.

Originally Published: “I Had To Kill,” by George Beltz, Front Page Detective, May, 1950.

Editor’s Note: Articles written for detective magazines during the 1940s, 50s and 60s often incorporated “recreated dialogue” in order to both tell the story and to advance the storyline. For readers today, this dialogue will feel contrived and trite. In spite of this, these writers made every effort to present a factual story. In nearly all cases, they were newspaper reporters with close knowledge of the case who wrote for crime magazines to earn extra money. Most of them wrote under a pseudonym, but not all.

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Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January, 1950

What is in a murderer’s mind when his fingers close around the windpipe of his victim and the pressure is increased until he feels the crunching of cartilage? Does he look down at what he has done, and then, like a child with a broken toy, try to set the sagging head straight-again? Does he brush back the wisps of hair that have fallen out of place, and, as he feels the skin grow first cool, then cold, is there a feeling of panic and revulsion?

Somewhere in Lancaster, Pa., the night of January 10, 1950, a man knew the answers to these questions, and, buried under a sheet of corrugated roofing, in an abandoned summer bungalow, was a dead girl who had for one fleeting second before she died seen the look in a killer’s eyes that told the story.

But Marian Baker, 21 years old, engaged to be married, was dead and the dead don’t talk.

Victim Marian Baker

Nothing was left of a girl who had pounded a typewriter in the office of Franklin and Marshall College, listened to a softly playing car radio; parked on a lonely hill; learned to cook and to sew so that when she married in June she would make a good housewife. Nothing was left of a girl who looked for an apartment, clipped recipes from women’s magazines, fed a horse a lump of sugar or kissed her fiancé out in front of everybody Christmas Eve when she announced her engagement.

Back in her room was a narrow shelf with a few hats and hanging on a rack, a few dresses; a few trinkets, half a shelf of books, a photograph of a boy, a car and a girl; some letters and a hairbrush. That was all that was left to say there had ever been a Marian Baker.

In another room, a boy sat smoking, looking out of the window. Closing his eyes he felt the throat under his hands. Then he threw the cigarette down, stamped it out, and walked through the door. There was no turning back now. Marian Baker was dead and in all Lancaster only her murderer knew it.

But four days later the whole town knew; the whole state, the whole nation knew. Marian Baker’s body was found under a wooden saw horse, covered by a piece of rusty, corrugated roofing, beneath the porch of a summer cottage on Mill Creek; a cottage the owners visited almost by accident; a discovery made only because two peculiar marks, like those of dragged heels, roused the curiosity of Mrs. Francis Harnish.

The victim’s body as it was discovered.

In the failing light of day the yard was roped off and the girl’s broken body was removed from its makeshift grave for Dr. Charles Stahr to make his preliminary examination. State, county and city police made casts of the footprints found in half frozen mud and studied the crooked path left by the killer as he pulled the victim under the house.

Like a wind-fanned flame, word spread over the campus that Marian Baker, whose disappearance four days before had become the main topic of talk, was found; that she was dead and that her killer was not known.

The report had snaked its way across town without missing an ear by the time the sad procession that followed the ambulance was back in town.

Marian Baker’s body is removed from underneath the porch of a deserted summer cabin.

“We have to crack this and crack it fast,” Commissioner Fred McCartney said. “This case is front page throughout the East. Up until now it was a missing person we wanted—today it’s a killer. Where are the records on the girl’s disappearance?”

The file on the week long search for Marian Baker was voluminous, but unrevealing. At the time the body was found, a 13-state alarm was in effect and state police, city and county officers were making every effort to locate the missing girl.

Marian had left the college shortly after 1 P.M. on Tuesday, January 10. She went first to the Farmer’s Bank & Trust Company and deposited canteen funds in the amount of $75.

“We traced her from the bank to the post office,” Lancaster Police Captain John Kirchner said. “She mailed a registered letter, then picked up her engagement ring which had been left at a jewelry store for repairs. At 2:15 George Crudden, a newspaperman, saw her downtown. Judging by the time her wrist watch stopped, she was killed exactly 20 minutes later. But that’s as much as we know.”

Marian had been reared by an aunt and uncle who lived a few miles from Lancaster. After getting a job at the college she boarded with friends.

“Nothing there for a clue,” Captain Kirchner said. “She had a 5:30 appointment at a beauty parlor on Tuesday—which was never kept. Fellow workers closed her desk when she failed to come back from her noon errand at the bank.”

“No motive and no suspects,” McCartney said. “What about her fiancé? We have to start some place.”

“I Can’t Believe It!”

Edgar R. Rankin, the 21-year-old youth to whom Marian Baker was engaged, had already spent four sleepless nights aiding in the search for his sweetheart. News of her death had nearly shaken him loose from his reasoning.

“I just can’t believe it,” he said. “I just can’t believe it.” But the lifeless body with the crushed skull that lay on the morgue slab was not to be refuted.

Rankin repeated his original story that he had not seen his fiancée since the previous Sunday when he left her at her rooming house following a date.

“There’s a lover’s lane near the cottage where the body was found,” Sergeant John Auman pointed out. “Do you think she might have gone there with someone else? A college student, maybe?”

“NO SIR!” Rankin’s temper flared at the suggestion. “Marian wasn’t dating anyone but me.”

Rankin was sure of this, but the troopers weren’t. The girl had vanished from the crowded streets of a comparatively large city. No one could have forced her into an automobile without attracting attention.

“My guess is she went out with someone else,” one of the troopers said after Rankin left. “A last date with some suitor after she announced her engagement. But the guy was jealous and refused to call it quits. It’s happened before and it will happen again.”

Following this theory, a visit was paid to the Weaver home where Marian had resided. The girl had been considered a guest rather than a boarder. She and Mrs. Weaver went to grade school together and werelifelong friends.

“Then you should know something of her social life,” Aumon said.

“Marian and Edgar went together for nearly two years,” Mrs. Weaver said. “In all that time she dated another boy on only one occasion. That was about a year ago when she and Edgar had a quarrel. It was just a silly little spat and they made up quickly.”

“You’re sure Rankin didn’t brood about it?”

“I should say not. He forgot the, whole thing. Since then the two of them have spent all their time apartment hunting and Marian has been learning to cook and sew.”

Sergeant Aumon was shrewd enough to see the line of questioning was leading nowhere. Marian probably accepted a lift in the car of a person she thought was a friend, but she certainly hadn’t gone off on an afternoon date with someone other than her boyfriend.

“Marian fully intended to return to the college or she would have locked up her desk for the day,” Aumon theorized. “But on the way back she met someone—a student, a professor, or just an acquaintance who happened to be going her way. Whoever it was, he took the girl out to Mill Creek and killed her. Our job is to find that man!”

It was easy to say, hard to do. F. & M. was a coeducational school with several thousand students on its roster. In addition, the slain girl had many friends and acquaintances off the campus.

On Sunday, Dr. Stahr definitely set the time of death as Tuesday afternoon, January 10. His post-mortem report stated that the victim had been strangled and beaten to death but she had not been sexually assaulted. Intent to do so, however, still remained as a possible motive for the crime.

“We’re slicing things pretty thin,” Aumon said thoughtfully, when he heard this. “If Marian Baker’s watch was correct, she was picked up, driven three miles into the country and murdered—all in the space of 20 minutes after George Cudden saw her on a downtown street. Her watch was broken at 2:35.”

Who Drove The Coupe?

Captain Kirchner and Commissioner McCartney enlisted the aid of college president Theodore Distler in the herculean task of identifying every F. & M. student who had been absent from class on the afternoon of the slaying. A probe of all known sex offenders also got underway.

“We know this girl was dragged to the cottage,” Aumon told the troopers. “That means she was slain elsewhere perhaps in a car. I want all garage and car cleaning establishments posted. Watch for bloodstains on the upholstery or floor of every car that comes in.”

Identification men were also doing a job with the killer’s footprints found in the mud at the Harnish cottage. The moulages (plaster casting) were too rough for identification, but temperature readings for the murder date were obtained and experts accurately estimated the consistency of the half frozen soil. By measuring the size and depth of the’ footprints they were able to state with a fair degree of accuracy that the murderer was tall, heavily built and probably a young and active man.

Meanwhile, outraged citizens, anxious to lend every support to the killer hunt, were pouring tips into headquarters: The first definite lead came from a neighbor who lived several doors beyond the Weaver home.

“This may not help much,” she said. “But on Tuesday, about 5 o’clock, my 8-year-old daughter told me she saw Marian come out of the house carrying a suitcase. She said she got into a car with a man who wasn’t Ed.”

“Could she describe the car at all?”

“Only that it was a coupe.”

Aumon questioned the youngster at length but his slowly rising hopes plunged like a lead weight in water as he discussed this latest development with Sergeants James Haggerty and V. E. Simpson.

“She must be mistaken,” Haggerty argued. “Unless the killer was shrewd enough to reset his victim’s wristwatch and then deliberately break it, Marian Baker had been dead for several hours when this child thought she saw her.”

“And don’t overlook the medical report,” Simpson remarked. “Analysis of her stomach contents indicate the victim died within three hours after eating her last meal at noon.”

“We can’t get around that,” Aumon admitted. “But I do have a hunch about the watch.”

A phone call to Mrs. Weaver established that Marian customarily wound her wrist watch at approximately 7 A.M. before leaving for work. Aumon then phoned officials or the Hamilton Watch Company in Lancaster.

“Would it be possible,” he asked, “to check the spring tension of a watch and find out how long it has run since last being wound?”

Assured that such a procedure was entirely feasible, the sergeant sent in the broken watch for testing. If it had run seven and a half hours, the time of death would be confirmed. If longer, then the killer was cagier than was thought.

By Monday morning none of the lines out had brought in a nibble. Edgar Rankin described his fiancée’s missing engagement ring as a small diamond in a gold setting with baguettes on either side. This information was passed on to pawnbrokers in Lancaster and nearby towns on the off chance that the killer would attempt to cash it in.

Friends and acquaintances of the victim were brought in for questioning and then released. Anyone without an alibi for the time of death was under suspicion and suspects were a dime a dozen. Captain Kirchner and President Distler swelled this number when they reported 175 students were absent from their classrooms on the previous Tuesday.

“Talk to those who had girl trouble first,” Aumon ordered. ‘We’ll get to the rest later, if necessary.”

The absentee students were processed quickly, but out of the welter of statements, one fact stood out from all others. Marian Baker had eyes only for Ed Rankin. Donald Mylin, treasurer of the college, recalled that she had gone out with a pre-med student who was graduated in June, but it was nothing serious. Many students frankly admitted an interest in the pretty girl, but all declared their advances had been firmly declined.

A phone call from the Hamilton Watch Company verified the time element. The watch still had 35 hours running time left which meant, if it was wound at 7 A.M., it was broken at 2:35 P.M.

But Aumon was far from satisfied with the progress the case was making. “Here’s a girl who doesn’t date,” he said. “Engaged to be married, learning to cook everything. So she’s given a ride by someone she knows. But why did she go out to Mill Creek? That’s an off-trail spot where only young lovers go.”

“I think I’ve got the answer to that,” Captain Kirchner said. “I’ve been given a tip that might be worth looking into. Marian Baker was learning to drive a car. She’d been taking lessons secretly, planning to surprise her friends.”

“Of course, of course!” Aumon was amazed by the simplicity of the solution. “A back road, away from traffic, where she could practice. Nothing better than Mill Creek for that. Who was the instructor?”

“I wish I knew,” Kirchner said. “Someone not connected with the college, I understand, but no one can give me his name. If only the girl hadn’t been so secretive . .”

“We’ll find him,” Aumon said confidently “Someone knew about those driving lessons or you couldn’t have been tipped off. It’s simply a matter of time.”

The questioning of absentee students was abandoned as investigators concentrated on finding the man who had been teaching Marian Baker to drive.

In the midst of this flurry of activity a man who introduced himself, as a local mortician requested an interview with Aumon.

Question Alerts Mortician

“It’s about a student,” the undertaker said nervously. “The boy asked me how long it takes a body to decompose. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but since this murder, well, I thought I’d better get in touch with you.”

“Good Lord!” Aumon said. “Who was he?”

“His name is Alvin Edwards.”

Captain Kirchner went through the student list to learn whether Edwards was in the clear. “No dice,” he said, after a moment. “Edwards has an air tight alibi. On the afternoon of the murder he went to a movie with some friends.”

“Morbid curiosity, I suppose,” Aumon agreed. “What else have we got?”

“Not much,” the captain admitted. “Right now we’re looking for Jim Withers, the chap who dated Marian last June. Someone saw him in town a week ago and I thought he might have looked her up again.”

“Might as well forget Withers,” Aumon said. “The man I want is the fellow who was teaching Marian Baker to . . .”

He was interrupted by a sergeant who hustled a total stranger into the office. “Here’s someone you’ll want to see, John,” the sergeant said.

Aumon studied the tall, thin man who twisted his hat nervously and looked at him with an uncertain smile. “I’m Ben Williams,” he said quickly. “Drive a bread truck here in town.”

“Sit down, Ben. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I . . you see, I knew Marian Baker pretty well. In fact, I’m the one who was teaching Marian Baker to drive.”

The sergeant kept his face blank.

“I intended to keep out of this.” Williams said. “Then I heard you were looking for the man Marian was taking lessons from. So I thought I’d better let you know I didn’t do it.”

“Right now you’re an A-I suspect,” Aumon said gravely. “If you are innocent, I hope for your sake you have an alibi.”

“I think I have,” he said. “Last Tuesday delivered bread all day.”

“Marian Baker was picked up, driven to Mill Creek and murdered all within 20 minutes,” the sergeant pointed out. “Your alibi isn’t tight, mister! Suppose you were driving around in a bread truck. There was nothing to keep you from taking this girl out to Mill Creek.”

“I covered a rural route that day,” Williams explained. “At the time of the murder I was at least 15 miles from town in the northern part of the county. What’s more, I can take you to every stop I made.”

Aumon felt his best lead slowly collapsing from under him. “We’ll give you a chance to prove that,” he said, but mentally he crossed Ben Williams from his list. The man’s alibi was too good to be faked, and in a matter of time the driver was given back his freedom, and cleared unconditionally of any complicity in the slaying.

“That leaves us with Jim Withers,” Aumon said bleakly. “Perhaps Kirchner isn’t so far wrong as I thought.”

That evening, Major William Hoffman, commander of the Philadelphia state police barracks, arrived in Lancaster to assist with the investigation. Hoffman had been watching the case closely and was much concerned over the last lead that had blown up in their faces.

“We simply must get results,” the major insisted. “Everything indicates a local man—someone known to the victim. Find him!”

“Jim Withers seems to be our best bet,” Aumon assured him. “We’re cooperating with Captain Kirchner and his men. So far we’ve learned that Withers left Philadelphia, heading west. He stopped in Lancaster to visit friends and was here until last Tuesday evening. He left then, intending to drive at night and avoid traffic. But no one seems to know his destination.”

“Did you get the make and license number of ‘his car?”

“Not the license,” Aumon admitted. “We have a description on the teletype now, and the number will go out as soon as the license bureau opens in the morning.”

“What about students?”

“All but 20 checked out okay. The remainder are being questioned.”

No one wanted to admit it, but the Withers’ lead was actually a forlorn hope. True, he had dated the girl six months previously, prior to his graduation. But there was no record of his ever having tried to get in touch with her again—and no reason for him to have returned to town with murder in his heart.

“We’re going to find him,” Aumon predicted. “But he’ll have an alibi. What then?”

The pawn shop alert had netted nothing; no one had attempted to dispose of the diamond engagement ring. Nor did any bloodstained cars show up in local garages. And one by one the 20 students were being alibied and released.

On Wednesday morning, Corporal James Kane sought out Alvin Edwards, the student who had asked about decomposing bodies. Sensing that the murder of Marian Baker was fast heading into the limbo of unsolved crimes, Kane was determined to crack it.

“Not My Idea”

“I’m curious about that remark son,” he said mildly. “Why did you ask how long it takes a body to decompose?”

Edwards, a clean cut youth and excellent student, smiled sheepishly. “Actually, it wasn’t my idea,” he admitted. “One of the seniors asked me and I was curious enough to try to find out.”

Corporal Kane almost swallowed his tongue. Here, it seemed, might be one of those almost unbelievable breaks of which every investigator dreams but rarely encounters. “What,” he asked, “is this senior’s name?”

“Gibbs,” the boy told him. “Edward L. Gibbs. He and his wife live at the college dormitory. I believe she works for the Armstrong Cork Company.”

Sergeant Aumon was alone when Kane entered his office. He pointed to a teletype message lying on the desk. “There it is, Jim Withers was picked up in Pittsburgh. Says he spent Tuesday afternoon with a Lancaster girl. The boys went to see her a few minutes ago. When she backs up his story . . . well, we’re washed up.”

Kane smiled briefly. “Not quite,” he said. “Listen to this . . .

His report was like a shot of adrenalin to the weary Aumon. Gibbs was among the students already questioned. Attention was centered on him early in the investigation because of a long scratch on one cheek. But he was dismissed when a fellow student admitted having inflicted it during basketball practice. Gibbs, however, had not yet cleared himself completely and was scheduled for a complete cross-examination in the morning.

College records identified him as a 25-year-old veteran who served with the Army Air Force in Europe; an excellent student, supposedly happily married. But he did know Marian Baker, and on several occasions had driven her to the bank when she placed canteen funds on deposit.

