Murder of Belle Douglas

What the Joplin Bulletin called "one of the most horrible and villainous crimes that has ever disgraced the history of Southwest Missouri" came to light on Monday, April 10, 1876, when one or more teamsters crossing Center Creek a few miles northwest of Joplin discovered the body of a young woman floating in the river downstream from the ford, where her clothes had snagged on a limb. The body was taken to the nearby residence of Charles Manlove, where it was identified as Miss Belle Douglas. Belle had been living with Manlove, and she had been missing for about four weeks. Although newspaper accounts at the time identified Belle as Manlove's sister-in-law, census records suggest that she might, in fact, have been his sister. If Belle was not his sister, then he must have had both a sister and a sister-in-law named Belle.
At any rate, an examination revealed that Belle had been struck twice with a heavy object, once on the side of the head and once on the back of the head. Either blow was deemed sufficient to have caused death. Belle was also found to be about seven months pregnant at the time of her death, and certain circumstantial evidence caused investigators to suspect that Manlove was both her seducer and her killer.
Manlove was arrested and taken to Joplin for a preliminary examination before Justice of the Peace J. C. Maddy. After several days of testimony, he was charged with murder and released on a $10,000 bond to await trial.
Before his earthly trial came up, however, Manlove was, according to the Joplin Democrat, called to answer at a "higher court" later the same year. While riding horseback on August 8 near the Stevens diggings about four miles west of Joplin, Manlove was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning that passed from the top of his head down through his body, breaking three ribs, and then separated and went down both legs. "Thus ends in tragedy one of the most mysterious occurrences that has happened in this county since the war," said the Democrat. "With Chas. Manlove dies his prosecution..., and perhaps the secret of her (Belle's) death will forever remain secret."

Staffleback Shack

One chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas, is about the notorious Staffleback family of Galena, Kansas. I've written more than once on this blog about the Stafflebacks previously; so, I'm not going to say a lot more about them. To summarize their main claim to infamy, suffice it to say that almost the entire family was implicated in the July 1897 murder of Frank Galbreath, a young man who had called late at night at the Staffleback home, which was considered a house of ill repute.
A few years ago, a large two-story house on north Main Street in Galena opened for tours as the so-called "murder bordello," because it was supposedly the old Staffleback home. Although even some of the people associated with the enterprise admitted that the two-story house on Main Street might not have been the actual home of the Stafflebacks, it still developed that reputation in the minds of many people.
For the record, the actual Staffleback house was no more than a one-story shack, and it was located on the western outskirts of Galena, not on Main Street. Attached is a sketch of the shack, which appeared in a St. Louis newspaper near the time of the Stafflebacks' trial for the Galbreath murder. The house was burned down by angry townspeople about a week after Ed and George Staffleback were convicted of murder but while they were still awaiting transportation to the state prison in Lansing.

Suicide or Murder?

Another chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas, is about a fascinating case that happened at Moran (located on Highway 54 between Iola and Fort Scott) in 1907. On a late September evening of that year, Mrs. Rebecca Sapp heard her grown daughter, Caroline May Sapp, scream shortly after she had stepped outside, and when Mrs. Sapp went to investigate, she found May lying dead in the yard with her throat slashed. Most people were convinced a heinous murder had taken place. No weapon was found on the premises in the immediate wake of May's death, but a subsequent search late that night turned up a razor. May's father and others who'd helped with the initial search swore the razor was not there at first. However, some people suspected almost from the beginning that Miss Sapp might have taken her own life.
Although no prime suspect in the apparent crime was identified at first, the incident recalled to some people's minds a scandal involving Miss Sapp from ten years earlier. When May was just 16 or 17, her schoolmaster, Samuel Whitlock, who was married and ten years older than her, was accused of having an affair with her. He staunchly denied the rumor, and the scandal was hushed up, but now May's death brought it back to the minds of those who remembered the decade-old rumor. And although no one openly accused Whitlock of killing the young woman, at least a few began to whisper that he might know something about her death.
Indeed, Whitlock, who had given up teaching and was now a businessman in Moran, came forward a few days after May died with a fantastic tale. He said he knew May had killed herself because he was present when she committed the act. He said that, in a panic, he picked up the razor after May slashed her own throat and took it with him but later brought it back. He said that ever since the Sapp family had moved into town from the surrounding countryside about two years earlier, May had been infatuated with him and had been almost constantly pursuing him. He admitted that he had met her secretly numerous times, but he said he was only trying to talk her out of her insane infatuation and that he never had an emotional or physical relationship with her.

