“Ho, ho,” King laughed when he heard about the Tribune article. “They’re just trying to build up sentiment for that boy. It’s ludicrous. Their ‘exposing’ it is part of a buildup that will continue all week.
“They’re just out to paint the boy as a character deserving sympathy for a chivalrous deed. They’ve swung to the lawyer’s idea of pleading temporary insanity. He acts goofy for anyone who goes in to see him now.”
That last sentence was a jab at the final part of the defense’s pretrial strategy: let Phil tell his bizarre story to the press. Again. But where the Tribune was left out the last time, they got the exclusive on this one. After the coded-message imbroglio, the defense team established an embargo against the World in general, and Lee Krupnick in particular.
There was no way Moss was ever going to agree to let Kennamer take the stand, where Anderson, Wallace, and King would pound the boy to dust under cross-examination. However, he still wanted potential jurors to discover what he and defense psychiatrists had observed. And where Kennamer thought this was another opportunity to take control and talk his way out of trouble, Moss knew what it really was: a perfect occasion for Phil to show potential jurors just how nuts he really was. This new and improved version of what happened that night was a feint against the prosecution, and a trap for his own client.
As before, the interview took place in Kennamer’s private quarters. The cabinet radio and rocking chair had been removed by newly elected Sheriff Garland Marrs, who left the boy with a bed, the dresser, and the portrait of Governor Martin Trapp.
At first, Kennamer chose his words with careful deliberation, but this would wash away when the story reached its melodramatic moments. By the end of it, Phillips wrote, he was swearing and laughing as he ridiculed someone else’s version of what had happened. At no time did Kennamer ever express remorse for his victim, whom he blamed for everything.
“Why did you kill Gorrell?” Phillips asked.
“In order to defend my own life,” Kennamer answered quietly. He then plunged into an evolved version of his one-man crusade to save Virginia.
“I met Gorrell last August through Preston Cochrane.[28] At the time I met him, the conversation was almost a monologue on the part of Gorrell, dealing with various crimes, hijackings, kidnappings. I didn’t pay much attention to him. It was an incident of another meeting with Gorrell which made me pay more attention and to change my mind about him.”
Kennamer had an interesting new take on who said what during the September 13 meeting with Gorrell and Ted Bath. It was a complete reversal of what Bath had told authorities. He never proposed robbing the Idle Hour, or kidnapping Gorrell family friend Barbara Boyle, or having Bath seduce Virginia Wilcox to get naked pictures of her—those were all John Gorrell’s ideas. And when it came to the honor of Barbara Boyle, well, he was her protector.
“It was at that meeting that Gorrell mentioned hijacking someone. I was propositioned to join in and I turned it down. Then the proposal to obtain some compromising photographs of girls was mentioned. The idea was that I was to put up the money and arrange for a party. At the time, I said the affair did not sound right and especially regarding one of the girls mentioned, I said I would not be interested.”
In this new version, all of the things Ted Bath told police Kennamer had said in that meeting were actually what Gorrell had said. And all the things Gorrell had said were what he, Phil Kennamer, had said.
Ted Bath was simply confused.
“Later on, Cochrane told me that Gorrell had approached him with a kidnap plot in which either Homer Wilcox Jr. or Virginia Wilcox was to be the victim. He had turned down the proposition, as had Pat Burgess.”
After Kennamer claimed he had discussed Gorrell’s alleged plot with Burgess, Cochrane, and Jack Snedden, the group decided that Kennamer should be the one to travel to Kansas City to see if Gorrell was serious.[29]
Kennamer then wove his story into a bad gangster movie that portrayed Gorrell as a Kansas City crime lord. Although he had enrolled in dental school just two months before, and worked in the hotel as a telephone operator on the graveyard shift three nights a week, Gorrell had plenty of time, along with attending his classes, to form a dangerous, well-armed gang. This was about as far away as one could get from the nervous boy who spoke of his fears to his roommates and Dean Rinehart, and then borrowed a .22-caliber pop-gun for protection but couldn’t scrape more than three bullets together.