“Gibbs could be our man,” Kane declared.

But Edward Gibbs was not to be found in any of his usual haunts—and for a very good reason. At that moment he had walked into President Distler’s office and demanded an audience. Distler, in conference with Max Hannum, publicity director of the college, looked up in amazement when the disheveled youth brushed by the secretary who sought to restrain him and forced his way.

“Sure, Ed, we know you,” Hannum assured him. “Come in and sit down.”

Gibbs shook his head. “You don’t know me. You only think you do.”

It was the kind of statement the men ordinarily would have ignored, but these were not ordinary times for the harassed college officials. Simultaneously the same thought flashed into the minds of the two men. “This is it, yet it can’t be. Things like this just don’t happen.”

“I Did It”

But all doubt was dispelled when Gibbs, haggard and wild eyed, said, “I’m your man. I did it.”

Stalling for time, Distler countered with a question. “What did you do, Ed?”

“Killed Marian.”

Two Baltimore reporters entered the outer office just then, wanting an interview. But Distler and Hannum were holding a stick of dynamite with the fuse lit. They dared not let the press in on what was transpiring until definite proof of guilt had been established. The truth was, both men were hoping against hope that the student’s confession was untrue, perhaps brought on by nervous tension and overwork.

But the reporters were suspicious. They lingered for ten minutes while Gibbs sobbed in a corner and Distler and Hannum engaged in a loud discussion on irrelevant subjects trying to throw the reporters off. Eventually the newsmen departed in disgust.

With one hand on the telephone, Dr. Distler said. “Are you sure, Ed, that this is not hysteria or hallucinations?”

“It’s hard for me to believe, too,” the youth answered. “But I can describe the whole thing, show you where I hid some of the stuff.”

Convinced at last, President Distler lifted the phone . . .

Edward Gibbs made a full confession to the brutal crime. “It wasn’t a date,” he insisted, after explaining how he met Marian Baker on a downtown street and offered to drive her back to the college. “We just went the long way around.”

At the Harnish cottage, Gibbs had a sudden impulse to choke his lovely companion. But she fought free and fled from the car.

“I followed her,” the student murmured in an almost inaudible voice. “When I caught her I choked her again and again. But when I saw her lying so still I knew if she wasn’t dead, then I had to kill her. So I went back to the car and got a lug wrench out of the trunk. I hit her with that until I was sure she was dead. I—I guess I was out of my mind.”

Returned With Shovel

Suddenly overcome by the enormity of his crime, Gibbs fled the scene. But he returned within an hour, bringing a shovel to dig a grave. The frozen ground prevented this and after removing his victim’s ring and taking her purse, he dragged the body under the cottage and covered it with the sheets of metal roofing.

Edward L Gibbs confessed to the murder.

“I was sure nobody would be able to find it for a long, long time,” he went on. “I had an idea that when spring came and the ground softened up a little, I might come back and bury her. I didn’t figure anyone would come around the cottage in the winter.”

“What did you do with her purse?” Aumon asked.

“I threw it away. There was $14 in it. I took the money and spent it.”

“And the ring?”

“That I flushed down a filling station toilet.”

The ring was recovered from the drain trap. Other officers, searching Gibbs’ dormitory home, found a jacket stained with the blood of his victim. At the same time, an electric magnet located the lug wrench in Conestoga Creek where it had been thrown by the killer.

Proof of guilt was now established, but officers scoffed at the “impulse” motive for the crime. In their opinion, Marian Baker was slain when she resisted the sexual advances of her supposed friend.

After reenacting the slaying on two different occasions, Gibbs was given a hearing in the office of Alderman J. Edward Wetzel on January 19. He listened in silence as District Attorney John M. Ranck read a warrant which charged him with “wilfully, feloniously, maliciously and premeditatively” choking the pretty secretary to death.

With no change of expression, Gibbs then heard himself ordered held without benefit of bail for trial in the Lancaster County court on March 13. At that time the final curtain will be rung down on the campus drama of life and passion and sudden death.

End of Story.

Conclusion to Story:

At his trial, Edward L. Gibbs was found guilty of first degree murder and he was executed on April 23, 1951.

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January 17, 1974,
Clayton County, Georgia,
outskirts of Atlanta

TO THE CLAYTON COUNTY police officer on routine patrol, the white object near the shoulder of Slate Road and Highway 42[1] looked like a bag of trash. Illegal dumping was a fairly common occurrence in his line of work and he stopped to check it out. When the officer walked around to the side of the road and shined his flashlight, the large pale object had legs, arms, breasts and a head.

Sometimes, flashlight beams reveal things we don’t want to see and this time was no exception. Looking down, the lawman was appalled to see that the young, shapely girl looked as if she had been tortured to death. Unsure if whether the nude female was alive or not, the policeman stood closer. If she was alive, he needed to render immediate aid but when he touched her cold skin, he knew.

The officer radioed backed to headquarters for assistance and immediately began securing the scene. It was truly a horrific sight. The girl’s face looked like a distorted mass of barely recognizable features. Her nose was flattened and she was covered in purplish bruises with severe swelling that pushed everything out of position.

It got worse as he shined his flashlight down her heavy-set body. Long, thin welts on her thighs indicated she had been whipped. Small round scorch marks over her torso and breasts indicated the tell-tale signs of cigarette burns. Hot red candle wax had been poured on her stomach, inner thighs and between her legs. When thrown out of the car, the body fell on its side with its arms and legs protruding out in abnormal directions—an indication they had been smashed and broken either before or after death.

Whoever murdered this poor girl was no master criminal. Before his colleagues even arrived, the officer found a good tire track by the road just waiting for a plaster-of-paris cast. Next to the girl was a blood-stained portion of a cardboard box with black tape wrapped around it and what looked like fibers, possibly carpet fibers, adhered to the tape.

Despite their mistakes, her killer or killers had done one thing right; removed her clothes and stole her identification. But there was more than one way to identify a corpse and an ambulance carried the girl’s broken body to the Fulton County medical examiner’s office in nearby Atlanta where her fingerprints may indicate who she was. In a worst case scenario, the M.E. could make a dental impression.

Although Atlanta and the suburbs which surround it have grown exponentially since 1974, it was much smaller then. But to those who lived there at the time, the city had grown fast in the few decades leading up to 1974. As part of that rapid growth, hippies, motorcycle gangs, runaways and hustlers were all attracted to a mid-town Atlanta district known as the “The Peachtree Strip.”

The Strip, as it was more commonly called, was a sleazy area of run-down motels, darkened strip-clubs, dangerous bars, and cheap apartment houses. Since there were no local missing person reports of a five-foot four-inch girl with brunette hair weighing close to 140 pounds, Clayton County investigators worked off the assumption that she was one of Atlanta’s many runaways.

“Literally, thousands of runaway teenagers find a home among the dubious denizens of ‘The Strip.’ It was the thinking of detectives that the female victim might have come from among their number,” a crime magazine reported the following year. “It is nearly impossible to walk in the streets for the clusters of the unwashed and non-working, most of them young, and most of them looking for a victim or a handout.”

On Saturday, two days after the gruesome discovery, a confidential informant working for Sheriff Earl Lee of nearby Douglas County provided investigators with two names possibly tied to the woman’s death. One was a young woman in her twenties known as “Bonnie,” while the other was a man known as “Wes” or “West,” also in his twenties. Both subjects were known to frequent ‘The Strip.’ For Sheriff Lee, his informant was as solid as they come and had always provided them with good tips in the past. If he said to look for a “Bonnie” and “West,” that’s what they needed to do.

With a solid lead pointing to the rundown Strip, a special squad of Atlanta homicide investigators was formed to probe possible connections to an area they knew well. The began a slow, building by building, person by person canvas of the Strip and it didn’t take long for them to find people who knew the victim. The Strip may have had its share of low-level thieves, drug-dealers, pimps and hustlers, but when it came to murder, detectives knew someone would eventually talk.

And that’s exactly what happened. Talking to a young couple inside a bar one afternoon, a teenage girl told detectives the victim was a friend of hers who had hitchhiked to Atlanta after running away from her parent’s home in Newport News, Virginia. Her name was Donna Marie Dixon and she was just seventeen years-old.

The young girl was asked to identify her friend at the morgue but she was unable to recognize her Donna’s battered face. The victim’s parents were then contacted in Newport News and the sad information was passed on to her step-father who broke the news to her mother. When they came to retrieve their daughter’s body later that next week, Donna’s parents made a positive identification. By then, however, police would already know for certain it was young Donna Marie Dixon.

As it turns out, there were a lot of “Bonnies” associated with the Strip, but the small-time criminals, who often knew more than police, could associate the name “Bonnie” with the name “West” who turned out to be Wes McCorquodale, a tall, baby-faced twenty-one-year-old from Alma, Georgia who had a slight-build and a full head of stringy blond hair that covered his ears. During the colder months, McCorquodale would often wear the same coat which was described to detectives. The two subjects lived in an apartment on Moreland Avenue in southeast Atlanta, the same direction from The Strip which led to the spot where the victim was dumped.

As the two Atlanta detectives left the bar where they had learned their suspects’ names, they got in their car and were about to start for the apartment complex when they noticed a slightly-built young man with blonde, stringy-hair wearing the same color coat they were told to look for. After they slowly got out of the car and approached the him, they identified themselves and demanded to know his name.

It was Timothy Wesley McCorquodale.

During his interrogation at headquarters, McCorquodale told detectives “Bonnie” was his girlfriend, Bonnie Succraw Johnson. He gave police her address and place of work where she was picked up and brought in for questioning.

Although McCorquodale quickly waived his right to counsel and gave a full confession, the statement from his girlfriend, Bonnie, was the one used during his trial. The two lived together in an apartment in the 700 block for Moreland Avenue which they shared with her three-year old daughter by another man, and a female roommate named Linda Dearing, who was eight months pregnant. Both Linda and Bonnie were given immunity in exchange for their statements which were some of the most sickening, cold-blooded and shockingly horrific documents ever presented in a Georgia courtroom.

During the early morning hours of January 17, Bonnie said she left the bar where she worked and met up with her boyfriend at another nightspot. Inside, McCorquodale was with Donna Marie Dixon where he was accusing her of stealing $50 from his acquaintance, “Leroy.” Despite the runaway’s repeated and steadfast denials, Bonnie’s boyfriend couldn’t seem to let it go and she tried to calm him down. Bonnie then took Donna into the ladies room where she did a full search of the plump girl which turned up nothing. Undeterred, McCorquodale then insisted Donna gave the money to a black man he saw her talking with and assumed was her pimp.

Outside the nightclub, McCorquodale let loose a barrage of racist insults over her assumed association with a black man. Then, McCorquodale, Donna Dixon, “Leroy,” and Bonnie caught a taxi which they took back to Bonnie’s apartment. Inside, McCorquodale’s obsession over the girl’s supposed theft of $50 intensified with heavy-handed questions that implied her guilt.

As the girl sat there sobbing, issuing quiet denials, McCorquodale changed tactics and pretended to soothe her feelings. As his left hand gently stroked the back of her head, Bonnie said she saw her boyfriend’s face change and she knew what was going to happen next; McCorquodale drew back his fist and smashed Donna in the face. After that, McCorquodale and Leroy began to slap, punch and hit the girl as they got her down to the floor.

Because of all the noise, the young couple’s roommate, Linda, woke from the back bedroom where she was sleeping with Bonnie’s three year-old daughter. Together, Bonnie and Linda watched and did nothing as McCorquodale and “Leroy” tortured the poor girl over the next couple of hours. First, they tied her wrists with Bonnie’s nylons, and then they started slapping and punching her, while denigrating her for associating with a black man and not “staying with her own kind.”

To keep her screams from reaching the neighbors, they put a washcloth in her mouth and secured it with electrical tape. McCorquodale then pulled off his leather belt which hard a large, Western style buckle, and began whipping the girl with it.

Then, they ripped off her clothes.

Now that the young victim was nude, gagged and bound, the torture began to escalate with cigarette burns, and hot wax from a red candle that was dropped on her stomach and private parts. The two men then took turns raping her orally, vaginally and anally. Afterward, the girl’s genitals were mutilated with chemicals and scissors.

As Bonnie told her story in a calm manner, the detectives were sickened by what they heard. After the rape and mutilation, Donna’s torturers took a break and released the girl to go wash up in the bathroom. By now, the three year-old awakened and was put back to bed with a story that Timothy and Bonnie were helping a kitten who had a broken-leg. Linda would later claim she remained in the bedroom with the little girl and didn’t see what happened next.

In the living room, McCorquodale and Leroy discussed killing Donna Dixon. Timothy told his girlfriend to get him a rope and she gave him a thin length of clothesline she recently purchased to hang in the bathroom.

After being coaxed out of the bathroom, and then a closet where she hid, McCorquodale pounced on her from behind and began to strangle her. At this point, Bonnie said, she told Leroy to get her boyfriend off of the victim or else he was going to kill her. It took both of them to pull McCorquodale off the dying girl.

As they looked down at her, the unconscious girl began to go into convulsions and her eyelids fluttered open and shut—indicating to her torturers she was still alive, but barely. It would have been the perfect time to call an ambulance but Bonnie, Linda and Leroy submitted to Wesley who was intent on destroying Donna’s innocent life. “Still tense with maniacal cruelty, the wiry McCorquodale threw himself upon her again, straddled her body, and choked her to death.” As he did so, he apparently slammed her head up and down which broke her neck.

Now the foursome had a real problem, getting rid of the body. To get Donna’s battered corpse out of the apartment, they found a cardboard trunk which once contained the toys and clothes of Bonnie’s little daughter To get his victim inside the small box, McCorquodale had to stomp down on her arms and legs to break her bones. When witness Linda Dearing later told police what it sounded like, she said “it was like you had taken a big stick and jumped on it, a cracking sound.”

McCorquodale voluntarily gave a written statement to police that was similar to Bonnie’s, but included information on how he had gotten rid of the body and some of the evidence. The day after the murder, McCorquodale and his girlfriend took a bus back to The Strip where he found a friend with a van who agreed to help him dump a box of trash by the side of the road. McCorquodale fiercely claimed his friend did not know what was in the box until they dumped it and refused to give police the man’s name. Because he was the decent type, McCorquodale claimed he got rid of it by the side of the road “so that it could found.”

As hard as they tried, police could not learn the identity of “Leroy” who was new to The Strip and whose last name was unknown. Bonnie and Linda did not know his last name and police could find no one on the street who even knew who he was. It was assumed that after the murder, “Leroy” left town and he was never caught.

Back at the apartment on Moreland Avenue, police found the victim’s blood in the carpet and on the tiles in the closet where she tried to hide. In the dumpsters, they found two white trash bags that contained her clothing, jewelry, purse and an address book with her parents Newport News address written inside.

On February 6 McCorquodale was indicted for first-degree murder and his trial took place in April in an Atlanta courtroom. His defense attorney eagerly tried to plead his client guilty, but Judge Osgood William would not accept saying he “could not, under any circumstances, sentence someone to death.”

To relieve himself of this burden, Judge Williams said he was rejecting McCorquodale’s guilty plea and forced the case to a jury trial where his punishment would be twelve men and women. Despite of his unwillingness to sentence a man to death, Williams noted that if McCorquodale was sentenced to death, it would be more beneficial for the higher court to have trial transcripts, as well as a decision that came from a jury.

In his opening arguments, McCorquodale’s defense attorneys told the jurors, “We’ve been trying to plead guilty for two days. Ladies and gentleman, we’re guilty. It’s that simple. We don’t deny what the witnesses are going to say.”

And what the witnesses, investigators, and experts had to say was revolting.

“The jury of six men and six women grew paler and paler as they listened to the medical man testify,” Richard Devon wrote for his article in Official Detective Stories magazine. “In truth, the evidence was enough to turn the stomach of any normal person, and numerous spectators, sickened, left the court room. Much of the evidence is unprintable.”

During the trial, both his girlfriend Bonnie, and roommate Linda Dearing testified against him. When he was questioning Bonnie about the victim’s strangulation with the clothesline cord, assistant district attorney Melvin England stopped the flow of sickening testimony to ask her a simple question.

“Back up, just a minute, let me ask you—at the time the defendant put the cord around Donna’s neck, did she say anything?” England inquired.

Just as calmly as she had testified all day, Bonnie told the court: “She said, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to kill me.’”

For a good part of the two day trial, the jurors were sickened by not just what the women said, but how they said it. They were calm and unemotional on the witness stand with no affect in their voice or body language. Later on, Bonnie told the jury of a cold blooded telephone call she received at work from Linda.

Dearing called Bonnie and informed her, “That the victim’s body was smelling up the apartment and to tell McCorquodale to come and get it.”

Dearing also had the unusual task of keeping Bonnie’s three year-old daughter away from the cardboard box that was shoved into a closet which had a cloth curtain instead of a door. It was the same closet Donna Dixon had tried to hide in.

After a ninety-seven minute deliberation, Timothy Wesley McCorquodale was convicted on April 12 and sentenced to death. In December of 1974, the Georgia Supreme Court denied his appeal. However, McCorquodale, along with all other death row inmates, were granted an indefinite stay of execution by Governor and Presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter, as the death penalty issue was revisited by the United States Supreme Court in 1976.

By sheer luck or miracle, McCorquodale’s execution date was continually put off until the 1980s. In May of 1980, McCorquodale and three other Georgia death row inmates wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter with an offer to go on a military mission to rescue the fifty-two American hostages held by Iran at that time.

