Police then theorized that Kennamer recognized Gorrell’s car parked in front of the hospital. Miss Word stated that Gorrell had placed his revolver in a pocket in the driver’s side door and had left the door open while he escorted her to the hospital’s front entrance—a distance of about one hundred yards. Sister Gratiana had signed her in at 10:50 p.m.
It was a sad twist of fate that Gorrell had left his revolver behind and his car door open.
As it turns out, Kennamer didn’t need his hunting knife after all. After Morton had taken the knife away, he gave it to Snedden, who later turned it over to police when he gave his statement.
There was never any struggle or fight, police claimed. The photograph Sgt. Maddux took showed that, they said. Kennamer shot Gorrell in cold blood near the triangular median, and a minute later, after the car had stopped, placed the barrel against his head and fired again. Then he wiped off the fingerprints, returned the revolver to the holster, and walked away.
When he surrendered, Kennamer told detectives he had walked home after killing Gorrell. But witnesses came forward who proved that was not true. From the murder scene, Kennamer walked two miles northwest back to the Quaker Drug Store. To get there, he probably walked right past his own house, which lay halfway in between. Instead of going home, he needed to tell someone of how he had just saved Virginia by killing Gorrell in order to put a stop to his devious plot to extort the Wilcox family.
By the time a wet-haired Kennamer got there, Born had left. Kennamer then went next door to the Sunset Café. Inside, he greeted several friends before he took pal Robert Thomas[13] aside for a private conversation that took place around midnight.
“Phil asked me how I was. I said okay. He said he had something to tell me,” Thomas told Anderson.
“‘What is it?’ I asked.
“‘I’ve just killed John Gorrell,’ Phil said. Of course, I didn’t think he was serious. I thought it was a joke so I wasn’t serious.
“‘Did you do a good job of it?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, I did,’ Kennamer answered. He then said he killed Gorrell because of an extortion note.
“‘What extortion note?’
“‘This one,’ he said. ‘Read it.’ I didn’t want to read it. He insisted and handed me an envelope. It was soiled but had never been mailed. There were three sheets of writing paper in the envelope, I think. The letter was written in black ink; it wasn’t typewritten.
“I didn’t pay much attention to the note but I remember it said if Mr. Wilcox didn’t pay a $20,000 ransom, they were going to kidnap his daughter, Virginia Wilcox. I remember it said that if he was to get in touch with them, he was to identify himself over the telephone as H. F. W. As I remember it, the letter was signed Mr. X. I’m not sure of that though.
“Phil said Gorrell was a dirty rat [and] asked me if I wanted to see the body. I told him I wasn’t interested. I still thought he was joking. Phil wanted to tell me more about it. He put the letter back in his pocket.
“Phil said he killed John Gorrell because of this extortion note written by John. He said it was the work of a gang in Kansas City. I didn’t pay much attention to any of the conversation because I didn’t believe it. It was the first time I heard Phil mention Gorrell’s name. I didn’t know Gorrell.
“Phil didn’t seem excited. He looked kind of wet. Something like he was perspiring.
“I also remember now that Phil, when he put the note back in his pocket, said that he would never show anyone that or use it because he didn’t want Virginia’s name brought into it.”
Robert Thomas was then asked how the conversation ended and what Kennamer did next.
“Phil asked me to take him home but I already had a car full and told him so. Phil said he would take a cab. I told him that wasn’t necessary because Tommy Taylor was there and he would take him home. I asked Taylor and he said he would. I then left Phil.”
Thomas didn’t learn of the murder until Saturday night, and he heard that Phil had surrendered earlier that day. He told his parents about Kennamer’s confession, and they took him to Anderson’s office Monday night.
When questioned by police, Tommy Taylor told them, “Phil asked me if I minded taking him home. I said I did not. I finished eating my sandwich and we took off together.” Taylor was a seventeen-year-old polo player at the Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore and was, like most others in Kennamer’s social group, the son of a wealthy oilman. His account also made it into newspapers that week.
