Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (11 page)

Kennamer then went on to name three young men who
had motive to kill Born and that any one or all of them were responsible. He
said he had given these names to Sheriff Charles Price and that Price knew the
young men.

“You can’t take that fellow’s story at its face
value,” Price said when he was asked about it. “We haven’t got enough on any of
those fellows to arrest them.”

Their names were wisely left out of the newspapers.

Returning to the extortion plot that was on
everyone’s mind, a reporter asked the chain-smoking prisoner, “Why did you show
the extortion note to so many people?”

“I had no reason to fear anything in the case.
When I heard of the plot last September, I set out to stop it. I went about it
carefully and when I had obtained the written note from Gorrell, I had the
evidence to show of the plot and didn’t care who knew it,” Kennamer said.

He was then asked about why he told Robert Thomas
he had killed Gorrell. “Thomas thought I was joking,” Kennamer replied. “I
didn’t offer to show the body. Thomas asked to see it. I told him I had to kill
Gorrell, that it was too bad, but that it was his life or mine and that the
trouble was over the extortion note.”

Kennamer then told of how Tommy Taylor had given
him a ride home and that the next morning he went to his father’s farm in
Chelsea to hunt quail. Saturday morning, he got back on the train to return to
Tulsa to see his attorney, “and make a clean breast of the whole thing.”

With humor, he recalled how he accidentally ran
into Richard Oliver.

“I got on the train and walked to the front of the
smoker car. I sat down and then decided to move further back in the car. I
looked at the other passengers and noticed the man, later known to be Oliver,
and thought he looked familiar,” Kennamer said as he held back his laughter. “His
eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his head!”

He couldn’t hold it in anymore and paused to laugh,
with the reporters joining in. “I—I started to ask him if he was going the
wrong direction for the insane asylum! I looked at him closely and he covered
his face with his hands.”

Despite the poor boy’s being scared out of his
mind, the reporters were laughing with Kennamer. The
World
reminded its
readers of Oliver’s first words to police that morning. “Protect me! The killer
is on this train and is trying to kill me!”

Kennamer continued laughing and remarked, “That is
just another strange coincidence in this case.” The other strange coincidence
Kennamer acknowledged was Homer Junior, Bill Padon, and their dates shooting
out the streetlights near the crime scene.

The day before Kennamer gave his version of the
truth to reporters, the
World
published a story which quoted the
anonymous police official. Since the start of the investigation, the
World
had quoted only two people with the Tulsa Police Department when it came to
their coverage of the investigation: Police Chief Carr and Sgt. Maddux. Within
their December 12 story, the same unnamed police official hinted that the
photos and negatives, which had never been connected with the case but were the
subject of city-wide gossip, “probably will be produced at trial.” For Tulsans—and
scandal-hungry tabloids nationwide—this was another explosive angle to the
case. With all the other problems their children had supposedly gotten
themselves into, now there were naked pictures of them doing things they
weren’t supposed to do until they got married.

“Do you know, for a fact, that the negatives and
photographs figuring in street rumors in connection with the Gorrell slaying
exist?” the police official was asked.

“I can’t deny that they do exist,” the police
official answered, in a puzzling reply.

“Will they be introduced during the preliminary
hearing?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. If the state finds it
necessary to introduce them, I believe they will be available.”

“Do you have them?”

“No.”

“Are they in possession of Dr. Gorrell?”

“I can’t say, I don’t know.”

Exasperated with getting nowhere, the reporter
finally asked this anonymous source, “Where are they?”

“I understand that they are in a safety deposit
vault in a certain downtown bank,” the police official said.

In the paragraphs that came directly before that
exchange, the newspaper is quoting Sgt. Maddux. Later on in the story, Sgt.
Maddux is the next person quoted. If Sgt. Maddux came before and after the
unnamed police official, it wasn’t hard for many to know who it was.

Including Phil Kennamer.

When the subject of marijuana and dirty pictures
came up, Kennamer unleashed a verbal broadside at Sgt. Maddux.

“The efforts of Mr. Maddux to conceal the facts of
this case are little short of criminal,” Kennamer began. “He has consistently
hinted at the existence of salacious pictures involving girls of prominent
families, when he knew that no such pictures existed, in order to perfect the
pattern of the case he has attempted to build around me. He has considered it
necessary to vilify and slander the name of Sidney Born and others.

“I’m morally certain Gorrell had no such
photographs. I know I did not. If anyone has them, they acquired them by the
process known as super-imposition.”

When reporters challenged Sgt. Maddux about the
photographs the next day, he denied knowing anything about them and added that,
as far as he was concerned, the investigation was over.

