Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland Read online

  Deadly Hero

  Also by Jason Lucky Morrow

  The DC Dead Girls Club: A Vintage True Crime Story of Four Unsolved Murders in Washington D.C. 88 pages.

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  Famous Crimes the World Forgot: Ten Vintage True Crime Stories Rescued from Obscurity. 288 pages.

  Volume One – Silver Medal Winner, 2015 eLit Book Awards, True Crime Category. Kindle only $3.95 or Free for Kindle Unlimited Subscribers.

  Copyright © 2015 Jason Lucky Morrow

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in academic works, critical reviews, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Published by: Historical Crime Detective Books, Tulsa, OK

  Editor: Gloria F Boyer, gfboyer.com

  Cover Design: Jason Morrow

  ISBN-13: 978-1511991711

  ISBN-10: 1511991712

  ASIN: B00XLSKNI2

  First Edition, 2015

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Mom.

  A Special Note on Historical Accuracy

  AS A FORMER NEWPAPER REPORTER, my style of writing is to craft an entertaining story, but also to stick with the facts. I go where the research leads me and in the end, the story is the story. All of the dialogue, quotes, and events in this book are as they appeared in the original source materials. I have not recreated any dialogue or manufactured events to make the story more dramatic. In some cases, especially during the trial portion, I had to trim excess verbiage to make the content flow more efficiently.

  To help bring the characters to life, I relied on an enormous amount of newspaper coverage to guide me in portraying body language, facial expressions, mannerisms, gestures, and tone of voice. These character traits are used to enhance the scene and set the mood, without altering the facts. About half of such character traits were specifically described in the research material. The other half of the character traits portrayed in this book are based on clues found in the research material and should be considered semi-fictional.

  This book was written by referring to approximately 640 newspaper articles, magazines, books, maps, census reports, interviews, and other resources. Although I have done my best to verify the information I have included, in any work of nonfiction, it is inevitable that some facts or interpretations will be incorrect.

  Footnotes: I have used footnotes throughout this book to provide clarity, perspective, or additional information. If you are reading this book on an e-reader, I encourage you to click the footnote links for information that will enhance your understanding of the events and your experience of the story.

  Thank you

  Before we begin, I would like to thank you for purchasing a copy of this book. I truly hope you enjoy this bizarre true story. If you do, I would be grateful if you would write a review on Amazon. Your reviews will really make a difference in the success of this book. As an independent researcher and writer, my only sources of advertising are reviews and word of mouth. As an underdog author in the true crime genre, I rely on my fans to spread the word.

  Contents

  Contents

  Part One: The Murder

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two: The Hysteria

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  Part Three: The Trial

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Four: The Politics of Justice

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jason Lucky Morrow:

  Sources

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Epilogue

  Author

  Part One: The Murder

  His teeth chattering so that he could hardly speak, 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?”

  — Tulsa Daily World

  December 2, 1934

  Chapter One

  Friday, 12:05 a.m., November 30, 1934

  WESLEY CUNNINGHAM JUST WANTED TO get home. After his family’s Thanksgiving[1] meal, the seventeen-year-old met up with friends for an evening out in downtown Tulsa that included a 9:30 showing of College Rhythm, followed by sandwiches and Nehi pop at the Orpheum Theater’s lunch counter. Around midnight, Wesley said his good-byes and sat in his family’s Ford DeLuxe while the engine warmed up. The weather had turned ugly, and the mixture of rain and sleet would impair his visibility for the drive home. It was time to get going.

  Driving south, Wesley was just a minute or two from reaching his stepfather’s driveway, when he saw something unusual in the road. In front of him, on a triangular median wedged between Victor Avenue and Forest Boulevard in the heart of Tulsa’s exclusive Forest Hills residential area, the front end of a Ford sedan had gone partway over the median, with the back half blocking the street. Although his headlights could barely pierce the elements to illuminate the car, he thought he could make out a figure slumped behind the steering wheel. Since it was a holiday weekend and college students were back in town reconnecting with old pals, he first thought it was a rich kid living nearby who’d had too much to drink.

  He lived two blocks away and knew the area well. The square mile of land that radiated out from the troubled car was one of the wealthiest in the state. Several hundred yards to the west, the seventy-two-room Philbrook Mansion sprawled out over twenty-three acres crafted into a garden that would rival the estates of Italy on which it was modeled. Its owner, Waite Phillips, was the younger brother of the founders of Phillips Petroleum. With the rest of the country mired deep in the Depression, oil-rich Tulsa was surviving marginally better than other major cities. And within that square mile lived most of the oil barons and elite of Tulsa society.

