When the news of Kennamer’s surrender first rolled through the city that Saturday night, more young Tulsans came forward with incredible stories of their own that allowed detectives to piece together everything that had happened that fateful night.
Chapter Seven
Sunday, December 2, 1934
KENNAMER’S SURRENDER ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, came at an inconvenient time for the Tribune and afternoon papers nationwide. A few dozen evening editions across the country were able to squeeze in a short piece about Kennamer’s surrender, his self-defense claims, and Huff’s statement.
By the next morning, the story had exploded across the country with front-page coverage in all forty-eight states. In nearly every AP and UP report, it was never about the young victim; it was a story about the son of a federal judge committing murder. Phil’s identity was enmeshed with his father’s, and nearly every headline drove home the fact that it was the son of a federal judge who was now charged with first-degree murder. He was often referred to as “young Kennamer” and “the judge’s son.” In the few cases in which a photo was published, it was his father’s image that appeared.
The story was hot enough that the wire services and major newspapers in Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York City sent in their best word-slingers to cover it. They were called newshawks and were veterans at covering major crimes. When they blew into town, it raised the stakes for everyone. The most celebrated of them all was Lowell Limpus of the New York Daily News. He was an Oklahoma native who had covered many important criminal cases of the last decade. His claim to fame was his personal investigation into the infamous 1922 Hall-Mills double murder that had led to police reopening the case.
Before the shock of a federal judge’s son confessing to murder could evaporate, reporters started digging into Judge Kennamer’s past. After his appointment to the state supreme court, he had moved his wife and children to Chelsea in Northeast Oklahoma, where he bought a farm he would own the rest of his life. When appointed to the federal bench in February 1924, the family, with two girls and two boys,[10] moved to Sand Springs, a town eight miles west of Tulsa. There, Phil thrived in school and was twice elected class president.
“Phil was endowed with natural leadership ability, and was one who would take a project and literally just put it over,” his elementary school principal later recalled. “Although he did not stand first in his class, he was a superior student, ranking in the top ten percent. He was quite well liked by his teachers and he was an able debater.”
In 1928, the family moved to Tulsa, where Phil began his freshman year. At home, there had always been signs of trouble, but in Tulsa, the boy fell apart. He would often confide to his sister Opal that he wished he were dead because he felt he was misunderstood and out of tune with the world. He first ran away from home when he was six, and he ran away again soon after the family moved to Tulsa.
In 1930, his father sent his troubled son off to military school in New Mexico, where he ran away before the school year finished. He earned just six and one-half credits the semester he was there and failed to complete his French, biology, and art courses. His highest grade was an 84 in modern history. He was next sent to a boarding school in Durant, Oklahoma, but when his mother’s illness with cystic fibrosis worsened, he accompanied her to San Antonio, Texas, where the warmer climate would ease her condition. Instead of aiding her, young Kennamer abandoned her. Authorities found the sixteen-year-old in Galveston on a fishing boat, where he said he was preparing to fight in a South American revolution but was unsure of which side to join. He later ran away to New Orleans and then on to Miami, where he was stopped by a federal lawman. When asked to explain why he was so far from home, Kennamer said he was going to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. Sent home, he continued to talk about joining foreign armies and expressed his belief that he could rule a South American country and be a popular dictator.[11]
In the 1930s, boys from poor families who ran away from home were arrested and brought to court, where they were frequently branded “delinquents.” This label would often earn them a sentence in a state reform school, where abuse by guards and other boys was common. But every time Phil Kennamer ran away, his father rescued him. In 1931, Kennamer attended Tulsa’s Central High School where an intelligence test revealed his high IQ. But his teachers took note of his inability to apply himself, and he left after just three months, receiving no credit. In 1933, his father made a last-ditch effort to provide his son with a secondary education by enrolling him in Tulsa’s prestigious Catholic school, Cascia Hall.
Just like at Central High, three months was enough before he quit.