“Phil turned on the radio in my car,” Taylor continued. “An orchestra was playing. After I had stopped the car in front of his home, Phil asked me to wait until the end of a piece of music.
“We talked for a minute or so. I don’t remember the things we discussed, but they were not important. I told Phil that I had promised my mother I would be home by 12:30, and that I would have to leave. He got out and walked toward the house.”
Taylor also said that it appeared as if something were bothering Kennamer, but since the two were only slightly acquainted, he didn’t probe further. He estimated the time he dropped Kennamer off to be 12:15 a.m.—about the same time the Cunninghams were calling police.
The story by Thomas and Taylor should have cleared up a couple of things for investigators. Kennamer didn’t have an accomplice, and the rumors that Wilcox Junior drove him home after the crime were not true. Even so, Junior wasn’t off the hook yet. As it turned out, Kennamer wasn’t the only one shooting a revolver that night.
When witnesses started coming forward to build an honest account of what had occurred before and after Gorrell was killed, Moss could see the story was shifting away from a simple case of self-defense. Three days after Kennamer surrendered, Moss held his first real meeting with his client on Tuesday, December 4. In the room with them were three more attorneys, recently added to the defense team. Russell Hayes was a young lawyer married to Kennamer’s sister, Juanita. Charles Coakley was the old law-firm partner with Judge Kennamer, and seventy-eight-year-old Charles Stuart was “one of the Southwest’s most prominent attorneys.” It was a meeting that began at 9:30 in the morning and lasted well into mid-afternoon. When Moss walked out of the room, he looked exhausted as reporters rushed up to him.
“The whole business is so queer that no normal mind can follow through,” he told them.
Anderson had already publicly stated that an insanity plea would be used, and a rumor was flying around that Moss had inquired with a nationally-known psychiatrist. Between the county attorney’s speculation and the rumors, reporters asked him if he was leaning toward an insanity defense—one he had used many times in the past.
“When you consider what these kids have done, analyze the conduct of their associates and the acts preceding the actual killing, just how much mental responsibility there is for what has been done is beyond me.”
At the heart of it all was the extortion note. Each day that week, newspapers devoted half their coverage to the extortion note and the Wilcox family, and the other half to Phil Kennamer and John Gorrell. Investigators knew of it only because witnesses had spoken of it. There was a congruity in their account of the note, so they knew it must be real, even though they had never actually seen it. Where it was and who had it were mysteries.
“I’m positive that there is an extortion note in existence and I think I know where it is or where it was,” Anderson told reporters. “It has been seen by at least ten people.”
“Have you seen it?” a reporter asked.
“No, but how I wish I could!” Anderson bellowed.
When Snedden was asked by reporters if he recognized the handwriting in the letter Kennamer had shown him, he said, “I did not recognize the handwriting but I knew that it was not Phil’s, as I would recognize his handwriting anywhere.”
On Tuesday, December 4, the same day Moss was meeting with his client, Maddux and Reif traveled to Kansas City, where they searched Gorrell’s room and questioned his “gang,” which turned out to be a b
unch of college boys who drank hard and chased skirts. Before they returned to Tulsa, Maddux told a reporter he had discovered evidence that would lead to an arrest of the son of a prominent Tulsa man.
“The detectives would not divulge the youth’s identity or the nature or source of their evidence. Maddux said the youth would be accused as an accessory of the slaying of Gorrell,” the Tulsa World reported. “The detective said the youth in question heretofore had not figured prominently in the case.”
It was a statement that revealed a peculiar characteristic about Sgt. Henry Bailess Maddux; the lead detective had a habit of making major announcements that were vague and mysterious, but he stopped short of clarifying them with concrete facts. This was a major case with a volatile, ever-evolving story line that went far beyond enthralling Tulsa residents, and Maddux seemed to enjoy feeding the fire with purposely ambiguous statements that were soaked in gasoline.
It would eventually get him into trouble.
