Virgil Reece Takes the Gate: The Story of Gertrude Lytle

Gertrude “Gertie” Lytle was a troubled young woman. Born Gertrude Graham about 1902, Gertie married John M. Lytle at the age of nineteen in Arkansas. The marriage soon failed, and Gertie was cast adrift.

In early 1930, Gertie came to St. Joseph, Missouri, and checked into a hotel, where she drank a bottle of poison in a failed suicide attempt. Taken to a hospital, she slowly recovered, and when she got out, she made her way to Savannah (MO) because an elderly woman she met in the hospital had told her what a nice place it was. 

In Savannah, Gertie went to work for the McCormick family, and the first day she was there, she met Virgil Reece, a World War I veteran and prominent citizen of the community. The two hit it off immediately, and they dated for the next two years. 

During those two years, Gertie also worked for the Breit family and for Virgil's father. She enjoyed living and working on the Reece farm, and she told friends that she and Virgil were planning to get married.

Her dreamworld came crashing down when she learned in early June 1932 that Marie Thompson, an old friend of Virgil’s, was coming back to Savannah. Gertie noticed that Virgil “showed considerable interest” in Miss Thompson’s return, and he became cold toward Gertie.

Gertie was devastated by Virgil’s loss of interest in her, but she put on a brave front, telling him that he could "take the gate." Gertie left the Reece farm and went back to stay with the McCormicks on June 16. Mrs. McCormick later recalled that Gertie seemed cheerful, but she wasn't as carefree as she let on. A week or so later, she visited the Breits, and, knowing the layout of their home and where everything was kept, she slipped a .32 caliber revolver into her purse while no one was watching.

Miss Thompson arrived from Oklahoma near the same time as Gertie’s visit to the Breit home, and the Thompson woman began keeping company with Virgil. Gertie still pretended not to care, but she was seething with jealousy and anger on the inside.

On the evening of June 27, when she saw Virgil and Miss Thompson pull up in Virgil's car and park on the north side of the Savannah square, Gertie strode out into the street and pulled out the stolen revolver. She strolled up to the driver's side door and escorted Virgil to the gates of hell by shooting him in the head. 

When a bystander demanded to know why she'd done that, Gertie replied, "Virgil knows," as she walked away.

Approached by a night patrolman, Gertie handed over the revolver. She announced, "I just killed Virgil," and she later said that she had planned to kill herself, too.

Virgil was rushed to a hospital but died a few hours later. Meanwhile, Gertie was taken to jail and charged with first-degree murder. She waived preliminary examination, and her trial was held in November 1932. The key point of contention between the prosecution and the defense was whether Gertie acted from mere spite or from righteous indignation. The defense argued that Virgil's rejection of her drove her to temporary insanity. Implicit in the argument, although not directly stated, was the contention that Virgil had taken Gertie to bed under a false promise of marriage. The prosecution argued, on the other hand, that Virgil had made no such promise. He had, to the contrary, made it clear he did not want to get married.

After closing arguments, the judge gave instructions that left no room for an in-between verdict. Either Gertie was not guilty by reason of insanity, or she was guilty of first-degree murder, which carried a penalty of death or life imprisonment. The jury came back hopelessly deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.

At Gertie’s retrial in February 1933, the jury found her not guilty, despite the fact that the charge had been reduced from first-degree murder to second-degree murder. The jury held that Mrs. Lytle was now sane but was insane at the time of the crime, and she walked out of the courtroom a free woman.

The story above is a condensed version of a chapter in my latest book, Gangster Queen Bonnie Parker and Other Murderous Women of Missouri https://amzn.to/3RsmBJ1.

I Have Killed Him and I'm Glad I Did It: The Story of LaCulia Curry

On the night of Wednesday, July 15, 1931, Winston Edwards and his wife, Irene, came to the Deer Street Police Station in St. Louis about 11:30 p.m. to lodge a complaint that a young woman named LaCulia Curry had been harassing them all afternoon and evening in and around their apartment building on Adline Street.

Two beat officers were assigned to investigate Edwards’s complaint, and they rode on the passenger-side running board of his Ford coupe as he drove them back toward his home. As they approached the apartment building, Edwards spotted Miss Curry, pointed her out to the officers, and slowed to let them off. They started around the vehicle to question Miss Curry, but before they could reach her, she whipped out a .38 caliber revolver, jumped on the driver’s side running board, and fired two shots at Edwards. One struck him in the chest and one in the hip, and he sank down in the seat.

“You have shot him!” Irene cried out.

“Yes, I have killed him,” LaCulia retorted, “and I am glad I did.” She then turned the gun on herself and shot herself in the side, inflicting a serious wound.

Edwards died almost instantly, but Miss Curry was rushed to City Hospital No. 2, where she gave a statement before lapsing into unconsciousness. She said she had been associating with Edwards lately but that they’d recently gotten into a quarrel and he had beaten her up. She showed off some bruises on her face to back up her claim.