“All four of us have discussed this proposition and we would rather go to our graves fighting for our country than sitting here and rotting in this hell,” wrote famed mass-murder Carl Isaacs. Isaacs killed six members of the Ned Alday family in 1973.

Although their letter was published in newspapers, President Jimmy Carter never wrote back. For Isaacs, it was another one of his many publicity stunts. The three other prisoners that were to accompany him on their secret mission were Timothy McCorquodale, Troy Gregg, and Johnnie L. Johnson.

Two and one-half months later, on July 28, 1980, McCorquodale, Gregg, Johnson and David A. Jarrell escaped from a maximum security prison at Reidsville, Georgia. Using hack saw blades smuggled into prison with the approval of a corrupt guard, the four death row inmates sawed through the bottom bars of their cell doors. Then, at 6 a.m., they just walked out of the prison wearing retailored pajamas dyed black and made to look like guard uniforms. Although they were scrutinized at the main gate of the 2,100 inmate prison, the fake uniforms were enough for them to bluff their way through. The accessories and patches sewn into the phony uniforms came from the corrupt guard who had been selling drugs to prisoners.

One hour later, Gregg telephoned Albany Herald newspaperman, Charles Postell, and told him of their escape and said they were in Jacksonville, Florida. When Postell called deputy commissioner Col. William Lowe to inform him of the escape, Lowe later told reporters it was the first time he had heard about it.

“Their flight from fourth floor cells was so well executed that more than hour after Postell informed prison officials of the ‘news tip,’ the escape had not been confirmed,” the Associated Press reported.

Three of the prisoners were captured two days later inside of a rundown house near a lake in North Carolina following a six hour stand-off with police that included a helicopter hovering overhead. The house was owned by William “Chains” Flamont, a member of the motorcycle gang the ‘Outlaws.’ Flamont said he was friends with escapee Jarrell, and news reports at that time indicated McCorquodale may have been a member of the Outlaws when he murdered Donna Dixon. Also in the house at the time was James Cecil “Butch” Horne, a close friend of Flamont’s, who also may have been a member of the Outlaws.

Although police wouldn’t say what tipped them off, before the stand-off they retrieved Gregg’s body from a nearby reservoir. Flamont told police a fight erupted between the prisoners and Gregg was beaten to death. Later reports indicated McCorquodale was the key individual behind Gregg’s murder.

After the prisoners were returned, eleven individuals were indicted with helping the four death row inmates escape. This included McCorquodale’s mother and aunt who investigators said sent him the hacksaw blades concealed inside the handle of a portable radio. Investigators also reported McCorquodale’s mother, Toni Jo Hooper, and Aunt, Minnie Hunter, visited the prison the day before the escape and left a car with the keys inside waiting in the parking lot for the four to drive away in after their escape.

Besides a prison guard, authorities also indicted Charles Postell and his wife who they said purchased the hacksaw blades. Postell vigorously denied these charges with the declaration that Georgia authorities were trying to get revenge on him for publicly embarrassing him. The hardware store attendant, whom Georgia investigators claimed sold the hacksaw blades to Postell’s wife, could not remember the purchase.

“We are inclined to view it all as harassment and revenge,” Postell’s boss at the Albany-Herald told reporters on August 28, after his employee was released on $5,000 bond. “Certain law enforcement agencies got egg on their faces.”

The outcome of the eleven indictments is unclear from available newspaper archives. If the hacksaw blades were smuggled in a portable radio purchased by members of McCorquodale’s family, it would be completely unnecessary to have someone else purchase the hacksaw blades.

During a preliminary hearing for “Butche” Horne, another witness testified: “That McCorquodale knocked Gregg down and began stomping him. He said McCorquodale, who is six-foot three-inches tall and weighs about 300 pounds picked up his right foot and stomped down with all his weight several times on Gregg’s upper chest, throat and head.”

Butch Horne then pushed McCorquodale off and stomped on Gregg himself, the witness said in court. In spite of this testimony, officials chose not to charge McCorquodale or Horne with the murder of Gregg.

McCorquodale’s appeals dragged on for seven more years with the help of an attorney from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Besides alleged errors made during his 1974 trial, McCorquodale’s various appeals claimed that he told a state psychiatrist in 1976, who believed him, that he could not remember murdering Donna Dixon.

”I cannot believe that I would do them things,” he claimed during a session. ”I just don’t believe I could do it.”

In the year leading up to his execution, those who knew him said that Donna Dixon’s killer, now in his mid-thirties, underwent a religious transformation. In a last bid to stay alive, McCorquodale wrote a letter to the state pardon and parole board. The board chairman then told reporters “he does show considerable remorse for what he’s done.”

But it was too little, too late and Monday, Sept. 21, 1987 McCorquodale’s legal luck ran out and at 7 p.m. he was strapped into the state’s electric chair. In a 1990 article, newspaper reporter Amy Wallace recalled the time she witnessed McCorquodale’s execution.

Placing both his hands on the armrests, the six-foot-one-inch, 270-pound inmate hoisted himself into the electric chair that inmates had built out of sturdy Georgia pine.

As usual, there would be no single executioner. To spare any individual the job of killing, the state had divided each electrocution into dozens of tasks, and prison employees were asked to volunteer for just one. On this day, dozens of people would perform the many rituals that, altogether, would lead to McCorquodale’s death.

Earlier that afternoon, one guard had served him his last meal: boiled shrimp, crab legs, tossed salad with Thousand Island dressing and apple pie a la mode. Another prison official had tape-recorded a private statement that would be stored in the prison archives, and the prison barber had shaved McCorquodale’s head.

Now, six guards surrounded him. In a carefully choreographed procedure, they fastened ten leather straps around McCorquodale’s body, cinching them tight. The guards exited and a prison electrician attached two electrodes to wet sponges at the top of the inmate’s head and on his right ankle.

Before the leather hood was placed over his head, McCorquodale was asked if he had any last words. With a thumbs-up to his father, cousin, and two other family members, McCorquodale said, “Yes, I would like to tell my dad, and everybody with him, that I love them very much. Stay strong in Christ.”

At 7:23 p.m. Eastern time, thirty-five year-old Timothy Wesley McCorquodale was pronounced dead. Donna Marie Dixon would have been thirty-one years old.

[1] State Route 42 and Highway 23 now run concurrent with each other near Slate Road, Clayton County, GA.

 Here is a link to an audio recording of his execution.

Bibliography

“State Murder Trial Continued Despite Plea,” United Press International, Pulaski Southwest-Times, Pulaski, VA, April 12, 1974, page two.

“Incredible Torture-Murder by a Southern Sex Sadist!” by Richard Devon, Official Detective Stories, August, 1975.

“Condemned Await Supreme Court: Re-evaluating the Death Penalty,” United Press International, The Argus, December 1, 1975, page two.

“3^rd Man’s Execution Date Set,” Associated Press, Thomasville Times Enterprise, October 26, 1976, page ten.

“Gilmore Wins Plea for Execution; Pardons Board Orders Date Set,” John Nordheimer, New York Times, Dec. 1, 1976, page forty-nine.

“Inmates Volunteer for Hostage Rescue,” Associated Press, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, May 11, 1980, page two.

“Killers Flee GA. Prison,” Associated Press, Winchester Star, July 29, 1980, page one.

“4 Killers Flee,” Associated Press, The Daily Globe, July 30, 1980, page twenty-two.

“Fugitives Holed Up for Six Hours before Surrender,” Associated Press, Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, July 31, 1980, page one.

“Jury Indicts Three after Jail Escape,” Indiana Evening-Gazette, August 14, 1980, page three.

“Evidence Lacking for Murder Trial in Escapee’s Death,” Associated Press, The Sumter Daily-Item, August 26, 1980, page one.

“Editor Indicated on Escapes,” United Press International, Marshall Evening-Chronicle, August 28, 1980, page eight.

“Appeal Challenges Death Jury,” Associated Press, The Harrisonburg Daily News-Record, August 31, 1982, page nine.

“Slayer Executed in Georgia; High Court Rejects Appeals,” Associated Press, New York Times, September 22, 1987, page A24.

“Commentary: States Using Death Penalty Must Not Look Away,” Amy Wallace, Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1990.

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Story Credit: “The Case of the Make-Believe Orphan,” by Gerry Smart, Front Page Detective, November 1955.

Texas, March 1953

The boy’s words over the phone were simple, but it was the way he spoke that brought tears to the woman’s eyes. She kept thinking of her own son, Paul, now serving his time in the Air Force. Maybe Paul had known the despair she heard now in the stranger’s boyish voice.

“I don’t want to bother you, Mrs. Winterbauer. I wasn’t going to call. I put it off as long as I could. But Paul said if I was ever in Dallas. . . .”

She interrupted him, blinking her eyes and talking fast to push out of her mind any thought of her son ever sounding this lonely.

“You’re not bothering me one bit, young man. Of course I remember you. I’m mighty glad you called, and I know Paul would want you to come out and see his home.”

She didn’t remember him, but that didn’t matter. There were so many airmen in her son’s barracks when she last visited him at Lackland Base near San Antonio, that the names and introductions had been scrambled and lost in her joy at seeing Paul.

“I’d sure like to come out,” the boy said, shyly. “You see, I got transferred to Perrin Base at Sherman, Texas and then I got this leave. I didn’t know anybody, and didn’t have anywhere to go.”

“Is your home far away?” Mahala Winterbauer asked.

“My folks are dead,” he said.

That clinched it. Mrs. Winterbauer felt the tears filling her eyes again as she told him, “What you need is to meet some young folks, friends of Paul’s, and make a real vacation out of your leave. You check out of that hotel right now, and I’ll pick you up in my car. It’s a two tone Chevrolet. Now stand by the hotel door and wait for me. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She was like a little girl who finds a lost kitten at her door. She knew a lot of it was her own loneliness. Paul’s enlistment and recent transfer to Korea had made her house empty. It’s hard to quit mothering somebody when you’ve done it so long. The death of her husband, retired police officer Edward Winterbauer, had added to her longing for someone to talk to and wait on, so that this call from her son’s friend was a little like having Paul home again.

She drove toward the Whitmore Hotel, making a mental list of Paul’s young friends to introduce to this young airman. She’d give him her son’s room, and maybe the young man could wear some of Paul’s civilian clothes. She decided to give him a real leave, the kind his own parents would give him, if they were alive.

That was March 3, 1953. . . .

ELEVEN days later, her brother-in-law, C. H. Winterbauer, became worried about her. The hotel where Mrs. Winterbauer worked as relief switchboard operator called him because they hadn’t been able to locate her for a full week. Mr. Winterbauer dialed his sister-in-law’s number, but got no answer. He hurried to her house and found the doors locked. That’s when he called police. It was a Saturday afternoon, March 14, 1953.

The officers met him at the front door, and they tried a series of passkeys before finding one that would fit. They saw her as soon as they pushed the door open. She was sprawled, fully clothed, like a huge swollen balloon, on the living room floor. The blood on her face had been caked for days. The smell of death filled the room. Her glasses, one lens streaked with black, dried blood, lay three feet away from her. A denture, knocked from her mouth, lay across the room. What had once been a puddle of blood was now a hard stain congealed in the carpet. She had been beaten to death.

Her brother-in-law froze in horror, and an officer led him back onto the porch and helped him sit down. Winterbauer mumbled, “Paul, I’ve got to get word to Paul. How do you tell a boy in Korea that he’s an orphan?”

Homicide officers moved into the house with fingerprinting equipment and made an inch-by-inch search for clues to the killer of the police officer’s widow. The homicide men knew she’d been dead at least a week. The killer had a big head start.

They visited neighbors. A woman next door to Mrs. Winterbauer remembered that she hadn’t seen the dead woman’s car since Sunday, six days before.

“That boy drove it out of the doorway about 4:30 Sunday.”

“What boy?”

“That airman who was staying at her house. Just a kid, really. Skinny and fuzzy cheeked. She told me about him. He was a friend of her son’s, but I can’t remember his name. She couldn’t seem to do enough for him. She even invited her son’s friends over to the house to meet him. I saw him back the car out Sunday, and I haven’t noticed anyone over there since. I figured she must have driven him back to his air base later, because the car has been gone and the house locked up.”

They found receipts in the house from the service station where Mrs. Winterbauer always traded. They called the station to find out if her car had been seen there.

“No,” the attendant said. “Mrs. Winterbauer hasn’t been in to the station for a week.”

“Would you have noticed her car if it was driven by someone else?”

“Like I’d notice if the sun didn’t come up one morning. That woman was bugs on one thing. She didn’t want anybody behind the wheel of her car, except herself. When she had to leave her car for a wash or grease job, she’d walk where she wanted to go before she’d let any of us drive her there in her car or pick her up in it. I never saw anybody but her driving that Chevy, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d seen it.”

Other officers began calling the young friends of Paul Winterbauer. One girl told of being invited to the Winterbauer house about ten days before, to meet a service friend of Paul.

“He seemed awfully young,” she said. “Skinny in the face, and short. Kind of shy. His name was Carmichael, and he had a funny first name, but I can’t remember what it was Basil, or something.”

“Do you remember where he was stationed?”

“Sure,” she said. “He talked about that. When Paul was sent to Korea, Carmichael transferred to Perrin Base at Sherman. He didn’t like it there because he didn’t have his old friends with him. But he didn’t seem to me like the kind that would be a big buddy of Paul’s. Paul’s always doing things and talking a lot. This kid was so bashful and young, I couldn’t imagine them as buddies. He may have known Paul, but I bet they weren’t the bosom pals he said they were.”

Dallas police asked officers at Perrin Base to check their records on the name Carmichael, recently transferred there from Lackland. Perrin Base sent them a file on Brasil Dail Carmichael. His records also spelled his name Brasel Dail Carmichael, Brazil Doyle Carmichael and Brasel Doil Carmichael. His scrawled signatures made the spelling difficult to make out. He was 18, five-feet eight-inches tall, weighing 136 pounds, black hair and brown eyes. He had gone AWOL from the base on March 1, and was still missing. His home was listed as Steinhatchee, Fla., a small fishing village near the Everglades. His parents lived there and in Tampa.

Had Mrs. Winterbauer given her sympathy to a man who was not the orphan he claimed to be, only to make an orphan of her own son?

Her neighbors and her son’s friends looked at the photograph from Perrin—a, skinny-faced, dark young man with solemn eyes looking out from under an airman’s cap that appeared too big for him. They were positive he was the boy who’d stayed in Mrs. Winterbauer’s home. Fingerprint experts clinched the identification when they reported prints in the house matched Carmichael’s.

On March 20, six days after the body was found, Dallas officials filed murder charges against Carmichael. The FBI wanted him for the AWOL charge. But he had vanished, taking with him Mrs. Winterbauer’s Chevy.

Police could find no certain motive for the murder. Mrs. Winterbauer had been generous with her house guest, treating him as though he were her own son. One of Paul’s friends remembered that the young stranger had asked the woman to let him use the car for a date, and Mrs. Winterbauer had refused. But that hardly seemed a motive for murder.

Police could find no evidence of robbery. Mrs. Winterbauer’s purse was in the living room when her body was found. It contained some small change, and appeared untouched. They checked with the hotel where she worked.

She’d been paid a $30 check on Friday—two days before her death. A hotel official went to the bank and thumbed through the canceled checks of employees who had cashed their checks for March 6. He slipped Mrs. Winterbauer’s from the stack and handed it to officers.

The check was cashed at a service station in the neighboring town of Terrell, Tex. Mrs. Winterbauer’s endorsement was on the back, and under it, the scrawled signature of Brasil Dail Carmichael. It was cashed the day of the woman’s death.

Police hurried to the service station and talked to the attendant. He remembered cashing the check. There were two men in the car, and the driver was an airman. It was a two-tone green Chevy. The airman bought $2 worth of gas and then pulled out that check.

The attendant identified the picture of Carmichael as the airman who had cashed the check.

With a detailed description of the car in hands of police all over the country, it seemed impossible for it to remain missing, especially since the car license tags were a year old, and due to expire on April 1. But neither the man nor the car was found.

Paul Winterbauer came home from Korea on special leave to attend his mother’s funeral. He told officers that he knew very little about Carmichael, and had no idea where the suspect would hide out.

He remembered Carmichael as a thin, shy boy who had bunked next to him at Lackland Base. They knew each other casually, and were certainly not buddies.

Florida police watched for Carmichael to show up at his parents’. They screened the elder Carmichaels’ mail and watched their home. But the suspect failed to communicate with them.

Three months after the murder, on June 7, Detroit police embarrassedly contacted Dallas.

A Detroit officer had seen a two-tone green Chevrolet parked and empty on a city street. The car had an expired Texas tag on the front and a Michigan plate on the rear. The officer noticed the car in the same place for two months before he reported it to the Auto Recovery Bureau. Detroit police could give no excuse for this delay.

The Michigan plate was stolen and the Texas plate bore the number of Mrs. Mahala Winterbauer’s missing car.

On the day the Auto Bureau checked the license number, the car mysteriously disappeared from the space where it had been for two months.

Three days later, it was again found in Detroit. There was no trace of the missing driver and murder suspect, and the lead was too old to be of any use. Police said they were positive it was not Carmichael who moved the car the second time. He’d probably left Detroit two months earlier when he abandoned the car, and he might be anywhere by this time.