Chapter Eight
December 2—8, 1934
ALMOST FROM THE BEGINNING, Homer Wilcox Jr. was named as a person of interest in the case. Initially, he was sought because he was a close friend of Kennamer. On Sunday, December 2, Maddux announced he had no more need to question Junior because other witnesses had come forward to fill in the blanks. Then, new information was received which made an interview with the seventeen-year-old “most important” to the case.
“We cannot help but admit that the investigation, as it now stands, hinges entirely on young Wilcox,” thirty-eight-year-old Anderson dramatically declared on Monday, December 3. He was a former mayor of Sand Springs and had recently been reelected to his second term as county attorney. “I cannot impress how vital the presence of Wilcox here is to the future development of the case. Wilcox can be of tremendous aid to us and we need his presence here immediately.”
This type of seesawing would become typical for the investigation. But on Sunday, the day after Kennamer surrendered, the entire Wilcox family had left town. Their departure from Tulsa hours before investigators sought them out for questioning was viewed with some suspicion. They had traveled to Toledo to do some Christmas shopping, their servants told authorities. Homer Senior then journeyed to New York City, where investigators were able to reach him by telephone in his room at the Waldorf Astoria. He told them Junior would be home in a few days and would be made available to answer their questions.
The two night watchmen for the Titus estate did hear gunfire that night, but they weren’t the muffled shots that killed Gorrell. Junior and three friends of his had some explaining to do as to how the streetlights near the murder scene were blasted out just a few hours before Gorrell was murdered in that same area. The Wilcox name featured prominently in the newspapers for the entire first week while the family was out of town. The extortion note was mentioned nearly every day, but the details of Junior’s coincidental involvement with the crime scene were left out. They didn’t have to include it. The grapevine was taking care of that for them, and it was feeding into the narrative of a bunch of rich kids who were out of control.
From blackmail photos of daughters from wealthy families caught in compromising positions to cocaine parties alleged by a ne’er-do-well convict looking to reduce his burglary sentence, the Hy-Hat Club and the youth of Tulsa’s well-to-do were getting the stink eye from adults. Narcotics detective Sgt. Francis McMillen ran down all the “whispered tips that dope peddlers were involved in the case” but eventually came up empty-handed. Nevertheless, the stories got wilder and wilder.
“There are disclosures of serious trouble among our youth and many signs of modern blight,” lectured a December 6 editorial from the World.
Governor-elect Ernest Marland’s attitude on the matter reflected the times: “What is it that creates a craving for narcotics among our young people? We are an Anglo-Saxon race, and it is not a natural habit.”
One Tulsa school board member said in a public meeting that first week of December, “The young people do everything that their parents do and then go on looking for new thrills!”
The statement by Maddux on the impending arrest of another prominent young son of Tulsa seemed only to confirm those beliefs. But by the next morning, the university-trained criminologist retracted it. No new suspects were being sought and no more arrests were planned.
That premature and provocative declaration wasn’t the only grenade Maddux lobbed into the investigation’s narrative. From day one, rumors had made their way into newspapers that a prominent Tulsa family had recently received an extortion note. This turned out not to be true, but what was true was that wealthy oilman Charles Wrightsman had received extortion notes in 1931.
True to his pattern of behavior, Maddux made the announcement to later that week that “an extortion note had been sent through the mails to another Tulsa oil operator.” The note he was alluding to was the Wrightsman note. Everybody already knew about the Wrightsman note. It was three damn years old. It had nothing to do with the Kennamer-Gorrell case, but that didn’t stop Maddux from using it to add to the mania that was building.
Looking down at the Sergeant’s desk, where he saw the letter addressed to Charles Wrightsman, a Tribune reporter asked Maddux, “Is that the note?”
Maddux could only smile and avoid the question, but eventually he responded, “You’d give your left arm to see what was in that note.”
No, he wouldn’t. Phil Kennamer was fifteen going on sixteen in 1931.
More unnecessary excitement was injected into the case that first full week when copies of the photograph Maddux took of a dead John Gorrell in his car were “leaked” to the Tribune and World. In a time when photographs of dead people rarely appeared in newspapers, it shocked the entire city, and was grossly insensitive to the boy’s parents.
