Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (17 page)

The other star witness came forward just a few
days before the trial would begin, and what she had to say was a bit of a
mystery. Mrs. Edna Harman was an apartment-building manager with a story in
which she allegedly overheard Kennamer saying something incriminating to
another boy while in the process of renting a room. She had reached out to Dr.
Gorrell, who took her to see Anderson and Wallace. But what neither prosecutor
realized at the time was that Edna Harman was a little unbalanced and
histrionic, and that she had inserted herself as a witness in other murder
cases before. Without knowing it, when Anderson signed her up to testify for
the state, he was taking the single biggest gamble of the entire case.

Many of the names on the defense list consisted of
classmates and friends who had Phil Kennamer stories to share that supported
the defense’s theory of insanity. The list also included Judge Kennamer and
Phil’s sister Juanita Hayes. The only star witnesses they had were their handwriting
expert and Dr. Karl Menninger, the celebrated psychiatrist.

Kennamer’s friends on the list were members of the
Hy-Hat Club. With just a few days to go before the trial began, the often-ridiculed
and maligned club of young men from prominent families, the subject of sensational
journalism from out-of-state metropolitan newspapers for the last two months,
finally received some vindication. A cooler, more rational mindset prevailed in
the minds of local adults who had once looked upon them so critically. The
mission statement of the club turned out to be more altruistic than getting
drunk and holding parties, and professed: “. . . the promotion of
good fellowship among its members, the promotion of good sportsmanship, and the
advancement of society in the best interest of humanity.”

Members paid dues and ended every meeting with the
club prayer: “Most Holy and Gracious Father in Heaven, we who are gathered here
in Thy name ask that Thou accompany each of us as we depart from this meeting,
that we may neither fail nor weaken in the ideals of our creed, and Thy love,
that becomes stronger and better each day in the sight of God and man. Amen.”

This exoneration was further supported by an
announcement on February 1 that both state and defense investigators finally
admitted there were absolutely no naked pictures of high-society girls in
existence anywhere. It confirmed what Ted Bath had told them, if they had
actually listened to him. Bath merely said Kennamer had proposed the idea of
seducing a girl to get compromising photos of her that
could
be used for
blackmail. But at no time did anyone claim to have seen such photos. As in their
overreaction to everything else, authorities and residents just assumed the
photos existed because it was too thrilling to think otherwise.

WHEN THE FOLKS IN PAWNEE heard the Kennamer trial
was coming to their city, it was an immediate source of pride for the community
of 2,800 people.

“This town is ready for the trial and welcomes it,”
said the publisher of the local newspaper. “Everyone, including the defendant,
will be treated with fairness, courtesy and hospitality here. After discussing
the change of venue with numerous people here, I am safe in saying that there
will not be prejudice in this community.”

They cast their eyes 1,400 miles to the east to
where the Bruno Hauptmann trial brought robust commerce to the merchants of
Flemington, New Jersey. The Pawnee Chamber of Commerce estimated $10,000
[32]
would be spent in
their community during the course of the Kennamer trial. Within the first
twenty-four hours, half the rooms at the only two hotels in town were booked,
and the rates doubled. The defense would take up residence at the Graham Hotel,
while the state prepared to move into the Pawnee Hotel. Both of them were
strategically placed across the street from the courthouse. The chamber
president also assembled a list of local homeowners willing to rent out rooms.
The Kennamer family rented out an entire cottage for themselves four blocks
from the courthouse.

When a local hamburger vendor read in the papers
that a hot-dog stand operator in Flemington had cleared $2,000 in one week, and
then learned the Kennamer trial was coming to his town, “Friends say he almost
hit the ceiling and rushed out of his shop, down the street, and spent a
quarter for a new haircut.”

