Eula Gipson Slain at a Joplin Nightclub

    On February 21, 1940, Joplin truck driver Harold Saunders had a date with Dorothy Hill. They met at Draeger’s Beauty Shop, where Eula Gipson, a “comely” twenty-six-year-old divorcee, had just finished giving Dorothy a perm. Eula knew both Dorothy and her date, and they invited her to come along. The threesome went bar-hopping, first to Wimpy’s tavern in East Joplin and then to Metzger’s bar on South Main Street. There they ran onto Delmar Petty, who was truck driver like Saunders. A thirty-two-year-old married man and the father of three children, Petty was also acquainted with Saunders’s female companions, and he joined the three in a booth. Petty appeared to already be drunk.
    About 10:30, the four took a taxi to the Rodenia Night Club on West Seventh, which had a reputation as a “disorderly place.” After the four resumed drinking, Petty and Ms. Gipson got up and started dancing. When they didn’t return, Saunders and Miss Hill went looking for them outside and finally saw Petty staggering back toward the club by himself about one o’clock in the morning. When they asked where Eula was, Petty said she was inside dancing.
    The three went back into the Rodenia, but Eula was nowhere to be seen. They went back outside and looked for her some more but still couldn’t find her. Saunders and Miss Hill finally decided Eula might have caught a ride back into town with somebody else; so, they picked up her coat and purse to take to her and started for home.
    As the couple left, they told the nightclub owner, “Kate” Melton, that Eula was missing, and Melton immediately undertook a search of his own. He, too, had no luck finding the missing woman. Meanwhile, Petty fell into a stupor in a booth. Melton finally aroused him at 5:00 a.m., and Petty went home. 

    When Eula didn’t come home or show up on Thursday morning at the beauty shop, her parents became concerned. After talking to Saunders and Miss Hill, they contacted the police.
    Two detectives went to Petty’s home to interrogate him. They found Petty still wearing the trousers he’d worn the night before, and they noticed blood on them. Petty admitted the shirt he’d worn the previous night also had blood on it, but he’d asked his wife to wash it.
    Petty was arrested and brought to the Joplin Police station for further questioning. He was then taken to the nightclub to help look for the missing woman.
    Meanwhile, Melton had already resumed looking for Eula, and about 2:30 p.m. he found her crumpled, nude body in some tall grass about 150 yards north of the nightclub. The grass had been beaten down all around the body, suggesting a struggle. “There was blood everywhere,” said the Joplin Globe in describing the woman’s beaten, mutilated body. It was “one of the most gruesome murders in Joplin police history.”
    The detectives arrived with Petty shortly after the grisly discovery, and the suspect covered his eyes in horror when he was shown the victim’s body. Melton told the officers he’d seen Petty arguing with Miss Gipson about midnight the previous evening and that he saw Petty “pull her outside.” Although investigators found only a single small knife on Petty when they searched him, Saunders said he knew the suspect had also been carrying a larger knife the night before, because he’d seen Petty take both knives out.
    Petty admitted he’d had a second knife but he didn’t know what happened to it. He said he’d been so drunk that he could remember hardly anything after he left Metzger’s bar. Asked how he got blood on his clothes and scratches on his hands, he said he figured he must have gotten into a barroom brawl, as he’d done a time or two before.
    Faced with the evidence against him, Petty finally broke down and admitted he must have killed Miss Gipson but that he couldn’t remember it. He was arraigned for first-degree murder and committed to the Jasper County Jail at Carthage.
    An inquest into Eula Gipson’s death took place on February 26, and despite both Saunders and Melton testifying against Petty, the jury returned a verdict that Eula came to her death by the hands of an unknown party. Testimony at Petty’s preliminary examination on February 28 was similar to that at the inquest, and Petty was held for trial without bond.
    Shortly after Eula Gipson’s murder, tests showed that her blood and the blood found on Petty’s clothes matched in type. At his trial in May, the prosecution, seeking the death penalty, paraded a whole passel of witnesses to the stand to testify against Petty, whereas the defense’s case rested mainly on one witness, a waitress at the Rodenia who claimed she’d seen some “rough-looking” men at the nightclub while Petty and his companions were there and that one of them appeared to have blood on his hand. She and a couple of other witnesses also said they didn’t see any blood on Petty after Eula disappeared. The defense introduced witnesses who testified to Petty’s good reputation in the community, but the prosecution refuted this by pointing out that Petty had been connected by rumor to the molestation or assault of two or three other young women. Near the trial’s end, Petty himself took the stand to repeat that he had no memory of exactly what had happened on the night in question but that he “wouldn’t do such a thing” as to murder Eula Gipson.
    In his instructions to the jury, the judge reduced the charge against Petty to second-degree murder. Despite this fact and the considerable evidence against Petty, the jury came back deadlocked. The split was rumored to be eight to four in favor of conviction. The judge declared a mistrial, and when Petty’s new trial finally came up in September 1941, the jury acquitted him after just twenty-five minutes of deliberation.

    This is a condensed version of a chapter in my most recent book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.

