Triple Murder at Grandin

   About 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday, January 17, 1973, Robert Kitterman walked into the Bank of Grandin (MO), where he was president, and told Ralph Stanley, the bank's bookkeeper, that he had dynamite wired to his chest and not to turn on any lights or electric switches or make any phone calls because they might trigger an explosion. Kitterman explained that his wife and daughter were being held for ransom by kidnappers and that the villains had rigged the dynamite to his chest. Stanley did not see any dynamite, but he noticed that Kitterman's shirt seemed tighter than usual. He could tell that something was likely under the shirt, and he could also tell that Kitterman was nervous.
   Stanley helped Kitterman gather up over $10,000 and place it in a money satchel. As Kitterman was leaving the bank with the ransom money, he met L. W. Kingen, superintendent of the nearby Elsinore Schools, and told him the same thing he'd told Stanley--that his wife and daughter were being held by extortionists. After Kingen and others alerted authorities, lawmen tried to intercept Kitterman before he once again made contact with the kidnappers but to no avail.
   About 2;30 p.m., just over an hour after Kitterman had walked into the bank, his car and his 17-year-old daughter's car were both spotted in a secluded area near an abandoned farm a few miles south of Grandin just across the county line in northern Ripley County. Nearby were the dead bodies of Kitterman; his wife, Bertha; and the 17-year-old daughter, Roberta. All three bodies were bound, and each had been shot once in the head at close range with a small-caliber weapon. Although Kitterman's body was rigged with wire, no dynamite was found. And investigators doubted the idea that Kitterman had been rigged with dynamite so that it could be set off remotely via a radio signal, but that was apparently what Kitterman had believed. A bullet believed to have passed through the daughter's body, a couple of spent cartridges, and a tire track were the only forensic clues found at the scene. The only other clue to the identity of the murderers was the fact that, while at the bank, Kitterman had referred to the abductors as "they," leading lawmen to believe that there was more than one perpetrator. Investigators theorized that the abduction happened at the Kitterman home just a mile or so south of Grandin when both Kitterman and his daughter, a high school senior, came home for lunch. The villains then likely drove the family or forced the family to drive to the scene where they were later found dead, and the wife and daughter were held captive there while Kitterman was sent into town to get the cash.

                               

   A breakthrough in the investigation came a couple of days later when police received an anonymous phone call from a man who said he'd seen 33-year-old ex-con Dallas Ray Delay set off a small explosive device in a Poplar Bluff garage a few days before the Grandin crime and brag that he was going to use it to rob a bank. Additional investigation further incriminated Delay, who was already wanted on a couple of other warrants, and it revealed his sidekicks to be 21-year-old Lloyd Dwaine Cowin and 22-year-old Jerry Rector. The suspects, all three of whom lived in the Van Buren area, were arrested in Poplar Bluff on Friday the 19th, two days after the crime.
   Charged with three counts of first-degree murder, all three defendants obtained changes of venue from Ripley County after they were bound over for trial. Delay pleaded guilty in Cole County in April 1973 and received three consecutive life sentences. Rector pleaded guilty in Jefferson County in late June and received three concurrent life terms. Cowin initially pleaded not guilty in Greene County Court but changed his plea to guilty in September and was sentenced to three concurrent life terms. All three perpetrators were also later either found guilty of or pleaded guilty to federal charges.

