. The Republican, reporting on the proceeding the next day, took a dim view of what Blunk had to say: "Yesterday, the big, strong, burly man, whom she nursed back to life, sat in court, apparently without feeling, and told the story of the shooting with no mitigating circumstances to ease her lot. He forgot to tell the court of his barbarous and unmanly conduct towards her."
Alice, on the other hand, was "a medium sized woman with bright black eyes and hair, slender, pale and nervous," who "did not look like a desperate character, or a woman who would wantonly attempt to take human life," said the Republican. "As she sat on the witness chair telling her story to the court, clothed in a neat pink dress and fanning herself complacently with a large black fan, she appeared anything but wicked and heartless. There was a choke in her throat and a tremor in her voice as she said to the court, 'I've been a perfect, true, honest, upright wife, and when he struck me it didn't hurt where the blow fell, but it wounded my heart; there's where the wound was, and it is there still. I didn't marry him to desert him. I married to live for him."
Alice went on the tell of her husband's constant drunkenness, the many abuses she had suffered at the his hands, and "the black and blue bruises she had carried about for weeks at a time." She said she had been driven to desperation by his abuse, especially on the night before the shooting, and hardly knew what she was doing when she shot her husband.
Despite much sympathy for the defendant, she was bound over under $300 bond to await the action of a grand jury. When the grand jury met in late July, however, they declined to indict Alice, and she went free.
True to her word, Alice refused to live with her husband after he regained his health. At the time of the 1900 census, she was living in Springfield with another young woman. Although Robert was still alive, she listed her marital status as "widowed." Robert also followed through on his vow to leave Springfield and was living in Nevada, Missouri, in 1900. Six years later, in 1906, Alice finalized her split from Robert Blunk by obtaining a divorce in Greene County Court.

A Gay Lothario and an Over-protective Old Man

An incident happened in the southwest corner of Polk County, Missouri, in June of 1895 that "caused a commotion" at nearby Walnut Grove, just across the Greene County line. About the middle of the month John Slatter, living about four miles north of Walnut Grove, paid a visit to the adjoining farm of Aaron Estabrook. Old Man Estabrook came into the house and caught his daughter-in-law and Slatter in "a compromising position." Estabrook "took quick action in the matter," said the  Springfield Democrat, "and, getting a bead on Slatter, opened fire." The ball struck Slatter in the right arm between his shoulder and elbow.
Mrs. Estabrook "made a clean cut denial of intending to do anything wrong, and a warrant was, therefore, served on Slatter charging him with attempted rape." Aaron Estabrook, meanwhile, was charged with assault with intent to kill. "The case of the elder Estabrook is a rather peculiar one," observed the Democrat. "If he had been the husband of the woman, it would have been 'perfectly regular,' but as he is the father-in-law it is a question to be solved how much right or provocation he had to shoot.

"It is most likely, however," concluded the Democrat, that the whole matter will be hushed up and little or nothing more heard of it." And that's exactly what happened. Both Slatter and Old Man Estabrook were scheduled to have their preliminary examinations before a Polk County justice of the peace on June 22, but even the Democrat, which had taken such an interest in the minor scandal, didn't report the outcome of the hearing.

Warrenton's Katie Jane Memorial Home Fire

I've written in the past on this blog about destructive fires, especially business district fires and school fires, in the Ozarks and surrounding region, but I know of only one fire in the immediate Ozarks area that claimed a multitude of lives. (By "multitude," I mean more than just a half dozen or so.) That one fire was the West Plains dance hall explosion/fire in 1928, which claimed somewhere around 38 lives, I think. However, if we look beyond the immediate Ozarks region to include the entire state of Missouri, there has been at least one fire in the Show-Me State that was more deadly than the West Plains disaster. (Maybe more than one. I haven't tried to research the topic extensively.)
On February 17, 1957. a fire broke out at the Katie Jane Memorial Home, a nursing facility for the elderly, in Warrenton, Missouri. Initial reports said at least 71 people perished in the blaze, and later estimates upped the figure a notch or two. At the time, it was the worst fire in Missouri history in terms of the number of victims, and, as far as I know, it still holds that dubious distinction.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and about 100 visitors were at the home in addition to the 150 or so patients/residents. The fire broke out about 2:30 p.m. in a first-floor sitting room and quickly spread to other parts of the 2 1/2-story brick structure, which had formerly housed the Central Wesleyan College. The fire swept down hallways and from room to room, feeding on wood furniture, wood floors, curtains, rugs, and other flammable materials. Almost all of those who died were elderly and infirm patients at the home.
Headlines in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch told the horrifying, heartrending story: "Screams of Elderly Patients Were Quickly Stilled by Flames" and "Rescuers Worked in Eerie Silence Soon After Fire Engulfed Nursing Home."
Several survivors told harrowing stories of their attempts to rescue others from the burning building. A Lutheran minister who was conducting a Sunday service for about 20 people told of leading his congregants to safety and then going back into the building to save other people. His first trip back into the building was successful, but then he got trapped by the fire and had to be rescued himself by climbing through a window and down a ladder. A nurse led several old men to safety, but when she tried to re-enter the building, the front entrance was already engulfed in flames. A neighbor who lived just a block or so away hurried to the scene with a ladder and began rescuing people. He told of one old woman who didn't want to abandon her belongings, and he had to coax her out the window. "I used some pretty strong language," he said. "I got hold of her and dragged her out over my shoulder."
Investigators blamed the fire on faulty wiring. The home had recently been inspected in order to have its license renewed, and the license was being held up, partly because the wiring had yet to be inspected by a competent electrician. After the fire, Missouri governor James T. Blair, Jr. called the fire "a terrible tragedy" and said he was going to appeal to the legislature for stricter inspection laws in the state.

