Newton County's First Female Murderer

On the morning of June 2, 1913, W.  A. Angle stepped outside the store that he ran about a mile south of Joplin just across the county line in Newton County and found a body lying in the road not far away. The dead man had a revolver lying beside him and a bullet hole in his breast. There was some suggestion at first that the death might have been a suicide, but the fact that the man had been shot in the back precluded such a likelihood. There were signs of a struggle, and found near the body was a woman's switch, a type of hair extension, which officers speculated had been lost during the scuffle. Two sets of footprints, apparently those of a man and a woman, led away from the body to another set of tracks made by a buggy. Authorities thought, therefore, that a man and a woman had been involved in the killing, but little else was known at first. One window of Angle's store had been broken, indicating that some sort of robbery attempt had occurred, and both Mr. Angle and his wife had heard a shot during the night.
At an inquest held by the Newton County coroner later the same day, the dead man was identified as George Kellem (aka Frank Dunbar) of Pittsburg, Kansas. The fact that Kellem had served a prison term in Kansas for burglary supported the theory that there had been an attempt to rob Angle's store. Kellem's wife, Pinie, was located and called to testify. She had been staying with her father in Newton County, and she said the last time she saw her husband was when he left about 1 a.m. to return to Joplin. She said her husband was carrying a revolver belonging to a man named Downing when she separated from him and that he had gone to look for Downing.
Later, however, Kellem's father testified that his son and Pinie argued the previous week when they were at his house in Pittsburg and that she had said to the younger Kellem, "Wait until we reach Joplin and you'll get your dose."

By this time, Pinie had left, but she was soon relocated and arrested on suspicion. She admitted arguing with her husband but denied any involvement in the crime and tried to implicate a man and a woman who had supposedly left the area for Oklahoma on the night of the killing. Nonetheless, she was held for a preliminary hearing, which took place on June 17. At the examination, the state presented evidence that Pinie not only had argued with Kellem but had pointed a revolver at him and threatened him on more than one occasion. She was supposedly jealous because of attentions Kellem was paying to a woman named "Big Mary." Pinie was charged with second-degree murder, reduced from a first-degree charge, and released on $1,000 bond pending the action of a grand jury. John Downing (the man Pinie had implicated) was charged as an accessory to the crime, but he had not yet been apprehended.
The grand jury failed to indict Pinie when her case came up in the fall of 1913, and she was released. However, some new evidence, including the fact that George Kellem was not really Pinie's husband, turned up in the spring of 1914. Pinie was located living in Webb City with her real husband, Louis Peckham, and both of them were arrested.
The husband was soon released, but a charge of murder was refiled against Pinie Peckham. At her trial in June at Neosho, testimony revealed that, at the time of the crime, Pinie had left Peckham and gone to live with George Kellem. She was variously known as Pinie Peckham, Pinie Kellem, or  Pinie Dunbar, and her maiden name was Tutsinger. She was described as a small woman about 25 years old with black hair and eyes. Despite her infidelity, her husband seemed to be "very devoted to her," according to the Neosho Times.

On the day before the crime, Pinie and Kellem had traveled from Pittsburg to her father's home south of Joplin. Pinie had threatened to kill Kellem, and Kellem had gotten possession of her revolver and taken out the ammunition for fear that she would carry out the threat. Pinie, however, got possession of Kellem's own revolver and put it in her purse. The idea of robbing Angle's store was thought to have been a mere frame-up as a way of getting Kellem out on the road so Pinie could kill him. It was thought that Pinie had one or more accomplices in the scheme but that she was the one who did the actual shooting. Her husband, Peckham, was released, and no one else was charged in the crime.

The trial ended at noon on June 9, and the jury deliberated until after dark, when they returned a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder. It was reported that ten jurors initially favored acquittal but they eventually agreed to the guilty verdict on the condition that they would recommend that the defendant be released on probation and given a chance at reform. By the time they learned that a recommendation for parole had to go to the State Board of Pardons, the judge had already sentenced Mrs. Peckham to ten years in the penitentiary. Pinie became the first woman ever convicted of murder in Newton County and, according to the Times, "probably the first ever tried on that charge."
Pinie's lawyers filed a motion for a new trial, but it was overruled, and she was transported to Jefferson City on June 13. Her sentence was commuted by the governor on September 25, 1917, after she had served barely over three years of her sentence.