Double Murder at Birch Tree

   About eleven o'clock on the night of July 13, 1932, 19-year-old Earl Phelps came hurrying into Birch Tree (MO) and hailed the first people he saw. He told them that he'd awakened from his sleep at the Phelps place outside town and found three intruders beating his father and stepmother to death. He tried to intervene and one of the villains knocked him down, he said, but he managed to get up and make his escape. A number of citizens rushed to the scene and found the man and the woman had both been badly beaten with a hammer and stabbed with a butcher knife. The woman died before they could get medical help for her, and Earl's father, Felix Phelps, died the next day at the hospital.
   That same day, July 14, as officials questioned Earl Phelps about the crime, their suspicions began to rest on him. He continued to stick to his story of intruders for some hours before he finally confessed to a Springfield newspaperman who'd come to Birch Tree to report on the crime. Young Phelps admitted that he and three of his acquaintances had killed the couple when they attempted to rob them of $2,000 and the couple resisted. The reporter convinced Phelps to repeat his confession to the county prosecutor.
   When the three young men whom Earl had implicated quickly proved alibis, authorities grilled young Phelps even harder, and he finally broke down and admitted that he alone had killed his father and stepmother. He insisted that the motive for the crime was the $2,000 his father and stepmother had recently gotten as a windfall. (One report said the stepmother had inherited it, and another said the couple found the money during a trip to Springfield.) Law officers, however, thought the real motive was Earl's hatred for his stepmother.
   When young Phelps's preliminary hearing came up in early August, he waived examination and was held for trial in the Shannon County Jail at Eminence without bond. Phelps escaped on the evening of September 6 by hitting a jailer in the side of the head with a shovel. A posse went out looking for him that night and couldn't find him, but the fugitive turned himself in the next day. At his trial on September 12, he pleaded guilty to double murder, and three days later, he was sentenced to two life terms in the Missouri State Prison. He was still in the penitentiary in 1940, but I'm not sure what happened to him after that, except that he died in 1968, according to a family historian.

  

Civil War Rape

   As I mentioned in my Bushwhacker Belles book, during the run-up to the Civil War and during the war's early stages, Southern leaders in Missouri used the threat of Federal soldiers raping Missouri women as one way of arousing sentiment against Union occupation of the state. In reality, rape was relatively rare in Missouri (and elsewhere) during the Civil War, and the rape of white women by Union soldiers was even rarer, since some of the few rapes that did occur were either committed by men other than Union soldiers or were committed against black women (i.e. slaves or servants). By my cursory calculation, Union Provost Marshals Papers mention only ten separate rapes, attempted rapes, or accusations of rape in Missouri during the entire four-year course of the war. Of course, this does not account for rapes that went unreported, as many almost certainly did; still, ten is a pretty low number, especially considering how prevalent murder, robbery, and other crimes were during the war and how disordered society in general was. 

   What historian Michael Fellman called "symbolic rape" (acts such as invading women's homes when no male protector was present, using obscene language in the presence of women, etc.) was much more common than actual rape. It's probably safe to say that, even if rapes were not carried out against Missouri women on a large scale, the threat of rape was an ever-present danger. And the actual rape of white women in Missouri by Federal soldiers was certainly not unheard of. See, for instance, my account of the rape of a woman in Taney County by a Union soldier in 1863. (https://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-civil-war-rape.html.)
   The rape of white women by men other than Federal soldiers was also not particularly common, but such crimes did, of course, occur. An example was a rape that happened in Bates County, Missouri, in the fall of 1862. In early October, 26-year-old Alexander Belcher and 23-year-old Ryan Tongut, both of Bates County, were charged with sexually assaulting 28-year-old Eliza (aka Louisa) Hedrick. Married and the mother of two or three kids, Eliza was also a resident of Bates County.
   Belcher and Tongut were arrested and taken to the camp of Confederate colonel Warner Lewis at Pleasant Gap in southeast Bates County, where they were given a drumhead court martial, convicted of rape, and sentenced to death on October 9. Rather than carry out the sentence himself, however, Lewis detailed a squad the next day to take the two men to Union authorities at Calhoun with paperwork outlining their crime and stating the verdict of the hasty trial he'd conducted. Although that extemporaneous proceeding had found the pair guilty and sentenced them to death, Lewis recommended that the two men, both of whom were unaffiliated with either the Confederate or the Union army, be turned over to civil authorities for trial.
   Alas, the pair never reached Calhoun. The squad transporting the convicts laid over at Deepwater on the evening of October 10, and during the changing of the guard that night, Belcher and Tongut, who had "worked their fists out of the chains which confined them," sprang up, knocked out the candle lighting the cell, "bursted open the door and made good their escape." A detail was sent out to look for the fugitives, but they were apparently never recaptured.

