Colorful Names and Nicknames of Ozarks Towns

Recently I ran onto an article by staff writer Ginger Ruark in a 1930s issue of the Springfield Press about colorful names of Ozarks towns, especially small towns. Some of the more interesting ones she cited were Split Log, Blue Eye, Long Lane, Hogeye (i.e. Charity), Slap Out (Grove Springs), Oronogo, and Pin Hook (i.e. Pleasant Hope). 

The naming of Split Log (also spelled Splitlog), located just south of the Newton County line in McDonald County, had nothing to do with cutting wood, as one might guess from the name itself. Rather it was named after an Indian Chief who started the town and whose name was Splitlog. 

Blue Eye on the Arkansas-Missouri border got its name when the first postmaster, who had several brown-eyed daughters but only one blue-eyed daughter, was tasked with giving the place a name. As the little community's first settlers were debating what the name should be, the postmaster's blue-eyed daughter came up to him, and, looking her in the eyes, the man announced that they should call the place Blue Eye. 

Long Lane in Dallas County got its name, appropriately enough, because the main street was a long, tree-shaded lane. 

Long Lane's neighbor, Charity, got its nickname Hog Eye, in an unusual way. In the 1880s, citizens of the area were anxiously anticipating completion of a railroad through the county. (It was never completed.) A man named Bennett established a general store on one side of the main street and traded his goods for railroad ties, which he planned to sell to railroad contractors. Shortly afterward, a newcomer whose name was also Bennett opened a store on the opposite side of the street, and in order to distinguish the two men, the townspeople took to calling one of them Hog Eye and the other one Goat Eye. Hog Eye Bennett was one of the main organizers of the early community picnics that were held regularly at Charity, and the picnic grounds were dubbed Hog Eye after Hog Eye Bennett. The festival itself came to be known as the Hog Eye Picnic, and even the town of Charity was (and still is) sometimes called Hog Eye.

Grovespring (or Grove Springs, as Ms. Ruark spelled it) was once known as Slap Out. The name supposedly derived from the fact that there were few stores within easy reach of the settlement, and residents were in the habit of calling on each other when they needed a cup of flour or some other essential. Often the reply they got was, "Sorry, I'm slap out myself." 

There are several variant stories on how Oronogo in Jasper County got its name. The one Ms. Ruark cited is one I've never heard before, and I don't think it's accurate. She said that, when early miners looking for ore in the area were told they'd never find any, they replied "It's ore or no go," and, so, when they did strike ore, they named the place Oronogo. This is just a tall tale, I think, because Oronogo was a town named Minersville quite a few years before it got the name Oronogo. One of the most prevalent explanations for how the town got its name is that one of the early storekeepers often took ore in exchange for his merchandise but when someone asked him whether he'd take other goods like crops or furs, he supposedly answered, "No, it's ore or no go." This was about the time Minersville was told by the post office to come up with a different name because there was already another town in Missouri by that name, and someone suggested Oronogo, a contracted version of "Ore or no go."  

Ms. Ruark didn't know what the "obscure reason" was that Pleasant Hope in Polk County got its nickname Pin Hook. This is something I've written about on this blog before. The short answer is that there was actually a place called Pin Hook that predated Pleasant Hope in the same immediate vicinity. Pin Hook disappeared, and Pleasant Hope sprang up about the time of the Civil War or shortly before, and a lot people started referring to Pleasant Hope as Pin Hook, even though that was not its official name. I'm not positive this is exactly how it happened, because I'm writing this just from memory, but it's something along those lines.

Other colorful place names mentioned by Ms. Ruark include Peculiar, Dog Town, Red Top, Red Hot, Windyville, Lick Skillet, Bird Song, Pumpkin Center, Possum Trot, Chicken Bustle, Christopher Crossroads, and Gouge Eye (an early name for Galloway, which is now part of southeast Springfield).

Long Lane Bank Robbery

Apparently, every little town in the Ozarks (and America as a whole) had a bank once upon a time. Take Long Lane, a small community in Dallas County, Missouri, for example. I didn't realize Long Lane was big enough to have ever had a bank, but it did. In fact, the bank got held up in December of 1932.

