Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (21 page)

When Eunice “Alabama” Word was sworn in and
responded to Anderson’s preliminary questions in her Deep South twang, it was
painfully obvious why they called her Alabama.

“She may have uttered ‘pardon my southern accent,’”
Walter Biscup from the
World
wrote, but he really wasn’t sure what she
said. “She is a native of Huntsville and talks with a broad accent, which at
times perplexed the jurors.”

But as the county attorney led her through every
single detail of that fateful night, the jurors grew accustomed to her voice.
She told them everything that had happened from the time Gorrell picked her up—what
they did and whom they were with—to the last moments she was with John.
Anderson had shaken off the Harman disaster and was building up to something
important.

“We got back to the hospital about 10:50 that
night,” she said. “I remember the time because I had to sign up when I came in
because we had to be in by 11:00 that night.” By Anderson’s next questions,
Alabama explained to the jury that the front entrance to the hospital was quite
a distance away from the street where John had parked his car.

“How far was it, what distance?” Anderson quizzed.

“Well, about 100 yards, I guess.”

“Did John go with you?”

“Yes.”

“Now, when he left the car what condition did he
leave it in?”

“He got out on his side and came around and opened
the door for me. He left the motor running and the door open,” Alabama said.

“He left the motor running?”

“It was raining and sleeting hard. There was frost
on the windows,” she explained.

“When he placed the gun in the pocket of the car,
was any part of it visible?”

“Yes, the handle was sticking above the pocket,”
she specified.

“Ever see John touch the gun after he put it in
the pocket at the pig stand where you ate a sandwich earlier that evening?”

“No, I did not.”

As he had done with Oliver and Huff, Moss tried to
discredit both the witness and the victim with questions about drinking. To his
disappointment, Alabama told him they had consumed no alcohol that night.

He then pressed her with questions about how John
was showing off the borrowed .22-caliber revolver and allegedly playing with
it. As hard as he tried, he uncovered nothing other than that Gorrell must have
been a novice at handling pistols since he seemed mildly fascinated by it. In
spite of this, Moss did uncover one interesting fact: before they ate at the
pig stand, they had gone to Cook’s Court, a tourist camp with little bungalows
for travelers.

“What did he do with the six-shooter when you were
there [in one of the cabins]?”

“I don’t know,” she answered meekly.

“You weren’t much interested in
that
six-shooter then?” Moss teased the poor girl.
[37]

When Jack Snedden was called up and questioned by
Anderson, the eighteen-year-old explained that he had been friends with
Kennamer, had driven him to the airport, and for the last year, was Virginia Wilcox’s
boyfriend. Sitting less than ten feet away, Kennamer scowled at his former
friend. His face was clenched tight and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t know what the
younger boy was going to say, but it really didn’t matter.

“On the way to the airport, did you have any
conversation with Kennamer about why he was going to Kansas City?” Anderson
inquired.

“He said he was going up to see Gorrell and if he
was going through with the extortion plot, he would kill him,” Snedden said in
a matter-of-fact tone.

When he didn’t go through with it, Kennamer sent
him a telegram: “. . . Keep your mouth shut. K.” After he got back
from Kansas City, one of the first things he did was to show Virginia’s
boyfriend the note, knowing Snedden would likely tell her, which is what Phil
wanted.

But still, nobody took him seriously.

Snedden then told Anderson about the meeting at
the Owl Tavern, where Kennamer showed him and Beebe Morton the knife he was
going to use to kill Gorrell later that night.

“He told me he had a date with Gorrell and I asked
him if he was going out there to kill Gorrell and he said ‘Yes.’ I talked to
him about his mother and the Gorrell family and the trouble he would cause and
he put his hands in his pockets and started whistling and he made a remark about,
‘calm, cool, collected is me,’ and so I left him.”

“About what time in the evening was it that he
left?” Anderson asked.

“There weren’t any clocks in there but I imagine
it was about 10:30 or a quarter of eleven.”

Gilmer then led Snedden to recount an incident the
previous summer when Phil Kennamer pressured him to telephone Virginia at her
parent’s Michigan vacation home and tell her that Phil was going to drink
himself to death if Virginia didn’t write him a letter. Although she agreed to
write Phil a letter, she instead wrote Jack a sharp rebuke and called into
question the sincerity of his feelings for her. In response to Virginia’s
letter reprimanding her boyfriend, Phil wrote a three-page apology letter to
Virginia and gave it to Snedden to mail, which he never did. Introduced as
evidence by Gilmer, Kennamer’s own letter to Virginia discredited defense
claims that his love for her motivated him to kill.

