The Murder of Carthage Cab Driver William Spain

Taxi driver William Spain left the Harrington Hotel in Carthage about 1:00 a.m. Monday, May 9, 1921, with two young male passengers dressed in military uniforms who said they wanted to go to the home of a Mrs. Tucker several miles northwest of Carthage. When Spain did not return after a reasonable time, the owners of the cab company instituted a search for the missing man. About nine o’clock the same morning, Spain’s blood-smeared taxicab was found abandoned two miles northwest of Carthage, and foul play was immediately suspected.
Suspicion settled on twenty-one-year-old Earl Dewey Tucker. He was the son of the woman to whose house the taxi passengers had said they wanted to be taken, and he was home on leave from Camp Eustis, Virginia. Family members told conflicting stories about the young man’s whereabouts the previous night. Nonetheless, officers felt sure they had the right man, and Tucker was arrested and then taken to Joplin.
Tucker stoutly maintained his innocence when he was grilled by law officers that afternoon. He said he’d been with his girlfriend when the crime had allegedly been committed. Despite his denial, Tucker was charged with first degree murder. The next day, he clung to his story of innocence even after his mother came to Joplin and pleaded with him to tell the truth.
On the evening of May 11, Tucker finally broke down and confessed, claiming he knew who had killed Spain but that he did not participate in the murder himself. He said he and a fellow soldier named William Mullen left Carthage shortly after midnight on Monday the 9th as passengers in Spain’s cab and that north of town they picked up two other soldiers, whom they had met as they were leaving Camp Eustis. One of the other two he knew only as Harry, and he did not know the fourth man’s name at all. When they got close to his mother’s house, Tucker said, he left the group. He reunited with Private Mullen a couple of hours later, and Mullen told him he had shot Spain and, with the help of the other two soldiers, dumped his body from a bridge over North Fork of Spring River. The only motive for the crime was that the killers wanted Spain’s vehicle, but they later abandoned it.
After Tucker’s confession, he was taken to Springfield for safekeeping. There he repeated the confession he’d given in Joplin, but authorities felt he was still not telling the whole truth.
On May 12, workers found Spain’s body lodged in some willows near the bridge over North Fork. An autopsy determined Spain had been shot twice and that either wound would have been lethal. Investigators concluded that Spain was behind the wheel when he was shot by a passenger in the front seat. This strengthened their belief that Tucker was the murderer, since he was seen in the front seat of the cab as it left the hotel.
On May 15, Tucker was brought back to Joplin, where he gave an altered, more complete confession than his previous one. He admitted that he was present, along with Mullen and the two John Doe soldiers, when Spain was killed, but he still maintained that Mullen was the trigger man. The motive was that the foursome wanted Spain’s car so they could rob the Purcell Bank.
At arraignment on Monday the 16th, Tucker waived a preliminary hearing and pleaded guilty to complicity in the first-degree murder of William Spain. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary and transported to Jefferson City later that same day.
In August 1921, Sheriff Harry Mead traveled to Jeff City to take an amended statement from Tucker. The prisoner now said he and Mullen were the only ones involved in Spain’s killing, and he told the sheriff the murder weapon was hidden at his sister’s house. He still maintained that Mullen was the one who shot Spain, but he admitted he’d helped throw the victim’s body over the bridge and helped hide the weapon.
In early November, Tucker amended his confession yet again. He now said Mullen was not involved at all in the murder. Tucker said he purchased Mullen’s revolver at Camp Eustis from a cook who’d gotten it from Mullen. Furthermore, Mullen’s revolver, the one he’d pointed lawmen to back in August, was not the murder weapon. He still maintained that he was only an accomplice and that one of his sidekicks, whom he did not know by name, had done the actual shooting. Officials believed Tucker was now telling the truth about Mullen, because Mullen had already provided a credible alibi. Authorities also believed Tucker had accomplices, as he claimed, but they did not think Tucker was only an aider and abettor. They felt he was the instigator of the crime and the person who’d pulled the trigger.
Around early September 1922, Tucker issued still another confession, claiming that Neil Mertins of Carthage was with him when Spain was killed and was the man who actually did the shooting. Tucker further implicated Mertins’s father-in-law, Isaac Harmon, as an accomplice in the crime. The sixty-seven-year old Harmon was married to Tucker’s twenty-year-old sister, Dolly, and the couple were going through a bitter divorce. Many speculated that Tucker’s latest confession was a put-up job instigated at least partly by Dolly, and the charges against both Harmon and his son-in-law were soon dismissed.
In 1929, Tucker escaped from a prison truck near California, Missouri. Recaptured in 1930, he was returned to Jeff City, but he escaped again in 1931. He was recaptured in 1933 and again brought back to the state pen.
Despite Tucker’s multiple escapes, the Missouri governor somehow deemed him worthy of a parole, and he was set free in 1941.
This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.