About nine o'clock on the night of the 22nd, two unmasked men, pretending to want some gasoline for their car, called at the apartment of Milam Bledsoe, cashier of the First State Bank of Long Lane. The apartment was located above the Bledsoe store, and the store adjoined the bank. Opening the door, Bledsoe recognized his unwelcome visitors as the same culprits who'd tried to rob him two weeks earlier, and he at first refused their demand to go with them. The two men brandished guns and, confirming that Bledsoe had thwarted them in an earlier attempt to rob the bank, said they meant business this time and were here to get the money. One of the men escorted Bledsoe to the bank at gunpoint, while the other gunman followed with the other three hostages in tow. 

The gunmen made Bledsoe open the safe for them, took about $1,000 in loot, and locked the cashier and the other three hostages in the vault. The bandits then dashed outside, where one or two other men waited in a getaway car. The vehicle, described only as light colored, was last seen heading west toward Buffalo.

The next day, Jack Ryan was arrested in Buffalo on suspicion of having participated in the Long Lane heist, and later that same day, Paul "Blackie" Bagby and Lloyd McKinney were arrested in Springfield. Bagby was a confessed liquor runner who had supposedly boasted at one time of being a lieutenant of Al Capone, and McKinney had recently been raided by federal officers. McKinney, however, proved an alibi and was released. Ryan and Bagby, meanwhile, were held on unrelated charges so they could be further investigated for the bank job, even though Bledsoe failed to positively identify either man when the suspects were brought before him. Both men were later charged in the bank robbery after Mrs. Bledsoe tentatively identified Bagby as the man who'd held her husband at gunpoint.

Bagby was tried on the bank robbery charge in April 1933, found guilty, and sentenced to ten years in prison. The bank charge against Ryan, meanwhile, was dropped for lack of evidence, but he was convicted on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon and given a six-month jail sentence.

Later, Bagby was granted a new trial and a change of venue to Webster County, and he was set free on bond pending the new trial. He jumped bond but was recaptured in Illinois in early September 1933. Turned over to his bondsman, he again failed to appear when his new trial was called a second time. A new date for the trial was set, and the bondsman assured authorities that Bagby would appear this time. When the suspect didn't show up yet again, the bond money was confiscated.

Bagby finally showed up in Springfield in May 1934 and turned himself in to his lawyer. He was taken to Marshfield and lodged in the county jail there. As it turned out, Bagby shouldn't have pressed his luck by asking for a new trial. He was tried at Marshfield later that same month and given a 25-year sentence in prison. Denied a new trial, he was transported to Jefferson City in June. 

Apparently, no one else was ever charged in the Long Lane bank robbery.

A Family Affair

The Sedalia Bazoo was one of the most prominent practitioners of yellow journalism in Missouri in the late nineteenth century. The editors of the Bazoo liked nothing better than a gory murder case, a public hanging, or a juicy scandal. They found a scandal in July 1883 when James Heflin of the Beaman neighborhood north of Sedalia filed charges on July 24 against Milton Fall, his brother-in-law and near neighbor, for assault with intent to kill.

Sensing a sensational story, a Bazoo reporter set about ferreting out the facts behind the assault charge. What he learned was that Fall and Heflin had been good friends until recently. Heflin was married to Fall's sister, and the two men lived about a quarter mile from each other. They both had several kids, and the two families frequently visited in each other's homes. In the spring or early summer of 1883, however, Fall began to suspect that Heflin, who was about 35 to 40 years old, was "paying too much attention" to Fall's 23-year-old wife, Flora.

On July 10, Fall was working in his field when he saw Heflin approaching his (Fall's) house. Suspecting that Heflin had come to pay a visit to Flora, Fall sneaked up to his house, looked in a window, and caught his wife and his brother-in-law "flagrante delicto," which translates roughly to "in the act" or "red handed." What followed was "a scene beyond the power of the reporter to describe."

During the angry confrontation, Heflin and Mrs. Fall vehemently denied any undue intimacy, and Heflin even threatened Fall's life if he publicly accused Heflin of seducing his wife. In due course, Heflin retired from the fray, leaving Flora to deal with her angry husband. The next day, Fall left his wife and went to stay with his mother, who, of course, was also Heflin's wife's mother.