The news also called for hurried preparations to
the courthouse itself for a trial that would be the biggest in Pawnee history. Construction
on the four-story, sand-colored, brick building had begun three years before,
and it was put into use one year before the trial began. It featured a
neoclassical, art-deco style common for the era. A floral crown adorned the parapet
and stood above inlaid, carved Indians in full headdress standing watch over
all who entered. Thirty feet below them, closer to the eye, hard-edged,
low-relief sculptures depicted scenes of early Pawnee County life that included
Indians, cowboys, farmers, and pioneer settlers. Three-story-high, fluted
pilasters on the exterior were complemented by fluted woodwork for the judge’s
bench. To get to the third-story, solitary courtroom that ran east to west,
participants and spectators walked on a polished, chipped-stone, composite floor.
[33]

It was an impressive building for such a small
community, and it was well suited for a trial that would be featured in a
newsreel shown in movie houses throughout the country. The building sat in the
middle of an entire city block, and with the tiny business district facing it
on all four sides, it was effectively the town square. The courtroom itself was
much larger than any in Tulsa. In the gallery, lawyers, jurors, newsmen,
teletype operators, and court personnel could be squeezed together behind the
railing. Behind them, another four hundred spectators could sit tightly on
eighteen church-pew-style benches.

Within days of the announcement, telegraph-and-telephone-company
construction crews were stringing wires to two improvised press rooms that were
hastily assembled near Judge Hurst’s chambers. They were equipped with ten
typewriters, two teletype transmitters, and three telegraph-sending sets,
spread over four tables and twelve chairs in two rooms that together, “most
housewives would say [were] too small for a bedroom,” the
World
declared.
Tulsa radio station KTUL also set up shop in Pawnee with remote-transmitting
equipment that was cutting-edge for 1935 Oklahoma.

When it was designed, the fourth floor of the
courthouse was intended for use as the new county jail. However, commissioners ran
out of money to outfit it by the start of the Kennamer trial. Prisoners were
still being kept in the old, two-story, rough-cut sandstone jail built in 1899.
Pawnee residents seemed to take particular delight in the fact that Kennamer
would be locked up in a bona fide jail cell complete with flat-iron-barred
doors and windows, and shelf-like beds made of steel. His only comfort would be
a thin mattress, and he would have to live with nearly a dozen other prisoners,
some of whom had prior run-ins with his father.

Judge Thurst and Pawnee officials were anxious to
avoid a repeat of what happened at Kennamer’s preliminary hearing. Extra
security precautions were planned and stricter rules drawn up. Tulsa County Deputies
John Evans and Tony Benson would be sworn in as Pawnee deputies and tasked with
escorting Kennamer to and from the courthouse. The courthouse doors would
remain locked until 8:00 a.m., and no passes would be issued for spectators.
[34]
All trial-watchers
would be required to sit on one of the gallery benches, but there was to be no
standing along the walls. They also had until 10:30 a.m. to find a seat or
clear out. After 10:30, only jurors, attorneys, newsmen, courthouse employees,
and other people with business related to the trial would be allowed to roam
freely over the third-floor corridor while court was in session. Witnesses
would have to wait in the district attorney’s offices until their names were called.

No photographs would be permitted in the courtroom
during the trial. Those who violated these rules would be barred from the building,
and the reporters associated with their newspaper would also be invited to
leave.

Since the fourth floor was mostly empty, the jury deliberation
room was situated there. Once twelve men had been selected,
[35]
they would be
sequestered in a house one block south of the courthouse, where guards would
keep the public and press away.

BECAUSE THIS WAS NO ORDINARY CASE, the transfer of
Phil Kennamer to the Pawnee County Jail on Sunday, February 10, was bound to be
anything but ordinary.

“Hundreds of curious persons had thronged the [Pawnee]
courthouse grounds at noon in anticipation of Kennamer’s arrival,” the
World
reported. “Peanut and pop vendors hawked their wares to the matinee crowd. The
eleven prisoners in the rough-cut sandstone jail, all serving minor sentences,
also were affected by the holiday spirit. They wore freshly laundered clothing
for the occasion.”