A coroner’s inquest determined that LaCulia had indeed been harassing the Edwards couple lately, and the jury ordered her held on a murder charge.

At LaCulia’s trial in January 1932, defense testimony confirmed that Edwards and Miss Curry had, in fact, been keeping company before the shooting and had gotten into a violent argument during which Edwards had shoved her out of his car and dragged her a considerable distance after her clothes caught on the car door. LaCulia also took the stand to claim that she only killed Edwards because she was afraid he was going to kill her.

Edwards's wife, Irene, who was the main prosecution witness, testified about the harassment that she and Winston had received from Miss Curry prior to the shooting.

Charged with first-degree murder, LaCulia was found guilty of second-degree murder with a sentence recommendation of ten years in the state penitentiary. After her conviction, she was interviewed by a St. Louis newspaper. She expressed remorse over what she'd done and sorrow for the pain her actions had caused her mother. She said she was ready to take her punishment and to try to better her life once she got out.

                                              Photo courtesy Missouri State Archives.

LaCulia was transported to Jefferson City to serve her sentence at the women’s prison farm. She earned merit time for good behavior and had her sentence commuted after serving only half of her ten years. LaCulia came back to St. Louis to live with her mother and aunt, and she seemingly continued her good behavior. She got married and became a devoted wife and remarried after her first husband's death. In 1967, Governor Warren Hearnes granted her a full pardon. LaCulia died in 1978 and is buried in Washington Park Cemetery in St. Louis.  

This story is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Gangster Queen Bonnie Parker and Other Murderous Women of Missouri https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-Bonnie-Parker-Murderous-Missouri/dp/1467170925.

An Honorable Girl: The Story of Ada Lee Biggs

After 20-year-old Ada Lee Biggs was convicted of second-degree murder in November of 1928 in Ste. Francois County (MO) for killing her stepfather, William Simpson, newspapers speculated that the jury must have doubted her word because of inconsistencies in her story. While it's true that the story Ada told when first arrested differed somewhat from what she told the jury, her claim of abuse at the hands of her stepfather was pretty consistent from the beginning.

The basic facts of the case were straightforward—on the evening of July 14, 1928, Ada poked a shotgun through a window of her home in Bismarck (MO) and blew the top of her stepfather’s head off. But even at that time, a St. Louis newspaper reported that "a sinister tale of a middle-aged man...who was attracted by the daughter of the widow he married..." lay in back of the crime.

Ada's father died when she was young, and her mother, Bertie, married William Simpson when Ada was about eleven years of age. Simpson's inappropriate behavior toward Ada began shortly after the marriage, and according to Ada, he made life hell for her from the time she was 12 years old. He would not let her have friends, and he became very jealous if a boy even looked at her.

As Ada grew older and more physically mature, Simpson’s advances became more insistent. He started groping her and trying to get her to have sex with him whenever her mother was away from home. Ada told her mother of Simpson’s conduct, but Mrs. Simpson didn’t believe her.

Finally, on December 15, 1926, when Ada was 18, Simpson, who was about 50, took Ada out in his car to a secluded spot, raped her, and threatened to kill "the whole damn family" if she told anybody.

Ada left home after that but soon came back when Simpson threatened to have her committed to a home for delinquent girls. Simpson's abuse resumed, as he raped Ada once or twice a month during the first half of 1927. Somewhere along the line, Bertie finally started believing her daughter, and in mid-1927, she invited her brother, Oscar Greenwalt, to come and live with the Simpson family to help protect her and Ada from her husband's rampages.

Simpson, who stayed drunk much of the time, suffered from ataxia and was given to spells. Most of his neighbors considered him about half insane. His spells worsened after Greenwalt arrived, and around the first of 1928, Bertie and her brother began plotting to get rid of Simpson. They tried to get Ada to kill him, saying they'd vouch for her, but she resisted the idea at first.

She finally agreed to the idea after Simpson went on a day-long spree on Saturday, July 14, 1928. About five o’clock in the afternoon, Bertie told her brother that they had to "do it today.” Greenwalt agreed, and they appointed Ada to carry out the murder.

Simpson took regular steam baths to try to combat the effects of his ataxia. So, the conspirators waited until later that evening when it was time for him to take his steam bath. Even at the last moment, Ada still balked at the assignment, but she finally agreed after her mother brought out a shotgun and her uncle cocked and handed it to her. While Simpson was taking a steam bath, Ada, nineteen at the time and a recent graduate of Bismarck High School, slipped up outside the window about ten o’clock and shot the man, almost blowing his head off.

When authorities arrived, Ada, Bertie, and Greenwalt denied involvement in the crime. Based on evidence found at the Simpson home, however, Greenwalt was taken in for questioning the next day, and he broke down and confessed to his involvement, implicating his sister and niece as well.

When Ada was arrested and questioned, she gave a statement taking full blame for the crime, trying to shield her mother and uncle. She said the reason she did it was because of the mean way her stepfather treated her and because he had threatened to kill her. To a newspaper reporter, Ada clarified that Simpson had "brutally assaulted" her.

