Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (5 page)

By late afternoon that Saturday, Tulsa reporters knew
about Floyd Huff’s statement made in Kansas City just a few hours before. According
to Detective Higgins, Huff said Kennamer told him he was going to kill Gorrell,
because John was the mastermind of a $20,000 extortion scheme which threatened to
harm Virginia Wilcox, the woman Phil Kennamer was in love with, if the money
wasn’t paid.

However, the whole bizarre story was more
complicated than that. Those same reporters would soon learn, from Phil, that
Gorrell’s original plan was to kidnap Virginia, and that Phil had acted as
double agent and had gone to Kansas City to convince Gorrell to change his plan
from kidnapping to extortion. Then, with the extortion note in his possession,
Phil could put a stop to it.

The day before, credible rumors had filtered into
the newsroom that a shakedown against a wealthy Tulsa family had already taken
place. But when they interviewed Wilcox, he denied ever receiving a note, and
no other families came forward to claim they were the victims of an extortion
plot. If the Wilcox letter described by Huff was never sent, it was unclear to
everyone where it was or who had it.

At 3:30 p.m., Chief Deputy John Evans arrested big
Wade Thomas, owner of the Idle Hour, a food and beer joint that operated
illegal slot machines and craps tables in the back. No charges were filed, and
Thomas was held in solitary confinement—away from the newspaper reporters, who
were never given a straight answer on why he was arrested. The Tulsa papers
made a big deal of his arrest and insinuated there was a possible connection to
the murder, extortion plot, or both.

For all the jaw-droppers and hard news that
investigators and reporters were trying to make sense of that Saturday, there
was the soft news of a broken family coming to terms with the loss of their son.
More than five hundred people attended the funeral services for John Gorrell Jr.,
held at the First Presbyterian Church. The entire student body of the Spartan
School of Aeronautics attended en masse. After the graveside service, a
Tribune
reporter followed the Gorrells home, where the family tried to reconstruct what
they knew about their son’s ties with Phil Kennamer.

“The first time I heard of Phil Kennamer,” Mrs. Gorrell
said as she leaned back in her chair, “was last summer when, for about a week, he
would come by the house for John accompanied by another boy. The friendship was
short-lived. It just spurted up and then as suddenly died down. I never heard
much of Phil again until Thanksgiving Day.

“Before John came home that day, Phil Kennamer
called for him. I forgot to mention it to John until that night at the dinner
table. Doctor Gorrell had just served John with a second helping, and I told
John that Phil had called twice for him. He looked very funny and didn’t take
another bite of dinner. He went out at about 7:20
[9]
and shortly after
that, Phil called for John again.

“Now, I am sure Phil was just keeping in touch to
see that John was in town and couldn’t get away from him by his calls [on]
Thanksgiving. And to think he shot John with John’s own gun.”

The
Tribune
reporter was the first to break
the news to the family that Kennamer might have killed John over an extortion
plot against the Wilcox family, allegedly masterminded by their son.

“John couldn’t have been mixed up in anything like
that,” Mrs. Gorrell fired back in disbelief. “Why, when the Lindbergh kidnapping
and the others were in the limelight, John was the first to express his horror
and disgust. That was one thing about John. He was never cruel. He could never
have been that way to anyone.

“And as for ever wanting $20,000, John wasn’t like
that. He never wanted big amounts of money. He only wanted small amounts to do
little things.”

“If John had only come to us with all that was
worrying him instead of keeping it to himself, but he wouldn’t do that,” his
father chimed in. “Evidently, he had been threatened in Kansas City by Phil Kennamer,
and that was why he was so upset. But he figured that he could get out of it
without disturbing or worrying us.”

The
Tribune
writer did not press them about
rumors that John had gambling debts owed to Wade Thomas, or that there was a
rumor he’d dreamed up some scheme involving frequent trips to Mexico.

Before ending the interview, the Gorrells
expressed their belief that Phil Kennamer had an accomplice—someone who drove
him away from the murder. That conviction was also shared by Sgt. Maddux and
his detectives, even though Kennamer was telling anyone who would listen that
it was a solo job.

