Owl Tavern proprietor Jack Arnold, who told police that Snedden received a telegram from Kennamer at his tavern, reported he was threatened a week earlier by an anonymous telephone call. Although initially frightened by the threats, he later told police he believed they were crank calls.
Police also reported that Kennamer had written a letter to Betty Watson, allegedly admonishing her for talking to police. Fortunately, her father intercepted the note before she could read it.
“We told Betty it would be best for her not to go out at night and to remain with her friends when it seemed that a murder had been committed,” her father told reporters. “When she called home tonight [Tuesday, December 11], I thought it would be all right for her to go wherever she desired.”
Although police believed the anonymous threats were from pranksters and wackos looking to stir things up, they took no chances, and several witnesses received twenty-four-hour police protection.
Hours after Maddux and another detective were called to Born’s blood-soaked Chevrolet, they were confident in their declaration that it was a suicide. They pointed to several factors, which included powder marks inside the wound and the use of his father’s gun. The pistol had fallen into Born’s lap and was covered in blood. One nearby resident and a man walking his dog heard the shot, and both reported to police that they saw no one fleeing the scene.
But to many Tulsans, murder seemed more plausible than suicide, given Born’s trivial involvement in the case. When asked why Sidney Born would commit suicide, Sgt. Maddux pulled a Sgt. Maddux.
“Fear,” he replied.
Fear? Fear of what?
True to his character, Maddux coyly refused to elaborate on his answer and chose the provocativeness of mystery over the enlightenment of clarity.
“Whether he meant that Born feared an attack from the accomplice police continue to intimate aided Kennamer in the slaying,” the Tulsa World wrote the day after the suicide, “or whether he was of the opinion Born had taken a greater part in the Gorrell case than he had admitted to officers went unexplained by Maddux.”
Whatever the reason, Sidney Born’s “fear” was certainly real to him, even if it was found later to be blown out of proportion. But when city lawmen learned that shortly before his suicide, Sidney had tried to contact Phil, the sheriff’s department received a sharp rebuke from Maddux. He criticized the lax custody of their star prisoner and claimed Born would not have committed suicide if Kennamer was more restricted in his confinement. Ever since it was publicized that he had called down to Anderson’s office, folks believed he was freely allowed to use the telephone—including Maddux.
The sheriff’s department strongly denied this claim but their only proof was the self-accountability of their guards. They would first claim no calls at the jail were received. This was later changed to the acknowledgment that a call was received at 1:15 p.m., but that the jailer told the caller (Born) that Kennamer was not allowed to use the telephone.
Nearly all the young people whose names appeared in the newspapers came from powerful, wealthy families with patriarchs who gave the veiled impression that they could squash any public official they disfavored. Rumors supporting this notion had trickled back to police headquarters. Maddux, and his detectives, sensed the subtle threat that “their jobs were unsafe,” reported Commissioner Oscar Hoop. The issue became such a concern that the retired army colonel and University of Tulsa history professor felt it necessary to push back in the newspapers.
“I told my men yesterday and I’ll repeat it now, that their jobs are safe regardless of where this investigation might lead,” Col. Hoop said. “There is no one in this town too big or too wealthy for us to include in the investigation if it proves necessary to do so.”
Hoop’s backing gave Maddux the confidence to criticize the sheriff’s department publicly.
“It was our wish that the sheriff’s office hold Kennamer in solitary confinement and allow him to talk with no one except his attorney and members of his immediate family,” Maddux told the World. “We have positive evidence that Kennamer has sent mail to witnesses in this case, and in at least one instance, of a threatening nature. We also understand Kennamer has had the use of the telephone.”
County Attorney Holly Anderson was attending a crime conference in Washington DC, when he heard of Born’s death. He sent a telegram to the sheriff requesting Kennamer be moved to a jail cell. The reply he received was a sharp rebuke stating that “he had no authority in determining the manner in which a prisoner should be kept.”
