A third account published in a 2001 book about the 517 PRCT described what happened on the road to Trans-en-Provence this way: “En route, shots sent everyone diving for cover. Lt. Harry Moore and PFC Phil Kennamer yelled they would deal with the problem. Five minutes later, when the firing ceased, the gun crews started forward. ‘We found Moore and Kennamer face down in the road, both of them dead,’” reported a soldier who was there.
Soon after they were killed, the machine-gun nest was knocked out with point-blank fire from a howitzer, and encirclement by a squad of infantrymen led by Lt. Allison, Captain Vogel wrote in his after-action report. During the skirmish for Trans-en-Provence, Jacques Debray, a French paratrooper and guide for the American soldiers, was also killed during hand-to-hand combat with two German soldiers.
On a visit to Oklahoma for a legal matter during late November 1943, Kennamer had told Tulsa World Managing Editor Edward Burks about a premonition he had.
“Something just seems to tell me,” Kennamer said to his dinner guest at the family home, “that I won’t come back. I hope that if I die under the flag of my country, those who have condemned me will hold me differently in their memories.”
His wish was granted. News of Phil Kennamer’s death spread nationally when it was made public on September 27, one day after the army officially notified Judge Kennamer on his farm in Chelsea.
Governor Kerr declared that Kennamer’s death on the battlefield justified the parole board’s decision to grant his freedom. “He has joined the ranks of Oklahoma sons who have given their lives that we may be free,” Kerr said in solemn tone to a Tribune reporter. “No man can do more.”
Editorials from scattered newspapers throughout Oklahoma and Texas proclaimed that with his sacrifice came redemption.
“Such a sacrifice will purify any life and clear the record of any individual of any errors of his youth,” declared the editor of the daily newspaper in Ardmore, Oklahoma.
“It isn’t easy to atone for a crime,” the Denton Record-Chronicle stated on September 30, “but Phil Kennamer . . . has done as much as any man can do in atonement. Kennamer is no more a hero than thousands of other Americans who have laid down their lives in battle, but at least some of the black mark on his name should be erased by his sacrifice.”
The Daily Oklahoman had more eloquent words with its praise for Oklahoma’s fallen son. “No matter what Phil Kennamer ever did and no matter what mistakes he ever made, he died in a uniform for country’s sake, and that settles all scores. Let us forget the errors of youth, however serious those errors may have been, and remember only that Phil risked his life and gave it freely out yonder in the battle and the storm.”
This caliber of public absolution was exactly what Judge Kennamer wanted—before 1944. Although he finally got it, it came with a price he was never willing to pay. For on the morning of September 26, when he received that telegram from the War Department, Franklin Elmore Kennamer discovered what John and Alice Gorrell learned on the floor of a Pawnee hotel room:
That God has not invented pain like the pain of losing a child—and all the pain that came before could barely be remembered. In the years that remained, when they were lost in their quiet yearning for those lives they would never see, they were broken by the theft—of the way it was supposed to be.
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Epilogue
Holly Anderson: 1897-1974
After leaving office in January 1937, Holly Anderson worked in private practice for two years until he entered the state House of Representatives in January 1939. His first act was to introduce a bill requiring a three-day notice for obtaining a marriage license in order to prevent “gin marriages,” in which couples from Texas crossed the border into southern Oklahoma to marry on a whim because they were drunk and horny. In 1942, after Anderson had already won the Democratic nomination for reelection, he resigned from public office to join the US Army Air Force with the rank of lieutenant, where he served as a technical training officer. After the war, he returned to private practice and died on May 3, 1974. He and his wife, Virginia, had two daughters.
William Dixie Gilmer: 1901-1954
William “Dixie” Gilmer served as the Tulsa County Attorney from 1937 to 1946, where he developed a statewide reputation as an aggressive prosecutor. With his popularity and name recognition firmly established, he entered the Democratic primary for governor, but lost to Roy Turner, who went on to win the 1946 election. In 1948, Gilmer beat Republican incumbent George B. Schwabe to represent the First District of Oklahoma in the US House of Representatives. His congressional career only lasted one term, and he spent most of that time in Walter Reed Hospital being treated for tuberculosis. Schwabe regained his seat in the 1950 election, and Gilmer returned to Oklahoma, where Governor Johnston Murray appointed him to serve as state commissioner of public safety. During his time with the Murray administration, he introduced several improvements, including the use of radar in state patrol vehicles. He died from his illness on June 9, 1954, two days after his fifty-third birthday. He and his wife, Ellen, had no children.
