Henry Starr and the Bank of Seligman Robbery

I've previously written on this blog about notorious outlaw/bank robber Henry Starr. One time I gave more or less an overview of his criminal career, and another time I focused on the 1893 train robbery near Pryor Creek, Oklahoma, which he was involved in. In the overview, I mention the robbery of the Bank of Harrison, Arkansas, in February 1921, during which Starr was mortally wounded. However, Starr was also involved in another bank robbery just a couple of months earlier, a crime I have not previously mentioned on this blog. 
About 10 a.m. of Dec. 20, 1920, a Marmon 6 automobile pulled to a halt in front of the Bank of Seligman. Two men got out and went into the bank, while a third stayed behind the wheel of the vehicle. Several people were on the street at the time, but nothing about the appearance of the men or the car aroused suspicion. Once the two men were inside the bank, though, one of them drew a revolver and ordered everybody to “Put ’em up!” Meanwhile, the other man looted the vault and the cash drawer, securing a little over $1,200, mostly in currency. The robbers ordered bank cashier Walter Stapleton, bookkeeper Lawrence Chapman, and patron F. W. Frost into the vault and closed the door on them. The two bandits then walked leisurely out of the bank to the awaiting getaway car. The Marmon sped away to the south toward Eureka Springs. 
Inside the vault, Stapleton went to work extricating himself and his fellow captives. He had recently read an account of a bank robbery in which a cashier had been locked inside a vault, and Stapleton had studied his own vault’s lock at that time to ascertain if and how one might be able to open it from the inside. His preparation proved worthwhile, because he was able to free himself and his companions in less than five minutes and give an alarm.
Stapleton described the apparent leader of the robbers as a dark complexioned man, who wore colored glasses, stood about six feet tall, and walked with erect posture. The second man, according to Stapleton, was blond, stood about five feet, eight inches, and appeared nervous. Neither man wore a mask, and Stapleton said he could easily identify either one.
After the alarm was given, a posse quickly organized and pursued the bandits about nine miles southeast of Seligman, where the burning Marmon was found at the foot of a steep embankment. Apparently the robbers had run the auto off the cliff intentionally and escaped to the hills on foot. Deputies followed the trail of the bandits into the woods but lost the track after about two miles.
A bank association of which the Seligman bank was a member offered a reward of $300 each for capture of the holdup men. Lee Ahl, from Galena, Kansas, was arrested on suspicion at Tulsa and brought back to Barry County in mid-January of 1921. Ahl had also been arrested on suspicion of robbing the Bank of Sarcoxie in January of 1920 and was out on bond when he was arrested on the Seligman charge. At his preliminary hearing, though, he was released for lack of evidence, and the Sarcoxie charge against him was soon dropped as well.
After notorious robber Henry Starr was mortally wounded in a botched holdup attempt in Harrison, Arkansas, in mid-February of 1921, Cashier Stapleton traveled to Harrison and identified Starr as the leader of the gang that had robbed him. In addition, Starr made a deathbed confession admitting that he and two sidekicks had pulled off the Seligman job.

Mount Vernon

In 1894, the Springfield Democrat ran a series of articles promoting Greene County and all of southwest Missouri, including specific towns throughout the region, especially those located on railroads and, therefore, readily accessible to travelers. Most of the articles about the individual towns were brief and didn't offer a lot of information, but some of them were nonetheless interesting.
Take, for example, an article that appeared in a September 1894 issue about Mount Vernon. The paper reminded readers that Mount Vernon, situated on the Greenfield & Northern Railroad about 40 miles west of Springfield, was the county seat of Lawrence County. Furthermore, the article claimed, Mount Vernon was also the "Mecca of this region for invalids." According to the newspaper, "The purity of the atmosphere, which winnows in from the mountains; the sulphur spring, which is renowned for its medicinal properties, and the reputation of the little city with its 2,000 inhabitants for longevity have made Mt. Vernon famous as a health resort."
The article then went on to cite statistics that, at least in the light of what me know about modern medicine and fitness, seem to call into question whether Mount Vernon was, in fact, a very healthy place. "There are thirty men in the place who weigh between 250 and 300 pounds," said the newspaper, "and the rising generation, some of them promise to tip the scales at 400 pounds and still not have superfluous flesh.
"The town has every possible natural advantage," concluded the article, "while in educational and religious matter it takes a back seat for nothing nor nobody."

