A Murder Mystery Solved: The Slaying of R. T. Thompson

On Wednesday evening, October 23, 1929, Joplin watchmaker Robert T. Thompson was out riding around with Miss Mary Quinn, a nurse at St. John’s Hospital. The two had known each other for years, but they’d gotten better acquainted during Thompson’s recent stay at the hospital for treatment of an eye illness. Divorced and the father of a young child, Thompson had continued to see the twenty-three-year-old Miss Quinn after his discharge, and the two had “been out driving on several occasions.

On this night, Thompson picked Mary up and drove east of town to Duquesne Road. He wanted to get away from Joplin, because the bright lights bothered his eye, which still required treatment. Turning north, the couple drove to Newman Road and turned east. A half mile down the road, Thompson slowed, preparing to stop, so Mary could put some medicine in his eye. Just as she turned on the dome light so she could see to administer the medicine, a car with several people in it pulled up alongside the Thompson car, and one of the passengers ordered Thompson to stop. Instead of complying, he started to pull away, and someone from the other car fired a shot that struck him in the left temple. Thompson slumped over the steering wheel, apparently lifeless, as the assassin car sped away. Mary frantically drove her friend to the hospital, but it was too late.

A large reward was offered for the apprehension of the gang responsible for killing Thompson, but their identity remained a mystery.

For two years.

In early October 1931, police got an anonymous tip that Leslie Edgington of Joplin was somehow involved in Thompson’s murder, and he was arrested Edgington for questioning. The tip also implicated four other people, and police began rounding them up, too. Earl Osborn of Central City was lodged in jail at Joplin alongside Edgington, while George Herrelson and his wife, Bertha, who was Osborn’s sister, were arrested in Kansas and taken to the Cherokee County Jail at Columbus. The fifth suspect, Floyd Blinzler, fled and was not immediately apprehended.

On Monday, October 12, Edgington confessed to his part in the crime and confirmed the identity of the other four participants. He said Osborn and Herrelson had been operating as road bandits for some time prior to the killing of Thompson. On the night of the murder, Osborn and the Herrelson couple picked up him and Blinzler and convinced them to take part in a robbery. The two young men rode in the back seat of Herrelson’s Chrysler. Osborn, who was riding shotgun in front, had two pistols, and he handed one to Edgington.

When the gang spotted the Thompson car coming to a halt with its dome light on, Herrelson pulled up beside it. Osborn and Edgington hopped out with their revolvers in hand. When Thompson refused the order to stop and began to drive away, Osborn opened fire.

Confronted with Edgington’s confession, Osborn gave a statement of his own on October 13. He admitted being the gunman who’d shot Thompson, but he refused to implicate his sister or her husband. Osborn and Edgington were arraigned on a first-degree murder charge and committed to the Jasper County Jail at Carthage.

Blinzler was captured at Crocker, Missouri, on October 15 and brought back to Carthage, where he gave a statement confirming that Osborn was the slayer of Thompson, but he said Herrelson directed the operations of the gang. Blinzler also admitted that he and Edgington had accompanied Herrelson and Osborn on several robberies prior to the Thompson murder. Blinzler was charged with murder and joined Edgington and Osborn at the county jail.

On October 17, George and Bertha Herrelson were extradited from Kansas, charged with murder, and transported to Carthage to join the others.     

At their preliminary hearings on November 4, Blinzler and the Herrelsons were bound over for trial in circuit court. Edgington and Osborn waived preliminary hearings and were also held for trial. Osborn decided to plead guilty to first-degree murder, though, rather than face a jury. The prosecution offered to reduce the charges against Edgington and Blinzler to second-degree murder in exchange for their testimony against the Herrelsons, and they took the deal.

Each in turn took the stand to testify against the Herrelsons when their joint trial got underway at Carthage on November 30. The testimony of the youthful accomplices was similar to what they’d said when arrested, but it had some holes. And  the defense attorney argued that his clients were not even at the murder scene on the night in question.

The case was given to the jury on December 1, 1931, and they came back that evening with a verdict convicting both Herrelson and his wife of first-degree murder. A few days later, the sentences for Edgington and Blinzler were set at fifteen years apiece in the state prison.

Edgington and Blinzler were paroled or had their sentences commuted before 1940. Meanwhile, Osborn and the Herrelsons were still making their home at the big house in Jefferson City.

This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.

