"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.

 

 

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., 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, 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.