A Murder at Red Top

   A somewhat notorious murder occurred at Red Top, Missouri, in 1922. Where the heck is Red Top? you might ask. Well, it's located about halfway between Fair Grove and Buffalo on Old Highway 65. I probably should say "used to be located," because I don't think much of anything remains to suggest the place ever existed, except that the stretch of Old Highway 65 where it is/was located is now called Red Top Road. Red Top had a post office when I was growing up in Fair Grove, but that was about all it had, even then. I remember going to an auction at Red Top with my dad when I was about eight years old, but my reminiscences of Red Top have nothing to do with the brutal crime that was committed there 100 years ago.
   On the afternoon of April 19, 1922, Frank Creed, a resident of the Red Top community, grew concerned because he had not seen his elderly neighbors, John W. and Margaret Hunt, for several days and a dog they always kept tied in the front yard was nowhere to be seen. Creed decided to investigate, but he was unable to rouse anyone when he knocked at his neighbors' door. Finding the door locked, Creed went to a side window, peered inside, and saw Margaret Hunt's body lying on a bed buried beneath a heap of bed clothes. Several pieces of furniture in the room were overturned, giving the impression that a struggle had taken place.
   Creed summoned authorities, and further investigation determined that Mrs. Hunt's skull had been crushed and her throat slashed. After a lengthy search, her husband's body was found in the barn hidden beneath a stack of hay. His skull, too, had been crushed, and his body was cut and bruised in several places. Officers estimated that the couple had been dead for several days.
   On the night of the 19th, 25-year-old Ezra Davison was arrested on suspicion of having killed the Hunts. Part of the evidence that led authorities to Davison was the fact that a wagon and a team of mules were missing from the Hunt place and a man who knew Hunt and recognized his white mules had seen the suspect driving the wagon and team in Springfield. Davison, who was also a resident of the Red Top area, was lodged overnight in the Dallas County Jail at Buffalo.
   The next morning, Hunt's wagon was located on a farm ten miles north of Springfield on the Pleasant Hope road, where Davison had recently been working. The same morning, Davison was brought to the Greene County Jail at Springfield for safekeeping.
   Authorities speculated that robbery was the motive for the crime, since the Hunts were known to be fairly well off financially. On the afternoon of the 20th, Davison gave a confession to a Springfield newspaperman, however, that suggested a different motive. Two years earlier, Davison had been attacked while in his bed, beaten severely, and left disfigured and blind in one eye. Afterwards, he filed for divorce from his wife and for custody of his two children, claiming that she had played some part in the attack on him. The divorce had recently been granted after a bitter trial, but the couple's two small children had been split between them, with each parent gaining custody of one child. Davison said that on the fateful day, which he identified as April 12, he stopped by the Hunt place late in the afternoon and was going to help Hunt retrieve a load of hay from a field. Before they started, however, the two men were discussing Davison's recent problems, and Hunt supposedly said, in reference to the attack on Davison, that he got about what he deserved. Both men became angry, and, according to Davison, Hunt attacked him with a pitchfork. Davison grabbed another pitchfork and knocked Hunt off his wagon. At this point, Mrs. Hunt came outside and tried to intervene on her husband's behalf, attacking Davison with a hoe. Davison knocked the woman down with his pitchfork and then resumed hostilities with Hunt, knocking him down a second time.
   Both Mr. and Mrs. Hunt lay unconscious on the ground. Davison picked the woman up, took her to her house, and washed the blood from her face. Going back outside, he found Hunt still lying on the ground, and he struck him with a grubbing hoe to make sure he was dead. Davison carried the dead man into his barn and covered him with hay. He then left but came back a couple of days later and took Hunt's wagon and mules.
   Davison later changed his story to say that he was not alone when the fight with the Hunts occurred. He claimed another man had killed Mrs. Hunt and that he (Davison) had only killed Hunt in self-defense. Still later, he changed the story again, maintaining that he was not even present when the deadly events unfolded.
   The jury that tried Davison on a first-degree murder charge in Bolivar on a change of venue in early 1923, however, apparently gave more credence to his first confession. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary. He was received at the Jefferson City prison on February 18 and died in the prison hospital there over 26 years later.