City Crime Versus Country Crime

Do cities generally have a higher rate of violent crime than small towns and rural areas, even after you allow for the population difference? I suspect that they probably do. I think that people in small towns and the country often have stronger ties to the community, more of a sense of belonging, and just an overall sense of close-knittedness that is sometimes missing in large cities. However, my opinion is really just a hunch. What I know for sure is that this subject has been a matter of debate for a long time.
The day after Christmas of 1895, the St. Louis Republic reported that there had been 15 murders in St. Louis during the past 90 days. Anticipating the Republican National Convention that was scheduled for St. Louis in June of 1896, the newspaper suggested that the city's criminal record would be a magnet for criminals of every stripe from across the country and that they would turn St. Louis into a "harvest field."
The Republic blamed the recent uptick in crime in St. Louis on lax administration. For instance, the newspaper alleged that bad men were able to "purchase exemption" from their crimes and that such corruption only made the criminals bolder. Unless the city started enforcing the law more strictly, the newspaper warned, St. Louis would soon "witness such carnivals of crime as Chicago has seen."
About a week later the Taney County Republican reprinted part of the article from the Republic, and editors B. B. Price and S. J. Williams observed that the 15 recent murders in St. Louis had caused "less fuss" and received less publicity than one similar murder would have received "if it happened in Taney County." The editors went on to claim that, "for some reason or other, crime in the big cities does not receive such sensational treatment as crime in the country." They concluded that, in fact, life and property were much safer in Taney County than they were in St. Louis because the laws were more strictly observed and enforced. Perhaps the editors were a little touchy because of all the negative publicity Taney County had received during the Bald Knobber era of the 1880s, At any rate, they seemed to suggest that the only reason crime in rural areas received so much publicity was because such crime was rare, thus adding another twist to the debate about the prevalence of crime in the cities versus the country.

Lynching of George Graham

Shortly after one o’clock on Tuesday morning, April 27, 1886, a large body of horsemen rode into downtown Springfield from the west and surrounded the courthouse at the corner of College and the public square. Almost all the men were armed, and nearly all had handkerchiefs across their faces. They numbered about one hundred and fifty and appeared well-organized. Eight or ten of them dismounted at the jail, located on College Street at the rear of the courthouse, and they rapped on the door.

            When night watchman R. W. Douglas opened the door, the small mob presented their weapons and marched Douglas into the sheriff’s quarters, where two of them grabbed Sheriff F. M. Donnell as he was rousing from bed and putting on his pants. Donnell offered no resistance, against the heavily armed men.

            They told Donnell they didn’t want to hurt him but they would if he didn’t let them have George Graham, who had recently confessed to killing his first wife and dumping her body in an abandoned well on a Brookline farm owned by nationally known temperance revivalist Emma Molloy. Fearing for her husband’s safety, Mrs. Donnell turned over the key to a drawer where the jail keys were kept.

            After the mob retrieved the jail keys, two vigilantes guarded Donnell while the rest, taking Douglas with them, unlocked the door leading to the cells. Douglas refused to say which cell was Graham’s, but one of the men looked into Graham’s cell and recognized him. The mob soon had the door to Graham’s cell open.

            The prisoner thought the men were bluffing at first, but realizing they weren’t as they entered his cell, he became defiant, calling them Brookline murderers. One of the men put a shotgun to Graham’s head and ordered him to shut up and put on his clothes. Graham sobbed briefly as he dressed but quickly regained his composure.

            The vigilantes tied Graham’s hands, put a rope around his neck, and herded him outside. They put him into a spring wagon, and they made Douglas get in the wagon as well. The cavalcade started east on College Street, crossed the public square, and turned north on Boonville. Aroused by the commotion, many curious onlookers trooped along behind “the march of death.” Periodically the rear guard of the night riders stopped to warn the spectators back.

            The march continued north to within a couple of blocks of Division Street, then wound its way west, finally halting beneath a blackjack oak tree about 300 yards north-northwest of the woolen mill on or near the site of present-day Weaver Elementary School.

            The rope around Graham’s neck was tied to a limb about nine feet off the ground and the wagon driven out from under Graham. However, the rope was too long, allowing his feet to hit the ground. Two of the gang lifted him up while others adjusted the rope around the limb. The ones holding Graham up then let go, and he swung with his feet barely touching the ground until he finally choked to death. 

            It was after 3:00 a.m. when most of the gang rode away to the south and then went west out of town. About thirty men remained at the tree, but they, too, rode away a half hour later, leaving the curiosity seekers free to approach the body.

            They found Graham dead with blood oozing from his mouth and nose. Pinned to his coat was the following message:

When the Coroner is in possession of this paper, Geo. E. Graham will be dead, and as little punishment will have been inflicted as if he had been hanged by legal authority.
It is a matter of right to the community and justice to humanity that we, “The Three Hundred," ignore the law in this instance.
We recognize that our criminal statues are not equal to all occasions, therefore we have resolved to remove from our midst the worst criminal who has ever infested our country before he gets the “benefit of clergy,” that we may hereafter and forever live and be without his presence and vicious influence.

