Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (3 page)

Map of Oklahoma showing Tulsa, Claremore, Chelsea, and Vinita.
Click to enlarge.

Saturday, December 1, 1934

AT 5:46 THE FOLLOWING
MORNING, the daily southbound Frisco train ground to a halt in front of the Claremore
railroad station. Three detectives from Tulsa, followed at some distance by
reporters and a photographer, approached the conductor.

“We are looking for a young fellow, Richard Oliver,”
Detective Reif said with a flash of his badge. “He’s on the train and—”

“I know he’s on my train,” the uniformed conductor
interrupted. “That boy is scared to death. He is locked up tight in my
compartment.”

With amazement and near-disbelief, the detectives
listened as the conductor tried to explain in a few hasty sentences what had
transpired in the past hour. Anxious to get the boy off the train, the
conductor excused himself for a moment and returned with a young man who
clearly didn’t want to be there.

When Detective Reif got a look at Richard Oliver,
everything about his demeanor conveyed the dental student’s belief that he
would be horribly murdered at any moment. From his wild, expressive eyes to his
quick, sharp glances in every direction, to his pulled-up coat collar that he
tried to hide behind, their witness looked as if he would break into pieces if
anyone screamed, “Boo!”

“Are you the officers from Tulsa? Thank God you
are here,” Oliver said as he turned and pointed back at one of the cars down
the track. “The man who killed Gorrell is on that train!”

The newsmen were there to catch Oliver’s
frightened state. “His teeth chattering so that he could hardly speak,” a
Tulsa
World
reporter wrote, “Oliver refused details until he had pushed those who
met him into the safety of the baggage room at the Claremore station.”

“He is going to kill me,” Oliver squeaked. “My
God, why did I say that I would name the man who killed Gorrell?”

Detective Reif didn’t know what to think. Maybe
the boy was one of those easily excitable types prone to delusions. Or a
nervous type. Could the killer they’ve been hunting now for thirty hours
actually be on that train? Coming back to Tulsa? It didn’t seem right, but the
boy did look as if he had seen the devil himself.

By the time Oliver finally calmed down, the train
had left the station. He was thrust into a sedan and taken back to Tulsa with a
carload of newsmen following close behind.

Back at police headquarters, Oliver told his
story.

“He got on the train at Chelsea. He was wearing a
tan suede jacket and gray trousers. Almost at once I recognized him as Bob
Wilson. He was the man John feared.

“Wilson recognized me. I could feel his eyes
boring through me. I got up and moved toward the rear of the train. Wilson
followed a few minutes later, taking a seat behind me.

“In desperation, I went to the conductor. I had
received a telegram at Vinita from the Tulsa Police Department advising me that
they would send detectives to meet me at Claremore as a precautionary measure,
and I showed it to the conductor and he protected me.” The conductor had locked
Oliver in his private cabin and then locked the door to the coach.

In Chief Carr’s office with detectives and a
stenographer, over donuts and coffee, Oliver told how he’d first met Bob Wilson.

“John was a happy-go-lucky fellow,” Oliver began.
“He seemed to always invite risks and danger, but he made friends wherever he
went.

“The night of November 15, he got a telephone call
from Tulsa. I was there at the time; also Jess Harris, who shared the apartment
with John and me. He appeared to be worried and said, ‘There’s a fellow coming
up from Tulsa. He is in a jam down there over some slot machines we own and I
am afraid that he is coming up here to get me.’

“The next day, John told Jess and myself that when
this fellow got up here he would introduce him to us as Bob Wilson and
explained that while that was not his real name, it would suffice. He asked
that we take a good look at Wilson for if anything ever happened to him, Wilson
would be the one responsible.

“‘If I am ever murdered or wounded,’ John said, ‘you
will know that Wilson did it. Remember, Wilson will be the man.’

“About eleven o’clock, the night of November 20,
he received another call. This call had come within Kansas City and was from
Wilson. John talked to him for about five minutes. The conversation ended with
John agreeing to meet Wilson in the apartment lobby at midnight.

“A few minutes before midnight, our apartment bell
rang. Gorrell went down to the lobby, remaining there six or seven minutes. Then,
John and Wilson came into our apartment. After a brief introduction, they went
into the bedroom where they remained about an hour. I noticed that Wilson
carried a long parcel.

“Both left the building, neither returning that
night. Later, when I went into the bedroom, I found the package. It had been
opened and I saw that it was a box which had contained surgical gloves. The brand
was
Aid
and as John had a girl in trouble, I figured that Wilson was
probably a medical student he knew who was going to operate on the girl.

