Christmas 100 Years Ago

   How was Christmas celebrated in this region 100 years ago? To answer that question, I decided to check a few Missouri newspapers from late December 1921. In general, the answer is that the celebrations weren't all that much different from the way we celebrate Christmas today, except that the holiday was less commercialized then than it is today. Of course, people shopped for Christmas gifts just as they do today, but the shopping season was more concentrated, consisting mainly of just a few days before the holiday. Celebrations largely centered around the church, but there were also private parties and other events.
   In Joplin, snow flurries on the afternoon and night of Christmas Eve "added the finishing touches" to preparations for Christmas Day 1921 in the city. Most of the Joplin churches held services on Christmas Eve, and afterwards, choirs from nearly all the churches serenaded the residential districts with carols until after midnight. Also, "eleventh-hour shoppers thronged the stores" in downtown Joplin on the night of the 24th until the businesses finally closed their doors at ten p.m.. Various clubs and welfare workers "carried the spirit of the Yuletide into more than 200 humble homes," bringing food for the families and toys for the kids. After the late closing on Christmas Eve, which was a Saturday, most of the businesses did not plan to re-open until Tuesday. Earlier in the week, a number of churches and social clubs had held parties, but Christmas Day, which was a Sunday, was devoted to religious services and family get-togethers.
   The Christmas celebrations in Springfield in 1921 were similar to those in Joplin. This is to say that they generally centered around the churches. One thing that struck me as noteworthy about Christmas Day in Springfield 100 years ago is that the post office was still busy delivering mail. The postmaster estimated it would take four or five wagons working all day long on the 25th to get all the mail and packages delivered. Not only were postal workers busy on Christmas Day, but at least a few businesses stayed open on Christmas as well. For instance, the Colonial Hotel dining room advertised a Christmas dinner from six to eight p.m. for $1.50 per plate consisting of Ozark turkey, roast goose, suckling pig, plum pudding, and all the fixings.
   In St. Louis, Christmas Day of 1921 was "more generally celebrated in a religious way than for several years." This, of course, had much to do with the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1921. Some of the Catholic churches, in particular, were planning midnight masses as well as daytime masses on the 25th.
   In Chillicothe, "the Christmas spirit prevail(ed) in the churches." On Friday evening, several churches presented Christmas programs involving mainly the children, and the pastors were preparing "special sermons" for Sunday. On Saturday, the Shriners and other clubs of Chillicothe handed out Christmas baskets to needy families. Then on Sunday, services were held both morning and evening in most of the town's churches.

A Heinous Crime

   We hear a lot about the high rate of crime nowadays. If reports in my local newspaper are any indication, sex-related crimes seem especially prevalent. However, if one allows for the increase in population, I'm not sure the incidence of crime is all that much greater than it was 100 years ago or 150 years ago, and I think this observation applies even to sex-related crime. In making this argument in a post on this blog a few years ago, I cited several examples of rape and statutory rape in the Springfield (MO) area during the late 1800s, as reported in that city's newspapers. Also, I think it's probably true that part of the reason we seem to hear more about sex-related crimes nowadays than we used to is simply that the victims of such crimes are much more willing to come forward than they used to be.
   One example I cited was the case of Springfield dance instructor C. W. James, who was charged in 1894 with raping his underage daughter. I said at the time that I didn't know the ultimate outcome of the case, but I've recently done a little more research and have learned more about the case. It's a fascinating story, if somewhat morbidly so.
   On March 23, 1893, the Springfield Leader reported that Professor C. W. James and his "charming daughter Miss Brooxie (usually spelled Brooksie) have returned from Florida." The report might have served as an omen if readers had been discerning and cynical enough to suspect the worst, because Professor James soon started making a habit of taking along the 13-year-old girl, unaccompanied by his wife, to help with his instruction when he toured the country giving dance lessons.
   However, it was not until the fall of the same year, 1893, during a trip to Arkansas that James first forced or coerced his daughter, who had turned 14 a couple of months earlier, into having sex with him. The "unnatural relationship" between James and his daughter continued on a fairly regular basis after that, but it was not until the following spring, 1894, that Brooksie finally broke down and told her mother, Jennie, about what had happened. She said she would have told sooner except that her father had threatened to shoot both her and her mother if she did. Jennie knew her husband was abusive, but she was skeptical at first that he was actually "capable of desecrating his own flesh and blood." So, she took no action except to keep a closer eye on her husband. She caught him in compromising positions with Brooksie a time or two but still did not report the incidents because she was afraid of her husband, who had often threatened and abused her, and because she hesitated to bring shame on the family. Finally, though, on Monday, May 28, Jennie had had enough.    

   At the noon meal, her husband insisted on eating with Brooksie in a front room while Jennie and her two sons were at the kitchen table. The 44-year-old James "made approaches" toward Brooksie but backed off when they "were objected to." After lunch, however, James announced he was going to take Brooksie with him to a nearby park, and as they were leaving, the girl whispered in secret to her mother, pleading with Jennie to protect her.
   After the father and daughter were gone, Jennie, who lived near the corner of Robberson and Commercial, hastened to Commercial Street and reported her husband's abuse of Brooksie to a couple of businessmen, who, in turn, reported James to authorities. When the professor returned home, Jennie was not there. He found her at the nearby house of another woman, but Jennie refused to see her husband, and the neighbor ordered James off the property. The police arrived shortly afterwards, arrested James, and took him to jail on the complaint of his wife.
   Interviewed later that evening by the Springfield Leader, Jennie, 33, told the reporter she had married James 17 years earlier when she was just 16. She had endured "a long series of insults and injuries heaped upon (her) and the rest of the family" throughout her marriage. She had put up with the abuse partly because she had married James against her parents' wishes and did not want to divulge her humiliation and shame to them. James's "unspeakably outrageous behavior" toward their daughter, however, was the last straw. "There is a point where oppression must cease," she said. The Leader described Jennie as "intellectually bright and with an attractive figure," although the harsh treatment she'd been subjected to over the years had had an effect on her "both physically and mentally." The reporter described Jennie's daughter, Brooksie Dell, as "a pretty girl, a trim and graceful lass, not particularly developed for her age, but very attractive in every way and admired by all who knew her."
   In an interview the next morning, the Leader also gave James a chance to tell his side of the story. He denied that he'd ever molested his daughter and said he was "as innocent as a babe unborn." He said he thought the charge against him had been trumped up by Jennie under the influence of "outside parties." He admitted that he and his family had occasionally had their "little troubles," but "nothing serious has ever been charged against me before." Professor James, the "dancing master," was a small man, not more than 120 pounds, with refined manners, who was generally well thought of by the public, but apparently, according to the Leader, he had "pursued a systematic policy of cruelty to his family for years."
   James came before the criminal court on the afternoon of May 29, the day after his arrest and was committed to jail without bond to await an official hearing. The question of whether he was to be charged with rape or incest was left unsettled.
   A day or two later, James wrote a letter from his jail cell to the Springfield Democrat, once again denying the charges against him and holding himself up as a model parent. A rumor had circulated since his arrest that he was a drunkard, and James also vehemently denied this charge as well.
   In early June, James tried to kill himself by butting his brains out against his cell door until he lost consciousness. He also took to not eating and soon became even more emaciated than he already was. From his cell, he wrote to his wife almost every day, trying to gain an audience with her, but she steadfastly refused to see him. "He pretends to have great affection for his family," observed the Democrat, "but admits that he sometimes treated them brutally when at home."
   James waived examination when the time for his hearing came up in late June, and unable to give the stipulated $3,000 bond, he was returned to jail to await the action of a grand jury. By this time, he was well on the road to recovery from his suicide attempt and was also starting to eat better. However, "He will never be a fat man," observed the Leader, "even should he eat pie."
   The grand jury officially charged James with rape, but when his trial came up in late July (on Brooksie's 15th birthday), the prosecution agreed to lower the charge to incest if he would plead guilty. James readily agreed so that he would not have to suffer the shame and embarrassment of having his family testify against him, as they were prepared to do. Expressing his displeasure with the dismissal of the rape charge, the judge pronounced a sentence of 7 years in the state prison, the maximum allowed by law. Jennie and Brooksie were present at the trial and sentencing, and Jennie said afterward that she never wanted to see or speak to her husband again.
   James was transported to Jeff City on August 6 or 7 and admitted to the state prison on the 7th. He was discharged on December 28, 1899, under the three-fourths law after serving about five and a half years of his seven-year term.

