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.