The Murder of Ella Scott

After thirty-two-year-old Eleanor “Ella” Scott was killed under mysterious circumstances at her home in La Cygne, Kansas, in mid-June of 1923, a few people whispered that her husband, John Ellison Scott, might have murdered her, but the large majority of folks throughout Linn County brushed aside the rumors. Even after Scott was charged with murder, most people stood by the thirty-one-year old Scott. Everything changed, though, when evidence was brought out that Scott had been secretly carrying on with his wife’s nineteen-year-old niece, Arlene.

In the fall of 1919, Arlene Scott, Ella’s teenage niece, had come to stay with the couple so that she could attend the local high school. After Arlene, who was no relation to Ellison, graduated from La Cygne High School in the spring of 1923, she moved to Pittsburg and enrolled for the summer term at the college there to obtain her temporary teaching certificate.

Meanwhile, on the night of June 19, Ellison and Ella Scott attended a tent show in La Cygne and drove home in the family car. They had been home just a few minutes when neighbors heard shots ring out, and a couple of minutes later, Scott appeared on the sidewalk outside the home exclaiming that his wife had been shot. By the time medical help arrived, though, Ella was beyond help and died from two gunshot wounds.

At first, nearly everyone believed Ellison’s story that he’d still been in the garage putting away the car when his wife was shot inside the house, presumably by a would-be burglar. The Scotts’ marriage had no outward signs of discord, and most people knew of no reason why Ellison might have wanted his wife dead.

But investigators were busy hunting up just such a motive.

People were still skeptical even after Scott was arrested on June 22, three days after the shooting, because county officials would not reveal the incriminating evidence against the accused. Taken to Mound City, the county seat, Scott pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and was released on $15,000 bond.

At his preliminary hearing on July 5, the accused was bound over for trial, but his attorneys immediately filed a writ of habeas corpus. The judge refused to release Scott but did grant a new hearing with an admonition to prosecutors that they present stronger evidence.

At Scott’s new preliminary exam, “much damaging evidence against the accused was brought out” that was not presented at the first hearing, according to the La Cygne Journal, but even then there probably would not have been enough evidence to make a strong case against Scott “had it not been shown that he made a trip to Pittsburg a couple of weeks ago,” met Arlene Scott, his deceased wife’s niece, and registered with her at a hotel as man and wife under assumed names. Arlene Scott denied that she had ever been intimate with her uncle-in-law, but the sheriff, following her to the stand, testified that Arlene had admitted just such an affair to him less than a week earlier. Scott was held for trial under a $20,000 bond, and he was unable to come up with the bail money, because the sensational testimony caused most of his supporters to desert him.

When Scott’s trial got underway at Mound City in mid-September, the judge ruled that no one under the age of eighteen should be admitted to the courtroom because of the spicy testimony regarding the intimacy between the defendant and Arlene Scott that was expected. The prosecutor sought to show that Scott’s motive for murdering his wife was twofold. He was financially embarrassed and hoped to collect on a $3,000 life insurance policy he’d taken out on Ella just before her death. Also, he did not get along with his wife, contrary to the impression the couple gave in public, and he wanted to be free of her so he could be with Arlene, with whom had had been carrying on an affair both before and after the murder.

Witnesses were called to establish the likelihood of an affair between the defendant and Arlene Scott, including the proprietor of the Pittsburg hotel where the couple had registered. In addition, a recent cellmate of Scott’s at the county jail testified that the defendant had confessed his intimate relations with Arlene to him.

Near the end of the trial, Ellison Scott took the stand in his own defense. He admitted going to the hotel in Pittsburg with his wife’s niece, but he claimed he simply wanted to talk with her in private because he had been under such suspicion since his wife’s death that Arlene was the only friend he had left. He said he wanted to get out of the public eye to protect Arlene’s reputation, and he gave the same reason for registering as husband and wife. Asked why he didn’t find some other private place to talk besides a hotel room, Scott said he had a bad headache and wanted to lie down. He admitted his actions were indiscreet, but he said he simply failed to consider the possible repercussions at the time.

On September 27, after deliberating over thirty hours, the jury in the Scott case failed to agree, and the judge declared a mistrial. At a new trial in April 1924, Scott was convicted of second-degree murder, but the state supreme court overturned the verdict, partly on the basis that, when a man was accused of killing his wife, proof that he was intimate with another woman was legitimate evidence but mere circumstances suggesting such a likelihood were not.