Jealousy and a Quarrel

About the first of June, 1938, thirty-year-old Chester Jackson of Joplin got into a quarrel with his paramour, Theola Isaac, and she ended up receiving a five-month suspended sentence for wounding him during the ensuing fight.
   It didn’t take Jackson long to find himself another woman, as he was soon living with Daisy Esmond, but it didn’t take him long either to have a falling out with Daisy. Two years divorced and the mother of two kids, Daisy left Jackson around the end of July and went to stay with her brother-in-law and her sister, Mamie. On the evening of August 2, Jackson called at Mamie’s house on West Tenth and asked Daisy to come back, but she refused.
   About 11:30 the next night, Jackson returned packing a pistol and called Daisy outside. Speaking to her in front of Mamie’s home, he again implored Daisy to come back to him, but she still refused. They quarreled, and when she turned to go inside, he pulled out his pistol and shot her in the back. An ambulance was summoned, but Daisy died on the way to the hospital.
   Meanwhile, Jackson turned himself in at the police station shortly after the shooting and was held on suspicion of murder. After questioning the suspect, a Joplin detective said that the shooting apparently resulted from “jealousy and a quarrel.” When Jackson was arraigned on August 5, he admitted the shooting but claimed he didn’t intend to kill Daisy and was only trying to scare her. Dismissing the suspect’s dubious claim, the justice ordered him held without bond for first-degree murder. The Joplin Globe’s first mention of Daisy’s murder came the next day when the paper reported only that Jackson, a black man, had been arraigned for killing “a Negress.”
   Appearing for trial in Jasper County Circuit Court in late September, Jackson first planned to plead guilty but changed his mind when he learned the prosecution meant to seek the death penalty. Daisy’s sister, Mamie Ransom, was the main witness for the prosecution, testifying that Jackson had previously threatened Daisy and that he shot her as she was retreating toward the house. Jackson took the stand in his own defense, admitting he was angry and jealous when he went to see Daisy on the fateful night but claiming he had no memory of shooting her. The last thing he recalled, he said, was Daisy threatening to kill him.
   The jury found Jackson guilty on September 27 and sentenced him to death. He displayed no emotion when the verdict was read but later remarked that it was a “gross miscarriage of justice.” Sentence was officially pronounced about a week later, and his execution set for November 28 in the gas chamber at Jefferson City. An appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court automatically stayed the execution. In the meantime, Jackson was transported to Jefferson City to await the high court’s decision. In early July 1939, the supreme court reversed the verdict of the lower court on the grounds that the trial judge should have granted the defense’s request for a continuance and should have included in his instructions to the jury an option of second-degree murder. The case was remanded to Jasper County for a new trial, and Jackson was brought back to Carthage.
   In September, he was again convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. The case was again appealed, but in July 1940 the high court upheld the verdict. The execution was reset for September 20, 1940. Jackson didn’t say a word as he was led into the gas chamber at Jeff City and strapped into the death chair at shortly after midnight on that date. The gas was released at 12:24 a.m., and Jackson died at 12:28.
   This blog entry is a condensed version of a chapter in my most recent book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.

Man Kills His Wife on Their Honeymoon

    Nineteen-year-old Charles Garner married 17-year-old Virginia "Jean" Collingham on June 12, 1939, at York, Nebraska. Shortly afterward, the young couple came to Missouri to spend part of their honeymoon with Garner's grandmother, who lived west of Liberal in Barton County, where Charles had been reared. On July 2, he and Jean went to a water-filled strip mine near the Kansas state line, where the young woman waded into the water. According to her husband's story at the time, she slipped on a rock when she reached deep water and fell in over her head. Neither Jean nor Charles were able to swim, and all the young man could do was watch futilely and scream for help. 
    When help finally arrived, Jean had already drowned, and her body was retrieved from the water-filled pit. Authorities believed the young man's story, and Jean's death was ruled accidental. The body was shipped back to York for burial. Jean's death was the second tragedy to befall the Collingham family within a month. In early June, Jean's brother, Alvin, had shot and killed himself because he was reportedly despondent over poor health.  
    Garner also returned to Nebraska, and on September 17, he walked into a jail in Gering on the pretext of wanting to sleep in the jail. As he made the request, he handed the night marshal a note confessing to killing his wife two and half months earlier. In the note, Garner related that he and Jean had gone to the mining pit to wade in the water. After walking out onto a ledge near the deep water, Jean mentioned another young man whom she had dated before she and Garner got married. Garner told her not to mention the other suitor's name again because he despised him, but Jean kept right on talking about Garner's romantic rival. Growing irate, Garner pushed his new wife into the water and held her head under. She tried to fight her way to the surface, but Garner kept pushing her under until she went down a final time. Then he went to the top of a nearby hill, yelled for help, and told his phony story of an accidental drowning.
    Garner was lodged in jail and, later in September, brought back to Missouri to stand trial for murder. He confessed again after he reached the Barton County Jail at Lamar, but at his arraignment on October 16, he pleaded not guilty. Repudiating his previous confessions, he said he'd only confessed "on a bet" because he was out of work and hungry and that he'd repeated the confession in Missouri because he liked the publicity. 
    At his trial in mid-November, Garner reverted to his original defense that his wife had drowned accidentally and he'd been unable to rescue her because he couldn't swim. However, one of the prosecution witnesses testified that he knew the defendant to be a good swimmer. One of the first people to answer Garner's calls for help testified that he shouted "It's no use, she's gone!" as rescuers started into the pit. Other witnesses said Garner kneeled down after his wife's body was brought out of the water, and, showing no emotion, turned a ring on her finger. Two or three defense witnesses testified that Garner showed great affection for his wife, and the defendant took the stand himself to repudiate his confession and repeat the story of an accidental drowning. Late in the afternoon of November 21, the jury came back after two or three hours of deliberation with a verdict convicting Garner of first degree murder. A defense motion for a new trial was denied, and Garner was transferred to the state prison at Jefferson City the next day.
    On or about December 20, Garner gave a written statement to the prison warden confessing to three other murders. He said he'd killed Alvin Collingham during an argument over Collingham's objections to Jean's relationship with Garner. A few days later, he killed another young man who said there was something fishy about Alvin's supposed suicide and suggested that Garner might know something about it. Two years earlier, Garner said he'd also shoved a boy from a freight train near Kansas City and that the lad had fallen under the wheels of the train and been crushed to death. Garner now claimed he'd killed his wife because she was the only person who knew about the three previous murders. 
    Authorities, however, were skeptical of Garner's latest confession, and subsequent investigation did little to change their mind. In January 1940, Garner repudiated his latest confession, saying he'd only admitted the three prior killings in hopes of getting the death penalty. He said he'd rather die than spend the rest of his life in prison. Authorities considered the case officially closed. 

