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

by Morrow, Jason Lucky

Inside the sheriff’s office, Moss leaned against a waist-high counter and called out to Deputy Nathan Martin.

  “This is Phil Kennamer. He wants to surrender. He killed John Gorrell,” Moss declared.

  Martin chuckled. He looked at Moss and waited for the punch line that never came. But this was no joke. The older man in glasses was serious. Kennamer stood there quietly with a smug look on his face that would become his trademark. Martin then looked to his left at Chief Deputy John Evans, twenty feet away, who caught the confused look on his face. When Evans reached the counter, Moss repeated his statement.

  “This is Phil Kennamer. He wants to surrender. He killed Gorrell.”

  A wave of silence rolled through the wide room as deputies, secretaries, and clerks stopped what they were doing and stared quietly at the two men. It was as if Bruno Hauptmann himself had walked into the room.

  “Have you been in trouble?” Nathan Martin asked the young man.

  “Yes, I shot Gorrell. I had to do it. It was self-defense,” Kennamer replied.

  Inside the county attorney’s office, an excited secretary broke into the meeting with the surprise announcement. Those old men, with their paunch bellies, backaches, arthritis, and other ailments, sprang up like they were young boys again and hustled down the corridor to where Moss and Kennamer were standing.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Deputy Evans escorted Kennamer and Moss to the sheriff’s office with a dozen officers, detectives, and newsmen crowding close behind.

  “Phil told me this morning the facts and circumstances surrounding the killing and he wanted to surrender,” Moss began with a raised voice to quiet the chatter. “I said I wanted to talk to his father about it. I knew his father would concur with me and Phil that the rightful thing for him to do was to surrender.

  “Phil’s thought was that some person would be arrested and charged with this offense who had not been [involved] with the killing. His confidence in the righteousness of his defense satisfied him the outcome of this prosecution would be in accordance with the truth and his complete vindication.

  “Kennamer knew Gorrell for several months but was not an intimate acquaintance of his. Phil admits he shot Gorrell but did it in self-defense. After the shooting, Phil went home. He did not say anything to his father, and I was the first person he discussed the matter with this morning. Judge Kennamer approved completely Phil’s determination to voluntarily surrender.”

  For all the confidence Moss had in his client at that moment, it would soon melt away when he would learn from new witnesses that half the proclamations he had just made were not true. If he didn’t know it then, he would soon learn: Phil Kennamer had a big mouth.

  Moss then told his audience of lawmen and journalists that Kennamer killed Gorrell in self-defense with Gorrell’s own gun. When a reporter asked for further explanation, Moss pushed his glasses back and stared directly at the young man who asked the question.

  “Suppose I was having a difficulty with someone and he tried to kill me with his gun and we both fought over it and in the end, he was killed with his own gun. There would be nothing extraordinary about that.”

  Kennamer did have that part going for him. It wasn’t his gun, it was Gorrell’s. But like everything else that would come up during the case, there were many layers to the truth.

  “The family environment of Phil Kennamer,” Moss continued with an air of self-righteousness on his client’s behalf, “makes it of necessity true that there was some powerful underlying reason for the trouble that finally came up between the two young men.”

  Sergeant Maddux and his senior detectives stood back quietly and watched the spectacle unfold. The client was with his lawyer, and his lawyer was grandstanding in front of reporters who were asking all the questions. But when they probed and prodded for concrete answers to specific queries, Moss would fire back, “you can’t ask these questions! It was self-defense and that’s all we have to say now.”

  Soon after the lawyer left his client in the custody of deputies, Sgt. Maddux and his detectives took a crack at him. But as much as he liked to talk, and talk about himself, Kennamer was sticking to his lawyer’s guns; it was self-defense. All the salient details of his story would just have to wait.

  Afterward, the newsmen scrutinized Kennamer once again and were impressed with what they saw. His dark-brown, wavy hair was parted on the left side. He had strong wrists and hands, and a determined jaw that hung low and full. His heavy eyelids punctuated the cocky expression he always had, and his 185 pounds on a six-foot frame could intimidate a lot of people.