The months and years passed without further word of Carmichael.

IN JUNE, 1955, three members of the McPherson family of Dickenson, Tex., were murdered in their beds. The case paralleled the Winterbauer case so closely that many officers were certain Brasil Carmichael had added these murders to the first one.

Mrs. McPherson was seen with an airman whom she introduced as a service friend of her eldest son. She invited the stranger to her home. That night while Mrs. McPherson, her elderly mother, and her youngest son were asleep, the airman got up and shot all three of them to death. Then he robbed Mrs. McPherson’s purse.

He escaped in Mrs. McPherson’s two-tone Ford, and for days no trace could be found of him or the car.

The dusty Carmichael folders came out of police files, and once again the hunt for the missing suspect was in full swing. But he had vanished, and there was not the slightest lead.

Police captured the man suspected of the McPherson murders, a few weeks later. It was not Carmichael. The two-year-old folders went back into the files.

In Washington, D.C., fingerprint experts check their voluminous files on hundreds of fingerprints every day. If you get picked up by police anywhere in the country, and if they book you, no matter how small the charge, they’ll take your fingerprints. Then they’ll ask the FBI to check the prints and make sure you’re who say you are.

In two years, of all the prints the FBI was asked to trace, Carmichael’s prints never turned up.

In mid-July, 1955 a fingerprint expert was making a routine check on identification of a prisoner serving a 15-day sentence in Mayville, N.Y., for peddling magazines without a license. The man gave his name as Glenn David Whitmore.

His fingerprints led the experts to the file on Brasil Dail Carmichael.

Brasel Dail Carmichael

It had been a routine check, unhurried. If the Mayville authorities had delayed six more days in sending in the prints, Carmichael would have served his 15 days and been released before the report went through.

FBI agents rushed to Mayville to take custody. Dallas police were notified.

Homicide Captain Will Fritz read the alias of his suspect. “Booked as Glenn David Whitmore.” The name Whitmore was familiar. He glanced through his file on the crime. The Whitmore was the hotel where Carmichael was staying when he first telephoned his victim.

On Monday, July 25, Carmichael was arraigned in Jamestown, N.Y., on the federal charges of transporting a stolen car. He was held under $10,000 bond. Authorities started the paper work to take him back to Texas.

“Suppose I don’t want to go back to Dallas?” he asked United States Commissioner E. R. Bootey.

“You’re going back anyway,” Bootey replied. On August 1, he was returned to Dallas to face murder charges.

At first, he claimed innocence. But later he broke down and told officers about the murder. “The last day I was at the house,” he began, remembering his stay with Mrs. Winterbauer, “she was getting ready to visit relatives and I asked her to let me drive her there so I could use the car. She refused, and said I’d been drinking. I grabbed a Coke bottle and hit her on the head. The next thing I knew she was lying on the floor and there was blood all around her head on the floor.”

Dallas authorities intend to ask the death penalty, but Carmichael said, “I’m going to do my best to beat the chair, and maybe someday I’ll get out of prison.”

Once he’d made his statement he seemed to relax. “I’ve moved around the country a lot, mostly selling magazines, and I’m very tired of ducking and dodging. I’ve slept much better since my arrest than I have in two years.”

Note: On October 6, 1955 Brasel Dail Carmichael accepted a plea deal of 99 years in prison in exchange for escaping the electric chair.

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This is part one of a two part story that is 9,500 words long. Part two will be posted on Friday, November 14.

Author’s Note: “Texas Jim” Baker was a serial killer who used poison and pistols to murder nine men around the world between 1924 and 1929. After he was captured in February, 1930, for the murder of a chemical laboratory employee, Baker bragged about these murders “with lip-smacking gusto” during several confessions to investigators and newspaper reporters. He thrived on the attention he received and often embellished his life story and the murders by describing them with overtly gruesome details meant to shock his listeners into thinking he was a special kind of monster. By doing so, Baker also hoped to increase his celebrity criminal status and gain more attention for himself. Several months after he was sentenced for one of his murders, International Features Syndicate paid him to write his autobiography. The story they published was filled with lies, half-truths, self-pity and Baker’s trademark overstated joy he felt while poisoning his victims. Through my research of New York newspapers, and five true crime magazine articles published after his trial, I believe I have separated fact from fiction as well as anyone could. Below, Baker’s “autobiography” is followed by facts gleaned from the investigation and his incarceration as reported by New York newspapers.

Wednesday, February 19, 1930

The Detroit detectives scrutinized the young man in front of them and didn’t know whether to believe him or not. If the story he told them was true, then twenty-four-year-old[1] James Baker was one of the worst mass murderers[2] they’d ever seen. He seemed arrogant, almost as if he was bragging about his confession to poisoning eight men around the world. They were used to liars in their line of work, but if “Texas Jim” Baker was a liar, he was one of the biggest. However, the liars they knew avoided specifics. They lacked details. All the made-up stories prisoners told were meant to get them out of trouble, not sent to the electric chair.

The confession Baker told them was rich in detail.

His claim to killing seven other men was news to them but they were sure they had the right man for the 1928 poison slaying of Henry Gaw, an employee at the Guggenheim Metallurgical Research Laboratory in New York City on the morning of December 28. His photograph, description, and tattoos on his right forearm matched the James Baker that New York City police were hunting the last fourteen months. However, since Texas Jim hadn’t killed anyone in Michigan that they knew about, this homicidal maniac was New York’s problem, not theirs. And as soon as he could be extradited, they would have to deal with him.

Texas Jim Baker, 1930

Jim Baker’s “Autobiography”

According to his semi-fictional autobiography he wrote for International Features Syndicate, which was published in the Sunday edition of newspapers nationwide, “Texas Jim” Baker was born James Bakerien in Warren, Ohio, sometime around 1907. He wrote that his mother gave him up for adoption and he was taken in by a young couple he referred to as “Mr. and Mrs. Plummer.” Baker described his adoptive parents as petty criminals who regularly beat him and guided him down a lawless path.

“At home I knew only cruelty—unmerciful beatings, harsh words—all under the guise of parental authority.”

While just a small boy, his adoptive parents taught him the value of having an alias and forced him to participate in their petty crimes and burglaries. His first stretch of jail time came at the age of five when all three of them were locked up for some scheme they had been working. By the age of ten, Baker described himself as an accomplished burglar and thief working with the “Plummers” between Greenville, Pennsylvania and Newton, Ohio. He was arrested twice during this period and served a one year sentence in an Ohio reform school for boys where he claims he was beaten often with “horse-harnesses, belt straps, clubs and blackjacks.”

When he was released, Baker returned to his adoptive parents who were now calling themselves “Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Parks.” In telling the story of his first killing which was later proven false, Baker described it as a case of self-defense. Instead of being sent to school, his adoptive father put him to work in a new contracting business he’d started. After three weeks of working with no compensation, the eleven-year-old boldly informed “Cyril” he wasn’t going to work for him anymore unless he got paid. This led to a heated argument and the older man began beating him. When his adoptive mother tried to intervene, Cyril began choking her. Fearing that he was going to kill her, Baker fetched a revolver, pointed it at their tormentor, and pulled the trigger.

“The bullet struck him above the left breast and he staggered out into the street and dropped. There was a hole near his head where the slug had came out. I turned him over and noticed a bloody froth on his lips. I never saw him again.”

Although local prosecutors did not file charges against him, a juvenile court judge did send him back to reform school to serve another year where he claims he was “beaten daily” by guards. When he wrote of this incident for International Features Syndicate, he felt sorry for himself for the one year sentence he received. “My only reward for saving the life of Mrs. Parks was a year’s sentence,” Baker wrote with a tone of self-pity.

After he had served his time, he again moved back in with his adoptive mother who by then had moved to Warren, Ohio. Although he thirteen-years-old, Baker claimed he obtained forged papers that said he was seventeen-years-old and found work in several different local factories. However, each time he got a job, company managers eventually discovered he served time in reform school and he was quickly fired.

Disgusted with those who denied his efforts to earn an honest living, Baker claimed he was forced to return to a life of crime. It was not his fault he became a criminal, it was society’s fault. In order to survive and support his adoptive-mother, he burglarized stores and had a successful run for a few years.

“In my years of burglary, I tried in every respect to be scientific. I knew in advance every detail of my coups, with such a degree of success, that while the whole town—even the whole country—was looking for the “The Lone Wolf,” I walked the streets a free man with plenty of money in my pockets and a comfortable home with Mrs. Parks. I always kept her in funds,” Baker boasted.

He was eventually caught when some stolen property was traced back to his fence who ratted him out. Instead of sending the teenager to a juvenile facility, Ohio authorities sentenced him to serve thirty months in the state penitentiary at Mansfield “because the police said I was too tough for the reformatory.”

After serving what he claimed was his fifth term in confinement, Baker migrated to Springfield, Missouri, where he “pulled some jobs.” He was caught again and sentenced to serve four years in the Boonville Training School for Boys. During this period, a national organization which inspected reform schools nationwide rated Boonville as “the worst or one of the worst” juvenile institutions in the country. After serving one year, Baker said he escaped and traveled to Kansas City where he burglarized a pharmacy and pilfered a bottle of strychnine pills. He then made his way the Texas coast where he found work as a steam fitter on cargo ships.

In 1924, the now seventeen-year-old wrote that he was exploring Houston when he ran into George Honeycutt, a down on his luck alcoholic. Honeycutt was begging for money on the sidewalk when Baker walked by. Instead of giving him money, Baker proposed to buy him a meal. As the two walked several blocks to a seaman’s restaurant, Honeycutt annoyed him by insisting he drink from a bottle of wood grain alcohol he kept with him. Baker was repulsed by men who drank alcohol and they may have reminded him of his adoptive father.

“In a flash, I saw a way of getting rid of him,” Baker wrote. “I took five strychnine tablets from my pocket and dropped them in his bottle. After we finished the meal, he ordered a cup of coffee and poured the poisoned wood alcohol into it. He drank it in a couple of gulps and remarked that it tasted awfully bitter.”

Honeycutt ordered a second cup of coffee and again poured the poisoned alcohol in it. “He said it was giving him an unusual kick,” Baker reported. “When the meal was finished, I paid for it and left with Honeycutt for I didn’t want to miss the fun.”

The “fun” came as the two walked down Congress Avenue with Honeycutt moaning in pain and misery as the poison did its work. The dying man told Baker he felt like committing suicide to escape his agony. With a broad smile, Baker informed him that wouldn’t be necessary since he’d already “attended to that for him.”

At the corner of Main Street and Congress Avenue, Honeycutt fell to the sidewalk and began shaking violently. His body arched so that only his feet and head rested on the curb. A crowd formed and an ambulance was called which took him away but he was already dead. In the newspapers the next day, Baker read that the Houston coroner had ruled Honeycutt’s death a suicide.

“People have often wondered how I could do it,” Baker wrote in a philosophical tone. “A strange question from my point of view since to murder when the urge to kill arrived has always seemed to me the logical and sensible thing to do.”

Even though he was heartless killer, he was a heartless killer with principles. He had scruples. “I have never killed women—only men. I killed for two reasons—because men have treated me badly since childhood and because of an overwhelming urge to kill that would come over me at times. After that, I used to get impulses to poison people. I liked to watch the effects of different kinds of poison. It gave me a funny sort of sensation,” Baker wrote.

He remained in Texas a few more years where he earned his nickname, “Texas Jim,” and when he moved to Florida in 1926, he found a job as a steamfitter on the outbound German ship Dalafven. Taking the advice his parents once gave him, Baker used an alias. This time, he was “Don DeVorl.” When the Dalafven reached Holtenau, Germany, Baker got that funny sensation that had been dormant for two years and he found his second victim at a Hamburg beer garden near the coast.

A fellow, quite drunk, sat down opposite me. He ordered a kummel[3] and a beer and started talking to me. I didn’t feel like talking to him or anyone else. My beer I left untouched. Inside me I felt the restlessness begin to take form. I began to see this fellow who had imposed himself on me as a very obnoxious person. Soon I was quivering internally with the desire to kill.

I held back for a few seconds—then dropped five strychnine tables into my beer and substituted my glass for his. I always carried them with me since the time I first stole them.

Then I raised the glass as a signal to drink and said “Prosit![4]” He responded to my toast and drained the glass. I spilled my glass on the floor for I seldom drink alcoholic beverages.

The fellow squirmed around. He passed some remark about the especially bitter taste of the beer. I asked him to come with me but he said he’d rather not, for he felt sick. I was sorry not to have the fun of watching him die but I valued my liberty too well to risk arrest so I wandered down to the waterfront.

In July of 1927, Baker was working on the oil tanker Gulfport with a crew that didn’t care for him because “he didn’t like to drink.” Disgusted with their drinking, Baker waited until the ship docked in Las Piedras, Venezuela, and followed the ship’s crew to a cantina where they ordered beer. Baker slowly made his way to the wooden keg, removed the bung, and dropped all twenty of his remaining strychnine tablets inside. After a few more rounds of drinks, the ship’s whistle sounded and the crew made their way back to the ship.

Some of them didn’t make it.

“A few blocks later, one of the men collapsed. The others were too drunk to notice him. I had to leave him before he finally died but from a reading knowledge and practical experience with strychnine, I estimated he had about fifty-seven seconds left,” Baker gloated.

Two more died before they could reach the ship and “flopped about, lost their voice, quivered and finally straightened out.” Back on the ship, four of his unsuspecting shipmates took to their bunks violently ill but managed to live.

When the Gulfport reached New Jersey, Baker jumped ship and knocked around New York City and Brooklyn until he grew tired of being a “landlubber” and signed on with the West Cusseta in June of 1928. The ship was bound for Asia and it was during this voyage that Baker would get his next urge to kill. This time, it came not because of alcohol, but from his disillusionment with the world.

When his ship reached the Bay of Bengal near India, he was overcome by a spectacular image which he eloquently described in his autobiography.

“The sea was as smooth as glass. There was a large, iridescent moon which cast a shimmering, silvery sheen over everything. The deck, the cabins, the funnels, the mastheads were enveloped in a beautiful coating of unmatched reality. The sea was burnished silver. The ship could be traced in the rays of the moon to the horizon where it seemed to drop off the edge of the earth. I went to bed that night inspired as I had never been before. For a few hours, I almost believed there was a God.”

But Baker’s romantic view of the world was shattered the next morning when the West Cusetta dropped anchor to take on a local pilot who would guide the ship up the Hooghly River. When he heard the telltale splash, Baker ran out on deck and instead of the beautiful scene that had played out the night before, he saw a revolting, vile infested wasteland of poverty and desperation.

“Imagine my feeling of disgust when I saw for the first time the cesspool of the world! After my dreams of the night before, I felt rotten. Nature had played me a prank.”

When the ship reached port, Hindu beggars came forward with tin cups asking for food. He took one of those cups from an older man and offered to get him some.

“I filled it inside the ship and sprinkled on some potassium cyanide to make it more appetizing,” Baker wrote. “The fellow bowed his gratitude and started eating. A minute later he lay down, quivered and was dead. I went to bed that night singing.”

Throughout his autobiography, Baker takes pleasure in his callous descriptions of the joy he felt when murdering his victims. This was his vanity creeping out of him, seeking avenues in which to further gain attention. He may have been a psychopath, or what they called morally insane, but Jim Baker was first and foremost, a malignant narcissist.

Baker found another opportunity within his life story to once again, astonish his readers, with a story of his time in China. This time, it was his enjoyment with public executions. “I got a great kick out of their executions. They cut of their heads with a sword—often as many as ten men!”

From China, the West Cusetta sailed to the province of Iloilo in the Philippines where the motive for his next murder, he wrote, would again be his disgust over another man’s drunkenness.

“A lot of natives were swilling down a local liqueur made from coconut palms. One was particularly drunk and getting drunker. I sat down beside him, dropped some powdered cyanide in his glass and dropped back in the crowd to watch the fun.”

Once again, the “fun” turned out to be similar to how Honeycutt, and the members of the ship’s crew died—by rolling around, moaning in agony before he died.

When his ship returned to New York City, he departed and acquired the most dangerous job a serial poisoner could have as a laboratory apprentice at the Guggenheim Brothers Metallurgical Research Laboratory. During his employment, Baker was a good employee known for his politeness and remarkable strength. After he had stolen a large quantity of poison, Baker resigned in October, 1928.

“I had always wanted to be a chemist and so I was glad to get the job at the laboratory,” Baker said. “I worked hard for a few weeks but I found that I was not going to be sent to South America for the company as I hoped, and I quit. I had been stealing quantities of poisons from them, especially cyanide.”

A short time after Baker quit, Gaw was hired on as a laboratory assistant –the same job Baker had. Baker next worked for the Edison Company but his position was terminated two days before Christmas. He then described to police how he murdered the lab assistant which eventually led to his arrest. Although he had already stolen a large quantity, Baker wanted more poison.

“I decided to go west and it struck me that I should lay in a fresh stock of poisons, which it would be easy to do at the Guggenheim place. I went up there the night of December 27, arriving a little before midnight.”

Henry S. Gaw was a twenty-nine year lab assistant who usually worked the day shift, but that night, he was assigned to watch over some experiments, and take the place of the night watchmen who called in sick that day. By all accounts, Gaw was a kind-hearted man who had recently moved to New York City from San Jose, California. He move in with his aunt and wrote his mother in Denver a few weeks before that he was pleased with his new job as a lab assistant. They made plans for her to come live with him.

