If part of the purpose of incarceration is meant to be rehabilitation, the program failed miserably in Stapleton’s and Jackson’s cases. Their time in lockup seems to have had the opposite effect. Almost as soon as Jackson was released, the two men got together in Kansas City and decided to go into “the hold-up business.” Shortly after forming their “partnership,” they stuck up a taxicab driver in Kansas City and then absconded to Pittsburg, Kansas. From there, they came to Joplin on Saturday, April 8, and rented a room on Kentucky Avenue. That night they traveled to Carthage looking for a hold-up target.
About ten o’clock, the desperate pair walked into Babcock’s store on East Central Avenue with their
faces uncovered. Jackson carried a knife, and Stapleton was
packing a pistol. According to bystander Fred Beard, Jackson bought some tobacco and then
asked for soda pop. When Babcock started toward the rear of the store to
retrieve it, Jackson followed him, and Stapleton also
shuffled in that direction. At the rear of the store, Jackson grabbed Babcock from
behind and demanded money, but Babcock spun
around and began scuffling with his assailant. Stapleton drew
his revolver and ordered Beard to
throw up his hands. After the customer complied, Stapleton also
ordered Babcock to
stick up his hands, and when he did not promptly obey, Stapleton fired a single shot that struck the
storekeeper in the neck. He died soon afterward.
The robbers fled through an alley and walked all the way
back to Joplin. Officers arrested Stapleton and
Jackson at
the Kentucky Avenue address just minutes after the pair arrived on Sunday
morning.
Stapleton, still going by the name Ralph Long, and
Jackson were taken to the Joplin Police station, where they gave confessions
and Stapleton revealed his real name. The next day, Monday,
the prisoners were arraigned in Joplin on first-degree murder charges, and they
pleaded not guilty.
Fearing mob violence, authorities moved the prisoners to
Miami, Oklahoma, and then Springfield, Missouri. As lynch fever subsided, the accused
murderers were brought back from Springfield and placed in jail at Carthage.
Stapleton’s trial got underway on May 1 in Division
2 of Jasper County Circuit Court at Joplin. Fred Beard, the customer who’d been in Babcock’s store on the night of the crime, was the
star witness for the prosecution. He positively identified Stapleton as
the shooter. The only defense by Stapleton’s lawyers was a plea to spare their client’s
life, but the jury found Stapleton guilty and recommended the death penalty.
Sterling Jackson’s trial began in Division 1 of the same
court on
May 3, the day after Stapleton’s concluded. Prosecution testimony was
virtually the same as it had been for Stapleton’s trial, and the defense again offered no
witnesses, although Jackson’s attorneys made a strong plea to spare his life. After
considerable deliberation, the Jackson jury, like Stapleton’s, found the defendant
guilty and recommended the death penalty. Defense attorneys for both prisoners filed motions for new trials, but both motions
were overruled on May 13. The two were sentenced to hang on June 23, 1922,
but appeals automatically stayed their executions.
On June
21, 1923, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s verdicts, and the
execution date for
both men was set for dawn on August 3. Plans called for them to hang
simultaneously on a double scaffold erected just west of the county jail
surrounded by a stockade to keep out uninvited spectators.
On Tuesday night, July 31, Stapleton made
an eleventh-hour appeal to the Missouri governor to
save his partner’s life. He claimed that neither he nor Jackson got
a fair trial. He said that if he and Jackson had been white, they might have
received life imprisonment but not death sentences, and he cited the recent
case of a young white man named Tucker who’d killed
William Spain in
Carthage and
received life imprisonment. He said he and Jackson were not given an
opportunity to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences as Tucker had
been. If the governor didn’t give both of them a stay, all Stapleton asked was
for him to commute the sentence of Jackson, who had nothing to do with the
actual killing. The governor, however, decided not to intervene.
Early Friday morning, August 3, 1923, Stapleton and
Jackson, with their arms already bound, were led from their cells to the
scaffold via a walkway through a west window of the jail. After the nooses and
caps were adjusted around the men’s necks and heads, Sheriff Harry Mead pulled a lever that sprung both traps
simultaneously, and Stapleton and
Jackson dropped
to their deaths together at 4:56 a.m.
This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest
book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper
County, Mo.
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