On July 15, Heflin came to visit his mother-in-law, and when Fall saw him coming, he pulled out a revolver and fired four shots at his brother-in-law. Although none of the shots took effect, Heflin filed charges against Fall on the 24th, and Fall's hearing was set for July 30.

It was thought that "all the dirty linen would receive an airing" at that time, but, instead, the charge against Fall was dropped. Friends and family members had persuaded Heflin to withdraw his complaint, convincing him that "further investigation" would only increase the ill feeling between family members and neighbors.

It was now claimed that Heflin was "not guilty of criminal intimacy with Mrs. Fall" and that the story to that effect was merely "concocted to justify Fall's shooting at Heflin." The Bazoo reporter, thus, concluded that the scandal was now a thing of the past.

Fall did, in fact, return to his wife a few days later, claiming now that the reason he'd left her was that he didn't think she loved him "as she should." He thought Flora allowed herself to be too much influenced by her mother, who lived with the couple. So, Fall let his mother-in-law know that "her departure at the earliest possible moment would be agreeable news to him," and she "at once vacated his house."

The Athletic Dennis Weaver

I think I've briefly written about Dennis Weaver on this blog before but only to comment in a general way about his fame as an actor and the fact that he was from Joplin and has a street named after him here. One thing I did not comment on was the fact that, when he was in high school and junior college in Joplin in the early forties, he was known as a good athlete. I had read this somewhere once before, but I recently ran across a newspaper article that shows he was more than just good--he was an outstanding athlete.

After starring at Joplin High and Joplin Junior High, Weaver entered military service and became a fighter pilot during World War II. When the war ended, he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma as a drama student. At the same time, he also resumed his participation in sports as a track athlete.

In the spring of 1947, Weaver, who was then known as Bill (having not yet adopted the name Dennis), competed for Oklahoma in the decathlon at the Kansas Relays. At the end of the first day, encompassing the first five events, Weaver was in second place with 3,610 points. His strongest events the first day were the high jump, where he cleared six feet, two and a half inches, and the quarter mile, which he ran in 51.3 seconds.

The second day, Weaver won the 1,500-meter race in a time of 4:32.8 and placed third overall in the final standings after all ten events were completed. Weaver's best finishes were maybe not world-class, but they were pretty darn good for a college decathlete in the 1940s. This is especially true considering that Weaver had apparently trained very little for the decathlon. The Joplin Globe reported that many of the events in the decathlon were "total strangers" to Weaver but that he had decided to "give it a whirl anyhow."

The same report noted that, during his time as a drama student at the University of Oklahoma, Weaver had played leading roles in "Kiss and Tell," "Uncle Harry," "The Late George Apley," and "Private Lives." As soon as the school term was over, Weaver had plans to move to New York City with his wife, the former Gerrie Stowell of Joplin, to further his drama training. He would, of course, go on to become famous for his roles in such TV series as Gunsmoke, Gentle Ben, and McCloud, as well as roles in a number of movies.

Smith-Parker Feud of Iron County

On Monday, July 28, 1913, Jim Smith and his father, John, went to the home of B. Lunsford at Bixby, Missouri, in the western edge of Iron County, where they confronted 23-year-old Richard Parker. Pointing at Parker, Jim Smith, 24, told his father, "There he is; do what you want to."

When John Smith stooped to pick up a couple of rocks, Parker pulled a gun from his pocket and shot the younger Smith, who fell to the ground. Parker started to flee, but he'd taken only a few steps when the mortally wounded Smith raised up and unloaded a shotgun at the retreating man. Parker collapsed and died almost instantly, while Jim Smith lived another six hours.

Both of the deceased young men worked in the timber camps of southeast Missouri, and it was assumed that there had been prior trouble between them, but exactly what that trouble might have been was not brought out at the inquest held over Parker's body later on the same day as the killings. It was expected that John Smith would be charged as an accessory before the fact in the death of Parker.

The uproar over the double murder had scarcely calmed when a report surfaced that the feud between the Parkers and Smiths had erupted into violence again, resulting in what was described as a "cold-blooded and brutal murder." On August 5, barely a week after the first incident, John Smith supposedly shot and killed Richard Parker's younger brother at Greeley, about 20 miles from Brixby in neighboring Reynolds County. Only 16 or 17 years old, young Parker had heard that Old Man Smith was making threats against him, and he left Iron County. However, John Smith started in pursuit and overtook the kid at Greeley. The boy begged for his life, but Smith gunned him down with a Winchester rifle.