Phil began his letter by confirming Jack’s loyalty
and devotion to her, and asking that she maintain her relationship with
Snedden. Kennamer ended with a melodramatic reassurance that he was no longer
in love with her. As Gilmer slowly read out loud to the jury, the
nineteen-year-old defendant lowered his head and covered his eyes with his
right hand.

The old feeling is dead, Virginia, whatever I said in my
delirium came from the liquor and not from me. Towards you now I feel nothing
but admiration, respect and friendship. It has been like that for some time and
all I wish in regard to you is friendship. The old feeling is dead . . .
it will assure you of absolute freedom from annoyance from me. So long
Virginia, if we meet again, I assure you it will be casually.

Moss’s strategy for questioning Snedden was not to denigrate
his character as he had attempted with previous witnesses, but to draw out
graphic, firsthand accounts that exposed his own client’s mental instability. He
needed to paint a picture of an irrational, love-sick boy, who would do
anything for Virginia Wilcox, even slay another human being.

“Now then,
JACK
, let me ask you this—shortly
after you started dating Virginia, isn’t it a fact that Phil came to you and
told you that if you ever mistreated her in any way he would kill you? He told
you that, didn’t he,
JACK
? Did he tell you this too,
JACK
, that
if you ever said anything about Virginia that was unfavorable, whether it was
true or false, he would you kill you?”

“Yes.”

Later on, Moss steered Snedden down the memory
lane of another bizarre Kennamer story. “Have you known instances,
JACK
,
when Phil would come to a gathering or a party where you and Virginia were and Phil
had not had a drink that he would dash out and get a glass of beer and then
pretend with the odor of the beer on his breath to be drunker than he was?”

“Yes, he would.”

The reason for this was simple: Virginia had once
written Phil a letter expressing her concern that he was drinking too much.
Therefore, if he acted like he was drunk, he just might elicit more of her
attention. Snedden further explained how Phil used his friendship to get closer
to Virginia. Once, when the two had a date, Phil bought an impressive bouquet
of flowers to be sent to Virginia, but with the instructions that Snedden not
tell her who they were from. But of course, that’s exactly what he did, and
Kennamer knew he would, which is why he used the boy to drive him to the flower
shop. Moss then got Snedden to reveal that during a Christmas dance at the Mayo
Hotel in 1933, Kennamer did not just crawl along the ledge outside the sixteenth
floor—he ran along it.

Although Moss was laying the groundwork for an
insanity defense, the embarrassing incidents revealed in court led his client
to focus his anger on Snedden. During a recess, Kennamer unleashed his wrath on
Virginia’s boyfriend. In the third-floor corridor, the only place he and Dr.
Gorrell and others were allowed to smoke, Kennamer’s face reddened when he saw
Snedden by the water fountain.

“YOU’RE A LYING DOG!” Kennamer shouted. “You don’t
remember what happened at the Owl Tavern Thanksgiving night! I don’t think you
can remember!”

Snedden grinned and walked away. He had told the
jury that Kennamer had said he was going out to meet Gorrell that night to kill
him. That was premeditation, not the actions of a hero, and Kennamer’s anger for
Snedden’s testimony would last forever.

Back in the courtroom, Moss continued his
cross-examination with a yardstick that he swung up and down and back and forth
as he emphasized his points.

 “Now,
JACK
, how many times did he tell you
he was in love with Virginia Wilcox?” Moss asked as he pointed the stick at his
own client.

“I did not count them.”

“Now then,
JACK
, did he ever tell you there
was no use of him living because Virginia didn’t care for him?”

“Yes, he did.”

“How many times did he tell you things like that,
JACK?
”

“Not more than two or three times,” Snedden
answered, seemingly unperturbed by the countless number of times Moss was
enunciating his name.

“Did he tell you,
JACK
, that because
Virginia would not care for him as he desired, that he thought he would commit
suicide by taking poison?”

“He did not tell me he had done it. I took him to
his home
to do it
!” Snedden blurted. However, when they got there, for
some vague reason, Kennamer never went through with it while Snedden was there.
Kennamer later told his friend that he
did
take poison that night, but
that he had taken an overdose, and the poison did not work in that large of a quantity,
and that was the reason he had not died.

After he carried Snedden through more of
Kennamer’s overly dramatic talk of suicide, Moss brought the boy around to the
Hy-Hat Club, of which the witness and his client were once both members. The
Hy-Hat Club was high on the list of salacious angles to the story that out-of-state
newspaper reporters were hoping would be revealed. If drugs or sex or orgies or
naked pictures or even petty crimes carried out by overprivileged brats were to
come out of this trial, it would come by way of the Hy-Hat Club, and their ears
perked up when they heard the club mentioned.