The Funeral of Mass Murderer Bill Cook

After Bill Cook, who killed the Mosser family in Joplin, was sentenced to death in California and was scheduled to die in the gas chamber, a funeral director from Comanche, Oklahoma, Glen Boydston, contacted the Cook family and offered to bring the body back for them if they would agree to let him hold a small service in Comanche before bringing Bill on to Joplin for burial. Boydston said a wealthy Comanche resident had offered to foot the bill as a tribute to his own wayward son, now deceased. Bill's father, William Cook, signed papers agreeing to the arrangement because the family didn't have the money to pay to have the body transported. When Badman Bill, as he was sometimes called, was executed on December 12, 1952, at San Quentin, Boydston was there waiting to take charge of the body.
But what happened after the undertaker got the body back to Comanche wasn't quite what the Cook family had bargained for.
When Boydston pulled up outside his funeral home early Sunday morning, December 14, a large crowd was waiting to greet him. The body was then displayed in an open casket inside the funeral home with the tattooed words "Hard Luck" still plainly visible across Cook's knuckles. Curiosity seekers streamed by all day Sunday, eager to get a glimpse of the notorious killer. "Mothers carried babies in their arms and fathers held their sons by the hand," said an Oklahoma newspaper, "as they stopped to look at the body of the killer from the Joplin slag pits."
One little boy told a reporter that he'd read about Cook in the newspaper and that he'd talked his mama into bringing him to the funeral home to get a look at him. A man said he came because he just wanted to see what "a real bad man" looked like. Women visitors, though, outnumbered men, and several them remarked on Cook's physical features. One woman said, "What a fine looking boy. He has beautiful hair. He doesn't look like a man who would do such a thing." The crowds on Sunday were still coming in droves when Boydston's wife finally locked the doors at 9 p.m.
The next day, Monday the 15th, the curious crowds kept coming and even increased. From all sections of Oklahoma they came and even some from surrounding states like Texas and Colorado. Seven busloads of kids from a school in Texas stopped by, after some school official apparently decided that viewing the corpse of a heinous and notorious killer would make an edifying activity for a field trip. By the end of the day on Monday, an estimated 10,000 people had paraded through the funeral home to view the body.
By Tuesday, so many people had come to take a gander at Cook's body that the funeral directors stopped trying to count them. "The number just got away from us," said one representative of the funeral home. On Tuesday evening, though, it was estimated that 15,000 people had paid a visit since Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, in Joplin the Cook family heard a radio report Tuesday evening about the carnival atmosphere in Comanche and the huge number of people who'd been allowed to view Bill's body. They called the Joplin Globe in anger requesting that word be disseminated demanding that the public display of Bill's body and plans for a public funeral in Comanche the next day be immediately halted. The family was particularly upset by reports that a collection box had been put out near the coffin for donations, because they said they did not want to try make money from Bill's death and they didn't want anybody else to do so either. They said Boydston had violated the agreement he had made with them to hold only a small, private funeral in Comanche and not to seek publicity. The Cook family left for Comanche later Tuesday night with plans to drive all night and personally "put a stop to" the funeral service slated for the next day.
When an Oklahoma newspaper reporter called at the Boydston funeral home in Comanche Tuesday night and informed the attendant of the Cook family's anger, the attendant said Boydston himself was home resting because he was so exhausted from the past few days' activities but he added that only $31 had been collected in the donation box and that it had been used to buy flowers.
Representatives of the Cook family arrived in Comanche early Wednesday morning and threatened a lawsuit if the funeral scheduled later that day was not called off. Boydston, saying he never meant any harm, immediately canceled the service, and the body was taken to Derfelt Funeral Home in Galena, Kansas, later on the 17th. After dark that same evening, the body was taken by back roads to Peace Church Cemetery at the northwest edge of Joplin for burial, arriving about 8:40 p.m. Although one newspaper headline called it an "eerie night service," the burial was, by most accounts, a small, private, brief, and simple service attended only by family, close friends, a minister, an undertaker, and one Joplin newspaper reporter, about fifteen people in total. The Rev. Dow Booe of Galena, minister of Joplin's First Gospel Workers' Church, delivered a short sermon before Cook was lowered into an unmarked grave next to where his mother had been buried almost twenty years earlier, the whole service lasting about ten minutes.