“Knowing that if Gorrell expected any treachery on my part, it might be dangerous, I bought a knife in Kansas City. I had it in my possession when I met him in the lobby of the hotel. There were several with him. He introduced me as Bob Wilson.
“Gorrell and I went up to his apartment and talked awhile. A man and another fellow came in and asked Gorrell ‘Is this fellow ok?’ Gorrell said ‘yes.’ The man asked again, ‘are you sure?’ and again Gorrell said ‘yes.’
“Then this man asked ‘do you have plenty of heat?’ and Gorrell pointed to a pistol saying ‘yes.’
“‘If you haven’t, I’ve plenty at my place,’ said the man. Gorrell replied ‘yes’ and the man left with the words, ‘OK boss.’
“I asked Gorrell what it was all about, ‘Just a couple of my boys,’ he replied.[30]
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he replied, ‘They do damn well what I tell them to!’
“Gorrell then told me that they had been working some petty hijackings and were now ready for ‘a big deal.’
“I said, ‘what have you lined up?’ He asked me what I had come to Kansas City for.
“‘The matter you were talking about before you left.’ I told him.
“He said, ‘you mean the Wilcox deal?’ and I said ‘yes.’
“He asked me how I knew about it and I told him Cochrane and Burgess told me. He said ‘Where do you figure in it?’ and I said ‘I figure in it all the way.’
“I believe it was at [my hotel room], rather than at his apartment, that he divulged the exact nature of his plan. Three or four of the chaps to whom I had been introduced were to come to Tulsa and lure one of the Wilcox children into a thinly populated district, crowd their car over, kidnap the boy or the girl, take him or her to a flying field outside of Tulsa where a plane would be waiting. Then the victim would be taken to Kansas City to a house in a suburban district. The details of securing the ransom were to be left to us in Tulsa. The ransom specified by Gorrell was $100,000.
“He asked me what I thought of the plan and I answered ‘very little.’ I told him it was too complicated, involved too many people and made possible too many contingencies. I then offered the counter suggestion that Gorrell write an extortion note asking for a more reasonable sum and obviating the handicaps presented by the other plan.
“He wrote the note the following morning and gave it to me to mail. Then I met Floyd Huff . . . and later [we] started back to Tulsa.
“Huff began to ask me about Gorrell, as to whether he had any money. It seems Gorrell had planned to buy an interest in Huff’s airplane salvage.[31] I finally told Huff, ‘Well, I’ll show you how crazy he is’ and showed him the extortion note Gorrell had given to me.
“Huff asked me if I were going to turn it over to the authorities. I told him no, that when Gorrell came to Tulsa on Thanksgiving, I was going to tell him if he attempted to go through with the plot that I would turn it over to the authorities. I did not tell Huff that I was going to kill Gorrell.
“On Thanksgiving Day, I called Gorrell several times without getting him and about 7:00 p.m. he called me and asked ‘How’s the shake coming along?’ I told him I couldn’t talk about it. He asked me to meet him at 7:30 p.m. at a drug store near St. John’s Hospital. When we met he again asked ‘How’s things coming along?’ I said I would see him later. He finally suggested I meet him on the corner near the hospital at 11:00 p.m., after he had a date with one of the nurses.”
Kennamer then explained how he met up with Jack Snedden and “Beebe” Morton at th
e Owl Tavern, and after he told them of the meeting he was to have that night with Gorrell, Morton had taken the knife away from him. At no time, he stressed, did he ever tell Morton and Snedden he was going to kill the dental student. He then caught a ride to the hospital with Sidney Born, where he found Gorrell sitting in his car waiting for him.
“We drove down South Utica Avenue. We talked in general for a while and then he said ‘Have you sent that letter?’ and I said ‘No.’
“‘Why not?’ he asked. I told him I had no intention of mailing it. He wanted to know ‘what’s the idea?’
“‘Simply this, John,’ I answered. ‘The only reason I went into this was because I thought you might try and go through with it. I’ve got the letter here.’