  

The Terrible McWaters

    Prior to 1860, William McWaters moved with his parents from St. Charles County to Cedar County, Missouri, where he and his brothers took up bushwhacking early in the Civil War. In April 1862, William was arrested for stealing and “jayhawking” in neighboring Vernon County and placed in the guardhouse at Butler. One witness testified he’d heard McWaters brag about killing a “damned abolitionist,” but the accused somehow managed to get free, because later that year he joined the regular Confederate Army. 

    After two and a half months, McWaters deserted and returned to his home territory. He resumed bushwhacking and started courting Jennie Mayfield of Vernon County, one of the Mayfield sisters of “bushwhacker belle” fame. Legend holds that McWaters accompanied William Quantrill during his infamous 1863 sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, and that he later rode with Bloody Bill Anderson, but these claims cannot be verified.
    After the war, McWaters continued his outlawry. He was implicated in the March 1867 murder of Vernon County sheriff Joseph Bailey, and later that year, he got into a wild gunfight with a posse that was trying to arrest him at Humansville. Described at the time as “a daring desperado” and “an expert with his revolvers,” McWaters escaped unscathed.
    McWaters fled to Nebraska, where he married Susie Davis at Otoe in December 1868. McWaters was still living at Otoe in mid-January 1873 when he and two other men assaulted Assistant Postmaster Wolf in the neighboring village of Wyoming. When an officer tried to arrest McWaters a few days later, gunplay erupted. McWaters wounded the officer and killed Wolf, who was assisting in the arrest. A report of the incident said McWaters had been a terror in Otoe County since he'd lived there.
   McWaters escaped but was arrested in Kansas City in early May and taken back to Nebraska. At his September murder trial, he was found not guilty, because it was shown that Wolf shot and slightly wounded McWaters before McWaters killed Wolf.
    McWaters went back home to his wife, but he soon got in trouble again. In February 1874, he and John Crook went into a saloon in Nebraska City, the Otoe County seat, in a drunken state and started raising hell. McWaters pulled out his revolver and opened fire, mortally wounding the bartender, Rudolph Wirth. Described as “a noted character and dangerous man,” McWaters and his sidekick were tracked to Iowa and brought back to Nebraska City, where they barely escaped lynching at the hands of a mob.
    On April 10, 1874, the desperate pair escaped the Nebraska City jail and fled south. In Kansas, the two split up. McWaters was recognized at Hays City and placed in the local jail, but he quickly escaped from that place, too. He then ranged back into southern Nebraska, barely avoiding recapture before heading west.
    About October 1, McWaters killed George Weed "without...provocation” in Sparta, Oregon. He hightailed it to California, where he was arrested in late October for the Weed murder. Before he could be returned to Oregon, the Otoe County sheriff arrived with requisition papers, and McWaters was escorted back to Nebraska City to stand trial for killing Wirth.
    He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-one years in the state penitentiary. At the time of his conviction, a Nebraska City correspondent wrote a story detailing the many exploits of the “terrible McWaters,” which subsequently appeared in newspapers across the country. Although much of the report was accurate, it also contained a number of fabrications and half-truths that became part of the McWaters legend.
    What the writer didn’t know was that McWaters’s exploits were hardly over. On January 11, 1875, just three weeks after arriving at the state prison in Lincoln, McWaters led a mutiny that nearly resulted in a large-scale prison break. After an all-night standoff, he and the other prisoners finally agreed to surrender.
    Four and a half months later, in late May 1875, McWaters was killed by a guard when he attempted to instigate another prison revolt. Thus ended the infamous career of the terrible McWaters, “noted murderer, desperado and horse thief,” as a Lincoln newspaper called him at the time of his death.
    This is a condensed and revised version of an article I wrote for the October 2020 issue of Wild West Magazine.

Harry Truman Returns to Lamar Again

Last time, I wrote about Harry S Truman returning to Lamar, the town of his birth, on the occasion of his nomination for vice president under FDR in 1944. In 1959, Truman, who was now a 74-year-old ex-president, came back to Lamar again for the dedication of his birthplace as a Missouri state historic site.

Truman arrived in Lamar at mid-morning on April 19, 1959, for the festivities. The town was decked out in colorful bunting and signs welcoming the former president, and over 7,000 people turned out for the occasion. After driving around the town visiting old landmarks, Truman had lunch with a Lamar attorney. Later, he dropped in on a reception held in his honor at Memorial Hall by his old World World I outfit, Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery. Truman who had been captain of the battery, joked that he'd never had more than 250 men in the outfit but that, after he became president, the ranks had ballooned to 35,000 men who claimed service in the unit. 

