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.