When Sheriff Price returned to his office on Monday, he gave reporters a logical explanation for Kennamer’s unorthodox imprisonment. He pointed out that when the courthouse was built in 1912, the jail on the third floor was designed to accommodate only seventy-five prisoners. By 1934, it was housing two hundred inmates. Cells originally built for four prisoners now held twelve. To place Kennamer in a private cell would force Price to release twelve prisoners because there were threats to Kennamer’s safety by inmates who hated his father.
“At least five prisoners have told me,” Price claimed to the Tribune, “that if Kennamer is put in with other prisoners he will be killed. It’s not worth taking the chance of murder to avoid a little criticism.”
Born’s death came as a complete surprise to Kennamer. The confessed slayer was attending afternoon church services within the jail when he was told by Assistant County Attorney William “Dixie” Gilmer that Born had shot himself. Gilmer later said Kennamer seemed genuinely shocked and affected by the news.
“I’m awfully sorry to hear that,” Kennamer said. “He was a dear friend of mine.”
It was the first time during his entire incarceration that Kennamer showed emotion, and when he was led back to his room, he wailed about how Born was his “best friend.”
Later, when told there was no hope for Born and that he would die soon, Kennamer said, “Isn’t that awful?” He then requested a Sunday-night conference with his attorneys. Charles Coakley was the first to reach him and later told reporters his client was “visibly shaken by the news and wept like a child.”
The next day, after he had regained his composure, Kennamer told anyone who would listen that he would never believe it was suicide. For him, Born’s death had created an opportunity; it was a chance to add unverifiable authenticity to his claims that Gorrell had a criminal gang, which was now responsible for Sidney’s death. He would later declare that he knew the three boys who did it and emphasize that Born’s testimony would have exonerated him in court.
But Kennamer’s appropriation of his friend’s suicide wasn’t nearly as amazing as other unbelievable rumors that Sunday, which forced investigators and reporters into high gear. Pranksters used his death as an opportunity to crank up the hysteria with outrageous claims.
The first rumor to engulf Tulsa was that Wade Thomas killed himself by swallowing poison, and that his wife would not allow investigators to perform an autopsy. Thomas had been released from jail on Friday, December 7, and he informed those who called his house that reports of his death were “greatly exaggerated.”
Another rumor claimed that John Newlin, Hy-Hat member and minor witness in the case, had been kidnapped. His parents declared it was nonsense and reported he was at home, safe and sound. While newsmen were chasing down those lies, another came into the World offices saying that the Quaker Drug Store had been bombed and was a smoking ruin. In addition, a bombardment of shots was heard that Sunday afternoon near Born’s Chevy, and “mysterious cars” were seen driving away. And poor Richard Oliver, the target of so many incidents beginning with his train ride home, was allegedly slain in Kansas City.
Even though these rumors were easily disproved and dismissed, there was one rumor that would not go away: Sidney Born was murdered.
By Monday morning, the city was equally divided between those who believed it was suicide, and those who knew it was murder. Maddux and city police ruled his death a suicide, based on the physic
al evidence, and “because of imaginative worries over his connection with the Gorrell slaying and the threatened exposure of his previous escapades with Phil Kennamer.”
Born’s university professors told police he was a high-strung boy, nervous, and prone to worry over insignificant things. The insignificant thing Born worried over was a threat by Kennamer “to make public the details of [some of their] escapades.” The Tulsa World quoted an anonymous “police official,” who sounded a lot like Sgt. Maddux, saying that he was convinced Kennamer spoke with Born from the matron’s quarters sometime between ten in the morning and noon, despite the claims of the county jail employees. Born’s effort to contact Kennamer from the drugstore twenty minutes before he shot himself was “one last effort to persuade the imprisoned youth not to reveal their escapade at the Mayo Hotel.”
