King then criticized Phil’s strategy for enlisting a younger boy like Homer Junior, whom he could easily influence, with the hope that he would tell Virginia or her father, and the family would then welcome him as a hero.
“I wonder if it has occurred to you why, if he is all that he is pictured to be, why did he not go to his own devoted father and tell him of the kidnapping plot?” King asked rhetorically. “Now we find him back home with the note. Why didn’t he take it to his father? Show it to some official? Why didn’t he say John had written the note he had in his possession to some person of authority? That is all he needed to do.”
In asking for a guilty verdict, King demanded that the jury “do what his father, Federal Judge Franklin E. Kennamer, failed to do—check him in his career of crime.”
John McCollum blew right into a hyperbolic denunciation of King, the unfairness of the prosecution, and the attempted assassination of Judge Kennamer’s career, before ending with a plea that his client be murdered instead of sent to prison—or something like that. No one could really understand what he meant.
“This trial has been conducted in such a way that it has driven me to conclude that the prosecution has endeavored to destroy fairness. I am going to make the statement now, and you will remember it, that they are trying to use this lawsuit for the purpose of destroying Judge Kennamer,” McCollum said with sincere outrage.
The Pawnee defense attorney then put all the blame on J. Berry King and declared that the sole reason he was brought into the case was to do the dirty work of a political assassin. McCollum then wandered far off-point with a long defense of Judge Kennamer that had little to do with the innocence of his client until he was near the end, when he said the prosecution had not provided the jury with a motive. Nor had they proved, in his mind, that Phil had entered the Gorrell car before John did, which led him to conclude that Phil had somehow been framed for murder by John Gorrell, who carried the gun that killed him.
“Was Phil framed? [By] the other boy? Yes. He proved that. They did. He drove around on that evening with this gun in evidence,” McCollum cried out as he held up the Herrington and Richardson revolver. “This gun was taken from his person and put in the pocket of the car. That was just a few minutes before he was to meet Phil. Just as handy a place as you can put a gun in unless you sit there and hold it in your hand.”
It was a statement that left the prosecution scratching their heads. John Gorrell framed Phil Kennamer for murder by leaving the gun out in order to get himself killed? Or, was he saying the prosecution was framing his client with the theory that Kennamer found the gun before Gorrell returned to his car?
It was hard to comprehend what McCollum meant about anything, or the logic in his conclusions, and it didn’t improve as he wound down his speech. In reviewing how the medical experts recommended Phil Kennamer be treated for his psychopathic personality, McCollum made another confusing statement to the jury. “I would rather have a man commit murder than ask me to send a helpless, mentally deficient boy to the state penitentiary. That is an awful thing to think about. Send this boy to the penitentiary among hard, heartless characters because you have no other place to send him? There is ample law in Oklahoma to take care of him.”
It was another head scratcher. So, John McCollum would rather murder a man, his own client perhaps, than send the helpless, mentally challenged Phil Kennamer to the penitentiary? If he was asking for his client to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, it was a curious way of going about it.
Prentiss Rowe was less prone to overblown hyperbole. Fighting off a flu bug that had ravaged Pawnee, the 240-pound assistant county attorney commanded attention without ever having to raise his voice. Since his work on the jury selection, Rowe had taken a backseat during most of the trial. When given a chance to speak to that jury one last time, his immediate approach was to return to the topic that seemed to dominate the closing arguments, Judge Kennamer. Like all the others, he was overly philosophical on the role of juries and the legal system. Like all the others, he took the scenic route to get to any of the few relevant points the entire case boiled down to. When he did get there, he was surprisingly eloquent, more so than any of the other attorneys.
And where the others were anxious to fill the air with words, Rowe gambled on silence. In order to illustrate Dr. Knoblock’s testimony that Kennamer fired the second shot at least one minute after the first one, Rowe held up his watch and stood in silence for sixty seconds.
“The jurors gazed fixedly on the watch,” Biscup wrote. “The lawyer dropped his arm and shouted, ‘Does that look like self-defense?’”
