“It was the answer of the school authorities to the beer halls, honky-tonks, and the places where students have learned to spend leisure time among companions of questionable character,” the Tribune reported. By offering dances at the schools, parents and educators saw they could control a social activity their children enjoyed. When the school board banned them in 1920, it had never stopped young people from dancing; it only forced them to hold their own dances somewhere else, which is exactly why the Hy-Hat Club was formed in the first place.
The Central High dance was wildly popular. One hundred fifty tickets were handed out for an estimated one thousand requests. Two days later, a Tribune columnist applauded the “courageous step” with high praise, and revealed the backward prejudices that had led to the logic behind banning them in the first place.
“There has been, in this town, for a number of years, a bigoted prejudice on the part of a small percentage of the population against dancing in general,” the writer began. “They hold to the ancient idea, inherited from the time of Pilgrims, that dancing is evil. The idea belongs to the same era as the belief that it is a sin to kiss your wife on Sunday, or own a deck of cards, or eat pasty-cake without first shaking it to get the devils out of it.”
Other clubs and churches saw the wisdom behind this new thinking and began sponsoring social events for young people and planning dances of their own.
But the Tribune wasn’t the only newspaper with an opinion. Across the country, newspaper editors observed what was occurring in Tulsa, and the reviews were not good. The editors of the World read these sanctimonious articles and editorials and saw what was happening. They looked out over their city, and it began to dawn on them that things were getting out hand. Rumor had replaced fact. Hysteria had replaced common sense. The city was besieged by an overreaction of its own making.
During the latter half of December, the World published several opinion pieces calling for a return to normalcy. The first of these appeared the day of Kennamer’s preliminary hearing under the title, “Denouncing Tulsa.”
“In consequence of the Kennamer-Gorrell-Born case, we notice a rather prevalent newspaper disposition to include all Tulsa in denunciations. . . . The indirect intimations are that Tulsa society as a whole, and youth in particular, are corrupt.”
The editorial went on to point out that Tulsa kids were probably no worse than the children anywhere else. “The ‘gilded youth’ idea is naturally played up [by other newspapers] in this Tulsa upheaval. We would call attention to the fact that bad conditions are likely to develop anywhere, in any grade of society . . . it is to the credit of Tulsa youth that its general moral and intellectual average is high.”
On December 28, the World published two more opinion pieces that highlighted the public’s hysteria, and cautioned against it. The first editorial, “Tulsa Youth,” revisited the ‘gilded youth’ idea and called for a fair and balanced examination of the entire case.
“When all the facts are in, and the whole episode is calmly analyzed, most of us will be surprised at the smallness of the number of young people who actually have been contaminated or damaged by a few.”
The paper then went on to admit that despite its own investigative report that attempted to connect widespread marijuana usage among young people, most of them “know very little about these dope cigarettes.”
On that same page, the World devoted a separate editorial to “Rumors.” “In the last three weeks, Tulsa has developed the rumor habit; it is a bad and disagreeable habit. The mortality list of Dame Rumor has been very large and almost anyone can start a ‘sensation’ about something.”
Tulsa citizens were asked to be more careful about judging the rumors they heard, and not to pass them on or embellish them. “There is a strange weakness in human nature, which makes the peddling of bad news a delight to many people, and many are not any too particular how they get their sensational fodder,” the editorial keenly pointed out.
But Phil Kennamer was the gift that that kept on giving. His unrelenting desire to manipulate, communicate, and influence events would once again backfire on him—just as it would for Sgt. Maddux. And as the police would soon discover, their chief investigator had a dirty little secret of his own.
Chapter Thirteen
A FEW DAYS AFTER KENNAMER surrendered, Tulsa World photographer Lee Krupnick took several photographs of him that appeared in newspapers across the country. The wire services, as well as the World, were clamoring for photos of the federal judge’s son charged with first degree murder. Always friendly and personable, Krupnick chatted with Kennamer not as a man in jail, but as a contemporary and fellow newsman since, as a cub reporter for the Daily Oklahoman, Kennamer had gotten to know World reporter Pat Burgess and was an intimate friend of ex-reporter Preston Cochrane.
