A Most Gruesome Murder

After the decomposing body of Louise Hagenbaugh was discovered on November 27, 1914, in her bed at the rooming house she kept on East Fifth Street in Joplin, it was thought at first that she might have died from asphyxiation, because the room was found to have a slow gas leak. However, other evidence pointed to robbery and murder. A dollar bill and an empty bag in which Mrs. Hagenbaugh, a wealthy divorcee, was known to have carried money were found on the floor near the bed, and a diamond ring with the stone missing was also discovered in the room. Upon closer inspection, investigators found fingerprints on the dead woman’s neck. A Joplin Globe reporter considered the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death “one of the most gruesome mysteries ever recorded in Joplin.”

A post-mortem examination revealed the deceased had indeed met a violent death. In addition to the bruising around her neck, three ribs had been broken, and it was theorized the murderer had crushed the ribs with his knee as he held her down and choked her. The coroner’s jury concluded that Mrs. Hagenbaugh had met death at the hands of some unknown person, but suspicion was already settling on William Webber.

A two-time ex-convict from Illinois, Webber, who also had a number of aliases, had come to Joplin a few weeks earlier and taken a room at Mrs. Hagenbaugh’s place. The woman had last been seen alive on the night of November 19, and Webber had flashed a wad of cash at a downtown saloon the next morning and then left Joplin.

Webber had originally come to Joplin to meet an old Illinois acquaintance named Thomas Whitsell, and the two men kept company during Webber’s brief stay in town. Whitsell, who also roomed at Mrs. Hagenbaugh’s, was arrested and held as a possible accomplice. Meanwhile, Webber, who’d already earned a reputation in Illinois four years earlier as “one of the most desperate criminals of the day,” was nowhere to be found.

Further investigation revealed that, after leaving Joplin on the 20th, Webber traveled to Illinois to meet a woman named Helen Siders. He’d come back to Joplin with the woman and her little girl a couple of days after the murder but then absconded again. It was learned that, in addition to having served one term in the Illinois State Penitentiary for burglary and another for armed robbery (the charge having been reduced from murder), Webber was wanted for robbing a post office at Springfield, Illinois, just a month or so before he came to Joplin. Now, with the latest charge against him, Webber became the focus of a nationwide manhunt.

Webber was finally tracked down and arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 20, 1915, when he was caught passing a string of bogus money orders under the assumed name of Roy Miller. They were the same money orders he’d stolen from the bank in Springfield, Illinois, prior to coming to Joplin. Federal authorities turned him over to Missouri, and Joplin police officers traveled to St. Paul to bring the accused killer back.

The party reached Joplin on the evening of February 26, and Webber was lodged in the city jail. The next day, he spoke with reporters, declaring that the person who killed Mrs. Hagenbaugh should be hanged but that he didn’t do it. He pointed to the fact that he had come back to Joplin with Mrs. Siders two days after Mrs. Hagenbaugh’s death as evidence that he didn’t kill her. “Would I have come back here knowing that I was facing a murder charge if I had actually committed the crime?” he asked rhetorically.

When Webber’s trial got underway in early May 1915, the prosecution called the Joplin chief of police and the Joplin chief of detectives as its star witnesses. Both men testified that Webber had admitted to them shortly after he was brought back from St. Paul that he might have been partly responsible for Mrs. Hagenbaugh’s death. According to their testimony, Webber told them that Mrs. Hagenbaugh was jealous because Webber was paying attention to another woman who lived in the Hagenbaugh rooming house, that they argued in a hallway when Webber started to go to the other woman’s room, and that he struck her and knocked her against a bannister or stove. He carried Mrs. Hagenbaugh to her room and placed her in bed but did not think she was seriously hurt. The state said the reason Webber came back to Joplin with Mrs. Siders was that he planned to dispose of Mrs. Hagenbaugh’s body, but when he learned that her building had been raided by police as a possible house of ill repute while he was gone and when he could not locate Thomas Whitsell, he again took flight.

The defense pursued the theory that Mrs. Hagenbaugh had indeed died of asphyxiation as the man who discovered the body first thought. They called an expert witness who testified that a person who died of asphyxiation could well have spots on the neck similar to bruises made by choking.

On May 7, the jury found Webber guilty of first degree murder and recommended life imprisonment. After Webber’s conviction, charges against Whitsell were dropped. Webber was transported to the state prison in Jefferson City in early June.

Webber’s lawyers appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but in July 1916, the justices confirmed the verdict of the lower court. In late August of the same year, Webber and three other inmates escaped from the state prison. Webber was recaptured in January 1917 near his old stomping grounds of Springfield, Illinois.

