Fourth of July Celebration, 1925

Nowadays, a lot of towns hold Independence Day celebrations, and some of them are pretty elaborate affairs. However, I don't think they're any bigger than those held 100 years ago, and, in many cases, they're not as big.

Let's take Joplin, Missouri, as an example. The City of Joplin's official Fourth of July celebration this year will be held (I'm writing this on the morning of the 4th) at the Missouri Southern State University football stadium. Gates open at 5:30 p.m., food trucks open for business at 6:00 p.m., live music is slated to begin at 7:00 p.m., and the festivities culminate with a fireworks display from 9:45 to 10:00 p.m. Sounds like a pretty big deal, but it scarcely compares to the celebration Joplin held in 1925.

The Fourth of July celebration in Joplin in 1925 actually kicked off on Friday night, July 3. All the downtown businesses stayed open late, since they were going to be closed all day on the fourth, and a big crowd gathered downtown on Friday night as normally happened every Saturday night. So, folks were already in a festive spirit when Saturday, the fourth, rolled around.

People gathered for picnics and other activities at all the parks in Joplin on the fourth, others went to nearby swimming holes just outside the city, and baseball games and golf tournaments were held throughout the day in various parts of town The biggest attraction, however, was at Schifferdecker Park, where as many as 15,000 people gathered for afternoon and evening festivities.

In addition to the everyday park attractions, a movie was shown and a dance was held, both sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce free of charge. There was also a concert of live music. Free ice water was furnished for those in attendance. A daylight fireworks display was staged in the afternoon as well as the big finale that night. The "gorgeous fireworks display" put on at Schifferdecker the night of the fourth cost thousands of dollars and was one of the biggest ever held in Joplin.

One thing that was rather noticeably absent from the Joplin Independence Day celebration in 1925, probably to the relief of many in attendance, was speechifying. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many local celebrations featured long-winded speeches by political office holders or candidates for office. Some people, I guess, actually enjoyed them.

The "Iron Mountain Baby" Skips Town

Called the Iron Mountain Baby, William Helms acquired his unusual moniker after he was thrown from a train along the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad near Irondale in eastern Missouri in 1902 when he was just a few days old. The unidentified infant was found by 67-year-old William Helms, nursed back to health, and taken in by the Helms family. His biological parentage remained a mystery, and he took the name of his foster family, who later adopted him.

Young Helms went to a rural school near Hopewell, where he grew up, and then moved to Salem, Missouri, to attend high school and worked as a reporter for the Salem News to help pay his way through school. Bitten by the newspaper/printing bug, Helms moved to Springfield in the mid 1920s to attend the teachers' college there and worked in a print shop in Springfield while going to school.

Around the end of 1926 or beginning of 1927, Helms moved to West Plains and worked as a printer there for a few weeks. He was soon back in Springfield, where he gave an interview to a Kansas City newspaper in mid-January 1927. In additional to discussing other topics, he said he had been hounded all his life by unwanted notoriety related to the sensational story of his infancy. He admitted that he had often wondered who his biological parents were and had even tried for a long time to find them, but he said he no longer cared and that Mr. Helms and his wife were his real parents. Helms expressed a desire to one day buy "a little printing business" of his own.

Helms's second sojourn in Springfield proved brief, as he left town around the end of January 1927 to take a printing job in Tulsa, Oklahoma. By late March of the same year, however, he was once again back in Springfield.

It may have been during this trip back to Missouri that Helms realized his dream of owning a "little printing business" of his own because sometime in the first half of 1927 he purchased a newspaper at Fair Grove, a small town 15 miles north of Springfield. What's known for sure is that Helms was fairly well established as editor and publisher of the Fair Grove Journal by August of 1927, when his position in Fair Grove was noted in Springfield newspapers.

William Helms Shortly Before Move to Fair Grove

In Fair Grove, Helms boarded with the Yandell family, and he took out a loan from the Fair Grove Bank to purchase the newspaper business He made the acquaintance of bank cashier J. I. Grant and other prominent citizens of the community and took an active part in civic affairs. He also participated in church activities, including as a leader in the Epworth League (a Methodist group for young adults) and was well liked in the town. In April of 1928, Helms visited Springfield with Cashier Grant and two other prominent Fair Grove citizens, as noted by the Springfield Leader.

On November 3, 1928, Helms up and left Fair Grove without giving notice to anyone. He left owing the Yandells $101 for board and owing the bank $511 for the mortgage it held on the newspaper plant. Several half-completed jobs were stacked about the printing office. His "sudden departure," said the Springfield Daily News, "comes not only as a surprise but as a shock to the entire community."