It was revealed at the time that both the Parker family and the Smiths were originally from Crawford County and that the trouble between them had apparently started with a dispute over ownership of a cow. Shortly after the cow dispute, the mother of the Parker boys had found Old Man Smith asleep at a picnic "--presumably the worse for liquor--and hit him over the head with a club." For this, John Smith and his son vowed revenge.

The stated cause of the feud between the two families is perhaps accurate, but the problem with the story about the elder Smith shooting and killing the teenaged Parker is that it seemingly never happened. There appears to be no further mention of such an incident in any regional newspapers after the initial report. However, John Smith was tried in late December 1913 for being an accessory to the murder of Richard Smith. He was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to two years in the Missouri state pen, and released after a year and half under the three-fourths law.

St. Robert, Missouri

There are numerous examples of towns that grew up in the early days of our country around bodies of water, mineral ore deposits, mineral springs, railroads, or highway crossroads; flourished for a while; and have since disappeared or almost disappeared. In other words, these were towns that started early and fizzled. Much less common are the opposite type: towns that started late and have done nothing but grow and thrive. St. Robert in Pulaski County, Missouri, is one example of the latter type of town that comes to mind.

St. Robert probably would never have come about if it had not been for construction of Fort Leonard Wood near Waynesville at the beginning of World War II. At the time, the only Catholic church in Pulaski County was located at Dixon about 20 miles away. Some of the Catholic soldiers and their families who were stationed at Fort Leonard Wood commuted to Dixon, but they asked about having services closer to the fort. Responding to the request, the Catholic church began holding mass in a theater in Waynesville each Sunday.

After the war, to serve the growing number of Catholic families in the area, a new church was built between Waynesville and Fort Leonard Wood and dedicated in 1951. Father Robert Arnold, the parish priest at Dixon at the time, was instrumental in building the church; so, it was named St. Robert in recognition of his contribution and in honor of St. Robert Bellarmine, a 16th century Jesuit cardinal and scholar canonized in 1930, who was chosen as the parish's patron saint. 

The community that grew up around the church also came to be known as St. Robert. At the time it was incorporated in late 1951, the town had a population of about 500, but today it is a thriving town of over 5,000. 

The Freeman-Bible Murder Case

I usually don't write about incidents that happened in the past 25 or 30 years, but when you're writing about Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma (https://amzn.to/3Q1Tt7i), it's hard to ignore the Freeman-Bible murder case from 25 years ago, one of the most publicized criminal cases in the history of the region.

In the early morning of December 30, 1999, a woman's body was found in the burning rubble of a mobile home near Welch, Oklahoma. She was identified as Cathy Freeman, and the body of her husband, Danny, was soon discovered in the debris as well. There was no sign, however, of the Freemans' 16-year-old daughter Ashley or Ashley's best friend, Lauria Bible, who'd spent the night with the Freemans.

Arson was suspected, and authorities announced a couple of days later that the victims had been shot prior to the fire. Whoever had killed the Freemans had apparently also abducted the girls.

A region-wide search for the girls was launched, and numerous tips were investigated, but no sign of them was found. One of the few good leads, an automobile insurance card found near the murder scene, was ignored.

The case was highlighted on America’s Most Wanted, but none of the tips generated by the show panned out. But the Bible and Freeman families, especially Lauria's mother, Lorene, did all they could to prevent the case from going cold. Despite their efforts, the investigation gradually came almost to a standstill.

After 18 years of chasing tips that led nowhere, authorities finally got a break in the case in 2017 when the Craig County sheriff found some long-overlooked materials left by a previous sheriff's administration. The following year, authorities announced during a news conference that 66-year-old Ronald Dean Busick had been arrested and charged in the murders of Danny and Cathy Freeman and the abduction and subsequent murders of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible. Two other suspects in the case, Warren Philip Welch II and David A. Pennington, had died in 2007 and 2015 respectively.

