Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (4 page)

Saturday afternoon,
December 1, 1934

Tulsa, Oklahoma

FRANKLIN ELMORE KENNAMER
WAS BORN in Alabama in 1879. After graduating high school, he attended a
private college and studied the law under several apprenticeships. He moved to
Oklahoma in 1901 where he taught school and continued his legal studies. In
1905 he was admitted to the bar and joined a law practice in Madill. In 1908,
he associated with attorney Charles Coakley in a long-running partnership that oversaw
a large amount of Indian land litigation and important criminal cases, in
addition to representing the local interests of several railroads.

He was a city attorney for Madill from 1915 to 1916
and mayor from 1919 to 1920. In 1919, he was a delegate to the Republican
National Committee and supported Warren Harding for president. A Republican
resurgence in November 1920 propelled him to the Oklahoma State Supreme Court.
In 1924, while other prominent men were considered to be front-runners,
President Coolidge chose Franklin Kennamer to serve as Federal Judge for the
Eastern District of Oklahoma. Exactly one year after that appointment, Judge
Kennamer was moved to the newly created Northern District of Oklahoma, with a
federal courthouse in Tulsa. He quickly became well known throughout the state
as a stern judge with zero tolerance for bootleggers.
[5]

When his brother, Charles, was moved up from federal
prosecutor in Alabama to the bench in 1931, the two Kennamers were the only brothers
in US history to serve as federal judges at the same time. Other Kennamer brothers
occupied important government positions from Washington DC to Alabama.

When Philip was born in 1915, he was the youngest
of four siblings. Although extremely intelligent with an IQ of 120,
[6]
it became clear
from an early age that Phil was also a troubled child with psychological
problems—a fact that would become public knowledge in the months ahead.

As a morning paper, Saturday’s edition of
Tulsa
World’s
coverage was mostly a recap of everything that happened the day
before. Across the Midwest, the early papers in adjacent states showed no
interest in what was then viewed as a local story for Tulsa. By later that afternoon,
that would all change.

Reporters in Kansas City had gotten wind of Huff’s
statement and “literally were burning the wires in efforts to substantiate it.”
The sudden flurry of phone calls coming down from the north sparked wild rumors
that made their way into the offices of the
World
and
Tribune,
and
then out to the gaggle of reporters waddling around the courthouse, looking for
the next big angle.

But when they looked around for chatty Sgt.
Maddux, they were told he was in a meeting in County Attorney Holly Anderson’s
office with Chief Carr. In fact, all the city detectives on the case were in
that meeting, along with the coroner, and Assistant Prosecutor Tom Wallace.

Higgins had telephoned Chief Carr at 10:55 a.m.,
and the meeting he called together had started just after 12:30. One o’clock
came and went, then two. Whatever was going on in there, it had to be big.
Where the
World
reporters had time, the
Tribune
staff had run out
of it by 2:30. If there was a big scoop coming, Tulsa would read it about it
first in the
World’s
Sunday edition.

A scoop was coming—a lot of them, in fact. And
they were all jaw-droppers.

Around 2:40 that afternoon, two distinguished-looking
men dressed in fitted, dark suits walked up the short flight of steps at the
west entrance to the courthouse. As they entered the lobby, the elder of the
two was greeted with deference by those who knew him. His name was A. Flint
Moss, and he was the most highly regarded criminal defense attorney in Tulsa. He
had moved to Oklahoma in 1900 following his graduation from Cumberland
University in Tennessee. He was active in Democratic Party politics and was a
former county attorney for Kay County in north-central Oklahoma. He then
migrated to Oklahoma City, where he practiced law for six years before settling
down in Tulsa in 1913, just when the city was booming. As the defense attorney
for many high-profile murder cases, he quickly gained the respect of his peers,
and it was said about him that he “could laugh a murder case to acquittal.”

Half a step behind him and to his right was a young
man in a blue serge suit who looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Inside the sheriff’s office, Moss leaned against a
waist-high counter and called out to Deputy Nathan Martin.

“This is Phil Kennamer. He wants to surrender. He
killed John Gorrell,” Moss declared.

