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

by Morrow, Jason Lucky

  Besides calling Sgt. Maddux, the jury listened long and hard to Oscar Hoop, who testified on several different occasions. He turned over to them the affidavit Maddux had given him regarding the alleged bribe offer. The jurors also heard from nearly all of Maddux’s superiors, and most of the other detectives, who told the grand jury everything they knew about the case and their colleague, Sgt. Maddux.

  On April 19, the eighth day of the proceedings, the grand jury requested a meeting with all four of the city’s commissioners. When it was over, Oscar Hoop spoke with Chief Carr in his office before the two of them demanded that Sgt. Maddux meet with them at once. What happened next became front-page news throughout the state that weekend.

  “When I walked into Chief Carr’s office Friday morning, Chief Carr and Commissioner Hoop were seated. Hoop immediately told me that I was going to be indicted by the grand jury for concealing evidence from the grand jury,” Maddux told a Tulsa World reporter. “Commissioner Hoop said that my testimony before the grand jury was not the same as his in regard to the bribe offers and that the members of the grand jury had told him that unless I left the department, I would be indicted. He gave me thirty minutes to resign or be fired.”

  Maddux then said he told Hoop and Chief Carr that he didn’t want to embarrass the department, but he explained that he was broke and wanted time to look for a new job. He asked for and received permission to date his resignation for May 15.

  “I brought the resignation back into Chief Carr’s office,” Maddux continued, but Commissioner Hoop was not there. He returned in about ten minutes, and read my resignation. He took his pencil out and marked the date [May 15] out, substituted April 19, and had me approve the change by initialing it.”

  When asked it about it that same day, Hoop first tried to deny it, and then later confirmed it when he told an Associated Press reporter, “Maddux is through. He’s out.”

  Unknown to Maddux, when he spoke to Hoop about the bribe offer in December and in several meetings afterward, the commissioner had taken notes of what the criminologist had said. Those notes revealed that Maddux’s claims about the bribe changed each time he told it. Testimony from his fellow officers and superiors also likely confirmed the revelations brought out by Hoop.

  When the jury concluded their investigation the following Wednesday, their report eviscerated Sgt. Maddux, whom they blamed for a good portion of the false rumors that had plagued Tulsa for the last five months. They also found no evidence regarding Gorrell’s murder that was not brought out during the trial, and concluded that there was no evidence that Born was murdered, but only because Maddux had failed in his duties.

  At the outset, let us say that the vast amount of purported evidence turned in has been voluminous and the major portion founded upon rumor.

  Our investigation has failed to disclose any material matter which was not brought out in the trial of this case. We have accepted the report of the ballistics expert of the department of justice on the proposition that both bullets found in John Gorrell’s head were fired from the same gun.

  We have been unable to ascertain the existence at any time of any nude, compromising or obscene pictures involving any people connected with this case or any citizens of Tulsa, and we are of the opinion that no such pictures exist.

  We found no evidence of a $25,000 bribe having been offered to any member of the police department.

  We have also made what we deem a very thorough, complete, and exhaustive investigation into the death of Sidney Born Jr. At the present time, the grand jury is unable to determine whether or not Sidney Born Jr. committed suicide or was murdered.

  We feel that as a result of the Kennamer-Gorrell case and the Born case, that this community has suffered irreparable damage and injury. These cases were highly publicized and due to the prominence of the parties involved, many and various rumors were started and an untold amount of gossip engaged in. We feel that these matters have been enlarged upon, distorted, and exaggerated, and our investigation has further disclosed that these rumors were without foundation.

  In this connection, we have spent many hours trying to ascertain the source from which these rumors emanated. We have reached the conclusion that former police Sergeant Maddux was in large measure responsible for a great portion of the inaccurate and unfavorable publicity. We are also of the opinion that Sergeant Maddux failed to make a complete examination into the death of Sidney Born Jr. Also, that he was solely responsible for the unfounded statements and rumor that the bullets found in the head of John Gorrell were fired from different guns.

  This grand jury was considering filing of an accusation and ouster against Maddux, but prior to the [completion]of action along this line, the grand jury received information that he had resigned, which meets with the hearty approval of the grand jury.

  The Tulsa Tribune was among the many who were happy to see Sgt. Maddux go, and they reminded readers that in addition to his many other transgressions, he had tried to play them for fools when he told them about the Wrightsman note.

  During the noon hour [on December 3, 1934] Maddux sent word to [a Tribune reporter] that he had in his possession a $10,000 extortion note which had been mailed and delivered in Tulsa. He would not admit that it was the letter to Wrightsman he had exhibited, and the announcement was given wide publicity both in Tulsa and elsewhere.

  ‘You’d give your right arm to see this letter,’ Maddux said to the Tribune reporter, exhibiting an envelope on which was printed the name and address of C. J. Wrightsman, Tulsa oil man. Maddux declined to discuss its contents.

  [Later] that afternoon Maddux told reporters the note he had shown and his announcement referred to the same instrument, but late in the day he said for the first time that the note was three years old.