According to authorities, the three men had gone to the Freeman home around midnight December 30, 1999, to collect a drug-related debt when the girls walked in unexpectedly. Welch was thought to be the leader of the gang and the trigger man who killed Danny and Cathy Freeman, while the other two men set fire to their trailer.

The three men abducted the girls and took them to Welch’s trailer home in Picher, where they tortured and raped them over a period of days before strangling them to death and dumping their bodies in a local mine pit. It was revealed at the time of the news conference that the case could have been solved very early on if authorities had followed up on the auto insurance card found by private investigators just a day or two after the murder of the Freemans, because it would have led them to Welch.

Although Busick got off with a light sentence in a plea deal in which he promised to help find the bodies of the missing girls, they have never been found, and the quest to bring the girls home continues to this day. New searches are undertaken as new leads come to light. Anyone with information that might be relevant to the girls’ whereabouts can contact authorities or contact the Bible family through a Facebook page entitled Find Lauria Bible-BBI.

The Girl Scout Murders

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma book https://amzn.to/3Cp6apB concerns the infamous murders at the Camp Scott Girl Scout camp near Locust Grove in 1977. On Monday morning, June 13, three little girls, ages 8 to 10, were discovered dead near or inside their tent. They had been bludgeoned, and at least two of them had been sexually molested. 

The remaining girls at the camp were sent home, as an investigation into the murders was launched. No suspects were identified in the immediate aftermath of the crime, although authorities were working from the theory that one person, a man, committed the heinous deed. An official who was not directly involved in the investigation further revealed that lawmen had their eye on a man with a history of child molestation, but he would not name the person.

Investigators theorized that the killer had entered the campground on foot and that he was familiar with the area and the layout of the camp. However, no solid leads were developed during the first week or so after the killings. Lawmen then released for publication two tattered pictures, containing the images of three women, which had been found near the site of the murders, and they asked for the public’s help in identifying the women in the hope that the pictures might have been left by the killer.

One day after the photos were published, three women from southwestern Oklahoma were identified as the women in the pictures. The photos had been taken at a wedding in the Mangum-Granite area in 1968. How did such photos turn up 300 miles away nine years later near the site of a brutal crime? 

The answer came when it was learned on June 23 that Locust Grove native Gene Leroy Hart had developed the photos while incarcerated at the Granite Reformatory almost ten years earlier. Hart, a convicted rapist who’d been at large ever since his escape from the Mayes County Jail in 1973, was promptly named as the prime suspect in the murder of the three Girl Scouts. Authorities speculated that he might have been hiding out in the rugged hills surrounding the Girl Scout camp ever since his escape because he knew the countryside well, was considered a “real backwoodsman, and had friends in the area who might have sheltered him. A thirty-three-year-old “huskily built Cherokee Indian,” Hart was described as a “seven-time loser” whose run-ins with the law dated to his youth.

Hart continued to elude lawmen until he was finally captured on April 6, 1978, near Bunch, Oklahoma. At his trial in March of 1979, the prosecution called an Oklahoma state chemist who testified that hair taken from the body of one of the dead girls microscopically matched hair samples taken from Hart after his arrest. Another expert witness said that sperm samples taken from Hart’s underwear after his arrest were very similar to swabs taken from the bodies of the murder victim. Also, items taken from the tent of a counselor at the Girl Scout campground about the time of the murders were later found in the cabin where Hart was arrested. The defense countered that law officers made up their minds early on that Hart was guilty, that they never adequately investigated other possibilities, and that they might even have planted evidence against the defendant.

The jury returned a quick verdict of not guilty, and the courtroom erupted into pandemonium as Hart’s many family members and other supporters jumped up shouting and applauding. Officers involved in the investigation, on the other hand, were shocked and dismayed by the verdict. The county sheriff, for instance, said he did not intend to re-open the investigation because “we had the right man.”

Although he’d been acquitted of the Girl Scout murders, Hart was transported to the state prison at McAlester to resume serving sentences totaling 145 to 305 years for rape, kidnapping, and burglary that he faced at the time of his escape from the Mayes County Jail.

On June 4, 1979, barely over two months after his acquittal, Hart collapsed and died from a massive heart attack after exercising in the prison yard.