 

Murder of Nathan Stark and Hanging of Ira Sexton

   On the evening of October 28, 1897, 28-year-old Nathan Stark was driving a wagonload of corn near his home in Mercer County, Missouri, when a neighbor, 23-year-old Ira Sexton, emerged from some bushes and called for him to halt. Sexton told Stark that his (Sexton's) brother-in-law, Buzz Melton; his sister-in-law, Luvilla Anderson; and another man were waiting at Stark's home to kill him and take his money, Sexton proposed to help Stark and wanted him to dismount the wagon, but Stark was immediately suspicious. When he refused to dismount, Sexton, whom one newspaper described as a notorious character with "a tough reputation," pulled out a revolver and ordered Stark to hand over his money, which amounted to about $60. Stark "showed fight" and grabbed hold of the gun. After a brief tussle over the weapon, Stark jumped or fell from the wagon, got up, and started running. Sexton, who'd regained control of the revolver, opened fire, striking Stark in the back, but Stark kept running. He saw Luvilla Anderson standing outside his house. She called to him but he was afraid to approach the house for fear that what Sexton had told him was true. Instead, he kept going until he reached the house of a neighbor, William Cravens, who took him in and tried to make him comfortable. Stark told Cravens that Ira Sexton had shot him.
   Stark's wound was considered fatal, because the bullet had torn through the intestines and abdominal cavity, but he lived a couple of days, long enough to give an official dying declaration naming Sexton as his assailant. Meanwhile, Sexton was arrested the day after the shooting at the home of Buff Melton, where he'd been staying since his recent marriage to Buff's sister, Hattie. Hattie and Luvilla Anderson, who was another sister to Buff, were arrested as conspirators, along with a man named Cooksey, who had just arrived at Melton's house the day of the shooting and was a stranger to most folks in the area. Luvilla, whose husband had recently died, was engaged to marry Stark, but the prosecution theory was that she only wanted his money and didn't really want to marry him. At least one report suggested that the mysterious Cooksey was Luvilla's lover. All four suspects were taken from nearby Mercer to the county jail at Princeton for safekeeping, because talk of lynching was prevalent around Mercer. Sexton's preliminary hearing a few days later even had to be postponed because it was considered too dangerous to bring Sexton back to Mercer.
   Charges against Hattie Sexton and Cooksey were soon dropped, but Ira Sexton was officially charged with first-degree murder and held for trial at his preliminary hearing in early December. Luvilla was charged as an accessory, but charges against her were later dropped as well, for lack of evidence.
   At first, Sexton had not even bothered to deny his crime. He admitted that he shot Stark but said he didn't intend to and had only done so because Stark "showed fight." At his trial in February 1898, however, he did deny the deed, and the defense even called witnesses to try to establish an alibi. The jury didn't buy it. Sexton was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang in April.
   The execution was automatically stayed when the defense appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but the high court sustained the verdict in November and reset the hanging for December 28, 1898. On the fateful day, Sexton spoke at some length from the scaffold that was set up inside a stockade at Princeton, once again proclaiming his innocence. He even sang a couple of songs before being dropped through the trap to his death.

   According to county histories, thirty or more murders had been committed in Mercer County prior to Stark's killing, but Sexton was the first person ever to be convicted of murder. 

   Sketches from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Murder of Columbus Yandle

   On the night of March 14, 1893, Columbus “Lum” Yandle (also spelled Yandell or Yandall) was killed when someone fired a shotgun at him through a window in his home north of Henderson in the southwest corner of Webster County, Missouri. A township constable, Yandle died almost instantly, and he was buried in Panther Valley Cemetery in his neighborhood.
   The murder was a mystery at first, but barely more than a week later, Wesley Hargis; his uncle, John W. Hargis; and Yandle’s widow were arrested on suspicion. Wesley Hargis was only about eighteen years old, while his uncle was considerably older. Mrs. Hargis, who was Lum’s second wife, was about twenty-three, more than twenty years younger than her deceased husband.
   The younger Hargis broke down almost immediately after his arrest and confessed the crime. He admitted shooting Yandle but said he’d only done so at the urging of his uncle and Mrs. Hargis, who had paid him to commit the murder. It was reported at the time that John Hargis, Yandle’s hired hand, and young Mrs. Yandle, “a handsome brunette,” had been “criminally intimate” for four years. Wesley Hargis said his uncle had promised him $200 and Mrs. Yandle had pledged $100 for him to commit the deed. He claimed the woman had told him she was tired of living with her husband and wanted to marry John. He further stated that his uncle had helped him load the shotgun with which he killed Yandle.
   After Wesley’s confession, his uncle was interviewed. John said only that Wesley had told him that Mrs. Yandle wanted him to kill her husband, but he denied that he himself had anything to do with the crime.
   Mrs. Yandle was then interrogated, and she, too, denied involvement in the murder. She claimed that she and her husband were best friends who lived happily together and that no intimacy had ever existed between her and John Hargis, as many people were claiming. “The Hargis boys are trying to lay the burden of the crime on me,” she concluded.
   The three suspects were taken to Marshfield and lodged in the county jail. A grand jury promptly indicted all three of them for murder. Excitement in the Henderson vicinity was great, as all parties had been well thought of prior to the crime. There was some talk of taking the suspects out of the calaboose and dealing out summary justice.
   The cases of Wesley Hargis and Mrs. Yandle were heard in late November 1893 in Hickory County on changes of venue. In exchange for his testimony against the other two defendants, Wesley Hargis was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder, and he received a 99-year sentence in the state penitentiary. Mrs. Hargis was tried immediately after young Hargis’s plea deal, but, despite young Hargis’s testimony, she was acquitted. After a series of delays and changes of venue, John Hargis’s case was set to finally come up in Wright County in early September 1895, but it ended up being nol-prossed for lack of evidence. Whether Wesley Hargis served very much time in the state pen is also in doubt, as there seems to be conflicting evidence on the question.

 

Prohibition Begins in Missouri

   In my book Wicked Joplin, I wrote about how the last day before Prohibition was celebrated in Joplin, and I got to wondering how other Missouri localities observed the day. Although the period we know today as Prohibition did not begin until January 1920, the temporary Wartime Prohibition Act banned the sale of beverages containing more than 2.75 percent alcohol as of July 1, 1919. So, for all practical purposes, June 30, 1919, marked the last day that people could legally purchase booze.
   Known as a hell-raising town from its earliest days as a boisterous mining camp, "wet" Joplin was a frenzy of activity in the days leading up to the prohibition deadline. People from miles around who lived in “dry” territories trekked to Joplin to stock up on John Barleycorn, and record sales were reported. (The initial provisions of the prohibition act outlawed the sale but not the possession of alcoholic drinks.) On the eve of the law’s taking effect, Joplinites marked the occasion with wild revelry. All the saloons were jammed throughout the evening, as were all the cafes that served alcohol. “No New Year’s party in the history of Joplin...could be compared with it,” said the Joplin Globe the next day. “When midnight approached the merrymakers were well along toward that state where every one is a ‘jolly good fellow.’” When the fateful hour arrived, women jumped onto tables and starting singing “How Dry I Am” and similar ditties, while out in the streets “the revelry was nearly as bad. Men and boys paraded Main street shouting and yelling,” and both men and women in automobiles drove up and down the street screaming and shouting out the open windows. The Joplin police, reported the Globe on July 1, arrested seventy-eight people for drunkenness, even though they limited their arrests to those “who had become so intoxicated they will not realize until late today they were guests of the city....”
   Other towns and cities throughout Missouri marked the occasion with revelry as well, although their celebrations were more subdued in most cases.
   In Kansas City, "Last-chance parties abounded in hotels and cabarets," according to the July 1 Kansas City Times, "and the saloons did (a) heavy business." The celebration centered on Twelfth Street, where the merrymakers "made a noisy demonstration to the close." It was a "joyous and happy crowd," some woozy with liquor, but "not offensive." Some of the revelers were strangers to John Barleycorn but "made his acquaintance last night." One such newcomer to liquor was a woman who sat in an automobile outside the Hotel Muehlebach looking somewhat disheveled. "What do you think my Sunday school class would think of me now?" she asked as a reporter passed by.
   In St. Joseph, "The celebrators, or mourners, as the city's News-Press called them the next morning, "did everything they could to get rid of the liquor last night." Since the new law would still allow for light or "kickless" beer and wine, it was mostly "whiskey straight" that the St. Joseph partiers imbibed.
   For the most part, St. Louis, according to the July 1 Post-Dispatch, "permitted liquor to pass out last night with indifference. The expectation that the 'last night' would have aspects of drunkenness and revelry not uncommon to New Year's Eve was not realized." A fairly large number of people did take to the streets in the early evening, but when the crowds "realized that nothing to stir their risibility was going to happen, they dispersed to their homes." The St. Louis Star & Times largely agreed, noting that there were some large crowds throughout the city but that the celebration was "by no means of the New Year variety." Most of the celebrating occurred at "family parties, and revelry was the exception."
   In Springfield, "The ringing of church bells and the celebration at downtown cafes marked the passing of John Barleycorn and his stepbrothers," according to the Springfield Missouri Republican. Although some of the downtown cafes and saloons had more business than usual, there were no real parties like those normally held on New Year's Eve. When the clocks reached midnight, some of the churches in town, happy to see the death of John Barleycorn, rang their bells in dirge-like peals usually reserved for funerals.
   Many of the "thirst-parlors" in Joplin and elsewhere throughout the state closed after Wartime Prohibition took effect, even though the law initially allowed the sale of drinks with a small amount of alcohol. The saloonkeepers said that, with whiskey barred, they could not make enough money to pay expenses.

