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.)