From Memorial Hall, Truman and his old battery mates joined a parade to the little house where he was born about four blocks east of the public square in Lamar. The structure was built in 1867, and Truman's parents purchased it in 1882 for $915. Harry was born there in 1884, and his parents sold the house for $1600 and moved away in 1885. Truman admitted he had no recollection of the house, since he was just eleven months old when the family left Lamar. The home had been in the Earp family for years, but the United Auto Workers purchased it in 1957 with an eye toward developing it as a historic site. Now the UAW was gifting it to Missouri to operate as an official state historic site.

After an invocation and other preliminaries, Leonard Woodcock, vice-president of the UAW, officially presented the house to Missouri, with Governor James T. Blair accepting on behalf of the state. Seventeen-year-old Donald Braker, Lamar High School student body president, then presented Truman with a plaque on behalf of the city of Lamar honoring the former US president, which was to be permanently mounted in the room where he was born. Stuart Symington, US senator from Missouri, took the podium to give the official dedicatory address in which he praised Truman profusely. Harry responded briefly to both Braker's and Symington's speeches. Among his remarks, Truman said he greatly appreciated the honor that was being bestowed upon him. He said he felt as if he'd been buried and dug up while he was still alive. "They usually don't do this to former Presidents until they've been dead 50 years." He also said, after being lauded as a statesman, that he didn't consider himself a statesman because a statesman was nothing but a "dead politician." He said he was a politician and expected to stay one the rest of his life. The crowd roared its approval and shouted for him to "pour it on, Harry."

After the dedication ceremony was over, Truman and other dignitaries retired to the Traveler's Hotel for a dinner to close out the events of the day.

  

Harry Truman Returns to Lamar

As most readers familiar with Missouri history probably know, President Harry S Truman was born in Lamar. He was born on May 8, 1884, in a one and a half story frame house located at what is now 1009 Truman Street in Lamar. The family moved away, however, when Truman was just eleven months old, before he was old enough to have any recollection of the place.

Except for a brief stopover in 1924 when his car broke down near Lamar while on a trip from Kansas City to Joplin, Truman didn't come back until sixty years later, on the eve of his official nomination as FDR's vice presidential running mate. Senator Truman reached Joplin about 1:45 p.m. on August 30, 1944, by motorcade from Kansas City. He was greeted with cheers when he arrived at the Connor Hotel, where the Joplin Democratic Women's Club held an informal reception for him during which he met hundreds of well-wishers.

Later that afternoon, he was driven to the Camp Crowder army post near Neosho, where he was the guest of post commander Major General Walter E. Prosser. That evening, he returned to Joplin, where he spent the night at the Connor. The next morning he and the Democratic National Committee hosted a breakfast at the hotel for a congressional delegation of at least sixteen US senators and representatives. Later he held a press conference at 11:00 a.m., but a planned luncheon was canceled so as not to further delay his expected appearance in Lamar. During his stay in Joplin, Truman declared that he expected the Roosevelt ticket to carry Missouri by 100,000 votes in November. (The Democrats actually ended up winning the state by less than half that margin.)

Meanwhile, the town of Lamar had been busy all day on the 30th preparing for Truman's visit. When he finally arrived about four o'clock in the afternoon of the 31st, he was met at the edge of town by a reception committee of several hundred people. Some of them had been simmering about the Democratic Committee allowing Joplin to eclipse Lamar's big day, but at the sight of their favorite son, they put aside their pique and welcomed Truman as a conquering hero. His car halted frequently to let Truman, who was sitting in the backseat of the open automobile, greet well-wishers as he was escorted downtown. At the square, Truman, "smiling like a schoolboy," waved to spectators as his automobile circled the courthouse in a parade led by high-stepping school bands from Lamar and surrounding larger towns like Joplin, Carthage, and Springfield. 

Truman was then taken to the Traveler's Hotel, where he pressed through a crowd and made his way to the dining room for an informal reception. About a thousand people came through the reception line to shake his hand. 

After the reception, Truman was driven to the home of his birth at 1009 Kentucky Street. He and other visitors were shown around by the 86-year-old owner of the house, W. S. Earp, a collateral descendant of the Wyatt Earp family. 

That evening, Truman was taken back to the square for his speech officially accepting the vice-presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Among the spectators was his 92-year-old mother, Martha, who had arrived in Lamar about sunset.

During his time in Lamar, Truman was asked about the middle initial "S" in his name. He said it stood for his two grandfathers, both of whose names began with "S." "Therefore," he explained, "to please everybody, they just gave me the initial." 

After 1944, Truman came back to Lamar one more time, in 1959, for the dedication of his birthplace as a Missouri state historic site, but that's a subject for another post, perhaps next time. 

Bibliographical note: I took most of the information for this article from Joplin and Springfield newspapers, but for a more thorough examination of Truman's ties to Lamar, I recommend Joplin author Randy Turner's The Buck Starts Here.

A "Murderous Assault" in Springfield: Tom Brown's Killing of William Weir

Shortly after midnight on the morning of October 27, 1903, Tom Brown entered the Queen City Restaurant just off the public square on College Street, took a seat in the black section of the restaurant and ordered a plate of oysters. Sometime later, near one o'clock, William Weir, the establishment's "one-legged dishwasher," who was seated on a stool not far away, had a coughing spell. When he stopped coughing, Brown, who was reportedly drunk, asked Weir what the hell was the matter with him, and Weir told him to mind his own business. As the argument escalated, Weir told Brown to stop his cussing, called him a nigger, and told him to get out of the restaurant. Instead of obeying Weir's order, Brown made a threatening move toward the dishwasher. Weir picked up one of his crutches and raised it between him and Brown to ward off the threatened attack. When Brown got close enough, Weir poked him with the crutch. Brown immediately drew his pistol, shot Weir in the stomach, and fled the scene. 

