Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland

by Morrow, Jason Lucky

  “Kennamer, doing all the talking, said ‘No, this [one] suits us, we will take this one.’

  “After they went out she got to thinking about the good-looking fellows wanting an apartment, and wondering about their business. So she goes around the house on the south side. She saw Kennamer sitting at a desk or table with a pencil and tablet, and Kennamer says to the boy who was there in the apartment with him, he says: ‘That fellow has got yellow. He has backed out. I am going to Kansas City and I am going to put the skids under him.’”

  In the buildup before the trial, reporters pressed Kennamer for news about this mysterious new witness who had recently come forward. “You can say this for me about Mrs. Harman, I never heard of her,” he told them.

  When they told Anderson what Kennamer had said, the county attorney snapped back that he didn’t care what anyone thought of Mrs. Harman’s testimony because he was mighty impressed with it. “Her testimony is the most important yet uncovered,” he proclaimed.

  Wallace returned to his speech by showing graphic photographs of the two bullet wounds to Gorrell’s head, taking great care to give a vivid explanation of how the second bullet was fired a minute or more after the first shot. The jury, one reporter noted, “was visibly impressed.”

  “The first bullet wound, the blood ran straight down this way, filled his ear, ran down the back of his neck and collar,” Wallace explained. Pointing to where the second bullet had struck, Wallace detailed the path the blood from that wound traveled, crossing over the blood streak from the first wound.

  For Mrs. Gorrell, this was too much, and she escaped to the corridor where a water fountain would cool her cotton mouth.

  “You can see from this photograph where the blood flowed from. Not only that, the body of John Gorrell showed bruised spots as though hurt with a blunt something-or-other. The bump raised up right here where he had been struck,” Wallace declared as he pointed to the spot on the enlarged photograph the coroner had taken at the funeral home.

  On top of all that, the victim’s clothes were smooth, his hair unruffled, his foot was still on the gas, and the ignition was still on; Gorrell had been shot while he was driving, Wallace explained.

  “When we have shown this,” Wallace said to the jury as he brought his statement to a close, “we shall expect a verdict of guilty at your hands with the extreme penalty.”

  The state of Oklahoma wanted to see Phil Kennamer dead.

  Wednesday, February 13, 1935

  OVERNIGHT, A HEAVY RAIN PASSED through Pawnee that soaked into the red soil Oklahoma is known for, creating jagged ruts and furrows in the dirt roads leading to the small community. Automobiles carrying travelers into town with business that morning brought the clay-heavy earth with them, their slender tires pounding and flipping it out in all directions as they circled the square looking for a place to park.

  Inside the medieval-looking jail a few hundred yards to the northwest of the courthouse, Kennamer was laughing and joking with the eleven other inmates as they ate their oatmeal and toast. They washed their food down with coffee and smoked cigarettes Kennamer had purchased for all of them after a Kangaroo Court was convened by the other prisoners to fine the new occupant three dollars on his very first day. It was his initiation, and he took it well—better than his first impression of his new quarters, when his jaw dropped and sagged there for several moments as he scrutinized the tiny cell with its flat-iron door and steel-frame bed.

  But Phil quickly adapted, and his gregarious personality won him friends among the other prisoners. Bitter over the treatment he’d received in Tulsa, where newspapers bashed him as the perennial problem child, and Sheriff Price set him up to be double-crossed by Lee Krupnick, he was anxious to sing the praises of the Pawnee Jail to anyone who’d listen.

  “He seems to be a pretty nice fellow,” said pack leader Everett Hargraves, who was serving a ninety-day sentence on a liquor violation. “The boys seem to like him and he said right out that he likes it here a lot better than he liked staying in the Tulsa County Jail.”

  Kennamer also welcomed the new reporters from Oklahoma City, Kansas City, New York City, and Chicago, who were now swarming around him. When the press wasn’t out to get him, as the Tulsa reporters had been, he turned up the charm and loved to talk about himself and all the flaws in the case against him.

