Bloody Williamson (34 page)

State’s Attorney Boswell built his case on the testimony of former Birger gangsters. All agreed that on the day of Jones’s death Birger was absent from Shady Rest. Jones and Millich, then the caretaker, quarreled over the question of who had charge. In the course of the argument Millich shot Jones.

This much the defense admitted. They contended, however, that Millich fired in self-defense, and that Gowen was an innocent bystander who did nothing more than help drag the body to the bear pit, where it lay until the next day when Birger, having returned, gave orders that it be thrown into Saline Creek.

Oral Gowen, thirteen-year-old brother of Ural, gave damaging testimony in behalf of the prosecution. He was plowing in the vicinity of Shady Rest, he related, on the day the murder took place. When he heard shots he ran to the cabin.

“Who was the first person you saw when you got there?” he was asked.

“My brother,” he replied.

Harry Thomasson, now serving his lifetime sentence in Menard Penitentiary, testified that on the day of the killing he was at the barbecue stand when he heard shots from the direction of
the cabin. Running there, he came upon Jones, face-down on the ground. Gowen, standing over the body, had Jones’s machine gun in his hands; Millich was near by. Several others came up, saw what had happened, and returned to the stand. Thomasson went with them. Once he looked around, saw Gowen and Millich dragging the body by the heels to the rear of the cabin. Shortly afterward he heard two more shots.

When asked why he did not do something for Jones while the dying man lay bleeding on the ground, he answered with a flash of his old defiance:

“I don’t generally get mixed up in killings that aren’t my own.”

Millich took the stand in his own defense. In his halting English he told a straightforward story. On the day of the killing he was walking from the barbecue stand to the cabin when Jones, behind him, called out: “Rado!” As he turned, Jones opened fire with a machine gun. Millich pulled the trigger of his own rifle. Jones missed, Millich did not. That was all there was to it, except that Ural Gowen had had no part in the shooting.

The jury, after pondering the evidence for fifteen hours, found both defendants guilty. Gowen’s punishment was set at twenty-five years in the penitentiary, Millich’s at death.

In the first murder case arising from the gang war the prosecution had won two convictions and one death penalty. Charlie Birger, in his cell, had something to think about.

Ten days after the verdict Judge Hartwell overruled a motion for a new trial and announced that Millich would be “hanged by the neck until dead” on October 21, 1927. The condemned man stood before the bar, impassive, until the judge finished. Then he asked permission to speak.

“I had no fair trial,” he said. “The evidence was framed against me by Mr. Boswell. I never killed the man because I wanted to but because he forced me to. I tell the truth.”

The sheriff led him to his cell.

June 1927–April 1928

J
UNE
11, 1927, was a memorable day in the history of the gang war. That afternoon Art Newman revealed the revolting story of the murder of Lory and Ethel Price. In the morning Charlie Birger, now fighting for his life, met his first setback.

The occasion was a hearing on a motion for a change of venue. Birger entered the crowded courtroom on the heels of a deputy, jaunty and confident, took a chair at the side of his pretty young wife, who had previously found a place inside the rail, and clasped her hand. While his lawyers contended that local newspapers had prejudiced the general public against their client, and that the publication of Harry Thomasson’s confession had heightened the prevailing animosity, he listened intently. When the judge denied the motion he showed no sign of disappointment, but he twisted and squirmed with impatience during an argument over the date of his trial. As soon as that was settled he turned to the sheriff and said abruptly: “Are you ready?” After a brief good-bye to his wife he fell in behind the officers and marched, ramrod-stiff, from the room.

On the 6th of July, as a Williamson County jury was about to
decide the fate of Rado Millich, jailers led Birger, Newman, and Ray Hyland into the bare courtroom of the Franklin County courthouse to stand trial for the murder of Joe Adams. Arguments on motions took up the first two days. After that came the tiresome business of selecting a jury. All the defendants paid close attention to the questioning, the State’s Attorney trying to ascertain each talesman’s attitude toward capital punishment, the lawyers for the defense feeling for reactions to insanity and alibis.

One morning, before court convened, an incident revealed how bitterly Birger and Newman had come to hate each other. In response to a question from a reporter, Newman said something about Birger’s connection with a bank robbery some months earlier. Birger overheard.

“Why, that guy’s crazy!” he exploded. “I didn’t even know him then. Look at him sitting over there. Anybody can tell he’s crazy.”

Facing his codefendant, he continued:

“You dirty, woman-killing son-of-a-bitch, you ought to be ashamed to ask for a trial. You ought to ask the people to hang you.”

“That’s enough of that,” Newman growled.

One of Birger’s attorneys quieted him. As he subsided he remarked for all to hear:

“If Newman gets out I want to hang.”