Where Helms had gone and why was a complete mystery until Cashier Grant received a letter from the absconder on November 14. Dated November 12 and posted at Eufaula, Oklahoma, Helms told Bryant to take back the printing plant as payment of the $511 debt because he "never expected to see Fair Grove again." He also gave instructions for the return of some "boiler plate" type to a Kansas City syndicate.

In late November, the Yandells also received a letter from Helms, postmarked Houston, Texas, promising to pay the debt he owed them for room and board.

Rumors circulated as to what caused Helms to leave Fair Grove so suddenly and as to what his future plans might be. One Springfield acquaintance said Helms had told him he was going to South America. Other friends said Helms had a girlfriend in St. Louis and that they were planning to get married but that he had recently received a letter from her saying she'd changed her mind. This heartbreak, his friends speculated, had caused Helms to "give up his efforts at making a success." Still others suggested that Helms had quit Fair Grove so suddenly simply because he was frustrated that he'd been unable to live up to the high expectations of success he held when he first moved there and purchased the newspaper.

The suggestion of a St. Louis connection seemingly had some validity, because Helms did later marry a young woman in the St. Louis area, but whether she was the same one his Springfield friends had mentioned is not known. The couple subsequently moved to Texas, where they had one child. William Helms, the Iron Mountain Baby, died in Texas in 1953 and was brought back to Missouri and buried in a cemetery not far from the place where he'd been thrown from a train over fifty years earlier.

Rdy 1928

 

A "Tangled Romance" Claims Two Victims

A headline in the January 1, 1962, issue of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat spoke of a "tangled romance" resulting in the deaths of two people. The first sentence of the report told the story in brief: "Two women...were shot to death and the husband of one was wounded Saturday in a series of events involving a love triangle in Jefferson County."

It seems 33-year-old Juanita Smith, a pretty blonde who taught elementary school at Hillsboro, had been having an affair for a couple of years with 40-year-old Ralph Patton, former school board president at Richwoods, where Mrs. Smith had previously taught. On Tuesday, December 27, 1961, Patton left his wife, 37-year-old Esther, and went to stay at the Arlington Hotel in DeSoto. When Juanita Smith told her husband, Clarence, that she also planned to leave him, he grew extremely angry and jealous. He met Patton later that evening (the 27th) at a tavern in Richwoods, where the two men had a heated argument.

On Saturday, December 30, Esther met with her husband and his lover at the hotel to try to iron out the marital difficulties in her family, but Patton informed her that he did not intend to return home unless she became sick and needed him.

The two women then left together about mid-afternoon and drove to the Smith residence at Fletcher a few miles west of DeSoto. After Esther Patton talked with the Smith couple for a few minutes over coffee, she left with the stated intention of bringing her husband back with her so that all four parties could hash out the situation.

Instead of retrieving her husband, however, Esther drove to a spot about two and half miles west of DeSoto, pulled off the side of the road, and shot herself with a .32 caliber pistol. Gravely wounded but still alive, she drove into DeSoto, where she fell out of the car into the street. The pistol was found lying in the car seat. Esther was rushed to a hospital in Festus but died shortly after arrival.

Meanwhile, as Smith and his wife were waiting for Mrs. Patton to return, they got into a quarrel about Juanita "messing around with Patton." After waiting for some time with no sign of Esther Patton's return, Juanita took an aspirin and went to bed, and Smith took two aspirins and two "nerve pills" (i.e. tranquilizers). He later claimed that was the last thing he remembered.

What police were able to reconstruct from the evidence, however, was that Smith called Juanita's brother, Lloyd Nickelson, about dusk and told Nickelson and his wife that he was going to kill himself. They rushed to the Smith home and saw him standing in the doorway with a shotgun. As Nickelson approached the house, Smith retreated from the doorway, and a shot came from inside the house. When Nickelson and his wife entered the house, they found Juanita Smith lying on the kitchen floor dying from a shotgun blast and Clarence Smith on the floor, on the opposite side of a table from his wife, dazed and suffering from a wound across his face, apparently self-inflicted in a suicide attempt.

Juanita Smith died on the way to a hospital, and her husband was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. After his wound, which proved superficial, was treated, he was taken to the Jefferson County Jail at Hillsboro.

Tried at Hillsboro in late May 1962 on a reduced charge of second-degree murder, Clarence Smith was found not guilty after a jury deliberation of only about 45 minutes.

Note: Photo from the Crystal City Jefferson County Press-Times

A Series of Eternal Triangles--Part 3

The climactic act in the three-part tragedy of early 20th century love triangles in the southwest Missouri/southeast Kansas area took place in 1928 in Baxter Springs, Kansas.