  “I have nothing to worry about,” Kennamer boasted. His confidence was based on one reason—he was going to tell his story on the stand. This was news to Tulsa writers who were under the impression Moss would not let him testify. But whispered remarks from other members of the defense team that weekend indicated their client would tell his story. The only evidence they had to support their self-defense claim was what Phil said. If they wanted to sell the jury on self-defense, Kennamer would have to tell them about it.

  And true to his ego, the nineteen-year-old was “confident he has an excellent chance to be acquitted and that his own story of the student dentist’s death will improve his chances materially,” wrote a World reporter, who was mixed in with the out-of-town journalists. Kennamer discussed the case freely with them and enjoyed the attention while reporters played to his ego to get quotes for their stories.

  “I feel much better about my chances now that I know I am going to testify,” Kennamer professed. “I know I will have a much better chance to get a fair trial here than I would in Tulsa,” he declared, in a voice that sounded more like a seasoned criminal lawyer than a nineteen-year-old on trial for murder. “The biggest obstacle I have to overcome in this case is the jaundiced public opinion of statements created by persons who know nothing of the case.”

  Holly Anderson was the first to arrive at the courthouse Wednesday morning, and he was confident that he was the obstacle that Flint Moss and the defense team would not be able to overcome. As he sat there quietly by himself that morning, going over his questions, he knew that if he was ever going to advance his political career, he had to give his best performance in the one case everyone in Oklahoma and the rest of the country was watching. This was Oklahoma’s biggest trial since George “Machine Gun” Kelly. Comparisons between that case, as well as the one in New Jersey, which would end that same day with a verdict from the jury, were being made by enthusiastic observers and reporters.

  Today, more than any other day in his life, the former mayor of Sand Springs had to make a good showing.

  His first witness to the stand that morning was the victim’s newspaper-shy father, Dr. John Gorrell, who had sat at the prosecution table this whole time with his wife, Alice, just four feet away from Judge Kennamer. Somehow, the two fathers had managed to avoid eye contact the entire time. Both had gained the right to privileged seating, right up front, where each could closely monitor what was in their own best interests: justice for one, freedom for the other.

  After taking Dr. Gorrell through a brief history of the high points in his son’s short life, Anderson got to the reason why they were all there.

  “When did you last see your son alive?”

  “At 7:30 Thanksgiving night last year.”

  “Is your son now living or dead?”

  “He is dead,” Dr. Gorrell said in a slow and clear voice as Judge Kennamer and his son stared at him intently. Not once in the two-and-one-half months since the Gorrell’s son was killed had the judge ever said one kind word to the newspapers for the victim’s family. The only tears he was ever known to have shed were on the day his son surrendered.

  Richard Oliver took the stand next. In the months since he’d accidentally met up with “Bob Wilson” on the southbound Frisco train, he had steeled himself up for this moment. After taking the young, baby-faced, dental student through his short history as Gorrell’s roommate and his experience with Bob Wilson, Anderson got right to the point.

  “Is the man who was introduced to you as Bob Wilson in the courtroom today?”

  “Yes,” Oliver responded, and he pointed his arm straight and steady at Phil Kennamer.


  In his first cross-examination of the day, Moss’s questions indicated that part of his strategy was to attack the victim’s character.

  “Gorrell was supposed to work at a switchboard in your hotel at Kansas City, wasn’t he?” Moss asked, which got him an affirmative answer.

  “Wasn’t he so drunk that you had to work there for him?”

  Anderson roared his objection, which forced Moss to ask the same question, repeatedly, in less provocative language, but he was blocked each time.

  “How many nights had you worked the switchboard after the middle of October when you three [Gorrell, Oliver, and Jess Harris] began rooming together?”

  “Well, we changed a lot—”

  “I didn’t ask you that,” Moss snapped. “How many nights had you worked in John Gorrell’s place?” he repeated as he raised his voice.

  “Possibly three or four times,” Oliver responded.

  “Why?”

  “Because he wanted to go to a dance.”