The crowd consisted of women dressed in their best
attire, men in business suits, Indians wrapped in blankets, cowboys on horses, and
uniformed Boy Scouts, as well as the local high-school football team, which,
for some reason, also wore their uniforms. Standing out in this stand-out crowd
was the town’s most famous resident, Wild West showman and entertainer Gordon
William Lillie, otherwise known as “Pawnee Bill.” His long, gray hair, worn in
the style of George Custer and Buffalo Bill, was of extreme interest to eastern
newspaper reporters who were already migrating to Pawnee, which was being referred
to as the “Flemington, New Jersey, of Oklahoma.” These were the newshawks who
had already covered a large portion of the case, as well as a few who had just
left the Hauptmann trial behind, where jury deliberations would soon begin.

As a courtesy, deputies Evans and Benson permitted
Kennamer a ten-minute visit with his ailing mother, Lillie, whom he had not
seen since he surrendered on December 1. When he left, he appeared unaffected
by the visit with the woman who had worried the most about him. As he got
closer to trial, Kennamer had grown surly and foul-tempered. Word had gotten
back that the prosecution would qualify jurors on only one question: their opinion
of the death penalty.

His first stop in Pawnee was the county clerk’s
office, where papers were signed that officially transferred him to Sheriff
Charlie Burkdoll’s custody. As they did so, newspaper photographers strained to
take his picture.

“He roundly berated them, cursed the publishers of
the Tulsa newspapers, and generally vented his wrath on a score of
acquaintances,” the
World
reported. But it was the sight of their own Lee
Krupnick, the double agent behind the note-passing embarrassment, which sent
him into an apoplectic fit.

“Do I have to stay in the same room as that
son-of-a-bitch rat, Krupnick?” Kennamer cried out to Sheriff Burkdoll inside
the clerk’s office.

“What’s the matter with you, Phil?” Krupnick toyed
with him. “Don’t you know when a friend is trying to help you?”

“Aw, you rat!” Kennamer screamed as he unleashed another
volley of curse words.

“What happened to all your friends, Phil? None of
them came up to the jail to see you.” Still thinking that Kennamer had unknown
accomplices, Krupnick unsuccessfully tried to lure him into revealing their
names. “You’re just trying to be a hero and take the rap for the other
fellows.”

“I guess I know how I killed him,” Kennamer answered
sarcastically.

“I mean the extortion note.”

“Well, that’s my affair. And I want it understood
that anybody can take pictures of me except that rat, Krupnick,” Kennamer told
the sheriff.

Every time Krupnick tried to get a photograph of
Kennamer, Kennamer would turn his back or dodge behind someone. Krupnick only
managed to take a few photos for Monday’s morning edition by waiting patiently,
acting like he was engrossed in something else, and then hurriedly snapping a
picture. This battle with Krupnick would last throughout the trial and would
involve the entire Kennamer family and defense team. But it wasn’t just
Krupnick; Judge Kennamer was lashing out against any photographer who snapped a
picture of him, or his three children, without his permission.

The entire case had turned into a circus, a Roman holiday,
and Judge Kennamer was just as gruff as Phil. His reputation as a strict judge
who handed down long sentences was coming back to haunt him, now that his own
son would be tried for murder. A week before the trial, Charles Stuart reported
that the judge had been the target of anonymous gibes from criminals, who saw
the whole affair as poetic justice.

“Judge Kennamer has been stern and severe on law
violators,” Stuart admitted to the
Tribune
. “Now, members of the
underworld, and especially those who were sentenced by him, have telephoned and
said they are glad his son is in jail.”

The judge would have a front-row seat at the
defense table during his son’s trial, while his wife, Lillie, remained at home,
too ill to travel. His son and two daughters would support their brother from a
bench directly behind him in the gallery. As with most women with important
ties to the trial, the daughters’ clothing and accessories would be described in
great detail by newspapers.

Lost in the fervor of it all was the grief of a
father and mother whose eldest son was murdered by another boy who wanted to impress
a girl and her family. Never without a cigar clenched in his mouth, the stoic fifty-four-year-old
Dr. Gorrell kept his composure while he endured the slander of his namesake.
Newspapers steered clear of interviewing the doctor, not because he was
ill-tempered like Judge Kennamer, but because he didn’t believe in showcasing
his grief and anger to the public. According to his grandson and the victim’s
nephew, John Robert Gorrell, he kept that quiet, dignified demeanor for the
rest of his life.