Rowe also had the foresight to defend John Gorrell’s reputation and to call into question Kennamer’s contention that his victim was a criminal at heart. “It is my deduction that Gorrell would not go on down the line in this career of crime. It is hardly true that a young man who is willing to spend three nights a week working, in order that he may educate himself and fit himself for the future, is likely to turn criminal on a moment’s notice.”
Thursday, February 21, 1935
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, CHARLES STUART argued that is exactly what John Gorrell was: a cold-blooded criminal. Repeating much of what Moss had already said, Stuart again and again drove home the few good arguments the defense had. And just like Moss, he didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but of course, “my judgment and my duty compel me,” Stuart said, before launching into his attack on Gorrell’s character.
“Burgess and Cochrane told Kennamer that this man was preparing a scheme to kidnap his girl. What did Kennamer do? He made up his mind to go to Kansas City,” Stuart said.
“What for? To get the very evidence which he says he did get so he could stop him. What Gorrell wanted was the easy money—he didn’t care one iota about the girl. He wrote the letter,” Stuart insisted as he waved the letter in their faces. “Gentlemen of the jury, here is the letter. It is a pity that a young man of that age, that Gorrell, having all the surroundings of a Christian home—blessed with education—blessed with all the good things of the earth—SHOULD WRITE THAT LETTER!
“IT—is one of the most cold-blooded—exact—brief—severe letters of extortion—that I have ever read.”
In Stuart’s determination, Phil Kennamer showed “inexhaustible patience, inexhaustible forbearance,” by thwarting Gorrell’s devious plot. Then, he took the heroism of Phil Kennamer to a level even Phil Kennamer had never imagined.
“They have chased this boy to the sacred temple of justice and you must see to it that no prejudiced testimony shall enter this case by the poison-spewing of his enemies,” Stuart declared as he paused and turned toward the prosecution. “I love a brave man and I hate a coward. I believe that you are brave men, and like brave and true men you will tell this court that this boy is not guilty.”
After Stuart took his seat at 10:45 that morning, there was only one attorney left for the jury to endure. As everyone in the courtroom cast their gaze toward Holly Anderson, the defense was visibly surprised when his protégé William Gilmer stood up. They had been led to believe Anderson would do the closing, and they had even invoked his name into their own arguments.
This was Gilmer’s big opportunity. His performance during the trial had been acclaimed in the newspapers, and he had matched wits with Moss well enough that it impressed everyone, including Moss. But it was more than that. When the young lawyer stood up and began his address to the jury, with a nervous voice that wavered a bit before he found his confidence, it was a symbolic gesture that the torch had been passed from Anderson. In the next election, Gilmer would be named the new county attorney.
Walter Biscup took note that it was a strong contrast between the final two speakers. “. . . one by a veteran defense attorney who is seventy-eight years old and has practiced law fifty-six years, the other by a thirty-three-year-old prosecutor with ten years’ experience.”
True to his nature, true to his youthful energy, Gilmer unleashed his wrath
on Kennamer and did what no one else had done up to that time: he pounded the boy into dust. Gilmer’s forty-five-minute summation “was the most vitriolic presented by an attorney in this lawsuit, it was agreed,” Biscup wrote.
Harmon Phillips saw that fire in the young attorney as well. “Gilmer proved the sparkplug of the arguments, pacing back and forth and nervously wiping his hand with his kerchief. His voice rose to a shout repeatedly as he literally pounded home his point on the jury-box rail.”
The young prosecutor didn’t waste time with a preamble. He didn’t wax philosophical on the role of the legal system in general, or juries in particular. And he did not unwittingly bore those twelve tired men for the selfish pleasure of hearing the sound of his own voice. With notes in hand, he rapid-fired his points, which always hit their target.
“I’m handicapped in this,” he began with a nod toward his much older counterpart. “I won’t attempt to match the wisdom of Judge Stuart. That would be ridiculous for me to even try. I can’t answer his argument because I saw nothing of an argument in his case.”
Stuart grinned when he heard this. In spite of the boy’s jab at him, mutual respect had developed between them during the trial.