Lee Nutt was acquitted of murder for killing his wife's lover in Joplin in 1908, and John Cole was first found guilty and then acquitted on retrial for the 1917 killing in rural Granby of two men who were paying attention to his estranged wife. After Nutt's acquittal, he moved to Granby, where Cole lived, and the two men became close friends. Sometime in the 1920s, Cole, who was now single, started boarding with Nutt and his second wife. He went with them when they moved to Neosho in 1927 and again when they relocated to Baxter Springs a few months later. Both men went to work in the mines there.

In September 1928, Nutt told Cole he could no longer stay with him because he thought Cole was paying too much attention to Mrs. Nutt. A couple of months later, Nutt's wife left him and took their kids to Oklahoma, but Nutt came after her a week or so later, and the couple reconciled and returned home to Baxter Springs.

Another month later, on December 11, 1928, Nutt and his nineteen-year-old son, D. W. Nutt, came home from work and found John Cole and Mrs. Nutt there alone together. The three men started fist fighting and struggling with each other. Cole broke away from the elder Nutt, who had only one good arm, but his son clung to Cole as the latter bolted from the house and started down the street.

Lee Nutt caught up with other two men half a block away, brandished a .41 caliber revolver, and fired three shots at Cole at close range, two of which took effect. Cole died almost instantly, and Nutt promptly turned himself in, readily admitting that he'd killed Cole.

The younger Nutt, who was still holding Cole when his father started shooting, was also arrested, and both were charged with first-degree murder. Tried in Cherokee County Circuit Court in January 1929, the father again pleaded the "unwritten law" and was again acquitted, as he had been over twenty years earlier. The charges against his son were later dropped.

Thus, the three-part drama involving Lee Nutt and John Cole, both of whom had previously killed as a result of separate love triangles, ended in a bit of bitter irony when one of the friends killed the other in a squabble arising out their own private love triangle.

A Series of Eternal Triangles--Part 2

Last week I wrote about Lee Nutt's killing of his cousin, Jake Nicely, in 1908 in Joplin, after Nicely and Nutt's wife had run away together a few months earlier. Nutt was acquitted, and he moved to Granby, where he made the acquaintance of John Cole, who is the primary player in the next chapter of the three-part drama of love triangles.

Cole had been separated from his wife, Eva, for several months when he went to the house of her sister, Mrs. George Corkel, on the evening of July 26, 1917, where Eva was visiting, to try to effect some sort of reconciliation with her. Cole was talking to his wife when two young men named George Kincannon and Ralph Lucas came to the Corkel residence to take Eva and her sister Lulu McCaslin, who was also visiting Mrs. Corkel, out for an automobile ride. Only Kincannon emerged from the vehicle, because Lucas was either asleep or hunched down in the seat, so that Cole did not know but what Kincannon was alone. Lulu left with Kincannon (and Lucas), and Cole remarked to his wife after they left that he should have slapped Kincannon's face.

When they returned a short while later, Cole again made a threatening remark. Kincannon had just shaken hands with Lulu and bade her goodnight when Cole noticed that someone else was in Kincannon's car, and he asked who it was. Kincannon said, "See for yourself."

Cole walked closer to the car, and when he saw that it was Ralph Lucas in the vehicle, he exclaimed, "That's just who I thought it was."

Cole slapped Kincannon with his right hand and drew a .45-caliber revolver. The two men started arguing, and Eva pleaded with them to go away from her sister's house if they were going to fight. A few seconds later, though, Cole fired a shot into Kincannon's chest. Kincannon fell, and Eva ran toward the house shouting for Lucas to run. Cole fired another bullet into Kincannon's head after he was already down and then turned and started shooting at Lucas as he was trying to flee. After Lucas was down, Cole also put another bullet in him for good measure.

Cole immediately turned himself in to authorities, saying only that he was sorry for the conditions that "made the shooting necessary." At his trial in June of 1918 for the killing of Kincannon, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was released later in the year, however, under a writ of habeas corpus issued by the Missouri Supreme Court, and, still later, a new trial was ordered.

While the Kincannon case was still pending, Cole was tried in June 1920 for the murder of Lucas and acquitted. The Kincannon case was then later dropped.

The reader might wonder how this case is connected to the Lee Nutt case that I wrote about last time. Admittedly, the connection is pretty thin--only that Nutt and Cole were friends. However, the connection will become much stronger next time when I chronicle the third episode in southwest Missouri's jealousy-driven three-act tragedy of the early 1900s.