Despite his denials, he was arrested on suspicion and tried for first degree murder. The prosecution's theory of the crime was that Whitlock was a brute who tried to seduce Miss Sapp and killed her when she resisted his advances. The defense, on the other hand, insisted that Whitlock was telling the truth and that, when he told May that he and his family were leaving Moran to get away from her, she had killed herself, as she had previously threatened to do, rather than live without him. If the prosecution had not been so intent on protecting Miss Sapp's honor, Whitlock might well have been convicted on a lesser count, because, although many people believed that May had been infatuated with the defendant, as he said, few believed that he had never returned her affection in any way. However, because the state insisted on a first-degree murder charge and didn't allow for the possibility that May was killed during a lover's quarrel, the defendant was acquitted.
This, of course, is just an abbreviated version of the story. As I say, it's an interesting case, and you can read the whole story in my new book.

The Daltons' Reconnaisance Mission

Another chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas, is about the Dalton gang's ill-fated attempt to rob two banks at once in Coffeyville on October 5, 1892. I've written about this incident previously on this blog; so I won't recount the details again. Suffice it to say that the double bank robbery attempt turned into a fiasco, and virtually the whole gang was wiped out, but not before they killed or mortally wounded four citizens.
One of the things that caught my interest as I was researching this incident this time around was a reference or two that I found in Coffeyville newspapers to visits that members of the Dalton gang paid to the town in the days leading up to the ill-fated robbery attempt. I have read in Robert Barr Smith's book about the Coffeyville raid, I believe, and perhaps elsewhere that one of the main reasons the Daltons' attempt to rob two banks at once turned out so badly for them is that they thought they knew the layout of the town because they had lived there a couple of years earlier but they had not been back recently to learn the changes that had been made. Specifically, a hitching rail near one of the banks had been taken up for road repairs, forcing the gang to tie their horses farther away from the bank than they had planned. This may well be true, but, if so, the Daltons' lack of intelligence wasn't because none of the gang had visited Coffeyville recently.
One night in late September, Bob Dalton called at the home of a Coffeyville druggist named Frank Benson, and the visitor had a six-shooter in his hand when Benson answered the door. Dalton asked Benson to go to his drugstore and get him some whiskey, but Benson told him the store was out of whiskey and referred him to some of the other druggists in town. Dalton politely apologized for disturbing Benson and retired without further ado. Or so the Coffeyville Weekly Journal reported. Benson said he knew for sure the intruder was Bob Dalton because he had been well acquainted with Bob when he'd lived at Coffeyville, as the Dalton boys had made Benson's drugstore one of their loafing places.
So, either the hitching rail had been only very recently taken up prior to the botched robbery attempt, or else Bob and his brothers did a mighty poor job of reconnoitering the place.

Who Were the Benders?

One of the chapters in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas, is about the Bloody Benders of Labette County. Most people are at least vaguely familiar with the story. The Benders, a German family, settled north of Cherryvale on the trail from Osage Mission (i.e. St. Paul) to Independence in the early 1870s and started running a roadside grocery. People started disappearing in the neighborhood of the Bender inn during late 1872 and early 1873. Suspicion gradually settled on the Benders, but by the time some men went out to the Bender place to investigate and uncovered 8 or 10 bodies in a backyard graveyard, the family was long gone.
Actually, I've written about the Benders in one of my previous books, and I've mentioned them a couple of times on this blog. But I tried to approach the subject with a fresh perspective, and I did come up with some new information about the Benders, as far as their ages, where they came from before they came to Kansas, etc. At least this information was new to me, and I don't think I've ever seen much, if anything, about it elsewhere. The biggest mystery surrounding the Benders is what happened to them after they fled the scene of their heinous murders, but the exact makeup of the family and their origins have always been somewhat a mystery as well. I try to shed some light on this topic in my new book, but you'll have to read the book to find out exactly what I uncovered. I also offer my insight into what I think happened to the family after they fled, but, like everybody else's speculation on this topic, that's all it is--speculation. 