As for the rumored drug use that was going on
around town, Kennamer denied that he or any of his friends used drugs and asserted
that “narcotics entered in the case in no way.”

But when pressed for why Born might have been
murdered, according to
his
version, Kennamer answered that he was
convinced that someone representing himself to speak for Phil Kennamer telephoned
Born on Sunday morning and made a date for Born to meet at the spot where he
was fatally wounded. When Born went to the drugstore to try to telephone
Kennamer, he was attempting to verify the message. Unable to do so, Born went
to the meeting and was shot in the head by one of the three boys from Gorrell’s
“gang,” who then staged the scene to look like a suicide.

However, Josey Henderson told police the family
only received one telephone call that morning, and it was for her, which made
Kennamer’s story impossible.

The interview came to a halt when it was time to
serve Kennamer his evening meal. In his own mind, he had just talked himself
out of a murder trial. In spite of the sanctimonious confidence he had in his
performance, some of his answers actually seemed plausible. And the prosecution
had a major hurdle with the fact that Gorrell was killed with his own gun.
Kennamer didn’t go to the meeting armed with a weapon; Gorrell did. And if
Kennamer didn’t go to the meeting armed, it would be hard to prove
premeditation. Coupled with the possibility that Gorrell may have actually
written the note, Kennamer’s lawyers had a good defense.

Judging by all the crazy stories being told around
town, Tulsans, it seemed, were capable of believing anything. And if they
believed even half of his story, that could give a jury enough reasonable doubt
to let him go free.

When the judge’s son went to bed that night, he
was confident he’d done the right thing. He had told the truth, and the truth would
exonerate him. Everyone would read his side of the story in tomorrow’s
newspaper, and perhaps they would even let him go free after Monday’s
preliminary hearing. In his mind, Phil Kennamer had just won his own case.

PHIL KENNAMER MAY HAVE JUST
blown his own case. When Flint Moss read his client’s story the next morning,
he got sick, went home, and didn’t get out of bed for two days. One of his
assistants told reporters he was resting from “a nervous condition.”

The fifty-four-year-old attorney liked to play his
cards close to his chest. He didn’t want prosecutors to know about his defense
until the trial. At the preliminary hearing scheduled for Monday, he had no
plans to call any defense witnesses, or to put on any defense at all, for that
matter. Doing so would have shown Anderson and King which cards he intended to
play at trial. But now, his client had given away almost everything. The
prosecution would be adequately prepared to counterattack valid arguments the
defense wanted to preserve for the trial.

In thirty-four years of practicing law, Moss had never
had a client quite like Phil Kennamer. Judge Kennamer shared in his frustration,
but he’d also grown accustomed to his son’s impulsive behavior. After a long
talk with the boy, Judge Kennamer had a long talk with Sheriff Price.

“Judge Kennamer conferred with Sheriff Price
yesterday [Thursday, December 13] and requested that his son not be permitted
any visitors unless they were approved by him or the youth’s attorneys,” the
World
reported the day after the story was published. “Kennamer told the sheriff that
since his son was a minor, he would exercise his privilege as a father and not
permit the boy visitors unless they are sanctioned. The sheriff agreed to the
request.”

In other words, he couldn’t trust his son to keep
his mouth shut.

Local excitement about Monday’s preliminary
hearing soared exponentially over the weekend. Newspapers gave their readers
in-depth speculation on the strategies of both sides as if it were a sporting
match. The lineup of players was announced and dissected. Both the
World
and
Tribune
listed all of the nearly two dozen state witnesses and
reminded their readers of the role each had played in the events leading to the
moment.

For the prosecution, County Attorney Anderson
would lead while his assistant, Tom Wallace, would provide backup. Wallace was
much older than Anderson and had far more experience in the courtroom trying
murder cases. State Attorney General J. Berry King was invited into the case as
a special prosecutor, and his involvement sent a powerful message.

“The state is in this case to give vigorous
assistance to local authorities,” King declared to reporters on Saturday. “It
should be understood that the state is primarily interested in seeing that
criminal laws are enforced, and it is not interested in idle rumors and the
talk of common gossip.”

What King was alluding to was a startling new
development that came from Sgt. Maddux, who had informed his superiors he was
offered $25,000 to “drop certain phases of his investigation.” It was also insinuated
that Maddux might receive bodily harm if he didn’t do so. Maddux was careful
not to reveal the source of the bribe, but declared it was made to him while he
was away from Tulsa interviewing another blind-alley witness. When Chief Carr
and Police Commissioner Hoop were asked about the bribe, they neither confirmed
nor denied it. King would not elaborate on his statement, and Maddux himself
would say very little except to note that a record of his investigation and
evidence of the bribe had been locked away in a safe deposit box.