A young Henry Gaw as a submariner during World War I.

According to Baker’s account of the murder, he was in the middle of stealing poison filled jars when Gaw discovered him. Baker took control of the situation by pointing his pistol at him. The two then went back to Gaw’s desk and began to talk. In the closing months of World War I, Gaw joined the navy and served as a submariner. Since Baker was also a sailor, the two talked about the different ports they had been to.

Baker then reported he got up to brew some coffee and after it was made, told the navy veteran, “Gaw, I am going to make you a good drink, one that will put you to sleep.”

Gaw drank the coffee but didn’t die right away. A deathly pallor came over his face and he seemed like he was in a daze, Baker wrote.

“I put cyanide in his cup, but he saw me do it and wouldn’t drink it. So I took him by the neck and forced some of it into his mouth. It came up. I tried again and it wouldn’t work. Gaw was yelling and struggling. I knocked him around, and then tied him in the chair until he could move only his head. I gave him more of the doped coffee. It did no good, it wasn’t strong enough.

“Then I took the rest or the cyanide I had with me—five grains in all—poured it into the other cup, added a little coffee and stirred it with the barrel of my gun. I put some on the muzzle of the gun and shoved it down his throat. He was dead soon.”

Baker dragged Gaw’s body into an adjoining room, reached for a telephone book, and left a calling card by tearing it in half and spreading the pages all around his victim.

When he was leaving, Baker ran into two truck drivers from Baltimore who had just arrived with a delivery. Acting as though he were the security guard, he let the truck through the fence and into the property, then tied up the two drivers, Elmer Mayhew and Chester McCauley, and robbed of them $24. He was ready to shoot both of them but when Mayhew pleaded that he had a wife and two small children, Baker let them live.

[1] Newspapers reported he was twenty-three but Baker was lying when he told them his age. His 1940 census record reveals he was born in 1905, and he was at least twenty-four in when he was arrested.

[2] The word serial killer hadn’t been created yet.

[3] A sweet liqueur flavored with caraway seeds.

[4] German for “good luck.”

End of Part One

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Click Here to Read Part One — Or Click Here to Read All in One with Bibliography

The Investigation

After Baker left, the two men loosened their ropes and discovered Gaw’s body while searching for a telephone to call police. Detectives and lab supervisors were able to piece together that Gaw’s killer must be a former employee because he knew where to find the cash box and where the poison was secured. For some reason, the killer did not take Gaw’s money, nor did he remove the valuable platinum bars the lab stored which were worth thousands of dollars. They were also able to quickly deduce that Gaw was killed with poison, which was odd since Mayhew and McCauley said the killer had a gun. Detectives wondered why did he use poison instead of a gun.

After the two drivers described the man that robbed him, lab supervisors were able to narrow that down to three men, one of whom was Jim Baker. An employee photograph of Baker was used to make a positive identification with the truck drivers.

When police searched Jim Baker’s room that morning, they were horrified to learn what kind of man they were dealing with.

“Convinced by their discoveries in Baker’s room that they are dealing with a psychopathic case—the police began the nationwide distribution of circulars containing Baker’s photograph and description, as well as a warning that he is a dangerous man known to be armed with a dirk and a pistol,” the New York Times reported the day after the murder. Like most newspapers during for that era, the Times maintained a certain decorum for their readers. Some of the more delicate topics of humanity were off-limits, and if they couldn’t be avoided, they used code-words the general public understood. What the Times didn’t tell their readers was that in addition to being a psychopath, Jim Baker was a sexual sadist. A 1937 detective magazine had no such problems reporting on what police found in his apartment.

“Vials of deadly acids stood in rows on a shelf. A large bottle, falsely labeled, contained cyanide of potassium. There were ingredients for manufacturing prussic acid, one of the most virulent of poisons. Several notebooks in Baker’s handwriting gave details about the effects of various toxins. Other jottings dealt with abnormal sex psychology, the emphasis being on sadism and flagellation rather than on homosexuality. Indeed, the youth’s passion for women manifestly was second only to interest in poisons. Prints of nude girls lined the walls, and a sketch book was filled with obscene drawings by himself. He had hoarded scores of letters from women, with many lascivious passages being underlined in red.”

Police claimed they discovered enough potassium cyanide in his room to kill 100,000 people. It was a discovery that seemed to negate Baker’s claim that he had to return to the laboratory to steal more poison—unless he was planning mass murder on a level that would have been history making. It was just the kind of thing a narcissistic psychopath seeking infamy might plan.

After the robbery and murder, Baker was smart enough not to return to his room. Instead, he took the subway to Jersey City where he hid out for one week. To satisfy his ego, he sought out newspaper articles about the Gaw murder and cut them out as a souvenirs. One of the articles featured the photograph police showed to the truck drivers. He was now a hunted man.

In spite of all his prior arrests and confinement, New York City police knew very little about James Baker. To them, their five-foot nine-inch suspect had no criminal history, or any history at all that they could learn. Guggenheim employees said he made remarks that indicated he may have once been a sailor, and he had sailor-like tattoos, but they weren’t positive.

Whoever he was, “Texas Jim” Baker was a mystery to them.

By the middle of January, 1929 he left New Jersey and traveled west. “I wanted a place on some little traveled road, where there was little chance of hearing a radio or seeing a newspaper,” Baker said when he was captured a year later. “A radio or a paper might have kept things fresh in my mind. I wanted a quiet place where I could forget.”

The quiet place he found was the Newton Roy Farm located fifteen miles west of Detroit near Farmington. There, he met Roy’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Eleanor, and the two fell in love. It was her love that tamed the darkness inside him, Baker declared in his autobiography.

“After I met Eleanor, my Eleanor, I never committed another murder. She changed my whole life,” Baker claimed to a reporter. “We were sweethearts, worthy of the name.”

Eleanor Roy

But Baker’s big ego couldn’t keep his big mouth shut and when he started bragging about his strength, ripping up phone books, talking about his crimes and displaying his wanted picture from the newspaper to show people “what a dangerous character he was,”—his days with Eleanor were numbered. And to Eleanor, whom he trusted, he confessed to murdering two men in Detroit just before he came to her father’s farm in March, 1929.[1]

Although the collective accounts of his downfall are confusing or unclear, someone associated with the Roy farm stole the newspaper clipping with the farmhand’s wanted picture and showed it to Detroit police who were impressed enough to have Baker put under light surveillance. To prevent him from becoming suspicious, the clipping was quietly returned to his shack.

A few days later, visiting New York City detective Thomas A. Smith made a special trip to the Detroit detective bureau to secure a prisoner who was being extradited back to New York. That’s when they told him the story about the man in the photograph.

“He lives on a farm outside of town, and he always acts as if he is expecting to be arrested,” Detroit police told Smith. Curious, Smith was taken out to the Roy family farm which seemed deserted when he got there.

“Quietly and secretly he went out to the shack which the mystery man occupied,” the detective magazine shared with its readers. “The occupant was not at home, so Smith made an exhaustive search of the premises. He found nothing incriminating, but in the drawer of a table was the picture cut from a newspaper. The face was unfamiliar to him. He turned over the clipping and read fragments of a news story referring to the Gaw murder.”

With the farmhand under surveillance, Smith took a chance and carried the photograph with him back to New York where the Identification Bureau identified it as James Baker, wanted for the murder of Henry Gaw. New York authorities’ telegraphed back to Detroit that all of their suspicions were right. Baker was wanted for murder and on the afternoon of February 19, 1930 he was arrested.

The anonymous writer of the detective magazine article claimed he was present in Detroit when “Texas Jim” was brought in by detectives and gave readers a description of the murder suspect whose name would soon appear in newspapers across the country.

“Baker’s physical appearance and cool manner were the contrary of what might have been expected. He looked tough, but it was a healthy toughness. The fellow was as swarthy as a Latin, and in addition had been tanned almost a mahogany brown by his outdoor life. He leaned back in a swivel chair talking fluently, while a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. His sleeves were rolled up, displaying the tattoo marks about which we had heard—a coiling blue and green snake with its head at the wrist of one forearm; a dagger with garlands, and the words “Ceylon” and “Bombay” in a flourished script.”

Once in custody, Baker’s big mouth started talking and it didn’t stop. His confession to killing Gaw and seven other men shocked Detroit investigators and newspapermen who printed his revelations in daily papers across the country. His devil-may-care attitude over his capture and confession perplexed them, and when a newspaperman asked him if he was afraid of Sing Sing’s electric chair, Baker responded: “I know I’ll burn in New York but I’m not worrying. It comes to all of us someday.”

“After I had listened to him for a few minutes,” the magazine writer confided to his readers, “I perceived that his poise was a bluff, that mentally he was not normal. His strong, deep voice rang with boastfulness. He had a fiendish, cold-blooded story to tell and it came from his lips eagerly. He was an exhibitionist of the first order.”

Instead of fighting extradition, Baker waived his rights and was taken to the train station where two enormous, grizzled detectives would escort him back to New York City. When arrested at the Roy farm, he asked and was allowed to put on his best clothes which included an expensive suit featuring a silk pocket square, matching cravat and a double-knit white cap. Although they had searched him three times, it wasn’t good enough and Baker had more than one surprise waiting for them up his sleeve, or, down his pants.

Before he left Detroit, Baker was asked if he ever murdered anyone in Michigan. No, he replied, he did not kill anyone in Michigan.

It was a lie.

As the Rainbow Express sped towards Grand Central Station in New York, Detectives George Fitzpatrick and Arthur Horey searched Baker a fourth time as they train neared Pittsburgh. It was a good thing they did for they discovered a revolver in his underwear and a stiletto in his sock. Baker was planning on killing them both, if he had to, in order to escape.

The revolver featured an important clue, nine notches cut into the handle. No matter how many tales he told, or murders he confessed to in order draw more attention to himself, in a private moment when he had no thought of being captured, Baker engraved what is likely the true number of his victims. Now, investigators just had to figure out who they were.

Baker was taken to “Murderers Row” at the infamous Tombs jail[2] where he was interviewed over the next few days by police, doctors, and reporters eager to get the story of a multi-murderer. However, his story was a moving target that was difficult to pin down and the police didn’t know what to believe. Sometimes he claimed he killed twenty-five men, sometimes only nine, or was it twelve?

The Tombs physician Dr. Perry Lichtenstein, and Dr. Otto Schultz working for the district attorney’s office, pronounced him sane, but “morally insane” and a bit of a mystery. To the crime beat reporters who were there, well, they just wrote whatever he said because it was always great copy.

Both groups of inquisitors [police and psychiatrists] find plenty to excite their curiosity,” reported one news agency. “He is, of course, made to order for a psychiatrist… He is a somewhat more baffling problem to police. The fact that Baker is a lone wolf makes it all the more puzzling, say the police. If he were an eminent gangster, it would be much easier to explain, as he would be quite apt to make a business organization ready to help in emergencies of this kind. But everything about “Texas Jim Baker” indicates he is just a ham-handed ranch boy who, for some reason of his own, took up killing as a side-line more for sport than business.

So far as the psychiatrists are concerned, it is indicated that he will go down in the books as a ‘hypo-emotionalized’ case. That, as psychiatrists explain, ‘means under-emotionalized, as contrasted to the hyper-emotionalized or over-emotionalized cases. Mentally, he is way off balance. The under emotionalized types commit frightful crimes, seeking an emotion which does not come to them naturally.

Baker’s smiling indifference to what happens to him and his complete obtuseness as to any moral significance in his crimes is one of the unerring proofs of the under-emotionalized types of dementia. His distorted and swollen ego, as he boasts of his crimes, is another sure symptom.

Baker smiled a lot after he was brought to New York. He enjoyed the attention. Deputy Chief Inspector Edward Mulrooney of the New York Detective Bureau invited detectives from all over the Five Boroughs to witness Baker’s interrogation and more than 200 showed up to listen to the maniac killer answer questions. He surprised them all with his matter of fact answers but more so, by his confession to two more murders in Detroit. These murders were later verified by Eleanor and from evidence she helped police obtain.

On the night of January 20, 1929, while walking along the rails near Goulden Avenue at 2:30 a.m., Sergeant Walter Awe, with the Grand Trunk Railroad Police Department, caught Baker trespassing on railroad grounds. The two struggled and Baker shot him with his own pistol. When Detroit detectives discovered the revolver Baker was hiding on the train, it was Awe’s weapon which he had kept as a souvenir. It was a simple story; Baker overpowered Awe and came out the winner. But that’s not what he told reporters in New York. His story was presented like an old western quick draw shoot-out in which he was faster and a better shot.

After he killed Awe, Baker killed Otis South on January 29th. South was a taxi driver who objected too loudly to being robbed. Soon after he arrived at the Roy farm that year, the boastful psychopath told his new girlfriend, Eleanor, about murdering the two men. He gave her the taxi drivers’ knife and told her he pawned South’s watch in a Detroit pawnshop. She later took the knife and pawn ticket with Baker’s handwriting on it to Detroit police who were now fuming over having given up a double murder suspect to New York.

Eleanor had one other story to tell which made her claims even more credible, according to a Michigan Associated Press report. “On January 20 this year, the girl related, Baker saw an anniversary tribute to Awe from his widow in a newspaper In Memoriam column, clipped it and kept it for a time. Ten days later, he looked through the column for a similar reminder on the anniversary of South’s death but finding none, remarked that ‘the guy must have been divorced.’”

Baker knew that if he confessed to killing Awe and South to Detroit detectives, he never would have been extradited back to New York. When faced with being a celebrity criminal in Detroit, or a celebrity criminal in New York City, Baker chose the latter. The muckraking newspapers of New York were sure to make a big deal over his crimes and the trial he would get. Despite leaving Eleanor behind in Michigan, Baker had his sights set on being famous.

Or infamous.

During his questioning by Inspector Mulrooney and others, Baker gave a thorough account of how he murdered Henry Gaw. He also claimed he shot and killed his step-father Cyril Parks in 1923. Although his interrogators were sickened by his smug and cavalier attitude, one of them had the sense to play into it.

“I don’t think much of your story to the Detroit police that you can tear a telephone book in half,” Inspector Donovan, head of the identification bureau remarked to Baker.

“Is that so?” Baker countered. “Well I’ll show you I can make good on that statement. Give me a telephone book.”

Baker gripped the back of the one-inch Manhattan telephone directory and ripped it in half without straining. Then, like he did with Gaw, he scattered the pages all around his chair.

Got you. Just like it was when we found Gaw.

James Baker shows off his strength for reporters by tearing in half the Manhattan telephone directory.

After his interrogation, Baker was returned to cell 101 where he was under constant watch.

“He talked freely with the guard and betrayed not the slightest concern over his future welfare,” the New York Sun reported. “He appears to take an obvious pride in his status as a celebrity criminal if substantiated, will gain him a place of doubtful honor beside the world’s most notorious wholesale murderers.”

This was exactly what Texas Jim Baker wanted. However, for a man who desperately wanted to be a famous criminal, he was too stupid to realize that embellishing the details and lying about his body count would only hurt his cause. When he tried to claim credit for murders that never existed, the newspapers recognized that he was trying to manipulate them and refused to play along. Reporters found a weak spot in his family life.

“Baker, or Bakerlein, which seems to be his real name, is touchy on one subject only, that of his family. Yesterday he adopted a sullen attitude when questioned regarding his parentage. He admitted being born in Pittsburgh, but refused to talk of his people,” the Sun reported.

Pittsburgh? Why was he telling everyone else he was born in Warren, Ohio? He never explained why, but a 1940 census report confirmed he was born in Pennsylvania. As it turned out, he was never given up for adoption by his mother, either. He had lied about that too. Mrs. Parks wasn’t his adoptive mother, she was his real mother.

“I don’t owe them nothing,” he said sourly. “All I got from them was a lot of kicks and beatings.”

“How about your mother?” a detective asked.

“The last time I saw her was six years ago in Pittsburgh,” Baker answered. “I don’t owe her nothing either.”

When he was ten, his mother remarried and it was his step-father, Cyrus Parks, who taught him to be a petty criminal. Baker also lied to reporters about his age by saying he was twenty-three when he was actually twenty-four going on twenty-five.

Later on, the New York Sun was able to substantiate part of his criminal record as a young man. “The probation officer’s report diagnosed Baker as a ‘poser’ who spoke of crime with emotional exaltation. The report showed that his father had died at an early age and that his step-father had coached him in a career of petty thievery. At nine years of age, Baker was sent to the Industrial Reformatory in Ohio for petty larceny, and a year later he was returned to that same institution for firing a shot at his step-father. At thirteen he was sentenced to the Ohio State Reformatory.”

The shot he fired at his step-father missed its mark, in spite of what he later wrote in his autobiography. A search of Ohio death records confirms that no man named Cyrus Parks or Cyril Parks died in Trumbull County between 1913 and 1930. The probation officer’s report never said anything about serving a term in the infamous Boonville Training School for Boys. In other versions of his story, Baker never mentioned Boonville. He also claimed that at the age of sixteen, he ran away from home and travelled to Texas where he became a steamfitter’s apprentice on freighters. However, in other stories in which he spoke of his Texas years, he was seventeen or eighteen when he began working there.