“I want you to believe me when I say the state has tried to be fair in this case. I want to be fair to Phil Kennamer and his father,” Gilmer continued. “But I want to be fair to the parents of that dead boy too!
“When Phil Kennamer at the age of five was talking about a hangman’s noose, John Gorrell was in kindergarten.
“When Phil Kennamer was running away from school, John Gorrell was going right ahead.
“The only thing Phil Kennamer ever finished in his life was the murder.
“I ask you to deliberate in your own cool, sober way, and you go back and see whether the arrogant, supercilious, pampered son of a federal judge has a right to put himself in the place of the law, court, and jury on that Thanksgiving night and pass judgment on John Gorrell—convict John Gorrell—and to put himself in the place of almighty God and say to him, ‘you must die.’
“He hasn’t the right to do that and you know it!” Gilmer boomed.
A few minutes later, the young prosecutor circled back to the same theme. “You have the picture of a good, industrious boy and that of a pampered wastrel. KILLER—KIDNAPPER—KENNAMER—there he sits!” he said, with his finger pointing at Phil Kennamer. “You know it and I know it, and I think Flint Moss and C. B. Stuart know it too.”
As Gilmer neared the end of his summation, one of the shortest of all, he walked back to the prosecution table, picked up the enlarged death photographs and returned to hand them to the jury foreman.
“When you start figuring out this self-defense plea, look at these photographs. I want you to remember these photographs of John Gorrell when you go to your jury room.
“Who was the probable aggressor of the argument in the car that night? Phil Kennamer.
“Who on Thanksgiving night called the Gorrell home three or four times during the day? Phil Kennamer.
“Who sought him out? Phil Kennamer.
“Who started talking of killings and kidnappings? Phil Kennamer. That’s the first word of testimony you heard, that Kennamer was going to kill. He told Cadillac Booth of easy money and kidnappings. He shows all the way through he has criminal tendencies and was abnormal.
“He started the whole thing. We all know he did. At every stage Kennamer was in it.
“The defense says they got out there and stopped [while the two were in Gorrell’s car]. The scuffle starts and he was pushing him in the face,” Gilmer said as he demonstrated on Anderson in front of the jury box. It was a demonstration planned well in advance. “[If Kennamer] was pushing him in the face, why wasn’t the blood smeared?”
Why wasn’t the blood smeared? Uh-oh.
It was the single best point raised over nearly eight hours of closing statements. If the struggle for the gun truly happened the way Phil Kennamer said it did, and the bullet missed his left hand, which was pushing on John Gorrell’s face, why wasn’t the blood smeared as a result of his hand being there? With his hand there, the blood from John’s wound would have been obstructed and followed a different course. It was a great point but one that came too late. When Kennamer was on the stand, King could have nailed him on these issues with a reenactment. How did two bullets miss his hand or wrist? Why didn’t he have muzzle-flash burns on his hand? Why wasn’t the blood smeared?
As he neared the end of his fiery debate, Gilmer asked for something that surprised everyone—and most of all, Phil Kennamer.
“Now let me tell you this—as surely as you send that boy to the penitentiary, the reaction on the part of the father, and I wouldn’t blame him, the natural thing for him to do then is for that father to try and get him of that penitentiary and start to get him out the first day he goes in.
“We are going to ask you for the extreme penalty, gentleman,” Gilmer said with pause. “We are going to ask you to send this boy to the electric chair with the same calmness and coolness in your judgment that he showed John Gorrell on that Thanksgiving night. Send him down there and rub him out the way he did that poor boy in his car. Give him the extreme penalty. That is what we ask you to do.”
JURY DELIBERATIONS LASTED ABOUT as long as the closing arguments. When Gilmer finished five minutes before noon, the jury took a forty-five-minute lunch before deliberating. On the fourth floor of the courthouse, they were locked into one of four rooms, where they debated Phil Kennamer’s guilt for five hours. At 5:30 p.m., they were allowed to leave for dinner at a secluded location and then took a long walk to clear their minds in the cold February air.