Ada was charged with first-degree murder, and her mother and uncle, who knew all the details of the crime even before Ada confessed, were charged as accessories. The people of Bismarck exhibited “a strong sentiment in favor of Ada” in the aftermath of the shooting, while they were mostly indifferent toward Oscar Greenwalt and his sister.

Ada’s case was severed from the other two defendants, and when her trial came up at Farmington in November 1928, she told her whole story, pleading self-defense. She addressed the members of the jury in an even voice: "Gentlemen..., after my honor, my virtue, had been taken, I realized I could never marry. My social standing, my character, were ruined. That is what drove me to the insanity that I did."

Two or three defense witnesses testified to Ada’s good reputation prior to the crime, including Richard Dennis, a young man who had kept company with Ada before being driven off by Simpson. He called Ada “an honorable girl.”

Although Ada had been charged with first-degree murder, the jury came back with a verdict finding her guilty of second-degree murder. So, it's not clear, as the newspapers suggested, that the jury did not believe her story. It might well be that they did believe her story but still felt obligated by the law to find her guilty of the lesser offense.

Arguing for the idea that many people did believe Ada’s story is the fact that she was sentenced to only ten years in prison, while her mother and uncle, who both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder a couple of weeks after Ada's trial, received sentences of 15 years behind bars.

Ada was paroled in mid-1933, after serving less than five years. She got married the same year, and the couple later had two children. She died in 1979 and is buried at Cape Girardeau.  

The story above is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Gangster Queen Bonnie Parker and Other Murderous Women of Missouri https://amzn.to/3QQYt2z. 

I Showed Him the Road: The Story Mary Appleby

Sitting in a cell in November 1921 at the Greene County Jail a couple of days after gunning down her husband on Main Street in Springfield, twenty-four-year-old Mary Teague Appleby tried to express her feelings toward the man she’d killed, in some crude lines of verse she wrote down on cheap note paper. Here is a sample:

I gave him kind words, I showed him the road;
I tried not to let him go on with the load.
When a lift just in time would set everything right.
For I know what it means to be losing the fight.

I was his wife in his trouble and need,

I offered to help him, but he didn’t heed.

Although critics might find fault with the meter and verbiage of her lines, the Springfield Leader opined, "perhaps they express her feelings in the best way she knows. She apparently has but little education."

The Leader’s last observation was a definite understatement, because the only institution of learning Mary had attended in recent years was the school of hard knocks. Born in Christian County, Mary grew up in Stone County and later Webb City, where her father worked in the mines. When she was eighteen, Mary married 35-year-old Jim Thompson in Kansas City, and the couple had a son. However, the marriage was a rocky one, and the couple split up in late 1920 or early 1921 after moving to Springfield. Thompson took the boy and moved to Rogersville.

Mary soon became “intimately associated” with twenty-four-year-old Abe Appleby, a ne'er-do-well who seldom worked and depended on Mary to support him. Mary "played the hotels" in Springfield with Appleby acting almost as her pimp and taking most of the money she made.

Mary and Appleby got married soon after her divorce from Thompson became final in mid to late 1921, but she continued to work the hotels. In early November, Appleby was arrested for allegedly beating Mary up, but she put up his bail to get him released.

On Wednesday, November 9, Mary and her sister Eva Giles went shopping, and they were supposed to meet Appleby at the corner of College and Main streets at 3:30 p.m. When they didn’t arrive until about 4:00 p.m., Appleby grew angry at Mary and started cussing her, according to Eva's later story.

Mary got into a heated argument with her husband, and he threatened to kill her. The argument continued to escalate, and Mary ended up killing Appleby instead, in front of a pressing store in the 200 block of Main Street, when he struck at her and tried to grab a gun away from her that he'd given her to keep for him.  

     Two police officers quickly arrived on the scene and took Mary into custody. A Springfield Missouri Republican reporter who visited Mary in the Greene County Jail later that evening described her as slender and pretty with an overall appearance that reminded him more of a schoolgirl than a murderess. 

On November 10, the day after the shooting, a coroner’s jury reached a verdict that Abe Appleby had come to his death by a gunshot from his wife, Mary Teague Appleby, and two days later, a charge of second-degree murder was filed against her.

Mary’s trial got underway in early January 1922 before a packed courtroom. Most of the defense testimony centered around Appleby's abusive treatment of his wife, and Mary also testified in her own defense. The jury deadlocked, with a 10-2 vote in favor of acquittal, and Mary's second trial took place in April 1922. Her ex-husband, Jim Thompson, attended most of the proceedings and lent his support, allowing his son to sit on Mary's lap part of the time while the trial was going on. The defense once again offered much testimony as to Appleby's ill treatment of Mary, and this time she was acquitted. Mary's friends where excited for her, but Mary herself took the news with “no undue display of emotion.”

The story above is condensed from a chapter in my latest book Gangster Queen Bonnie Parker and Other Murderous Women of Missouri https://amzn.to/4n5NHkQ.