The Murder of Violet Brewer

   About seven a.m. on the morning of August 27, 1970, fifty-year-old Violet Brewer, clerk at a Quick Shop at 3328 N. Glenstone in Springfield, was shot to death during a holdup as she was opening the store for business. Twenty-two-year old Donald Joe Hall was arrested as a suspect in the case in mid-September on a tip from Warren Martin, who told police that Hall had given him a .32 caliber pistol to dispose of shortly after the Brewer murder. Martin, who was under arrest on suspicion of armed robbery, said he’d thrown the weapon into Lake Springfield, and it was recovered a few days after Martin’s confession. Hall had a criminal record dating back to 1965 when he was a seventeen-year-old kid, and, at the time of his arrest as a suspect in the Brewer case, he'd been out on probation for the past ten months after pleading guilty to a charge of displaying a dangerous weapon because he'd pointed a gun at a policeman who was trying to question him for careless driving.

                                            Violet Brewer from Springfield Leader & Press

   Hall’s probation was now revoked, and he was charged with first-degree murder. At Hall's trial, Martin, a former cellmate of Hall’s at the state prison, testified that Hall told him, after he gave him the pistol to dispose of, that he’d “had to shoot a gal” with it during a holdup when the woman reached for a phone to call police and that Hall admitted it was the murder and holdup that had been in the news so much lately. Forensic experts linked the weapon taken from Lake Springfield to the bullet removed from Mrs. Brewer’s head. However, Hall took the stand in his own defense to deny killing Brewer. He admitted giving the pistol to Martin but said he’d done so before the murder. Although one is left to wonder why Martin would point police toward a murder weapon if he’d committed the murder himself, Hall planted enough doubt in the minds of jurors to win an acquittal.
   Hall still faced five years in the penitentiary, though, on the charge of displaying a deadly weapon, and when he got out of prison in 1973 after serving only about half of the sentence, he promptly resumed his criminal career, culminating in the murder of Springfield jeweler William Roscoe White in December 1992, a crime for which Hall was convicted and sentenced to death (later changed to life imprisonment).
   This story is condensed from my book Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo. https://amzn.to/3Mi39sE

The Last Lynching in Missouri: The Murder of Cleo Wright

   In the wee hours of Sunday morning, January 25, 1942, 29-year-old Grace Sturgeon and her sister-in-law, LaVerne Sturgeon, were awakened from their sleep when they heard someone crawling through a window in the house where they were staying in Sikeston, Missouri, while their husbands were away in military service. Grace's 8-year-old son was asleep in another room. The intruder, a black man, confronted the women, lunging at them with a knife. LaVerne made her escape and ran from the house screaming for help, but the man grabbed Grace and cut her across the abdomen. He also slashed her hand when she tried to grab the knife. About this time, Grace's son was aroused from his sleep by the commotion, and the intruder took off. When LaVerne returned with help, Grace was lying in the floor with severe wounds.
   Law officers immediately went looking for the assailant. About a half mile from the Sturgeon home, Sikeston policeman Hess Perrigan and a citizen who was driving Perrigan's vehicle spotted a black man walking along the street with blood on his clothes. Perrigan arrested the man, took a knife away from him, and got into the back seat with his captive.
   Although Perrigan had his revolver trained on the prisoner, the man, later identified as 26-year-old Cleo Wright, whipped out another knife that he had hidden on his person and attacked Perrigan with it, severing an artery. Despite the severe wound, the officer managed to get off four shots, all of them striking Wright.
   Mrs. Sturgeon and Officer Perrigan were both taken to the Sikeston hospital with serious wounds, while the gravely wounded Wright was taken at first to the city hall, where the city jail was located. Walking under his own power, the prisoner, however, collapsed as he was led into the building. He, too, was then taken to the hospital and placed in the emergency room in the basement. Sometime after 5 a.m., however, he was moved back to the city hall and placed in a temporary detention room rather than the steel-barred jail in the basement. Here he reportedly admitted that he had attacked Grace Sturgeon.
   By about ten o'clock Sunday morning, a crowd had gathered at the city hall and were attempting the break down the ordinary wooden door of the detention room. A highway patrolman succeeded in temporarily dispersing the small group. The patrolman called for backup, and two other highway patrolmen and the city police chief arrived to help guard the prisoner.
   Over the next couple of hours, however, both the size and the determination of the crowd grew. About noon, prosecuting attorney David Blanton arrived and tried to reason with the growing mob, but his remarks only "seemed to inflame the crowd," according to the local newspaper, the Sikeston Herald. With shouts of "What are we waiting for?" the crowd surged into the city hall, shoved past the officers, and easily broke down the door to the detention room. Wright, already unconscious from his wounds, was dragged from the building. One report said he was immediately tied by his feet to the bumper of a car and dragged through the street toward the black section of town, while a conflicting report said he was crammed into the trunk of the car, taken to the edge of the black section, and then tied to the bumper. In either case, he was dragged back and forth through Sikeston's black neighborhood on the west side of town. After a few minutes, Wright's lifeless and nearly naked body was cut loose, gasoline was poured on it, and it was set ablaze "in front of the Negro school." The mob then gradually dispersed.
   The charred body lay unclaimed for several hours, before it was finally taken late that afternoon to a local cemetery and buried in the "Potter's Field." Grace Sturgeon and Hess Perrigan, on the other hand, gradually recovered from their wounds.
   As was generally true in cases of lynching, law enforcement made at least a superficial effort to identify and prosecute the ringleaders of the mob that dragged Wright from the city hall but to little avail. A grand jury early the next year failed to return a true bill against any of the perpetrators. Citing a lack of cooperation from potential witnesses, the jury said none of the guilty parties could be positively identified.
   The murder of Cleo Wright is generally considered the last lynching in Missouri, although the shooting death of town bully Ken McElroy in Skidmore in 1981 by an unidentified member of a crowd of townspeople who were confronting the hated McElroy has occasionally been characterized as a lynching as well. For a thorough account of the Wright lynching, I recommend The Lynching of Cleo Wright https://amzn.to/3YWPkXV by Dominic J. Capeci, Jr.

 

The Lynching of Roosevelt Grigsby

   Unlike some of the states of the Deep South, Missouri saw about as many white men as black men lynched during the late 1800s and early 1900s. This is not to say that blacks and whites were treated equally. No way! In the first place, even though the total number of whites lynched equaled or perhaps even exceeded the number of blacks lynched in Missouri, the proportion of blacks lynched as a ratio of the population was much greater. Also, black men were lynched more indiscriminately. Usually, when white men were lynched, there was pretty strong evidence against them and the offense of which they were accused was very serious. This wasn't necessarily the case with black men. They were often lynched on scant evidence and/or for relatively minor offenses, especially if the alleged offense involved a sexual advance toward a white woman. The lynching of Roosevelt Grigsby of Charleston, Missouri, is a case in point.
   About 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 18, 1924, Kathryn McFadden, a sixteen-year-old high school girl, started on foot with her younger sister from the confectionary store where Kathryn worked in Charleston to the girls' home a few blocks away. The girls were on North Elm Street just a couple of blocks from their house when a young black man jumped out from behind a fence and accosted them. He grabbed Kathryn and started dragging her across the street, but her and her sister's screams aroused the neighborhood and scared the attacker off.
   Kathryn had her dress torn and was in a "hysterical condition," according to the Charleston Times, when she was interviewed by law officers. However, she said she recognized her assailant because he had previously worked briefly at the confectionary where she was employed part-time. She identified the young man as Roosevelt Grigsby, who was about 21 years of age.
   Grigsby, who had previously served a stint in the state reformatory for an attempted assault on another young white woman in Charleston, was located at his home and brought to the Mississippi County sheriff's office in Charleston. Several other young black men were also rounded up for questioning. Grigsby admitted being in the vicinity of where the attempted assault had occurred, but he described two other young black men he claimed to have seen running from the area.
   Under questioning, Grigsby soon broke down and confessed, according to the local newspaper. About 8:30 p.m., after word of the alleged confession had spread throughout town, a mob, numbering at least 200, surrounded the sheriff's office. About half that number made a rush on the office and forcibly took Grigsby from the officers who were guarding him. The officers "attempted to interfere," according to the sheriff, "but were pushed aside."
   Grigsby maintained his composure and made no attempt to escape until after he was dragged from the room and into the street, where he began to scream and resist. Outside, he was attacked by several members of the mob as he was dragged to a tree on the east side of the sheriff's office. Someone produced a rope, and as the mob attempted to place the noose around Grigsby's neck, someone else struck him with the butt of a revolver, rendering him unconscious. One end of the rope was placed around his neck, and the other was thrown over a limb about fourteen feet off the ground. The victim did not appear to be conscious as he was drawn up.
   As the body swung back and forth, someone from the crowd fired a shot into it. After the body had hung for about thirty minutes, it was cut down, attached to the rear of an automobile, and dragged through the streets. With the mob traipsing along behind, the procession wound through the black district of Charleston, or the "bad lands," as local residents called the area. Several black families fled in fear after the lynching and the gruesome parade through their neighborhood.
   As the final act in the mob's cruel demonstration, Grigsby's body was tossed on a bonfire built near the intersection of Marshall and Elm and allowed to burn for some considerable time, with many in the mob hanging around until near midnight.
   Declaring that he planned to call a special grand jury, prosecuting attorney J. C. McDowell promptly launched an investigation into the lynching, but he got no cooperation. The mob was unmasked when they stormed the sheriff's office, and the sheriff and his deputies followed them outside when they dragged Grigsby from the office. However, the sheriff said it was too dark for him or his deputies to get a good look at any of the vigilantes and that he wasn't sure of the identify of any of them. A coroner's jury concluded the next day, December 19, that Grigsby had come to his death by lynching at the hands of a mob unknown to the jurors. McDowell enlisted the aid of the Missouri attorney general's office but to no avail. McDowell's successor, due to take office in January, announced that, on the advice of the circuit judge, he would not call a special grand jury but would, instead, wait for the next regular grand jury during the February term of court to take up the matter, since potential witnesses who refused to testify could not be punished while court was not in session. When the regular grand jury convened in February, it called at least twenty witnesses, but the jury announced after ten days that it had not obtained enough evidence to return a true bill against any of the lynchers. Thus, another lynch mob went unpunished.