Despite Hart’s acquittal, most, if not all, law enforcement officials associated with the case remained convinced that Hart was guilty, and years later, DNA forensics strongly suggested that authorities did, indeed, have “the right man.”

This is a greatly condensed version of the chapter in my book. 

The Murder of Prosecutor Jack Burris

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma book (https://amzn.to/3CrArEa is about the murder of Mayes County prosecutor Jack Burris at his home near Locust Grove on Saturday night, June 7, 1952. Using headlights from a utility tractor to see by, the thirty-five-year-old Burris was working on an air conditioner beside the house when someone who'd been lurking in the darkness fired a shotgun blast that struck him and killed him instantly. 

His wife, Melba, heard the blast, discovered the body, and hysterically telephoned for help. Lawmen arrived to investigate, and they found a spent shotgun shell about 13 feet from the body near a corner of the house. The only theory anyone could offer as a motive for the crime was that Burris had prosecuted someone "too hard," because he was well liked by everybody else.  

Investigators found a spent twelve-gauge shotgun shell about twelve or thirteen feet from the body near the southeast corner of the house, which was thought to be the spot from where the assassin fired the gun. The ejector markings on the brass casing of the shell were considered an important clue that might help authorities identify the murder weapon.[v] (Insert Images 042 & 043)

A dragnet was launched in the vicinity of the crime, and bloodhounds were brought in, but these efforts yielded no suspects and few clues. The Oklahoma State Crime Bureau soon entered the investigation. Burris's office safe at the county courthouse was opened, but the papers and other items found offered no definite leads as to who might have wanted the prosecutor killed.

The idea that the murder might have been a vengeance killing was more than idle speculation, because Burris had received threats in recent months related to his duties as prosecutor. 

The investigation eventually focused on illegal liquor and gambling activities in the Grand Lake resort area that Burris had been trying to clamp down on in the months prior to his death. On the night of June 26, agents seized a pickup in Miami, Oklahoma, that matched the description of one seen in the Burris neighborhood on the night of the murder. Immediately afterward, they raided seven businesses in the Afton area searching for contraband and possible evidence in the murder case. One of the places raided was owned by T. H. Bluejacket, who also owned another night spot that had been blown to bits four nights earlier, and lawmen thought there might be a connection between the explosion and the murder of Burris. The raiding officers confiscated a number of slot machines and other gambling devices and arrested a few suspects but turned up no solid evidence to point them toward Burris's killer

The crime bureau chief said C. E. Dawson, an Afton man known as “the kingpin slot machine operator in the Grand Lake area,” was the owner of the suspect pickup at the time of Burris’s murder. Dawson also owned at least one of the raided nightclubs, but curiously enough, Dawson was not among the men arrested in the sting as possible suspects in the Burris murder

All the men who were arrested in the sting were soon released, and investigators were left floundering for leads in the case. They were still operating under the assumption that the killing was related to gambling and other illegal activities in the Grand Lake region and that it was likely a murder for hire, but they had "no real suspect in the case.” Even the supposed link between the pickup seen at the scene of the crime and the one confiscated in Miami “fizzled” as a lead. In mid-July, the state crime bureau closed the temporary office it had set up in Pryor, the Mayes County seat, shortly after the murder.

A Tulsa newspaper published multiple articles complaining about the lack of progress in the Burris case and questioning why certain angles of investigation had been dropped. Why, for instance, had C. E. Dawson, the "slot machine king" who had been linked to the pickup seen in the Burris neighborhood, not been more vigorously pursued as a suspect?

The case stalled but was a revived in 1953. Dawson was questioned again at that time, but he denied involvement in the Burris murder and was soon released.  

Even though investigators with the crime bureau virtually admitted that they knew who had killed Burris, the case gradually went cold for lack of solid evidence, and it officially remains one of Oklahoma's biggest unsolved murder cases, even to this day. 

This is a greatly condensed version of the chapter in my M&M in NE OK book.

The Kidnapping and Slaying of the Mosser Family

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma book https://amzn.to/3W9v1nV is about the kidnapping and slaying of the Carl Mosser family. While the murders themselves did not take place in northeast Oklahoma (or anywhere in Oklahoma for that matter), the kidnapping and the manhunt for the kidnapper did occur in northeast Oklahoma. The manhunt then spread throughout the entire state and beyond.


