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.