A Webb City Murder The Killing of Coyne Hatten

When a stranger bumped into Coyne Hatten on the street in Webb City on the night of May 16, 1931, Hatten’s natural inclination was to stand up for himself. If Hatten had known the desperate character of the man he was facing, he might have exercised a little discretion, but, instead, he demanded to know whether the stranger was looking for trouble. He’d scarcely gotten the words out of his mouth when the stranger pulled out a revolver and shot Hatten in the chest. After a pause, the man poured two more bullets into Hatten’s body, killing him almost instantly.

After the shooting, the assailant rendezvoused a block away with a male companion and two female companions who were waiting in an automobile. The four then sped away from the scene.

The shooting was totally unexplained at first, and the shooter and his companions were unidentified. Early the next morning, May 17, authorities got a break when Mickey Carey, a forty-three-year-old ex-convict, appeared at the Joplin Police station. He said that he’d driven a man known to him as Jimmie Jones from Joplin to Webb City the previous night and that they’d been accompanied by Carey’s wife and a Webb City waitress named Doris Adams. Carey said he and his wife let the other couple out and that he heard gunfire shortly afterward. He claimed he and his wife then returned to Joplin, leaving Jones and Miss Adams behind.

Jones was arrested later that day at a Joplin rooming house. He was identified as an alleged Detroit hoodlum with several aliases. Police said Jones had recently associated with a gang of bootleggers at South Coffeyville, Oklahoma, where he was known as W. H. Geers. The suspect admitted going to Webb City the previous night but denied killing Hatten. However, on May 18, a coroner’s jury named Geers, alias Jones, as the slayer of Coyne Hatten. Doris Adams testified that she heard a shot and looked up to see Geers shoot Hatten twice more.

Geers was charged on May 19 with first degree murder. The next day, he broke down and gave a full confession. He said his real name was James “Jimmy” Creighton and he was twenty-six years old. Born in Oklahoma, he’d served one term in a reformatory, one term in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, and brief stints in a couple of city jails. He admitted he was wanted in connection with a daring bank robbery at Hastings, Nebraska, the previous February during which he and his partners shot it out with police to make their escape. He said he shot Hatten because Hatten shoved him and asked whether he was looking for trouble.

Creighton’s trial on a first-degree murder charge got underway at Carthage in late June 1931. Numerous witnesses identified Creighton as the man who’d killed Hatten, and they suggested that he had little, if any, provocation. Creighton, on the other hand, took the stand to claim self-defense. He said Hatten not only shoved him but also made a move as though reaching for a weapon.

On June 26, the jury found Creighton guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to hang. Creighton was taken to the state prison pending the outcome of his appeal to the state supreme court. In August 1932, the high court reversed the verdict on the grounds that the judge should have granted a change of venue.

Creighton’s second trial was held in Barton County in January 1933. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

For the first few years after being transported to the state penitentiary at Jefferson City, Creighton had a reputation as a troublemaker. In February 1934, he tried to “gouge his eyes out” with a fingernail because he’d supposedly been driven insane by the prison routine. Part of his sight was saved, and authorities thought his self-mutilation was a ploy to try to gain a parole. Creighton eventually calmed down and went to work as a prison barber.

He became trustworthy enough that he was allowed to work on the prison farm, but he escaped from there in 1944. Recaptured the next year, he was returned to the main prison. In early 1954, he was moved to the State Asylum at Fulton but returned to the prison after a month and half.

In September 1954, a riot at the state prison resulted in the death of one inmate and injuries to about twenty-five others, including Creighton. Afterward, Creighton, who was in a cell next to the man who was killed, was moved from the prison to the nearby Cole County Jail for his own protection. The following year, he testified against the ringleaders of the riot, earning a reputation among fellow prisoners as a “squealer” but also scoring points with officers prosecuting the rioters. In January 1956, the Missouri governor paroled Creighton on the recommendation of the prosecutors rather than return him to the penitentiary, where he would almost surely be killed.

