After 20-year-old Ada Lee Biggs was convicted of second-degree murder in November of 1928 in Ste. Francois County (MO) for killing her stepfather, William Simpson, newspapers speculated that the jury must have doubted her story that Simpson had sexually assaulted her on numerous occasions because what she said at trial was supposedly different from the story she'd told when first arrested. In fact, Ada's story that Simpson had repeatedly molested her was pretty consistent from the very beginning.
Ada's father died when she was young, and her mother, Gertie, married William Simpson when Ada was 11 or 12 years of age. According to Ada's later story, Simpson's inappropriate behavior began shortly afterwards, as he first tried to kiss her when she was only 12 years old.
On December 15, 1926, when Ada was 18, Simpson, who was then about 50 years old, took Ada out into a car when her mother was not home. Forcing her to succumb to his will at the point of a gun, he raped her. Ada later told her mother about the attack, but Gertie, who had four younger children with Simpson, did not believe her daughter, and Ada was sent to St. Louis to stay with Simpson's sister. Before long, however, her mother sent word that Ada should come back home or else Simpson was going to have her committed to a home for delinquent girls.
When Ada returned, Simpson's abuse resumed. He took her to the car and raped her about once or twice each month. He was so infatuated with her and so jealous of her that he would not let her go out with friends her own age. Simpson was given to "spells" during which he was mean to Bertie and other family members, too, and somewhere along the line Bertie realized that Ada had been telling the truth about her husband.
In the latter part of 1927, Bertie invited her brother, Oscar Greenwalt, to come and live with the family at their home in Bismarck to help protect her and Ada from Simpson. Simpson's spells worsened after Greenwalt arrived, and he, Bertie, and Ada soon began plotting to kill Simpson.
Simpson, who stayed drunk much of the time and was considered by neighbors to be about half insane, went on a day-long spree on July 14, 1928. Bertie decided that this was the day, and she and her brother appointed Ada, against her wishes at first, to carry out the murder.
Simpson suffered from ataxia and took regular steam baths to try to combat its effects. So, that night, Bertie loaded a shotgun for Ada, and then Bertie and Greenwalt positioned Simpson's homemade sauna next to an outdoor window. While Simpson was taking a steam bath, Ada, 19 years old at the time and a recent graduate of Bismark High School, slipped up outside the window and shot the man, almost blowing his head off. Bertie and Simpson's four young children were asleep in the house at the time, and Simpson's aged and blind mother was in an upstairs room.
Ada, Bertie, and Greenwalt denied involvement in the crime when authorities first arrived to investigate. However, Greenwalt soon confessed his part in the crime, and Ada and Bertie quickly followed suit. All three were taken to the county jail at Farmington. When first interrogated on July 15, the three said they were in on the crime together, but Ada, no doubt in an effort to protect her mother and uncle, quickly changed her story to say that she had acted alone. She said the reason she killed Simpson was that he would not allow her to have friends and was otherwise mean to her, but she did not specifically mention any sexual attacks. She said she committed the crime "for the peace of the family."
By July 16, though, Ada had already begun to reveal more details of why she killed her stepfather. He not only had first tried to kiss her when she was just 12 years old and refused to let her have friends, but he had made life hell for the whole family for many years. Even Simpson's own mother, according to Ada and her co-defendants, cried out, after learning that he was dead, "He's in hell right now. He was so evil."
Ada said that, when she killed Simpson, she was thinking of "all the things Simpson had done to her" during the past eight years and that she did not regret her actions. "I admit shooting him," she told a St. Louis reporter, "but it was self-defense. I did it to free my family and myself, and I did it for the good of the community. I haven't anything to hide. I'll tell my whole story when I face the judge."
And Ada did tell her whole story at trial in November of 1928. Taking the stand in her own defense, she told about the various times Simpson had assaulted her, and then her lawyer asked how that made her feel. She faced the jury box and calmly addressed the members of the jury, "Gentlemen of the jury, after I'd been driven to do this, after my honor, my virtue, had been taken, I realized I could never marry. My social standing, my character, were ruined. That is what drove me to the insanity that I did. If there had been any way out of the hell I was living, I would have taken it. He said he would follow me wherever I went and kill me."
The prosecution pointed out that Simpson was missing all four fingers from his right hand and suggested that he could not, therefore, have held a gun in his right hand and threatened Ada with it the way she said. Still on the stand, Ada pointed to her knuckles and said vehemently, "He had stubs as long as that." The defense also pointed out that, despite, missing the four fingers, Simpson, who ran a garage, was considered one of the best mechanics for miles around.
Although Ada had been charged with first-degree murder, the jury came back with a verdict finding her guilty of second-degree murder. So, it's not clear, as the newspapers suggested, that the jury did not believe her story. It might well be that they did believe her story but still felt obligated by the law to find her guilty of the lesser offense.
Ada was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Her mother and uncle both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder a couple of weeks after Ada's trial, and they, too, received sentences of 10 years behind bars. Ada, though, was paroled in mid-1933, after serving less than 5 years. She got married later the same year, and the couple had two children. She died in 1979 and is buried at Cape Girardeau.
No comments:
Post a Comment