At six o’clock that Saturday night, the judge himself
walked into the courthouse and held a thirty-minute private meeting with his
son in Sheriff Price’s office. Reporters caught up with him as he was leaving.

“I never dreamed such a thing could happen. I had
always instructed my boy to never touch the hair of a human unless it was a life-and-death
struggle,” Judge Kennamer said with tears in his eyes. “Life, it seems, is full
of tragedy.”

Feeling the need to explain himself, the judge
said his son had accompanied him on a quail hunt at his farm, near Chelsea in
Rogers County, on Friday. Later that night, Phil asked his father for a ride to
the local train station early the next morning, explaining that he had to
return to Tulsa on business. Phil then met with Flint Moss in Tulsa, who agreed
to take on his case, but demanded that they travel back to his father’s farm in
Moss’s car to speak with Judge Kennamer first. They returned to Tulsa that
afternoon and surrendered at 2:40 p.m.

As it turns out, Oliver was right. “Bob Wilson”
had gotten on the train at Chelsea, a mere nineteen miles northeast of
Claremore.

The Sunday editions of both Tulsa newspapers were
going to shock everyone. They had it all: Richard Oliver stalked by the killer
on the Frisco train, Floyd Huff’s statement, an alleged kidnapping or extortion
plot involving the Wilcox family, Phil Kennamer’s surrender, the funeral, the
mysterious arrest of Wade Thomas, the Gorrell family reaction, and Judge
Kennamer’s response to his son’s arrest. It should have been enough, but this
was no ordinary day. Later that Saturday night, a tall, young man about
Gorrell’s age pushed his way through the crowded courthouse lobby and marched
down the corridor to the sheriff’s department on the first floor. Standing
behind the same bannister from which Kennamer and his attorney had announced
their surrender just hours before, he asked to speak with Sheriff Price.

“I want to tell him something about Phil Kennamer
and John Gorrell,” he said. “They were planning some hold-ups and other things
a lot worse.”

That got him a first-class ticket to the sheriff’s
private office. His name was Ted Bath, and he was a Tulsa boy who worked at a
refinery in Longview, Texas. He was a close personal friend of John’s, he said,
and had been a pallbearer at his funeral that day. Chief Deputy Evans, who led
the investigation for county authorities, took his statement with a
stenographer.

“Last September I was home on a short vacation,” Bath
began. “One day, in the Brown Derby Café on South Main, I met John and a boy he
introduced as Phil Kennamer. We sat at a table, talking about a number of
things.

“Kennamer remarked that he needed some money. John
and I laughed. Both of us said we always needed money. A little later Kennamer
said the fact that my car had Texas license plates might be useful. He said
there was a place on East 11
^th
Street [the Idle Hour] that we might
hold up and get $300 or $400.

“He had something else in mind because he went on
to say this money could be used to further other plots.

“I didn’t like the idea and said so. I said if he
did, it could mean bloodshed and maybe someone would get killed. Phil made a
gesture as if to say ‘what does it matter?’

“At first I thought he was joking, and when I
learned he was serious about the matter I quickly told them I was not
interested because I had a good job and was doing pretty well for myself.

“The conversation switched, and in a few minutes I
left. I returned to the place a short time later. Phil and John still were there.
Kennamer spoke to me.

“‘Do you know Barbara Boyle?’

“I started to say no, when John interrupted.

“‘You leave her name out of this,’ John said. ‘She
is a close friend of the family.’

“Kennamer then asked me if I knew Virginia Wilcox.
I told him that I did not. He wanted to know then if I could take a couple of
weeks off from work. I said not unless it was for something important.

“Kennamer suggested that I ingratiate myself with
Miss Wilcox and try to get her into a compromising position. He wanted to
obtain some pictures of her. He said he would defray all my expenses. I said I
would not be interested. Shortly after that we left the place.”

As tired as he was after a long day, Deputy Evans
was ecstatic. Bath’s statement confirmed some of the rumors they had been
hearing. It also refuted Kennamer’s assertion that the extortion plot was all
Gorrell’s idea. Kennamer was in on it from the get-go, and it could break apart
his claim that it was all self-defense.

