“Yes sir.”
“Was this picture in the newspapers made from the same negative?” Moss already asked that question, but he wanted to back the car up and run over Maddux again.
“I imagine it was the same,” Maddux answered calmly. He wanted to appear nonchalant in order to downplay the beating he was taking.
“As far as you know, it was?”
“Yes sir.”
And again. “As far as you know there is no difference between the exhibit number six and the newspapers?”
“Yes sir,” replied the criminologist who had said earlier that it was his job to “preserve evidence.”
The king of courtroom sarcasm rolled over the top of Maddux one last time. “And you came to the conclusion that one or both of the newspaper boys got hold of the photographs?”
“Yes sir.”
The state rests.
Chapter Nineteen
THE STATE’S CASE WAS A mere skeleton of what many hoped it would be. Only fourteen of the fifty-seven witnesses subpoenaed had testified, while the rest were held in reserve for the rebuttal. Although few people felt it was weak, there was the general impression that it could have been stronger—with or without the Edna Harman fiasco. When reporters later pushed Anderson for an explanation, it put him on the defensive.
“We have made out a murder case against Kennamer. We didn’t take long to do it and we perhaps didn’t make it as dramatic as many [had] expected. We didn’t need to. It was just a prosaic case. We didn’t need to show a motive because it wasn’t necessary. We proved that Kennamer killed Gorrell and that he had previously threatened his life,” Anderson declared. “We also proved that the love Phil Kennamer claimed for Virginia Wilcox was ‘dead’ by his admission in a letter to her,” he added, referring to the letter given to Snedden but never mailed.
Disappointment was felt in Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Chicago, and New York City newsrooms when editors learned that half their chance to get a hot story of scandal-plagued Tulsa youth had evaporated. Their hopes shifted to the defense.
With two hours left to go in Thursday’s court session, Moss’s opening statement was a fifty-five minute overview of his case, which gave a detailed picture of a tempestuous boy who was almost a genius but was driven to insanity by the rejection of the woman he loved and his need to protect her from the likes of John Gorrell. Walter Biscup noted that during the long, impassioned speech, eighty percent of it built the foundation for the insanity angle. It was the biography of a ne’er-do-well, as his defense attorney specified in detail all of his client’s shortcomings and failures in life. As Moss carried on, Phil Kennamer’s ego took a beating. His body language betrayed his humiliation when he slouched low in his chair, leaning forward, eyes on the floor, as if he were trying to crawl under the table and hide.
Moss recounted for the jury how the boy had dropped out of high school, military school, boarding school, Catholic school, and a private school in San Angelo, Texas, where he abandoned his mother. That was the time he was later found on a fishing boat, trying to sail to Rio de Janeiro to join a revolution. When he was brought back to Oklahoma, Kennamer held onto this ambition and often spoke of joining revolutions in Mexico, China, and Cuba, where his superior intelligence over nonwhite races would garner him a leadership position. He imagined himself an expert at military tactics because he’d once read a book on the subject that he borrowed from the local library.
When his parents realized their boy could not be kept in school, his father used his influence to get him job after job, none of which Phil kept for very long. “His father would pay his wages through his employers without Phil knowing,” Moss informed the jurors. He burned through jobs as a gas station attendant, cub reporter at two newspapers, a driver for an oil company, and president of a semi-fictional advertising agency. He was working as an insurance salesman for a reputable company when he killed John Gorrell.
“Never has Phil been able, mentally, to content himself in a single character of employment for two months.”
Moss’s speech then chartered a course through the psychology of his client’s “mental weaknesses” before moving on to how the “tragedy” was all John Gorrell’s fault, and Phil Kennamer was Virginia Wilcox’s righteous savior.
“Now then, gentlemen of the jury, you are wondering if this plan to kidnap Virginia was conceived by John Gorrell, or Phil Kennamer,” Moss said. “Upon that issue we will satisfy you beyond any question. That is one of the links of the state’s case which the state proposed to put forward by Mrs. Harman.”