“I had never known Phil until then,” Krupnick later said, “although I had photographed him. But we wanted some better pictures. Phil asked me to bring the prints back and show them to him so he could pick the ones he liked.”
After visiting with Kennamer a second time, the two had another long and friendly discussion. At the end of their conversation, Kennamer asked Krupnick if he would obtain for him a photograph of his friend, Homer Wilcox Jr. This simple appeal by Kennamer was the genesis for a series of events that would bring intrigue, coded messages, and secret meetings to the case. For Kennamer, the request was a test of his capacity to enlist Krupnick into his confidence, and if he would respond to his manipulation.
Krupnick was not one to take chances. After agreeing to bring the photograph, he took the elevator to the first floor, walked into Sheriff Charlie Price’s office, and told him what his star prisoner requested. “They told me to go ahead, but to put a pin hole in the picture so it would be identified in [the] event Kennamer might tamper with it,” Krupnick continued.
When Krupnick returned with the photograph on December 17, he and Kennamer had another long chat. They talked about Sidney Born’s death, and Kennamer confided to Krupnick the name of a Tulsa boy whom he believed had murdered his friend and witness in the case. Krupnick, privy to the police investigators’ theories, and the coroner, who steadfastly maintained it had been a suicide, asked Kennamer: why that boy? Why would he murder Born?
“Phil was silent for a moment, [and] then he made a jump at me and I was scared. But he only grabbed my pencil out of my pocket and went to the corner of the room.
“‘You stay over there, Lee,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone for a few minutes.’
“Pretty soon he came over and gave me a folded piece of paper. ‘Give that to Cochrane,’ he said. ‘Tell him I said 3-2. Don’t forget to tell him I said 3-2.’”
In the elevator, Krupnick unfolded the note and saw it was a coded message:
FCQYHFHRHQGQQSDV
Once again, Krupnick found himself in the sheriff’s office. There, deputies copied the message, and later that night Krupnick deciphered it.
Can we depend on Pat?
When Kennamer said “3-2,” he was giving away the key to decode the message. The 3-2 system was a code developed by Cochrane while he was a student in Vienna, Austria, in 1933. At the time, the Nazi uprising in Germany had created tension there. Fearing their messages to each other would be read by authorities, Preston and Phil used the numerical code to communicate with each other. To decipher the first letter, the coded message’s receiver would substitute the letter three places before it in the alphabet. To decipher the second letter, one would count two spaces back. Then, the decipher repeats again as three before the intended letter, and then two, and so on.
The “Pat” the message referred to was Tulsa World newspaper reporter Pat Burgess, who had introduced Kennamer to John Gorrell in late August. Cochrane also once worked with Burgess and Krupnick but quit the World that October. Kennamer was insisting that Gorrell had made the kidnapping proposal to Burgess and Cochrane before he had ever met Gorrell. As part of his defense, Kennamer wanted them to testify that the kidnapping p
lan was all Gorrell’s idea.
Realizing Kennamer may have created a trap for himself, Sheriff Price took this information to Anderson, who then called for a secret midnight meeting at the Mayo Hotel. With Anderson, Price, two deputies, and Krupnick in attendance, a plot was hatched for the photographer to continue operating as a secret courier for Kennamer and Cochrane in the hopes that it might reveal valuable information that could be used at Kennamer’s trial. Anderson told Krupnick that his participation in their scheme would “render the state a valuable service by following Kennamer’s wishes in the matter.” Anderson then informed J. Berry King, who approved of the operation, and the World backed their photographer, knowing they might get the best scoop of the entire case.
Once again, Kennamer chose to forgo his lawyer’s advice, and authorities dismissed his father’s request that only attorneys and family could see his son. In spite of this, it was still Sheriff Price’s jail—the same Sheriff Price that Judge Kennamer had locked up several years before during Prohibition.