When the news of Kennamer’s surrender first rolled
through the city that Saturday night, more young Tulsans came forward with
incredible stories of their own that allowed detectives to piece together
everything that had happened that fateful night.

Sunday, December 2, 1934

KENNAMER’S SURRENDER ON
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, came at an inconvenient time for the
Tribune
and
afternoon papers nationwide. A few dozen evening editions across the country
were able to squeeze in a short piece about Kennamer’s surrender, his self-defense
claims, and Huff’s statement.

By the next morning, the story had exploded across
the country with front-page coverage in all forty-eight states. In nearly every
AP and UP report, it was never about the young victim; it was a story about the
son of a federal judge committing murder. Phil’s identity was enmeshed with his
father’s, and nearly every headline drove home the fact that it was the son of
a federal judge who was now charged with first-degree murder. He was often
referred to as “young Kennamer” and “the judge’s son.” In the few cases in
which a photo was published, it was his father’s image that appeared.

The story was hot enough that the wire services
and major newspapers in Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York City sent
in their best word-slingers to cover it. They were called newshawks and were veterans
at covering major crimes. When they blew into town, it raised the stakes for
everyone. The most celebrated of them all was Lowell Limpus of the
New York
Daily News
. He was an Oklahoma native who had covered many important criminal
cases of the last decade. His claim to fame was his personal investigation into
the infamous 1922 Hall-Mills double murder that had led to police reopening the
case.

Before the shock of a federal judge’s son
confessing to murder could evaporate, reporters started digging into Judge
Kennamer’s past. After his appointment to the state supreme court, he had moved
his wife and children to Chelsea in Northeast Oklahoma, where he bought a farm
he would own the rest of his life. When appointed to the federal bench in February
1924, the family, with two girls and two boys,
[10]
moved to Sand Springs, a town eight miles west of Tulsa. There, Phil thrived in
school and was twice elected class president.

“Phil was endowed with natural leadership ability,
and was one who would take a project and literally just put it over,” his
elementary school principal later recalled. “Although he did not stand first in
his class, he was a superior student, ranking in the top ten percent. He was
quite well liked by his teachers and he was an able debater.”

In 1928, the family moved to Tulsa, where Phil began
his freshman year. At home, there had always been signs of trouble, but in
Tulsa, the boy fell apart. He would often confide to his sister Opal that he wished
he were dead because he felt he was misunderstood and out of tune with the
world. He first ran away from home when he was six, and he ran away again soon
after the family moved to Tulsa.

In 1930, his father sent his troubled son off to military
school in New Mexico, where he ran away before the school year finished. He
earned just six and one-half credits the semester he was there and failed to
complete his French, biology, and art courses. His highest grade was an 84 in
modern history. He was next sent to a boarding school in Durant, Oklahoma, but
when his mother’s illness with cystic fibrosis worsened, he accompanied her to
San Antonio, Texas, where the warmer climate would ease her condition. Instead
of aiding her, young Kennamer abandoned her. Authorities found the sixteen-year-old
in Galveston on a fishing boat, where he said he was preparing to fight in a South
American revolution but was unsure of which side to join. He later ran away to
New Orleans and then on to Miami, where he was stopped by a federal lawman.
When asked to explain why he was so far from home, Kennamer said he was going
to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. Sent home, he continued to talk about
joining foreign armies and expressed his belief that he could rule a South American
country and be a popular dictator.
[11]

In the 1930s, boys from poor families who ran away
from home were arrested and brought to court, where they were frequently branded
“delinquents.” This label would often earn them a sentence in a state reform
school, where abuse by guards and other boys was common. But every time Phil
Kennamer ran away, his father rescued him. In 1931, Kennamer attended Tulsa’s
Central High School where an intelligence test revealed his high IQ. But his
teachers took note of his inability to apply himself, and he left after just
three months, receiving no credit. In 1933, his father made a last-ditch effort
to provide his son with a secondary education by enrolling him in Tulsa’s
prestigious Catholic school, Cascia Hall.