George "Pea Ridge" Hayes and the Murder of Officer Frank Keller

It apparently came as no surprise to the editor of the Springfield (MO) Leader when George "Pea Ridge" Hayes killed Deputy Frank Keller on July 9, 1895, because the Leader headline the next day read, "Murder At Last." Not only had Hayes previously threatened Deputy Keller, he'd long had a reputation as a "malicious, dull fellow" who was considered insane by many but also very dangerous.
Hayes was born in Arkansas about 1868 and grew up in Benton County, Arkansas, near Pea Ridge. When he was still just a kid, he struck out on his own, traveling from town to town in northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri. Somewhere along the line, he picked up the nickname "Pea Ridge" because of the town in Arkansas where he was from.
In April 1888, a man named George Hayes (presumably Pea Ridge) was run out of Springfield as a vagrant. In early 1891, Hayes was convicted of assault with intent to kill in Lawrence County and sent to the state penitentiary for a two-year term. Pardoned by the governor after only nine months, Pea Ridge returned to southwest Missouri and resumed his "worthless, thieving" ways. In July of 1893, he was sent back to Jefferson City, this time on a grand larceny conviction in Jasper County. At some point in the early 1890s, he also spent time in the Aurora City Jail on a minor offense. During his incarceration, he set fire to the jail "but unfortunately was not roasted alive," according to the Leader. In addition, during the same time period, Hayes picked up a chair in a Springfield courtroom and attempted to assault a judge with it after the judge sentenced him to a short term in jail for a minor offense. He was prevented from carrying out the attack by the constables guarding him, however. According to the Leader, Springfield city officers had made numerous attempts to get Hayes to leave town, including arranging a bogus jailbreak for him, which he took advantage of, but instead of leaving town, he hung around and had to be re-arrested.
Pea Ridge was discharged from his second term in the state prison in November of 1894 after serving three-fourths of his sentence. Returning to the Springfield area, he promptly got into trouble again. In the spring of 1895, he was arrested for stealing a lawnmower and sentenced to 90 days in jail. Sometime in June, while on a work detail, he tried to escape by darting into a saloon, but Frank Keller, the deputy sheriff guarding him, rushed in after him. Hayes picked up a chair and attempted to assault the officer, but Keller subdued the prisoner by hitting him with his billy club. After being recaptured, Pea Ridge swore to kill Keller.
He got his chance on July 9, 1895, when he and a number of other prisoners were out working on a chain gang at a stone quarry on North Grant Street. When Keller leaned down to inspect some work the men were doing, Pea Ridge, who was carrying a pick, hit him on the head with the tool, knocking the officer unconscious and severely wounding him. Another guard, with the aid of one or more of the prisoners, was able to overpower the assailant before he could do additional damage.
Keller died just a few hours after being attacked, and Pea Ridge was charged with first-degree murder and thrown in the dungeon at the Springfield City Jail. When word of Hayes's murder of Keller spread throughout the Ozarks, stories of Pea Ridge's notoriety began filtering back to Springfield from other towns. A report from Eureka Springs, for instance, said that the chief of police at that place had once run Hayes out of town by whipping him with a cowhide.
At his trial later in 1895, Hayes's attorneys put up an insanity defense. Although most people agreed that Pea Ridge was crazy, most felt he still knew right from wrong and should be held accountable for his actions. The jury accordingly convicted him of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Hayes was received at the Jeff City prison in October 1895. He was transferred to the insane asylum at Fulton in 1901, and in 1904, the governor once again intervened on his behalf, granting him a pardon after he'd served less than nine years of his assessed 99-year sentence.
Recollecting Hayes in 1929, a Springfield Leader columnist recalled that Pea Ridge went back to Arkansas after being discharged from his third prison sentence and "all trace of him was long since lost." The columnist remembered Hayes as a "criminally inclined" nut who was "often in jail." According to the columnist, Hayes was saved from the gallows only because it was shown at his trial that he came from "a family of nuts" who had intermarried and were "all kin to each other." One story said his paternal grandparents were first cousins to each other and his maternal grandparents were also first cousins to each other. A variation on the story claimed all four grandparents were first cousins to each other. In any case, insanity was said to run in the family, although George was admittedly the worst of the lot.
The reason the name of Pea Ridge Hayes was called to the columnist's mind was the recent fame of Pea Ridge Day, a well-known baseball player of the time, who was known as much for his comical antics as for his playing ability. His nickname, like that of Hayes, came from his hometown in Arkansas.