 

  

"Noted McDonald County Desperado" Bill Matney

   In 1929, the Neosho Times remembered William "Bill" Matney as a "noted McDonald County desperado." A reminiscent account in the Springfield Press in 1930 recalled Matney, who'd been killed in 1919, as a "bad man" and "one of the notorious gunmen of McDonald County." But what do we really know about the man. Not much, as it turns out.
   Matney first drew widespread attention in the fall of 1888 when he was about 27 years old. On Saturday night, November 24, he was carousing in Southwest City when he got into a dispute with a man named Lee Loudermilk, a resident of nearby Indian Territory. Apparently a grudge had existed between the two for several months, and it came to a head that evening in Southwest City. During the affray, Matney drew his revolver and shot Loudermilk in the forehead. Luckily for Loudermilk, the ball ranged upward and came out at the top of his head, causing only a severe scalp wound. After the shooting, Matney immediately left town and was not heard from again for some time. However, according to the Pineville News, Matney acted "wholly in self-defense." If this was true, he probably was not charged with a crime.
   At any rate, he soon reappeared on the scene in McDonald County, where he quickly earned a reputation as a tyrant and a bully. According to the Springfield newspaper's 1930 account, when Matney "decided to 'take the town,' he met with little opposition.....Quick on the draw and absolutely fearless," Matney terrorized the residents of southwest McDonald County for some years, according to the Press.
   But Matney finally bullied one too many men. The Press told the story of his demise eleven years after the fact:

        One day, he met two men on Butler Creek near the present site of Noel. Matney drew his gun and ordered one of the men to crawl across the creek on his hands and knees, the stream being shallow at    that point. When the man reached the center of the stream, Matney ordered him to stop.
   "Now lap water like a dog," ordered the gun-flinger.... Matney then turned to the second man, who was standing on the bank of the stream, and ordered him to follow his companion into the water. The second man, who had been standing by watching the proceedings without a word, quickly drew his revolver and fired. Matney fell mortally wounded, and another bad man of the Ozarks hill country died with his boots on.

   That's the legend. The story of what really happened is less colorful, and the facts are sketchy. The only contemporaneous account I've found thus far of Matney's death appeared in the August 28, 1919 edition of the Neosho Times: "Bill Matney was shot and killed at Noel last week by Howard Smith and Horace Halbert. He was drunk and tried to make one of them wade in the river and dance."
   A bad man in truth, Bill Matney was even badder in legend.

Republic Bank Robbery of 1932

   On the night of March 6, 1932, shortly after ten p.m., four young men held up the City Hall Drug Store in Springfield. Described as "narcotic addicts" in a local newspaper the next day, the four locked the employees and customers in the prescription room and made off with $150 in cash and an estimated $25 worth of narcotics. The four holdup men entered the store at the same time, three from the Boonville Avenue entrance and the fourth from Central Street. Three employees and at least four customers were in the store at the time, and the armed men herded them into the prescription room and then began rifling the drawers. At least one of the bandits had apparently scouted out the place, because he knew exactly where the money till was located.
   The next day, before any solid leads in the drug store case could be developed, four robbers, believed to be the same four men, robbed the Bank of Republic in western Greene County. Three of the holdup men entered the bank on the late afternoon of March 7 with guns drawn and forced two employees and two customers into a rear room. Two other customers were ordered to stand at the rear of the bank near the rear room. Two of the three robbers looted the cash drawer and safe of over $1,200 while the third stood guard. The fourth accomplice waited nearby in a getaway car. A large quantity of adhesive tape had been taken in the drug store robbery, and the fact that the bank victims were bound with the same type of adhesive tape and the fact the description of the bank robbers matched that of the drug store holdup men led investigators to conclude that the same gang had pulled off both capers. The bank robbers made their getaway in a black coach with a Missouri license.
   No suspects were publicly identified until the last day of March, when a man attempted to cash a money order at an Omaha (Nebraska) store, and the storeowner suspected it had been stolen from the Bank of Republic. Two policemen happened to be in the store trying on clothes, and they attempted to arrest the suspect after the storeowner notified them of his suspicions. The suspect pulled a gun and was fatally wounded when he attempted to shoot his way to freedom. Based on ID found on the man after he was brought down, he was tentatively identified as C. E. Darling, a resident of Pittsburg, Kansas, who had served two penitentiary terms. A sidekick who was with Darling in the Omaha store made his escape.
   Another suspect, identified as Virgil Harris, was captured in Lincoln, Nebraska, about a week later after he, like Darling, attempted to cash a money order suspected of being taken from the Republic bank. Also like Darling, Harris was an ex-con, having been sentenced to prison from Greene County in 1927 on a charge of robbery and grand larceny. Near the same time as Harris's arrest, Paul King was identified as the man who'd been with Darling at the time he was shot and killed. Like Darling, King was from eastern Kansas, and he was thought to be the third Republic bank robber. A man thought to be the fourth robber was also known to police, but his identity was not immediately revealed.
   Also an ex-convict, King was captured in North Carolina on April 12, along with his wife and her brother, Everett Collins. King admitted to being one of the Republic robbers, but Collins denied any involvement in the crime. The first three suspected robbers were all in the their mid-twenties, but Collins was only about 19. King's wife was not suspected in the Republic robbery, but authorities wanted to question her.
   A day or two after King's capture, Elmer Boydston, 28, was captured in Kansas City, He admitted his part in the Republic robbery, and was promptly brought back to Greene County. Collins continued to deny involvement in the crime, and authorities were inclined to believe him. Boydston, who had been a barber in Kansas City until recently, said he and the three other suspects robbed the drug store in Springfield on March 6, drove to Joplin, and then came back the next day and robbed the Republic bank. With his confession, officials considered the case solved.
   About the first of June 1932, Harris was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 50 years in prison. King and Boydston, both of whom had admitted their involvement in the crime, testified against the defendant. In return for their cooperation, King received only a 12-year sentence, and Boydston got 15 years. The Missouri Supreme Court later ordered a new trial in the Harris case. At his new trial in early 1934, Harris was again convicted, but this time he, too, received only a 12-year sentence.