The anonymous police official dodged questions regarding how the telephone communication between the two boys could have occurred. Jailer A. J. Schultz denied any outgoing call had been placed, and the Born’s maid, Josey Henderson, told police the phone only rang once that morning and it was for her. Schultz did admit that a young man called around 1:15 p.m. and asked to speak to Kennamer, but the jailer said he told him Kennamer wasn’t allowed telephone calls. This was corroborated by the drugstore employees who reported Born only used the phone for approximately twenty seconds before slamming the receiver down.
Even if this “police official” was making provocative statements, the physical evidence lent itself to suicide. An autopsy revealed powder burns and bullet fragments inside the wound, which detectives believed were consistent with suicide.
When Born left the drug store, he bumped into a young female friend who was later interviewed by police. “He left her and told her that he was going to jump into the river,” Maddux said later. “That was just a few minutes before he was found shot. Apparently he meant it but changed his mind on the method of suicide.”
In spite of all this evidence, the county sheriff’s department firmly believed Born was murdered. Explaining his theory that another, unknown man aided Kennamer the night Gorrell was slain, and then later murdered Born, Sheriff Charles Price said, “we have, from the start, worked on the theory that Born’s death may have been murder, and [we] are not satisfied with the suicide theory.”
The sheriff’s department was self-admittedly affected by the rumors flying around Tulsa that it was a murder. They searched for a suspect seen fleeing Born’s car after the gunshot echoed across Detroit Avenue, but this turned out to be the man who found Born, and he was running to call for an ambulance.
Sheriff Price then took issue with how Born’s body was positioned when found by the ambulance drivers. “The pistol was found in Born’s lap,” Sheriff Price told reporters. “If the boy had shot himself, I believe the weapon would have dropped straight down to the seat. The boy’s hands also were cupped in a manner as to fill with blood. That doesn’t seem right to me. The right hand should have been outside the leg.”
Also suspicious to the sheriff was the entrance wound in the right temple which was larger than the exit wound on the left. It should have been the other way around, he said. Normally, that would be true, answered city detectives, but when Born pressed the barrel against his temple, the bullet fractured the temporal and parietal plates. When the bullet exited the left side, it punched a small hole in the driver’s-side window and kept on going. However, Chief Deputy Evans didn’t believe it happened this way. Instead, he put forth the theory that Born’s killer was standing outside the car when he shot Born through the window.
But if this was true, where did the bullet go? It wasn’t inside his head. It wasn’t inside the car, and it didn’t open the door and then close it on its way out of Born’s Chevrolet. Evans’s theory was based on his own assumptions and ignored the plausible answer. Nevertheless, people believed him.
During that entire week, whispered phone calls were made to Sheriff Price, instructing him to look at certain people, or hinting that he should follow this lead or that clue, and it would all bring the mystery man into the light, the World told its readers. A young girl, nationally known for her ability to mimic birdcalls, was in the area that Sunday. She reporting hearing a gunshot and then hearing a man running through the bushes. Deputies investigated this report but were never able to substantiate it. Nevertheless, it was more proof that Born was murdered, even though it could never be verified.
When his investigation into Born’s death began to stall, Sheriff Price became frustrated and publicly claimed that there were many witnesses with information who were just too afraid to come forward. If they did, he said, they would prove his murder theory.
“I am at a loss to understand this fear,” Price said. Hundreds of people knew the boys, and in his mind, one of them held the key to solving both murders, if they would only come forward. “Just because they chanced to know something of the principals in this case does not mean the police will interpret that as meaning they are connected with the case . . . or as anything detrimental to their reputation.
“They should consider it a civic obligation to aid officers in the matter. If these persons will get in touch with us, we will see that they will receive the full protection of this office.”
No one ever came forward.