J. Berry King nearly came out of his chair as if he wanted to object. After the threats of mistrial and trouble they had gone through to get her name out of the trial, the lead defense attorney had just slipped it back in when it suited his purposes.
By now, the pitch in Moss’s voice was rising, and his hands gestured defiantly as he built up to a proclamation he wanted these jurors to take with them to their deathbeds. “Every statement that comes from a reputable or a reliable person upon the subject of this kidnapping places Phil Kennamer—uncompromisingly, courageously, single-handed and alone—in the position where he proposed [to take] a human life rather than let it take place.
“TRUTHFUL WITNESS,” Moss shouted, “shall come into your presence and assert the fact to be—Phil would dare any danger—defy any hazard—take any chance—and go to any length, foolish and foolhardy as he was—Phil Kennamer always opposed—with all that he possessed—the carrying out of this plot against Miss Virginia Wilcox.”
WHEN THE KENNAMER JURORS RETURNED to the rented house that evening, they found the one daily newspaper they were allowed had gigantic blocks cut out of it. Besides the Kennamer trial coverage, Judge Hurst ordered the Hauptmann death-penalty story also be removed. His trial may have been over, but the baby killer would remain above-the-fold news for weeks. Although national attention had shifted more to Phil Kennamer, he still played second fiddle to Bruno Hauptmann.
But it didn’t seem that way in Pawnee, Oklahoma, where sixty-two newspaper reporters, photographers, stenographers, telex operators, and a radio station crew, representing more than a dozen news organizations, appropriated the entire courthouse. It was their job to get the story out, which they couldn’t do without advanced technology.
“No one seems to notice the faint ticking of the telegraph instruments in the courtroom,” Tribune feature reporter Ruth Sheldon wrote. But they weren’t the old-style, Morse-code-sending units; these were teletypewriters, capable of transmitting sixty words a minute over a special cable installed and leased just for the trial. “There are eight of these sending keys, all of them the ‘noiseless’ type. They are not noiseless, but what sound does come from them is of such character that one would scarcely realize they are transmitting thousands of words.”
Every day, photographers would lie in wait on the second floor, where they would ambush key witnesses going up or coming down from the third floor. When the flashbulbs popped, it would send an eerie light that seemed to penetrate every floor of the courthouse. The photographers scanned each new arrival and snapped photographs, not knowing if the role they played that day would be tomorrow’s front-page news. Twenty-year-old Betty Watson found this out one morning when she came to the courthouse with her mother. She had been subpoenaed by the defense but was dropped from consideration at the last minute under mysterious circumstances, which sent reporters digging to learn more. Despite the fact that she would not take the stand, newspapers ran her photograph anyway because “she was strikingly attractive.” Her photo became a substitute for the scandalous stories promised but never delivered.
She wasn’t the only attractive individual involved in the trial. New York Evening Journal cub reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, [38] daughter of famed reporter James Kilgallen, had just arrived in Pawnee from Flemington. In another Ruth Sheldon feature story, the young woman proclaimed Phil Kennamer “more cute” than Bruno Hauptmann. “He is quite colorful. Seems to be a pretty nice
fellow, young, good-looking,” Kilgallen said. But she may have been attracted to his bad-boy image. “He looks to me like he’s the kind who would get real drunk, drive a car real fast and do all those things.”
The lawyers also fascinated her, especially Flint Moss. “That Moss—he’s so colorful!” the twenty-one-year-old exclaimed. “I got a big kick out of the way he leaned against the rail with his feet crossed next to the jury and the way he played his smile on the jury. In Flemington, that wouldn’t be allowed for five seconds.”
Flemington also didn’t have a dozen lawyers in the courtroom, bickering like children. So far, J. Berry King had kept his professional demeanor. But most of them, at one time or another, verbally attacked each other with caustic remarks, whispered insults, insinuations of incompetence and criminally liable behavior. Although Anderson couldn’t seem to contain his bitterness, Flint Moss remained “the smoothest man in the courtroom,” as Harmon Phillips wrote. He moved through the crowded corridors with cheerful greetings that were individualized to each recipient. His nickname for Deputy Nate Tucker was too racy to be repeated, but it always made Tucker smile. State hospital psychiatrist Floyd Adams was always acknowledged with a “there goes Doc Adams!” Moss could backslap and shake hands like a man running for office, and nearly everyone in Pawnee loved him.