The Murder of Wilma Plaster

    After the dismembered body of a woman was found Friday afternoon, October 6, 1989, near Willard, authorities said “the crime was unlike anything ever discovered in Greene County.” The woman’s legs and pelvic area were stacked on top of her torso with her feet pointing skyward. Her head was in plastic bag nearby, and a knife and other items were found in another bag. The woman’s arms had been severed from her body but were nowhere to be seen. The missing arms and a lack of blood at the scene caused investigators to conclude that the woman had been murdered elsewhere and brought to where the body parts were found. Investigators further concluded that the parts had not been tossed from a moving vehicle but rather positioned at the side of the road.
   The time at which the body was placed at the side of the road was narrowed to a fifteen-minute window just before 4:00 p.m., but the time of death was uncertain. No clues to the woman’s identity were found at the scene. Her body was taken to Springfield and then sent to St. Louis the next day for an autopsy.
   On October 8, the victim was tentatively identified as sixty-six-year-old Wilma Plaster of Hollister, Missouri. Wilma was described by acquaintances as a friendly person and a regular churchgoer. Meanwhile, police were trying to locate the victim’s red 1969 Chevy Beretta, in which she’d left her Hollister home on October 3. Witnesses had reported seeing a car matching the Beretta’s description in the Springfield-Willard area on October 6 before the body was found.
   On October 9, Wilma’s automobile was found at a motel on North Glenstone in Springfield, and investigators began combing it for clues. The same day, the autopsy, although not yet complete, determined that the victim had been killed by a small-caliber gunshot to the back of the head. On Tuesday, October 10, investigators learned that someone had forged a check for over $4,000 on Wilma’s bank account about two weeks before her death. Officers theorized that the forgery was probably connected to her death and that she had been acquainted with her murderer.
   Later on Tuesday, a woman from Olvey, Arkansas, contacted authorities after she discovered a number of suspicious items on her property that had apparently been left there by fifty-three-year-old Shirley Jo Phillips, a friend of hers from Springfield who’d visited her on Monday and departed early Tuesday. The woman said Phillips appeared very nervous during her stay and that she had insisted on washing her car. Investigators went to Olvey, and the woman pointed them to items Phillips had stashed beneath a wooden porch adjoining her mobile home. The items, including several canceled checks on Wilma Plaster’s account and bloody floor mats, seemed to link Phillips to the forgery and very likely the murder. Further investigation revealed that Phillips and Plaster had met each other in Hollister about September 20 and that the forged check had been written just a day or two later.
   Phillips was arrested Tuesday night in Springfield and held on suspicion of forgery. Later, the charge was upgraded to first-degree murder. Phillips was charged in Greene County because it was thought Wilma was killed there, although the site of the murder was not definitely determined. Also known as Jo Ann Phillips, the suspect lived on West College Street in Springfield and had recently worked as a secretary. She also served as vice-president of a Branson entertainment fan club, and it was apparently through her connection to Branson that she had met Wilma Plaster.
   About a week after Phillips’s arraignment on the murder charge, her mother, seventy-six-year-old Lela Kyle, was reported missing, and soon after this announcement, Oklahoma authorities contacted Springfield Police to report that an elderly woman’s dismembered and mutilated body had been discovered in the north part of Broken Arrow on May 12. The dead woman was tentatively identified as Lela Kyle, and Shirley Jo Phillips, although not charged, was considered a prime suspect in her mother’s murder.
   Delayed several times, Phillips’s trial finally got underway in January 1992. Much of the prosecution testimony centered around Phillips’s visit to Nora Martin, her Arkansas friend, and the items found under the mobile home porch. Martin testified that Phillips cut a seatbelt out of the front passenger seat of her car during her stay in Arkansas and that she thoroughly washed and vacuumed the vehicle even though it already appeared clean. Phillips seemed very nervous when a newscast about Wilma Plaster’s murder came on TV, and she admitted that police probably wanted to question her about Wilma’s death. Forensics experts linked the incriminating items found under the porch to the defendant and the victim. They testified that a .38 caliber weapon found among the items was the gun that killed Mrs. Plaster.
   Phillips pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but her public defender also tried to shift blame for Plaster’s murder to the defendant’s thirty-two-year-old son, Glen “Buddy” Minster. In addition, the defense called witnesses from the Branson area to try to establish an alibi.
   On February 4, 1992, the jury found Phillips guilty of first-degree murder. The defendant showed no emotion, but, as she was escorted from the courtroom, she told reporters, “I didn’t do it.” The next day, the jury came back after deliberations with a sentence of death.
   Phillips’s subsequent appeals for a new trial were denied, but the Missouri Supreme Court ultimately threw out her death sentence and ordered a new sentencing hearing. Because of Minster’s refusal to cooperate and other circumstances, such as the fact that at least two witnesses were now dead, the prosecution decided not to pursue another death penalty, and in 1998, Phillips was resentenced to life imprisonment.
   This story is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo. https://amzn.to/3yZTIuH

 

 

Murder of Springfield Jeweler Harry Klein

   Yet another notorious crime that I considered including in my book Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo. (https://amzn.to/3yZTIuH), but finally decided to omit was the murder of Springfield jeweler Harry Klein in 1981. The body of the 65-year-old Klein, manager of the Zales Jewelry Store on Battlefield Mall, was found on the morning of July 14, 1981, alongside Pleasant Valley Road just south of Sunshine in Springfield. Klein had been shot several times, at least once in the stomach and once in the head.
   In the immediate aftermath of the crime, robbery was developed as the likely motive, as a money clip, a gold watch, a gold chain, and a diamond ring were among the items Klein usually had on his person that were missing from his body. Klein's car was located about two miles away from where his body was found, and fingerprints were taken from the auto. The only other lead in the case was the fact that some kids in the area of the murder said they'd heard what sounded like gunshots around 8 p.m. on the evening of the 13th, which gave investigators a good idea of the time of death. A day or so later, a witness came forward to give a description of a vehicle he had seen following Klein's Mustang shortly before the presumed time of the murder. Another witness said he had seen Klein eating at a restaurant on East Sunshine with a blonde woman not long before the murder.
   After a five-month investigation, Greg Crusen, 28, and Judy Henderson, 32, both of Springfield, were arrested in Fairbanks, Alaska, as suspects in the Klein murder. The two were known to have been acquaintances of Klein, and they were thought to have been the occupants of the car seen following Klein on the night of his murder. Henderson was thought to be the woman who had been seen with Klein at the East Sunshine restaurant. Authorities said Crusen and Henderson were identified as suspects early on in the investigation, but they had left Springfield immediately after the crime and had been moving from place to place ever since. When they lived in Springfield, Crusen had been a real estate agent, and Henderson had run a tanning salon. A former associate of Henderson described her as a real nice person. Henderson kept company with Crusen, although the associate said Henderson claimed not to consider Crusen her boyfriend.
   The suspects waived extradition, and they were brought back to Springfield on the last day of 1981. Arraigned on first-degree murder charges on January 4, they remained in jail in lieu of $500,000 bond each. At their preliminary hearing in early February, an Alaska woman testified that Judy Henderson, while drunk, had confessed to her in a Fairbanks bar to having set a man up and having participated in his killing because she hated the man, although she did not give names or other specifics. The same witness said both Henderson and Crusen seemed nervous when they first arrived in Fairbanks, and they mentioned that they had witnessed a murder and thought a hitman was after them. The witness said she saw a wound on Henderson's body and that, when she asked about it, Henderson said a bullet had struck her after passing through a man's body. Both defendants were bound over for trial in the circuit court.
   The defendants were granted separate trials, and Henderson went on trial first, in July 1982. On July 27, the jury came back with a guilty verdict and a sentence of life imprisonment. In a letter to the judge, Henderson said she thought the punishment was overly harsh, because she had not killed anyone. The whole truth had not yet come out, she said, because she had been advised not to say certain things that might hurt someone else's cause (presumably Crusen's, since she and her co-defendant had the same lawyer).
   The original charge against Crusen was dismissed because he and Henderson were charged jointly. A new indictment charging Crusen by himself was then filed in order to allow Henderson to testify against him. Although listed as a possible witness, Henderson ended up not being called to testify at Crusen's trial in July 1983, although other prosecution witnesses testified that Crusen had confessed to killing Klein. Crusen, however, took the stand in his own defense to deny the charge, saying that Henderson alone had carried out the killing and that he was not even with her at the time but rather met up with her later and that she was hysterical and crying that she had shot Klein. Described as "clean cut," Crusen was acquitted of murder, despite the fact that much evidence suggested that he, not Henderson, was the actual trigger man in the crime. Why the prosecutor chose not to call Henderson as a witness against Crusen is not quite clear.
   Henderson filed a number of appeals over the years but to no avail until her sentence was finally commuted to time served in 2017 by Governor Eric Greitens, after she had spent 35 years behind bars. In explaining his decision, Greitens said the judge at Henderson's trial had told him that she actually had a relatively minor role in the murder, and Thomas Mountjoy, who had prosecuted the case, also supported clemency, saying it was the first time in his career he had ever supported clemency in a case he had prosecuted. Greitens also cited the obvious conflict of interest in the fact that Henderson's lawyer also represented Crusen. Henderson had been offered, through her attorney, a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against Crusen, but the offer had never been passed on to Henderson. In addition, four defense witnesses had allegedly been paid to lie in Crusen's case. Suffice it to say that, if all this was indeed true, the fact that Judy Henderson served 35 years in prison for the murder of Harry Klein while Greg Crusen got off scot free was a grave travesty of justice.

 