   Sources: Union Provost Marshals' Papers and US census records

Charity State Bank Burglary and Explosion

   Charity, Missouri, located just off Highway 38 in southern Dallas County, is a place I'm somewhat familiar with, since it's not too far out of my old stomping grounds around Fair Grove. Yet, I don't think I've ever actually been to Charity. I've been along the stretch of Highway 38 that passes by Charity, but the town proper lies slightly to the east of 38. I say town proper, but the town really doesn't amount to much. A church or two, a couple of businesses, and a few residences. That's about it, except for the elementary school, which I think is still going as part of the Dallas County R-1 (Buffalo) School District. Even when I was a teenager and young man running around Fair Grove, Charity was not much more than a wide place in the road, just as it is today, but that has not always been so. At one time in the early 1900s, it was a going little community with a high school. (The high school consolidated somewhere around the late 1940s with Elkland and Buffalo, and Elkland, in turn, consolidated with Buffalo, Fair Grove, and Marshfield in the late 1950s.) Charity even had a bank during the early 1920s, and the bank's short-lived history forms one of the more interesting and colorful parts of the town's past.
   In October 1919, Reuben "R. E." Melton, a former mail carrier and postmaster at Ozark, Missouri, moved from Christian County to Charity to help organize and start the Charity State Bank. The bank opened about the first of November 1919 with John Graves as president and Melton as cashier. About June of 1921, Melton resigned his position with the bank after less than two years, and in early July, he and his family returned to Christian County and took up residence in Ozark.
   In the wee hours of the morning of Monday, August 1, just a month or two after Melton's resignation, one or more bandits broke into the bank and blew up the safe. Initial reports said the burglars used so much explosive that the door of the safe blew through the front of the building, the rest of the safe blew through the rear of the building, and the explosion set the building on fire. The blaze was so intense that it caused the bricks partially encasing a vault to crumble, allowing all the banks papers inside to catch fire and be destroyed. Townspeople were awakened by the explosion, and a bucket brigade was quickly organized to fight the fire. However, the flames were so hot and had gained such headway, that nothing could be done to save the structure. Burned to the ground, the building was such a total loss that it could not be determined how much money, if any, the crooks had obtained, although the bank was capitalized at only about $10,000. Authorities initially had no clue as to who the robbers might be.
   When Melton received a phone call at Ozark on Monday morning informing him of the crime, he and another Christian County man headed to Charity to investigate. But was Melton returning to the scene of his own crime?
   In late September, Melton and a young man named Jesse Stevers, whom Melton employed in a garage he owned at Charity, were arrested on suspicion of having committed the bank job after incriminating evidence was reportedly discovered at the garage. Both denied all involvement in the crime, and both were released on bond. Melton said he would have no trouble establishing an alibi, because he was attending church in Ozark on the night the bank was blown up almost 50 miles away. Dallas County investigators said they had turned up no evidence that Melton's resignation from the bank was anything but voluntary, but a contrary report suggested that some residents of the Charity area had ill feelings toward the cashier, which partially accounted for his quitting. Ralph Cavin, Melton successor as cashier of the bank, was later arrested as a third suspect in the crime.
   Melton's case was moved to Hickory County on a change of venue, and he was found not guilty in November 1922. Many of his friends in Christian County, where he enjoyed a good reputation, said they had felt confident all along that he was not guilty. The cases of both Stevers and Cavin were moved to Webster County on venue changes, and the charges against them ended up being dropped for lack of evidence. So, as far as I've been able to learn, no one was ever convicted of blowing up the Charity State Bank. The process of liquidating the bank began almost immediately after the crime, and no other bank took its place in the small Dallas County community.

Southwest City Bank Robbery Number Three

   Last week I wrote about the 1932 robbery of the Cornerstone Bank in Southwest City, Missouri, and I mentioned that I had previously written about Bill Doolin's 1894 bank robbery in Southwest City. The Cornerstone was robbed again in 1955. In fact, I think it was the same bank in all three instances, although I don't believe it was called the Cornerstone in 1894.
   The third Southwest City bank holdup occurred on February 16, 1955, when three men entered the bank about eleven o'clock in the morning armed with .45 caliber revolvers. One bandit approached assistant cashier James Cantrell's window while the other two robbers herded four other employees and three customers to the rear of the bank and made them lie down. Cantrell was ordered to open the vault, but he claimed he couldn't because it was a time lock. Cantrell was then taken to the rear of the room and exchanged for a second assistant cashier, who opened the lock after the gang threatened to shoot him. The bandits, none of whom wore masks, made off with about $50,000. They were driving a 1953 or 1954 black four-door sedan and headed north toward Joplin.
   On February 18, just two days after the holdup, the FBI announced the arrest of two men in connection with the robbery. Glen Howard Potter, 53, was arrested on the night of the 17th on his farm near Southwest City, and Jack Cope, 29, was taken into custody on his farm near Delmar, Arkansas, on the morning of the 18th. Over $12,000 in loot was recovered at the time of Cope's arrest, and over $3,000 was found at the Potter place. Cope was charged as an actual participant in the robbery, and Potter was charged with knowingly receiving stolen property. Also named as suspects in the robbery but not yet arrested were Potter's brother, William Budshaw Potter, 49; a man tentatively identified as Frank Haley; and Glen Potter's daughter-in-law, Margaret Potter, 23. She had allegedly received about $1,300 of the loot. Glen Potter was from Chicago, but he had recently purchased the McDonald County farm. William Potter and Haley were still at large and were considered armed and dangerous.
   The next day, February 19, it was announced that both fugitives had been taken into custody, and that $45,000 of the stolen money had now been recovered. About $12,500 was found hidden under a house in Wheatfield, Indiana, where Ray Louis Curtis, 28, (alias Frank Haley) was arrested. William Potter of Thayer, Missouri, was arrested near the same time as Curtis, and another $13,000 was found on his farm. Margaret Potter was arrested about the same time as William Potter and Curtis, after Glen Potter admitted giving some of the loot to her.