Friday, February 15, 1935
A COLD FEBRUARY MORNING DID little to curb the enthusiasm that Friday as spectators and newsmen eagerly anticipated all the sensations that would come from defense witnesses. Famed reporter Copeland Burg, working for the William Randolph Hearst–founded International News Service, caught up with the defendant as he was getting a haircut at a barbershop across from the courthouse. Under the watchful eyes of Sheriff Burkdoll, Kennamer laughed and joked with three of his pals who’d be coming to his aid as defense witnesses later that day.
“Just wait until I get on the stand,” Kennamer teased Robert Thomas, Allen Mayo, and Claude Wright. “I’ll tell the world something they never heard about you guys before and believe me I know a lot about each of you!”
When the laughter died down, Kennamer added, “But don’t worry. Never mind. Everyone says I’M CRAZY.” It was a shot at his defense attorney’s strategy, which he resented, but in that rare moment, he had what he’d always relished: an audience fixated on his every word. He was the center of attention. As witty as his jokes were, there was always a thread of self-pity woven into each one of them.
“Say, this guy Jack Snedden is sure my pal,” he continued. “First he steals my girl. And I wrote Virginia a letter last August and gave it to Jack to mail and he just keeps it until now and then turns it over to the prosecution.”
“Are you sore at Jack, Phil?” Claude Wright asked him.
“No, not sore. He is just a nut—like me—but he can go around and make trouble—my pal Jack.”
This brought another round of laughter, and Burg noted the barber couldn’t keep the shaving lather out of Phil’s mouth as the boy jabbered on.
“I wish I had my school books with me and you could help me with my studies,” Wright offered.
“No, no,” Phil countered, “I’m crazy now and couldn’t help you a bit.” As Phil and everyone else chuckled, it nearly caused the barber to nick him with the straight razor. But his ego couldn’t help itself, and he had to call out one of his friends as a liar.
“Say Tommie, you had a nerve saying I told you to come along and I would show you Gorrell’s body. You know I didn’t say that,” Phil said in a dark tone.
Robert Thomas answered him with a nervous grin. He didn’t know what to say to someone whose version of that night was different from all the other witnesses. Arguing with Phil Kennamer was pointless.
“Never before has there been a defendant like Phil Kennamer,” Burg relayed to a national audience in his article.
JUST AS FLINT MOSS WAS set to call his first witness, he was interrupted by an unlikely source. Cartoon-faced J. Berry King, with his round cheeks, big nose, pointy chin, and coffee-cup-handle-shaped ears, had something to say. It was the first time he had had anything to say, and it caught Moss off guard.
“Your Honor, I am always inclined to be tolerant of any opening statement, entertaining and enlightening as the defense’s was, but as counsel for the state I understood Mrs. Harman’s former statement was not to come into the case,” King said as he turned to face Moss. “I request the defendant to withdraw her name from the record.”
“I refuse,” Moss pouted.
“Then I ask the court to strike it from the record.”
It was stricken. King one, Moss zero.
The first day of the defense’s case unraveled slowly but would end with what Moss anticipated would be powerful and emotion-laden testimony for the twelve jurors, who were beginning to impress him as the no-nonsense type. With his first three witnesses called and dismissed in thirty minutes, the defense attorney introduced into evidence twelve Spartan School of Aeronautics flying reports as specimens of John Gorrell’s handwriting. Moss then called Judge Franklin Kennamer to identify a letter his son had written, after admitting that he himself, Moss, had not read the letter. Next, he formally introduced the actual extortion note, which Judge Kennamer declared was not in his son’s handwriting.
When Gilmer passed on cross-examination, King jumped to his feet and shouted to Moss, “Do you mean you are offering evidence you haven’t even read?” he asked, referring to the letter the defendant had written. Again, King was able to catch Moss off guard.