J. Berry King: 1888-1962
After the Phil Kennamer trial, J. Berry King entered private practice, but poor health forced him to retire by the 1950s. A World War One veteran, he was active in the American Legion as well as the VFW. He was known to be an avid newspaper reader and often wrote letters to various Oklahoma columnists and editors. In a 1959 letter to an Oklahoma City newspaper columnist, he described himself as “chairman of the bored.” He died on November 24, 1962. His wife, Sadie, moved to Houston, Texas, and died there in 1984. They had no children.
Henry B. Maddux: 1898-1953
Following his public termination from the Tulsa Police Department, castigation by the grand jury, and procurement of a discredited witness statement for Judge Kennamer, which he then tried to sell to Dr. Gorrell, Maddux lived in Tucson, Arizona, and Roswell, New Mexico, where he owned and operated cemetery monument companies.
In 1947 he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he worked in the insurance business as a risk manager and sales director. He retired from the life insurance branch of the American National Insurance Company in 1952 and died of a heart attack on January 2, 1953.
Although his obituary says he was fifty-two when he died, military records available from Ancestry.com indicate he was born on December 30, 1898, and was actually fifty-four years old at the time of his death. His obituary also reveals that Maddux was “…an internationally recognized rifle marksman. His awards include the International Wimbledon trophy as the best marksman in the world, a dozen other trophies, and fifty medals.”
Captain Henry Maddux, of the Texas National Guard, did win the International Wimbledon marksman trophy in 1923. He also won second place in a 1922 national competition when he was a lieutenant. In spite of his actions during the Kennamer-Gorrell case, he served his country in the military during peacetime and in war, earned several promotions, and distinguished himself as a one of the best marksmen in the world during the 1920s.
Austin Flint Moss: 1880-1943
After Moss quit the defense team following Kennamer’s failed appeal in April 1936, he continued in private practice, but a heart condition forced him to enter semi-retirement a few years later. In March 1943, he retired for good and moved with his wife, Marjorie, to Long Beach, California, where he died later that year, on December 16, at the age of sixty-three. He lived long enough to see his client paroled.
Hon. Charles Bingley Stuart: 1857-1936
Defense attorney Charles Stuart died on October 30, 1936, six month
s after the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals rejected Kennamer’s appeal and banned his case from the Pawnee County Court. As a former federal judge during territorial days, and one of Oklahoma’s most famous litigators, Stuart was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame on April 26, 1937. His death notice in the Daily Oklahoman was full of praise and declared him to be “the most feared and most respected man ever to practice law in Oklahoma.”
Judge Franklin Elmore Kennamer: 1879-1960
After Philip died in 1944, Judge Kennamer lived a quiet existence on his farm near Chelsea, Oklahoma, until he died of heart trouble on May 1, 1960. He is buried in the Chelsea Cemetery near his daughter, Opal, who never married. His second wife, Pauline, used her ex-husband’s last name until she died in 1955. She is also buried in the Chelsea Cemetery.
Edna Harman: 1891- or 1893-1958
As near as I can tell, Edna Harman managed to keep her name out of the newspapers until she died in San Diego, California, in 1958, at the age of sixty-five or sixty-seven. Different authoritative sources list her birth year as either 1891 or 1893. In spite of the controversy she created during the Kennamer trial, Edna Harman had a family who loved her dearly, and she was known to be an active member of her church in Tulsa.
Sidney Born Jr.: 1915-1934
No one was ever arrested in connection with the death of Sidney Born. Although the coroner declared he committed suicide, Born’s life insurance company sided with the family and paid the $1,000 death benefit to his father.
Virginia Wilcox: 1916-2008
Following her October 1936 marriage to Jack Snedden, Virginia and Jack had two children: Jack Robin Snedden Jr. (1938-2003), and Beverly Virginia Snedden [Freese] (1939-2014). After serving in the merchant marine during World War Two, and then enjoying a successful business career, Jack Snedden died of pneumonia on November 12, 1946, three days short of his thirty-first birthday. Virginia later remarried, but she had no more children. Her grandson, and the son of Beverly, Jim Freese, is also working on a book about the Kennamer-Gorrell case. Virginia died in 2008 at the age of ninety-two.
Philip Kennamer: 1915-1944
In Trans-en-Provence, along the main road to Draguignan, near the intersection of Impasse Notre Dame and Place de 16 Aout 1944, beside a small chapel, there is a tiny city park where the locals have erected a war memorial to the three soldiers who died there during Operation Dragoon. The memorial is a rough-cut stone with an iron Patriarchal Cross, and an engraved marble slab that, when translated, reads: “In Memory of Debray Jacques, Harris T Moore, Phillip (sic) Kennamer, American parachutists who died facing the enemy on August 15, 1944, for the liberation of the village.”
In 1947, Philip’s sister, Opal, finished the book he started writing while he was in prison and titled it: The Inside of the Kennamer Case. On August 26, she confidently declared to Tulsa Tribune editors that the manuscript was on its way to the publisher. However, there is no record the book was ever published, and I could find no copy in existence.