Deadly Day in Ladore

The incident described below is actually one I've written about before on this blog, but I've decided to revisit the subject, because an expanded version of the blog entry constitutes the first chapter of my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas. The condensed version below gives most of the pertinent facts, but check out the book if you want to read the whole story.
On Tuseday, May 10, 1870, seven men rode into the town of Ladore, Kansas, looking to raise hell. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad (aka the Katy) planned to make Ladore, located about six miles north of present-day Parsons, a junction point of the railroad, and the place pulsed with rowdy activity in anticipation of the expected boom. A railroad man named Bowes recalled many years later that Ladore was the toughest place he ever struck. Whiskey was sold in almost every house, and "vice and immorality flourished like a green bay tree." But even the citizens of a raucous town like Ladore drew a line, and when the seven rowdy strangers got liquored up and crossed it, only one of them rode out alive.
The seven "hard-looking characters" hit town about noon and commenced filling up on whiskey. About dusk they "began operations" by knocking people down and robbing them, and because they were heavily armed, they soon had entire possession of the town. About seven in the evening, they went to a boarding house kept by James N. Roach on the south outskirts of the town and asked to stay overnight. They were refused because of their intoxicated condition. but they didn't take the rejection well. Two of the desperadoes guarded a stairs leading to the second floor, where a number of railroad workers boarded, while the other five took over the lower part of the building. One of them hit Roach over the head with his revolver, knocking him to the floor unconscious. The men then proceeded to a bedroom where Roach's daughter and two other girls who worked for him, 13 and 14 years of age, slept. Roach's daughter managed to escape by slipping out of the room unnoticed, but the hellions took the two young girls, who were sisters, and dragged them to the edge of some nearby woods. There they took turn raping the girls throughout the night. At one point a quarrel erupted between the leader of the gang and one of his men over one of the girls, and the leader shot and killed his own man. Roach roused enough that he could hear the terrible cries of the girls, but he dared not stir for fear the men, who continued to keep an eye on the boarding house, would kill him.
Near daybreak, the outlaws went their separate ways, and an alarm was sounded. A posse of citizens and railroad workers found one of the hombres in the nearby woods still holding one of the girls captive. He was quickly strung up to hackberry tree not far from the Roach place. Two others were located in town, having fallen into a drunken stupor at a saloon, and they promptly joined their comrade on the same limb of the hackberry tree. The remaining three desperadoes were overtaken on the road to Osage Mission (now St. Paul) and brought back to Ladore. Two of them soon adorned the hackberry tree alongside their pals, while the third man was granted a reprieve, since one of the girls testified that he did not participate in the hellish deeds of the other gang members. By 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning, five men hung lifeless side by side on the same hackberry limb. All five were later cut down and buried in a common grave near the hackberry tree.
Ladore's anticipated boom never materialized, because the main line of the Katy Railroad ended up bypassing the town and choosing Parsons instead as its junction point. Ladore settled into a period of peace and quiet, or, in the words of Bowes, it became "a good, moral town." The place gradually declined, and by the turn of the 20th century, it had virtually disappeared. Today about the only thing that remains to suggest that a town called Ladore ever existed is the cemetery, located on an out-of-the-way road a few miles north of Parsons.

Poplar Bluff Tornado

I mentioned last time that three of the top ten and five of the top twenty deadliest tornadoes in US history occurred in Missouri. Last week I wrote about the 1896 St. Louis tornado, which ranks third on the list, and I mentioned that I had previously written about the 1925 Tri-State tornado, which ranks as the deadliest ever, and the 2011 Joplin tornado, which ranks seventh. I have also previously written about the 1880 Marshfield tornado, which ranks sixteenth on the list with a death toll of 99, The remaining Missouri tornado on the top twenty deadliest list is the 1927 Poplar Bluff tornado, which killed 98 people and is tied for seventeenth on the list.

The storm descended on Poplar Bluff about mid-afternoon on May 9, 1927, with a "warning roar" and a "torrent of hail." The twister cut a swath about seven blocks wide and over forty blocks long through the city. Included in the storm's path was the downtown area, where almost all the buildings were either completely destroyed or heavily damaged. The town was also drenched with over two and a half inches of rain immediately after the tornado struck.

School was still in session at the time the tornado struck, and among the storm's victims were two or three children of the East Side School, which was in the direct path of the twister and was heavily damaged. A total of about 300 people sustained injuries of various degrees, in addition to the almost 100 fatalities.

One estimate placed the property damage of the tornado at 2.5 million dollars in the downtown area alone, but the twister also destroyed about twenty-five homes before reaching the downtown area and an unknown number beyond the downtown area. Total property damage was estimated as high as four million.

The tornado left Poplar Bluff with blocked roads, downed electric and telephone wires, and a shortage of food. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the local American Legion maintained a semblance of order in the town until the National Guard and relief agencies could reach the place.