“Don’t be surprised at anything I do,” he answered quietly.
King two, Moss zero.
But Moss was too experienced to let anything in the courtroom affect him, and he moved on to Wichita, Kansas, handwriting expert Jesse Sherman, a veteran of more than 750 trials. While Moss reviewed Sherman’s qualifications, the extortion note was handed over to the prosecution, where Dr. Gorrell had his first opportunity to inspect it himself. It was not as he had hoped. It was his son’s handwriting after all.
“If the defendant is seeking to prove that Gorrell wrote the extortion note,” Gilmer interrupted Moss, “we will admit it.”
Stunned, Moss replied, “You admit that the handwriting on the envelope and two pages of the letter is that of Gorrell’s?”
“Yes.”
The prosecution was prepared for this but still maintained that Kennamer was the author of the note, even if he didn’t actually write it. Privately, they believed Gorrell wrote it to get Kennamer off his back, or he was intimidated. According to the defendant himself, the note was written in his hotel room the morning of November 21, while the two were alone.
Admitting the note was written by John Gorrell deflated Sherman’s testimony and whatever impact it may have had on the jury. Instead of fighting it, going along with it was the state’s best strategy to reshape what it actually meant. If Kennamer plotted all this to portray himself as a hero, the extortion note would be the key to his entire story. Kennamer couldn’t force Gorrell to kidnap Virginia if he didn’t want to, but he could pressure him to write an extortion note. Once he had documented evidence in the victim’s handwriting, Kennamer could do exactly what he did: build a story around it that portrayed Gorrell as the evil bad guy and himself as Virginia’s brave defender.
Gorrell wasn’t alive to tell what happened that morning when he wrote the extortion note, but the statements from nearly every prosecution and defense witness firmly established that Phil Kennamer was a prolific liar. The boy couldn’t even keep his story straight between his two interviews with the World and Tribune.
All of this had made Flint Moss’s job incredibly difficult. When Kennamer surrendered, he’d told reporters this was a simple case of self-defense. That argument was quickly shredded by multiple witnesses who said it was premeditated, forcing Moss to push an insanity defense as eighty percent of his opening statement. This put Kennamer in the awkward position of claiming to the jury that it was self-defense when I did it, but I was als
o insane at the time and didn’t know right from wrong.
The only evidence of self-defense in the case was Kennamer’s own account of what happened. To support that claim, the high-school dropout would have to tell the jury himself. Moss had to go along with it because Phil had dug that hole deep. Kennamer was all by himself on that one, but the best strategy for Moss was to simply overwhelm the jury with stories from family and friends, as well as expert witnesses, that supported his agenda.
The balance of the defense witnesses that Friday were designed to turn the courtroom into a sympathy festival—for Phil Kennamer, the prodigal son; Phil Kennamer, the abnormal child; Phil Kennamer, the love-sick dreamer. Moss firmly believed this was his best hope for an acquittal. If the jury found his client not guilty by reason of insanity, the court would be forced to let him go free. After all, the trial was not an insanity hearing, the outcome of which could put Kennamer in a state mental hospital.
Longtime Kennamer pal Claude Wright was not supposed to be an important witness that day, but his two hours of testimony fed the jury outrageous stories from the life of the defendant. He was the fourth witness called and one of three friends whose recollections would provide anecdotal evidence to support defense psychiatrists’ claims that Kennamer was insane at the time of the “unfortunate tragedy.” While Wright’s testimony uncovered irrational and immature behavior, it was actually seen by many as just the sort of childish deeds and daydreaming that could come from any boy with an active imagination, but not necessarily one who was insane.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t peculiar stories to be told. Wright’s most shocking account was the time Phil jumped out of a second-story window with a noose around his neck when he was just five years old.
“Phil was attempting to explain to the kindergarten teacher how to tie a knot in the rope and he tied a curtain-string around his neck in a hangman’s knot and jumped out the window. He landed in a sand pile and wasn’t hurt,” Wright said.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 21