With the jury in seclusion, Kennamer was taken back to his cell. Judge Hurst retired to his farm to inspect his pecan trees. Surprisingly, nearly all of the defense team left Pawnee, and only John McCollum remained. Holly Anderson lounged in the tiny press room and chatted with reporters nearly the entire time. All the other prosecutors disappeared except Dixie Gilmer, who went back to the hotel to rest.
With nothing to do but wait, those who had to be there found ways to occupy their time, and in doing so, discounted the dignity of the courtroom. It was as if they were all schoolchildren again, but the teachers were gone and they were locked in the schoolhouse. Inside Judge Hurst’s chambers, four reporters cleared off his desk and began playing cards. Another reporter fell asleep on a gallery bench. As a gag, his colleagues woke him up by setting off a camera flash in his face. One reporter’s wife, who accompanied him to watch the nationally followed trial, sat at the judge’s bench and toyed with his gavel. When five hundred spectators cleared out, they left behind a jumble of newspapers, paper cups, pop bottles, bottle caps, peanut shells, and lunch sacks. The smoking rule, strictly enforced for ten days, was ignored. The trial was over, after all. Cigarette stubs started appearing here and there for the first time, and the smell of tobacco smoke permeated the courtroom.
Judge Kennamer paced the corridor for nearly an hour before settling down to chat with some friends of his as he puffed on a cigar.
Doctor Gorrell also paced and puffed on a cigar for thirty minutes, and then retired to the Graham Hotel, where eighty-five days’ worth of pain and sorrow fought their way out of his chest cavity to a nervous breakdown. Several hours later, John and Alice sat together and wrote out a statement to the press on hotel stationery.
Mrs. Gorrell and I should now like to be relieved of the pitiless publicity that has of necessity pursued us since the tragedy that deprived us of our boy.
We have done what we could to co-operate with the proper authorities in the presentation of the case to the courts.
We find no fault with the trial in its several stages and shall accept the verdict of the court and jury as parents should who have no other refuge in periods of grief as great as ours has been. Our only emotion toward Judge and Mrs. Kennamer is one of the deepest sympathy.
Whatever the result, we trust no Tulsa father or mother s
hall ever be called upon to sustain the sacrifice we have made.
Perhaps the result may bring an awakening. John would want us to be brave under such circumstances. We shall strive to be so in memory of him.
For our sake, please let the press and public conclude that with the final expression of the courts, the tragedy shall remain sealed within our hearts.
John and Alice Gorrell meant every word of what they wrote. According to their grandson, John Robert, they never spoke of the case publicly, and barely mentioned it within the family. If they spoke of John Jr., it was to recall more pleasant memories and his achievements, not his death.
At 8:55 p.m., the jury foreman rapped on the door to let the bailiff know they had reached a verdict. Fifteen minutes later, the pale-faced prisoner was brought in, and he sat between his father and John McCollum, the only defense attorney present. When Dixie Gilmer walked in with Anderson, Kennamer’s hate-filled glare followed the young prosecutor all the way to his chair. His “rub him out” with the electric-chair comment had rubbed Phil the wrong way. His scowl was so intense Biscup declared it was Phil’s strongest show of emotion during the entire trial.
Surprisingly, the courtroom filled up with spectators who only had twenty minutes to get there from the time Judge Hurst was notified to when he was handed the verdict. The Gorrells were among them and soon, it would all be over with.
The verdict, with Kennamer’s fate written on it, was passed to Judge Hurst, who read it before handing it to Court Clerk Nora Harshbarger: “. . . We find the defendant guilty of manslaughter in the first degree and being unable to agree upon the punishment leave the penalty to be assessed by the court.”
Judge Hurst thanked the jury and scheduled sentencing for two o’clock Saturday. He secretly dreaded having to determine the sentence, and wanted two days to consider his decision.
As he sat there, wearing the same blue-checked suit he’d worn the night he killed John, Phil Kennamer took the news quietly, his face blank. His left arm slowly slipped to the back of his father’s chair then up to his shoulder to comfort the man he would need now more than ever before.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 25