Martin chuckled. He looked at Moss and waited for
the punch line that never came. But this was no joke. The older man in glasses
was serious. Kennamer stood there quietly with a smug look on his face that
would become his trademark. Martin then looked to his left at Chief Deputy John
Evans, twenty feet away, who caught the confused look on his face. When Evans
reached the counter, Moss repeated his statement.

“This is Phil Kennamer. He wants to surrender. He
killed Gorrell.”

A wave of silence rolled through the wide room as
deputies, secretaries, and clerks stopped what they were doing and stared
quietly at the two men. It was as if Bruno Hauptmann himself had walked into
the room.

“Have you been in trouble?” Nathan Martin asked
the young man.

“Yes, I shot Gorrell. I had to do it. It was
self-defense,” Kennamer replied.

Inside the county attorney’s office, an excited
secretary broke into the meeting with the surprise announcement. Those old men,
with their paunch bellies, backaches, arthritis, and other ailments, sprang up
like they were young boys again and hustled down the corridor to where Moss and
Kennamer were standing.

It was going to be a long day.

Deputy Evans escorted Kennamer and Moss to the sheriff’s
office with a dozen officers, detectives, and newsmen crowding close behind.

“Phil told me this morning the facts and
circumstances surrounding the killing and he wanted to surrender,” Moss began
with a raised voice to quiet the chatter. “I said I wanted to talk to his
father about it. I knew his father would concur with me and Phil that the
rightful thing for him to do was to surrender.

“Phil’s thought was that some person would be
arrested and charged with this offense who had not been [involved] with the
killing. His confidence in the righteousness of his defense satisfied him the
outcome of this prosecution would be in accordance with the truth and his
complete vindication.

“Kennamer knew Gorrell for several months but was
not an intimate acquaintance of his. Phil admits he shot Gorrell but did it in
self-defense. After the shooting, Phil went home. He did not say anything to
his father, and I was the first person he discussed the matter with this
morning. Judge Kennamer approved completely Phil’s determination to voluntarily
surrender.”

For all the confidence Moss had in his client at
that moment, it would soon melt away when he would learn from new witnesses
that half the proclamations he had just made were not true. If he didn’t know it
then, he would soon learn: Phil Kennamer had a big mouth.

Moss then told his audience of lawmen and
journalists that Kennamer killed Gorrell in self-defense with Gorrell’s own
gun. When a reporter asked for further explanation, Moss pushed his glasses
back and stared directly at the young man who asked the question.

“Suppose I was having a difficulty with someone
and he tried to kill me with his gun and we both fought over it and in the end,
he was killed with his own gun. There would be nothing extraordinary about
that.”

Kennamer did have that part going for him. It
wasn’t his gun, it was Gorrell’s. But like everything else that would come up
during the case, there were many layers to the truth.

“The family environment of Phil Kennamer,” Moss
continued with an air of self-righteousness on his client’s behalf, “makes it
of necessity true that there was some powerful underlying reason for the
trouble that finally came up between the two young men.”

Sergeant Maddux and his senior detectives stood
back quietly and watched the spectacle unfold. The client was with his lawyer,
and his lawyer was grandstanding in front of reporters who were asking all the
questions. But when they probed and prodded for concrete answers to specific queries,
Moss would fire back, “you can’t ask these questions! It was self-defense and
that’s all we have to say now.”

Soon after the lawyer left his client in the
custody of deputies, Sgt. Maddux and his detectives took a crack at him. But as
much as he liked to talk, and talk about himself, Kennamer was sticking to his
lawyer’s guns; it was self-defense. All the salient details of his story would just
have to wait.

Afterward, the newsmen scrutinized Kennamer once
again and were impressed with what they saw. His dark-brown, wavy hair was
parted on the left side. He had strong wrists and hands, and a determined jaw
that hung low and full. His heavy eyelids punctuated the cocky expression he
always had, and his 185 pounds on a six-foot frame could intimidate a lot of
people.