After the police were notified of the shooting, they located Brown in a room along Kirby's Arcade, a walkway that led from the southwest corner of the square to South Alley (now McDaniel Street), but Brown made his escape out a back door before they could apprehend him. He was taken into custody on the afternoon of the 27th after a woman notified two black Springfield policemen of his whereabouts in a house near the corner of Phelps and Washington. 

Since Weir was not expected to live, the Springfield Leader called the shooting a "murderous assault," and the newspaper labeled the forty-two-year-old Brown "a vicious and dangerous negro." Often called "Cherokee Bill" because he "had some Indian blood in his veins," Brown belonged to "the worst type of bad negroes" and had seemingly "inherited the depraved instincts of both races." He allegedly was wanted for a murder committed in Indian Teritory. Weir, on the other hand, was an inoffensive and helpless old white man whose only vice was his ravenous thirst for beer. Weir lived at the restaurant and took his meals there as a perk of his job. He spent almost his entire $3 a week in wages on beer, said the Leader.

After the fifty-seven-year-old Weir died on the afternoon of the 28th, Brown was charged with murder, and there was much talk of mob action on the streets of Springfield. In response, authorities promptly whisked Brown away from Springfield to a jail in a neighboring county for safekeeping. He was brought back to Greene County for arraignment in late November. Brown pleaded not guilty. 

After a continuance, Brown went to trial in Springfield in early April 1904. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang on May 20. A defense appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court automatically stayed the execution. In the spring of 1905, the high court overruled the lower court's verdict and remanded the case to Greene County for retrial. The justices ruled that testimony alleging that Brown had pulled his pistol on another man earlier on the same night that Weir was shot should not have been allowed, since it had no direct relation to the Weir case. They also said that at least one or two of the jurors probably should have been excluded because they were known to be prejudiced against the defendant. 

When Brown's case came up for retrial in July 1905, the prosecution waived the first-degree murder charge in exchange for the defendant's guilty plea to second-degree murder. Brown was sentenced to 99 years in the state prison. He was transferred to the Jefferson City facility in October of 1905, and he was discharged in late July 1916 under commutation by the governor.  

John Smoote Kills His Wife's Father

I've heard it said many times that murders involving friends or family members are much more common than murders in which the victim and perpetrator are strangers. My research tends to bear out this statistic. I recently wrote on this blog about a man who murdered his brother-in-law in Webster County in 1893. A similar incident happened just a few years later in nearby Springfield when a man killed his father-in-law in what the Springfield-Leader Democrat called  "an explosion of rage."

On May 29, 1897, twenty-five-year-old John Smoote married Cynthia Keeling in Greene County when she was only seventeen. Cynthia's father, William Keeling, objected to the marriage, as he had always disliked Smoote, and the relationship between the two men continued to be anything but cordial after the marriage. The antipathy between the two finally came to head a little over a year later on June 27, 1898.

Cynthia and her husband lived in north Springfield near the junction of the Zoo Park and the Doling Park streetcar lines, and her father lived nearby. All three went to a barn together in the late afternoon of the 27th to milk a cow. As they started back to their respective homes, Keeling asked his daughter why she hadn't been to visit him recently. When she explained that she had been very busy, Keeling gave an angry reply, which caused her husband to confront the older man. The two argued until finally Keeling struck Smoote with the milk bucket he was carrying, spilling milk on both men. Smoote immediately drew a pocket knife and began stabbing Keeling, who soon fell to the ground. The younger man straddled Keeling and continued stabbing him after he was down, until he had delivered a total of eleven wounds.

A neighbor, Daniel Blount, heard the commotion and hurried to the scene on horseback in time to hear Cynthia yell to her husband, "Don't cut him anymore!" Blount also heard Smoote threaten to "cut your damned heart out," although the testimony conflicts on whether these words were directed at his father-in-law or at his wife when she tried to intervene. In either case, Smoote also threatened Blount in the same manner when Cynthia asked him to get off his horse and help out. In the face of Smoote's threat, Blount, instead of dismounting, turned around and left.

When Smoote's anger finally subsided, he tried to pick his father-in-law up and said, "Let's go home," but Keeling couldn't stand and fell back to the ground dead or dying. Later that evening, Smoote went to the sheriff's office, where he turned himself in and handed over the murder weapon. Two deputies, followed by the sheriff, went out to the scene of the crime and brought Keeling's body back to an undertaking establishment, where the coroner conducted an inquest the next morning. The jury concluded that Keeling came to his death by knife wounds inflicted by John Smoote.

At Smoote's preliminary examination in early July, Blount testified that he arrived on the scene in time to see Smoote strike Keeling with the last knife blow and that, when Smoote withdrew the knife, blood spurted as high as the assailant's head. Blount said he did not comply with Mrs. Smoote's request to get down and help because he was scared. Instead, he left to try to get additional help, but by the time he returned Keeling was already dead. Another neighbor, Miss Cordie Carter, also said she arrived on the scene while Smoote was still straddling his victim with the knife in an upraised fist as though getting ready to strike Keeling again. Miss Carter called for Smoote to get up and not stab Keeling again. He obeyed but, as he did so, he told her that he didn't think it was any of her business. 