  

A Series of Eternal Triangles--Part 1

A series of three related love triangles in the southwest Missouri-southeast Kansas area over a period of twenty years in the early part of the twentieth century resulted in the deaths of four men. The first act in this three-part tragedy was staged at Joplin in October of 1908, and the principal players were thirty-two-year-old David Lee Nutt, his wife, and his cousin.

About nine months earlier, Nutt and his wife, Blanche, were living on a farm near Neosho when Nutt's cousin Jake Nicely came to live with the couple and their three children. Nicely, who was of "prepossessing appearance" and about ten years younger than his cousin, "proved attractive" to the twenty-eight-year-old Blanche, and a friendship grew up between them.

In 1900, just two years after he and Blanche were married, Lee, as Nutt was usually called, had been involved in a mining-related dynamite accident that put out one of his eyes and blew off one of his hands. Whether Lee's disfigurement had anything to do with Blanche's disenchantment with her husband is unknown, but, for whatever reason, the relationship between Blanche and Nicely soon "ripened" into something more passionate than friendship.

One day in July, the clandestine lovers took off together, leaving Nutt to take care of the children alone. Nutt at first swore vengeance, but when the illicit couple was located in Kansas City, he and other relatives pleaded with Blanche to come home. "The efforts of the peacemakers were spurned," however, and the illegal lovers stayed together.

On October 25, 1908, Nutt came to Joplin on business and met his wife on the street that evening. He again pleaded with her to come back to him, but she still refused. He spent the night in a Joplin hotel ruminating over the treachery of his wife and his cousin. The next day, Nutt, who was carrying a revolver, again saw Blanche on the street and followed her into Church's shoe store. Discovering that Nicely was in the store with her, Nutt was overcome with anger. He fired several shots at Nicely, at least two of which took effect, and Nicely died almost instantly.

Nutt was arrested at scene without resistance. At his trial in 1909, Nutt pleaded self-defense, claiming that Nicely had physically assaulted him when he first entered the store and tried to speak to his wife. How much stock the jury placed in Nutt's version of what happened in the store is not certain, but they came back after only 45 minutes of deliberation with a verdict of not guilty, citing the "unwritten law" in addition to the self-defense claim.

A short time after this episode, Blanche divorced Nutt, and Nutt moved to Granby, where he remarried and where he made the acquaintance of one John Cole, who figures prominently in the next act of this three-part drama. (To be continued.)

Kingdom City

Most of the towns of Missouri and the Ozarks were founded in the 1800s or very early 1900s near bodies of water, mineral ore deposits, or mineral springs. A few were founded as county seats at the time their respective counties were formed.

Some towns, mainly small ones, were also founded in the early days at the intersection of two roads. This phenomenon of towns springing up as a result of road building continued well into the twentieth century, after automobiles had replaced horses and buggies as the primary mode of transportation and after most railroad building, mineral exploration, and other activities that provided the early impetus for the formation of towns had largely ceased.

I can think of several examples of towns in Missouri and the Ozarks that formed as a result of road construction during the first half of the twentieth century, but one the one I want to discuss today is Kingdom City, a small community in northern Callaway County.

When US Highway 40 and US Highway 54 were being built through Callaway County in the mid-1920s, Fulton in the central part of the county and McCredie in the northern part, both located along the planned route of Highway 54, hoped that Highway 40 would come through their respective town. Instead, it ended up passing a mile or two south of McCredie and intersecting with Highway 54 at that point.

The intersection soon had a gas station with more businesses likely to follow, but it had no name other than just the Y. The people of McCredie wanted to name the place South McCredie, while those from Fulton wanted to name it North Fulton. In November 1927, the Fulton Oil Company, owner of the service station, suggested naming the place Kingdom City as a reflection of Calloway County's nickname, Kingdom of Callaway, and Kingdom City it became.

The crossroads community grew rapidly after that. Within a year or so, Kingdom City boasted three filling stations, three cafes, a hotel, two garages, and a grocery store, and a department store was planned.

When I-70 was built through Callaway County in 1965, it passed a little bit south of the route Highway 40 had followed, but not far enough away to completely bypass Kingdom City, and the town still benefits from the patronage of travelers along I-70.

In 1967, Kingdom City was incorporated as a village, and the former unincorporated village of McCredie was absorbed into Kingdom City. The McCredie Post Office moved to Kingdom City near the same time.

Today, Kingdom City sports quite a few businesses and a population of about 145 people, while McCredie, as a separate place, exists mainly in memory.