  In a long editorial, the Tulsa World gave high praise to the grand jury, and commended them on their findings, which the paper confidently declared would silence, once and for all, the persistent rumors that had plagued the city for five months.

  The grand jury found out that, beyond all question, too many people had talked too much, and that the big talkers, when time for a showdown came, didn’t really know anything. This flood of rumors was the real cause of the convening of the grand jury; its careful work should settle all the talk and make the rumor mongers subside.

  Every opportunity has been given these gossips to tell what they know, if anything, and they have failed to make good. The grand jury report should be a standing rebuke to all such people, and it should remain as a caution to all to quit making unfounded assertions or dangerous surmises.

  Just prior to the release of the grand jury’s report, Maddux was planning to fight his forced resignation in district court. He changed his mind after reading the strong statement that came out against him.

  Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of Henry Bailess Maddux, but Henry Bailess Maddux had one more dirty trick up his sleeve that Tulsans would learn about one year later.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THERE WAS NO WAY IN HELL Phil Kennamer was ever going to serve twenty-five years in prison. This was the era of long sentences by law-and-order judges but also of early paroles courtesy of lenient state laws, pardon-and-parole boards eager to please, clemency by outbound governors, and a lucrative system of “parole brokers.” According to Oklahoma state law at the time, Kennamer could be out of prison in less than twelve years with good behavior. However, the definition of good behavior itself was incredibly loose. As long as he didn’t kill anybody, at the most, he would only have to serve fifteen years. But serving twelve or fifteen years was only necessary if his release could not be successfully achieved through back channels.

  And there was no way in hell Judge Franklin Kennamer was going to let his son rot in prison while his legal team fought for an appeal. When Charles Stuart told the press, “We think the boy is better off in prison while the case is being appealed,” that’s not what he really meant. What he really meant was tha
t Judge Kennamer needed more time to schmooze six of his prosperous friends throughout Oklahoma to pledge property worth $104,000 to secure the $25,000 appeal bond. When the judge and a new attorney, Eben Taylor, appeared in Judge Hurst’s chambers on May 21, they came with the deeds and an excuse: Phil was sick with influenza. It was the second time in five months he had gotten sick with the flu.

  When reporters peppered him with questions as he was released from prison, the boy was in high spirits. Although he had been in the prison hospital for nearly a week, he was obviously feeling better when he launched into a tirade against Tulsa reporters in general, and Lee Krupnick in particular.

  “If that photographer is here to take a picture of me, he’ll get his camera broken.” Phil then told reporters about his seventy-eight days in prison, which included his work in the twine factory, and a journalism course he started but never finished because it took too much time away from reading books.

  “The officials at the prison have been very kind to me,” Phil added. “I have learned a number of things since coming to prison, some good, some bad. I didn’t mind working in the twine plant but if I come back, I hope they’ll put me on the road selling twine instead of in [the] factory.”

  If the prison officials were nice to him, it may have been because his father was friends with the warden. It was a friendship that would later prove beneficial.

  Kennamer stayed in Tulsa that night at his parent’s home but left the next day for his father’s farm near Chelsea, Oklahoma, where he remained for the majority of the time during his appeal. Occasionally, he would make forays into Tulsa, which included a brief visit with his new enemy, Jack Snedden.

  Three weeks after his release, his defense team filed their brief with the Oklahoma criminal court of appeals. In it, they outlined nineteen legal atrocities committed by the prosecution and allowed by the court. When Moss argued for his client on October 1, he launched into a scathing attack of Gilmer, Anderson, and his nemesis, J. Berry King, and fired off words and phrases like “unfair,” and “deprived of constitutional rights,” and “taking advantage of a minor,” and “vicious, pernicious, and vile,” as well as “prejudicial, inflammatory remarks.”

  He was also not shy about blaming Judge Hurst, who, because of the media, “was swept off his feet,” and had imposed an excessive sentence. They also blamed him for not declaring a mistrial during the Edna Harman fiasco, even though Anderson himself had called for one, which Moss had rejected.

  1936

  Although Gilmer asked the judges for a mandate to send Kennamer back to prison by Thanksgiving, their decision didn’t come until March 13, when they rejected Kennamer’s appeal with the declaration that he had had a fair trial with an unbiased jury and that the sentence was not excessive. Jumping on the bandwagon of the court’s decision, Governor Ernest Marland brazenly declared, “There will be no clemency for the youth during my administration.”

  Instead of going back to prison, Phil remained free while his lawyers followed standard procedure and prepared their response to the appellate court’s decision. The law allowed them to petition for a rehearing that would open the door for a do-over of their appeal—but it was a long shot.

  As the defense team regrouped, Judge Kennamer took the rare step of brazenly announcing to the press that a private investigator had uncovered new, documentary evidence.

  “We have some really new evidence,” Judge Kennamer told the press in Oklahoma City. He and his son were there to present it to the governor, and to ask for a new investigation into the entire case. “It will make you sit up and take notice when it is divulged. The attorneys will present it when the time comes.”

