Bertie Brixey, Part Two

Last time I mentioned that the Officer Down Memorial Page website says Sheriff Bertie Brixey of Webster County was killed by his best friend in November of 1914 and that the killer was later lynched by a mob on the square in Marshfield. As I suggested last time, Brixey was indeed killed in November of 1914, but, after additional research, I've concluded that the more sensational details are apparently not true.
What I have learned since last time is that a man hired a buggy and team at Marshfield on Saturday, November 21, 1914, and drove the buggy to Niangua, where both buggy and team disappeared after he hitched them to a rail. Returning to Marshfield, he reported the incident to Sheriff Brixey, and the lawman set out the next morning for Niangua to try to determine who had taken the buggy and team.
For some reason, the sheriff suspected a young man named Edgar Bartlett of having knowledge pertaining to the buggy and team, and he aggressively questioned the young man, even striking him a time or two about the face. Despite the rough treatment, Bartlett said he knew nothing about the disappearance of the buggy and team.
Brixey let Bartlett go but later approached him again near the young man's home, where he resumed grilling him and accused him of having a concealed weapon on his person. Bartlett bolted away and ran toward his nearby home with the sheriff in pursuit. Inside the house, Bartlett armed himself with a shotgun and ordered the lawman to halt or he would shoot. When Brixey nevertheless started to enter the home, Bartlett fired, and the sheriff fell dead.
The missing buggy and team were found the day of the shooting incident, although it's not clear whether they had already been found before Brixey confronted Bartlett. Also, there was an intimation that at least one of the parties involved (probably Brixey) had been drinking.
Bartlett was arrested and charged with murder, but public sentiment seemed to be in his favor. At his trial in January of 1915 he was acquitted. The jury initially split eleven for acquittal and one for conviction before reaching a unanimous verdict in favor of acquittal. Not exactly the type of controversial verdict that would have given rise to mob lynching, as the ODMP website suggests. Nor did I come up with any evidence that the two men involved in the confrontation were acquaintances, much less best friends.
I'm a little disappointed in my findings, though, because the killing of a sheriff by a man who hardly knew him resulting in a verdict of justifiable homicide isn't nearly as dramatic as the murder of a sheriff by his best friend and the subsequent lynching of the killer. That's a story I would have liked to have written. The truth doesn't make nearly as good a story.

The Case of Sheriff Bertie Brixey

The Officer Down Memorial Page at www.odmp.org is an interesting website commemorating law officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty. There are several interesting pages at this website about lawmen from the Ozarks region who have been killed in the line of duty. One, in particular, that caught my attention is a page about Bertie Brixey, who was sheriff of Webster County during the early 1910s. According to the Officer Down website, Brixey was killed on November 22, 1914, reportedly by his best friend, whom Brixey was trying to arrest for murder. Later the killer was supposedly lynched by a mob on the Marshfield square. It's fascinating story, if it's true, but so far I've been unable to confirm the more colorful details of the case. Sheriff Brixey was, indeed, killed (in Niangua) on November 22, 1914, but I haven't found anything yet to suggest that the killer was the sheriff's best friend or that he was later lynched on the square at Marshfield. The ODMP is normally pretty accurate, though, and I'm still looking. So, maybe I'll come up with something to confirm the rest of the story.
On a personal note, I've recently learned that my book entitled "Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents" should be released by Pelican Publishing within the next couple of months. Covering both the Old West era and the gangster era, the book describes 25 notorious incidents of the Ozarks, starting with Wild Bill Hickok's shootout on the Springfield square immediately after the Civil War and ending with Bill Cook's mass murder of the Mosser family in the mid twentieth century.