Smoote was held pending the action of a grand jury. On August 1, he was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Blount and Miss Carter were again two of the primary prosecution witnesses at Smoote's trial in early September. They repeated essentially what they'd said at the preliminary hearing. Cynthia Smoote was the main witness for the defense. She said her husband and her father had never gotten along and had often argued. On the day of the murder, her father had called her husband "a damned liar," struck him with the milk pail, and seized him by the collar prior to her husband pulling out his knife. Other defense witnesses confirmed that Keeling was hostile toward Smoote and at least one or two said they thought Keeling was probably drunk on the day of the confrontation between him and his son-in-law. After a two-day trial, the jury came back with a verdict of second-degree murder and a sentence of three and a half years in the state prison. The jury had some difficulty in agreeing, because several jurors wanted a much longer sentence, but they finally relented in order to get any kind of conviction. 

Smoote was transferred to the penitentiary in Jefferson City on September 19, 1998. He was discharged in late April of 1901 on the state's three-fourths law. He returned to Springfield, but Cynthia apparently divorced him either during his incarceration or sometime not very long after his release, because in 1910 he was living with a new wife, the couple's newborn baby, and the new wife's kids by a previous marriage. 

Ash Grove Farmer Kills a Jailhouse Lawyer

If the folks around Ash Grove, Missouri, had been thoroughly acquainted with attorney Jefferson Brock's background when he set up residence and hung out his shingle there in 1890, they probably would not have been surprised when he ended up the victim of deadly gunplay on the streets of their small town four years later. To say Brock had a shady past is almost an understatement.

Born in Illinois about 1851, he moved with his family to Linn County, Kansas, prior to 1870. In October 1874, a man named Jefferson Brock stole a wagon and a team of horses from a farmer in Scott County, Iowa, and drove them into Illinois, not far from the area where Brock grew up. Although it's not certain this was the same Jefferson Brock, the circumstances suggest that he might well have been. Brock was apprehended in Illinois a couple of months later and taken back to Iowa to face charges, but the charges were soon dropped for lack of sufficient evidence.

Back in Kansas, Jefferson Brock got into a fight at a dance in Linn County in October 1876, and the other man was charged with assault. Around the beginning of 1878, Brock was charged in Linn County with highway robbery after sticking a man up at gunpoint, and he was lodged in jail at Mound City. In March of the same year, he escaped but was soon recaptured and taken back to the county jail. In April, soon after he was brought back, he and his girlfriend were united in marriage at the jailhouse. 

Brock was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in the state prison at Lansing. Admitted on May 1, 1878, he soon took up the study of law as he whiled away the hours during his incarceration. By the mid-1880s, some of his friends were circulating a petition to be given to the governor urging a pardon for Brock. The pardon finally came through in August of 1889. Brock came back to the Mound City area, promptly took the bar exam, and passed it. One of his first acts as an attorney was to sue the estate of his deceased father, seeking a bigger piece of the inheritance than he'd previously been given.

In the spring of 1890, Brock moved to Forsyth in Taney County, Missouri. He stayed there just a short while before relocating to Ash Grove. In January 1891, he was arrested on a charge of slander after a complaint from another Ash Grove resident, but apparently nothing came of the matter. Brock's first wife must have divorced him after he went to prison because, in January 1892, he married an Ash Grove girl, Miss Allie Swinney. In March of 1894, Brock was charged with perjury during a legal case, but he was acquitted. 

Sometime around late 1895, a man named James Gilmore borrowed some money from Brock, who was operating not just as a lawyer but also a small-time financier. Gilmore gave Brock some farm animals as collateral, but after Gilmore paid off the loan, Brock wouldn't give back the animals, claiming Gilmore also owed him for lawyer's fees. Gilmore hired a man to go the Brock's home, take back the animals, and run them off. 

The dispute between the two men escalated from there, with each accusing the other of making threats. Finally on February 22, 1896, Gilmore came into Ash Grove, where he and Brock got into another heated argument on the streets. Gilmore pulled out a gun and shot and killed Brock.

Gilmore was tried for murder in July of 1896, but the trial ended in a hung jury. The retrial took place in December of the same year. The prosecution argued that Gilmore was the aggressor in the dispute between the two men and that he drew his gun and shot Brock almost in cold blood. The defense maintained just the opposite--that Brock was the aggressor and that Gilmore only drew his gun because Brock was reaching for a weapon. This time, Gilmore was acquitted.

M. C. Hayes Kills His Cousin

On Saturday, January 4, 1890, M. C. "Mick" Hayes, accompanied by his cousin John Hayes, became involved in an argument with two black men, including George Robins, near the corner of Walnut and Campbell streets in Springfield. Robins and his companion had apparently done nothing to provoke M. C. Hayes, but Mick was in an intoxicated, belligerent state. He started to pull out a revolver, but his cousin intervened to try to prevent gunplay. As the two scuffled over possession of the weapon, it discharged and struck John under the left shoulder. He fell to the sidewalk, gravely wounded. Mick Hayes then turned the gun on the black men and fired three shots, one of which struck Robins, seriously wounding him. John Hayes was taken to a nearby drugstore, where physicians tried to relieve his suffering but held out little hope for his recovery. Robins was treated at a physician's office and then taken to his sister's house. 

Meanwhile, Mick Hayes fled the scene but was soon afterward apprehended at his home. Taken before a justice of the peace, he was committed to jail in default of $5,000 bond but later was released on a $10,000 bond. A preliminary hearing was delayed until January 16 in order to wait and see what the result of the men's wounds might be. John Hayes, a well-respected Springfield letter carrier, died on January 15. Shortly afterward, his cousin was indicted for murder and also for felonious assault for shooting Robins, who was expected to recover.

After two or three continuances in the Greene County Circuit Court, Mick Hayes received a change of venue to Christian County. In September 1892, in an apparent plea bargain deal, the murder case against him was dropped and he pleaded guilty to the felonious assault charge. He was fined $300 and costs. Not much penalty for killing a man, his own cousin no less, and seriously wounding another.  