The Fair Play Fire

Fair Play, a small railroad town in western Polk County (MO), had a population of about 250 people when it was visited on Sunday afternoon, September 19, 1887, by a fire that destroyed nearly all the business district.

Initial reports said the fire originated on the premises of S. L. North and Co. General Store and Bankers and could not be contained. Efforts were concentrated on removing all the goods that could be saved, and the North general store and adjoining bank, the lumberyard, and a millinery in the upper story of the North building were the only businesses that were unable to remove their stock.

A later report said that the only buildings to escape the fire were the McAckran and Co. Hardware store, a blacksmith shop, a small grist mill, and a few dwellings. Businesses, in addition to those mentioned in the previous paragraph, which were burned out were B. S. Brown & Son General Store; Brown and Hopkins Drugstore; Fox, Potts and Paynter General Store; Gordon & Drake General Store; P. D. Spraque Jewelry; W. Vanzant Hotel and Restaurant; and W. Robenstine General Store. Total loss was estimated at between $30,000 and $40,000.

Fair Play rebuilt rapidly after the fire, and today it is still a flourishing little town of about 450 people.

Marion C. Early High School

When I attended Fair Grove High School many years ago, we occasionally played Morrisville in basketball or baseball, but the school was called Marion C. Early High School, not Morrisville High School, and I remember wondering why. Why didn't the school simply have the name of the town in its title like nearly all the other small-town high schools I knew about?

I'm pretty sure I could have learned the answer if I'd been inquisitive enough to do a little research or even to ask a few people who might be in a position to know, but I did neither of those. Recently, though, I learned the answer without really trying. I was just scrolling through some Springfield newspapers when I came upon a 1925 article about Marion C. Early's donation of the land and buildings for the school.

Born in 1864, Early, a St. Louis lawyer, grew up on a farm near Morrisville. Although limited educational opportunities were available to him, he managed to obtain enough early schooling to enroll in Drury College in Springfield. After working his way through Drury, he studied law at Washington University in St. Louis, earned his law degree, and was admitted to the bar.

Although Morrisville did not have a high school during the early 1900s, it did have a junior college, Morrisville-Scarritt College, which was founded in 1909 with the merger of Morrisville College (previously Ebenezer College) and Scarritt College of Neosho. The deed to the land on which the college was located stipulated that it had to be used for educational purposes.

However, when the college closed in 1924, the people of Morrisville could not afford to purchase the land. Mr. Early, who had been a trustee of Morrisville-Scarritt College, bought the eight-acre tract of land and the college's four brick buildings for an estimated $100,000 and donated them to the town of Morrisville for use as a high school. A consolidated school district was organized, and the town's first public high school opened in September of 1925 as Marion C. Early High School.

Gasconade Bridge Tragedy

Construction of the Pacific Railroad west of St. Louis began in 1851. The road was supposed to become the first transcontinental railroad, and by the fall of 1855, it had reached the Missouri state capital at Jefferson City. To mark this milestone, a celebration was planned in Jefferson City for November 1, and early that morning an excursion train of 12-14 cars carrying about 600 passengers left St. Louis to attend the festivities.

The trip to Jefferson City was about two-thirds complete when, shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon, the train approached a wooden bridge over the Gasconade River at the present-day town of Gasconade. The bridge was not yet complete, but it was supported by a temporary trestle that was thought safe. However, as the train started across the bridge, the structure gave way, precipitating the front locomotive and ten of the passenger cars into the river. The bridge was about thirty feet above the river, and the water that the train cars plunged into was as much as twenty feet deep.

The rear locomotive and one of the passenger cars became disengaged from the rest of the train and were thus saved. In addition, some of the passengers had gotten out of their respective cars before the train started across the bridge in order to inspect the bridge and to observe the crossing. They, too, were saved, unless they happened to be on the bridge as the train started across it. Still, over thirty people were killed in the disaster, and another 100 or more were injured.

The rear locomotive raced back the way it had come to give an alarm, but details about the disaster were slow to reach the cities. As information about the tragedy trickled into St. Louis over the next couple of days, the entire city was thrown into "a dark time of distress."

A reporter for a Jefferson City newspaper reached the Gasconade bridge on Saturday morning almost 48 hours after the disaster. He described the scene as "such a heap of ruin as few mortals ever before gazed upon."

The Gasconade tragedy was the first major bridge collapse in American history with large-scale casualties.

Pumpkin Center

I mentioned Pumpkin Center, a crossroads community in Dallas County (MO) when I wrote about colorful names of Ozarks towns and villages a few weeks ago. It's located about five miles north of Buffalo on Highway 73 at its intersection with Highway 64. I used to pass through Pumpkin Center occasionally (depending on what route I took) when I'd drive to Jefferson City or Columbia from southwest Missouri, and I often wondered about the curious name of the place.