“The next day, Gorrell said nothing about Wilson’s
visit, although the man called twice for him. Wilson said he was staying at the
Phillips Hotel. Once, when he called, I answered the telephone. He said his
name was Hake, but I recognized his voice.

“A couple of days later, I asked John what had
happened to Wilson. He answered shortly, saying that nothing had happened to
him. A few minutes later he made this remark: ‘I guess he went back on a
Braniff [Airways] plane. That’s the way he came here. He had a round trip
ticket.’”

The lineage of the revolver was of interest to
detectives, and Oliver was able to clear that up. The weapon was borrowed from
roommate Jess Harris. Gorrell’s parents knew he carried the revolver on long
trips but were unaware that he had been murdered with his own weapon.

 “He said he wanted it for self-protection,”
Oliver explained. “We thought his self-protection talk was nothing more than
make-believe.”

When asked to give a description of Bob Wilson,
Oliver said he was of medium height and stocky, with thick dark hair and dark
eyes. He appeared to be well developed muscularly, but above all, his friendly
personality had been his outstanding characteristic.

As Oliver waited outside the chief’s office, Carr
and his detectives discussed the young man’s statement. It hadn’t provided the
smoking gun, but it gave them a lot of leads to work. A wire was sent to Kansas
City Police to check the registration records at the Phillips Hotel and the
passenger list at Braniff Airways. Detective Fisher would check the airline’s
records in Tulsa.

Around the same time Oliver was telling his story,
a chubby, bald-headed, middle-aged man walked into the Kansas City Police
Department Headquarters and asked for a private meeting with Chief of
Detectives Thomas Higgins. While Tulsa detectives were still trying to track
down Bob Wilson, this new witness had an amazing story to tell of the
twenty-four hours he had spent with John Gorrell’s killer.

And he knew Bob Wilson’s real name.

Saturday mid-morning,
December 1, 1934

Kansas City, Missouri

THOMAS J. HIGGINS DIDN’T
LOOK like a detective. At least not in the way those Hollywood flickers
portrayed hard-nosed, gum-shoe detectives. He was short, wore wire-frame
glasses, and had a comb-over that failed to mask his bald dome. But where
others were brash and forceful, Higgins was methodical, patient, thoughtful—qualities
that led to his posting as chief over all detectives in Kansas City, Missouri.

And when airplane parts dealer and unlicensed pilot
Floyd Huff sat across from his desk that Saturday morning of December 1, Higgins
detected the nonverbal clues of a nervous man anxious to tell a story that he
felt was important. If this fella
believed his story was significant,
Higgins was patient enough to hear him out. In an article that appeared the
following year in a crime magazine he coauthored, Higgins recounted the statement
Huff gave.

He began by handing Higgins a newspaper clipping
about the murder in Tulsa of John Gorrell Jr., a student at Kansas City Western
Dental College. Attached to the Associated Press article was a clipping from a
local newspaper that had pursued the Kansas City angle, with a short but
unproductive interview of Dick Oliver. Higgins read each item twice before
asking Huff the significance of the clippings.

“Chief, that boy was murdered and I know who did
it!” Huff exclaimed. “The murderer told me in so many words that he was going
to kill Gorrell. He told me how he was going to do it. It fits to the letter
with this story.

“That fella will come back here and kill me. He
gave me his name, address, and telephone number. I’m not going to leave here
until that man is arrested.”

“Let’s get this straight, Huff. Start right at the
beginning,” Higgins told him. “I’ll listen. And if your story is worth
anything, you’ll get the action you want.”

“I had known Gorrell for some time,” Huff began. “I
knew that he was a licensed pilot. He was a frequent visitor at the airport.

“The afternoon of November 21, he and another
young chap came to my hangar at Fairfax Airport. They wanted to rent my plane
for a flight. Flying conditions were bad, almost what we call zero-zero. I
refused to let my ship go out.

“Evidently, what I said confirmed Gorrell’s
opinion on the weather, as he was a good pilot. His friend, however, seemed to be
disappointed. We talked for a little while. The boys said they had no way to
get home. I offered to take them to Gorrell’s apartment.

“Gorrell’s friend wanted to go to the Kansas City
Airport, so I drove across the intercity viaduct into Missouri. The fellow sent
a telegram at the postal branch and then went to the airport ticket office. He
left the unused part of a round-trip airline ticket with the agent. He said he
didn’t want to lose it.

“From there, we drove to 2015 Linwood Boulevard,
[3]
where Everett
Gartner lived. Both boys seemed to be well acquainted with Gartner.

