Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (6 page)

Jack Snedden, Virginia’s boyfriend and the son of
a recently deceased oil millionaire, was a primary target of Phil’s boasting.
Warping Snedden into his conspiracy was necessary because someone close to Virginia
would have to tell her what a hero he was. Like her brother, Snedden told
Virginia about the alleged plot. On November 20, Kennamer asked the nineteen-year-old
to drive him to the Spartan Airport so he could catch a Braniff Airways flight
to Kansas City to confront Gorrell.

“He said he was going up there to see if Gorrell
was going through with the extortion plot and, if he was, he was going to kill
him,” Snedden told police and reporters that first week. “He said Gorrell had a
gang up at Kansas City that was planning to kidnap Virginia Wilcox. That he
would be back the next day and asked me to be at the airport at three o’clock
to bring him in to town.”

When Snedden returned to the airport on November 21
to pick up Kennamer, he learned no planes were flying that day because of bad
weather. Later that afternoon, he got a telegram from Kennamer which was sent to
the Owl Tavern, addressed to him.

“Grounded in Kansas
City. Keep your mouth shut.”—K

Huff was telling the truth when he said Kennamer
sent a telegram from the airport. And why would Jack Snedden have to keep his
mouth shut?

When more witnesses came forward that first week
of the investigation, all Kennamer’s movements and nearly every word he said Thanksgiving
night were documented by detectives. When they were done piecing it all
together, Kennamer had cooked his own goose. A timeline of how the murder began
and ended on Thanksgiving night was constructed by detectives and given to
reporters during the week after the murder.

At approximately 7:30 that Thanksgiving night,
Judge Kennamer gave his son a ride to the Crawford Drug Store, across from St.
John’s Hospital, where Phil ran inside and bought his father some cigars and a
magazine. When he returned to the car, Judge Kennamer claimed he asked his son
to come home because the weather was bad. Phil begged off and said he’d be home
between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m. After his father left, John arrived,
[12]
and the two made
plans to meet up later at eleven o’clock. Gorrell then walked across the street
to pick up his date at the hospital and returned home to pick up Charlie.

Kennamer was next seen at the Owl Tavern a little
after 10:00 p.m., where he met up with Snedden, Randall “Beebe” Morton, and
George Reynolds. Morton and Reynolds were also the sons of oil millionaires.

“That afternoon, he called me and told me to meet him
down there [later that night],” Snedden told police. “He called me in the back
and pulled open his coat and showed me a hunting knife. He said he had a date
with Gorrell at eleven o’clock. Beebe Morton took the knife off of Phil; it was
in a scabbard. I asked him if he was going out there to kill Gorrell and he
said ‘yes,’ then I talked to him about his mother and the Gorrells and the
trouble it would cause and he put his hands in his pocket and started
whistling.

“I left him talking to Beebe Morton. He turned and
went out the front door and yelled back that he would be back in five minutes.
I waited there, [but] he never did come back. I imagine it was around 10:30 or
quarter to 11 when he left.”

Kennamer then walked to the Quaker Drug Store, two
doors east of the Owl Tavern, where he ran into his close friend and confidant,
Sidney Born Jr. The Owl Tavern, Quaker Drug Store, and Sunset Café were
clustered together on 18
^th
Street and were the main hangouts for the
children of Tulsa’s elite. They referred to it as the “Jelly Bean Center,” and
it was where they often congregated before and after dances or movies. Born was
the president of the Hy-Hat Club and was the nineteen-year-old son of a
University of Tulsa research professor and petroleum engineer. Earlier that
night, Sidney had been ice-skating on a group date with his girlfriend.
Afterward, he had taken her home and then made his way to the drugstore, where he
was hanging out with other friends when Kennamer walked in.

“I want you to take me someplace,” Kennamer was
quoted as saying, in a statement Born gave to police. But Born was busy and
tried to hand off his car keys to him, to which Kennamer replied, “No, you come
on and take me.”

Reluctantly, but willing to do Kennamer a favor on
a bad night, Born told Maddux and his men that he drove the one mile to St.
John’s Hospital at approximately 10:45 p.m. Kennamer asked him to drive one
block past the hospital, and when Sidney stopped at an intersection, suddenly
and without warning, Phil jerked open the door, sprang out of the car, and
yelled back that he would see him later. Born could not see which direction he
went because of the bad weather.