Philip’s body was buried in France until it was exhumed, returned to the United States, and interred at Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa on May 8, 1948, when funeral services were held. He is buried in the same cemetery where John Gorrell Jr. and Sidney Born Jr. were laid to rest.
Dr. John and Alice Gorrell, 1881-1961, and 1885-1959
John and Alice Gorrell died in 1961 and 1959, respectively. After losing John Jr. and Edith Ann, they raised their two remaining children Benjamin Franklin Gorrell and daughter Nancy Jane. Ben went on to become a well-respected eye, ear, nose, and throat doctor, like his father. Doctor Ben Gorrell and his wife, Mildred, had three children, John, Benjamin Jr., and Elizabeth Ann, who died in 1992. John is retired and lives in the country near Sand Springs where he is fixing up a twenty-five-foot Sea Ray Cruiser and builds birdhouses for the young patients of a children’s cancer wing of a Tulsa hospital. Ben Jr. is a successful insurance executive in Tulsa. Nancy Jane married George Coe and they had three children together: Mary Ann, Janie, and Andi. Nancy Jane died in 1995.
Acknowledgments
IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND words to adequately thank all the people who helped me with the research for this story. Without them, this book would be much less than what it has become.
It begins with the research department of the Tulsa Public Library, where the kindness of Nick Abrahamson, Jennifer Greb, Kathy Harger, Mary Moore, and Sheri Perkins was overwhelming. They were always professional, accommodating, and helpful. Sheri was particularly helpful with her multi-sourced answers to obscure research questions, and for introducing me to the oral history collection, where I found thirty-five-year-old interviews that added color and depth to a few of the book’s characters.
I couldn’t have written this book without visiting the Pawnee County Courthouse, where Judge Patrick Pickerill gave me a tour and let me explore, and Court Clerk Janet Dallas answered questions and provided historical perspective.
Dodie O’Bryan, from the Pawnee County Historical Society, was as cheerful as she was helpful, providing valuable information and answering questions.
I also want to express my sincere appreciation to Jean Loup-Gassend, author of Operation Dragoon: Autopsy of a Battle: The Allied Liberation of the French Riviera August-September 1944, who helped me understand Operation Dragoon, American paratroopers, and the First Airborne Task Force. His attention to detail is appreciated. We traded dozens of emails, and he was always informative and encouraging.
I also want to thank Operation Dragoon veteran, Merle McMorrow, 92, both for his help with my book and for his service to our country. During our email discussions, he patiently explained to me what it was like to be a paratrooper, to have served during World War II, and to have been friends with Private First Class Philip Kennamer. His book, From Breckenridge to Bastogne: The Accounts of a World War II Paratrooper, contains many amazing stories about his time in the service.
Deadly Hero would be a grammatical and style nightmare if it weren’t for my editor, G. F. Boyer, who went far beyond her primary duties to provide me with helpful suggestions and encouragement. In twenty years of writing, she is the coolest editor I’ve ever had.
I wanted to save the Gorrell family for last. I met John Robert Gorrell, John Gorrell Jr.’s nephew, last summer while doing research for this book, and he was gracious enough to have me over to his wonderful home. I thank him for being helpful to me and for his encouragement to work on this story, even though it must be a difficult subject for his family.
From my heart, thank you, everyone.
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Sources
DURING THE 1930S, EDITORS OF Tulsa’s dailies had a unique style when it came to laying out the front pages of their newspapers. On many occasions, especially as the Go
rrell-Kennamer story began to unfold, they would trumpet a two to six column headline in large type, and then beneath that singular headline, they would run two or three separate news stories related to the case, but each one covering different angles. Above each of these stories would be three to five sensationalistic teasers or sub-headlines that were meant to pull the reader in. Since I could not consider those teasers to be actual headlines, I was forced to use the main one, although it was for two or three different stories. Therefore, when you consider the headlines below, please keep in mind that many of those that began on “page 1,” could represent more than one story.
TDO = The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
MDNR = Miami Daily News Record, Miami, Oklahoma
TAEN = The Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma
TDA = The Daily Ardmoreite, Ardmore, Oklahoma
TT = Tulsa Tribune, Afternoon Newspaper, Tulsa, Oklahoma
TDW = Tulsa Daily World, Morning Newspaper, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Part One
CHAPTERS 1-5
“Mystery Slaying Hinted in Death of John Gorrell,” TDW, November 30, 1934, page 1.
“Murder Seen by Police in Death of Dental Student,” TT, November 30, 1934, pages 1 and 16.
“Startling Mystery Unfolds in Inquiry of Gorrell Murder,” TDW, December 1, 1934, pages 1 and 4.
Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Page 31