Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (20 page)

“I feel much better about my chances now that I
know I am going to testify,” Kennamer professed. “I know I will have a much better
chance to get a fair trial here than I would in Tulsa,” he declared, in a voice
that sounded more like a seasoned criminal lawyer than a nineteen-year-old on
trial for murder. “The biggest obstacle I have to overcome in this case is the
jaundiced public opinion of statements created by persons who know nothing of
the case.”

Holly Anderson was the first to arrive at the
courthouse Wednesday morning, and he was confident that he was the obstacle
that Flint Moss and the defense team would not be able to overcome. As he sat
there quietly by himself that morning, going over his questions, he knew that
if he was ever going to advance his political career, he had to give his best
performance in the one case everyone in Oklahoma and the rest of the country
was watching. This was Oklahoma’s biggest trial since George “Machine Gun”
Kelly. Comparisons between that case, as well as the one in New Jersey, which
would end that same day with a verdict from the jury, were being made by
enthusiastic observers and reporters.

Today, more than any other day in his life, the
former mayor of Sand Springs had to make a good showing.

His first witness to the stand that morning was
the victim’s newspaper-shy father, Dr. John Gorrell, who had sat at the
prosecution table this whole time with his wife, Alice, just four feet away
from Judge Kennamer. Somehow, the two fathers had managed to avoid eye contact
the entire time. Both had gained the right to privileged seating, right up
front, where each could closely monitor what was in their own best interests:
justice for one, freedom for the other.

After taking Dr. Gorrell through a brief history
of the high points in his son’s short life, Anderson got to the reason why they
were all there.

“When did you last see your son alive?”

“At 7:30 Thanksgiving night last year.”

“Is your son now living or dead?”

“He is dead,” Dr. Gorrell said in a slow and clear
voice as Judge Kennamer and his son stared at him intently. Not once in the two-and-one-half
months since the Gorrell’s son was killed had the judge ever said one kind word
to the newspapers for the victim’s family. The only tears he was ever known to
have shed were on the day his son surrendered.

Richard Oliver took the stand next. In the months
since he’d accidentally met up with “Bob Wilson” on the southbound Frisco
train, he had steeled himself up for this moment. After taking the young, baby-faced,
dental student through his short history as Gorrell’s roommate and his
experience with Bob Wilson, Anderson got right to the point.

“Is the man who was introduced to you as Bob
Wilson in the courtroom today?”

“Yes,” Oliver responded, and he pointed his arm
straight and steady at Phil Kennamer.

In his first cross-examination of the day, Moss’s
questions indicated that part of his strategy was to attack the victim’s
character.

“Gorrell was supposed to work at a switchboard in
your hotel at Kansas City, wasn’t he?” Moss asked, which got him an affirmative
answer.

“Wasn’t he so drunk that you had to work there for
him?”

Anderson roared his objection, which forced Moss
to ask the same question, repeatedly, in less provocative language, but he was
blocked each time.

“How many nights had you worked the switchboard
after the middle of October when you three [Gorrell, Oliver, and Jess Harris]
began rooming together?”

“Well, we changed a lot—”

“I didn’t ask you that,” Moss snapped. “How many
nights had you worked in John Gorrell’s place?” he repeated as he raised his
voice.

“Possibly three or four times,” Oliver responded.

“Why?”

“Because he wanted to go to a dance.”

He wanted the boy to say Gorrell was too drunk,
but when he couldn’t get that, Moss switched course. “Did Gorrell introduce
Kennamer as Bob Wilson?”

“Yes sir.”

“He told you that he was from Chicago?”

“I don’t remember.”

“IN FACT,” Moss began by raising his voice again,
“he told you that he was a gangster!”

“He did not.”

“What had he told you about the circumstances?”

“You want me to tell?”

“Tell me,” Moss said confidently. “I won’t cringe
about the facts.”

“He said that ‘when this fellow comes, I want you
to get a good look at him. If I am ever killed he will be the one to kill me.’”

Tulsa’s most highly esteemed defense attorney was
off to a bad start.

When Floyd Huff sat in the witness chair, Anderson
led him through his entire account of everything Phil Kennamer had said in that
now-famous car ride to Tulsa. His story had not changed since he’d told it to Kansas
City Chief of Detectives Thomas Higgins and during the preliminary hearing in
December.