  The area was unusually dark, and Cunningham noted that several streetlights in the vicinity were out. His car was equipped with a spotlight, and as he pulled abreast of the Ford, he guided the beam toward the cab.

  “I saw a man, very pale, with blood running down his face,” he would later tell police. But as he studied the situation more carefully, he slowly began to understand that it was no drunk driver. That fella looked dead.

  Accelerating to get out of there, Cunningham sped to his home nearby and told his stepfather, who called police. When the patrolmen arrived on the scene five minutes later, they checked on the driver and
saw what looked to be a bullet hole in his right temple. Blood streaks had gravitated down in jagged lines that took several different directions. Their first assessment of the situation led them to believe the young man had shot himself while the car was still in motion, which might explain why it had gone over the curb. They did find a gun in the car, but it wasn’t where they thought it would be. Instead, it was tucked neatly in a leather shoulder holster that lay on the seat next to him.

  That was odd.

  From the description given by Wesley’s stepfather, the police dispatcher assumed the Ford’s occupant was dead, and at 12:20 a.m. he notified Sergeant Henry B. Maddux, who was on duty. Maddux was the police department’s criminologist and second-in-command of the detective bureau. He’d been hired in January by a progressive new fire and police commissioner, and his boyish face misled others into thinking he was much younger than his thirty-five years.

  There was virtually no traffic on the wet streets as Sgt. Maddux, accompanied by Detective George Reif, drove to the scene. When they arrived at the triangular median, the investigators found the whole area unusually dark. Looking around, they noticed several streetlamps were out. They would need more light. Maddux ordered a patrolman and Detective Reif to reposition their patrol vehicles so that the victim’s car was in the middle, lit by four headlight beams.

  Peering through the open passenger door, Maddux immediately noticed the death car was still in gear, and the ignition switch had not been cut off. When the Ford jumped the curb, it had apparently shut the motor off. Turning his attention to the dead man, Maddux found that aside from the streaks of blood and a small bruise over his right eye, the young driver appeared peaceful. His clothing was in perfect order, and his dark, wavy hair was still carefully in place. His feet were still on the clutch and gas pedals, and his right fingers were touching a leather holster that held a revolver.

  That didn’t sit right with him. How does a man with a bullet in his head put a revolver back in the holster? He didn’t know where this case was going to lead, but his training told him photographs of the dead driver would be needed. As Detective Reif pointed a flashlight toward the cab, Maddux adjusted the Kalart flash, peered through the Kodak’s viewfinder, and snapped a picture.

  After handing the camera off to Reif, Maddux carefully reached into the dead man’s coat and, from an inside pocket, retrieved a wrinkled envelope addressed to John Gorrell Jr., at 1205 Linwood Boulevard, Kansas City, Missouri. The return address was 2116 East 15th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the letter was apparently from the boy’s mother.

  John Gorrell Jr.?

  Maddux didn’t know the name but Reif did; John Gorrell Sr. was a prominent local physician, and if this was his son, it was a bit of a surprise to both of them. There had been a lot of suicides lately, but most of those were by men who had lost fortunes or were beaten down by the Depression. But as he tilted the boy’s head and aimed Reif’s flashlight toward the grisly wound, he made a discovery that would eventually turn the entire city of Tulsa inside out.

  There were two bullet holes in the side of Junior’s head.

  Maddux called Reif to take a look and told the young detective to keep the fact that this was now a murder investigation a secret. Maddux made an instant decision to throw off the killer by letting him think the police believed it was a suicide. He wanted the shooter to relax and let his guard down.

  The sergeant then turned his attention to the revolver jammed tightly into a leather shoulder holster on the seat next to him. With his handkerchief, Maddux lifted the holster from the edge and gingerly placed it in a paper sack. If it was the murder weapon, then fingerprints might link it to the killer. The barrel protruded through the bottom of the holster, and judging by its smell, it had recently been fired. But a more detailed examination would have to wait until later that morning, after Maddux notified the boy’s parents.

  In spite of the late hour, the commotion attracted a small crowd of onlookers. Across the street, the grounds of the Cornelius Titus mansion were well lit, but not enough to reach across the street. Parked in a car nearby were two security guards who worked for Mr. Titus. Sergeant Maddux, a man who lived with his wife in a modest apartment, looked around the area and understood that this was the part of town where the rich people lived. It was not going to be a routine murder investigation.

  As he warned the patrolmen to guard the scene until the coroner arrived, one of them directed the senior lawman’s attention to Wesley Cunningham, who had returned to the area.

  “As I turned off Forest Boulevard, I noticed the car,” Cunningham explained to Maddux. “It looked as if there had been some sort of accident. I stopped when I was abreast of the car and turned on my spotlight.”