Murder of Lena Cukerbaum

   Another notorious incident that I considered including in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County https://amzn.to/3yZTIuH, but ultimately decided to omit was the murder of storekeeper Lena Cukerbaum on the night of Saturday, November 30 or the early morning of Sunday, December 1, 1974. Mrs. Cukerbaum's body was found in her living quarters at Luhn's store, located at the corner of Highway 13 and Greene County Route CC about ten miles north of Springfield, by a deputy who was dispatched to investigate a report that the elderly woman had not opened the store that morning as she was accustomed to doing. Mrs. Cukerbaum had operated the store for about 50 years.
   The woman's hands were bound behind her back with a coat hanger, her ankles were taped together, and she'd been brutally beaten. Investigators called to the scene speculated that robbery was the motive for the crime, since a box that was thought to normally contain money was found empty. Mrs. Cukerbaum was known to keep large sums of money on the premises, but the exact amount of missing money was unknown. Officers theorized that the victim had been tied up and tortured in an effort to get her to tell where her money was hidden. They further speculated that the 81-year-old widow had put up a strong resistance, since the tape around her ankles was almost loose and the coat hanger wire around her wrists was also stretched. Official cause of death was suffocation caused by collapsed lungs due to most of her ribs on both sides being broken. "In other words," said Greene County coroner Erwin Busiek, "she was stomped to death."
   No definite leads were uncovered or suspects identified in the immediate wake of the crime. On December 2, however, authorities announced that they wanted to question two men and a woman who were seen in the area of the store on Saturday evening driving a brown 1957 Chevrolet. The next day, December 3, officials further announced that they were looking at the possibility that three men who escaped from the Clay County Jail in Liberty, Missouri, in the wee hours of Sunday morning were responsible for the heinous crime committed 160 miles away the same morning. A car stolen in nearby Independence shortly after the escape had been found only about a quarter of a mile from Luhn's store. Over the next day or so, two other stolen cars entered the picture as possible evidence in the murder case.
   On Friday, December 6, authorities said that three definite suspects had been identified, although their names were not immediately revealed. Two men were already in custody in Iowa, while the third was still at large. The three were officially charged with first-degree murder on December 9, although they were still not publicly identified. One of the suspects was originally from the Springfield area. The three men who escaped from the Liberty jail were not the three men charged with murder.
   On December 11, the suspects were identified as James Teitsworth, 23, Ralph Parcel, 23, and Berton DeWitt, 25, all of Iowa. Teitsworth and Parcel were returned to Greene County a few days later, while charges against DeWitt were dismissed and a different Iowan, Earl Weeks, 35, was named in his place as the third suspect. Weeks was extradited to Missouri in early January 1975.
   In late January, Teitsworth agreed to testify against the other two defendants in a plea bargain deal that reduced the charge against him to being an accessory. He said he was the driver of the car and the lookout but that he did not enter the store and that the plan was only to rob Mrs. Cuckerbaum, not kill her. None of the defendants knew the woman, but Teitsworth knew of the store, because he had once stayed briefly with a family in the Brighton area.
   At his trial in early April, Weeks was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, with Teitsworth serving as the primary witness against him. When Parcel went on trial in late July, he testified in his own defense, claiming that he, too, did not go inside the store building. He said he stayed outside the door as a lookout while Teitsworth drove down the road as a lookout and that only Weeks actually entered the building. The jury, though, didn't buy his story, and he, like Weeks, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, Teitsworth's deal called for him to receive a five-year sentence with one year to be served in the county jail and the remainder to be served on probation, assuming he conducted himself properly.
   During the months and years after their convictins, both Weeks and Parcel filed and lost a series of appeals and requests for new trials, just as they had lost bids for changes of venue at the time of their trials. However, both men were finally furloughed and then paroled in 1989. The actions caused an uproar of protest in Greene County, especially among neighbors of Mrs. Cukerbaum, but to no avail.

The Burning Deaths of Willard and Viola Blades

   The lot where Willard and Viola Blades lived at the corner of Grant Avenue and Catalpa Street in Springfield was so ringed with trees and shrubs that, when their home caught fire late Saturday night, June 16, 1984, no one discovered the blaze until it was out of control. A passing motorist finally noticed the fire and called it in, but the house was already consumed in flames. After the fire was extinguished, investigators found the charred remains of the couple in the rubble, but the bodies were so badly burned that investigators said they might never know the exact cause of their deaths. Fire and police detectives did not suspect foul play, and an initial examination of the bodies yielded no clues, leaving authorities to speculate that the couple must have died of smoke inhalation.
   But some things didn’t quite seem right from the very beginning. The couple were known as “sticklers for fire safety” and had several smoke detectors in their home. Mrs. Blades’s body was found in an upstairs room stretched out in the middle of a bed in an unusual position, while her dead husband was found on his back nearby in the bedroom floor. Victims of fire were more often found in a curled up position.
   Suspicions were further aroused when forensics tests revealed that Viola had two head injuries. She also had a piece of rope tied around one wrist and what appeared to be a piece of cloth tied around her neck, suggesting that she might have been assaulted and tied up prior to her death. Investigators concluded from the burn pattern beneath the bed that the fire had probably started there, and tests later confirmed that an accelerant had been used under the bed.
   Unlike his wife’s body, Willard Blades’s body had no signs of injury, and investigators tentatively concluded that he had, in fact, died of smoke inhalation. Officials now strongly suspected that they were looking at either a homicide-suicide or a double homicide.
   But which one? There were no signs of forced entry and no signs that anything of substantial value had been taken. Had Blades assaulted his wife and then burned her and himself up in the fire, or was the arson an attempt to cover up a heinous double murder? Investigators leaned toward the double-homicide theory, despite no evidence of a break-in or a robbery.
   Based on interviews with friends and relatives of the Bladeses in Oklahoma, investigators soon identified an acquaintance of the couple as a person of interest in the case. The man, whose name was not revealed at first, was known to have been in Springfield on the Saturday that the Blades house burned down.
   The “acquaintance” of the couple turned out to be Willard Blades’s nephew Ronald Conn. By July 24, Springfield officers had accumulated enough evidence to charge him and two accomplices with two counts each of capital murder in the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Blades. The accomplices were Ann Marie Dulany and Paul Richard Schmitt, both from Illinois. Conn and Ms. Dulany, who’d been living together, were already in custody in Illinois when the charges were filed, and Schmitt was arrested later that day. The suspects were brought back to Springfield and arraigned in circuit court.
   The defendants’ cases were separated, and Conn’s came up first. He finally went on trial for capital murder in early June 1986. Just after the trial opened, Conn pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in a deal that allowed him to escape the death penalty. As part of the plea-bargain, Conn gave a statement admitting to stealing stuff from his uncle and aunt. He placed primary blame for the crime on Schmitt, however, claiming that he and Ms. Dulany were already outside the house when Schmitt set the fire. Conn was sentenced to two concurrent life terms.
   At her trial in December 1986, Dulany admitted being present at the fire, but she laid nearly all the blame for the murders on Conn. The defense claimed she’d only helped Conn because she was under his control. It didn’t help Dulany’s cause, however, that she had given a conflicting statement shortly after her arrest in which she laid most of the blame for the murders on Schmitt.
   The jury found Dulany guilty, and she was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for fifty years. Her subsequent appeals were ultimately denied.
   In February 1987, Schmitt, the third defendant, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in keeping with a previously negotiated arrangement in which he’d agreed to testify against Conn, if necessary. Schmitt received two concurrent twenty-year prison terms with no possibility for parole.
   So, even though the evidence suggested Conn was the one who actually started the fire that burned up his uncle and aunt and destroyed their house, Ms. Dulany ended up getting a tougher sentence than her male sidekick in that he was eligible for parole sooner. Perhaps that’s the risk she ran by refusing to cop a plea. However, Mother Nature stepped in to rectify the seeming inequity. Conn died of natural causes at the age of sixty-eight in 2014 while still serving time at the Farmington Correctional Center.
   This post is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo.

 

 

Bombing of Wilder's Restaurant in Joplin

   Since moving to Joplin many years ago, I've occasionally read or heard reference to a bombing that took place in the 1950s at Wilder's Restaurant on Main Street, but I'd never actually read a detailed account of the incident until yesterday, when I started researching it for this blog.
   On Thursday night, September 3, 1959, a dynamite explosion ripped through the upstairs office, apartment, and lounge above the restaurant, injuring six people, one of them critically. Apparently, five sticks of dynamite had been placed on the roof of the two-story building, directly above the office of the restaurant owner, Vern Wilder. Police theorized that the explosion was an attempt on the life of Wilder or his associate, Harry Hunt.
   But Wilder was downstairs in the restaurant at the time and was not injured, and Hunt was also not injured. All six of the injured people were in the upstairs part of the building, including 70-year-old Charles Greenwood, who was critically injured. The blast showered bricks and glass onto Main Street street outside the restaurant and shattered the windows of several neighboring businesses. "It shook the hell out of everything," said a man who happened to be passing by on the sidewalk and barely missed being killed or seriously injured. Greenwood, an employee of a cigar store next door to the restaurant, died on the morning of September 5.
   Police immediately undertook an investigation of the explosion. It was suspected that either someone with a personal grudge against Wilder and/or Hunt or underworld figures involved in illegal gambling were responsible for the bombing, because it was an open secret that Wilder's was one of the main "casinos" in Joplin. In fact, one report said that Wilder's was among the three largest gambling establishments in the entire state of Missouri. Wilder had even admitted during a civil action in 1950 that Hunt operated a gambling room above his restaurant, and the two men had both been indicted in 1951 for setting up gambling devices, although the indictments were later quashed. At the time of the explosion, Wilder was suing an insurance company, claiming a safe containing $10,000 ($7,000 of which belonged to Hunt) had been stolen from the restaurant property and that the insurance company had refused to pay for the loss. This was cited as another possible motive for the crime.
   According the the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the upstairs part of Wilder's was Joplin's "only big-time gambling casino." The previous year (1958), Missouri governor James Blair had named Joplin as one of the "worst spots in Missouri for gambling." Although he had not identified Wilder's specifically in his formal statement, he had reportedly mentioned the restaurant in private remarks. Informed of the governor's remarks, Wilder denied that he ran the biggest gambling operation in Jasper County. He just "ran a friendly game," Wilder said. "I just try to run a good restaurant."
   The Post-Dispatch went on the assert that there had recently been "considerable jealousy among gamblers" in the Tri-State area of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, as some of the gamblers not associated with Wilder's resented the fact that the restaurant had apparently been granted an exclusive right to operate in Joplin with police turning a blind eye to Wilder's activities while clamping down on others.
   In addition, after Blair's 1958 report, some of the big-time gamblers in Kansas City had felt the heat because of the governor's vow to crack down on gambling in KC and had allegedly invaded Joplin as a more lucrative and wide-open field for their gambling operations. Several months before the restaurant bombing, the Kansas City high-rollers had begun demanding a cut of Wilder's gambling proceeds. Despite these allegations, little proof was offered, and no one was indicted for the explosion or the murder of Greenwood.
   In early 1960, a Jasper County grand jury launched an investigation not only into the explosion but also into gambling activities in the county. The investigation uncovered evidence of gambling not only at Wilder's but also in Carthage and at one or two other locations in the county. Wilder and several associates, including Hunt, were indicted for gambling, but the grand jury report, issued in February, failed to uncover a definite motive or to name a suspect in the September explosion.