“What did he tell you of his plan to kill John
Gorrell?”

“He said he would kill Gorrell next week in Tulsa.
Take him out on some by-road, as I would call it, after dark, make out like he
had a flat tire, and when they got out, he would let Gorrell have it then.”

Huff’s statement was important, and it supported
what Jack Snedden had told police: that the murder of John Gorrell Jr. was
premeditated. However, the middle-aged, bald man had a past that could
discredit him. Before he ended, Anderson felt the need to stave off a potential
disaster with this witness, and it was better the jury heard it from him first—before
Moss sunk his teeth into Huff.

“Mr. Huff, have you ever been convicted of a
felony?”

“Yes. Twice.”

 “In jail on any other offense?”

“Once.”

On cross-examination, Moss took Huff back through
his story of the car ride, with careful attention applied to the extortion
note. He probed and prodded for holes and weak spots in Huff’s story but was
unable to churn up anything substantial. He then tried to steer the witness to
discuss his client’s state of mind, in an attempt to lay the groundwork for his
insanity defense.

“Didn’t you tell Kansas City police that you
thought Kennamer was crazy?”

Before he could answer, the young gun of the prosecution,
Dixie Gilmer, fired off another one of his many objections that day. He was
determined to go up against the old hand, the veteran defense attorney, and
beat him.

“Do you think he’s crazy?” Moss tried once more,
only to watch as Gilmer flew out of his seat and blasted another objection with
a speed that stunned even him.

“You didn’t tell Gorrell that Kennamer had
threatened his life?”

“No.”

“Because you thought Kennamer was crazy?”

Gilmer objected once again but Moss didn’t care; by
then, he’d made his point to the jury three times.

For his part, Huff was clearly more amicable than
he had been during the preliminary hearing, where his aggressiveness had played
into Moss’s hands. The prosecution, it seems, had cautioned their witness. Even
when Moss forced him to talk about his prison record, Huff sounded more
embarrassed than angry, and anxious to explain himself, which he did, but only
after Moss thoroughly humiliated him over his minor criminal record.

During the Great War, Huff was stationed at Fort
Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and had gone AWOL, an offense that earned him a short
stint at Alcatraz, which was a military prison at the time. In 1920, he had served
six months in jail on a vague charge of larceny, followed by a violation of the
Mann Act in 1922 that also got him nine months in prison. In the latter case,
the unmarried woman he’d transported across state lines later became his wife. As
bad as it made Huff look, some courtroom observers thought he was being bullied
by Moss, who purposely made all the charges sound worse than they really were.

Anderson’s next witness was a strong one. Ted Bath
was a tall, clean-cut, handsome, young man with thick, black hair and angular
features. He possessed a quiet confidence that made him all the more believable,
and his voice was steady and calm. But it was what he had to say about Phil
Kennamer that would leave an impression on the minds of the jury. Bath’s
account of his time with Gorrell and Kennamer in the Brown Derby Café on September
13 was rich in detail. He spoke of how the judge’s son had proposed the armed
robbery of a beer joint that would yield them three or four hundred dollars,
but that he, Bath, had dismissed that idea because someone could get killed. He
then told the jury of how Kennamer had proposed blackmailing a girl named
Barbara Boyle, but had then put forth Virginia Wilcox’s name after Gorrell told
Kennamer to leave Barbara out of it.

“He suggested that he would defray my expenses if
I would ingratiate myself with Virginia Wilcox so as to be able to get her into
a compromising position so that some pictures could be taken of her. I said I
would not be interested.”

Kennamer didn’t like hearing this. He didn’t want
anyone to hear it. For the first time during his trial, his body language betrayed
his emotion. As he listened to Bath talk about his plans to seduce Virginia to
get naked pictures of her, Kennamer put on a show that was meant to be noticed—clenching
and opening his fists, his mouth quivering, and his hate-filled eyes piercing
into Ted Bath. When he saw this, Dixie Gilmer’s face melted into contempt and
disgust.

But after the next witness took the stand, all the
attorneys would be disgusted, and one of them would put his career in jeopardy.