When Baker was brought out for his grand jury indictment on February 25 for the murder of Henry Gaw, and his not guilty plea on March 6, 1930, he was his typical, outrageous self in order to impress reporters who were present. First, he demanded the judge send him a manicurist because his fingernails were “getting raggedy.” Then, he requested the best lawyers possible, which the judge granted. When asked about the murders, he was over the top in his callous answers. About Gaw, “he told with lip-smacking gusto how he forced cyanide down the watchman’s throat.” In another statement about his other victims, Baker claimed he murdered “because he wanted to watch them suffer.” He also admitted he was vain and liked to wear dapper clothes, and seldom killed for money, but what money he did get was spent on nice suits.

After these two hearings, Baker was taken back to his cell on “Murderers Row” where he experienced the worst possible thing that could have happened to him: he watched helplessly as the “maniac-killer” Texas Jim Baker story died in the newspapers. Other than the initial reports of his arrest and two brief hearings, he never got the big headlines and stories he was hoping he would get. Instead, there was the unfolding depression, bank closures, prohibition lawbreakers and gangsters to read about. Gaw wasn’t a socialite housewife who was mysteriously murdered in her home, or a prostitute beheaded by some deranged lunatic, or a rich merchant murdered by his business partner. Gaw was just a low level employee who was killed during a burglary. It happened all the time in New York City. Although it was tragic when William Awe and Otis South were shot and killed, the capture of their killer didn’t rate front page headlines either. And besides those three confirmed murders, Baker’s other victims were far away. Distant. They were men without names or faces.

Nobody cared anymore and they wouldn’t care again until his trial. His headline disappeared into a sea of other headlines, and the more pressing matter of trying to cope with a sharp economic downturn.

Baker’s Trial

A week before his trial was scheduled to begin on Monday, May 19, 1930, in Judge Charles Cooper Nott’s courtroom, a series of events, independent of each other, began to occur which altered the course of Jim Baker’s life forever.

Baker’s defense attorney, James Murray, successfully petitioned Judge Nott for his client to undergo a second round of “sanity observation” at Bellevue Hospital. The forty-seven-year-old attorney truly believed his client was insane. Unfortunately, Dr. Menus Gregory, chief of the psychopathic ward at Bellevue, disagreed and declared him medically sane but stated Baker was definitely “not normal.” However, there was one item in his report that Murray found interesting—brain damage. Dr. Gregory’s diagnosis nearly concurred with Dr. Lichtenstein and Dr. Schultz who in February found Baker to be medically sane, but “morally insane.”[3] It was a term once used to describe psychopaths and anti-social personality disorder types before those terms had recently entered the medical dictionary. Morally insane was also a term still used by doctors from the old school and had not yet disappeared from usage.

The “morally insane” diagnosis was a break for defense attorney Murray who could use it to confuse a jury. With a little luck in the courtroom, Baker just might squeak by on the insanity defense he planned. On the first day of the trial, Murray’s questions for potential jurors revealed to Assistant District Attorney James McDonald what the defense was planning. If anybody could sell the jury on the idea that Jim Baker was morally insane, it was Jim Baker. If Murray put Baker on the stand, his outrageous descriptions of the pleasure he took in killing could be enough to get him a not guilty by insanity verdict.

That wasn’t the only problem McDonald had. Henry Gaw’s mother, Clara Gaw, was in town for the trial and pressuring him to back away from the death penalty. She was in his office that first morning and “between sobs she announced that she was not in favor of having Baker put to death if he was convicted,” the New York Times reported. “She told McDonald that after reading newspaper articles about Baker at her home in Denver, she believed her son’s killer was mentally unbalanced and should spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum. She added that she felt if Baker were freed, he would probably kill again.”

Sensing which way the wind was blowing, prosecutor McDonald reconsidered a defense offer to plead guilty to second degree murder. A verdict of murder in the first degree would have meant an automatic death sentence in Sing-Sing’s electric chair.

“I have no doubt that the jury would convict this defendant of first degree murder,” prosecutor McDonald told the court, “but on the basis of statements made by Dr. Schultz and Dr. Lichtenstein, his death sentence would no doubt be commuted by the governor.”

In his report to the judge, Dr. Lichtenstein described Baker as one of the most “peculiar persons” he’d ever encountered in his time as the lead physician for The Tombs. During his examination, Baker “spoke of his crimes with emotional exaltation and seemed to be swayed by violent hatreds, rage and pride, with a predominating idea of persecution.”

The persecution aspect was ambiguous. If he meant Baker felt persecuted, he was accurate because that was a central theme Baker used to describe his time with both his parents and in reform school in his “autobiography.” But if he meant Baker enjoyed the idea of persecuting others, then that was true too. He had said as much during his many interviews and the self-drawn sadomasochistic pornography found in his room, with its emphasis on flagellation, further supported that claim.

In accepting the guilty plea, Judge Nott said he was of the opinion that justice would best be served with the compromise and although Baker was accountable for his crimes, there was little doubt he was not a normal person.

When Baker was brought into court the morning of May 23 for sentencing, he was shackled to two guards and six others surrounded him. With all of his boasting of what a bad man he was, and how he looked forward to the electric chair, the assignment of eight guards showed reporters that authorities were taking no chances. If he was going to try to and go out like a true desperado, they were there to make sure it wasn’t going to happen in the courtroom. It was, in all likelihood, an unnecessary precaution since a narcissistic psychopath like Baker loved himself too much to ever seriously consider the 1930 version of suicide by cop. His agreement to second-degree murder proved he had no intention of dying young, despite his death-wish claims.

“Reports that he would insist on pleading guilty of first degree murder so that he might be sentenced to the electric chair failed to materialize and in all, he presented a docile figure as he stood before the bar,” the New York Sun revealed.

Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, Baker was more elated with the fact that with eight guards around him, it reinforced his own beliefs about himself as a super killer.

“The youth preened himself before the crowd in the room as he was marched from the detention pen to the bench,” the New York Evening-Post reported. “Apparently, he relished being the center of attention. He grinned cheerfully…and the smile did not fade as he was escorted back to the Tombs to await transportation to the penitentiary.”

Whether he knew it or not, Baker needed to revel in the moment as long as possible because it was the last time he would ever appear in public. Even with all those guards around him, Baker’s mere presence was enough to victimize one more person—the victim’s mother. A special correspondent for the Buffalo Courier-Express described the heart-wrenching scene: “While the mother of the man he just had been convicted of having murdered collapsed in hysterics before him, Texas Jim Baker, the strange ‘bad man’ who said he wanted to die in the electric chair, did not alter his frosty smile as he was sentenced here today.”

While Baker was preoccupied over Mrs. Gaw’s suffering, and with all the attention focused on him, he was unable to catch the significance of what his attorney did next. Before the sentence could be read, Murray “told the court that physicians had found evidence of an old depressed skull fracture, indicating that there might be some bone pressure on the brain, and asked that Baker’s head be X-rayed as soon as he was safely within Sing Sing.”

His request was granted. “As attendants carried from the courtroom Mrs. Clara Gaw, Judge Charles C. Nott, obviously regarding Baker’s swashbuckling attitude with distaste, sharply sentenced him to forty-years to life,” the Courier-Express reported. When he was hustled out of the courtroom, “the young man who still wants to be bad so badly,” never lost his arrogant sneer.

If he had understood what his lawyer had just done, it could have wiped that smirk off his face. Baker’s stay in Sing-Sing would only last five weeks. Acting on the judge’s orders, doctors there took an X-ray of Jim Baker’s brain and changed their mind about him; he was insane after all they decided. Forty years in prison, with a possible early parole, may have been tolerable to him, but a declaration by the court he was insane meant his transfer to Dannemora State Mental Hospital would require him to stay there for an indefinite period. Most psychiatrists understood then there was no cure for a psychopath, especially one with neurological damage. His forty year term had just turned into a life sentence.

But Baker’s luck was indomitable and more than one month later he was offered money by International Features Syndicate, a William Randolph Hearst news agency, for his life story, to be written by him. It was a bad idea if IFS wanted a true account because Baker was incapable of giving them that. However, that didn’t seem to matter to them so long as Baker wrote it and the more outrageous it was, the better.

Epilogue

After Baker’s two-part, semi-fictional autobiography ran in the Sunday magazine section of major newspapers in August, the narcissistic killer who desperately wanted to be famous lived out the rest of his life in obscurity. In an ironic twist, his lies and embellishments damaged his credibility and hurt his story which quickly became forgotten.

Seven years later, an August 1937 issue of Official Detective Stories published a short story about his case. In that article, the anonymous writer, who was likely a reporter for one of New York City’s daily newspapers, reported that six of his eight poisoning victims were confirmed: Gaw, Honeycutt, the German citizen, and the three sailors aboard the Gulfport.

“Baker’s crimes in Bombay and Ilio remained doubtful,” the magazine reported. His murders of William Awe and Otis South by gunshot were also confirmed, which brought his death total to eight—one less than the notch on his gun. With ‘Texas Jim’ Baker, it is impossible to know if he killed nine men, or eight. The ninth victim could have been anybody, or simply represented his deep desire to have killed his step-father, a man he truly loathed.

According to the 1940 US Census, thirty-five-year-old James Baker was still housed at Dannemora State Mental Hospital where he was patient number 22830. The author was unable to determine Baker’s fate after 1940. The New York State Archives is extremely sensitive when it comes to the mental health records of its citizens, and the process for obtaining that information is restricted to family members only.

[1] In his newspaper autobiography, Baker wrote that he killed three men after leaving New Jersey and before he found the Roy farm, but only two of these were confirmed.

[2] The colloquial name for New York City’s jail.

[3] Some newspapers falsely reported Lichtenstein and Schultz declared him both medically and morally insane.

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The following story was written and provided by the History Section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A link to a photo gallery of high quality black and white images from the Chicago Tribune taken during Martin Durkin’s trial can be found at the end of this article. These images are amazing to view and historical true crime readers won’t want to miss them. This is an incredible story of a man who shot and wounded four police officers in two separate incidents before killing Agent Ed Shanahan in Chicago in 1925.

During his trial, Durkin was noted to have the ability to charm both a wife and mistress, and keep them both at the same time. He may have been a dynamic and interesting criminal in his day, but he was also a cold blooded murderer. His story is below.

Justice Department Agent Edward Shanahan

On October 11, 1925, FBI Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan, sought to apprehend Martin James Durkin, a professional automobile thief, for violation of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. Durkin had a long record. He had previously shot and wounded three policemen in Chicago and also had shot and wounded a fourth police officer in California. He had already attained a reputation as a desperate gunman who would shoot to kill upon meeting the slightest interference in his activities.

Special Agent Shanahan had received confidential information to the effect that a man thought to be Durkin was due to arrive at a certain garage in Chicago with a stolen automobile that he had transported to that city from New Mexico. Special Agent Shanahan procured proper assistance and proceeded to the garage in question. After an all day wait, it appeared that the information was inaccurate and that Durkin would not come into the garage as had been expected.

While the police officers with Special Agent Shanahan had momentarily left the garage for the purpose of seeking another detail of officers to relieve them, Durkin drove in with the stolen car. Special Agent Shanahan attempted to take him into custody but, through a ruse, Durkin swept an automatic pistol from the front seat of the stolen automobile and shot Shanahan through the breast. Special Agent Shanahan was the first FBI agent to be killed in the line of duty.

As a result of this atrocious murder, all the forces of the FBI throughout the country were concentrated in an effort to effect Durkin’s capture.

A few weeks after the murder of Shanahan, information was received that Durkin and a woman with whom he had been living would appear in Chicago at the home of a relative of the woman. Police officers of the Chicago Police Department attempted to arrest Durkin when he arrived at the house late at night. In the gun fight which followed, a police officer was killed and another wounded. Durkin again escaped.

Durkin successfully evaded capture until January 20, 1926, when he was arrested near St. Louis, Missouri as the result of an alarm spread throughout the United States and a last minute chase across the continent conducted entirely by special agents of the FBI.

Martin Durkin

Durkin’s “racket” was the stealing and interstate transportation of high powered automobiles which he sold after all the numbers thereon had been changed. The cars which he was particularly fond of stealing were Pierce Arrows, Cadillacs, and Packards. His favorite system in stealing such automobiles was to present himself as a prospective buyer at dealerships which handled these expensive cars. There he would dicker for the purchase of a high priced automobile and would agree to buy the same, arranging to have the car serviced and filled with gasoline and oil, ready for delivery to him the following day. He would agree to return the following day and pay cash for the car. That night he would burglarize the garage of the dealership in question and drive the expensive car away. He would then change the motor, serial number, and all other assembly numbers by means of which the car could be identified. Next, he would procure license plates under assumed names giving fictitious addresses. He would then drive the car to another state where he would dispose of it for several thousand dollars.

Special agents of the FBI carefully notified dealerships for such expensive cars throughout the United States as to the method employed by Durkin in these thefts. On January 10, 1926, as a result of this careful and systematic covering of the entire country, a Cadillac dealership at San Diego, California, informed the Los Angeles office of the FBI that, on the night before, a new Cadillac Phaeton with brown California top, green body and green wooden wheels had been stolen from their show room under circumstances identical with the system employed by Durkin. The motor, serial, and other assembly numbers on this stolen Cadillac were procured by FBI agents. In an effort to stop this car on the theory that perhaps the thief driving it might be Martin Durkin, all roads leading from California to the eastern section of the United States were covered. This systematic covering of all highways was conducted by Bureau agents in field offices at Los Angeles; Phoenix, Arizona; Denver, Colorado; El Paso, San Antonio and Dallas, Texas; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The transcontinental highways leading East were covered by shotgun squads day and night for almost a week to no avail. The Cadillac failed to appear.

On Sunday, January 17, 1926, a sheriff in the town of Pecos, Texas noticed a green Cadillac parked on the streets. He accosted the young man who was at the wheel and asked him to identify himself. The young man was a very smooth talker and did not present the appearance of a hard-boiled gunman and murderer. He convincingly told the sheriff that his name was Fred Conley and that he was a deputy sheriff of Los Angeles, California. He also told the sheriff that he had been employed at Los Angeles as a movie actor and that he was then en route east with his wife.

The sheriff asked him to produce papers showing ownership of the Cadillac, and the young man stated that those papers were in his luggage at the hotel. He told the sheriff that he would be glad to go for them and bring them back to the sheriff’s office. The sheriff carefully observed the Cadillac before permitting this. He took a record of the motor number, license number, and other assembly numbers on the car and noticed in particular that it had red wooden wheels. The young man was carrying a pistol and had a forty-four Winchester in the car, all of which lent color to his story that he was a Los Angeles deputy sheriff. Being disarmed by his innocent appearance and glib talk, the sheriff permitted him to go to the hotel in Pecos for the purpose of procuring and exhibiting the papers certifying ownership of the Cadillac.

When the young man describing himself as Mr. Fred Conley, a deputy sheriff from Los Angeles, did not return immediately with these papers, the sheriff proceeded to the hotel where he discovered that “Mr. Conley” had hurriedly entered the hotel, seized his baggage, and accompanied by the woman with whom he was registered, departed from Pecos at a high speed in the Cadillac.

Efforts made by the sheriff that day failed to effect the capture of “Mr. Conley” in this Cadillac car, which the sheriff now believed to be stolen. Numerous car thieves had been captured by this sheriff at Pecos, Texas, and he believed that this was just another thief and did not, at the time, connect him with Martin Durkin, the Chicago gunman, for whom a $1,000 reward was outstanding.

However, on this Sunday, January 17, 1926, the sheriff wrote a letter to the field office of the FBI at El Paso, Texas, describing the incident mentioned above and ending his communication with the comment to the effect that the FBI “might have something on this bird.”

The special agent in charge of the office at El Paso, Texas immediately recognized the physical description contained in this letter as being that of Martin Durkin, the murderer of Special Agent Shanahan.

The Cadillac touring car which had been stolen in Los Angeles bore assembly numbers entirely different from those on the Cadillac car examined by the sheriff at Pecos, Texas; the wheels of the car driven by “Mr. Conley” were red, whereas the wheels on the car stolen at San Diego had been green. However, the glibness with which “Mr. Conley” had evaded the sheriff at Pecos bore the earmarks of Durkin’s methods of operation. There was no doubt in the minds of the Bureau operatives at El Paso that they were on the right trail.

The telegraph and telephone wires were kept hot both east and west in the effort to stop this Cadillac car driven by “Mr. Conley” and his woman companion. Bureau agents now had the benefit of the changed assembly numbers, as well as the license number on this stolen car. Special agents were dispatched from El Paso to comb the country in the remote western section of Texas known as the “Big Bend of the Rio Grande.”

As a result of an all day search through the cactus and sage brush of those remote regions, the stolen car was found deserted in a clump of desert mesquite trees about 50 miles west of Fort Stockton, Texas. The deserted Cadillac was found late in the afternoon of January 19. The right rear wheel was broken off. The fleeing murderer had the misfortune to get a punctured tire and, because of the high rate of speed at which he had been traveling, had lost the brand new extra tire from the rack in the rear. In desperation, he had continued driving on a flat tire with the result that the spokes in the wheel had finally broken, and he could proceed no further. Tests by Bureau agents positively identified the Cadillac as the one which had been stolen at San Diego.

A hurried investigation revealed information from a rancher nearby that he had hauled the smooth talking stranger and the good looking woman with him to the small town of Girvin, Texas. The stranger had said that they were going to catch a train at Alpine, Texas in the Davis Mountains, about 150 miles to the south, near the Mexican border.

Special agents of the Bureau, knowing the fondness of Martin Durkin for the big cities and the night clubs, were not fooled into believing that he had entered old Mexico. They believed that he would not care to undergo the hardships of desert travel in that bandit infested region.