All the press coverage of extortion letters and kidnapping plots caused federal agents to make a cameo appearance in the case. The Kennamer-Gorrell note was locked up by the defense somewhere, and the Wrightsman note was three years old. There wasn’t much they could do and, after a day or two, newspapers never mentioned them again.
On December 5, County Attorney Holly Anderson announced to the press that his office and the sheriff’s department were closing their investigation. This declaration came after Homer Wilcox Sr. promised that Junior would be made available for questioning upon their return to Tulsa. Newspapers held off revealing Junior’s involvement until official announcements were made.
The next day, Anderson, with Dr. John Gorrell, invited Oklahoma Attorney General J. Berry King to assist with the prosecution. King’s participation in the case gave the short-lived illusion that the state would be heavily involved in the Kennamer prosecution. But King, like Sheriff Price, would relinquish his office in a little more than a month.
As it turned out, King was close friends with Judge Kennamer, even though he was a Democrat. King had recently lost his bid to be the Democratic candidate for governor in the primary. He’d served as assistant attorney general in the 1920s, and then attorney general for almost six years, with his term ending on January 14, 1935. In those days, his name was just as familiar to Oklahomans as Judge Kennamer’s, if not more so.
Like the day Phil surrendered, Wednesday, December 5, was a news-packed day. Around midmorning, a black sedan with a red warning light mounted on top—something new in those days—parked in front of the Tulsa County Courthouse. Five minutes later, Wagoner County Sheriff Clay Flowers and Mr. and Mrs. Basil James were in Sheriff Price’s office. The day before Thanksgiving, five robbers had stormed the James home, lined up them and two guests against a wall, and robbed them of eighty-five dollars, several guns, a watch, and forty-five pints of whiskey.
James was the owner of a roadhouse just outside of Wagoner,[14] and when he and his wife saw Kennamer’s picture in the newspaper, it looked familiar. Up at the matron’s room, they identified Kennamer as the leader of the gang and one of two men who didn’t wear a mask and held a .32-caliber revol
ver with an attached silencer.
“He was the man,” James whispered after the group had all peeked in on Kennamer in his room. “He was the man who knocked on my door and the man who first entered the house.”
The wife confirmed her husband’s identification and for nearly a week, newspapers included this new angle within its coverage. Kennamer and Moss emphatically denied the Jameses’ claim, and Tulsa investigators backed off from pursuing it a day or two later. This time, Kennamer was actually telling the truth; witnesses placed him in Tulsa around the time frame of the Wagoner robbery.
On the night before Thanksgiving, the same night the James couple was robbed, Kennamer left home around seven o’clock and walked to Jack Snedden’s house. Snedden was taking Virginia Wilcox to a dance at the Mayo Hotel. The trio went to the Quaker Drug Store first, where they stayed until 8:30 p.m. Friends Sidney Born and Jerry Bates showed up around that time, and Phil went with them downtown. At approximately 9:30 p.m., Bates and Born went to the same dance as Snedden and Virginia, but Born loaned his car to Kennamer, who damaged part of it in yet another wreck. Later that night, after the dance, Born met up with Kennamer at the Sunset Café.
From there, Born and Kennamer went back to the Mayo Hotel, where they rented a room for “a wild party.” In the morning, one of them, presumably Born, wrote a check for ten dollars, which later bounced, to cover their bill.
Although Basil James persisted, Tulsa authorities were confident Kennamer didn’t commit the robbery. If he had access to a .32-caliber revolver equipped with a silencer, he wouldn’t have been showing off a hunting knife to friends the night of the murder. Even when his alibi became public knowledge, the robbery accusation fed the public perception that Kennamer had a full-fledged criminal gang that was still on the loose. Several witnesses against Kennamer reported receiving threatening telephone calls and letters to keep their mouths shut. The same day Oliver’s name appeared in the paper, detectives were guarding his home after rumors had made their way to headquarters that their witness was in danger. On Sunday night, Dr. Gorrell called to speak with Oliver about his son but was told Oliver was out.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 6