HARMON PHILLIPS KNEW SOMETHING
BIG was about to happen. The lunch recess had ended, and by 1:15, the
reporters, attorneys, and court personnel were settling back down in the
courtroom. Most of the spectators brought sack lunches with them and hadn’t
even left—not wanting to lose their seats to others waiting outside to get in. When
the trial resumed, Anderson’s “mystery witness” would take the stand. Earlier
that morning, the
Tribune
reporter caught up with forty-two-year-old
Edna Harman and carefully prodded her with questions. Although matronly and plump,
it was obvious that she was once a very attractive woman, with a strong jawline
that supported a wide face, high cheekbones, and a small nose. Her blue eyes
matched the blue dress she wore beneath a fashionable black coat with a fur-trimmed
collar that came with a perky little hat. When she sat down to talk to
Phillips, she looked nervously around the small lobby of the Pawnee Hotel and confided
to the newspaper reporter her big secret—that ever since she’d told Anderson
what she knew, her life had been threatened.

A lot.

“They’ve told me that it would happen within
thirty days after the trial,” she told him in an overly affected voice. “I know
the men who came to see me, and if I am asked, I shall tell their names from
the witness stand.”

But as a noble mother, she of course was not
concerned for her own safety, but that of her children. She had the way it
would happen all figured out. “The threats have mostly been toward my eighteen-year-old
son who carries the mail,” she whispered. “It would be awfully easy some dark
night for there to be an accident on the road from Tulsa to Ponca City.”
[36]

When Phillips queried her for concrete details,
she dodged his question with a vague answer. “Some of the threats have been of
kidnapping and others of death.” They were, she added, meant to keep her off
the stand.

The apartment-building manager had informed the
prosecution about the threats, and at her insistence, they assigned county
investigator Jack Bonham to be her bodyguard. He was sitting just a few feet
away, reading a newspaper, oblivious to all the assassins targeting this poor
woman.

Phillips immediately sensed something was off with
Mrs. Harman and raised a question about some interesting facts leaked by the
defense team. “Are you the same Mrs. Harman that appeared as a witness in the Birl
Shepherd murder trial five years ago?”

Mrs. Harman’s face dropped when Phillips mentioned
Shepherd’s name, but she recovered and manufactured a coy little smile. “What’s
your next question please?”

“Are you not the same Mrs. Harman who offered
evidence in another trial in Tulsa some years before that case?”

Again, she smiled, and repeated, “What are your
next questions?”

“What other trials have you appeared in?”

“I would rather not answer those questions until I
reach the witness stand.”

“The defense attorneys will ask you then,”
Phillips pointed out.

“Well, I’m not so sure I
will
take the
stand,” she replied haughtily. After a long pause as she studied a gruff-looking
man walking out of the hotel, she changed the subject back to her favorite topic.
“To tell you the truth I am afraid. I’ve had all kinds of threats to keep me
from the stand. Saturday, two men came to my house and suggested I leave town before
the subpoena reached me.”

As if all that weren’t enough, she’d also received
anonymous threats by telephone. Before Phillips could unravel that claim, Mrs.
Harman quickly excused herself for “some royalty business,” but said she would return
that afternoon.

The afternoon had arrived.

When Anderson called Edna Harman to the stand, Phillips
leaned forward from his perch and readied himself. Tomorrow’s front-page
headline was about to unfold.

“Do you know the defendant, Phil Kennamer?”

Mrs. Harman ignored the question and turned to
face the bench, “Your Honor, I am afraid to testify in this case.”

“Just answer the question,” Judge Hurst replied.

“Let her testify and let the jury and everyone
hear!” Moss shouted as encouragement.

“Honorable judge, I’m afraid to testify in this
case. I want to be excused. My family has been threatened time after time
during the last twenty-four hours. I—I can’t do it!” she squawked. “My children—mean
more to me—(sob)—than anything else on earth. I’ll take the penalty. I won’t
testify!”

KA-BOOM!
The ticking time-bomb of a witness
had just exploded. Anderson froze. He couldn’t think straight.

“Let her tell all—I have no secrets,” Moss howled.