Carl and Thelma Mosser and their three children left their Atwood, Illinois, home on Friday afternoon, December 29, 1950, headed for New Mexico, to visit relatives. A few days later, family members in Illinois received postcards from the Mossers postmarked Claremore and Tulsa, Oklahoma. However, the Mossers still had not reached their destination in New Mexico, and relatives began to worry.

About noon on January 3, 1951, the Mossers’ bullet-ridden and blood-spattered 1949 Chevy was found abandoned in a ditch on the northwest edge of Tulsa. The mother and father's drivers' licenses and other identifying items were found in the car, but there was no trace of the Mossers themselves. Investigators had little doubt that they were looking at a case of mass murder, but where the bodies were and who the killer was remained mysteries.

On January 4, the search for the Mossers switched to Claremore, where it was learned the family had spent the previous Friday night and had eaten breakfast the next morning. They had not been seen since. Later that day, law officers again shifted their focus, this time to the Oklahoma City area. A Texas man named Archer told investigators he had been robbed and had his car stolen near Luther, Oklahoma, on Saturday by a hitchhiker he’d picked up in Texas. A farmer named Mackey living in the Luther area, reported that he’d seen a man abandon Archer’s car, wave down a vehicle with an Illinois license, and climb into the latter vehicle, which was carrying a man, a woman, and several kids. Taken to Tulsa, Mackey tentatively identified the bullet-ridden Chevy as the car he’d seen the hitchhiker climb into. In addition, Archer’s description of the hijacker generally matched the description of a man whom a Tulsa resident had seen near the abandoned vehicle northwest of Tulsa.

A search of Archer’s automobile turned up an even stronger lead in the case. Found in the vehicle was a sales slip for a .32 caliber revolver purchased in El Paso, Texas. It was the same type of weapon believed used in the Mosser crime, and the slip showed the gun was purchased by W. E. Cook, Jr.

Authorities were on the right track in identifying the hijacker. William E. “Bill” Cook, Jr. was indeed the villain who had waylaid the Mosser family. Growing up in Joplin, Missouri, Cook was left adrift as a small child and started getting into trouble before he was even a teenager. He ended up in the reformatory and later the Missouri State Prison.

Cook or “Cookie,” as he was sometimes called, was released from prison in the summer of 1950. He returned briefly to Joplin but soon set out for California. On Christmas Day of 1950, Cook got drunk and hitchhiked from Blythe, California, to Mexico. After trying unsuccessfully to get a girl to come with him, he hitchhiked back to the United States. Near Lubbock, Texas, he abducted Archer and forced him to drive to the Oklahoma City area, where he robbed Archer, abandoned Archer’s car, and flagged down the Mossers.


After waylaying the Mosser family, Cook forced Carl Mosser to drive west through Oklahoma into Texas. At Wichita Falls, Cook and Mosser went into a store, where Mosser started yelling for help, but the storekeeper thought the two men were playacting. Cook pulled his gun and forced Mosser back into the car. The pell-mell journey continued back and forth across the country until Cook and his captives ended up back in his hometown of Joplin in the wee hours of January 2, 1951. Cook was stopped at the side of a street in the southwest part of town when a Joplin police car came by and flashed its spotlight on the Mosser car. Cook later claimed he was getting ready to release his hostages, but, when the police came by, Mrs. Mosser and her kids started screaming and Cook started shooting after the police car drove on past. After killing all five members of the family, Cook took the wheel and drove around Joplin an hour or so before dumping the bodies in an abandoned mine shaft in the neighborhood where he grew up.

He then drove to Tulsa and abandoned the Mosser vehicle later that day. He got a lift into Tulsa and from there made his way to California riding buses and hitchhiking. Meanwhile, the search for the Mossers expanded from the Tulsa and Oklahoma City area to all of Oklahoma and into surrounding states.

On Saturday, January 6, Cook waylaid and killed a motorist named Dewey in southern California. On January 15, Cook was captured in Mexico and quickly brought back to the United States. The same day authorities found the bodies of the Mossers at the bottom of the abandoned mine shaft on the west side of Joplin. Cook soon gave a full confession to having killed not only the Mossers but also Mr. Dewey.