                       

            The note cautioned other criminals to stay away from Greene County and warned that anybody who tried to discover the identity of the lynchers would be “speedily DISPATCHED TO HELL.” It ended with a warning to Sheriff Donnell to keep his mouth shut if had recognized any of the vigilantes, or he would “die the death of a dog.”    

Released after the lynching, night watchman Douglas returned to town to get the sheriff, and the two lawmen went back to the tree to cut Graham’s body down. It was taken downtown, where a coroner’s jury later that day concluded that George Graham “came to his death by being hung by the neck until dead by parties to this jury unknown.”

            Speculation arose after the lynching as to the identity of the mob, but a grand jury failed to return any indictments. Critics of Mrs. Molloy, who had been charged as an accessory after the fact in Sarah Graham’s murder, suggested the lynching might have been instigated by her Springfield friends to keep Graham from revealing incriminating information about her.

            The available evidence does not support such a conspiracy theory. Instead, the lynch mob was probably organized in the Brookline area, where the murder had occurred.

            This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Bigamy and Bloodshed: The Scandal of Emma Molloy and the Murder of Sarah Graham.

Murder of a Nightwatchman

About noon on Christmas Day of 1899, twenty-five-year-old Edgar Spencer was armed with a knife and causing a disturbance in John Adkins's saloon in Vandalia, Missouri, when thirty-five-year-old nightwatchman Benjamin Eddelman, who happened also to be in the saloon, drew his pistol and ordered Spencer out of the building. Although later evidence suggested that Eddelman's weapon was not even been loaded, Spencer acceded to the threat and let a couple of his acquaintances, who had interceded, escort him out of the saloon.
Spencer went to the local livery, where he expressed anger at having been put out of the saloon and made threats toward Eddelman. Vandalia mayor J. Smelser confronted the irate man, telling him he needed to settle down and that Eddelman had already gone home.
Not long afterwards, however, Smelser found Spencer and Eddelman in front of the saloon exchanging words. He again warned Spencer to settle down or else he would have to put him in jail. Eddelman told the mayor to go ahead and put Spencer in jail because he was tired of fooling with him and didn't want any more trouble from him. However, Smelser allowed two of Spencer's buddies to again escort the troublemaker away.
About two o'clock, though, Spencer showed up at the saloon yet again, and this time he was armed with a pistol. Adkins tried to put him back out, but Spencer walked into an interior room where Eddelman was standing at a counter near an ice chest. Spencer strode up to the nightwatchman, grabbed him by the throat, and shot him in the head, killing him almost instantly. The assailant backed out of the saloon and fled, but he was soon apprehended by the mayor and placed in the calaboose.
At his trial in Audrain County Circuit Court early the next year, Adkins was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to ten years in the state pen. His lawyers appealed the verdict, claiming that Spencer feared for his life because Eddelman had made threats against him. In October of 1900, however, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the verdict, saying that, even if Eddelman had made threats against Spencer, it made no difference unless the defendant was being threatened at the time of the shooting, and there was no evidence at all that such was the case. The high court admonished Spencer that he should be happy he got off with such a light sentence.
Spencer was then transported to the Missouri State Penitentiary in February 1901. Five years later, he found an official who was more sympathetic than the supreme court justices. Missouri governor A. M. Dockery commuted Spencer's sentence in 1906, after he had served only half of his ten-year sentence.

Great Blizzard of 1899

The Great Blizzard of 1899, sometimes called the Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899, was a winter-weather event that affected the entire United States, especially east of the Rockies. It occurred during the first half of February, with the peak cold weather happening between February 10 and February 14, and it set all kinds of records for lowest all-time temperatures. Until the mid-1930s, it was the coldest February on record for the United States, and for several individual states, including Kansas and Missouri, February 1899 still stands as the coldest February on record.
All of Missouri and the Ozarks, like much of the rest of the country, suffered during the cold wave of February 1899. A report from Joplin on February 8 said that southwest Missouri was experiencing its coldest weather since 1863. The cold weather brought the lead and zinc mines around Joplin to a virtual standstill. The Joplin report said that the output of ore the previous week had been only about half as much as normal, and the output was expected to drop even more dramatically during the coming week.
The next day, February 9, Webb City recorded a low temperature of 12 below, and a report from Golden City said it was 13 below there, with even the ripples in streams frozen solid. Various towns in north Missouri recorded temperatures as low as 28 below. On the same day, February 9, Galena, Kansas, reported, just as Joplin had on the 8th, that the mines were virtually at a standstill. Spring River was frozen twelve inches thick, whereas as ice even as thick as six inches was unusual.
The Kansas City Journal reported on February 12 that the previous day's low was -19 degrees. The 12th promised to be considerably colder, because February 11th's low mark of -19 had already been matched at 3 a.m. on the 12th when the newspaper went to press.
On February 12, 1899, Springfield, Missouri, recorded a temperature of -29 degrees Fahrenheit, paralyzing the town. I believe that mark still stands as the lowest temperature ever recorded in Springfield.
Temperatures in the Potosi, Missouri, area dipped to as low as thirty degrees below zero around February 12. By the 15th, the cold temperatures were starting to moderate, and the Potosi Journal summed up the weather phenomenon that the area had just endured: "The weather the past week has been the severest felt in this section for many winters. In fact, even the oldest inhabitant cannot recall anything like it.... Such intense cold is unusual in these latitudes and caused much discomfort and some suffering in the community. Business was practically suspended and people devoted themselves chiefly to attending fires and staying warm."

