Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland

by Morrow, Jason Lucky

  When Detective Reif got a look at Richard Oliver, everything about his demeanor conveyed the dental student’s belief that he would be horribly murdered at any moment. From his wild, expressive eyes to his quick, sharp glances in every direction, to his pulled-up coat collar that he tried to hide behind, their witness looked as if he would break into pieces if anyone screamed, “Boo!”

  “Are you the officers from Tulsa? Thank God you are here,” Oliver said as he turned and pointed back at one of the cars down the track. “The man who killed Gorrell is on that train!”

  The newsmen were there to catch Oliver’s frightened state. “His teeth chattering so that he could hardly speak,” a Tulsa World reporter wrote, “Oliver refused details until he had pushed those who met him into the safety of the baggage room at the Claremore station.”

  “He is going to kill me,” Oliver squeaked. “My God, why did I say that I would name the man who killed Gorrell?”

  Detective Reif didn’t know what to think. Maybe the boy was one of those easily excitable types prone to delusions. Or a nervous type. Could the killer they’ve been hunting now for thirty hours actually be on that train? Coming back to Tulsa? It didn’t seem right, but the boy did look as if he had seen the devil himself.

  By the time Oliver finally calmed down, the train had left the station. He was thrust into a sedan and taken back to Tulsa with a carload of newsmen following close behind.

  Back at police headquarters, Oliver told his story.

  “He got on the train at Chelsea. He was wearing a tan suede jacket and gray trousers. Almost at once I recognized him as Bob Wilson. He was the man John feared.

  “Wilson recognized me. I could feel his eyes boring through me. I got up and moved toward the rear of the train. Wilson followed a few minutes later, taking a seat behind me.

  “In desperation, I went to the conductor. I had received a telegram at Vinita from the Tulsa Police Department advising me that they would send detectives to meet me at Claremore as a precautionary measure, and I showed it to the conductor and he protected me.” The conductor had locked Oliver in his private cabin and then locked the door to the coach.

  In Chief Carr’s office with detectives and a stenographer, over donuts and coffee, Oliver told how he’d first met Bob Wilson.

  “John was a happy-go-lucky fellow,” Oliver began. “He seemed to always invite risks and danger, but he made friends wherever he went.

  “The night of November 15, he got a telephone call from Tulsa. I was there at the time; also Jess Harris, who shared the apartment with John and me. He appeared to be worried and said, ‘There’s a fellow coming up from Tulsa. He is in a jam down there over some slot machines we own and I am afraid that he is coming up here to get me.’

  “The next day, John told Jess and myself that when this fellow got up here he would introduce him to us as Bob Wilson and explained that while that was not his real name, it would suffice. He asked that we take a good look at Wilson for if anything ever happened to him, Wilson would be the one responsible.

  “‘If I am ever murdered or wounded,’ John said, ‘you will know that Wilson did it. Remember, Wilson will be the man.’

  “About eleven o’clock, the night of November 20, he received another call. This call had come within Kansas City and was from Wilson. John talked to him for about five minutes. The conversation ended with John agreeing to meet Wilson in the apartment lobby at midnight.

  “A few minutes before midnight, our apartment bell rang. Gorrell went down to the lobby, remaining there six or seven minutes. Then, John and Wilson came into our apartment. After a brief introduction, they went into the bedroom where they remained about an hour. I noticed that Wilson carried a long parcel.

  “Both left the building, neither returning that night. Later, when I went into the bedroom, I found the package. It had been opened and I saw that it was a box which had contained surgical gloves. The brand was Aid and as John had a girl in trouble, I figured that Wilson was probably a medical student he knew who was going to operate on the girl.

  “The next day, Gorrell said nothing about Wilson’s visit, although the man called twice for him. Wilson said he was staying at the Phillips Hotel. Once, when he called, I answered the telephone. He said his name was Hake, but I recognized his voice.

  “A couple of days later, I asked John what had happened to Wilson. He answered shortly, saying that nothing had happened to him. A few minutes later he made this remark: ‘I guess he went back on a Braniff [Airways] plane. That’s the way he came here. He had a round trip ticket.’”