Moser's Directory of Missouri Places doesn't say much about Pumpkin Center and nothing at all about how it got its quaint name. However, I ran across a 1934 Springfield News and Leader article recently that gives a little bit of info about the place and how it got its name.

At the time of the article, J. M. "Uncle Josh" Duff and his wife operated a general store at the crossroads. In fact, according to newspaper, Duff had "the only store in Pumpkin Center, the only filling station, the only home, the only barn, the only well." In other words, "Pumpkin Center belongs to Uncle Josh."

The store served as a community trading post where farmers from the surrounding area traded cream, eggs, and produce for other home necessities. It was also a popular loafing spot "during the slack season," and often tourists would stop in just to visit the rustic place.

When Josh was away from the store, his wife, Nancy, operated it, but she didn't want to be called "Aunt Nancy," and she wasn't crazy about the tourists snapping pictures of the store and its owners.

Duff had bought the store about 1924 from A. L. Hause, who had gotten it from Charles Cussack, who in turn had acquired it from Robert Miller, the original owner. When Miller built the store, the house, and the barn about 1908, he was at a loss as to what to call the crossroads community. The forerunners to the present-day highways that intersect at the place were just dirt roads that would become muddy messes during wet weather. A neighbor, remarking on all the rain the area had been getting, supposedly said to Miller, "You might as well call it Pumpkin Center; this is a pumpkin growing country."

When Highway 64 was built some years after the store was established and was routed past the store, gasoline pumps were installed, but the place never became a booming metropolis. Today, there is still not much there other than a crossroads store and station.

Dadeville Banker Killed during an Attempted Holdup

About 1:30 in the afternoon of July 26, 1926, two young men in a 1926 Ford touring car stopped in front of the Crisp Prairie Bank of Dadeville (MO) after making several passes up and down the street in front of the bank. The taller of the two men got out of the vehicle and entered the bank. In the bank at the time were longtime banker Charley Landers, one customer, and the customer's small son. Brandishing a revolver, the tall bandit ordered all three of them into the vault.

Instead of entering the vault as ordered, Landers started toward the door of a small office at the back of the bank, and the would-be robber shot him twice in the back, once before he entered the little room and again after he'd passed through the door. Landers staggered through the room and out a rear door, where he fell to the ground.

The bandit, with the revolver still in his hand, backed out of the bank without taking any money. He walked to the waiting Ford and got in, and the vehicle headed east out of town.

Taken to a hospital in Springfield, Landers lived long enough to give a description of the man who shot him, but he died later that same evening. A large reward was offered for the apprehension of the man who killed Landers, and at least four separate men were arrested on suspicion over the next few months, but each was soon released for lack of evidence and the inability of Dadeville townspeople to identify them.

Another man was arrested on suspicion two or three years later, but he also was released after he was brought to Dadeville and people who had seen Landers's killer said he was not the man. Interest in the crime gradually waned after that, and, as far as I've been able to determine, no one was ever prosecuted for the murder of Charley Landers.

Robbery of the Bank of Pennsboro

I stated recently on this blog that seemingly every little town in America had a bank once upon a time, and the majority of them apparently got held up at one time or another. Add Pennsboro, Missouri, a small community in southern Dade County, to that list.

On November 2, 1928, a "rough-looking" man entered the Bank of Pennsboro about three o'clock in the afternoon and, flourishing a firearm, demanded that the assistant cashier, Truman Allison, show him the money. The bandit scooped up all the readily available cash, about $900, locked Allison in the vault, and made his escape in a Chrysler automobile.

A customer entered the bank just as the robber was fleeing and soon helped Allison get loose. The men went to summon law enforcement but found that the bandit had cut all the telephone wires leading in and out of Pennsboro.

Based on a description of the getaway vehicle, the Pennsboro bank bandit was traced to Springfield and identified as local businessman B. W. Baty. While being questioned at his pressing/dry cleaning shop, Baty was allowed to go into a back room, where, unknown to officers, he secured a small bottle of poison. Arrested and taken to the central police station on the evening of November 3, he committed suicide by taking the poison. Baty's family didn't think he was guilty of the robbery, because they said he didn't need the money, but all the evidence, including the license plate number of the Chrysler, pointed to his guilt.

At the time of the Pennsboro bank robbery, the town sported a population of about 75 people and had three other businesses besides the bank: a post office and two general stores. Nowadays, it's hardly a wide place in the road. It's home to a church and a couple of residences, and that's about it.