At his third trial, held on a change of venue at Garentt in Anderson County in March 1926, Scott was found not guilty. A case that had been hailed as the most sensational in Linn County history wound down with little publicity, and Ellison Scott quietly walked away a free man.

This story is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas.

Murder of Savilla Scott and Hanging of Frank McDaniel

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the hanging of Willis Washam in 1854 in Greene County, Missouri, which was the first legal hanging in the county. The last hanging in the county and, as far as I know, the only other legal one occurred over 80 years later in 1935, when Frank "Sonny" McDaniel was hanged for the murder of his paramour, Savilla "Billie" Scott.
The 28-year-old McDaniel had served a term in the Missouri State Penitentiary for burglary and larceny and another on in the Federal prison at Leavenworth for violating liquor laws. Around 1932, he came back to Springfield, where he was unemployed and spent most of his time loafing in pool halls. However, the 24-year-old Savilla, who was estranged from her husband, took up with the idler, moved in with him, and helped support him through her work as an "elevator girl" at a Springfield department store.
In March of 1933, the couple had been living together for about nine months, but they often argued over McDaniel's continuing attention to other women. According to testimony at McDaniel's subsequent trial, the two went to a dance together on the night of March 27, but they again quarreled, and McDaniel left early. Later, Savilla went home accompanied by her sister and brother-in-law, and the three found McDaniel there. Savilla announced her intention of leaving McDaniel, started taking down some curtains she owned, and otherwise began making arrangements to vacate the premises. "Let her go, I don't give a damn!" McDaniel reportedly declared when he saw Savilla making arrangements to leave.
But apparently he did care. The next evening he was driving his car around Springfield with 22-year-old Edward Warren, an acquaintance, as his passenger, when he spotted Savilla on the street, stopped, and offered to take her to her destination. Savilla got in, but instead of taking her where she wanted to go, McDaniel drove south of Springfield a few miles and stopped on a dirt road a short distance west of Campbell Street Road. He lit a cigarette and told Savilla he'd brought her out here to kill her. She asked why, and he said, "Because you did me dirty." After a pause, though, he dropped his head and said, "I guess I won't."

McDaniel then drove east of Campbell Street Road and stopped on another isolated, dirt road. Regaining his resolve, he ordered both Savilla and Warren out of the car. He told Warren to stay at the front of the car, and he took Savilla to the rear of the vehicle. Warren heard Savilla pleading for her life, and he went to the rear of the car to try to intervene. McDaniel ordered him back to the front, though, and Warren soon heard four or five gunshots. McDaniel came back to the front of the car and threatened to kill Warren, too, but he decided to let him live, warning that he definitely would kill him if he didn't keep his mouth shut.
Savilla's body was found early the next morning, March 29, by residents of the area. She had been shot four times in the head and five times in total. McDaniel was arrested later the same day and was called to testify at a coroner's jury the next day, March 30. He offered an alibi and said that Edward Warren could verify it, but, instead, Warren ended up being the main witness against the suspect.
McDaniel was tried without delay, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to be hanged on July 28. The verdict was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, however, and the prisoner was transferred to the state pen at Jeff City to await the high court's decision. The defense's main contention in its appeal was that McDaniel's testimony at the coroner's jury amounted to being compelled to incriminate himself.
The supreme court didn't see it that way, suggesting that McDaniel was just a material witness at that point and that his testimony had been freely given. In early March 1935, the justices affirmed the lower court's decision and reset the execution for April 12, 1935. McDaniel was brought back to Springfield from Jeff City on April 11. Early the next morning, he went to the scaffold on the courthouse grounds in Springfield still protesting his innocence. "God bless you all," he said, just moments before dropping into eternity.

Dispute over Route of I-44

I vaguely recall when Interstate 44 was constructed through Missouri, and I tend to think of it as an event that happened at a fairly specific time in the past. But actually it took almost a decade to complete from conception until the last leg of the highway was opened. Planning for the highway began about 1956, and the final section of the road was not completed until about 1964 or 1965. Throughout this period, newspapers contained stories updating the progress on construction of the highway. The progress hit a brief snag in 1959, when a protest arose over the proposed route of the road through Lawrence County.