“Then I knew I had made a mistake in saying that. He said ‘By God, you’ll never do anything with that letter,’ and drew a gun. He almost threw it at me. The holster falling off, he stuck it in my face and pulled the trigger. It snapped. I grabbed it and twisted it back. I was pushing his face with my left hand. The car had slowed up. My finger was inside the trigger guard. There was a shot. I have no distinct recollection of the second shot but it came immediately. The car hit the curbing. I put the gun in the holster and sat there a moment. I do not remember wiping off the fingerprints. Then I got out and walked to the Owl Tavern.”
Although his new story was similar, it had changed in many places from the account he gave in December. His description of how he was pushing on Gorrell’s face when the gun went off would later become one of the strongest clues that it was not self-defense. Since Moss had already announced Kennamer would not take the stand in his own defense, Anderson’s team would find it hard to cast doubt on both stories. But they did have witnesses to call who could shred it to pieces—and nearly everything he’d just said was contradicted by witness statements to police.
AS PART OF THEIR BUILDUP to the trial, the World published a running account of witnesses set to testify. Two days before the February 11 start date, the list had topped out at 108, and was almost evenly divided between the defense and the prosecution. Nineteen were set to testify for each side.
At the top of Anderson’s roll call were the names of all the major witnesses who had come forward in December and with whom Tulsans were already familiar. Over the last few weeks, two new names had floated to the top and were leaked to the press. Hanley “Cadillac” Booth was an Oklahoma City bail bondsman and former bootlegger who said that during the summer of 1934, while Kennamer was a rookie reporter for the Daily Oklahoman, the boy had brought up the Wilcox name and proposed crimes similar to what Ted Bath had reported.
The other star witness came forward just a few days before the trial would begin, and what she had to say was a bit of a mystery. Mrs. Edna Harman was an apartment-building manager with a story in which she allegedly overheard Kennamer saying something incriminating to another boy while in the process of renting a room. She had reached out to Dr. Gorrell, who took her to see Anderson and Wallace. But what neither prosecutor realized at the time was that Edna Harman was a little unbalanced and histrionic, and that she had inserted herself as a witness in other murder cases before. Without knowing it, when Anderson signed her up to testify for the state, he was taking the single biggest gamble of the entire case.
Many of the names on the defense list consisted of classmates and friends who had Phil Kennamer stories to share that supported the defense’s theory of insanity. The list also included Judge Kennamer and Phil’s sister Juanita Hayes. The only star witnesses they had were their handwriting expert and Dr. Karl Menninger, the celebrated psychiatrist.
Kennamer’s friends on the list were members of the Hy-Hat Club. With just a few days to go before the trial began, the often-ridiculed and maligned club of young men from prominent families, the subject of sensational journalism from out-of-state metropolitan newspapers for the last two months, finally received some vindication. A cooler, more rational mindset prevailed in the minds of local adults who had once looked upon them so critically. The mission statement of the club turned out to be more altruistic than getting drunk and holding parties, and professed: “. . . the promotion of good fellowship among its members, the promotion of good sportsmanship, and the advancement of society in the best interest of humanity.”
Members paid dues and ended every meeting with the club prayer: “Most Holy and Gracious Father in Heaven, we who are gathered here in Thy name ask that Thou accompany each of us as we depart from this meeting, that we may neither fail nor weaken in the ideals of our creed, and Thy love, that becomes stronger and better each day in the sight of God and man. Amen.”
This exoneration was further supported by an announcement on February 1 that both state and defense investigators finally admitted there were absolutely no naked pictures of high-society girls in existence anywhere. It confirmed what Ted Bath had told them, if they had actually listened to him. Bath merely said Kennamer had proposed the idea of seducing a girl to get compromising photos of her that could be used for blackmail. But at no time did anyone claim to have seen such photos. As in their overreaction to everything else, authorities and residents just assumed the photos existed because it was too thrilling to think otherwise.
WHEN THE FOLKS IN PAWNEE heard the Kennamer trial was coming to their city, it was an immediate source of pride for the community of 2,800 people.
“This town is ready for the trial and welcomes it,” said the publisher of the local newspaper. “Everyone, including the defendant, will be treated with fairness, courtesy and hospitality here. After discussing the change of venue with numerous people here, I am safe in saying that there will not be prejudice in this community.”