Just like at Central High, three months was enough
before he quit.

Judge Kennamer then used his influence to get his
son job after job, none of which lasted more than a few months. His most
notable profession, and one that led to his current trouble, was as a reporter
for the
Daily Oklahoman
. While working for the Fourth Estate, he got to
meet
Tulsa World
reporters Preston Cochrane and Pat Burgess, two young men
who would figure largely in the Gorrell investigation. He also got acquainted
with the fast lifestyle of bootleggers and petty criminals, including Oklahoma
City bondsman Henry “Cadillac” Booth, who would play a large role in unraveling
Kennamer’s intricate plot.

It was not unusual at that time for reporters to
rub elbows with criminals, claimed
World
police beat reporter Walter
Biscup in a 1979 interview for a Tulsa Junior League oral history project. To
get the inside scoop, Biscup and his colleagues would hang out at nightclubs
and speakeasies.

“You had a few nightclubs here that were really
run by people who had an underworld tie. They weren’t part of the underworld,
but, on the other hand, they knew what was going on, and you could buy drinks,
you could gamble, in fact; while Tulsa wasn’t a really wide open town, still it
was,” Biscup explained. “And that’s where most of the action was. It was a
different age.”

Biscup also frequented the county jail, where he
talked directly with prisoners behind bars. “I got real friendly with all of
the criminals who were there for a long time and [would] buy them cigars sometimes.
Get magazines. First thing you know, they trust you, and tip you off,” he said.
Biscup, along with Burgess and others, worked on the Kennamer story.

To get Phil to his newspaper job on time, the judge
bought him a car, which he wrecked a few weeks later. He bought his son another
car but it too was wrecked in less than a month. The third car he bought for
his son was wrecked a few weeks after he got it, and only a week or two before
he flew to Kansas City to meet Gorrell.

During his short-lived time as a car owner, he was
stopped by local police for drunk driving on numerous occasions, but only once
was he cited and fined twenty dollars.

Phil had a reputation as a liar and an
exaggerator, but he was also known for his complete lack of fear. Stories
circulated that he once jumped from the running board of one car to another when
both were traveling fifty miles per hour. During a Christmas party the year
before at the Mayo Hotel, he crawled out a window on the sixteenth floor and
walked along the ledge from one end to the other in order to impress Virginia
Wilcox, who was on a date with another boy.

She was not impressed, and the stunt only repelled
her further.

If his attorney wanted to build an insanity case,
his client surely had the history of outrageous behavior, and County Attorney Holly
Anderson forecast that was exactly what Moss would do.

FOR ALL THAT WEEK, city and county investigators labored
long into the night, sifting the factual witness statements from the ludicrous assertions
phoned in by anonymous tipsters and amateur detectives. The Tulsa grapevine
was
thriving on rumors that outnumbered facts, rumors that seemed more credible
only because they were sensational and satisfied the public’s thirst for conspiracy
theories and complicated plots. Local officials had their own theories, which evolved
daily. Still in the matron’s room on the third floor, Kennamer read all the
newspaper coverage and followed the investigation with interest.

“It is strange that they apparently overlook the
obvious in order to seek the mysterious,” he was overhead to say. But they were
only doing their job, and unrelenting rumors fogged the investigation.

“There seemed no end to these startling stories,”
the
Tribune
reported that week. “While officers tend in time to run all
of them down, for the present the prosecutors and reporters centered on those
that seemed most probably linked with the case.”

The
World
also made note of the phenomenon.
“Numerous anonymous telephone calls were being received by police in regard to
the case. Several informed detectives of interested persons who could shed more
light on the mysterious aspects of the slaying. These were all being checked,
and from the haze of rumors, whispered information, and suspicions, officers
were hopeful of abstracting salient facts.”

Wild stories of sexual blackmail, underage
drinking, gambling, marijuana smoking, and narcotic smuggling within the young
social set of Tulsa’s most noted families became the background theme to the
entire investigation and seeped into detectives’ analyses. Those allegedly involved
were associated with the elite Hy-Hat Club, of which Kennamer was once a member.
It was a club of rich boys who were selective about who could become a member or
attend club dances.