Judge Kennamer then used his influence to get his son job after job, none of which lasted more than a few months. His most notable profession, and one that led to his current trouble, was as a reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. While working for the Fourth Estate, he got to meet Tulsa World reporters Preston Cochrane and Pat Burgess, two young men who would figure largely in the Gorrell investigation. He also got acquainted with the fast lifestyle of bootleggers and petty criminals, including Oklahoma City bondsman Henry “Cadillac” Booth, who would play a large role in unraveling Kennamer’s intricate plot.
It was not unusual at that time for reporters to rub elbows with criminals, claimed World police beat reporter Walter Biscup in a 1979 interview for a Tulsa Junior League oral history project. To get the inside scoop, Biscup and his colleagues would hang out at nightclubs and speakeasies.
“You had a few nightclubs here that were really run by people who had an underworld tie. They weren’t part of the underworld, but, on the other hand, they knew what was going on, and you could buy drinks, you could gamble, in fact; while Tulsa wasn’t a really wide open town, still it was,” Biscup explained. “And that’s where most of the action was. It was a different age.”
Biscup also frequented the county jail, where he talked directly with prisoners behind bars. “I got real friendly with all of the criminals who were there for a long time and [would] buy them cigars sometimes. Get magazines. First thing you know, they trust you, and tip you off,” he said. Biscup, along with Burgess and others, worked on the Kennamer story.
To get Phil to his newspaper job on time, the judge bought him a car, which he wrecked a few weeks later. He bought his son another car but it too was wrecked in less than a month. The third car he bought for his son was wrecked a few weeks after he got it, and only a week or two before he flew to Kansas City to meet Gorrell.
During his short-lived time as a car owner, he was stopped by local police for drunk driving on numerous occasions, but only once was he cited and fined twenty dollars.
Phil had a reputation as a liar and an exaggerator, but he was also known for his complete lack of fear. Stories circulated that he once jumped from the running board of one car to another when both were traveling fifty miles per hour. During a Christmas party the year before at the Mayo Hotel, he crawled out a window on the sixteenth floor and walked along the ledge from one end to the other in order to impress Virginia Wilcox, who was on a date with another boy.
She was not impressed, and the stunt only repelled her further.
If his attorney wanted to build an insanity case, his client surely had the history of outrageous behavior, and County Attorney Holly Anderson forecast that was exactly what Moss would do.
FOR ALL THAT WEEK, city and county investigators labored long into the night, sifting the factual witness statements from the ludicrous assertions phoned in by anonymous tipsters and amateur detectives. The Tulsa grapevine was thriving on rumors that outnumbered facts, rumors that seemed more credible only because they were sensational and satisfied the public’s thirst for conspiracy theories and complicated plots. Local officials had their own theories, which evolved daily. Still in the matron’s room on the third floor, Kennamer read all the newspaper coverage and followed the investigation with interest.
“It is strange that they apparently overlook the obvio
us in order to seek the mysterious,” he was overhead to say. But they were only doing their job, and unrelenting rumors fogged the investigation.
“There seemed no end to these startling stories,” the Tribune reported that week. “While officers tend in time to run all of them down, for the present the prosecutors and reporters centered on those that seemed most probably linked with the case.”
The World also made note of the phenomenon. “Numerous anonymous telephone calls were being received by police in regard to the case. Several informed detectives of interested persons who could shed more light on the mysterious aspects of the slaying. These were all being checked, and from the haze of rumors, whispered information, and suspicions, officers were hopeful of abstracting salient facts.”
Wild stories of sexual blackmail, underage drinking, gambling, marijuana smoking, and narcotic smuggling within the young social set of Tulsa’s most noted families became the background theme to the entire investigation and seeped into detectives’ analyses. Those allegedly involved were associated with the elite Hy-Hat Club, of which Kennamer was once a member. It was a club of rich boys who were selective about who could become a member or attend club dances.