 

Jasper County’s Only Double Hanging

After Castille Stapleton (alias Ralph Long) and Sterling Jackson were arrested on suspicion of killing Carthage storekeeper George Babcock in April of 1922, they revealed that they’d first gotten acquainted at the Missouri State Penitentiary a couple of years earlier. Jackson got sent to Jefferson City in December of 1918 on a burglary conviction from Jackson County when he was twenty-one years old. Stapleton, twenty-two, joined Jackson at the big house six months later, also on a burglary charge from Jackson County. Stapleton was released in September of 1921, and Jackson had his term commuted in early March 1922.
If part of the purpose of incarceration is meant to be rehabilitation, the program failed miserably in Stapleton’s and Jackson’s cases. Their time in lockup seems to have had the opposite effect. Almost as soon as Jackson was released, the two men got together in Kansas City and decided to go into “the hold-up business.” Shortly after forming their “partnership,” they stuck up a taxicab driver in Kansas City and then absconded to Pittsburg, Kansas. From there, they came to Joplin on Saturday, April 8, and rented a room on Kentucky Avenue. That night they traveled to Carthage looking for a hold-up target.

About ten o’clock, the desperate pair walked into Babcock’s store on East Central Avenue with their faces uncovered. Jackson carried a knife, and Stapleton was packing a pistol. According to bystander Fred Beard, Jackson bought some tobacco and then asked for soda pop. When Babcock started toward the rear of the store to retrieve it, Jackson followed him, and Stapleton also shuffled in that direction. At the rear of the store, Jackson grabbed Babcock from behind and demanded money, but Babcock spun around and began scuffling with his assailant. Stapleton drew his revolver and ordered Beard to throw up his hands. After the customer complied, Stapleton also ordered Babcock to stick up his hands, and when he did not promptly obey, Stapleton fired a single shot that struck the storekeeper in the neck. He died soon afterward.

The robbers fled through an alley and walked all the way back to Joplin. Officers arrested Stapleton and Jackson at the Kentucky Avenue address just minutes after the pair arrived on Sunday morning.

Stapleton, still going by the name Ralph Long, and Jackson were taken to the Joplin Police station, where they gave confessions and Stapleton revealed his real name. The next day, Monday, the prisoners were arraigned in Joplin on first-degree murder charges, and they pleaded not guilty.

Fearing mob violence, authorities moved the prisoners to Miami, Oklahoma, and then Springfield, Missouri. As lynch fever subsided, the accused murderers were brought back from Springfield and placed in jail at Carthage.

Stapleton’s trial got underway on May 1 in Division 2 of Jasper County Circuit Court at Joplin. Fred Beard, the customer who’d been in Babcock’s store on the night of the crime, was the star witness for the prosecution. He positively identified Stapleton as the shooter. The only defense by Stapleton’s lawyers was a plea to spare their client’s life, but the jury found Stapleton guilty and recommended the death penalty.  

Sterling Jackson’s trial began in Division 1 of the same court on May 3, the day after Stapleton’s concluded. Prosecution testimony was virtually the same as it had been for Stapleton’s trial, and the defense again offered no witnesses, although Jackson’s attorneys made a strong plea to spare his life. After considerable deliberation, the Jackson jury, like Stapleton’s, found the defendant guilty and recommended the death penalty. Defense attorneys for both prisoners filed motions for new trials, but both motions were overruled on May 13. The two were sentenced to hang on June 23, 1922, but appeals automatically stayed their executions.

On June 21, 1923, the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s verdicts, and the execution date  for both men was set for dawn on August 3. Plans called for them to hang simultaneously on a double scaffold erected just west of the county jail surrounded by a stockade to keep out uninvited spectators.

On Tuesday night, July 31, Stapleton made an eleventh-hour appeal to the Missouri governor to save his partner’s life. He claimed that neither he nor Jackson got a fair trial. He said that if he and Jackson had been white, they might have received life imprisonment but not death sentences, and he cited the recent case of a young white man named Tucker who’d killed William Spain in Carthage and received life imprisonment. He said he and Jackson were not given an opportunity to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences as Tucker had been. If the governor didn’t give both of them a stay, all Stapleton asked was for him to commute the sentence of Jackson, who had nothing to do with the actual killing. The governor, however, decided not to intervene.  

Early Friday morning, August 3, 1923, Stapleton and Jackson, with their arms already bound, were led from their cells to the scaffold via a walkway through a west window of the jail. After the nooses and caps were adjusted around the men’s necks and heads, Sheriff Harry Mead pulled a lever that sprung both traps simultaneously, and Stapleton and Jackson dropped to their deaths together at 4:56 a.m.

This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.