Preston Cochrane was the son of a corporate attorney for one of the local oil companies. He was a handsome young man, with high cheekbones, a strong jawline, and a full head of hair he parted on the left. He wore fashionable glasses and dressed in expensive clothes that rested stylishly on his slender frame. He enjoyed poetry and read many books, and although he was extremely intelligent, his soft and agreeable manner was no match for the domineering personality of Phil Kennamer. And with many of those same characteristics, neither were Sidney Born or Homer Wilcox Jr., who was just seventeen. Phil Kennamer had a unique way of selecting friends who were passive and pliable. Applying these criteria, he seemed to believe Krupnick was the same sort.
Together, Kennamer and Cochrane started an advertising agency, but like many of Phil’s endeavors, he quickly grew tired of it, and they later sold their accounts to another agency. Before Cochrane went to work with the Tulsa World, the two traveled parts of the United States together and stayed in hotels under aliases. Cochrane was known as “Douglas Montgomery Blair,” while Kennamer traveled as “Richard Barnard.”
On December 20, Krupnick delivered the note to Cochrane. At first, Cochrane wanted the photographer to deliver his message orally, but Krupnick convinced him to put the message in writing “because Phil will know your writing.”
Cautious, Cochrane replied to Kennamer:
BGVKVCITDKGJHYLNOIHVLPLVEUUPWJLU
This translated to: “Yes, is afraid he [Pat Burgess] will get mixed in this. Burn this.”
Embracing his new secret-agent role, Krupnick was a master manipulator himself and persuaded Cochrane, that very day, to write another note to Kennamer, and to mark it with his signature.
“I’m for you, you know that,” Cochrane wrote in code. “Would have been up to see you but Moss says not now. Law thinks I know something and are [watching] me. (GJE).”
The initials GJE stood for DMB, or Douglas Montgomery Blair, which Cochrane reluctantly added after he was persuaded to do so by Krupnick. If the notes later made it into evidence at trial, authorities wanted there to be no doubt who was behind them.[23]
To ensure the secrecy of their little conspiracy, the sheriff’s department took an active role by posing as lookouts. When Krupnick was with Kennamer, Sheriff Price positioned himself near the elevator doors on the ground floor, where he kept an eye on anyone going up to the jail. In the sheriff’s office, Chief Deputy John Evans watched for Price’s signal. If one of the defense attorneys or a family member was going up to see Kennamer, Evans was ready to transmit a signal using the jail buzzer. Upstairs, jailer Tony Benson was ready to receive the signal. Benson would then knock on Kennamer’s door, which was the signal to Krupnick, to advise him that a visitor was coming up to see him. Knowing that this was potential evidence, they also took photostatic copies of all the correspondence.
The fourth note passed, from Kennamer to Cochrane, turned into an all-out forgery by the crafty Krupnick. When pressed to write it, Kennamer also wanted Krupnick to deliver it orally since he too believed the exchange of notes was getting too risky. In order to continue the sham, Krupnick typed out Kennamer’s message on his typewriter at World offices. But instead of passing along Kennamer’s caution, he removed those statements and substituted phrases that encouraged continuance of the whole note-passing affair:
Stay away from reporters. Lee is okay. Other birds are swine. Give me more facts. Don’t worry I will burn your answers. I am doubtful about Pat. He might talk. Give me actual low-down. I have lots to confide you. Tell me all. Be sure and typewrite. Don’t ever write. We sure can depend on Lee. A real pal. What’s doing? You know what I mean. Hurry with your answer. Keep your chin up fellow.
When the note was delivered on December 21, Cochrane was naturally suspicious because it had been typed instead of written. Krupnick explained that a typewriter was available in the room adjoining Kennamer’s, which was actually true. When the two met up again in a downtown café on December 22, paranoid that he was being watched, Cochrane put his reply in a matchbox that he passed to Krupnick under the table. It read:
These better stop for few days. Am being watched. Pat won’t talk but won’t go on stand for defense. Wants to stay clear out of it. Who is trying to spot me? Why, I am for you Sweetheart. We’ll win in the end.
But that’s not the note Krupnick delivered. Instead, he substituted a typewritten note in which the phrase “these better stop for few days. Am being watched,” was eliminated.
After delivering Cochrane’s message, he returned to the matron’s room on the morning of December 23 to find Kennamer still in bed, sleeping.