For a gang of young wastrels who all owned automobiles,
initiation into the club was rumored to be: “Drink ten glasses of beer, one
right after the other, hop into your automobile and drive around a corner at
sixty miles per hour.”
The unsubstantiated activities of the Hy-Hat Club
coexisted with the city-wide gossip that swirled around the Gorrell murder
until their escapades became exaggerated and distorted, taking on a life of
their own.

On Monday morning, Chief Deputy Evans escorted
Kennamer to Judge John Woodward’s Court of Common Pleas, where his attorney was
waiting for him. Moss waived the reading of the charges and pleaded “not guilty”
on his client’s behalf. Kennamer said nothing during his entire arraignment. He
was smartly dressed in a gray suit, gray shirt, and matching gray tie. All eyes
in the courtroom were on him, and they saw a young man who was completely at
ease—almost as if he enjoyed the attention.

As Moss, Anderson, and Judge Woodward discussed a
timetable for the preliminary hearing, Kennamer fingered a button on his suit,
glanced down at his freshly polished shoes, and then scanned the audience.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a cigarette and match, and lit the match
off his thumbnail. He puffed away until Moss whispered something in his ear. He
then dropped the cigarette on the courtroom floor and smashed it with his foot.

With five other murder trials in the pipeline,
Anderson was able to push the preliminary hearing to December 17. Judge
Woodward ordered Kennamer held without bail. As he was escorted from the
courtroom, he smiled at acquaintances. His father was notably absent.

Kennamer’s immaturity was not lost on those
present, and a
Tribune
writer took note of his attitude.

“When the boy went to jail, he did so, apparently,
without a word of advice from his father about his conduct in jail, or about
other matters of court and jail procedures of which a federal judge could be
presumed to know a great deal. He told the boy he was in the hands of his own
attorney. He didn’t tell him not to talk or not to pose for photographers, or
to drop his light-hearted air.”

Moss did tell his client not to talk, but Kennamer
couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to. In the weeks leading up to the murder, he
spoke often of the necessity to kill John Gorrell to stop him from carrying out
his kidnapping plans in order to save Virginia. Sometimes, he attempted to be chivalrous
by claiming he didn’t want to drag her name into it. But he did drag her name
into it. When he got back from Kansas City, where he later claimed he talked his
adversary into an extortion plot instead, Kennamer showed the three-page letter
to ten of his peers and told them of his plans to kill Gorrell in order to save
Virginia. If they happened to see him as a hero, so be it.

There was only one problem he didn’t count on: nobody
believed him because Phil Kennamer always “talked big.” He told Jack Snedden,
Virginia’s boyfriend, and four of his friends. He told Betty Watson, a friend
and sophomore at the University of Oklahoma. He even told Homer Wilcox Jr., who
then told his eighteen-year-old sister, Virginia, but neither one of them told
their parents because they didn’t want them to worry over nothing. In the past,
Phil had threatened to kill himself on numerous occasions because Virginia
didn’t love him, but he never went through with it. Why would they believe his
latest rantings?

Kidnappers had been in the news a lot at that time.
About fourteen months before, George “Machine Gun” Kelly had gone to trial at
the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City for the kidnapping of wealthy oilman
Charles Urschel. He and his wife Kathryn were sentenced to life in prison. And
then there was the most sensational crime of the twentieth century, the
kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby. Bruno Hauptmann had been
arrested that September and, by the time Gorrell was murdered, the impending trial
dominated nationwide radio and newspaper coverage.

Even with all those headlines in the background to
set the mood, nobody believed Phil Kennamer.

When he surrendered that Saturday afternoon, Moss
relayed to newsmen that his client chose to surrender because he didn’t want an
innocent person to be charged with murder. Although noble, there was no chance
that was ever going to happen. One hour before the murder, Kennamer told
friends he was going to kill Gorrell, and then afterward, he not only told a friend
he’d done it, he offered to show him the body.