“Now, when the Hy-Hat Club gave a dance, how was
it decided which boy would go with which girl?”

“A list was sent around to each sorority and the
girls would write down the name of the boy they wanted to go with. Then, the club
officers would meet and determine who was to go with who to the dance, [and] then
pair them off,” Snedden explained.

Okay, not yet, but it was coming . . .

“Now,
JACK
, do you know of any instances
when Phil attempted to influence the Hy-Hat Club to let him go with Virginia?”
Moss asked as he raised and lowered the yardstick that was getting on
Anderson’s nerves.

“He usually asked Virginia to go with him and she
would usually tell him she had another date, that is, if she had one.”

Hmmm, still nothing. Get to the good stuff . . .

“You do know that Phil did all he could within the
Hy-Hat Club to arrange it so that he would be Virginia’s escort to the dance.”

“Every time I know of but once,” Snedden recounted
before being dismissed for the day.

That was it? Damn Hy-Hat Club.

Both sides had scored that day, but after the Mrs.
Harman fiasco, the prosecution’s case had lost its edge. In tomorrow’s
newspapers, writers would proclaim the state would likely rest its case later
that day. But the big story that day wasn’t Mrs. Harman or the scandalous revelations
of any witnesses on the stand. Instead, it was the Bruno Hauptmann trial. The
jury had found him guilty and sentenced him to die in the electric chair.

Was it a bad omen for Phil Kennamer?

Thursday, February 14, 1935

PHIL KENNAMER WASN’T THE
ONLY crazy person before the court that Thursday morning. The first order of
business Judge Hurst attended to was a plea hearing for Edna Harman. Charged
with contempt of court, her bond was set at $1,000, and her trial was scheduled
for March 11. Instead of making money as a witness, she lost money as a
prisoner. When Harmon Phillips tried to interview her again as she was being
led back to jail, Edna Harman wasn’t so talkative anymore.

“Although having discussed her appearance here and
[her] reluctance to testify without hesitancy when she first appeared Wednesday
morning, after the court ordered her held, she refused to discuss the matter
with anyone.”

The courtroom started filling rapidly as soon as
the doors opened at 8:00 a.m., and the day began with Flint Moss recalling
JACK
Snedden to the stand. Many in the crowd that day were Tulsans attracted by all
the Edna Harman drama and testimony summarized the night before in a remote
broadcast by radio station KTUL.

Ever since he’d arrived in Pawnee, Moss had lived
up to his reputation as “the smoothest man in the courtroom.” His gabardine wool
suits were tailor-made to fit, and he preferred dark colors with flashy silk
ties and white pocket squares that shimmered. His deep-toned leather shoes were
custom-made by a Tulsa shoemaker. Moss kept them clean by wiping them down as
soon as he got into the building. As much as he wanted the jurors to think of
him as one of them, he wasn’t about to walk around in front of the jury box
with red dirt on his shoes.

Despite some minor setbacks the morning before, he’d
scored big with the Harman fiasco, and the momentum was on his side. The state
would likely rest its case that day, and he looked forward to pushing the
defense’s double-pronged strategy before the jurors. But first he had to chip
away some more from Anderson’s witnesses. He began by introducing the most
damning piece of evidence the defense had: that Gorrell was the mastermind of
the extortion plot.

“Now Jack,” he dropped the enunciation, “tell the
court whether exhibit two is the handwriting of Phil Kennamer?” Defense exhibit
two was the extortion note. Although Moss was showing it to Jack Snedden, a
prosecution witness, he wasn’t going to introduce it into evidence until the
defense was allowed to present
their
case with
their
handwriting
expert.

“This is not Phil’s writing,” Snedden said as he
examined the note he’d first seen at the Quaker Drug Store.

“Jack, did the defendant ever tell you before he
went to Kansas City that John Gorrell intended to kidnap Virginia Wilcox?”

“Yes sir.”

“What did he tell you?”

“About this gang in Kansas City that was going to
kidnap Virginia.” It was the answer Moss wanted.

“Did he tell you what connection Gorrell had with
the gang?”

“Gorrell,” he said, “was the leader of the gang
.
”

ANDERSON AND MOSS EXAMINED AND cross-examined six
of the last seven prosecution witnesses in less than ninety minutes. The
state’s case had been reduced to the short-story version of what happened: Kennamer
said he would kill Gorrell, then he shot him twice in the head, and then he
confessed to it, claiming self-defense.