On a personal note, I mainly write historical nonfiction, but I do occasionally write fiction and have for many years. Recently I published a western novel, Return to Dry Creek (https://amzn.to/4i8bLiR) as an e-book, and in connection with the launch of that book, I'm making the first book in the series, Wild in His Sorrow (https://amzn.to/4cso8oO), which I published a couple of years ago, free to download for the next four days.

Another Pretty Horse Thief

In my book Wicked Women of Missouri https://amzn.to/3Rq24Sh, I write about a couple of attractive young women who caused sensations in the southwest Missouri area around 1890 when they borrowed rigs from liveries, didn't pay up front, and didn't bother to return them. They were both charged with horse theft and sent to prison for short stints.

The outbreak of horse thievery among good-looking young Missouri women during that time frame apparently wasn't confined just to the southwest part of the state, though. Take Clara Graham as an example.

Clara, a tall, well-dressed young woman, worked for a family on the east side of Kansas City in early 1889. On February 13, a dispute arose between her and certain members of the family, and she quit the job or was released. The next day, having nothing else to do, she decided to take a buggy ride, and she engaged a rig from the Gordon and Schmid Livery. She picked up a friend of hers, a barber's wife, and then rode around Kansas City a while before driving to Armourdale (now a neighborhood in Kansas City, KS, where they were joined by a man named McCoy, a friend of Clara's.

According to Clara's later story, McCoy gave her something to drink that must have been laced with a drug, because the next thing she remembered was waking up in St. Joseph two days later. But she still had the horse and buggy, and there was no sign of McCoy or her lady friend. The next day, she drove on to Troy, Kansas, because she had an uncle living near the town, who, she thought, might help her out. She stayed at a hotel in Troy for several weeks and, when she got ready to leave, she sold the rig to the hotel proprietor and got enough to satisfy the debt she owed for the room and board with $30 left over.

However, Clara spent the $30 on trifles and was once again broke when she was finally traced to the Troy area in mid-March. She was brought back to Kansas City to face a charge of grand larceny. Clara did not oppose extradition.

Her arrest and appearance in the Kansas City Court on a horse stealing charge caused "a flutter of excitement." Taking note of the sensation, if not contributing to it, the Kansas City Times editorialized, "A horsethief is about as unpopular a mortal as can follow a rogue's profession. Hanging in none too good for him.... A vulgar horsethief is beneath the notice of a high-toned bank burglar or even a gentlemanly pickpocket, but when a horse thief is a woman, and a good-looking one at that, the whole aspect of things is changed."

The Times described Clara as tall, "finely formed," and "of unusual intelligence." Prior to taking the horse and buggy for a joy ride, she had "a magnificent suit of brown hair," but she had cut it short and put on a blonde wig prior to engaging the rig so that she would not to be recognized. Clara had "dark gray eyes and regular features, and while not beautiful, is quite interesting."

Another newspaper opined that Clara would "not win the first prize in a beauty show," but that "she has a pleasant and somewhat handsome face."

Clara claimed she wrote to the livery in Kansas City on more than one occasion while she was on the lam trying to explain the circumstances of what had happened, but that she did not hear back. Authorities were skeptical of the claim and even more skeptical of her claim that she had been drugged.

Clara pleaded not guilty to the charge of horse stealing, claiming she had no intention of stealing the rig but had planned to return it from the start. She cited the fact that she'd left most her belongings in Kansas City as proof that she meant to return. The fact remained, however, that she had sold a horse and buggy that did not belong to her, and she was indicted on the grand larceny charge. She remained in jail in lieu of $1,000 bond.

Clara was scheduled for preliminary examination on March 22. She waived examination when the appointed time came, beseeching the judge only that he reduce her bond so that she might stand a chance of getting out of jail, where she had been thrown side by side with "women of notorious character." The judge reduced the bond to $500, but Clara remained in jail.

At her trial in early May, Clara was found guilty and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. She was transferred to Jefferson City in early June, and a number of people began working on her behalf almost immediately to have her sentence mitigated. In early December, the governor granted her a full pardon, and she was released to the custody of her father, after serving only about six months of her two-year sentence.

Mexican Villa

Mexican Villa has always been one of my and my wife's favorite spots to eat in Springfield. Nowadays, there are several Mexican Villa locations in Springfield, but last night (March 28, 2025), we ate at Springfield's original Mexican Villa, which was founded at the corner of National and Bennett in 1951. At least, that's the brief history, as I had always thought it to be, but come to find out, the story is not quite that straightforward.