For a gang of young wastrels who all owned automobiles, initiation into the club was rumored to be: “Drink ten glasses of beer, one right after the other, hop into your automobile and drive around a corner at sixty miles per hour.” The unsubstantiated activities of the Hy-Hat Club coexisted with the city-wide gossip that swirled around the Gorrell murder until their escapades became exaggerated and distorted, taking on a life of their own.
On Monday morning, Chief Deputy Evans escorted Kennamer to Judge John Woodward’s Court of Common Pleas, where his attorney was waiting for him. Moss waived the reading of the charges and pleaded “not guilty” on his client’s behalf. Kennamer said nothing during his entire arraignment. He was smartly dressed in a gray suit, gray shirt, and matching gray tie. All eyes in the courtroom were on him, and they saw a young man who was completely at ease—almost as if he enjoyed the attention.
As Moss, Anderson, and Judge Woodward discussed a timetable for the preliminary hearing, Kennamer fingered a button on his suit, glanced down at his freshly polished shoes, and then scanned the audience. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a cigarette and match, and lit the match off his thumbnail. He puffed away until Moss whispered something in his ear. He then dropped the cigarette on the courtroom floor and smashed it with his foot.
With five other murder trials in the pipeline, Anderson was able to push the preliminary hearing to December 17. Judge Woodward ordered Kennamer held without bail. As he was escorted from the courtroom, he smiled at acquaintances. His father was notably absent.
Kennamer’s immaturity was not lost on those present, and a Tribune writer took note of his attitude.
“When the boy went to jail, he did so, apparently, without a word of advice from his father about his conduct in jail, or about other matters of court and jail procedures of which a federal judge could be presumed to know a great deal. He told the boy he was in the hands of his own attorney. He didn’t tell him not to talk or not to pose for photographers, or to drop his light-hearted air.”
Moss did tell his client not to talk, but Kennamer couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to. In the weeks leading up to the murder, he spoke often of the necessity to kill John Gorrell to stop him from carrying out his kidnapping plans in order to save Virginia. Sometimes, he attempted to be chivalrous by claiming he didn’t want to drag her name into it. But he did drag her name into it. When he got back from Kansas City, where he later claimed he talked his adversary into an extortion plot instead, Kennamer showed the three-page letter to ten of his peers and told them of his plans to kill Gorrell in order to save Virginia. If they happened to see him as a hero, so be it.
There was only one problem he didn’t count on: nobody believed him because Phil Kennamer always “talked big.” He told Jack Snedden, Virginia’s boyfriend, and four of his friends. He told Betty Watson, a friend and sophomore at the University of Oklahoma. He even told Homer Wilcox Jr., who then told his eighteen-year-old sister, Virginia, but neither one of them told their parents because they didn’t want them to worry over nothing. In the past, Phil had threatened to kill himself on numerous occasions because Virginia didn’t love him, but he never went through with it. Why would they believe his latest rantings?
Kidnappers had been in the news a lot at that time. About fourteen months before, George “Machine Gun” Kelly had gone to trial at the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City for the kidnapping of wealthy oilman Charles Urschel. He and his wife Kathryn were sentenced to life in prison. And then there was the most sensational crime of the twentieth century, the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby. Bruno Hauptmann had been arrested that September and, by the time Gorrell was murdered, the impending trial dominated nationwide radio and newspaper coverage.
Even with all those headlines in the background to set the mood, nobody believed Phil Kennamer.
When he surrendered that Saturday afternoon, Moss relayed to newsmen that his client chose to surrender because he didn’t want an innocent person to be charged with murder. Although noble, there was no chance that was ever going to happen. One hour before the murder, Kennamer told friends he was going to kill Gorrell, and then afterward, he not only told a friend he’d done it, he offered to show him the body.
Jack Snedden, Virginia’s boyfriend and the son of a recently deceased oil millionaire, was a primary target of Phil’s boasting. Warping Snedden into his conspiracy was necessary because someone close to Virginia would have to tell her what a hero he was. Like her brother, Snedden told Virginia about the alleged plot. On November 20, Kennamer asked the nineteen-year-old to drive him to the Spartan Airport so he could catch a Braniff Airways flight to Kansas City to confront Gorrell.