“Don’t say anything, Mrs. Harman!” Anderson fired
back. In the gallery, the quiet roar of excited whispers added to the chaos
that was unfolding.

“Any witness who will make such a statement is a
disgrace and I ask that she not talk like that,” Moss yelled above the noise. “Your
Honor, I demand that a mistrial be declared immediately on the grounds of
prejudice.”

Not knowing what to do, Anderson blamed Moss for
telling the witness to “tell all,” although it did come on the heels of Judge
Hurst’s order to answer the question.

Joining in, Charles Stuart stood up and pompously
remarked, “It’s a disgrace to the administration of justice!”

“It’s the truth, Mr. Moss! It’s the truth!” Mrs.
Harman shrieked.

“It’s Moss’s own doing!” Anderson snapped back.
How he came to that conclusion was unclear; but what was clear was that his political
career was now in jeopardy.

The courtroom devolved into chaos: Judge Hurst was
addressing the jury, saying something about “disregarding testimony”; the bailiff
was rapping the gavel to quiet the gallery, where four hundred people were talking
at once; Moss was still going on about a mistrial, and prejudice, and some
other stuff Phillips couldn’t make out; Anderson was calling for a ten-minute
recess; and Mrs. Harman was still shaking her head in defiance of the defense
attorneys who were attacking her character.

Kennamer found the entire outburst amusing.
Carefully shielding his face from the jury with his hand, Kennamer turned to
face his siblings directly behind him, flashed a knowing smile, and whispered a
few words Phillips couldn’t make out.

While the court reporter was reading back Mrs.
Harman’s statement to Judge Hurst, Moss leaned toward Anderson and whispered,
“You’re nuts.” When the stenographer finished, Judge Hurst zeroed in on a sly
comment Moss had made. “Now, Mr. Moss, you asked her to proceed,” he pointed
out.

Moss, well-known for his witty sarcasm in the
courtroom, raised his hands in consternation, “Please, Your Honor, don’t take
advantage of my excitement.”

This raised the ire of Dixie Gilmer, who was
showing himself to be faster at caustic rejoinders than the sharp-tongued Flint
Moss. “Your Honor, he never was excited in his life.”

“What the hell, did you plan this?” Anderson
whispered to Moss, loud enough for the first four rows in the gallery to hear. The
defense attorney ignored both of them and instead glanced over at one of the
Kennamer siblings, pointed his finger at Anderson who’d turned his back on him,
and made circles with his finger around his ear as if to say,
He’s crazy
.

The trial was now personal.

“She endeavored to sell her testimony to the
defendant,” Moss said, getting back to business.

“Mr. Moss, you’re a liar!” Mrs. Harman cried out.

“I can prove by attorneys Breckridge and Boorstin
of Tulsa that Mrs. Harman attempted to sell her testimony to the defense in a
case several years ago,” Moss declared. Mrs. Harman wasn’t scared from death threats,
he would later tell Harmon Phillips. The woman sensed her career as a
professional witness was about to be exposed by Moss on cross-examination. The
defense had done their homework. He knew the state’s witness better than they
did.

“She asked for $2,500, and then $1,200, to sell
her testimony to Judge Kennamer in this case. We can show some letters written
to Judge Kennamer were written by her. In the last two weeks she called Wash
Hudson [a criminal defense attorney] and sought to learn if she could obtain
extra remuneration for testifying in an Oklahoma City manslaughter case.”

Anderson felt as sick as he looked.

“There is no question but that the defense was
ready for her appearance on the stand, and the state was not,” Phillips wrote
in his notepad.

“The state has already told the jury what she will
testify,” Moss said as he continued his attack. “Her statement is false. We
never communicated with her or threatened her. We welcome her here. I want to
tell what we know and then ask the county attorney to withdraw [from] the
opening statement that part about her.”

“It would be necessary if she didn’t testify,”
Judge Hurst agreed.

“Your Honor, she told me two minutes before the
session opened that she
would
testify,” Gilmer contended.

“She has told me she was threatened,” Wallace
joined in. “At noon she got a telephone call. When she came back she was
nervous. Two men warned her to get out of town.”