While stationed in south Texas during World War II, former Springfield resident G. H. Ferguson developed a love of Tex-Mex food. After the war, he and his wife, Betty, returned home to Springfield, and they purchased a barbeque restaurant, the Pig 'N Bun Drive In, at 1408 S. National in 1951. Ferguson soon introduced some of the Mexican recipes he remembered from Texas, giving Springfield its first taste of Mexican food, but the place was still called the Pig 'N Bun. 

Around 1958, the Fergusons opened Old Mexico, a Mexican restaurant on South Glenstone across from the Plaza Shopping Center. At the same time, they leased the Pig 'N Bun to a man named Tommy Lafino, who turned it into the Italian Villa.

Then, when Lafino retired about 1962, the Fergusons closed Old Mexico, returned to the restaurant at National and Bennett, and renamed it Mexican Villa. So, the place where my wife and I ate last night is, in fact, the original Mexican Villa site, but it did not acquire the Mexican Villa name until more than ten years after Feguson first served Mexican food from that location. 

Ash Grove Bank Robbery

I've seen it suggested a couple of different times on the Internet and elsewhere that Bonnie and Clyde either were involved or very well might have been involved in the robbery of the Ash Grove (MO) bank on January 12, 1933. While it's true that the Ash Grove bank was robbed on that date, it is virtually certain that Bonnie and Clyde had nothing to do with the caper.

Around noon on January 12, two unmasked men entered the Bank of Ash Grove, and one of them asked for change for a $5 bill. As the cashier turned to make the change, both bandits drew guns and ordered the cashier, J. H. Perryman, and his assistant, Nora Anglum, to throw up their hands. One man stood guard over the two bank officials while the other one scooped up all the cash he could find. The latter bandit then forced Perryman, at the point of a gun, to open the safe, and he cleaned it out, too. 

While Perryman was opening the safe, a customer, Perry Titus, started into the bank and, seeing what he thought were two other customers ahead of him in line, turned around and started back out. However, a third bandit, who had been keeping a watch from a getaway car, ordered him back into the bank and then followed him in. Announcing that he was Pretty Boy Floyd, this third robber seemed to be in charge. He tried to get the cashiers to come up with more money, but when they swore there wasn't any more, he told his sidekicks it was time to leave. 

Making off with about $3,000, the bandits dashed to the waiting getaway car and sped out of town to the south and then west, closely pursued by a posse of three citizens, who briefly exchanged gunfire with the robbers. The pursuers finally lost track of the bandits a few miles north of Mount Vernon. 

Several men were arrested for questioning in the immediate aftermath of the Ash Grove heist, but none of the first ones picked up were held very long. 

Bonnie and Clyde were never serious suspects in the crime, but their kidnapping of Springfield motorcycle cop Tom Persell later in January led indirectly to their name being falsely associated with the crime, because after Persell was released unharmed near Joplin, he came back to Springfield and told of his adventures with the notorious Barrow gang. One of the things he said was that the driver (later identified as Clyde Barrow) mentioned something about Ash Grove during the gang's pell-mell flight along the backroads from Springfield to Joplin. This was the first intimation that Bonnie and Clyde might have been involved in the Ash Grove robbery, and apparently a few historians and would-be historians have picked up on Persell's suggestion and run with it. 

The first serious suspect arrested for the Ash Grove holdup was Jack Allen (aka Paul Fitzgerald) who was nabbed in Oklahoma about the same time Bonnie and Clyde were taking Persell for his unsolicited ride. Allen was brought back to Springfield, where he was known to local law enforcement, and lodged in jail.

In mid-March, Allen and several other prisoners broke out of the Greene County Jail and stole an automobile to make their getaway in. He was recaptured a week later after a gun battle near Harrison, Arkansas. Charged with grand larceny, based on the theft of the car, he was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

A second suspect in the Ash Grove bank robbery, Roland "Screwdriver" Haley, was identified in early April. At the time he was being held in a Palestine, Texas, jail on a burglary and larceny charge. Two or three weeks later, he broke out of jail but, like Allen, was soon recaptured after a shootout. Brought back to Missouri in late May, he went on trial in early June for the Ash Grove robbery, was convicted, and was sentenced to 25 years in the pen. After his conviction, he admitted that he was the man who, during the Ash Grove robbery, had identified himself as Pretty Boy Floyd. 

As far as I know, no one else was ever charged in the Ash Grove bank robbery. So, the identity of the third bandit remains unknown, but one thing's pretty clear: it wasn't Clyde Barrow. It's almost equally certain that it wasn't Pretty Boy Floyd either.

 

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.