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.

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.)