  That time would come on April 11, when the defense launched a two-pronged attack to petition Judge Hurst for a new trial, and a motion for the criminal court of appeals to rehear their arguments, based on the new evidence.

  On the face of it, the new, documentary evidence provided by a private investigator was intriguing. But just as Moss and Stuart laid a trap for the prosecution in Edna Harman, it was the prosecution’s turn to set a trap for the defense. After it was over, and the dirty tricks were laid bare, Flint Moss would recuse himself from the defense team—permanently.

  In the petition for a second hearing before the appeals court, the defense attached four affidavits. The first one declared that one of the jurors, before the trial, had stated his opinion that Phil Kennamer was guilty, “and therefore was a prejudiced juror.”

  The second and third affidavits asserted that Jack Snedden had lied on the stand when he said he’d asked Kennamer at the Owl Tavern on the night of the murder if he was going out to kill John Gorrell, and Phil had answered “Yes.” That affidavit was made by a Pawnee jailer who said he had overheard a conversation between Kennamer and Snedden in the courthouse restroom during a trial recess.

  “Kennamer asked Snedden why he did not tell the truth when he testified,” the second affidavit declared. “Snedden said ‘I can’t because I’d get in trouble and I’m afraid to.’”

  The third affidavit was from Owl Tavern proprietor Jack Arnold, who professed that Snedden was highly intoxicated Thanksgiving night, and that he came in the next day with a hangover and remarked that he couldn’t remember anything about the night before.

  But it was the fourth affidavit that Judge Kennamer was counting on to free his son. It was made by a twenty-one-year-old man from Illinois who declared he was a friend of Gorrell’s during the single semester the two attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, during the fall 1933 semester. It was accompanied by two letters, allegedly written by Gorrell, but signed “Jeff” and “Steve,” which portrayed the sender as an outlandish, over-the-top, “criminal mastermind,” the defense stated. In one of the letters, dated September 1934, “Gorrell” attempted to draw Wright into his criminal enterprise.[41]

  A group of local boys has started to organize for the new administration coming in soon [Sheriff-elect Garland Marrs]. We have the slot machine racket for Tulsa lined up pretty well. We have the sheriff where he will play ball with us and seeing that Oklahoma is a dry state, we have sent for a man to get the liquor concession under control. I wonder if you might be able to come down and get in on the ground floor.

  . . . To make things easier on all concerned, we have the federal judge’s son well in the gang so there is might little danger anywhere.

  . . . I am going to K.C. and handle the K.C. end of the business with the [gang members], etc. As far as your end is concerned, I’ll have to write you from K.C. on Sunday.

  In his affidavit that was taken in the boy’s hometown of Canton, Illinois, Wright further stated that Gorrell had proposed to rob three safes on campus and kill the night watchman if necessary; to fly drugs and aliens from Mexico into the United States; and in 1933, to kidnap a high-society girl from Tulsa, fly her across the border into Mexico, and hold her for $50,000 ransom. To top it all off, Wright’s affidavit conveniently declared that Gorrell “indicated [that] if anything went wrong, Phil Kennamer was to be the fall guy.” From looking at her picture in a crime magazine, Wright identified Virginia as the intended kidnap victim, and claimed that she and John had been writing each other since 1933.

  To pile on more inflammatory accusations, the defense motion also claimed the prosecution bought and paid for testimony because Dr. Gorrell did pay Edna Harman the one hundred dollars. He was lying, they asserted, when he said he didn’t pay her, (even though she was forced to take the stand by subpoena, which would nullify any reason Dr. Gorrell would have for paying her the money she requested).

  When the affidavits and letters were made public, the backlash came hard and fast. Garland Marrs denied ever knowing John Gorrell in his lifetime. John Gorrell and Virginia Wilcox never knew each other, and it was stated at trial that Phil Kennamer had to supply Gorrell with the Wilcox address. In 1933, John Gorrell didn’t have a pilot’s license, and he couldn’t fly anywhere or rent an airplane.

  When Jack Snedden heard
about the libelous claims made by the defense, he sent a telegram from Princeton University, where he was attending school, to Dixie Gilmer, who released it to the press.

  I have just learned that part of the evidence upon which Kennamer seeks a new trial is based on the premise that my testimony was untrue and that I was intoxicated when Kennamer was disarmed and that I was afraid to tell the truth.

  Those allegations are, of course, maliciously false. Last summer, Phil approached me and requested that I change my testimony. Because of my refusal, my family and I have been subjected to indignities.

  Gilmer and Dr. Gorrell had been waiting for this moment since December 1935. When the press came to them looking for a response, they detonated their own bomb: the private investigator working for the Kennamers was Henry Bailess Maddux. As it turns out, Maddux had approached Judge Kennamer in the fall of 1935 with information about Wright that he had gathered during his investigation. The disgraced, former detective then worked out a secret deal with the judge to get “documentary evidence” that Gorrell was a big-time criminal mastermind who was ready to frame his son. As part of their agreement, the judge agreed to pay Maddux $250 and gave him assurances that he would use his influence get him a job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[42]