Accordingly, the ticket agent of the Southern Pacific Railway in the village of Alpine, Texas was immediately interviewed. Information was obtained from him that a strange man and woman had boarded Southern Pacific Train No. 110 at 12:12 a.m., on Monday, January 18, 1926, for San Antonio, Texas. From train dispatchers of the Southern Pacific, information was immediately obtained as to the names and addresses of the train conductor and pullman conductor who had ridden Southern Pacific Train No. 110 through Alpine on the night in question.

The railroad conductor was found at his home in El Paso, and he identified a photograph of Durkin as being the man who got on his train at Alpine at midnight on the 18th and gave a good description of the woman with him. He furnished additional information indicating that Durkin had talked with the pullman conductor concerning possible connections out of San Antonio, Texas for other points. It was ascertained that the pullman conductor in question was, on the night of the inquiry, en route on another train between San Antonio and Dallas.

Special agents from the Dallas and San Antonio Field Offices, on the morning of January 20, obtained information that a couple using the same baggage check numbers as those which had been used by Durkin and his lady companion out of Alpine, Texas had secured transportation out of San Antonio, Texas on the Texas Special of the M. K. & T. Railroad, then en route to St. Louis, Missouri, and due to arrive there that same morning at 11 a.m.

The pullman conductor of Southern Pacific Train no. 110, upon being interviewed, positively identified photographs of Durkin. He also stated that Durkin, upon boarding the train at Alpine, had immediately inquired as to the quickest connection out of San Antonio for St. Louis and had been told that the first and best connection was the above described Texas Special.

At about daylight on the morning of January 20, special agents of the FBI at St. Louis, Missouri were notified that Martin Durkin and his mysterious woman companion were in a stateroom in a car of the Texas Special of the “Katy,” due to arrive there that morning at 11 a.m. The services of the City Detective Bureau of the St. Louis Police Department were procured, and through appropriate arrangements, the Texas Special was stopped at a small town near St. Louis, where the fugitive murderer would have no chance to escape except by running on foot through plowed fields. The train was surrounded, and Bureau agents, accompanied by St. Louis City detectives, dragged the desperate gunman from the stateroom and placed him in irons before he had an opportunity to reach for the weapons which were in his luggage and overcoat.

Because it was not a federal offense to kill a special agent until 1934, Durkin was tried and convicted in state court for the murder of Agent Shanahan and was sentenced to serve a term of 35 years in the penitentiary at Joliet, Illinois. He also was tried in the federal court at Chicago for the interstate transportation of numerous automobiles in violation of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. He was convicted on all these charges and was given a term of imprisonment in the federal penitentiary totaling 15 years. Durkin was 25 years of age when he entered the Statesville Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois in 1926. In 1946, he was taken to Leavenworth Federal Prison. He was 53 when he was “released upon expiration of sentence” on July 28, 1954.

Chicago Tribune Images http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-131105-vintage-crime-durkin-pictures/

Article Source: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/durkin

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Rich Owens was the executioner for the state of Oklahoma from 1915 to 1947. In addition to being a guard, his took the position as executioner because the state paid him $100-150 for every man he executed.

During his life, he killed a total of 75 men: sixty-six of those were by execution, and the other nine were men he killed under various circumstances.

Below, he describes a prison escape by two inmates. They had snuck-up behind him, stabbed him in the back, left the knife in, and were going to walk him out the front gate. Here is his story of how he killed both of them with his own hands.

“By then I had my other hand loose. I grabbed that so and so by the hair and socked that knife in to the neck bone, nd I didn’t pull it out straight. I just ripped ‘er out and let ‘er slice clear across. Then I kicked him a couple of times in the mouth and said now die, you so and so and go to hell with the others.

“You ought of seen how that so and so looked,” he said.

“I went in the tool shed after that other one. He began to cry for mercy—Oh. Mr. Rich, oh, Mr. Rich, don’t kill me.

“I said, you so and so, I said I’d kill you if you didn’t kill me. I told you not ever to ask me for mercy. He jumped through the window and a guard shot him in the knee.

“He went down bellering and I finished him with a long-handled shovel. I sure smashed his brains out. Then I jumped up and down on his temple ’til I felt the skull crush in.”

Please click on this LINK to read the rest of the story which is available by .pdf only.

Photo Citation: Oklahoma Publishing Company. [Photograph 2012.201.B1046.0404], Photograph, November 22, 1933; (http://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc538212/ : accessed October 26, 2015), Oklahoma Historical Society, The Gateway to Oklahoma History, http://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

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Feature Story

Learn how Lynne Schulze, Eileen Hynson, Judy Sylvester, Judy Martins, and Cheryl Ann Scherer Disappeared in the 1970s in separate incidents. You’ll be shocked to learn who the chief suspect is in the disappearance of Lynne Schulze!

Read Article —>

While conducting research for a story about a double-homicide in 1898, I came across an account of all known lynchings for that year. The statistics were interesting and confirmed what you might suspect, but also revealed some surprising information.

Out of 127 lynchings in 1898, five of them were women. As expected, African-Americans represent the majority with 102 black men and women murdered, while only 23 whites and two Indians met a similar fate. By far, most of the lynchings occurred in the south with 118.

The report also reveals the reason for each lynching—and that’s where it gets interesting.

I do not possess the academic qualifications to comment on all the social injustice this document contains. I will leave that for the experts. However, there are few cases from this point worth spotlighting. Some of the more outrageous reasons to lynch a man include: “insults;” “paying attention to a white girl” (I looked up this case and read that the white girl enjoyed the attention); “resisting assault (so, he was just supposed to take a beating and not fight back?); and “violation of contract (whatever that means).

In a few of these cases, there are links to where I looked up the case and copied a newspaper article which described the events that surround the lynching.

Also worth noting is that in 1898, lynching didn’t necessarily mean hanging. Instead, it could mean a homicide inflicted in any manner by a group, gang, or vigilante mob that denied the individual his or her right to due process.

If you would like to search for more information on any of the names listed below, you can try the Library of Congress newspaper archives. You will have to use the advanced search option and exact match for search terms.

Read Full Report

   by Jason Lucky Morrow

During the spring of 1928, Catherine Clark was lonely and looking for love. Things hadn’t worked out with her first husband, Ralph, whom she divorced in 1925. Nearly every day for the next three years, Catherine would wake up early, go to work at her small business repairing genuine fake oriental rugs, then return home to an empty apartment. There were no children to happily greet her at the door; no sober man to hold her in his big arms. Just sore fingers, a meal for one, a depressing light bulb or two, and solitary life in big city Boston—far from her childhood home in Connecticut where she grew up with ten brothers and sisters.

A woman can only take so much loneliness. If men weren’t coming to her, the plump, thirty-five-year-old would have to put herself in a place where they could see her better. Three years was enough and in April 1928, Catherine placed her information with one of the many nationwide matrimonial agencies popular during her time. To get a man interested in her, Catherine would not only have to advertise her measurements—five-feet five-inches, 165, blue eyes, light-brown hair—in a catalog for men to peruse, but also her net worth—a dowry to be paid to the man who promised to take care of her. He, in turn, was required to list his employment, income, and net worth including property.

It wasn’t romantic, but it was practical. True love, Catherine hoped, would come eventually.

Continue Reading “The Love Song of Archie Moock, 1928.”

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Four females slaughtered to protect underage love affair.

A 1978 crime magazine article highlights the gravity of the crime with a bold headline.

On the morning of August 11, 1977, a Seaside, California, police officer kicked down the door to a small duplex and found four females spanning three generations of the Smith family dead from too many stab wounds to count.

Looking into the kitchen, he could see Josephine Smith, the white-haired grandmother, lying dead next to her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Suzanne Harris, who was lying dead next to her six-year-old daughter, Rachel Harris. In the bedroom, Renee Ferguson, another fifteen-year-old Smith family granddaughter and niece to Suzanne, was found dead, lying across the bed with her hands tied behind her back.

All four females had not been seen since attending church on Tuesday night, August 9. After the service, Grandma Smith promised the Assembly of God Church pastor they would return the following evening for his evangelical seminar. They never came. It wasn’t like Grandma Smith not to appear when she said she would. He thought about checking on them, but his attention was directed elsewhere.

That Wednesday morning, both Suzanne Harris and Renee Ferguson were supposed to be at work; Suzanne at an electrical firm, and Renee to her summer job she had gotten through the youth job corp. Neither one of them showed-up and Suzanne’s car remained under the carport, exactly where it had been parked the night before.

Later that Wednesday night, a friend of Renee’s mother asked a neighbor acquainted with the family to check on them the following morning when he went to work. At 5:30 a.m. that Thursday, August 11, no one answered the front door, but as he was walking away, he noticed a light on in the bedroom, peered through the window, and saw Renee face down on a blood-soaked bed with her hands tied behind her back. Approximately ten minutes later, the officer was kicking down the door to the worst crime scene of his career.

Inside the home, detectives found a house of human slaughter that looked like something out a low-budget, teenage slasher film—the kind targeted for young people eager for an emotional thrill.

An autopsy later showed that each victim had been stabbed between nineteen and forty-five times. The wounds were made with a knife so long that almost all of them would have been fatal. Even with three victims lying clustered together on a linoleum kitchen floor, every surface inside the small residence seemed untouched by gore.

Grandmother Josephine Smith

“I walked in and saw blood all over and the officer told me to get out,” the neighbor later told reporters. “I don’t ever want to see anything like that ever again. It about made me sick.”

They may have found a lot of blood, but it was what they didn’t find that would cause the investigation to last far longer than anyone in the community could stomach.

The windows and door were not broken.

There didn’t appear to be a struggle inside the home.

None of the victims were sexually assaulted.

Nothing valuable was taken from the home or from any of the victims.

In short, there were no clues, no suspects, and no motive.

But what they did have was a hell of a lot of blood. And down in that blood, they would later find foot prints that were only visible in a crime scene photograph. After careful study, they concluded there was one large shoe print, and another print, not as big, maybe a bare foot, but it was small. Who did that belong to? Rachel?

Although inexperienced with investigating a house full of dead women, murdered by some movie theater monster with an unseen-face, a long-knife, and a short-temper, the Seaside police force used every resource available to them. Their investigation was thorough and professional. They did what they were supposed to do. They interviewed everybody that knew the family. Twice. They interviewed 500 people before it was over. They searched for clues within a wide radius of the area. They investigated every tip and lead that came into a special hotline. They sent out bulletins and called in reinforcements from the state Bureau of Investigation.

But when the crime wasn’t solved fast enough, the fear of Seaside residents turned to anger and resentment against their own police force. Serving a community of just 23,000 people, they thought the force was too small for the kind of mass-murder that should have happened somewhere else.

After the bodies were discovered, they organized citizen brigades to patrol the streets on foot. Volunteers with CB radios cruised the back roads all-night in their vehicles, talking to each other in official sounding language about all clear this and suspicious looking that.

At the end of three weeks, they grew tired of playing cops and movie monster killers. Without a suspect in custody, the family members complained to the mayor and the media. Then, the media started asking loaded questions about the investigation being led by just three detectives on the Seaside police force.

The lack of trust by the public got so bad that the California Department of Justice had to investigate the investigation. Released on September 19, their evaluation asserted the performance of Seaside detectives “is complete and being conducted competently.” It further stated that no involvement by the state DOJ was necessary.

In short, the local police were doing their job and just needed a break in the case.

The break in the case came from a nineteen-year-old girl who called into a hotline to give them the name of the fourteen-year-old girlfriend of the killer. Well, his new fourteen-year-old girlfriend. She was calling about getting that girl arrested, and was genuinely surprised when they weren’t hip to who the killer was.

She had to tell them: his name was Harold Arnold Bicknell. Except, she didn’t say it in a normal way, she spit it out of her mouth with the contrived shock and sarcasm feral teenagers are known for.

“And who is Harold Bicknell?” the detective asked the caller.

“You don’t even know that? I thought you said you were a detective investigating those murders.”

Harold Bicknell was the nineteen-year-old grandson of Grandma Smith; nephew of Suzanne; cousin to both Rachel and Renee; the Harold Arnold Bicknell who sang in the church choir and volunteered for the citizen patrol for one day; the same Harold Bicknell who joined the Nay two days after the murder. And the same Harold Bicknell who had a fourteen-year-old girlfriend that replaced the girl that was on the telephone, who was really calling to get her in trouble, not Harold.

The movie that had ended as a teenager slasher film began as a teenage romance with a love-triangle as the plot.

The detective who took the call investigated Harold Arnold Bicknell by questioning his friends. Those who knew something, talked.

Bicknell is escorted off the plane that brought him back to Monterrey County.

On October 26, Bicknell was arrested at the San Diego Naval Training Center and brought back to Monterrey County. He later made a partial confession to the crime on tape. His fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Terri Marie Milligan, was also arrested and charged as a juvenile for her involvement in the murders. In late November, another young girl, fifteen-year-old Karen Kirby, was arrested and charged with murder. The district attorney’s office was hush-hush on Milligan and Kirby’s exact involvement. All that was known about Kirby was that she was a friend to victim Renee and her sister Rayleen. She was also an acquaintance of Bicknell and Milligan, but didn’t know them that well.

In February, investigators revealed they had a surprise witness who was in the duplex on the night of the murders. Not only were Milligan and Kirby there during the slaughter, but so was Rayleen Ferguson, Renee’s sister. After the murders, she had tried to block it all out, and had not come forward to investigators and the district attorney until November. Shortly after she told them what happened that night, Karen Kirby was arrested.

During a court hearing in February 1975, Rayleen testified she was standing outside the kitchen when the attack started after Renee and Bicknell began arguing, according to an Associated Press report.

“I heard screaming,” she said, adding that she saw knives swinging and blood and was then struck on the back on the head and knocked unconscious.

She said she woke up the next morning in Miss Kirby’s bedroom and told Miss Kirby she had had a bad dream.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it,’” Ferguson told the judge.

Ferguson also testified she once tried to tell Bicknell about the dream and he agreed and said, “Yes, it does seem like a dream.”

WITH RAYLEEN TESTIFYING AGAINST BICKNELL, and his confession on tape, it was a trial that should have ended in days, not three weeks. Harold, who had pleaded not guilty, said he could not recall killing anybody, and disavowed his taped confession.

Testifying on his own behalf, he said he went over there late that night to confront his cousin Renee. She was going to spill the beans to his long-time girlfriend, the girl who called the detective, about his groping and grunting with his underage girlfriend.

Bicknell is escorted back to the courtroom to hear the verdict.

From the witness stand, Bicknell, talking in the third-person because he had several personalities, stated that he killed for the noblest reason of all.

“When I look back, I see that he was fighting to protect love,” one of his personalities declared in court. Apparently, it was one of the good personalities, because that one didn’t like the cold-blooded, stab four members of his family over one-hundred times personality.

“When I see how much damage I wrought, I abhor that man,” the high school dropout said with some dramatic flair.

Then, although he couldn’t recall killing anyone when he first began to testify, one of his personalities later confessed to jurors that he killed the three younger females. He thoroughly denied killing Grandma, and blamed Kirby and Milligan. He would never have killed Grandma, it had to have been the other girls, he said repeatedly.

The jury also abhorred the short young man who had wrought so many lives. He was found guilty on April 21. One month later, he was ordered to serve four life sentences—to run concurrently: which really meant one life sentence; which didn’t really mean his entire life because life without parole wasn’t an option until the 1980s; and because it was the 1970s, when prison sentences were ridiculously lenient, his four consecutive life sentences meant that he would be eligible for parole in seven years.

Fortunately, the California Board of Parole Hearings didn’t believe in lenient sentences for lovesick mass-murderers. Harold Arnold Bicknell is still serving his life sentence at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad. He is fifty-eight-years-old.

In June 1975, Terri Milligan was convicted in juvenile court of three counts of first-degree murder, and one count of second degree murder. Karen Kirby was convicted of being an accessory, but found not guilty of murder. Just like their involvement in the murders that night, their sentences were not made public.

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Special Guest Feature Story by: Dr. Barry Morton:

At few times in its history has the small town of Crawfordsville, Indiana ever been more regularly in the spotlight than it was between the autumn of 1889 through November 1890. The Pettit murder trial, “the most publicized case in this period,” began with published rumors of the Reverend William F Pettit’s suspicious conduct around the time of his wife’s death in August 1889, continuing through grand jury deliberations and his arrest in early 1890. His lengthy and dramatic trial, held in Crawfordsville between October and November 1890, “attracted attention throughout the Midwest because of the prominence of the families involved in it.”

The Pettit murder attracted widespread attention for two good reasons. On the one hand it was the lurid nature of the case: “the murder for which Pettit stands convicted was one of the most deliberate, cruel, and cold-blooded crimes ever committed in the state of Indiana.” The courtroom was packed daily and local spectators lined up every morning with their own chairs. Even Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur and the town’s most famous resident, was in regular attendance (and said to be writing a novel based on the case), as were journalists from Indianapolis and Lafayette—whose stories were reprinted widely.

In addition, the prominent social position of the murderer and his accomplice made it equally dramatic. Not only was Pettit the minister of one of Indiana’s wealthiest Methodist congregations, but he was also one of the highest-ranking Freemasons in the state. His accomplice, the widowed Clemmie Whitehead, came from an upstanding family—the Meharrys—that was easily the wealthiest in the Montgomery and Tippecanoe County area that its landholdings straddled.