  The lineage of the revolver was of interest to detectives, and Oliver was able to clear that up. The weapon was borrowed from roommate Jess Harris. Gorrell’s parents knew he carried the revolver on long trips but were unaware that he had been murdered with his own weapon.

  “He said he wanted it for self-protection,” Oliver explained. “We thought his self-protection talk was nothing more than make-believe.”

  When asked to give a description of Bob Wilson, Oliver said he was of medium height and stocky, with thick dark hair and dark eyes. He appeared to be well developed muscularly, but above all, his friendly personality had been his outstanding characteristic.

  As Oliver waited outside the chief’s office, Carr and his detectives discussed the young man’s statement. It hadn’t provided the smoking gun, but it gave them a lot of leads to work. A wire was sent to Kansas City Police to check the registration records at the Phillips Hotel and the passenger list at Braniff Airways. Detective Fisher would check the airline’s records in Tulsa.

  Around the same time Oliver was telling his story, a chubby, bald-headed, middle-aged man walked into the Kansas City Police Department Headquarters and asked for a private meeting with Chief of Detectives Thomas Higgins. While Tulsa detectives were still trying to track down Bob Wilson, this new witness had an amazing story to tell of the twenty-four hours he had spent with John Gorrell’s killer.

  And he knew Bob Wilson’s real name.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday mid-morning, December 1, 1934

  Kansas City, Missouri

  THOMAS J. HIGGINS DIDN’T LOOK like a detective. At least not in the way those Hollywood flickers portrayed hard-nosed, gum-shoe detectives. He was short, wore wire-frame glasses, and had a comb-over that failed to mask his bald dome. But where others were brash and forceful, Higgins was methodical, patient, thoughtful—qualities that led to his posting as chief over all detectives in Kansas City, Missouri.

  And when airplane parts dealer and unlicensed pilot Floyd Huff sat across from his desk that Saturday morning of December 1, Higgins detected the nonverbal clues of a nervous man anxious to tell a story that he felt was important. If this fella believed his story was significant, Higgins was patient enough to hear him out. In an article that appeared the following year in a crime magazine he coauthored, Higgins recounted the statement Huff gave.

  He began by handing Higgins a newspaper clipping about the murder in Tulsa of John Gorrell Jr., a student at Kansas City Western Dental College. Attached to the Associated Press article was a clipping from a local newspaper that had pursued the Kansas City angle, with a short but unproductive interview of Dick Oliver. Higgins read each item twice before asking Huff the significance of the clippings.

  “Chief, that boy was murdered and I know who did it!” Huff exclaimed. “The murderer told me in so many words that he was going to kill Gorrell. He told me how he was going to do it. It fits to the letter with this story.

  “That fella will come back here and kill me. He gave me his name, address, and telephone number. I’m not going to leave here until that man is arrested.”

  “Let’s get this straight, Huff. Start right at the beginning,” Higgins told him. “I’ll listen. And if your story is worth anything, you’ll get the action you want.”

  “I had known Gorrell for some time,” Huff began. “I knew that he was a licensed pilot. He was a frequent visitor at the airport.<
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  “The afternoon of November 21, he and another young chap came to my hangar at Fairfax Airport. They wanted to rent my plane for a flight. Flying conditions were bad, almost what we call zero-zero. I refused to let my ship go out.

  “Evidently, what I said confirmed Gorrell’s opinion on the weather, as he was a good pilot. His friend, however, seemed to be disappointed. We talked for a little while. The boys said they had no way to get home. I offered to take them to Gorrell’s apartment.

  “Gorrell’s friend wanted to go to the Kansas City Airport, so I drove across the intercity viaduct into Missouri. The fellow sent a telegram at the postal branch and then went to the airport ticket office. He left the unused part of a round-trip airline ticket with the agent. He said he didn’t want to lose it.

  “From there, we drove to 2015 Linwood Boulevard,[3] where Everett Gartner lived. Both boys seemed to be well acquainted with Gartner.