WHILE THE DEBATE OVER BORN’S death continued, one persistent rumor was cleared up when seventeen-year-old Homer Wilcox Jr. walked into police headquarters on Monday, December 10, as promised, to explain his connection to the case. Police and newspapermen had been holding back on reporting that Wilcox, classmate Bill Padon, and their dates that night, had shot out the two streetlights near Gorrell’s Ford just hours before he was murdered. The murder, and all the rumors and events that stemmed from it, roused the suspicions of officials and the general public. It was hard for them to believe the streetlights being shot out did not have something to do with the murder and was just a coincidence.
Homer Wilcox Jr. and his father arrived at 8:35 in the morning and were both neatly dressed in dark blue overcoats, tailored suits, and fashionable ties. They were unfamiliar with the layout of the police station and appeared confused by the crowd at the door of the municipal courtroom. A helpful reporter directed them to Maddux’s office.
While the sergeant and Assistant County Attorney Dixie Gilmer questioned the young man for forty-five minutes, Homer Senior and his attorney waited in the press room of the courthouse and chatted with reporters. Wilcox expressed his belief that Kennamer had “forced his companionship” on some of the younger boys whose names had been mentioned in the case.
“Kennamer often called our house by telephone and asked for Homer, but Mrs. Wilcox consistently discouraged the association, principally because Kennamer was reputed to be a wild driver and had been in several automobile accidents,” Senior told reporters. “Mrs. Wilcox didn’t want our son to go out with Kennamer and get hurt in an accident. I told the boy to give police any information he might have that would help them. But he doesn’t know anything.”
The fact that Wilcox and friends shot out the two streetlights nearest to where Gorrell was found dead in his car was mere coincidence, Senior asserted.
Maddux and Dixie Gilmer agreed and seemed satisfied with the boy’s explanation that his connection to the crime scene was a fluke, but Junior and Padon had still broken the law. Homer was formally arrested on a charge of malicious mischief and was in the process of emptying his pockets for the desk sergeant when he remarked, “I’ve certainly gotten myself in a fine mess.”
Before he could be jailed, however, his father’s attorney made arrangements for the boy’s release on a $500 bond. When he appeared in municipal court the next day, the flash of a news photographer’s camera brought an admonishment from Judge Andress Hatch.
“This young man is under the protection of the court,” Judge Hatch began. “While he’s under my jurisdiction, I am not going to subject him to pictures unless he wants them taken.”
For such a minor
crime and the boy’s accidental involvement in the case, the World and Tribune devoted dozens of column inches and numerous photographs. The story then spread as far east as the New York Times, and to California newspapers like the Oakland Tribune.
Judge Hatch reprimanded the boy and hinted at the perceived privileges of being the son of a wealthy oilman.
“Doubtless you have been the subject of parental indulgence,” he began. “You have had pleasures and conveniences which many your age do not have. You should have had some privations and hardships to make you strong. Perhaps if things in general had not been so easy, it would be different.”
He then fined the boy seventy-five dollars and expressed his desire that it should be deducted from his Christmas allowance. In contrast, the Tulsa Tribune noted that the madam of a brothel was fined fourteen dollars plus court costs that same day. Padon was also arrested and fined fifty dollars for his part. The two girls who were with them that night were never charged. Ironically, it was one of them who had shot out the light nearest to Gorrell’s Ford after Padon had taken a shot and missed.
Outside the courtroom, Wilcox Senior took offense to the judge’s criticism of his parenting and how newspapers and city leaders were shaping the story into a cautionary tale of rich kids gone wrong.
“The amount of money given my children as spending change is so small that I would not name it for fear friends would think it untrue. The children of financially well-off families are wild, in a way, but no wilder than those in less fortunate circumstances. And it is only the prominence of the parents that has brought both stories to the front pages of the nation’s press.
“Youths of families living in my neighborhood and who are schoolmates of my son do not have large sums of money to spend, according to their fathers with whom I have talked. I believe my own family is an average one and I know that Junior does not have too much money to spend,” Senior said as he adjusted his fedora in preparation to leave. “One does not have to have money to get into trouble. Lack of it is the usual cause for crime. Daily check of the newspaper and courts will show that.”
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 8