Police then theorized that Kennamer recognized
Gorrell’s car parked in front of the hospital. Miss Word stated that Gorrell
had placed his revolver in a pocket in the driver’s side door and had left the
door open while he escorted her to the hospital’s front entrance—a distance of
about one hundred yards. Sister Gratiana had signed her in at 10:50 p.m.

It was a sad twist of fate that Gorrell had left
his revolver behind and his car door open.

As it turns out, Kennamer didn’t need his hunting
knife after all. After Morton had taken the knife away, he gave it to Snedden,
who later turned it over to police when he gave his statement.

There was never any struggle or fight, police
claimed. The photograph Sgt. Maddux took showed that, they said. Kennamer shot
Gorrell in cold blood near the triangular median, and a minute later, after the
car had stopped, placed the barrel against his head and fired again. Then he
wiped off the fingerprints, returned the revolver to the holster, and walked
away.

When he surrendered, Kennamer told detectives he
had walked home after killing Gorrell. But witnesses came forward who proved
that was not true. From the murder scene, Kennamer walked two miles northwest
back to the Quaker Drug Store. To get there, he probably walked right past his own
house, which lay halfway in between. Instead of going home, he needed to tell
someone of how he had just saved Virginia by killing Gorrell in order to put a
stop to his devious plot to extort the Wilcox family.

By the time a wet-haired Kennamer got there, Born
had left. Kennamer then went next door to the Sunset Café. Inside, he greeted
several friends before he took pal Robert Thomas
[13]
aside for a
private conversation that took place around midnight.

“Phil asked me how I was. I said okay. He said he
had something to tell me,” Thomas told Anderson.

“‘What is it?’ I asked.

“‘I’ve just killed John Gorrell,’ Phil said. Of
course, I didn’t think he was serious. I thought it was a joke so I wasn’t
serious.

“‘Did you do a good job of it?’ I asked.

“‘Yes, I did,’ Kennamer answered. He then said he
killed Gorrell because of an extortion note.

“‘What extortion note?’

“‘This one,’ he said. ‘Read it.’ I didn’t want to
read it. He insisted and handed me an envelope. It was soiled but had never
been mailed. There were three sheets of writing paper in the envelope, I think.
The letter was written in black ink; it wasn’t typewritten.

“I didn’t pay much attention to the note but I
remember it said if Mr. Wilcox didn’t pay a $20,000 ransom, they were going to
kidnap his daughter, Virginia Wilcox. I remember it said that if he was to get
in touch with them, he was to identify himself over the telephone as H. F. W.
As I remember it, the letter was signed Mr. X. I’m not sure of that though.

“Phil said Gorrell was a dirty rat [and] asked me
if I wanted to see the body. I told him I wasn’t interested. I still thought he
was joking. Phil wanted to tell me more about it. He put the letter back in his
pocket.

“Phil said he killed John Gorrell because of this
extortion note written by John. He said it was the work of a gang in Kansas
City. I didn’t pay much attention to any of the conversation because I didn’t
believe it. It was the first time I heard Phil mention Gorrell’s name. I didn’t
know Gorrell.

“Phil didn’t seem excited. He looked kind of wet.
Something like he was perspiring.

“I also remember now that Phil, when he put the
note back in his pocket, said that he would never show anyone that or use it because
he didn’t want Virginia’s name brought into it.”

Robert Thomas was then asked how the conversation
ended and what Kennamer did next.

“Phil asked me to take him home but I already had
a car full and told him so. Phil said he would take a cab. I told him that
wasn’t necessary because Tommy Taylor was there and he would take him home. I
asked Taylor and he said he would. I then left Phil.”

Thomas didn’t learn of the murder until Saturday
night, and he heard that Phil had surrendered earlier that day. He told his
parents about Kennamer’s confession, and they took him to Anderson’s office Monday
night.

When questioned by police, Tommy Taylor told them,
“Phil asked me if I minded taking him home. I said I did not. I finished eating
my sandwich and we took off together.” Taylor was a seventeen-year-old polo
player at the Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore and was, like most others
in Kennamer’s social group, the son of a wealthy oilman. His account also made
it into newspapers that week.