They cast their eyes 1,400 miles to the east to where the Bruno Hauptmann trial brought robust commerce to the merchants of Flemington, New Jersey. The Pawnee Chamber of Commerce estimated $10,000[32] would be spent in their community during the course of the Kennamer trial. Within the first twenty-four hours, half the rooms at the only two hotels in town were booked, and the rates doubled. The defense would take up residence at the Graham Hotel, while the state prepared to move into the Pawnee Hotel. Both of them were strategically placed across the street from the courthouse. The chamber president also assembled a list of local homeowners willing to rent out rooms. The Kennamer family rented out an entire cottage for themselves four blocks from the courthouse.
When a local hamburger vendor read in the papers that a hot-dog stand operator in Flemington had cleared $2,000 in one week, and then learned the Kennamer trial was coming to his town, “Friends say he almost hit the ceiling and rushed out of his shop, down the street, and spent a quarter for a new haircut.”
The news also called for hurried preparations to the courthouse itself for a trial that would be the biggest in Pawnee history. Construction on the four-story, sand-colored, brick building had begun three years before, and it was put into use one year before the trial began. It featured a neoclassical, art-deco style common for the era. A floral crown adorned the parapet and stood above inlaid, carved Indians in full headdress standing watch over all who entered. Thirty feet below them, closer to the eye, hard-edged, low-relief sculptures depicted scenes of early Pawnee County life that included Indians, cowboys, farmers, and pioneer settlers. Three-story-high, fluted pilasters on the exterior were complemented by fluted woodwork for the judge’s bench. To get to the third-story, solitary courtroom that ran east to west, participants and spectators walked on a polished, chipped-stone, composite floor.[33]
It was an impressive building for such a small community, and it was well suited for a trial that would be featured in a newsreel shown in movie houses throughout the country. The building sat in the middle of an entire city block, and with the tiny business district facing it on all four sides, it was effectively the town square. The courtroom itself was much larger than any in Tulsa. In the gallery, lawyers, jurors, newsmen, teletype operators, and court personnel could be squeezed together behind the railing
. Behind them, another four hundred spectators could sit tightly on eighteen church-pew-style benches.
Within days of the announcement, telegraph-and-telephone-company construction crews were stringing wires to two improvised press rooms that were hastily assembled near Judge Hurst’s chambers. They were equipped with ten typewriters, two teletype transmitters, and three telegraph-sending sets, spread over four tables and twelve chairs in two rooms that together, “most housewives would say [were] too small for a bedroom,” the World declared. Tulsa radio station KTUL also set up shop in Pawnee with remote-transmitting equipment that was cutting-edge for 1935 Oklahoma.
When it was designed, the fourth floor of the courthouse was intended for use as the new county jail. However, commissioners ran out of money to outfit it by the start of the Kennamer trial. Prisoners were still being kept in the old, two-story, rough-cut sandstone jail built in 1899. Pawnee residents seemed to take particular delight in the fact that Kennamer would be locked up in a bona fide jail cell complete with flat-iron-barred doors and windows, and shelf-like beds made of steel. His only comfort would be a thin mattress, and he would have to live with nearly a dozen other prisoners, some of whom had prior run-ins with his father.
Judge Thurst and Pawnee officials were anxious to avoid a repeat of what happened at Kennamer’s preliminary hearing. Extra security precautions were planned and stricter rules drawn up. Tulsa County Deputies John Evans and Tony Benson would be sworn in as Pawnee deputies and tasked with escorting Kennamer to and from the courthouse. The courthouse doors would remain locked until 8:00 a.m., and no passes would be issued for spectators.[34] All trial-watchers would be required to sit on one of the gallery benches, but there was to be no standing along the walls. They also had until 10:30 a.m. to find a seat or clear out. After 10:30, only jurors, attorneys, newsmen, courthouse employees, and other people with business related to the trial would be allowed to roam freely over the third-floor corridor while court was in session. Witnesses would have to wait in the district attorney’s offices until their names were called.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 16