He was, they said, a nineteen-year-old who carried
himself with the poise of someone twice his age, and they noted that he looked
much older. Some of them knew him personally from the short time he was a cub reporter
for an Oklahoma City paper. They also recognized him from the circle of
chiselers and crumbs and schleppers and spoiled young swells that clung to the illegal
gambling and drinking dens of Tulsa’s quasi-underworld.

“He speaks fluently, unhesitatingly, and
interestingly. He has a habit of mixing metaphors and embellishing his
statements with aphorisms. He is quick on repartee and has a sense of humor,” a
World
reporter observed.

Although his appearance and diction were
impressive, Kennamer’s calm composure and confidence puzzled them. In their
experience of covering crime, young offenders booked into jail were often
nervous, unsure of what would happen next. But not Phil. He was one cool customer,
and it seemed to come from within, not from who his daddy was.

“Did you kill John Gorrell?” asked
World
reporter Pat Burgess, who was well acquainted with Kennamer.

“I did.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“It was self-defense.”

“Why was it self-defense?”

“I sincerely regret that it was necessary for me
to kill John Gorrell, but under the circumstances, it was necessary and I did
it.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I had to save my own life.”

“Were you involved in the purported plot to extort
money from Homer Wilcox in a kidnapping scheme?”

“Certainly, I was not.”

“Did you know the Wilcox family?”

“Yes.”

“Were you implicated or involved in any other
extortion plot?”

“Such a thing never entered my head.”

“What caused the fatal fight?”

“I’ll tell that to the court at the proper time as
my lawyer has directed me.”

“How do you feel about this killing now?”

“I regret it. It was necessary to do and I am
sorry for John Gorrell, for his family and for my own.”

The query,
what caused the fatal fight
,
turned out to be a question Tulsa would debate for years.

The interview was cut short by deputies, who
formally arrested Kennamer and lodged him in the jail matron’s living quarters.
This was the first of many actions Sheriff Charlie Price would take that were
controversial. Price, it would soon come out, had a lot of axes to grind, and
Kennamer’s cell was a very comfortable room. It was modestly furnished with a cast-iron
bed, an ivory-toned dresser, a green rocking chair, and a battered and scarred
radio cabinet. When Kennamer walked into the room, he observed a private
lavatory to his right, and to his left, a door, which was supposed to be
locked, that led to the matron’s office with a desk and typewriter.

For some untold reason, a low-hanging portrait of
Governor Martin Trapp was left behind to adorn the pastel colored walls. Trapp
had left office nearly eight years before. It might have been left in place out
of respect, since he was the one who had established the State Bureau of Criminal
Investigation. He had also curbed the power of the Ku Klux Klan by passing an
anti-mask law.
[7]

To everyone involved, it looked like special
treatment, which Sheriff Price admitted it was, but not because he liked Judge
Kennamer—he hated Judge Kennamer.

“I wanted to show Judge Kennamer how kind I can be
to his son, in contrast to what he once did to me,” Sheriff Price later
explained.

“When Price was undersheriff several years ago,”
the
Tulsa Tribune
reminded its readers, “Judge Kennamer sentenced him to
three months in jail and ordered him fined $500 when he would not tell a grand
jury about reported drinking among officers at the jail. Price said he knew
nothing about it. He served a month in the Vinita jail and was freed when his
fellow officers paid the fine for him.”

Sheriff Price failed to win reelection, and in four
more weeks, he and twenty-six deputies were out the door. Feeling as if he
answered to no one, he was going to do whatever he damn well wanted to do.

Once they had the motive of self-defense,
reporters began chipping away at the alleged extortion plot involving the
Wilcox family. Second only to Kennamer’s surrender, this was the next big
angle. Homer Wilcox was a sickly man when he came to Tulsa in 1909 and got into
the grain and elevator business. He soon regained his health and, with
investors, began drilling for oil, which had recently been discovered in the
area. But after he came up empty-handed time and time again, they started
calling him “dry-hole Wilcox.” Wilcox persevered and, with a new strategy,
began drilling deeper than anyone else. This approach paid off, and he applied it
repeatedly. By 1922, the
Tulsa World
estimated he was worth $20 million.
[8]