  He was, they said, a nineteen-year-old who carried himself with the poise of someone twice his age, and they noted that he looked much older. Some of them knew him personally from the short time he was a cub reporter for an Oklahoma City paper. They also recognized him from the circle of chiselers and crumbs and schleppers and spoiled young swells that clung to the illegal gambling and drinking dens of Tulsa’s quasi-underworld.

  “He speaks fluently, unhesitatingly, and interestingly. He has a habit of mixing metaphors and embellishing his statements with aphorisms. He is quick on repartee and has a sense of humor,” a World reporter observed.

  Although his appearance and diction were impressive, Kennamer’s calm composure and confidence puzzled them. In their experience of covering crime, young offenders booked into jail were often nervous, unsure of what would happen next. But not Phil. He was one cool customer, and it seemed to come from within, not from who his daddy was.

  “Did you kill John Gorrell?” asked World reporter Pat Burgess, who was well acquainted with Kennamer.

  “I did.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “It was self-defense.”

  “Why was it self-defense?”

  “I sincerely regret that it was necessary for me to kill John Gorrell, but under the circumstances, it was necessary and I did it.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I had to save my own life.”

  “Were you involved in the purported plot to extort money from Homer Wilcox in a kidnapping scheme?”

  “Certainly, I was not.”

  “Did you know the Wilcox family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you implicated or involved in any other extortion plot?”

  “Such a thing never entered my head.”

  “What caused the fatal fight?”

  “I’ll tell that to the court at the proper time as my lawyer has directed me.”

  “How do you feel about this killing now?”

  “I regret it. It was necessary to do and I am sorry for John Gorrell, for his family and for my own.”

  The query, what caused the fatal fight, turned out to be a question Tulsa would debate for years.

  The interview was cut short by deputies, who formally arrested Kennamer and lodged him in the jail matron’s living quarters. This was the first of many actions Sheriff Charlie Price would take that were controversial. Price, it would soon come out, had a lot of axes to grind, and Kennamer’s cell was a very comfortable room. It was modestly furnished with a cast-iron bed, an ivory-toned dresser, a green rocking chair, and a battered and scarred radio cabinet. When Kennamer walked into the room, he observed a private lavatory to his right, and to his left, a door, which was supposed to be locked, that led to the matron’s office with a desk and typewriter.

  For some untold reason, a low-hanging portrait of Governor Martin Trapp was left behind to adorn the pastel colored walls. Trapp had left office nearly eight years before. It might have been left in place out of respect, since he was the one who had established the State Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He had also curbed the power of the Ku Klux Klan by passing an anti-mask law.[7]

  To everyone involved, it looked like special treatment, which Sheriff Price admitted it was, but not because he liked Judge Kennamer—he hated Judge Kennamer.

  “I wanted to show Judge Kennamer how kind I can be to his son, i
n contrast to what he once did to me,” Sheriff Price later explained.

  “When Price was undersheriff several years ago,” the Tulsa Tribune reminded its readers, “Judge Kennamer sentenced him to three months in jail and ordered him fined $500 when he would not tell a grand jury about reported drinking among officers at the jail. Price said he knew nothing about it. He served a month in the Vinita jail and was freed when his fellow officers paid the fine for him.”

  Sheriff Price failed to win reelection, and in four more weeks, he and twenty-six deputies were out the door. Feeling as if he answered to no one, he was going to do whatever he damn well wanted to do.

  Once they had the motive of self-defense, reporters began chipping away at the alleged extortion plot involving the Wilcox family. Second only to Kennamer’s surrender, this was the next big angle. Homer Wilcox was a sickly man when he came to Tulsa in 1909 and got into the grain and elevator business. He soon regained his health and, with investors, began drilling for oil, which had recently been discovered in the area. But after he came up empty-handed time and time again, they started calling him “dry-hole Wilcox.” Wilcox persevered and, with a new strategy, began drilling deeper than anyone else. This approach paid off, and he applied it repeatedly. By 1922, the Tulsa World estimated he was worth $20 million.[8]

  By late afternoon that Saturday, Tulsa reporters knew about Floyd Huff’s statement made in Kansas City just a few hours before. According to Detective Higgins, Huff said Kennamer told him he was going to kill Gorrell, because John was the mastermind of a $20,000 extortion scheme which threatened to harm Virginia Wilcox, the woman Phil Kennamer was in love with, if the money wasn’t paid.