  He then told of how he had seen the lines of blood on the right side of the man’s pale face and had sped home to tell his stepfather, who then called police at 12:15 a.m. He estimated five to ten minutes had passed from the time he discovered the car to when the phone call was made.

  That would put the time of death sometime before midnight, Maddux would later report.

  When the police sergeant reached the Gorrell home, a reporter for the Tulsa Daily World had already broken the news to the family. With a lack of sensitivity, the writer asked Dr. Gorrell if he thought his son could have committed suicide, a theory being advanced by police.

  “Ridiculous,” Dr. Gorrell said, while standing in the doorway, dressed in his pajamas. “John was in the best of spirits yesterday. He had been attending dental school in Kansas City and only got home yesterday morning for the holidays. I know that he would not kill himself. He was not the type.”

  Both parents were emphatic in their opinion that John had had no reason to commit suicide. He was a normal, vibrant, young man who was intensely interested in joining the dental profession and was engaged to an attractive young woman living in Pittsburg, Kansas.

  With a scornful look to the reporter, Sgt. Maddux introduced himself and was let into the Gorrell home. At the same dining-room table used by the family just hours before, Maddux proceeded slowly with his questions to the grieving parents. He needed a timeline of their son’s activities that day, where he was, and who he was with.

  John had returned early that morning from Western Dental College in Kansas City, where the twenty-one-year-old shared a room with two other Tulsa boys, Richard Oliver and Jess Harris, the parents told him. Oliver had stayed in Kansas City, but Harris and Gorrell drove back to Tulsa in the Ford. Around noon, John reconnected with his pal Charles Bard, who was home from Oklahoma A&M.[2] The two of them then attended a University of Tulsa football game before having Thanksgiving dinner at the Gorrell home. It was a normal day, but what they told Sgt. Maddux next caught his interest.

  Thirty minutes into the family dinner, they were interrupted by a telephone call. Mrs. Gorrell pushed her chair back from the table to answer the phone, but John was already out of his. There were eight people at the dinner table that night: John and his younger siblings, Edith Ann and Ben; Charles Bard; Dr. and Mrs. Gorrell; and two adult guests.

  “No, I’ll go, Mother,” John had said as he walked to an adjoining hallway where the family telephone was located. His mother couldn’t make out what he was talking to the caller about, but when he returned to the dining room, she could tell something was wrong. The sparkle had left his eyes, and his face was blanched and tight.

  “He looked to be in a state of suppressed nervous excitement,” Mrs. Gorrell said. “When I asked what was wrong, he said ‘nothing.’”

  But just a few minutes later, John announced he and Charles had dates that night, and they excused themselves from the table. They ran upstairs to John’s room to get ready and came back down around 7:20 p.m. When they came back down, his mother could hear the clicking of the telephone dial as her son made a call and then John speaking in a low mumble. After he was done, John and Charlie walked by the crowded dining table toward the front door. She asked her son where he was going and received a terse
reply.

  “Don’t ask me, Mother.”

  That was the last time she saw her son alive.

  BACK AT THE CRIME SCENE, reporters for the Tulsa World and Tulsa Tribune were moving through the growing crowd, looking for neighbors to interview. Frank Moss, one of the night watchmen for the Titus estate, had heard five shots earlier that night. At nine o’clock, he had heard three shots, then the sound of a car speeding away, and then later, two more shots. His partner, Carl Rust, had also heard shooting.

  “I heard three shots and then the sound of racing cars,” Rust told a World reporter. “They came around the curve from over the hill, and then there were two more shots. The cars separated. One of them drove toward town, and the other turned down in such a way that it could have been just where this one was found.”

  Rust assumed it was young people still celebrating the holiday. He judged the incident as unimportant until he noticed all the activity where Gorrell’s car was found. Somehow, the two night watchmen had not noticed the Ford until the police had shown up.

  Sergeant Maddux’s strategy of publicizing a suicide theory, with the intention of getting the killer to let his guard down, lasted only a few hours. As reflected in the morning paper, reporters had learned Gorrell had been shot in the head, twice, and the probable murder weapon was his own revolver, which was returned to the shoulder holster that rested on the seat. That information came from police Captain J. D. Bills, who apparently wasn’t in on the secret.

  After the body was removed by the coroner, Maddux and Reif directed their attention back to the streetlights. Two of them were out, including one with a shattered bowl that was near the Gorrell car. They weren’t sure what to make of this detail, or if it was even connected to the murder. For now, they needed to find Charlie Bard, and they needed to find the two young ladies the boys had been with the night before. To solve this case, Maddux and his detectives would have to reconstruct every minute of the nearly five hours between 7:30 p.m. and 12:10 a.m.