“He said he was going up there to see if Gorrell was going through with the extortion plot and, if he was, he was going to kill him,” Snedden told police and reporters that first week. “He said Gorrell had a gang up at Kansas City that was planning to kidnap Virginia Wilcox. That he would be back the next day and asked me to be at the airport at three o’clock to bring him in to town.”
When Snedden returned to the airport on November 21 to pick up Kennamer, he learned no planes were flying that day because of bad weather. Later that afternoon, he got a telegram from Kennamer which was sent to the Owl Tavern, addressed to him.
“Grounded in Kansas City. Keep your mouth shut.”—K
Huff was telling the truth when he said Kennamer sent a telegram from the airport. And why would Jack Snedden have to keep his mouth shut?
When more witnesses came forward that first week of the investigation, all Kennamer’s movements and nearly every word he said Thanksgiving night were documented by detectives. When they were done piecing it all together, Kennamer had cooked his own goose. A timeline of how the murder began and ended on Thanksgiving night was constructed by detectives and given to reporters during the week after the murder.
At approximately 7:30 that Thanksgiving night, Judge Kennamer gave his son a ride to the Crawford Drug Store, across from St. John’s Hospital, where Phil ran inside and bought his father some cigars and a magazine. When he returned to the car, Judge Kennamer claimed he asked his son to come home because the weather was bad. Phil begged off and said he’d be home between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m. After his father left, John arrived,[12] and the two made plans to meet up later at eleven o’clock. Gorrell then walked across the street to pick up his date at the hospital and returned home to pick up Charlie.
Kennamer was next seen at the Owl Tavern a little after 10:00 p.m., where he met up with Snedden, Randall “Beebe” Morton, and George Reynolds. Morton and Reynolds were also the sons of oil millionaires.
“That afternoon, he called me and told me to meet him down there [later that night],” Snedden told police. “He called me in the back and pulled open his coat and
showed me a hunting knife. He said he had a date with Gorrell at eleven o’clock. Beebe Morton took the knife off of Phil; it was in a scabbard. I asked him if he was going out there to kill Gorrell and he said ‘yes,’ then I talked to him about his mother and the Gorrells and the trouble it would cause and he put his hands in his pocket and started whistling.
“I left him talking to Beebe Morton. He turned and went out the front door and yelled back that he would be back in five minutes. I waited there, [but] he never did come back. I imagine it was around 10:30 or quarter to 11 when he left.”
Kennamer then walked to the Quaker Drug Store, two doors east of the Owl Tavern, where he ran into his close friend and confidant, Sidney Born Jr. The Owl Tavern, Quaker Drug Store, and Sunset Café were clustered together on 18th Street and were the main hangouts for the children of Tulsa’s elite. They referred to it as the “Jelly Bean Center,” and it was where they often congregated before and after dances or movies. Born was the president of the Hy-Hat Club and was the nineteen-year-old son of a University of Tulsa research professor and petroleum engineer. Earlier that night, Sidney had been ice-skating on a group date with his girlfriend. Afterward, he had taken her home and then made his way to the drugstore, where he was hanging out with other friends when Kennamer walked in.
“I want you to take me someplace,” Kennamer was quoted as saying, in a statement Born gave to police. But Born was busy and tried to hand off his car keys to him, to which Kennamer replied, “No, you come on and take me.”
Reluctantly, but willing to do Kennamer a favor on a bad night, Born told Maddux and his men that he drove the one mile to St. John’s Hospital at approximately 10:45 p.m. Kennamer asked him to drive one block past the hospital, and when Sidney stopped at an intersection, suddenly and without warning, Phil jerked open the door, sprang out of the car, and yelled back that he would see him later. Born could not see which direction he went because of the bad weather.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 5