Plans called for the new interstate highway to roughly follow the path of Route 66 from Springfield to Halltown and then to veer southwest across country to the Mount Vernon area, from where it would then roughly follow the route of U.S. 166 to the Oklahoma state line. In the early summer of 1959, a group of citizens from Lawrence County organized in opposition to the plan. The protesters, numbering about 200, wrote letters to US Senator Stuart Symington and US Congressman Charlie Brown demanding that Congress take action to stop construction of the highway until its route could be reconsidered. The group felt that, instead of building a completely new highway that ran between and parallel to Route 66 and US 166, the government should utilize one of the old highways as much as possible in construction of the interstate. The protesters felt that to build a completely new highway when both Route 66 and Route 166 were perfectly good roads was "a serious misuse of money."
Those who supported a brand new road pointed out that it was a little late to be organizing a protest, since plans for the highway had been known for at least two years or so. In addition, supporters of the already-announced plan said that, contrary to what the protesters said, constructing a new highway was actually cheaper than trying to bring either Route 66 or Route 166 up to interstate highway standards because of all the expenses involved in building access roads, overpasses, cloverleafs, and so forth.
Nothing came of the last-minute protest, and plans for the construction of I-44 across Lawrence County continued as scheduled. Only a small section of Highway 166 was used temporarily as one lane of the new interstate.
   

Sensationalist Reporting

I occasionally hear or read of someone complaining about sensationalism in the news media nowadays as if to suggest that this phenomenon is relatively recent. I agree that some news outlets and some journalists sensationalize the news just to try to attract more readers or listeners, but I strongly disagree with the implication that there was a time when such sensationalism didn't pervade the American media. If so, I don't know when it was. If anything, newspapers used to be much more sensationalist than they are today. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, almost nothing was off limits, including people's private lives. Suicide, for instance, was a subject that often made headlines. Nowadays, when a person commits suicide, newspaper accounts many times do not even give the cause of death, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not only was the cause of death almost always given, but the incident was also usually recounted in detail, insofar as the reporter could learn the details. It was not until around the 1920s or so, when the medical community began reprimanding journalists for reporting suicides, suggesting that such coverage only caused more people to kill themselves, that sensationalist reporting of suicides began to subside.
People's romantic lives were also considered fair game, although there was often a sexist element in deciding which stories to pursue. If a wife cheated on her husband, that was considered fodder for a good newspaper story, but if a man cheated on his wife, that activity was often allowed to continue with just a knowing wink.
When the Rev. J. B. Tharp, a 60-year-old Baptist minister from Weir City, Kansas, arrived in neighboring Fort Scott in early February 1902 saying that his wife had left him and run away with a younger man and that he was looking for the fleeing lovebirds, the Fort Scott Daily Tribune deemed the story not just newsworthy but worthy of a major headline and a full account of the wife's treachery. In addition to preaching the gospel, Tharp sold eggs and butter out of his home, and people would call at his house at all hours to make purchases. His wife was about twenty years younger than he was and looked even younger, as she was said to be beautiful. She often conducted the butter and egg transactions; so Tharp took little notice when one young man in particular started paying frequent visits to the home. Tharp was often away from home on the preaching circuit, and the relationship between his wife and her mysterious paramour blossomed in his absence. Tharp had a friend who tried to warn him that there was a growing intimacy between his wife and the young man, but the old preacher paid little attention until it was too late.

Tharp was holding revivals in Missouri when he received a letter from the friend that his wife and the young man had run off together, taking the couple's 9-year-old boy. Tharp hurried home and found that not only had his wife and her lover fled with his son but they had also taken about $200 in cash that Tharp had saved up and also converted a horse and buggy and other property belonging to Tharp into ready cash and taken it, too.
Tharp scoured Weir City at first, but no one had seen his wife or her lover during the past few days, and no once seemed to know the identify of the young stranger she had absconded with. Tharp then went to Lamar, Missouri, where his wife's folks lived, but they had seen no sign of their daughter, they said. Returning to Kansas, Tharp stopped in Fort Scott to institute a search in that town. When reporters got wind of his story, they rushed to interview him and to broadcast the story of his forlorn search.
Not finding his runaway wife in Fort Scott, Tharp left, saying he was headed to Kansas City to look for her there. The preacher did, indeed, overtake his wife in Kansas City a week or so later, but the paramour was not with her. Tharp retrieved some of the money his wife had taken from him, but he decided not to press charges against her. He refused to take her back, because he said he wanted to go his own way, and he allowed her to go her own way, too, and to keep their young son. "He returned to his home in Weir City," concluded the Daily Tribune, "and she will probably take up life with the man whom she loves better than she does her own husband."
And that's the kind of story that made sensational headlines in the "good old days."