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

A Murder Mystery Solved: The Slaying of R. T. Thompson

On Wednesday evening, October 23, 1929, Joplin watchmaker Robert T. Thompson was out riding around with Miss Mary Quinn, a nurse at St. John’s Hospital. The two had known each other for years, but they’d gotten better acquainted during Thompson’s recent stay at the hospital for treatment of an eye illness. Divorced and the father of a young child, Thompson had continued to see the twenty-three-year-old Miss Quinn after his discharge, and the two had “been out driving on several occasions.

On this night, Thompson picked Mary up and drove east of town to Duquesne Road. He wanted to get away from Joplin, because the bright lights bothered his eye, which still required treatment. Turning north, the couple drove to Newman Road and turned east. A half mile down the road, Thompson slowed, preparing to stop, so Mary could put some medicine in his eye. Just as she turned on the dome light so she could see to administer the medicine, a car with several people in it pulled up alongside the Thompson car, and one of the passengers ordered Thompson to stop. Instead of complying, he started to pull away, and someone from the other car fired a shot that struck him in the left temple. Thompson slumped over the steering wheel, apparently lifeless, as the assassin car sped away. Mary frantically drove her friend to the hospital, but it was too late.

A large reward was offered for the apprehension of the gang responsible for killing Thompson, but their identity remained a mystery.

For two years.

In early October 1931, police got an anonymous tip that Leslie Edgington of Joplin was somehow involved in Thompson’s murder, and he was arrested Edgington for questioning. The tip also implicated four other people, and police began rounding them up, too. Earl Osborn of Central City was lodged in jail at Joplin alongside Edgington, while George Herrelson and his wife, Bertha, who was Osborn’s sister, were arrested in Kansas and taken to the Cherokee County Jail at Columbus. The fifth suspect, Floyd Blinzler, fled and was not immediately apprehended.

On Monday, October 12, Edgington confessed to his part in the crime and confirmed the identity of the other four participants. He said Osborn and Herrelson had been operating as road bandits for some time prior to the killing of Thompson. On the night of the murder, Osborn and the Herrelson couple picked up him and Blinzler and convinced them to take part in a robbery. The two young men rode in the back seat of Herrelson’s Chrysler. Osborn, who was riding shotgun in front, had two pistols, and he handed one to Edgington.

When the gang spotted the Thompson car coming to a halt with its dome light on, Herrelson pulled up beside it. Osborn and Edgington hopped out with their revolvers in hand. When Thompson refused the order to stop and began to drive away, Osborn opened fire.

Confronted with Edgington’s confession, Osborn gave a statement of his own on October 13. He admitted being the gunman who’d shot Thompson, but he refused to implicate his sister or her husband. Osborn and Edgington were arraigned on a first-degree murder charge and committed to the Jasper County Jail at Carthage.

Blinzler was captured at Crocker, Missouri, on October 15 and brought back to Carthage, where he gave a statement confirming that Osborn was the slayer of Thompson, but he said Herrelson directed the operations of the gang. Blinzler also admitted that he and Edgington had accompanied Herrelson and Osborn on several robberies prior to the Thompson murder. Blinzler was charged with murder and joined Edgington and Osborn at the county jail.

On October 17, George and Bertha Herrelson were extradited from Kansas, charged with murder, and transported to Carthage to join the others.     

At their preliminary hearings on November 4, Blinzler and the Herrelsons were bound over for trial in circuit court. Edgington and Osborn waived preliminary hearings and were also held for trial. Osborn decided to plead guilty to first-degree murder, though, rather than face a jury. The prosecution offered to reduce the charges against Edgington and Blinzler to second-degree murder in exchange for their testimony against the Herrelsons, and they took the deal.

Each in turn took the stand to testify against the Herrelsons when their joint trial got underway at Carthage on November 30. The testimony of the youthful accomplices was similar to what they’d said when arrested, but it had some holes. And  the defense attorney argued that his clients were not even at the murder scene on the night in question.

The case was given to the jury on December 1, 1931, and they came back that evening with a verdict convicting both Herrelson and his wife of first-degree murder. A few days later, the sentences for Edgington and Blinzler were set at fifteen years apiece in the state prison.

Edgington and Blinzler were paroled or had their sentences commuted before 1940. Meanwhile, Osborn and the Herrelsons were still making their home at the big house in Jefferson City.

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