  He wanted the boy to say Gorrell was too drunk, but when he couldn’t get that, Moss switched course. “Did Gorrell introduce Kennamer as Bob Wilson?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “He told you that he was from Chicago?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “IN FACT,” Moss began by raising his voice again, “he told you that he was a gangster!”

  “He did not.”

  “What had he told you about the circumstances?”

  “You want me to tell?”

  “Tell me,” Moss said confidently. “I won’t cringe about the facts.”

  “He said that ‘when this fellow comes, I want you to get a good look at him. If I am ever killed he will be the one to kill me.’”

  Tulsa’s most highly esteemed defense attorney was off to a bad start.

  When Floyd Huff sat in the witness chair, Anderson led him through his entire account of everything Phil Kennamer had said in that now-famous car ride to Tulsa. His story had not changed since he’d told it to Kansas City Chief of Detectives Thomas Higgins and during the preliminary hearing in December.

  “What did he tell you of his plan to kill John Gorrell?”

  “He said he would kill Gorrell next week in Tulsa. Take him out on some by-road, as I would call it, after dark, make out like he had a flat tire, and when they got out, he would let Gorrell have it then.”

  Huff’s statement was important, and it supported what Jack Snedden had told police: that the murder of John Gorrell Jr. was premeditated. However, the middle-aged, bald man had a past that could discredit him. Before he ended, Anderson felt the need to stave off a potential disaster with this witness, and it was better the jury heard it from him first—before Moss sunk his teeth into Huff.

  “Mr. Huff, have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

  “Yes. Twice.”

  “In jail on any other offense?”

  “Once.”

  On cross-examination, Moss took Huff back through his story of the car ride, with careful attention applied to the extortion note. He probed and prodded for holes and weak spots in Huff’s story but was unable to churn up anything substantial. He then tried to steer the witness to discuss his client’s state of mind, in an attempt to lay the groundwork for his insanity defense.

  “Didn’t you tell Kansas City police that you thought Kennamer was crazy?”

  Before he could answer, the young gun of the prosecution, Dixie Gilmer, fired off another one of his many objections that day. He was determined to go up against the old hand, the veteran defense attorney, and beat him.

  “Do you think he’s crazy?” Moss tried once more, only to watch as Gilmer flew out of his seat and blasted another objection with a speed that stunned even him.

  “You didn’t tell Gorrell that Kennamer had threatened his life?”

  “No.”

  “Because you thought Kennamer was crazy?”

  Gilmer objected once again but Moss didn’t care; by then, he’d made his point to the jury three times.

  For his part, Huff was clearly more amicable than he had been during the preliminary hearing, where his aggressiveness had played into Moss’s hands. The prosecution, it seems, had cautioned their witness. Even when Moss forced him to talk about his prison record, Huff sounded more embarrassed than angry, and anxious to explain himself, which he did, but only after Moss thoroughly humiliated him over his minor criminal record.

  During the Great War, Huff was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and had gone AWOL, an offense that earned him a short stint at Alcatraz, which was a military prison at the time. In 1920, he had served six months in jail on a vague charge of larceny, followed by a violation of the Mann Act in 1922 that also got him nine months in prison. In the latter case, the unmarried woman he’d transported across state lines later became his wife. As bad as it made Huff look, some courtroom observers thought he was being bullied by Moss, who purposely made all the charges sound worse than they really were.

  Anderson’s next witness was a strong one. Ted Bath was a tall, clean-cut, handsome, young man with thick, black hair and angular features. He possessed a quiet confidence that made him all the more believable, and his voice was steady and calm. But it was what he had to say about Phil Kennamer that would leave an impression on the minds of the jury. Bath’s account of his time with Gorrell and Kennamer in the Brown Derby Café on September 13 was rich in detail. He spoke of how the judge’s son had proposed the armed robbery of a beer joint that would yield them three or four hundred dollars, but that he, Bath, had dismissed that idea because someone could get killed. He then told the jury of how Kennamer had proposed blackmailing a girl named Barbara Boyle, but had then put forth Virginia Wilcox’s name after Gorrell told Kennamer to leave Barbara out of it.