“We had been there some time when Gorrell’s friend
brought up the subject of his return to Tulsa. He wanted to return that night,
but all the flights from Kansas City had been canceled.

“Gartner offered to buy the unused airplane
ticket. The deal went through. I then said that I planned to drive to Oklahoma,
and that I would go as far as Bartlesville. That is about fifty miles from
Tulsa.

“‘If you will take me on into Tulsa, I will buy
the gas and oil for the trip,’ this young fellow said to me. That was
satisfactory.

“About 4:30 that afternoon we started for Tulsa.
We stopped at a store and bought a bottle of Scotch whiskey. We opened the
bottle shortly after we left the city, headed south. We had a drink or two. The
weather and roads were all we talked about for some time. For a long while
neither of us said anything. Suddenly, the boy said:

“‘Do you know why I came to Kansas City?’

“I told him ‘no.’

“‘I came up to kill John Gorrell.’

“I looked at him and laughed. He said:

“‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

“This boy opened his bag and pulled out a long
dagger. He said he had some rubber gloves he had intended to use when he
stabbed his friend.

“I thought that was all boy talk and that the chap
was trying to impress me. Then he told me why he had been so disappointed about
the airplane that afternoon. He said he had planned to crack Gorrell over the
head with a wrench and then bail out. That would make it look like an accident.
His little plan would have cost me just about $8,000 for a new plane, too.

“The boy showed me a bump on his head which he
said he suffered in an automobile crash, and I still thought that perhaps he
was just drunk and maybe a little irrational from that crack on the head,” Huff
told Higgins.

“He kept talking about how he was going to kill
Gorrell. Listen, Chief, he said this: ‘Gorrell is coming to Tulsa next week. I’ll
get him then. I’ll drive him out on some lonely road, [and] pretend I have a
flat tire. Then he’ll get it!’”

Higgins would later write that he wasn’t sure if
he should believe Huff, who seemed as if he were trying just a bit too hard to
sell the detective on his wild tale. But there was one item in his story that matched
with what the AP reported: “was found in a motor car in a lonely south side
park area.”
And Huff had just quoted the killer to have said, “I’ll
drive him out on some lonely road…”

“I had become impressed,” Higgins wrote in his magazine
article. “This was a case 300 miles out of my jurisdiction, across two state
lines, but that made no difference. I questioned Huff. ‘What was this fellow’s
name?’”

Huff reached into a shirt pocket, retrieved a
scrap of paper, and extended it to Higgins.

Phil Kennamer. Philtower Building. 4-0219.

“That’s the name he gave me,” Huff said. “When I
left him in Tulsa the following morning he gave me that scrap of paper, first
writing his name on it.”

“Why did he want to kill Gorrell?” Higgins wanted
to know.

“Why, he had some rigamarole about a girl he
wanted to protect. He showed me a letter he said was an extortion note; that it
demanded $20,000 from a man named Wilcox. He explained that the [extortion] letter
threatened the life of Virginia Wilcox, the girl he loved.

“I didn’t read the letter, [because] it was
sealed. Kennamer simply showed me the envelope, which was addressed to Wilcox.
Wilcox is a very wealthy oil man, according to what the boy said.

“I asked him what he was going to do with the
letter, where he obtained it.

“‘Gorrell gave it to me to mail in Tulsa,’ he
said.

“‘Are you going to mail it?’ I asked him.

“He said he was undecided just what he would do
with it. He was very positive in saying he did not intend to turn it over to
police.”

Huff ended his story by reporting that he and
Kennamer had spent the night in a hotel in Pittsburg, Kansas, and had arrived
in Tulsa midmorning on November 22, where he dropped Kennamer off at the
Philtower Building.
[4]

Higgins found the story to be credible.
Astonishing, but credible. There were too many rich details a fabricator
wanting a little notoriety couldn’t have plucked out of thin air. While he
waited for a long-distance connection with Chief Carr to advise him to arrest
Phil Kennamer, he had no idea of the storm he was about to unleash.

“This story, with the lightning-swift developments
that followed in its wake, was to rock Tulsa to its very foundation that
Saturday afternoon,” Higgins wrote. “It would be difficult to find adjectives
describing the bombshell it created in Tulsa Police Headquarters. The name,
which had meant little to me, was a potent one in Tulsa. There was prestige,
both social and professional, behind it.”

Phil Kennamer, aka Bob Wilson, was the son of
Federal Judge Franklin Kennamer.

Tulsa was about to be hit by a tornado.