Ephraim Bennett Murders His Brother In Law

On the afternoon of May 30, 1893, 50-year-old Ephraim Bennett went to home of John Buchanan about ten miles southwest of Marshfield, Missouri, in West Dallas Township, to talk business with Buchanan, who was his brother-in-law. Sometime earlier, Buchanan's wife (i.e. Bennett's sister) had begun "to show symptoms of insanity and finally became a raving lunatic," and she started accusing her husband of mistreating her. It was decided Mrs. Buchanan needed to be taken to Nevada to the "insane asylum," as the state hospital was called at the time. However, her husband was poor and lacked the funds to have her committed and transported to Nevada. Bennett agreed to lend him the money, despite the fact that he believed his sister's accusations and blamed Buchanan for driving her crazy.

Presumably, the "business" Bennett wanted to talk over with Buchanan involved the debt that the latter owed him. At any rate, the two men talked matters over, supposedly in a friendly manner, and Bennett departed about two o'clock in the afternoon. Buchanan and his 10-year-old son then left the house and started working in a field. They had not been at work long before Bennett showed back up carrying a revolver and accused Buchanan of abusing his sister. Buchanan made a motion as if to reach for a weapon, and Bennett promptly opened fire, shooting the other man five times in quick succession.

After the shooting, Bennett calmly walked away, asking his little nephew to come with him. Bennett went to a neighbor's house, where he readily admitted the shooting. He claimed Buchanan had threatened to kill him and that he'd gone to the field to ask him about it. When Buchanan "tried to put his hand in his pocket," Bennett said, "I was too quick for him and fixed him." Bennett then went to a justice of the peace and turned himself in.

He was turned over to Sheriff James Goss of Webster County and lodged in jail at Marshfield. A coroner's inquest held soon after the shooting concluded that Buchanan came to his death by means of a pistol shot in the hands of Ephraim Bennett. At Bennett's preliminary examination on Monday, June 5, evidence was presented that Bennett had threatened Buchanan on several occasions, while the defendant presented his self-defense version of events. He was bound over without bond to await the action of a grand jury. 

After the hearing, several clusters of men gathered in different spots on the public square in Marshfield, and the sheriff, suspecting that they were plotting vigilante action, spirited Bennett out of jail and took him on foot to some woods on the outskirts of town, where a deputy met them with a hack and took the prisoner farther out of town. Late that night a mob of about 70 men surrounded the jail in Marshfield. The leaders went inside and demanded that the jailer turn over the keys and lead them to Bennett's cell. The jailer told them Bennett was not there, but they thoroughly searched the place, ransacking it in the process, before they became convinced the jailer was telling the truth. They then dispersed quietly, and few people living in the vicinity of the jail even knew anything out of the ordinary had taken place.

The next morning, June 6, Sheriff Goss brought the prisoner back to the jail in Marshfield, but that afternoon he and other law enforcement officials decided Bennett should be removed to a more secure location for safekeeping. A deputy took the prisoner to the train depot, secreted him in the baggage car, and escorted him to Springfield, where he was placed in the Greene County Jail. 

Bennett was taken back to Marshfield in March 1894, but instead of going on trial as scheduled, he was granted a change of venue to Dallas County. At his trial in Buffalo in October of the same year, the defendant was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to ten years in the state prison. The verdict was met with general surprise and disapprobation, because most observers had expected a first-degree murder conviction. The jury was said to have initially split 9-3 in favor of first-degree but that three members held out for second-degree and the others compromised in order to get any sort of conviction. 

The prisoner was received at the penitentiary in Jefferson City on October 20. He was discharged in April 1902 under the 3/4 law, which allowed for release, on the condition of good behavior, after a convict had served three-quarters of his sentence.  

Murder of a Summersville Constable

 On Wednesday, July 18, 1888, Will Renfro appeared before a justice of the peace in Summersville, Missouri, on a minor charge. He and his brother, Peter, became angry at one of the witnesses, and late that afternoon, after the trial, they accosted the witness, John Hughes, on the streets of Summersville. When Will hit Hughes with his fist, Constable Charley Dorris intervened and told Will Renfro he was under arrest. Discovering that Peter Renfro had his pistol drawn, Dorris turned toward him and said, "Hold on!" Peter Renfro retreated, and the lawman followed. When they were away from the crowd, Renfro suddenly turned and fired, striking Dorris in the forehead. Dorris lapsed immediately into unconsciousness and died an hour later. According to a report in the Houston Herald a few days later, both Renfro brothers were drunk at the time of the incident. Peter Renfro made his escape after the shooting, but he turned himself in the following Monday, July 23, and was lodged in the Texas County Jail at Houston.

Charged with first-degree murder, he was granted a change of venue to Greene County. While still awaiting trial, he escaped from the Springfield jail in early January 1890. Around the first of August, when Renfro had still not been recaptured, the Missouri governor offered a $200 reward for his apprehension. He was captured a few days later in a cave on Leatherwood Creek in Shannon County. 

Renfro was taken back to Greene County, where his trial got underway on August 24, just a couple of weeks after his recapture. At his trial Renfro claimed the killing of Constable Dorris was an accident--that he'd actually been aiming at someone else who was among the crowd on the street in Summersville at the time of the shooting. Understandably, the argument did little to sway the jury, and Renfro was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang on October 9. An appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court automatically stayed the execution.

The high court upheld the lower court's verdict in November 1892. His execution was reset for late January 1893, but he again escaped from the Greene County Jail on January 21, with eleven other prisoners, just eight days before he was scheduled to die.   