Although the interminable questioning of prospective jurors was a dumb show to the spectators, they jammed the courtroom from morning to night. Whenever the sweltering heat and sheer boredom drove someone to the open air, newcomers waiting outside at the head of the stairs would jostle each other for his place. If they could hear little of what went on, and make little out of what they heard, there were the defendants to gape at—Birger by the side of his wife, his two daughters on his knees; Newman, dapper and nonchalant; Hyland of the swarthy complexion, thick lips, sloping forehead, and sinister joviality. Since
the courtroom was small, only a few of those who sought admission managed to squeeze inside. Others, by the hundred, stood in the courthouse square, forced to be content with a brief glimpse of the prisoners as they were led to and from the jail.

A week passed before a jury was completed—a jury of miners, farmers, and clerks, all with such “American” names as Fisher, Gunn, Knight, and Simpson. Then the lawyers made their opening statements, and the State’s Attorney began to call the witnesses for the prosecution.

Following time-tested tactics, he worked slowly to the testimony by which he intended to prove his case. Two days went by before he introduced the widow of the victim. Dry-eyed, she spoke in short, toneless sentences, with no striving whatever for dramatic effect.

Clarence Rone, serving a term in the Williamson County jail, tightened the case against Birger. The boy was seriously ill, and spoke in such a low voice that the jurors strained to hear him. He had been at Shady Rest, he related, on the night before Adams was killed. He saw Harry and Elmo Thomasson come in, and he watched them enter a closed room with Birger, Newman, Ritter, and Hyland. An hour or so later Harry left; the others stayed all night.

The next afternoon, Rone continued, he saw Connie Ritter hand a pistol to Newman, who in turn gave it to Hyland.

“Take the bullets to the basement,” Ritter ordered, “and dose them with poison.”

Then he scribbled a note that he read aloud, sealed, and handed to Elmo.

Rone was at Shady Rest when the gang gathered there after the killing. Birger was elated.

“That was fine work you boys did,” he said to the Thomassons. “I won’t have to worry about that big son-of-a-bitch any more.”

Harry Thomasson, however, was the witness on whom Martin relied for clinching his case. Staring sometimes at the floor, sometimes at the three defendants, the young convict told the full story of the crime.

On the night of December 11, 1926, Birger, Newman, and Ritter called him and his brother into a room at Shady Rest and closed the door.

“We’ve got a job for you two boys and it’s got to be done tomorrow,” the gang leader announced.

Art Newman asked Harry if he had ever killed anyone.

“No,” the boy answered, “I never had enough against anyone to kill them.”

Birger broke in. “You are the boys to kill Joe Adams. He don’t know you and the law won’t suspect you. What I want you to do is this. Go to West City and leave your car about a block from Joe Adams’s house. Then go up to the front door and knock. If Carl Shelton, Joe Adams, or Ray Walker come to the door, shoot, and don’t stop to ask questions. If anybody else comes to the door, ask for Joe. If they say he’s not there, stick around in the neighborhood and watch the house.”

They sent for Ray Hyland. “Jew,” Birger said, “we want you to drive a car tomorrow.”

“Why, that Jew ain’t got guts enough to kill anybody,” Newman taunted. “He wouldn’t even drive the Chrysler that bombed Joe Adams’s house.”

“What do you say, Jew?” Birger asked.

Hyland laughed. “I don’t know, Charlie. I’ll think it over.”

Harry wanted to go home that night. Birger objected, but finally
allowed him to go to Benton, where he stayed with Pearl Phelps.

The following morning, Thomasson continued, Elmo and Hyland came after him and the three drove to Shady Rest. He described, as Rone had, the poisoning of the bullets and the writing of the decoy note. In the remainder of his testimony, he repeated, substantially, the confession he had made in April.

As Thomasson left the stand, after a futile effort by the defense to shake his testimony, Hyland smiled. Newman’s face was expressionless. Birger yawned, but those close to him heard him mutter, “Damn,” and saw that beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

On the morning after Thomasson’s appearance the state completed its case and the judge declared a recess until afternoon. Attorneys for the defendants used the time for a conference. Again Newman showed the depth of his animosity toward his former friends. He would have nothing to do with his codefendants, he announced, and he would not confer with their attorneys for the purpose of making a joint defense.

Although upset by Newman’s attitude, the lawyers for the defense proceeded, after the recess, to make their opening statements prior to putting the defendants on the stand in their own behalf. R. E. Smith, representing Birger, asserted that his client had not stopped at Shady Rest on the night of December 11, and that his peregrinations on the following day, when Adams was killed, were for the sole purpose of tracking down Carl Shelton. Hyland had driven the car for the Thomasson brothers, his lawyer admitted, but had not even an intimation that they planned to commit murder. Newman, according to W. F. Dillon, whom he had retained, was implicated only because he had met the killers after they had done their work. The meeting, he asserted, was accidental—Newman had run into them by chance while he was delivering gin to one of Birger’s customers.

At the conclusion of the opening statements, Newman told his attorney that he wanted to speak to him in private. The two men
retired. Dillon soon emerged, obviously perturbed, and called a conference of his colleagues. He related what Newman had just revealed to him—that the little gangster intended to take the stand and tell the full story of the Adams killing. Newman had added that his testimony would be corroborated by a confession that he had made to John T. Rogers on the way back from California—a confession that Rogers, by agreement, had kept secret.