Anderson’s next witness was Randal “Beebe” Morton,
who testified about meeting Kennamer the night of the murder, and specifically,
how he had relieved Kennamer of the knife—not once, but twice.

Hoping to show that his client surrendered the
knife because he had no harmful intent, Moss asked him, “Now then, when you
went to take it from Phil, he didn’t protest or even resist you, did he?”

“No, not a bit,” Morton said.

But there was a good reason for that. Beebe Morton
was a very big boy—bigger than Kennamer. And when he took the knife away from
him, it was not the first time he’d disarmed a killer. When Morton was just fourteen
years old, he watched his neighbor Roy Freeman barge into his house and shoot
both of his parents to death. Morton then attacked the crazed man, took the gun
away, and called police. Freeman was sentenced to life in prison, and Morton
and his brother inherited from their Osage Indian parents their oil-well rights
granted by the federal government.

No, Phil Kennamer wasn’t going to mess with Beebe
Morton, who then tried to talk him out of murder.

“[Kennamer] said ‘Gorrell is going to kidnap Virginia
Wilcox. I am going to stop it. I am going to kill John Gorrell tonight.’ And I
said, ‘With this knife?’ And he said ‘Yes.’ And I asked him if he was really
going to, and he said ‘Yes.’ I said ‘Phil, do you think it is worth it?’ And he
said, ‘Yes, I am terribly in love with Virginia Wilcox and I am going to
protect her in every way I can.’”

Anderson then called two witnesses who quickly
testified that they saw the defendant come into the drugstore between 10:30 and
10:45 that night, about the same time Snedden said Kennamer left the Owl
Tavern, which was just a few doors down. However, what jurors didn’t hear was
that Sidney Born had told police in December that he and Kennamer left the
drugstore at approximately 10:45. Since it was only one mile to the hospital, his
testimony could have placed Phil at Gorrell’s car while John was escorting his
date back to the sign-in desk.

Shortly after eleven o’clock that morning, the city
coroner, and Deputy Nathan Martin, were also rapidly questioned and dismissed. Although
there was never any doubt, Anderson established cause of death, and that Phil
Kennamer told Martin, “I shot Gorrell.”

But there was one prosecution witness called to
testify whom Moss did not want to rush. No, he was going drag this one out. He
was going to make it hurt. This witness was special.

The State calls Sgt. Henry B. Maddux to the stand.

Moss’s contempt for Sgt. Maddux stretched back
before his claims of turning down a $25,000 bribe, as well as his contrived
bravery to soldier on with his investigation despite an insinuation of bodily
harm. He wanted to know about the photos Maddux took of a dead John Gorrell in
the front seat of his Ford sedan. If he had custody of the negatives, which
were police evidence, how did they get published in both of the Tulsa
newspapers?

Maddux had crossed the ethical line when it came
to damning his client in the press, and now it was time to get a little
payback. But first, Gilmer had to take him back through the night Gorrell was
killed.

“Approximately at what time, Mr. Maddux, did you
see the body of John Gorrell Jr?” Dixie Gilmer began.

“About 12:30 on the morning of November 30, I
believe,” Maddux answered.

“I ask you if, at that time, you photographed
either the automobile or the body inside of the automobile?”

“I did.”

“Later, did you take a photograph of the head and
face of John Gorrell at the mortuary?”

“I did.”

It was a line of questioning designed to introduce
two enlarged photographs of the dead victim. Moss ignored the death-scene photo,
which he sorely wanted to talk about, but loudly objected to the head shot
taken at the morgue, sometime after the murder. While the photographs were
being examined by defense attorneys during their objection, Phil Kennamer
noticeably leaned in and craned his neck to see the gory results. He was a
little too obvious about it for reporters, and when he smirked and grinned at
his handiwork, they took note of it.

Others observed the opposite reaction from the
victim’s parents. Doctor Gorrell buried his face in his hands as his wife ran
from the courtroom in tears.

While the jurors studied the photographs
carefully, Moss interrupted Gilmer to question Maddux on the minute details of
photographing the victim in the car.

“When you took state’s exhibit number six, did you
open any of the car doors?” Moss began.

“Yes sir.”

“What door?”

“Right door. Right front door,” Maddux answered.

“Right front door,” Moss repeated. “Where did you
place the camera in order to take plaintiff’s exhibit number six?” The answer
to Moss’s questions was obvious just by looking at the photographs, so why
bother asking them, some wondered. But Moss had his reasons. He wanted his
detailed questions burned into the memories of the jurors when it came time to
confront Maddux later.

“In front of the right front door. Right door to
Mr. Gorrell’s right side,” Maddux answered.