It was a peculiar claim by Maddux, one that would
take on a life of its own in the months ahead. Its peculiarity dwelt in the
notion that a bribe to drop certain phases of the investigation, as he said it
was, was even possible. It had seemingly come way too late. The entire case was
heavily reported on in newspapers throughout the country. The cat was already
out of the bag. How could Sgt. Maddux be expected to put a screaming, clawing
cat back in the bag without arousing suspicions?

It was an inflammatory accusation that, if true,
made the Kennamer family look suspect and could negatively influence the jury
pool. But Maddux wasn’t the only one throwing mud at the Kennamer defense.
Colonel Hoop, with more verbal ambiguity, softly intimated to both Tulsa
newspapers that he was also in physical danger from the same men who had tried
to bribe Maddux. When asked about both the bribe and the implied threats, he
gave reporters an evasive answer that only seemed to confirm the rumor.

“I can’t say as to that,” he told them.

There was more to the story, but Tulsa would have
to wait to hear it all. For now, it was just the latest in a long line of sensational
proclamations from authorities. The day before, J. Berry King had succumbed to
the trend when he told a United Press reporter, “The real facts in the Gorrell
slaying case have never yet been permitted to come to light. The trial of
Philip Kennamer will prove a series of sensations undisclosed at present.”

There were more sensations? His careless comment
seemed to confirm that the wild rumors flying around town might actually be
true.

Ruth Sheldon, a feature writer for the
Tribune
declared, “. . . he set tongues wagging again in Tulsa.” The public,
already keyed up and on edge, were vulnerable to that kind of tantalizing
statement. When the Oklahoma Attorney General said there was more to the case, folks
believed him. King, like many other officials involved in the case, was fueling
the machine that drove public excitement and jeopardized Kennamer’s chances for
a fair trial.

And Flint Moss was taking note of it.

Despite all the hype and preparation, the task
before the state on Monday was simple. They only had to show Court of Common Pleas
Judge Bradford Williams three things: that Gorrell was slain on the night of November
29, that a crime was committed, and that there was probable cause to believe
that Phil Kennamer had committed that crime. If the judge ruled in the
prosecution’s favor, Kennamer would be bound over, and his murder trial would
be set for the January term of district court. Due to an idiosyncrasy in the
law at that time, it was unlikely that he would be allowed bail.

At first, Anderson said he would only put on a
prima facie case—just enough to have Kennamer bound over. Later on, he seemed
to waffle on this strategy out of concern that many of the state’s witnesses were
in hiding and could disappear completely before the trial date. If he called
them in at Monday’s hearing, their testimony would be on the record, which
could then be used at the trial.

Over-excited from a nonstop assault of rumors and
revelations, many hoped the preliminary hearing could give Tulsans the answers
to all their questions. Who gave Kennamer a ride to the Owl Tavern after he
murdered Gorrell? Was it Sidney Born? And
who was Born’s killer, and
will his death affect the prosecution? What role did marijuana play in all
this? Will the extortion note be presented? Did Gorrell really write it? Where
are the salacious pictures of Tulsa debutantes, and who was in them? Is Wade
Thomas the leader of a criminal gang of rich kids? Why did Floyd Huff serve
three sentences in prison? Is he a marijuana smuggler? What was that Wilcox boy
really up to that night? And the marble machines—what about the marble
machines?

Veteran
Tribune
editor Harmon Phillips played
into the public’s demand for answers when he raised their expectations in the lead
paragraph of a front-page story published the afternoon before the December 17
hearing. “The hysterical theories and fantastic rumors which have swept the
city the past two weeks in connection with the deaths of John Gorrell, Jr., and
Sidney Born, will be reduced to reality Monday when Phil Kennamer, 19, sits in
a courtroom to hear the state, for the first time officially, reveal the facts
upon which it prosecutes him for the murder of Gorrell.”

However, further down in that same article, Harmon
hedged against his over-promise in the lead when he wrote, “The preliminary
trial may prove sensational or it may assume the plane of simple formality.”

Floyd Huff, the state’s star witness, arrived
Saturday, and reporters were cautioned not to interview him or ask questions.
Prosecutors were taking no chances in the final hours. After a one-hour meeting
with the nervous man, Anderson said they were merely “brushing up on his
testimony.”