   All five defendants went to trial in Kansas City in June 1955, and all five pleaded guilty to an assortment of charges. As the three principals in the robbery, William Potter was sentenced to 32 years in prison, Cope was sentenced to 32 years, and Curtis was sentenced to 12 1/2 years. Glen Potter got two years for receiving stolen property, while young Mrs. Potter's sentencing was deferred. Later the same year, she received a suspended three-year term and was placed on probation.

Another Southwest City Bank Robbery

   I wrote about the 1894 robbery of the Southwest City Bank by Bill Doolin and his gang in my book Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents and also had an article published about the event in Wild West Magazine, but the little town in the extreme southwest corner of Missouri has had at least two other bank robberies in its history.
   On December 16, 1932, about two o'clock in the afternoon, three heavily armed men came into the Cornerstone Bank in Southwest City, forced the cashier and his assistant into the vault, and locked it. The robbers, one of whom wore dark glasses while the other two were unmasked, then looted the tills of slightly over $600 before making their escape in a Desoto sedan. They were last seen heading west toward Grove, Oklahoma, but a pursuing posse lost track of the bandits and called off the chase.
   A week or so later, Everett Bailey of Joplin was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Southwest City holdup, and on December 26, he gave a written confession implicating himself and four other men in the crime. The other four were George Meyers, former manager and operator of the telephone exchange at Noel; Henry Stange, Joplin building contractor; 24-year-old Glen Rowe of Joplin; and Budge Duvall, also of Joplin. The next day, Meyers was arrested and lodged in jail at Pineville, where Bailey was already cooling his heels. Stange was taken into custody the same day and placed in the Newton County Jail at Neosho. Rowe and Duvall were captured near Riverton, Kansas, on December 28 and taken to the Joplin City Jail. Frank Rowe, Glen's father, was also arrested on suspicion. Five of the suspects signed confessions, with only Stange refusing to do so. According to the various confessions, Bailey and Duvall staged the actual robbery, while Glen Rowe waited in the getaway car. Meyers's home was used a staging point for the robbery, and the stick-up men returned there after the robbery. They ditched the bandit vehicle at the Meyers place and were driven to Joplin by Meyers. Stange and the elder Rowe allegedly helped plan the caper.
   On December 29, the suspects appeared in McDonald County Court, where the guilty pleas of Glen Rowe, Duvall, Meyers, and Bailey were accepted. Duvall, Rowe, and Meyers were sentenced to 25 years in the state pen, while Bailey, as the first to confess and the one who implicated the rest of the gang, got only 20 years. Stange pleaded not guilty and demanded a trial. Either Frank Rowe never confessed to begin with, as was previously reported, or else he recanted his confession, because he also pleaded not guilty and sought a trial. However, I can find no later information about his involvement in the crime or about a subsequent trial; so, I think the case against him must have been dropped, since he did not participate in or help plan the heist but only had knowledge of it.
   At his trial in early May 1933, Henry Stange was found guilty of being an accessory before the fact to the robbery, and he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
   Next week, I might write about the third Southwest City bank robbery.