  However, the whole bizarre story was more complicated than that. Those same reporters would soon learn, from Phil, that Gorrell’s original plan was to kidnap Virginia, and that Phil had acted as double agent and had gone to Kansas City to convince Gorrell to change his plan from kidnapping to extortion. Then, with the extortion note in his possession, Phil could put a stop to it.

  The day before, credible rumors had filtered into the newsroom that a shakedown against a wealthy Tulsa family had already taken place. But when they interviewed Wilcox, he denied ever receiving a note, and no other families came forward to claim they were the victims of an extortion plot. If the Wilcox letter described by Huff was never sent, it was unclear to everyone where it was or who had it.

  At 3:30 p.m., Chief Deputy John Evans arrested big Wade Thomas, owner of the Idle Hour, a food and beer joint that operated illegal slot machines and craps tables in the back. No charges were filed, and Thomas was held in solitary confinement—away from the newspaper reporters, who were never given a straight answer on why he was arrested. The Tulsa papers made a big deal of his arrest and insinuated there was a possible connection to the murder, extortion plot, or both.

  For all the jaw-droppers and hard news that investigators and reporters were trying to make sense of that Saturday, there was the soft news of a broken family coming to terms with the loss of their son. More than five hundred people attended the funeral services for John Gorrell Jr., held at the First Presbyterian Church. The entire student body of the Spartan School of Aeronautics attended en masse. After the graveside service, a Tribune reporter followed the Gorrells home, where the family tried to reconstruct what they knew about their son’s ties with Phil Kennamer.

  “The first time I heard of Phil Kennamer,” Mrs. Gorrell said as she leaned back in her chair, “was last summer when, for about a week, he would come by the house for John accompanied by another boy. The friendship was short-lived. It just spurted up and then as suddenly died down. I never heard much of Phil again until Thanksgiving Day.

  “Before John came home that day, Phil Kennamer called for him. I forgot to mention it to John until that night at the dinner table. Doctor Gorrell had just served John with a second helping, and I told John that Phil had called twice for him. He looked very funny and didn’t take another bite of dinner. He went out at about 7:20[9] and shortly after that, Phil called for John again.

  “Now, I am sure Phil was just keeping in touch to see that John was in town and couldn’t get away from him by his calls [on] Thanksgiving. And to think he shot John with John’s own gun.”

  The Tribune reporter was the first to break the news to the family that Kennamer might have killed John over an extortion plot against the Wilcox family, allegedly masterminded by their son.

  “John couldn’t have been mixed up in anything like that,” Mrs. Gorrell fired back in disbelief. “Why, when the Lindbergh kidnapping and the others were in the limelight, John was the first to express his horror and disgust. That was one thing about John. He was never cruel. He could never have been that way to anyone.

  “And as for ever wanting $20,000, John wasn’t like that. He never wanted big amounts of money. He only wanted small amounts to do little things.”

  “If John had only come to us with all that was worrying him instead of keeping it to himself, but he wouldn’t do that,” his father chimed in. “Evidently, he had been threatened in Kansas City by Phil Kennamer, and that was why he was so upset. But he figured that he could get out of it without disturbing or worrying us.”

  The Tribune writer did not press them about rumors that John had gambling debts owed to Wade Thomas, or that there was a rumor he’d dreamed up some scheme involving frequent trips to Mexico.

  Before ending the interview, the Gorrells expressed their belief that Phil Kennamer had an accomplice—someone who drove him away from the murder. That conviction was also shared by Sgt. Maddux and his detectives, even though Kennamer was telling anyone who would listen that it was a solo job.