The Murder of Carthage Cab Driver William Spain

Taxi driver William Spain left the Harrington Hotel in Carthage about 1:00 a.m. Monday, May 9, 1921, with two young male passengers dressed in military uniforms who said they wanted to go to the home of a Mrs. Tucker several miles northwest of Carthage. When Spain did not return after a reasonable time, the owners of the cab company instituted a search for the missing man. About nine o’clock the same morning, Spain’s blood-smeared taxicab was found abandoned two miles northwest of Carthage, and foul play was immediately suspected.
Suspicion settled on twenty-one-year-old Earl Dewey Tucker. He was the son of the woman to whose house the taxi passengers had said they wanted to be taken, and he was home on leave from Camp Eustis, Virginia. Family members told conflicting stories about the young man’s whereabouts the previous night. Nonetheless, officers felt sure they had the right man, and Tucker was arrested and then taken to Joplin.
Tucker stoutly maintained his innocence when he was grilled by law officers that afternoon. He said he’d been with his girlfriend when the crime had allegedly been committed. Despite his denial, Tucker was charged with first degree murder. The next day, he clung to his story of innocence even after his mother came to Joplin and pleaded with him to tell the truth.
On the evening of May 11, Tucker finally broke down and confessed, claiming he knew who had killed Spain but that he did not participate in the murder himself. He said he and a fellow soldier named William Mullen left Carthage shortly after midnight on Monday the 9th as passengers in Spain’s cab and that north of town they picked up two other soldiers, whom they had met as they were leaving Camp Eustis. One of the other two he knew only as Harry, and he did not know the fourth man’s name at all. When they got close to his mother’s house, Tucker said, he left the group. He reunited with Private Mullen a couple of hours later, and Mullen told him he had shot Spain and, with the help of the other two soldiers, dumped his body from a bridge over North Fork of Spring River. The only motive for the crime was that the killers wanted Spain’s vehicle, but they later abandoned it.
After Tucker’s confession, he was taken to Springfield for safekeeping. There he repeated the confession he’d given in Joplin, but authorities felt he was still not telling the whole truth.
On May 12, workers found Spain’s body lodged in some willows near the bridge over North Fork. An autopsy determined Spain had been shot twice and that either wound would have been lethal. Investigators concluded that Spain was behind the wheel when he was shot by a passenger in the front seat. This strengthened their belief that Tucker was the murderer, since he was seen in the front seat of the cab as it left the hotel.
On May 15, Tucker was brought back to Joplin, where he gave an altered, more complete confession than his previous one. He admitted that he was present, along with Mullen and the two John Doe soldiers, when Spain was killed, but he still maintained that Mullen was the trigger man. The motive was that the foursome wanted Spain’s car so they could rob the Purcell Bank.
At arraignment on Monday the 16th, Tucker waived a preliminary hearing and pleaded guilty to complicity in the first-degree murder of William Spain. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary and transported to Jefferson City later that same day.
In August 1921, Sheriff Harry Mead traveled to Jeff City to take an amended statement from Tucker. The prisoner now said he and Mullen were the only ones involved in Spain’s killing, and he told the sheriff the murder weapon was hidden at his sister’s house. He still maintained that Mullen was the one who shot Spain, but he admitted he’d helped throw the victim’s body over the bridge and helped hide the weapon.
In early November, Tucker amended his confession yet again. He now said Mullen was not involved at all in the murder. Tucker said he purchased Mullen’s revolver at Camp Eustis from a cook who’d gotten it from Mullen. Furthermore, Mullen’s revolver, the one he’d pointed lawmen to back in August, was not the murder weapon. He still maintained that he was only an accomplice and that one of his sidekicks, whom he did not know by name, had done the actual shooting. Officials believed Tucker was now telling the truth about Mullen, because Mullen had already provided a credible alibi. Authorities also believed Tucker had accomplices, as he claimed, but they did not think Tucker was only an aider and abettor. They felt he was the instigator of the crime and the person who’d pulled the trigger.
Around early September 1922, Tucker issued still another confession, claiming that Neil Mertins of Carthage was with him when Spain was killed and was the man who actually did the shooting. Tucker further implicated Mertins’s father-in-law, Isaac Harmon, as an accomplice in the crime. The sixty-seven-year old Harmon was married to Tucker’s twenty-year-old sister, Dolly, and the couple were going through a bitter divorce. Many speculated that Tucker’s latest confession was a put-up job instigated at least partly by Dolly, and the charges against both Harmon and his son-in-law were soon dismissed.
In 1929, Tucker escaped from a prison truck near California, Missouri. Recaptured in 1930, he was returned to Jeff City, but he escaped again in 1931. He was recaptured in 1933 and again brought back to the state pen.
Despite Tucker’s multiple escapes, the Missouri governor somehow deemed him worthy of a parole, and he was set free in 1941.
This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Midnight Assassinations and Other Evildoings: A Criminal History of Jasper County, Mo.