"Big George" Herrelson

   One of the chapters of my book Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo. is about the murder of Joplin watchmaker R. T. Thompson in late October 1929 during a robbery attempt gone bad. George Herrelson; his wife, Bertha; Bertha's brother, Earl Osborn; and two other men were arrested in connection with the crime two years later, in October 1931. The Herrelson couple and Osborn were ultimately found guilty of first-degree murder in the case, and they received sentences of life imprisonment, while the other two men, who were younger and who testified against the other defendants, were given lighter sentences for second-degree murder convictions.
   The two younger men testified that Osborn was the trigger man in the murder and that Herrelson was the leader of the gang. They said that Herrelson and Osborn had been involved in a number of previous robberies. So, I knew, or at least suspected, that Herrelson and Osborn had been involved in other crimes, but only recently did I uncover some of the details of those crimes.
   Residents of Cherokee County, Kansas, George and Bertha Herrelson were, from all appearances, fairly upstanding members of society during the early to mid-1920s. They had two popular and pretty teenage daughters, one of whom was selected a school queen at Galena. But somewhere along the line, "Big George," as he was sometimes called, got sidetracked, and his life took a criminal turn.
   Herrelson's illegal shenanigans first came to public attention in the spring of 1928, when he allegedly set fire to his own house in an apparent attempt to collect the insurance. Charged with arson, he was acquitted at trial in the spring of 1929. By this time, though, or shortly after, he had become involved in other criminal activities.
   The murder of Thompson, as previously mentioned, took place in October 1929.
   Then, in late December of 1929, a gang of men robbed a prominent, elderly businessman named William Cottengin and his daughter at Cottengin's home in Hartville, Missouri. The gang pulled up outside the home, and when the daughter came to the door, they forced her at gunpoint back into the house. They forced the old man and his daughter to lie on the floor and bound and gagged both of them. With their victims incapacitated, they chiseled open a safe Cottengin kept in his home and took about $700 from it. They then jumped back into their car and sped out of town.
   As with the Thompson murder, there were no suspects in the Cottengin case at first, but in early January 1930, just days after the Hartville caper, a jewelry store in Herrelson's hometown of Galena was robbed, and he was arrested in connection with the heist. Then, in March 1930, before the Galena case could be prosecuted, several men were arrested in northwest Oklahoma as alleged members of a robbery ring that had been operating in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri for several months, and one or more of the captives named Herrelson and Osborn as fellow members of the gang. Herrelson was also fingered as the leader of the group who had robbed Cottengin.
   The Missouri governor filled out a requisition to have Herrelson returned to Missouri to face charges in the strongarm robbery of Cottengin, and Kansas authorities, who already had the defendant in custody for the jewelry store robbery, honored the request. Herrelson was taken back to Hartville to face assault and robbery charges and was lodged in the Wright County jail. However, he somehow got free of the charge or perhaps was released on bond, because he was back home in Cherokee County when he and his wife were arrested in October 1931 on charges of murdering Thompson. And that was the end of "Big George" Herrelson's criminal career. 

Sports Broadcaster Vern Hawkins

   One of my earliest memories is listening to the Southwest Missouri State Bears basketball games on Springfield's KWTO-AM radio station. The voice of the Bears back then, in the early 1950s, was Vern Hawkins, and he continued calling the Bears games for another thirty years or so after that.
   A native of Dallas County, Missouri, Hawkins attended Buffalo High School, where he was a star basketball player during the late 1930s and early 1940s. He played one season of basketball for Missouri Valley College in Marshall before he was called into military service during World War II.
   After the war, he transferred to SMS, where he lettered for two years under legendary coach Andy McDonald (after whom McDonald Arena was named). Hawkins started his broadcasting career while still in college, calling Bears games on KGBX radio during the 1949-1950 season, McDonald's final season as head coach. In 1951, Hawkins moved to KWTO, becoming news and sports director.
   One of the highlights of Hawkins's career was broadcasting Bears games during the team's back-to-back NAIA championship years of 1951-52 and 1952-53. In addition to announcing Bears basketball games, he also broadcast Drury College basketball games for several years, and later he added SMS football games to his schedule. Hawkins retired from broadcasting in 1985, having announced approximately 900 Bears basketball games.
   While he was still broadcasting, Hawkins also went into partnership with Bill Virdon (former Major League Baseball player) and Beryl Swan in a sporting goods store in Springfield. He also became a stockbroker and investment advisor.
   Hawkins died in 1993, and he was posthumously inducted into the Springfield-Area Sports Hall of Fame two years later.

   To be sure, there have been several other long-time play-by-play sports announcers in Springfield over the years. These include Bill Maynard and Dick Bradley, both contemporaries of Hawkins. Another name that comes to mind is Ned Reynolds, whose career giving sports news and announcing sporting events for KY-3 TV in Springfield spanned almost fifty years from about 1967 to 2014.
   But I always associate Vern Hawkins, first and foremost, with Springfield sportscasters, because he was the one I listened to as a little kid and he was still going strong long after I grew to adulthood.

The Criminal Assault of Elaine Hale

   Eighteen-year-old Elaine Hale of Springfield had dated twenty-one-year-old Bobby Dale Shay of Bolivar a few times previously, and he'd never tried to molest her. The night of Saturday, April 26, 1958, was different, though.
   On that night, she and a friend went on a double date with Shay and Carl Sidney Roberts, a twenty-three-year-old friend of his from Bolivar. The foursome went to a drive-in movie, and after the show, Roberts, who was driving, took his date home. Instead of then taking Elaine home, however, he drove south of town on Fremont to the Lake Springfield vicinity and pulled off the road in a secluded area. According to Miss Hale's later story, when Shay got some beer from the glove compartment and he and Roberts started drinking, she got anxious and asked to be taken home, but Shay threatened to "rough her up" if she didn't shut up. She started screaming, and Roberts punched and choked her to make her be quiet. He then held her down while Shay raped her, and then Shay held her while Roberts also criminally assaulted her. Elaine tried to resist, scratching Shay and biting Roberts, but to no avail.
   After the assault, the young men dropped Elaine off in the wee hours of April 27 near her home on East Trafficway, and she immediately reported what had happened to her father, who promptly notified police. The officers took Elaine, who was bleeding from the mouth, to a doctor, who confirmed that she'd been sexually assaulted, and she identified her attackers. They were located and taken into custody at a cafe on Kearney Street a short time later. Shay had scratches on his hands and arms and abrasions on his face, while Roberts had a mark on his wrist. In addition, Elaine's socks were found in the car stuffed behind the back seat, where she said she'd put them.
   Charges of forcible rape were filed against the two men on Monday the 28th. At their preliminary hearing on May 12, Elaine, the main prosecution witness, identified the defendants as her attackers and testified to the facts in the case much as she had related them in the immediate aftermath of the incident. The defense grilled her on cross-examination, trying to find discrepancies in her story, and she was finally led crying and screaming from the courtroom. At the conclusion of the hearing, the defendants were bound over for trial in the circuit court and, at the urging of prosecutor Lyndon Sturgis, held without bond. Sturgis announced that he would seek the death penalty for both defendants in the case.
   Defense attorney Bob Yocum sought a change of venue for his clients, saying they could not get a fair trial in Greene County because of all the publicity surrounding the case, and the motion was granted, with the trial being moved to Christian County. The defense was granted a separation, and Shay's trial got underway in December. At the start of the trial, Sturgis announced that he was no longer seeking the death penalty. Elaine Hale again testified as the main state witness, repeating the story she'd told previously. For the defense, Shay took the stand to tell his side of the story. He denied raping Miss Hale but admitted having consensual sex with her, and he claimed Roberts had nothing to do with the incident.
   Shay was found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in the state prison. A motion for a new trial was denied.
   At Roberts's trial in June 1959, defense attorneys attacked Miss Hale's character. They got her to admit that she'd first met Bobby Shay when he picked her up on the streets of Springfield and that she'd allowed herself to be picked up at least one or two other times. She also admitted that she and Shay had been kissing in the back seat before the alleged rape. As for their client, the attorneys said, Roberts had not even had intercourse with Miss Hale, much less raped her.
   In closing arguments, the state said that not only did the evidence, such as Elaine's bloody mouth, indicate a forcible attack but that it came down to a matter of logic and reason. Who were you going to believe? It took courage for Miss Hale even to testify, and why would she testify to anything but the truth? The defendant, on the other hand, was highly motivated to lie in order to try to save his own skin. After the jury was already in deliberation, the judge granted a defense motion for a mistrial because the prosecution had drawn attention the fact that Roberts's wife had declined to testify in her husband's defense and because Miss Hale was allowed to sit on the front row sobbing and wiping her eyes in full view of the jury.
   After the hung jury, charges against Roberts were dropped. Then, in October 1960, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the verdict in the Shay case on a technicality and ordered a new trial. Prosecutors subsequently dropped charges against Shay, too, because Miss Hale, the complaining witness, had moved to California and did not want to have to go through the ordeal of another trial.
   So much for the death penalty that was originally sought by the prosecution. Instead of dying in the gas chamber, Shay served less than two years behind bars for the alleged rape of Elaine Hale, and Roberts got off scot free.
   Note: This is a case that I considered writing about when I was researching my most recent book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo., but I ultimately decided not to include it in the book, at least partly because of the rather anticlimactic ending to the story.