  At six o’clock that Saturday night, the judge himself walked into the courthouse and held a thirty-minute private meeting with his son in Sheriff Price’s office. Reporters caught up with him as he was leaving.

  “I never dreamed such a thing could happen. I had always instructed my boy to never touch the hair of a human unless it was a life-and-death struggle,” Judge Kennamer said with tears in his eyes. “Life, it seems, is full of tragedy.”

  Feeling the need to explain himself, the judge said his son had accompanied him on a quail hunt at his farm, near Chelsea in Rogers County, on Friday. Later that night, Phil asked his father for a ride to the local train station early the next morning, explaining that he had to return to Tulsa on business. Phil then met with Flint Moss in Tulsa, who agreed to take on his case, but demanded that they travel back to his father’s farm in Moss’s car to speak with Judge Kennamer first. They returned to Tulsa that afternoon and surrendered at 2:40 p.m.

  As it turns out, Oliver was right. “Bob Wilson” had gotten on the train at Chelsea, a mere nineteen miles northeast of Claremore.

  The Sunday editions of both Tulsa newspapers were going to shock everyone. They had it all: Richard Oliver stalked by the killer on the Frisco train, Floyd Huff’s statement, an alleged kidnapping or extortion plot involving the Wilcox family, Phil Kennamer’s surrender, the funeral, the mysterious arrest of Wade Thomas, the Gorrell family reaction, and Judge Kennamer’s response to his son’s arrest. It should have been enough, but this was no ordinary day. Later that Saturday night, a tall, young man about Gorrell’s age pushed his way through the crowded courthouse lobby and marched down the corridor to the sheriff’s department on the first floor. Standing behind the same bannister from which Kennamer and his attorney had announced their surrender just hours before, he asked to speak with Sheriff Price.

  “I want to tell him something about Phil Kennamer and John Gorrell,” he said. “They were planning some hold-ups and other things a lot worse.”

  That got him a first-class ticket to the sheriff’s private office. His name was Ted Bath, and he was a Tulsa boy who worked at a refinery in Longview, Texas. He was a close personal friend of John’s, he said, and had been a pallbearer at his funeral that day. Chief Deputy Evans, who led the investigation for county authorities, took his statement wit
h a stenographer.

  “Last September I was home on a short vacation,” Bath began. “One day, in the Brown Derby Café on South Main, I met John and a boy he introduced as Phil Kennamer. We sat at a table, talking about a number of things.

  “Kennamer remarked that he needed some money. John and I laughed. Both of us said we always needed money. A little later Kennamer said the fact that my car had Texas license plates might be useful. He said there was a place on East 11th Street [the Idle Hour] that we might hold up and get $300 or $400.

  “He had something else in mind because he went on to say this money could be used to further other plots.

  “I didn’t like the idea and said so. I said if he did, it could mean bloodshed and maybe someone would get killed. Phil made a gesture as if to say ‘what does it matter?’

  “At first I thought he was joking, and when I learned he was serious about the matter I quickly told them I was not interested because I had a good job and was doing pretty well for myself.

  “The conversation switched, and in a few minutes I left. I returned to the place a short time later. Phil and John still were there. Kennamer spoke to me.

  “‘Do you know Barbara Boyle?’

  “I started to say no, when John interrupted.

  “‘You leave her name out of this,’ John said. ‘She is a close friend of the family.’

  “Kennamer then asked me if I knew Virginia Wilcox. I told him that I did not. He wanted to know then if I could take a couple of weeks off from work. I said not unless it was for something important.

  “Kennamer suggested that I ingratiate myself with Miss Wilcox and try to get her into a compromising position. He wanted to obtain some pictures of her. He said he would defray all my expenses. I said I would not be interested. Shortly after that we left the place.”

  As tired as he was after a long day, Deputy Evans was ecstatic. Bath’s statement confirmed some of the rumors they had been hearing. It also refuted Kennamer’s assertion that the extortion plot was all Gorrell’s idea. Kennamer was in on it from the get-go, and it could break apart his claim that it was all self-defense.