What made the photo most interesting to observers
in the room is what it didn’t show. “Kennamer has contended that he engaged in
a violent death-struggle with Gorrell before he killed him,” Walter Biscup
wrote for
Tulsa World
readers. “The photograph showed there had been no
struggle, that Gorrell’s body was upright, and that his clothes were in no way
disarranged.”

Resuming his questions, the young prosecutor then
led Maddux to note there was a small bump with a dark discoloration below
Gorrell’s right eye in the photograph. When Kennamer surrendered, he had no
bruises or marks that would indicate Gorrell had fought back.

Gilmer then qualified for the court that the
witness was a criminologist, and Maddux explained to the jurors that meant “the
scientific detection of crime,” and one of his duties for the police department
was to “preserve physical evidence.” But when Gilmer attempted to elicit from
the police sergeant his opinion regarding which bullet wound came first, and the
distance from which it came, Moss successfully objected.

“If he’s testifying as an expert, I want to show
he’s not one,” Moss demanded. “The only way you could tell that answer, to how
far away the shots were fired, would be by actual demonstration.”

After convening from the lunch recess, Moss
recalled Maddux to the stand for cross-examination. “Immediately after court
adjourned you refused to talk to Mr. Charles Coakley, one of the defense
attorneys, about the facts you knew in this case and had not testified to, didn’t
you?”

“I told Mr. Coakley I didn’t think it was my place
to tell him anything at the time,” Maddux answered. He’d been avoiding the
defense attorneys ever since Kennamer was jailed.

“What did Mr. Coakley ask you?”

“He asked me the condition of the gun, if I had
the gun in my possession. I told him I thought the proper place for that question
was on the witness stand.”

“Isn’t it true that Mr. Coakley went to Mr.
Anderson to get a court order to talk to you, and Mr. Anderson objected?”

Anderson loudly objected on the grounds that the
question called for a hearsay response. Always eager to provoke the county attorney,
Moss responded with a salty remark that was not printed.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” Anderson snapped
back. “I want to reiterate my objections to these remarks of defending counsel!”

Judge Hurst once more admonished Moss, who knew he
was getting under Anderson’s skin and thoroughly enjoyed it.

“How long have you been on the Tulsa Police
force?” Moss asked, as he refocused his attention on his favorite defense
witness.

“A year ago last January.”

“Do you have the gun in your possession with which
Gorrell was killed?”

But Gilmer objected and said the gun would be
produced as soon as they had a chance.

“You’ve had plenty of chance,” Moss replied
angrily, which led to another squabble breaking out.

“Another sally from Gilmer brought a comeback from
Moss, and once more Anderson jumped to his feet. He and Moss shouted back and
forth, bringing sharp raps from the court,” Phillips wrote.

“Mr. Gilmer’s remark was first and improper. So
was Mr. Moss’s. Both of you keep quiet,” Judge Hurst admonished. He had become
a babysitter to a bunch of oversized children with law degrees.

Moss then took Maddux through a long dialogue on
bullets, ballistics, the murder weapon, and the process of fingerprint
identification—where he struck oil.

“So, you assert that because of the fact where you
found the gun, and the tests you made to reveal fingerprints on any part of it,
that some person had not only intentionally but successfully rubbed and
obliterated the fingerprints on it?” Moss inquired.

“I don’t know whether intentionally or by
accident, but they were removed,” Maddux replied.

Moss then got him to admit he had not dusted the
butt of the gun, trigger, or leather holster for fingerprints. “It would be
possible to get them off but I didn’t do it,” Maddux confessed.

“How many photographs did you make that night of the
Gorrell body?” Moss casually inquired, getting back to the setup he was
building.

“Just one.”

“One single photograph and one single negative?”

“Yes sir.”

“Now then, whatever reproduction of the photograph
you made that found themselves in the papers of Tulsa were made from state’s
exhibit number six?”

“They came from the same negative,” Maddux
admitted.

“Did you make any other prints from the same
negative and turn them over to the newspapers, from which they produced a
likeness of state’s exhibit number six?” Moss asked.

The color drained out of his face. He didn’t like
where this was going. “I made three or four prints and I suppose that the
newspapers got them.”

“Do you remember seeing the photographs in the
Tulsa papers?”

“I believe I saw one of them.”

Moss, who’d been leaning against the railing farthest
from the witness, sauntered closer as he continued his questions. He was moving
in for the kill. Maddux looked over at Gilmer for support, but there was
nothing he could do.

“That photograph that you saw in the newspapers
came from the state’s exhibit number six. Nobody else took a photograph that
night?”

Maddux shifted in his seat. “I don’t believe they
did.”