“Lee, bring me my trousers,” Kennamer said when he woke. “Tell Cochrane 3-5.” From one of the pockets, he handed Krupnick a typewritten note that read:
I know you are with me. Don’t think I’ll forget it. After I am sprung we are going to sue every paper in the United States. Forget it now though. Vital Pat takes stand. You received a letter from Gorrell in November. Keep your chin up, Sweetheart.[24]
When Cochrane was ready with his reply, they met once again at the café on the evening of December 24.
Merry Christmas. Don’t understand about Snedden except that he tried to frame me. Same one, I know who. My chin’s up. How’s yours? - XXXXXXXXXX
According to Krupnick’s account of the whole affair he later explained in a newspaper article, Snedden referred to Jack Snedden, and was a reference to a conversation between Cochrane and the photographer.
“Cochrane told me he didn’t like Snedden, and that Snedden didn’t like him,” Krupnick later explained. “I thought I might get some information by mentioning Snedden, so I told Cochrane that Phil said ‘Snedden is talking too much, be careful,’ but nothing came of it.”
When Krupnick delivered the message to the prisoner later that Christmas Eve, Kennamer cautioned him not to come the next day because his family would be present. When he returned the day after, Krupnick came with the idea of unraveling the story behind the letter that Gorrell supposedly wrote Cochrane in November. When he got there, he told Kennamer that Cochrane was worried about the letter from Gorrell.
“I was sitting on the bed and Phil was sitting in the rocker,” Krupnick later recalled. “Phil became very quiet and for at least three minutes he sat with his head on his hands, saying nothing. Then he looked at me in the eye and said, ‘Listen, you tell him not to worry about that Gorrell letter, that I will say that he lost it. Be sure to tell him Pat must take the stand.’”
Krupnick then tried to convince Kennamer to put that in writing but he refused, and instead the photographer received an eighth message that was not in code.
Skip matter of epistle [referring to Gorrell’s letter], find out if Pat hasn’t been ‘contacted’ by someone from the gang which is out to get me. Keep your chin up and don’t worry.—K
But Krupnick didn’t deliver that message, and once again, he concocted a different one, with the knowledge of county authorities and hi
s bosses at the newspaper. “Don’t worry about Gorrell letter. I will say you lost it. You and Pat be sure and take the stand.”
It was the last note that would ever be delivered after Kennamer let something slip to his chief counsel, who put a stop to it. On January 3, a small portion of the entire affair appeared in the Tulsa World when Moss, seeking to do damage control, spoke of it to reporters. Moss said it was further proof that his client “was not entirely responsible for his ‘whimsical actions,’” the paper reported. It supported the defense’s theory, Moss added, that Kennamer was unbalanced.
“I have not seen the notes but Phil told me about them Sunday [December 30] in a way that indicated he was boasting of his shrewdness,” Moss said. “As far as I have been able to learn, these notes contained nothing incriminating or of any relevance [where] the slaying proper is concerned. Kennamer is entirely out of hand.”
He was right that the whole scheme had not produced anything that would incriminate his client, and even the county attorney had to agree. For those who still believed Kennamer had an accomplice on the outside who would have been revealed in the notes, that ghostly figure remained elusive.
Within that same article was confirmation by Fire and Police Commissioner Oscar Hoop during a public meeting with city commissioners that Sgt. Maddux was offered a bribe for the staggering amount of $25,000.[25] As he had already shown in the past, Maddux’s proclamation inflamed the story line and fed into city-wide beliefs of a conspiracy. Or, at the very least, it insinuated that the Kennamer family was behind it, which they weren’t.
“[In December], I was informed by Sergeant Maddux that he had been offered $25,000 to discontinue his investigation along certain lines in a criminal case, that he had declined, and that the person making the offer then said he would be obliged to use other means to stop further inquiry,” Hoop said. Although he had been careful not to mention which criminal case it was during a public meeting, privately, everyone knew what he meant, and that it tied back to earlier bribe reports in the newspapers. Hoop also told city leaders that Maddux claimed only a little more evidence was needed before he could make an arrest.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 13