The Murder of Eben Brewer and Hanging of James McAfee

Saturday, July 31, 1897, was payday for the miners of Joplin, and the downtown area swarmed with people. James McAfee was among those roaming the streets. A “tough character,” McAfee had been a miner himself until he strained his back the previous Tuesday and “took a layoff.” Perhaps his lack of work prompted the desperate plan he devised that night. Sometime during the evening McAfee proposed to an acquaintance, Ben Shoemaker, that they team up and rob Joplin storekeeper Eben Brewer when Brewer started home later that night.

Shoemaker ostensibly agreed, but instead of carrying through with the crime, he reported McAfee’s plan to deputy constable Frank English. The constable, in turn, revealed the scheme to Brewer, who suggested that he and the police lay a trap for McAfee. Brewer would close up and start home as normal, but, unbeknownst to McAfee, he would be armed and the officers would also be lying in wait for the robber. English advised against the plan, telling the storekeeper that the police force was short-handed, but young Brewer insisted, explaining that he would enlist the help of his father-in-law, Joe Shelver.

Constable English went back out on the streets and stayed busy until late in the evening. He’d promised Brewer to take up a position near the store by eleven o’clock, but it was a quarter after by the time he arrived at the business, located at 1213 Main Street. Another man, whom English didn’t recognize, came in about the same time he did, purchased a pack of chewing gum, and then went to the water pail to get a drink. While the man was drinking, English asked Brewer in a hushed tone whether McAfee had made an appearance. The storekeeper winked and motioned toward the man at the water pail, who left about that time through the back door.

English offered to escort Brewer home and again tried to talk him out of his scheme to catch McAfee red-handed. Brewer insisted that the “matinee should come off at once.” Explaining his plan, he said he would leave the store accompanied by his father-in-law. Brewer would have a revolver concealed in a paper sack, and Shelver would have a double handful of red pepper to throw in the robber’s eyes. If McAfee ordered Brewer to throw up his hands, he would raise them with the sack in his hand and shoot through the sack while his father-in-law threw the pepper in the crook’s eyes.

English thought it was a dangerous plan, but Brewer still insisted. Agreeing to take up the best position he could, English left and hid at the south end of the alley behind the store. Meanwhile, officer Ben May, along with Shoemaker, the police informant, stationed themselves at the north end of the alley. Brewer and Shelver left by the front entrance when they closed the store. They then walked to the south side of the building, where they turned east across a vacant lot toward the alley. Brewer’s home was located on the west side of Virginia Avenue adjoining the alley and almost directly behind the store, but just as he and Shelver reached the alley, McAfee stepped out from behind an outhouse blocking Shelver’s path. Shelver tried to throw the pepper in his assailant’s eyes, but a gust of wind blew it back in Shelver’s own eyes. He took off running, and McAfee fired an errant shot at him. The robber then turned and fired at Brewer, hitting him in the side. Brewer staggered across the alley to the turnstile leading into his backyard, where he opened fired on McAfee but missed. 

Immediately after the first shots rang out, Constable English saw a shadowy figure racing toward him in the alley. English called “halt,” and when the man obeyed, the constable recognized him as Shelver. Looking down the alley toward the scene of the crime, English saw McAfee fleeing north about eighty feet away. He fired two shots at the suspect but missed. Upon reaching the north end of the alley, McAfee encountered Shoemaker and Officer May, who fired a hail of bullets at him, but he managed to “run the gauntlet” and make his escape.

Very soon afterwards, however, McAfee was arrested on suspicion because of blood on his shirt and other incriminating circumstances. English identified him as the man who’d been in the store just before the shooting, and Shoemaker said he was the man who’d tried to recruit him to help hold up Brewer. Still, McAfee denied his guilt.

Doctors who treated Eben Brewer after the shooting held out little hope for his recovery, and as word of the deadly assault spread, a mob formed and talked of lynching McAfee. He was taken for safekeeping to the Jasper County Jail at Carthage, where he finally broke down the next day and confessed the crime. The victim died a day or two later, and McAfee was charged with first-degree murder.

McAfee’s case came up in the circuit court at Carthage in late April 1898, and the jury came back on May 4 with a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced McAfee to hang, but the execution was stayed pending an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. The high court affirmed the decision of the lower court in early March 1899, and, after a gubernatorial stay, the execution date was set for July 6. About mid-morning on that date, McAfee was led from the jail, by means of a stairway through a window, directly onto the scaffold, which had been erected inside a stockade on the courthouse grounds. Crowds of curiosity-seekers milled around, but only about fifty people were allowed inside the stockade to witness the hanging. McAfee was positioned on the trap door, and the sheriff sprang the trap launching him into eternity at 9:52 a.m.
Like my last three blog entries, this one is condensed from a chapter in my new book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo. The book is available at your online superstore, or if you live in the Joplin area, at Always Buying Books.