A big deal was made in the papers about how Born’s
statement to police—that he gave Kennamer a ride to meet with Gorrell—could not
be used at trial. It was an observation used to introduce the fact that witness
statements given at the hearing could be used later at trial “should any state
witness die a natural death, disappear, commit suicide or be murdered.” As
intimated by Anderson earlier, this was a true concern of many.

In anticipation of an insanity defense hinted at
by Moss, Anderson requested that Dr. Felix Adams, superintendent of the
Northeastern Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane in Vinita, be in attendance to
observe the defendant. “At this time, Doctor Adams will begin his official
observation of Kennamer to offset any defense plan [to plead insanity] at the
subsequent trial,” the
World
reported early Monday morning.

The psychiatrist rumored to be snagged by the
defense was one of the biggest names in his field at the time, Dr. Karl
Menninger of Wichita, Kansas. Menninger’s book,
The Human Mind
,
published four years earlier, had made him and the Menninger Clinic famous. For
the next few decades, he enjoyed a successful secondary career as an expert
witness for defense attorneys with clients facing the death penalty. He was
their go-to psychiatrist when they needed to have a client declared insane, and
Karl Menninger declared nearly all of them “insane.” During a 1951 competency
hearing of a spree-killer in federal court in Oklahoma City, evidence was
produced that Menninger had been a long-term but secret member of a national
anti-death-penalty group.

Accurately gauging the public’s interest in the
case, Judge Williams moved the preliminary hearing from his relatively small
courtroom to the more accommodating courtroom of a district court judge. A
large crowd was anticipated. In their Monday morning issue, released before the
hearing began, the
World
accurately revealed what was in store for that
day.

“Indications that a throng will pack the courtroom
and overflow in the corridors were seen yesterday with continuous demands upon
officials for seats. Throughout the day, county and city officials were
besieged at their homes with telephone calls from hundreds of friends and
acquaintances desirous of getting in the courtroom. No official who has been
even remotely mentioned in connection with the Gorrell-Kennamer case escaped
the avalanche of calls.”

In spite of the city-wide excitement, Anderson and
King were cautioning Tulsans that there was likely to be no sensational testimony
or other developments during the hearing. It was a statement that showed
Anderson had finally decided to put forth only the minimum necessary to have
Kennamer held for trial.

“The public apparently does not understand the
significance of a preliminary hearing trial, which is meant only to present
sufficient evidence and testimony to justify the holding of the defendant for
jury trial,” King explained to both
World
and
Tribune
readers. But
nobody was listening, and King’s own relatives in Tulsa reported they were
flooded with telephone inquiries from those hoping to get seats via their
connection with the attorney general.

In addition to the four regular bailiffs, six
deputies were called in that morning to “herd the human horde.” Despite the nine
o’clock starting time, a large mob was already present when the courthouse opened
at 6:45 that morning. Forty-five minutes later, the normally spacious Division
Two courtroom on the second floor was packed with hundreds of seated and
standing spectators. Several hundred more who were too late to get inside massed
together in the second-floor corridors, flowed down a wide stairwell with two
wings, and spilled out all over the first-floor lobby, in a line that kept on
going out the front door. Outside, more people gathered around the large
granite steps and along the sidewalk. Anyone with regular business at the
courthouse that morning discovered it was impossible to park a car within a reasonable
distance.

Photographs taken from the second-floor landing
that day reveal folks of all ages, races, and levels of society. The pressure
of this crowd to get inside became so great that the courtroom had to be locked
one hour before the hearing started. The eight-foot, wooden, double doors
banged and creaked and moaned under the stress of the excited mob.

For the two deputies tasked with escorting
Kennamer to court, the only way down from the third floor was the elevator.
When the doors opened, the hallways leading to the hearing were so clogged with
the morbidly curious that Kennamer had to be rerouted and brought in through
the judge’s chamber. When he emerged into the room, reporters were careful to
note the time, 9:07 a.m., and the dark blue-grey suit with grey tie he wore.
His face was solemn and serious, and he kept his gaze from the crowd.

“As he calmly walked to a chair at the defense
table, the murmur of voices from the spectators developed into a crescendo of
tongue wagging,” senior
World
journalist Walter Biscup noted. He shared
the jury box with nearly twenty other local, state, and national reporters. No
photographers or cameras were allowed, and the visually dynamic scene had to be
painted with words. “Kennamer sat upright and had his arms crossed against his
chest. His face was expressionless. During the two weeks that he was held in
the county jail, the prisoner’s complexion has assumed the ‘prison pallor.’”

In addition to the hundreds of curious spectators
observing his every move, Kennamer was scrutinized by the careful gaze of Dr.
Felix Adams, who was tasked with discerning any signs of abnormality.