A Murder at Percy’s Cave

   On Monday evening, August 14, 1922, several young adults drove out from Springfield in three cars to Percy’s Cave (now Fantastic Caverns). The caravan included Ernest Cameron and his wife, Eva; John Yancy and his wife, Aline; and George Aurentz and his girlfriend. Yancy was an uncle of Ernest Cameron, and Aurentz was a brother of Eva Cameron. They were all on friendly terms, or so it seemed. But strained relations lay beneath the surface.
   Upon arrival at the cave property, all the group except Yancy walked down a hill to a pavilion, where a dance was in progress. Yancy, 37, stayed in his car with a bottle of liquor. Some of the others had also been drinking, or soon would be. It was about 9:00 p.m.
   At the pavilion, 33-year-old Aurentz handed over a pistol he was carrying to the son of the property owner, J. W. Crow. Aurentz and the others then started dancing on a platform beneath the pavilion. Exactly what happened after this was disputed, but we can generally reconstruct the most likely scenario. Not long after the group arrived, 25-year-old Ernest Cameron, accompanied by his wife, brought some food back to Yancy at the cars, where Ernest and Eva got into an argument. They temporarily resolved the matter and returned to the pavilion. After a while, Eva, 32, danced with a man named John Hedgpath, and he and Eva’s husband got into a quarrel.
   Hedgpath left, but Cameron took up the matter with Eva. The dispute grew so heated that Eva struck at Ernest, and he retaliated by hitting her and, by some accounts, knocking her down. She appealed to her brother for help, but George told Eva he didn’t want to interfere.
   Eva and Ernest, still arguing, started back toward the cars. They hadn’t gone far when Eva started cursing her husband and throwing rocks at him.
   Eva then retreated to the pavilion, and Cameron ambled that way, too. Eva again complained to her brother of Ernest’s mistreatment of her. George remarked that he was going to kill Cameron if he didn’t stop fighting with his sister. Aline Yancy, overhearing the threat, went to the parking lot and told her husband he needed to get Ernest away from the dance before a serious fight happened between him and George. But it was too late.
   After Aline left the pavilion, the dance quickly ended, and Ernest started back toward the cars, shoving his wife along. As the couple neared the cars, according to Eva, her husband struck her in the face with a pop bottle. She stumbled back down the hill and saw her brother, who had retrieved his pistol from Crow, leaving the dance. Eva again called to George for help, and he hurried past her to where Cameron was standing near Yancy’s car.
   Stopping a few feet in front of Cameron, Aurentz cursed and threatened to shoot the other man. Yancy yelled from his car for George not to shoot, but he drew his pistol and fired three shots in quick succession. Cameron stumbled back, collapsed, and died almost instantly. Eva Cameron rushed up and yelled to her brother, “Oh, George, you’ve killed him! You’ve killed him in cold-blooded murder.”
   Warning the bystanders to stand back, Aurentz retreated into the woods, as Yancy swore revenge.
   After hiding out overnight, Aurentz turned himself and was lodged in the Greene County Jail. A coroner’s jury concluded that Cameron died from a gunshot wound inflicted by George Aurentz, and Aurentz was indicted for murder in early September.
   Aurentz’s trial got underway in early December 1922. John and Aline Yancy were two of the main witnesses for the prosecution, testifying that Aurentz had come up to Cameron, threatened to shoot him, and then immediately opened fire. One of the main defense witnesses was Eva Cameron, Aurentz’s brother. She told of her husband’s mistreatment of her, she said Ernest had a gun and that George was only defending himself, and she denied saying George had killed Ernest in cold blood. The prosecution claimed Eva was not a credible witness because she was not even present when the shots were fired but instead came rushing up afterwards. The defense, in turn, went after the state’s witnesses, especially John Yancy, claiming he was a man of low character and was out to get their client.
   Testifying in his own defense, Aurentz said Cameron had made threats against him and was abusive to both his sister and his mother.
   Although Aurentz had been charged with first degree murder, the judge gave instructions allowing for a lesser degree of guilt, and the jury deliberated only two hours before returning a verdict of second degree murder. Sentence was set at twenty-five years in prison.The defense appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, and in June 1924, the high court overruled the lower court’s decision largely on the grounds that Eva Cameron’s statement that George had killed her husband in cold blood should not have been admitted. Since she was not at the immediate scene when the shooting started and did not witness the confrontation leading up to it, her initial reaction was no more than an uninformed opinion.
The case was, therefore, remanded to Greene County for retrial.
   Aurentz was again convicted of second degree murder at his new trial in January 1925, but this time he was sentenced to only twenty years in prison. The case was again appealed, and Aurentz remained free on bond until the supreme court affirmed the verdict of the Greene County court in May 1926. He was then transported to the state prison in Jefferson City. 
   Aurentz didn’t exactly do hard time, though. He was “given much freedom from the start,” according to one newspaper, and he was paroled in 1930 after serving a little over four years.
   This story is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo.