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.