   

Robert Fay Adams Slays His Wife

   When twenty-one-year-old Adela Adams and her nineteen-year-old sister, Donna, left their Springfield home for school on the morning of February 3, 1970, their father, Robert Fay Adams, was lying on the couch, and their mother, Willa Lee Adams, was getting ready for work. It was the last time the girls would see their mom alive.
   When Adela and Donna came home that afternoon, their father said Willa had left after he fell asleep on the couch, taking some personal items with her, and he didn’t know where she’d gone. The girls knew their parents had been having marital problems, but some things about their mother’s disappearance just didn’t add up. For instance, Willa hadn’t shown up for work, and that just wasn’t like their mother. The longer she stayed gone, the more concerned the young women became.
   Later in February, Adams went to Florida, and when he came back, he told his daughters he’d met their mother there and she was coming home in early March. When she didn’t show up at the appointed time and their father left for Kansas City, the girls finally went to the police.
   A check in Kansas City revealed that Adams had never arrived there. In mid-March, he was located in a Pensacola (Florida) hospital. He’d been admitted the night before when a young woman sought help for him after he took an overdose of medicine. Just twenty-two, the woman had run away from Springfield with the older man about ten days earlier.
   Adams’s stomach was pumped, and when he regained consciousness on March 18, he admitted he must have killed his wife but claimed not to remember how. All he remembered, he said, was seeing her lifeless, bloody body on the floor of their bedroom with a revolver beside the body. He’d loaded the body into a vehicle, cleaned up the mess in the house, and buried the body with a bulldozer at a gravel bar southeast of Forsyth in the Kissee Mills area. He also disposed of the gun in the same general area.
   Willa’s body was found on March 19 buried in a ditch that ran beside a gravel bar along the banks of Beaver Creek. A post mortem determined that she had been shot in the head, and a first-degree murder charge was filed against Adams, who was brought back from Florida on March 21. Acting on a tip from Adams, divers retrieved the suspected murder weapon from Bull Shoals Lake near the Highway 86 overpass.
   At Adams’s preliminary examination, the state introduced the admission Adams had made about burying his wife’s body. To establish motive, the prosecution also called Patricia Weidmann, a Springfield woman, to testify that Adams suspected his wife was cheating on him. The witness said she’d accompanied Adams on the night before the murder as he followed Willa and saw her meet another man at a Springfield motel.
   Arraigned in Greene County on May 1, Adams pleaded not guilty by reason of mental defect. The trial finally got underway in February 1971. Testifying for the prosecution, the defendant’s daughters both said they’d seen their father’s revolver in his closet right before their mother disappeared but that it was gone after she disappeared. Both also testified about their parents’ marital problems, and Adela added that her mother had told her on the morning of her disappearance that she was irritated because the girls’ father had followed her the night before.
   Although called by the state, Mrs. Weidmann was treated as an adverse witness because she kept offering testimony painting Willa Lee as promiscuous and even suggested that Donna might not be Robert Fay Adams’s biological child.
   The defense claimed Adams killed his wife during a heated argument that ensued after she confronted him on the morning of February 3 about following her the night before. During the quarrel, Willa Lee threw up the fact that he’d raised a child that wasn’t even his, told him who Donna’s real father was, and called Adams a “damn fool.” Willa Lee went for her husband’s gun, but Adams got it and shot her in a fit of anger. He couldn’t remember actually pulling the trigger, though.
   Adams took the stand to deny killing Willa, claiming he’d never hurt his wife in his life. Also, two mental health experts testified that Adams had a hysterical personality that might lead to a mental breakdown when confronted with his wife’s infidelities. This might very well cause him to have no memory of killing his wife.
   During rebuttal, the prosecution, seeking to refute the idea that the murder was not premeditated, called a woman to the stand who said Adams had discussed with her in 1969 possible ways of killing his wife.
   On February 20, the jury came back with a verdict of murder in the second degree and a sentencing recommendation of forty years in prison. Adams was released on $25,000 bond while the defense appealed his case to the Missouri Supreme Court. He absconded during the first half of 1973, while the case was still awaiting a hearing.
   Adams was recaptured in November 1973 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport as he returned from Germany, where he and a new wife had been to visit her parents. Adams was brought back to Missouri and taken directly to Jefferson City to begin serving his prison term.
   Because of his reported good behavior at the state prison, Adams was transferred to a minimum-security facility in Fordland prior to 1981 It was thought he’d probably be released on parole in a few years, and he was being considered for a work-release program. In mid-March 1981, he was even granted a furlough to visit friends in Columbia.
   Big mistake! He was last seen in Columbia on March 14, and he didn’t show up on the 17th when he was scheduled to be back at Fordland. Nobody knew where he’d gone, and nobody in Missouri ever saw him again.
   This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo.

May Kennedy McCord

   I recently read that a new book featuring the collected writings of May Kennedy McCord will soon be released by the University of Arkansas Press. For those unfamiliar with her, McCord was a famous folklorist, writer, radio personality, singer, and promoter of the Ozarks who for many years had a regular column in Springfield newspapers called "Hillbilly Heartbeats" and later a radio show by the same name on KWTO-AM. She was affectionately known as the "Queen of the Ozarks" or the "Queen of the Hillbillies."
   May was born in 1880 in Carthage, Missouri, to J. Thomas and Delia (Fike) Kennedy. When May was a young child, the family moved to Stone County, where she grew up. She married traveling salesman Charles C. McCord in 1903, and the couple had three kids. The family moved to Springfield in 1918. In July 1924, when May was 43 years old, her first piece of writing in print, a poem entitled "Alarming," appeared in a very small local publication, appropriately called Midget Magazine, edited by Thomas Nickel, who was also publisher of the school newspaper for Southwest Missouri State Teachers College (now MSU). The poem appeared under May's maiden name, May Kennedy, because her husband, thinking she was already too busy with her music, her church work, and her involvement in various organizations such as the WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union), did not want her to launch a writing career as well. However, he soon relented, and she quickly had an article accepted in Sample Case magazine, a publication of the United Commercial Travelers, a national organization to which her husband belonged. Subsequently, she published several other articles in the same magazine, and she soon started writing a column called "Hillbilly Heartbeats" for Ozark Life, published by Otto Ernest Rayburn, noted author, editor, and promoter of all things Ozarkian. Ozark Life was the official publication of The Ozarkians, an organization for regional writers based in Eureka Springs. May was an active member of the group.
   In October 1932, May's "Hillbilly Heartbeats" column began appearing in the Springfield Sunday News and Leader, and she continued writing the column for Springfield newspapers for almost eleven years. In addition to May's own writings and musings about the folklore and folkways of the Ozarks, the column often carried the work of other area writers. This column was something of a forerunner of "The Wastebasket" column edited by Lucille Morris Upton and others (see my March 13, 2012, blog entry about Lucille Morris Upton). Actually, I think McCord's "Hillbilly Heartbeats" column and "The Wastebasket" column (under another predecessor of Upton's) ran simultaneously in Springfield newspapers for a while, but the two were more or less combined under the name "The Wastebasket" after McCord quit writing her column in mid-1942. Upton came along as editor of the combined column about three years later.
   The reason May quit her column was so that she could take a job in St. Louis at radio station KWK as a musician (e. g. guitar player), folksinger, storyteller, and on-air personality. May would stay in St. Louis during the week and come back home to Springfield on weekends. May's husband died not long after she took the St. Louis job, and in 1945 she moved back to Springfield, where she took a job with KWTO doing a program called "Hillbilly Heartbeats," the same title as her former newspaper column. It was during her time with KWTO that May became widely known as the "Queen of the Ozarks" or "Queen of the Hillbillies," although one or both monikers might have occasionally been used to describe her prior to this time. May continued doing this show at least through the mid-1950s, because I remember that it was still on when I was a kid. I rarely listened to it, but I think my parents occasionally did.
   Mrs. McCord was named Missouri's Mother of the Year in 1950. She was cited not just for her accomplishments as a writer and radio personality but also for her work with church and charitable organizations.

   When May died in 1979 at the age of 99, she was already a legend in the Ozarks.