Niangua Fires and Bank Robbery

   A reader recently contacted me to ask whether I knew anything about Niangua (Webster County, MO). He said he'd heard about a bank robbery that took place there back in what might be called the heyday of bank robberies--the 1920s and 1930s. I told him that, having grown up in the Springfield area, I was familiar somewhat with Niangua and that my high school (Fair Grove) even used to play Niangua in basketball once in a while. But I really didn't know anything at all about the history of the place. So, I decided to see what I could find out.
   The first thing I learned was that Niangua was established in 1870 as a station along the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad and was named after the nearby Niangua River. Some sources say the place was originally called Miteomah, but this is not entirely accurate, because in 1874, Niangua was listed as a railroad station about six miles northeast of Marshfield and Miteomah as a post office about five miles northeast of Marshfield in Campbell's 1874 Gazetteer of Missouri. Apparently the post office later changed its name to Niangua, and the two places more or less merged.
   Beyond these basic facts about Niangua's very early days, I also learned that not only did Niangua have a bank robbery, as the reader informed me, but it has also had at least three destructive fires of note in its history.
   The first significant fire occurred on the night of May 23, 1891, when Niangua was "almost entirely destroyed by fire," according to the Marshfield Chronicle. The fire started in the Odd Fellows Hall between 11 p.m. and midnight, and by the time the blaze was discovered it had "gained such headway" that it was impossible to bring it under control. In addition to the Odd Fellows Hall, the fire destroyed the post office, the train depot, and at least two businesses, which comprised four buildings. Total loss was estimated at $10,000 or more, which was a pretty good sum in 1891.
   On February 27, 1917, another big fire visited Niangua, completely destroying the town's main mercantile business, including a warehouse in addition to the main store. The buildings and the stock of goods lost were valued at about $16,000. Cause of the fire was not definitely known, but, based on the fact that witnesses had seen a strange car backed up to the store not long before the fire broke out and that certain undamaged goods were found outside the store where they had apparently been dropped, investigators conjectured that the place had been robbed and the fire had been deliberately started to try to cover up the crime.
   Then on Saturday, May 17, 1941, three Niangua businesses were destroyed in what was called a "blast-blaze." An acetylene torch exploded in a garage, and the resulting fire raged for an hour and a half, spreading to two other businesses. In addition to the garage, a barber shop and a two-story drugstore were reduced to ashes. Since Niangua had no fire department at the time, a bucket brigade fought the blaze futilely until the flames reached an alley, where they burned themselves out. Total loss was estimated at $5,000 or more, and none of the businesses had insurance.
   As for the bank robbery, it happened on October 31, 1928, but it was more than a Halloween prank. Two young men entered the Bank of Niangua shortly before closing time and, flourishing handguns, forced the cashier and his wife to help sack up all the silver and currency they could find in the drawers. The culprits made off with almost $4,000, escaping by automobile.
   The cashier and his wife, who was the assistant cashier, gave authorities good descriptions of both bandits, and lawmen were quickly on their trail. Within 24 hours, E. M. Bumgarner, 35, of near Northview was arrested as the owner of the car that was identified as the getaway vehicle, and Louis Petty, whom the cashier had tentatively identified as one of the holdup men, was arrested while working in a cornfield on his farm west of Marshfield. Both Bumgarner and Petty had criminal records, with Petty, 25, having served two stints in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
   Both suspects denied involvement in the Niangua bank robbery at first, but within a few days Petty broke down and gave a full confession, implicating both E. M." Jack" Bumgarner and Lawrence Bumgarner (a nephew of Jack). Petty said Lawrence, 24, was the other man who entered the bank with him. Lawrence was arrested on suspicion based on Petty's story, but he was soon declared innocent and released. Petty and Jack Bumgarner were given preliminary hearings, and both were bound over for trial. They were retained in jail when they were unable to make bail. Later, Lawrence Bumgarner was rearrested, and Petty's brother Roy was also arrested on suspicion of involvement in the robbery.
   In mid-December, Petty and Jack Bumgarner escaped from the Webster County Jail at Marshfield, but they were soon recaptured. All four defendants went on trial in January 1929. Louis Petty was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison after he refused a plea deal that would have given him 45 years. Lawrence Bumgarner pled guilty and received 25 years. Roy Petty, charged with receiving part of the loot, was given a 3-year sentence. Jack Bumgarner was granted a change of venue to Pulaski County, and I have not yet learned the outcome of his case.