The confessed killer was brought back to Oklahoma City, where he pleaded guilty to kidnapping and killing the Mossers. The judge sentenced him to 300 years in federal prison.

Cook was released to California authorities to stand trial on state charges of murdering Robert Dewey. At his trial in November 1951 at El Centro, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. He was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin on December 12, 1952.

This is a condensed version of the chapter in my book.

Bonnie and Clyde and the Murder of Commerce Constable Cal Campbell

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma book https://amzn.to/4a3huUU concerns Bonnie and Clyde's gunfight with law officers in Commerce, Oklahoma, in April 1934. Although less known than the desperate pair's April 1933 shootout with officers just across the state line in Joplin, Missouri, the Commerce incident was almost equally horrific.

About 9:30 a.m. on Friday, April 6, 1934, Commerce police chief Percy Boyd and constable Cal Campbell, acting on a tip, went to investigate a suspicious vehicle at the side of a road on the southwest edge of town. The driver of the suspect automobile, later identified as Clyde Barrow, rammed his car into reverse and started back down the road “wide open,” but the new Ford V-8 veered into a ditch and got stuck in the mud.

Campbell and Boyd got out of their car and started toward the stranded vehicle. When Campbell noticed that the occupants of the car were brandishing weapons, he drew his pistol and opened fire. Barrow and another man, later identified as Henry Methvin, leaped out of the stranded Ford carrying automatic rifles and started running toward the lawmen, firing as they came. Campbell got off three shots before he was killed in the hail of bullets. Boyd, who managed to fire his weapon four times, was also knocked off his feet but received only a flesh wound. 

After the shooting stopped, Barrow ran toward a nearby farmhouse, while Methvin walked toward Boyd and ordered him to get up. The chief made a joke as he got to his feet, which seemed to put the gunman in a good mood.

Barrow and his sidekicks forced Boyd and three other men who happened by to try to get their vehicle unstuck, but it remained mired in the mud, Finally, a man in a truck came and pulled the Barrow vehicle out of the mud. Barrow forced Boyd into the back seat of the car beside Methvin, then took the wheel and sped away to the west, with Bonnie Parker in the passenger's seat cradling a shotgun. 

Upon learning of the shooting, lawmen hurried to the scene of the incident, where they found Campbell already dead. A posse quickly formed and gave chase after the outlaw vehicle. Authorities tentatively identified the villains as the Barrow gang, and a manhunt throughout the entire region, with officers from several different agencies participating, was soon launched. 

Meanwhile, Clyde took Chief Boyd on a pell-mell flight toward Chetopa, Kansas, and along the back roads of southern Kansas until they finally reached Fort Scott in the early to mid-afternoon. During his captive ride, Boyd noticed a whole cache of automatic rifles and other weapons in the vehicle. 

In Fort Scott, the fugitives first learned that the 60-year-old Campbell had died when they bought a newspaper with headlines about the shooting. At first Clyde said he was sorry “the old man” was killed but that he “had to do it.” Later, though, he and the other gang members laughed about the shooting.

During Boyd's unwelcome tour of southeast Kansas, Bonnie told him that the photo showing her smoking a cigar, which had been reprinted in newspapers across the country in recent months, was taken purely as a joke. She had borrowed the cigar from Clyde just for the photograph, and all the publicity about her smoking cigars was “bunk.” She wanted Boyd to let it be known that she was not “a cigar addict.”

About ten o’clock Friday night, Barrow drove around Fort Scott looking for a car to steal but failed to find one that suited him. Shortly afterward, the gang drove southeast of town about nine miles and let Boyd out unharmed in the wee hours of Saturday morning, April 7. After enlisting help, Boyd was taken back to Fort Scott, where he was treated at a hospital for his minor injuries and released. The next day, he told the story of his misadventures with the Barrow gang to newspapers. Boyd said the gangsters “treated [him] fine," and he thought his and Campbell’s shootout with the Barrow gang probably would not have happened if the constable hadn’t fired first.

Meanwhile, Bonne and Clyde wound their way through the dragnet and escaped to Texas. They were killed the next month in Louisiana.