Despite the escape,  Missouri governor Sam Baker paroled Webber in October 1924 on the recommendation of the State Penal Board.

This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.

A Webb City Murder and the "Unwritten Law"

After J. W. “Will” Costley was arrested for killing Benjamin Newman in October 1909 at a boarding house run by Costley’s wife in Webb City, the defense invoked the so-called “unwritten law,” a principle widely cited to justify homicide arising from affairs in which the victim had offended a man’s honor, a woman’s virtue, or the sanctity of marriage. Costley claimed he’d caught Newman sleeping with his wife, but Costley and his wife were separated. Would the “unwritten law” still apply in his case?

Costley and his wife, Mary, ran a boarding house on North Webb Street in the booming mining town of Webb City. Sometime in early October 1909, the couple got into a big fight that led to a separation, and Costley was charged with assault. Released on bond, he wouldn’t leave Mary alone. He was especially upset by the attention Benjamin Newman was paying to his wife, and he made threats against both of them.

After the separation, Mary continued to run the boarding house. One of her roomers was miner Ralph Page, and late Saturday night, October 23, Newman accompanied Page home. About midnight Page fell asleep on the lounge where Mary normally slept, leaving Newman and Mary still awake. About three hours later, Costley slipped into the house through a window and found Newman and Mary in bed asleep together in a room adjoining the one where Page was. Retrieving a heavy gas pipe, Costley roused Newman and Mary and attacked Newman with the pipe when he sprang up in bed.

Mary fled upstairs screaming for the two young women who roomed there to help her because Costley was “killing the men.” The two women started downstairs but were met by Costley, who ordered them back upstairs “where they belonged.” Meanwhile, Newman staggered from the house with a broken nose and several severe gashes in his head. The commotion also aroused Page, and either he or the severely wounded Newman alerted authorities.

Costley surrendered to two officers who arrived on the scene, declaring, “I caught that fellow with my wife.” Charged with felonious assault, he was taken to the county jail at Carthage to await a preliminary hearing. On Monday, October 25, Costley was taken before a justice on the prior charge of assaulting his wife. He was sentenced to ten to twenty days in jail on a reduced charge of disturbing the peace. Three days later, Newman died at the Salvation Army Hospital in Webb City, and the second assault charge against Costley was promptly upgraded. In early November, as soon as his sentence for disturbing the peace of his wife expired, he was re-arrested on a second-degree murder charge.

At his preliminary hearing on November 19, Costley was ordered held for trial, and he was returned to the Carthage jail. Arraigned in circuit court at Joplin in early January 1910, Costley pleaded not guilty, and the judge ordered him held without bond. When his trial got underway in Joplin in mid-February, Mary Costley did not appear, either as a witness or as a spectator.

The main state witnesses were other occupants of the Costley boarding house, including Ralph Page. Page said he did not actually witness the attack on Newman and had no knowledge of the events directly leading up to it. The two officers who had arrested Costley testified, however, that he confessed the attack to them, and the defense did not deny this fact.

Instead, Costley’s lawyers, in addition to invoking the “unwritten law,” claimed self-defense. Costley took the stand and declared that, upon discovering his wife in bed with Newman, he retrieved the metal pipe because he was afraid to approach the man unarmed. Then, when he roused Newman from his sleep to demand an explanation, Newman reached beneath a pillow for a revolver. As he started to pull the revolver from its hiding place, Costley struck him with the gas pipe.

The jury received the case late Friday afternoon, February 18, and reported back Sunday morning, after deliberating throughout the day on Saturday, that they could not reach an agreement. The judge declared a mistrial. One report said the jurors agreed on conviction but were deadlocked on the punishment, while another said they disagreed on the defendant’s guilt. “In any event,” observed the Webb City Register, “it is felt that the unwritten law saved William Costley from serving a term in the state prison for killing Ben Newman.”

When Costley’s second trial began in Joplin at the May 1910 term of court, “little interest” was shown in the proceedings, and testimony in the case, as in the first trial, consumed only a few hours. Despite the court’s admonition against invoking the so-called “unwritten law” as a defense, Costley’s lawyers wove it “surreptitiously into evidence and addresses to the jury.” And contrary to the judge’s instructions, the state introduced evidence concerning Costley’s assault on his wife a few weeks prior to Newman’s killing to undercut the “unwritten law” defense, suggesting that the Costley marriage had already been defiled before Newman came on the scene.

The jury this time found Costley not guilty, surprising many observers who thought the outcome would be another hung jury. In fact, the jury was split at first, but those holding out for a guilty verdict were finally persuaded to the defendant’s side. Mrs. Costley, who had not previously appeared during the trial and had also not attended most of the first trial, was in the courtroom beside her husband when the verdict was announced.

This article is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.