  “We had been there some time when Gorrell’s friend brought up the subject of his return to Tulsa. He wanted to return that night, but all the flights from Kansas City had been canceled.

  “Gartner offered to buy the unused airplane ticket. The deal went through. I then said that I planned to drive to Oklahoma, and that I would go as far as Bartlesville. That is about fifty miles from Tulsa.

  “‘If you will take me on into Tulsa, I will buy the gas and oil for the trip,’ this young fellow said to me. That was satisfactory.

  “About 4:30 that afternoon we started for Tulsa. We stopped at a store and bought a bottle of Scotch whiskey. We opened the bottle shortly after we left the city, headed south. We had a drink or two. The weather and roads were all we talked about for some time. For a long while neither of us said anything. Suddenly, the boy said:

  “‘Do you know why I came to Kansas City?’

  “I told him ‘no.’

  “‘I came up to kill John Gorrell.’

  “I looked at him and laughed. He said:

  “‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  “This boy opened his bag and pulled out a long dagger. He said he had some rubber gloves he had intended to use when he stabbed his friend.

  “I thought that was all boy talk and that the chap was trying to impress me. Then he told me why he had been so disappointed about the airplane that afternoon. He said he had planned to crack Gorrell over the head with a wrench and then bail out. That would make it look like an accident. His little plan would have cost me just about $8,000 for a new plane, too.

  “The boy showed me a bump on his head which he said he suffered in an automobile crash, and I still thought that perhaps he was just drunk and maybe a little irrational from that crack on the head,” Huff told Higgins.

  “He kept talking about how he was going to kill Gorrell. Listen, Chief, he said this: ‘Gorrell is coming to Tulsa next week. I’ll get him then. I’ll drive him out on some lonely road, [and] pretend I have a flat tire. Then he’ll get it!’”

  Higgins would later write that he wasn’t sure if he should believe Huff, who seemed as if he were trying just a bit too hard to sell the detective on his wild tale. But there was one item in his story that matched with what the AP reported: “was found in a motor car in a lonely south side park area.” And Huff had just quoted the killer to have said, “I’ll drive him out on some lonely road…”

  “I had become impressed,” Higgins wrote in his magazine article. “This was a case 300 miles out of my jurisdiction, across two state lines, but that made no difference. I questioned Huff. ‘What was this fellow’s name?’”

  Huff reached into a shirt pocket, retrieved a scrap of paper, and extended it to Higgins.

  Phil Kennamer. Philtower Building. 4-0219.

  “That’s the name he gave me,” Huff said. “When I left him in Tulsa the following morning he gave me that scrap of paper, first writing his name on it.”

  “Why did he want to kill Gorrell?” Higgins wanted to know.

  “Why, he had some rigamarole about a girl he wanted to protect. He showed me a letter he said was an extortion note; that it demanded $20,000 from a man named Wilcox. He explained that the [extortion] letter threatened the life of Virginia Wilcox, the girl he loved.

  “I didn’t read the letter, [because] it was sealed. Kennamer simply showed me the envelope, which was addressed to Wilcox. Wilcox is a very wealthy oil man, according to what the boy said.

  “I asked him what he was going to do with the letter, where he obtained it.

  “‘Gorrell gave it to me to mail in Tulsa,’ he said.

  “‘Are you going to mail it?’ I asked him.

  “He said he was undecided just what he would do with it. He was very positive in saying he did not intend to turn it over to police.”

  Huff ended his story by reporting that he and Kennamer had spent the night in a hotel in Pittsburg, Kansas, and had arrived in Tulsa midmorning on November 22, where he dropped Kennamer off at the Philtower Building.[4]

  Higgins found the story to be credible. Astonishing, but credible. There were too many rich details a fabricator wanting a little notoriety couldn’t have plucked out of thin air. While he waited for a long-distance connection with Chief Carr to advise him to arrest Phil Kennamer, he had no idea of the storm he was about to unleash.