Birdie McCarty: Another Female Horse Thief

           The past two weeks, I've written about two different female horse thieves who made their appearance in southwest Missouri around 1890. After a decade's hiatus, another woman horse thief, Birdie McCarty, came on the scene, but most of her exploits took place just across the Kansas line. When Birdie made her criminal debut in the Kansas-Missouri border region in early 1902, one area newspaper waxed nostalgic, observing that law officers were “now dealing with the first female horse thief since the palmy days of the reign of May Colvin, the notorious woman desperado, who invaded this section of the country about ten years ago.” Sensationalized in the press over the next few weeks, Birdie made fewer headlines than her predecessor only because her career in crime proved briefer than May’s. 

            Birdie’s saga began when she accompanied a young man from Butler, Missouri, to Fort Scott, Kansas, about the 20^th of February, 1902. After a few days in Fort Scott, her male companion proposed that she go to a livery and get a horse and buggy, which she did. The couple started south but got into an argument at Pittsburg over who owned the rig. The quarrel ended, according to the Joplin Globe, with the man telling Birdie to “go to hell.” Instead, “she concluded to go to a better place” and came to Baxter Springs, where she arrived on the evening of February 25 and turned herself in to the city marshal, confessing that she had a horse and buggy that belonged to a liveryman in Fort Scott.
               After she was placed in jail at Baxter Springs, “some little dispute” arose, according to the Globe, among the town’s officials over the auburn-haired prisoner’s attractiveness. The marshal claimed the woman was “beautiful to look upon,” while the mayor declared that “her face would stop a Frisco freight.”

            The next day an officer from Fort Scott arrived to escort the prisoner back to Fort Scott to face criminal charges. Confined with three other women in a basement room of the Bourbon County courthouse, Birdie was described as “a daring little woman about 22 years old.” The close quarters of the basement room didn’t hold Birdie for long. On Sunday, March 23, she “opened up a sensational Sabbath” by making what the Fort Scott Monitor called “a dash for liberty that even the professional crooks of the stronger sex might well envy…. Birdie McCarty had flown, and the other birds had soared away in her wake.”

            The four women parted ways after they escaped, with Birdie going in the company of a male accomplice named Red Taylor, while the other three fugitives headed north. Taylor took Birdie to meet Pete Sheflet, reputed to be her lover, and she and Sheflet “rode like the wind” on the same horse, according to Birdie’s later testimony, to the camp of two brothers named Ryder. Sheflet induced the Ryder boys to take Birdie on as a cook, and she started south with the brothers, riding in the back of their wagon.

            Birdie’s three fellow escapees were recaptured about two miles north of Fort Scott shortly after the jail break. The three women swore they had nothing to do with plotting the escape but that it was all the work of Birdie McCarty, who had been boasting for several days that her captivity would be brief. The women claimed to know nothing about the escapade until Birdie awakened them about five o’clock Sunday morning and told them the door was open.

            Meanwhile, the Bourbon County sheriff overtook the Ryder brothers about twelve miles south of Fort Scott, crawled into the back of their wagon, and found Birdie hidden beneath a pile of gunny sacks. He placed the fugitive under arrest and brought her back to Fort Scott. Taylor and Sheflet were also arrested. They were suspected not only of aiding Birdie in her flight but also of having helped her escape to begin with, although Birdie claimed she opened the door herself with a piece of wire.

            A few days after being recaptured, Birdie made headlines because of her scandalous predilection for tobacco. “Birdie McCarty, besides being an acknowledged horse thief,” read a brief story in the Monitor, “is quite a tobacco fiend.”

            Birdie’s trial for horse stealing came up during the May term of court. She was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to five years in the Kansas Penitentiary. The judge, who’d heard the defendant mention that she was raised to go to church and knew the Lord’s prayer, offered to take a year off the sentence if she could recite the prayer by heart. Birdie reportedly hung her head and could not repeat even the first line, and the five-year sentence stood.

            Birdie was sent to the state prison at Lansing, where she was received on May 14, 1902.