“That’s not the reason she’s scared,” Moss
laughed. He was enjoying this moment. It was his revenge against Anderson, who had
publicly attacked the defense with witness-tampering allegations merely because
they had exercised their legal right to interview state witnesses before the
trial started.

“Your Honor, [on] Saturday,” Anderson began. “She
told me a story that sounded plausible. I haven’t had an opportunity to
investigate her standing at home. If she’s not telling the truth, I don’t want
her here.”

“Mr. Wallace made a statement we want to
challenge,” Stuart protested. “He said this woman was approached by a lawyer
she believed represented the defendant.”

“I’ll let her tell who he was,” Wallace barked.

“She was visited by two representatives of the
defendant after we were served with notice. We were entirely proper in doing
so,” Charles Coakley said, speaking for the first time that day.

“This is not a police court. It is a court of
justice and I want my rights,” Stuart demanded.

Judge Hurst had heard enough. Both sides were
overheated, and he needed to restore order and facilitate a compromise. “Mr.
Moss, if the court will admonish the jury to disregard her statement here, and [if]
the state takes her out of her opening statement, will you waive your motion?”

“I’m not certain the case isn’t prejudiced by what
happened here,” Moss replied. “I’m going to ask Mr. Anderson to investigate my
charges and have him tell the jury that her proposed statement would be false.”

“We’ll recess for twenty minutes and Anderson can
make an investigation. Jury dismissed.”

Former Pawnee County Attorney Lee Johnson, who sat
silent during the melee, sought out Moss and Stuart and worked diligently with
them for a compromise. He would, they agreed, put together a strong statement
for the jury. After that, Moss would withdraw his mistrial motion. Anderson,
for his part, wasn’t with that group and had disappeared with Mrs. Harman to investigate
her claims of harassment and death threats. He was unaware of the compromise
being worked out.

When court reconvened at 2:31 that afternoon, Lee
Johnson explained how they had recently learned of Edna Harman without having
time to vet her story, and he expressed regret for her outburst before bringing
the prosecution’s
mea culpa
to a close.

“Mrs. Harman voluntarily related her story and it
was accepted in full faith. No one connected with the prosecution of this case
knew or suspected that Mrs. Harman would make the scene she did. We have concluded
she is unworthy of belief, and withdraw from the consideration of this jury her
testimony,” Johnson said. He then closed with a recommendation that Edna Harman
should be arrested and charged with contempt of court.

Although Johnson had just saved the day for the
prosecution, it didn’t seem to matter to Anderson, who feared he had lost his
case. He wanted a do-over.

“The scene just created in this courtroom a little
while ago has undoubtedly left some influence on the minds of the jurors of
this case. For that reason, I want to join the defense counsel in that this be
considered a mistrial and that this witness be held.”

Moss threw up his hands in disgust and another
round of bickering, shouting, and finger-pointing flared up. But when Charles Stuart
pointed out that this was not the first time in courtroom history that an outburst
like this had taken place, and His Honor could simply tell the jury what to
disregard, Judge Hurst seized upon that observation as his opportunity to put
an end to the pandemonium that came courtesy of Mrs. Harman.

“Is there a man on the jury who is prejudiced on
either side in this lawsuit by reason of what has happened in Mrs. Harman’s
testimony?” When all of the jurors gave negative replies, that they were not
prejudiced, Hurst ordered the trial to proceed, and for Mrs. Harman to be
arrested.

The woman who had come to Pawnee with a bodyguard
to testify against Phil Kennamer would now reside in the same jail as Phil
Kennamer.

WHEN THE VICTIM’S FIFTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD mother took
the stand, she did so with a sad expression that broke the hearts of every female
in the gallery. Alice Gorrell was a well-dressed woman whose white hair
contrasted nicely with the black hat she wore. She was dignified and well mannered,
but the questions about her son’s last night on earth were disturbing, and her
voice sometimes wavered as she struggled to answer Anderson’s questions as best
she could. She told the jurors of how Phil Kennamer had called three times that
night, looking for her son. Although she had met him previously and heard his
voice before, and the voice on the telephone
told
her he was Phil Kennamer,
Moss forced her to admit that she could not be certain the voice was actually Phil
Kennamer, and he was able to block that portion of her testimony from entering
the record.