  “He suggested that he would defray my expenses if I would ingratiate myself with Virginia Wilcox so as to be able to get her into a compromising position so that some pictures could be taken of her. I said I would not be interested.”

  Kennamer didn’t like hearing this. He didn’t want anyone to hear it. For the first time during his trial, his body language betrayed his emotion. As he listened to Bath talk about his plans to seduce Virginia to get naked pictures of her, Kennamer put on a show that was meant to be noticed—clenching and opening his fists, his mouth quivering, and his hate-filled eyes piercing into Ted Bath. When he saw this, Dixie Gilmer’s face melted into contempt and disgust.

  But after the next witness took the stand, all the attorneys would be disgusted, and one of them would put his career in jeopardy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  HARMON PHILLIPS KNEW SOMETHING BIG was about to happen. The lunch recess had ended, and by 1:15, the reporters, attorneys, and court personnel were settling back down in the courtroom. Most of the spectators brought sack lunches with them and hadn’t even left—not wanting to lose their seats to others waiting outside to get in. When the trial resumed, Anderson’s “mystery witness” would take the stand. Earlier that morning, the Tribune reporter caught up with forty-two-year-old Edna Harman and carefully prodded her with questions. Although matronly and plump, it was obvious that she was once a very attractive woman, with a strong jawline that supported a wide face, high cheekbones, and a small nose. Her blue eyes matched the blue dress she wore beneath a fashionable black coat with a fur-trimmed collar that came with a perky little hat. When she sat down to talk to Phillips, she looked nervously around the small lobby of the Pawnee Hotel and confided to the newspaper reporter her big secret—that ever since she’d told Anderson what she knew, her life had been threatened.

  A lot.

  “They’ve told me that it would happen within thirty days after the trial,” she told him in an overly affected voice. “I know the men who came to see me, and if I am asked, I shall tell their names from the witness stand.”

  But as a noble mother, she of course was not concerned for her own safety, but that of her children. She had the way it would happen all figured ou
t. “The threats have mostly been toward my eighteen-year-old son who carries the mail,” she whispered. “It would be awfully easy some dark night for there to be an accident on the road from Tulsa to Ponca City.”[36]

  When Phillips queried her for concrete details, she dodged his question with a vague answer. “Some of the threats have been of kidnapping and others of death.” They were, she added, meant to keep her off the stand.

  The apartment-building manager had informed the prosecution about the threats, and at her insistence, they assigned county investigator Jack Bonham to be her bodyguard. He was sitting just a few feet away, reading a newspaper, oblivious to all the assassins targeting this poor woman.

  Phillips immediately sensed something was off with Mrs. Harman and raised a question about some interesting facts leaked by the defense team. “Are you the same Mrs. Harman that appeared as a witness in the Birl Shepherd murder trial five years ago?”

  Mrs. Harman’s face dropped when Phillips mentioned Shepherd’s name, but she recovered and manufactured a coy little smile. “What’s your next question please?”

  “Are you not the same Mrs. Harman who offered evidence in another trial in Tulsa some years before that case?”

  Again, she smiled, and repeated, “What are your next questions?”

  “What other trials have you appeared in?”

  “I would rather not answer those questions until I reach the witness stand.”

  “The defense attorneys will ask you then,” Phillips pointed out.

  “Well, I’m not so sure I will take the stand,” she replied haughtily. After a long pause as she studied a gruff-looking man walking out of the hotel, she changed the subject back to her favorite topic. “To tell you the truth I am afraid. I’ve had all kinds of threats to keep me from the stand. Saturday, two men came to my house and suggested I leave town before the subpoena reached me.”

  As if all that weren’t enough, she’d also received anonymous threats by telephone. Before Phillips could unravel that claim, Mrs. Harman quickly excused herself for “some royalty business,” but said she would return that afternoon.