The entire Pettit affair also illustrates the tension that existed in America’s evolving justice system. As the legal scholar Elizabeth Dale has so deftly shown, America’s justice system was an evolving, contested arena well into the twentieth century. Even late into the nineteenth century, local notions of popular justice coexisted with the distant, bureaucratic arm of the state. For instance, in western Indiana, the vigilante Horse Thief Detective Agency had a far greater presence than the various county sheriffs and local police. While the vigilantes did not get involved in the Pettit affair, the actions of ordinary citizens were decisive in first obtaining official prosecution and then conviction. Gossip and shaming were central to the affair, and these were classic forms of popular justice. The people of Shawnee Mound were convinced of Pettit’s guilt, but believed his station would enable him to get away scot-free. Their actions, which he sought to counter, led to his demise.

Continue Reading…

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Introduction:

On January 11, 1902, fifteen-year-old Nora Fuller disappeared after she left her home. She told her single mother of three that she was going to meet with a man about a job as a nanny after she found his advertisement in the local newspaper. She didn’t come home that night or the next, and the search for Nora Fuller began. Her nude body was found one month later in an empty apartment.

The careful planning and attention to detail by her cunning killer is what makes this case so intriguing. Added to the mystery is that Nora may have been secretly meeting with a much older man, confiding to one friend that he was her boyfriend.

In a story that was on going, with front-page coverage in San Francisco newspapers between January and March 1902, the city was captivated by the mysterious murder of Nora Fuller. This extreme level of publicity put enormous pressure on the San Francisco Police Department to solve the case.

Beneath this introduction is a 3,000-word feature story written by retired San Francisco Police Captain Thomas A. Duke in his book, Celebrated Criminal Cases of America, published in 1910.

According to Duke’s story, the police were eventually able to identify a strong suspect, or so they believed at the time. Unfortunately, he left town before he could be arrested and was never seen or heard from again. What is most fascinating about Duke’s story is the long-running account of circumstantial evidence that police believed connected the murder to this man.

The pressure to solve the case also meant that dozens of other men who were rounded up and interrogated had their names published in the local newspapers as well. With the public’s fear and anger already inflamed by those same dailies, the lives of these men were effectively ruined.

At the end of the story is a link to download a three-page .pdf file containing the front and two interior pages San Francisco Call published on February 11, 1902—three days after Nora’s nude body was discovered. Nearly every square inch of those three pages is devoted to the Fuller murder.

The information within those three pages may not match up with Duke’s account, who wrote it years later and had a more complete view of the crime.

I have also added a link to an October 17, 2016, sfgate.com article.

I will add more links to this feature story, including links to more pdf files, in the near future.

The Nora Fuller Case

Eleanor Parline, better known as Nora Fuller, was born in China in 1886.

In 1890 her father was an engineer on the Steamer Tai Wo. One night he was sitting asleep in a steamer chair on the deck of the vessel while at sea. Shortly after he was seen in this position his services were required in the engine room, but when a helper was sent after him the chair was vacant, and Parline was never seen again. A year later Mrs. Parline married a man named W. W. Fuller, in San Francisco, but seven years later she obtained a divorce.

As she had four small children, Mrs. Fuller experienced much trouble in getting along. In 1902 she lived at 1747 Fulton Street. At that time Nora, who was then fifteen years of age, decided to quit school and seek employment.

On January 6 she wrote to a theatrical agency, and after stating that she had a fairly good soprano voice, asked for employment. Two days later the following advertisement appeared in the Chronicle and Examiner:

“Wanted—Young white girl to take care of baby; good home and good wages.”

At the foot of the advertisement was a note directing anyone answering to address the communication in care of the paper the advertisement was found in. Nora Fuller answered it, and on Saturday, January 11, she received the following postal:

“Miss Fuller: In answer to yours in response to my advertisement, kindly call at the Popular Restaurant, 55 Geary Street, and inquire for Mr. John Bennett, at 1 o’clock. If you can’t come at 1, come at 6. ‘ JOHN BENNETT.”

Mrs. Fuller sent Nora to the rendezvous, and the girl took the postal card with her. About one hour later Mrs. Fuller’s telephone bell rang, and her twelve-year-old son answered.

A nervous, irritable voice, which sounded some like Nora’s, told him that the speaker was at the home of Mr. Bennett, at 1500 Geary Street, and her employer wanted her to go to work at once. (It was subsequently learned that 1500 Geary Street was a vacant lot).

The boy called out the message to his mother, who instructed him to tell Nora to come home and go to work Monday. The boy repeated the message, and the person at the other end said: “All right;” but before any more could be said by the boy the receiver at the other end was hung up. Nora Fuller never came home. A few days later the distracted mother notified the police.

F. W. Krone, proprietor of the Popular Restaurant, was questioned and he stated that about 5:30 on the evening of January 11, a man who had been a patron of his place at different times during the past fifteen years, but whose name he had not up to that time heard, came to the counter and stated that he expected a young girl to inquire for John Bennett, and if she did to send her to the table where he was seated.

The girl did not appear, and Bennett, after waiting one-half hour, became restless and walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for several moments. He then disappeared.

This man was described as being about forty years of age, five feet nine inches high, weighing about 170 pounds, wearing a brown mustache, well dressed and refined appearing.

A waiter employed at the Popular Restaurant, who frequently waited on “Bennett,” stated that the much-wanted man was a great lover of porterhouse steaks, but the fact that he only ate the tenderloin part of the steak earned for him the sobriquet of “Tenderloin.”

On January 16 lengthy articles were published in the papers in regard to the mysterious disappearance of the girl.

On January 8, [three days before Nora’s disappearance] a man giving the name of C. B. Hawkins called at Umbsen & Co.’s real estate office, and, addressing a clerk named C. S. Lahenier, inquired for particulars regarding a two-story frame building for rent at 2211 Sutter Street. The terms were satisfactory to Hawkins, but Lahenier asked the prospective tenant for references. He replied that he could give none, as he was a stranger in the city, but as he had a prepossessing appearance the clerk let him have the key after paying one month’s rent in advance. The man then signed the name “C. B. Hawkins” to a contract.

He stated that he was then stopping at the Golden West Hotel with his wife. The description of Hawkins was identically the same as the description of Bennett.

On the following day the real estate firm sent E. F. Bertrand, a locksmith and “handy man” in their employ, to the Sutter-Street house to clean it up.

Many days after this a collector for the firm named Fred Crawford reported that the house was still vacant—judging from outside appearances. He went to the Golden West Hotel to inquire for Hawkins, but he was not known there.

On February 8 the month’s rent was up, and a collector and inspector named H. E. Dean was sent to the house.

Using a pass key he entered, but finding no furniture on the lower floor, he went upstairs, where he found the door to a back room closed. This he opened, but as the shade was down the room was in semi-darkness. He discerned a bright-colored garment on the floor, but as he seemed to know by intuition that something was wrong, he hurriedly left the building, and meeting Officer Gill requested him to accompany him back to the house. The officer entered the room, and upon raising the shade found the dead body of a young girl lying as if asleep in a bed. On the bed were two new sheets, which had never been laundered, a blanket and quilt. An old chair was the only other furniture in the house. Neither food nor dishes could be found. Nor was there any means of heating or lighting the house, as the gas was not connected.

The girl’s clothing was in the bedroom, also her purse, which contained no money, but a card with the following inscription thereon:

“Mr. M. A. Severbrinik, of Port Arthur.”

(It was subsequently learned that this man sailed for China on the Peking three hours before Nora Fuller left home on January 11.)

On the floor was the butt of a cigar, and on the mantle-piece in the front room was an almost empty whiskey bottle. There were no toilet articles in the house except one towel.

Many letters were found addressed to Mrs. C. B. Hawkins, 2211 Sutter Street. They were from furniture houses and contained either advertisements or solicitations for trade. A circular letter addressed to Mrs. Hawkins and bearing a postmark of January 21, 11 p. m., or ten days after the dis-appearance of Nora Fuller, had been opened by someone and then placed in the girl’s jacket, which was found in the room. Mrs. Fuller identified the clothing as belonging to her daughter, and subsequently identified the body as the remains of Nora. No trace was ever found of the postal card Nora received from Bennett.

Dr. Charles Morgan, the city toxicologist, examined the stomach and found no traces of drugs or poisons. Save for an apple, which the deceased had evidently eaten about one or two hours before death, the stomach was empty.

There was a slight congestion of the stomach, possibly due to partaking of some alcoholic drink when the stomach was not accustomed to it. Mrs. Fuller stated that Nora ate an apple shortly before she left home on January 11.

Dr. Bacigalupi, the autopsy surgeon, found two black marks on the throat, one on each side of the larynx, and as there was a slight congestion of the lungs, he concluded that death was due to strangulation. But the child had been other-wise assaulted and her body frightfully mutilated, evidently by a degenerate. Captain of Detectives John Seymour took charge of the case.

B.T. Schell, a salesman at J. C. Cavanaugh’s furniture store, located at 848 Mission Street, stated that at 5 p. m., January 9, a man of the same description as “Hawkins” or “Bennett,” and wearing a high silk hat, called and said that he wanted to furnish a room temporarily. He purchased two second-hand pillows, a pair of blankets, a comforter and top mattress. He insisted that the goods be delivered at night or not at all. This Schell promised to do. The customer then wanted to know what assurance he had that the salesman would not substitute another mattress, and Schell suggested that he put his initials on the mattress as a means of identification. Acting on this suggestion Hawkins used a large heavy pencil and wrote the letters “C. B. H.” on the mattress. After leaving word to deliver the articles that night to 2211 Sutter Street the man departed.

Lawrence C. Gillen, the delivery boy for this firm, stated that he had to work overtime in order to take the articles to the Sutter Street house that night.

When he arrived the house was in darkness. He rang the bell and a man came to the door, and from what he could see with the lights from the street lamps he was of the same description as the man who made the purchases, and he wore a silk hat. Gillen asked him to light up so he could see, but he said, “Never mind, leave the things in the hail.”

Richard Fitzgerald, a salesman employed at the Standard Furniture Company, 745 Mission Street, stated that a man of “Bennett’s” description bought a bed and an old chair from him on January 10, and that he engaged an expressman, Tom Tobin, to deliver the same to 2211 Sutter Street.

Tobin stated that this man was present when he arrived, and requested him to set up the bed in the room where it was found. This man he described as being of Bennett’s ‘appearance.

It is probable that the sheets, towel and pillow cases were purchased at Mrs. Mahoney’s dry goods store, 92 Third Street, which was just around the corner from the Standard Furniture Company. These articles were carried away by the purchaser.

On the floor of the room where the girl’s body was found was a small piece of the Denver Post of January 9, upon which was a mailing label addressed to the office of the Railroad Employees’ Journal, 210 Parrott building.

When this paper arrived at the Parrott building it was given by Exchange Editor Scott to a Mr. Hurlburt, a delegate from Denver to a railroadmen’s convention then in session in the assembly room in the Parrott building. After glancing at it he threw it on a large table, and some other delegate picked it up and took it to Dennett’s restaurant, where he left it on the dining table. The steward of the restaurant, Mr. Helbish, picked it up, and after taking it to the counter began to read it, believing it was the San Francisco Post. He laid it down, and Miss Drysdale, the cashier, glanced over it. She laid it down, and how it got to 2211 Sutter Street remains a mystery.

A seventeen-year-old girl named Madge Graham met Nora Fuller in June, 1901, and they became very friendly. Madge boarded at Nora’s house for a while until her guardian, Attorney Edward Stearns, requested her to move away, because a lawyer named Hugh Grant was a frequent visitor at the Fuller home.

She claimed that Nora Fuller frequently spoke to her of having a friend named Bennett, also she believed that the advertisement was a trick concocted by Nora and “Bennett” to deceive Mrs. Fuller.

John Bennett

She furthermore stated that Nora often telephoned to some man, and that one day Nora requested her to tell Mrs. Fuller that she and Nora were going to the theater that night. Madge did as requested, but she stated that instead of going with her, Nora went with some man. It was also claimed that someone gave Nora complimentary press tickets to the theaters.

A. Menke, who conducted a grocery at Golden Gate and Central Avenues, stated that Nora Fuller frequently used his telephone to call up someone at a hotel, although she had a telephone in her own home a few blocks away.

Theodore Kytka, the handwriting expert, made an examination of the original slips filled out by “Bennett” for his advertisement for a young girl, and also the signature of “C. B. Hawkins” to the contract when he rented the house, and found both were written by the same person.

On February 19 the Coroner’s jury rendered the following verdict:

“That the said Nora Fuller, aged fifteen, nativity China, residence 1747 Fulton Street, came to her death at 2211 Sutter Street in the City and County of San Francisco, through asphyxiation by strangling on a day subsequent to January 11 and before February 4, 1902, at the hands of parties unknown. Furthermore we believe that she died within twenty-four hours after 12 m., January 11. In view of the heinousness of the crime, we recommend that the Governor offer a reward of $5,000 for the discovery and apprehension of the criminal.

“ACHILLE ROSS, Foreman.”

Believing that the person who committed this crime might have changed his address and sent a written notification to that effect to the postal authorities, Theodore Kytka examined 32,000 notifications of changes of address. Of this number he found three signatures that bore considerable resemblance to the Bennett-Hawkins style of penmanship, and one of these three was almost identically the same.

This proved to be the signature of a man in Kansas City, Mo., and Captain Seymour went east to make a personal investigation. It was found, however, that the man had nothing to do with the crime.

On January 16, five days after the disappearance of Nora Fuller, but three weeks before her fate was known, the papers of San Francisco gave considerable space to the mysterious case. Two days later a gentleman connected with a local paper notified the police department that a clerk in their employ named Charles B. Hadley had disappeared. It was afterward said that he was short in his accounts with his employers.

Detective Charles Cody was detailed to locate the man, and he found that he had lived at 647 Ellis Street with a girl born and raised in San Francisco, who had assumed the name of Ollie Blasier, because of her infatuation for a notorious character known as “Kid” Blasier.

No trace of Hadley was found. Finally the body of Nora Fuller was discovered, and photographs of the signature of “C. B. Hawkins” on the contract with Umbsen & Co., and the “C. B. H.” on the mattress, were published in all the papers.

The Blasier woman had a photograph of Hadley in her room, upon the back of which he had written his name, “C. B. Hadley.” Seeing the great similarity in the handwriting she delivered this to Detective Cody, who in turn delivered it to Theodore Kytka for investigation.

Kytka determined at once that the person who wrote “C. B. Hadley” on the photograph also wrote “C. B. H.” on the mattress, and “C. B. Hawkins” on the contract.

While Hadley had the same general physique as “Hawkins,” it was known that he was always clean shaven. Miss Blaiser stated, however, that she had seen Hadley wear a false brown mustache about the house, and it was subsequently learned that he purchased one at a Japanese store on Larkin Street.

In addition to this, Chief of Police Langley, of Victoria, B. C., made an affidavit to the effect that a Mr. Marsden, a storekeeper in Victoria, B. C., had stated that he had been a companion of Hadley’s, and that while out on a “lark” he had seen Hadley wear a false mustache. Miss Blasier made a further statement substantially as follows:

“I now recall that after the disappearance of Nora Fuller Hadley made a practice of getting up early in the morning and taking the morning paper to the toilet to read.

“On the day of his final disappearance he followed this practice, and after he left the house I found the morning paper in the toilet, and I noticed a long article about the disappearance of Nora Fuller. It was evident that his mind was greatly disturbed on this morning.

“The next day I was making up my laundry, and at the very bottom of the pile of soiled clothing I found some of his garments which had blood on them. I burned them and also his plug hat.

“It is well known that Hadley is partial to porterhouse steaks and that he eats only the tenderloin.

“On the evening of January 16, Hadley telephoned to me that he would not be home. I confess that I suspect he committed this murder.”

Theodore Kytka obtained Hadley’s photograph and altered it by giving him the appearance of wearing a mustache and plug hat. This was shown to different persons who had dealings with “Hawkins,” with the following results:

Tobin, the expressman, said it looked very much like him; Lahenier, the real estate man, said it bore a marked resemblance. Ray Zertanna, who had seen Nora in the park with a man, stated that the picture was a good likeness of this man. Schell, who suggested that “Hawkins” place his initials on the mattress, said it was an exact likeness of Hawkins. Fred Krone, the restaurant man, who had the conversation with “Bennett” on the evening Nora left home, said it was not a likeness of Bennett.

Hadley left his money in a certain bank in this city, where it remains even now.

An investigation was then made as to his past, and it developed that he was an habitue of the tenderloin district, and that he was on the road to degeneracy. His true name was Charlie Start, and his respected mother resided in Chicago.

On May 6, 1889, Superintendent of Police Brackett, of Minneapolis, issued a circular letter offering $100 reward for the arrest of Charles Start for embezzlement.

About two years before the murder of Nora Fuller, Hadley enticed a fifteen-year-old girl into a room and outraged her. He then purchased diamonds and jewelry from a certain large jewelry store in San Francisco and gave them to the girl, who is now a respectable married woman residing in the neighborhood of San Francisco.

The country was flooded with circulars accusing Hadley of this murder and calling for his apprehension, but he was never located.

Many believe that he committed suicide.

Links:

Download 3 page .pdf file of February 11, 1902, San Francisco Call

Read sfgate.com October 17, 2016, article about the case.

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