“Phil turned on the radio in my car,” Taylor
continued. “An orchestra was playing. After I had stopped the car in front of
his home, Phil asked me to wait until the end of a piece of music.

“We talked for a minute or so. I don’t remember
the things we discussed, but they were not important. I told Phil that I had
promised my mother I would be home by 12:30, and that I would have to leave. He
got out and walked toward the house.”

Taylor also said that it appeared as if something
were bothering Kennamer, but since the two were only slightly acquainted, he
didn’t probe further. He estimated the time he dropped Kennamer off to be 12:15
a.m.—about the same time the Cunninghams were calling police.

The story by Thomas and Taylor should have cleared
up a couple of things for investigators. Kennamer didn’t have an accomplice,
and the rumors that Wilcox Junior drove him home after the crime were not true.
Even so, Junior wasn’t off the hook yet. As it turned out, Kennamer wasn’t the
only one shooting a revolver that night.

When witnesses started coming forward to build an
honest account of what had occurred before and after Gorrell was killed, Moss could
see the story was shifting away from a simple case of self-defense. Three days
after Kennamer surrendered, Moss held his first real meeting with his client on
Tuesday, December 4. In the room with them were three more attorneys, recently
added to the defense team. Russell Hayes was a young lawyer married to
Kennamer’s sister, Juanita. Charles Coakley was the old law-firm partner with
Judge Kennamer, and seventy-eight-year-old Charles Stuart was “one of the
Southwest’s most prominent attorneys.” It was a meeting that began at 9:30 in
the morning and lasted well into mid-afternoon. When Moss walked out of the
room, he looked exhausted as reporters rushed up to him.

“The whole business is so queer that no normal
mind can follow through,” he told them.

Anderson had already publicly stated that an
insanity plea would be used, and a rumor was flying around that Moss had
inquired with a nationally-known psychiatrist. Between the county attorney’s
speculation and the rumors, reporters asked him if he was leaning toward an
insanity defense—one he had used many times in the past.

“When you consider what these kids have done,
analyze the conduct of their associates and the acts preceding the actual
killing, just how much mental responsibility there is for what has been done is
beyond me.”

At the heart of it all was the extortion note.
Each day that week, newspapers devoted half their coverage to the extortion
note and the Wilcox family, and the other half to Phil Kennamer and John
Gorrell. Investigators knew of it only because witnesses had spoken of it.
There was a congruity in their account of the note, so they knew it must be
real, even though they had never actually seen it. Where it was and who had it were
mysteries.

“I’m positive that there is an extortion note in
existence and I think I know where it is or where it was,” Anderson told
reporters. “It has been seen by at least ten people.”

“Have you seen it?” a reporter asked.

“No, but how I wish I could!” Anderson bellowed.

When Snedden was asked by reporters if he
recognized the handwriting in the letter Kennamer had shown him, he said, “I
did not recognize the handwriting but I knew that it was not Phil’s, as I would
recognize his handwriting anywhere.”

On Tuesday, December 4, the same day Moss was
meeting with his client, Maddux and Reif traveled to Kansas City, where they
searched Gorrell’s room and questioned his “gang,” which turned out to be a
bunch of college boys who drank hard and chased skirts. Before they returned to
Tulsa, Maddux told a reporter he had discovered evidence that would lead to an arrest
of the son of a prominent Tulsa man.

“The detectives would not divulge the youth’s
identity or the nature or source of their evidence. Maddux said the youth would
be accused as an accessory of the slaying of Gorrell,” the
Tulsa World
reported. “The detective said the youth in question heretofore had not figured
prominently in the case.”

It was a statement that revealed a peculiar
characteristic about Sgt. Henry Bailess Maddux; the lead detective had a habit
of making major announcements that were vague and mysterious, but he stopped
short of clarifying them with concrete facts. This was a major case with a
volatile, ever-evolving story line that went far beyond enthralling Tulsa
residents, and Maddux seemed to enjoy feeding the fire with purposely ambiguous
statements that were soaked in gasoline.