  “This story, with the lightning-swift developments that followed in its wake, was to rock Tulsa to its very foundation that Saturday afternoon,” Higgins wrote. “It would be difficult to find adjectives describing the bombshell it created in Tulsa Police Headquarters. The name, which had meant little to me, was a potent one in Tulsa. There was prestige, both social and professional, behind it.”

  Phil Kennamer, aka Bob Wilson, was the son of Federal Judge Franklin Kennamer.

  Tulsa was about to be hit by a tornado.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday afternoon, December 1, 1934

  Tulsa, Oklahoma

  FRANKLIN ELMORE KENNAMER WAS BORN in Alabama in 1879. After graduating high school, he attended a private college and studied the law under several apprenticeships. He moved to Oklahoma in 1901 where he taught school and continued his legal studies. In 1905 he was admitted to the bar and joined a law practice in Madill. In 1908, he associated with attorney Charles Coakley in a long-running partnership that oversaw a large amount of Indian land litigation and important criminal cases, in addition to representing the local interests of several railroads.

  He was a city attorney for Madill from 1915 to 1916 and mayor from 1919 to 1920. In 1919, he was a delegate to the Republican National Committee and supported Warren Harding for president. A Republican resurgence in November 1920 propelled him to the Oklahoma State Supreme Court. In 1924, while other prominent men were considered to be front-runners, President Coolidge chose Franklin Kennamer to serve as Federal Judge for the Eastern District of Oklahoma. Exactly one year after that appointment, Judge Kennamer was moved to the newly created Northern District of Oklahoma, with a federal courthouse in Tulsa. He quickly became well known throughout the state as a stern judge with zero tolerance for bootleggers.[5]

  When his brother, Charles, was moved up from federal prosecutor in Alabama to the bench in 1931, the two Kennamers were the only brothers in US history to serve as federal judges at the same time. Other Kennamer brothers occupied important government positions from Washington DC to Alabama.

  When Philip was born in 1915, he was the youngest of four siblings. Although extremely intelligent with an IQ of 120,[6] it became clear from an early age that Phil was also a troubled child with psychological problems—a fact that would become public knowledge in the months ahead.

  As a morning paper, Saturday’s edition of Tulsa World’s coverage was mostly a recap of everything that happened the day before. Across the Midwest, the early papers in adjacent states showed no interest in what was then viewed as a local story for Tulsa. By later that afternoon, that would all change.

  Reporters in Kansas City had gotten wind of Huff’s statement and “literally were burnin
g the wires in efforts to substantiate it.” The sudden flurry of phone calls coming down from the north sparked wild rumors that made their way into the offices of the World and Tribune, and then out to the gaggle of reporters waddling around the courthouse, looking for the next big angle.

  But when they looked around for chatty Sgt. Maddux, they were told he was in a meeting in County Attorney Holly Anderson’s office with Chief Carr. In fact, all the city detectives on the case were in that meeting, along with the coroner, and Assistant Prosecutor Tom Wallace.

  Higgins had telephoned Chief Carr at 10:55 a.m., and the meeting he called together had started just after 12:30. One o’clock came and went, then two. Whatever was going on in there, it had to be big. Where the World reporters had time, the Tribune staff had run out of it by 2:30. If there was a big scoop coming, Tulsa would read it about it first in the World’s Sunday edition.

  A scoop was coming—a lot of them, in fact. And they were all jaw-droppers.

  Around 2:40 that afternoon, two distinguished-looking men dressed in fitted, dark suits walked up the short flight of steps at the west entrance to the courthouse. As they entered the lobby, the elder of the two was greeted with deference by those who knew him. His name was A. Flint Moss, and he was the most highly regarded criminal defense attorney in Tulsa. He had moved to Oklahoma in 1900 following his graduation from Cumberland University in Tennessee. He was active in Democratic Party politics and was a former county attorney for Kay County in north-central Oklahoma. He then migrated to Oklahoma City, where he practiced law for six years before settling down in Tulsa in 1913, just when the city was booming. As the defense attorney for many high-profile murder cases, he quickly gained the respect of his peers, and it was said about him that he “could laugh a murder case to acquittal.”

  Half a step behind him and to his right was a young man in a blue serge suit who looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.