This time he stayed on the run for over five years. He was finally recaptured on February 14, 1898, on the Current River not far from the Missouri-Arkansas border. He said he'd been roaming over southern Missouri and northern Arkansas for the whole five years. He was brought back to Springfield, and his execution date was reset for May 21. However, a number of citizens, especially some of the women of Springfield, circulated a petition asking for leniency, and, just a week and a half before he was supposed to hang, the governor commuted his sentence to 25 years imprisonment without parole. He was taken to the state prison in Jeff City on May 14, but he ended up spending nowhere near 25 years behind bars. A different governor commuted his sentence to time served as of May 13, 1905, and he was discharged on that date after serving only seven years at the Big House.   

 

The Murder of Brooks Van Noose

On Sunday, March 4, 1934, W. R. Murray went to the home of wealthy businessman Brooks Van Hoose and became concerned when he couldn’t rouse him. The next day, he went to the real estate agency Van Noose and George Biemdick operated together in Carthage. Informed that Van Hoose hadn’t showed up for work yet, Murray told Van Hoose’s partner what had transpired the day before. Biemdick and others drove out to the Van Hoose place to investigate. They found Van Hoose dead on the floor just inside the doorway of his massive stone house. He’d been shot multiple times.

The Biemdick party immediately called authorities, and Sheriff Oll Rogers arrived to investigate. A revolver Van Hoose owned was found on the floor beside his body, and Rogers thought the victim had been killed while resisting would-be robbers. The sheriff believed there was more than one assailant, and he placed the time of death as about 9:30 Saturday night, March 3, because a neighbor woman reported hearing gunshots about that time and Van Hoose had not yet dressed for bed when he was killed.

On Monday evening, eight or ten hours after Van Hoose’s body was discovered, ex-convict Charles Napper turned himself in at the county jail after learning he was wanted as a suspect in the murder. He confessed he was with four other men near the Van Hoose home on Saturday night, but he denied participating in the crime. He named the other four men as former Carthage restaurant operator L. B. Harmon, L. B.’s brother Glenn Harmon, and two acquaintances of Glenn Harmon whom he did not know. Napper said he and L. B. Harmon were in one car, while Glenn Harmon, who had a long crime record and was currently wanted for several robberies, was in a second car with his two sidekicks. They met and parked near Van Hoose’s house, and L. B. Harmon walked off with the other three men leaving Napper alone in L. B.’s car. Napper said he knew the gang was up to something but he was not in on the scheme. After a few minutes, the four men hurried back, and all five took off in the same cars they’d arrived in. Napper said he never saw Glenn Harmon or his two pals after that.

Arrested about the same time as Napper, L. B. Harmon gave a story similar to Napper’s except he said that he and Napper, after stopping at the rendezvous spot near Van Hoose’s home, left for Joplin without waiting for Glenn Harmon and his sidekicks to show up. He claimed to know nothing about the murder of Van Hoose. After talking to Napper and L. B. Harmon, officers concluded that a sixth man might have been in on planning the robbery of Van Hoose.

On March 8, first-degree murder charges were filed against Napper, L. B. Harmon, Glenn Harmon, and three unidentified associates of Glenn Harmon.

In mid-March, Victor Powell and Byron Wolff were identified as accomplices of Glenn Harmon in the murder of Van Hoose. Apprehended in Denver, Powell was brought back to Jasper County. During the return trip the prisoner admitted he’d been in the Carthage area with Glenn Harmon at the time of Van Hoose’s murder but, like Napper, he denied involvement in the actual crime. He put the full blame on Wolff and Glenn Harmon.

Wolff was captured in Los Angeles on the evening of March 26 when he was overpowered by a tailor whom he attempted to hold up. The next night, Glenn Harmon was killed in a gunfight with a Los Angeles detective after Wolff led officers to the hideout where the fugitive was holed up. A couple of days later, William Moors was arrested as the mysterious sixth accomplice. He was a taxicab driver who had brought Powell, Wolff, and Glenn Harmon from Kansas City to Carthage on the day of Van Hoose’s murder.

In mid-April, Wolff was brought back to Jasper County, and he and the other four suspects were jointly arraigned at Carthage on charges of first-degree murder.

In early June, the cases of Napper, Powell, Wolff, and Moors were severed, while L. B. Harmon was granted a change of venue to Barton County. Powell’s trial was held first, in mid-June. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

At Wolff’s trial in late June, Napper testified for the prosecution, and Wolff was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Napper was released on parole a couple of weeks later.

Both Powell and Wolff appealed their verdicts to the Missouri Supreme Court after their motions for new trials were denied. L. B. Harmon’s trial at Lamar in September ended in a mistrial.

In late March 1935, Moors, who’d been adjudged insane a few years earlier, was again declared insane and committed to the state hospital at Nevada. The murder charge against him was nol prossed.

L. B. Harmon was acquitted upon retrial in September 1935. In November 1935, the Missouri Supreme Court granted Wolff a new trial. On retrial at Carthage in March 1936, he was convicted of second-degree murder and given ten years in the penitentiary.

In June 1936, the state supreme court denied Victor Powell’s appeal and sustained his sentence of life imprisonment. The Jasper County prosecutor expressed dissatisfaction with verdict, because authorities were convinced that Glenn Harmon was the ringleader and Wolff was the trigger man. Yet Powell had ended up getting a much stiffer sentence than Wolff. Powell had been offered a deal if he turned state’s evidence, but he refused and was now paying the price.

This blog entry is condensed from my book Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings.