Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland (24 page)

“7:30.”

“I arrived there a little before 7:30 and two
girls were there in the store. One of them, I think was Eunice Word, who
testified here. They got up and asked the clerk if he knew John Gorrell. He
said that he did. They asked him to tell Gorrell that they had to return to the
hospital and for him to pick them up there. Possibly five minutes after they
left, Gorrell came to the door, and I got up and met him at the door and told
him that the girls had gone back to the hospital.

“We stepped outside and he said, ‘How is this thing
coming along?’ and I said, ‘You are busy now and I will see you tomorrow.’

“He said, ‘I will be through early tonight,’ and I
said I wanted to get home early.

“He said, ‘I’ll have these girls in at eleven
o’clock,’ and I said, ‘If you are through at eleven, I will meet you then.’ I
don’t know whether he returned to his car or went across to the hospital.”

His explanation was incredible. “These girls”
established
Gorrell as having a date with two women that night. But if the second girl was
supposed to be Hazel Williams, Charlie Bard’s date, she wasn’t a nurse, and she
didn’t even work at the hospital. And although Phil telephoned four times that
day looking for John, and once the day before, he portrayed himself to the jury
as indifferent to when the two would meet up.

 “Now, after he left to fulfill his mission with
this girl at the hospital, what did you do?”

“I called a cab and went to the Owl Tavern,”
Kennamer answered. After a long discussion about the knife, who took the knife,
how he got it back, and how it was taken again, he created completely new dialogue
for Morton and Snedden.

“‘What are you going to do?’” Morton asked him.

“I said, ‘I am going to have a showdown with
Gorrell.’”

“He said, ‘You are going to kill him, aren’t you?’
and I said, ‘No.’

“He said, ‘I think you are,’ and I said, ‘No, you
are wrong, I wouldn’t get into anything like that.’

“He said, ‘If there is any trouble I am going to
take a hand in it.’ I said, ‘No, in the first place there will not be any
trouble and the best way to start trouble would be for you and Snedden to go
along.’”

Kennamer then declared that the only reason he had
the knife was for self-defense. “I thought that if Gorrell anticipated that I
was not going through with this, he would have someone else with him and they
would beat me up or something.”

After he finished his story about the knife,
Kennamer explained to the jury how he then walked a few doors down to the
Quaker Drug Store where he found Sidney Born at eleven o’clock that night
eating a sandwich and drinking a Coca-Cola. He needed Sidney to give him a
ride, but his friend tried to hand over his keys so Phil could take his car.

“No, you come on and take me,” Kennamer said he
told Born.

“What time did you leave to go to the hospital?”
Stuart asked.

“Seven minutes after eleven o’clock,” Kennamer
answered.

“Did you see his car?”

“Yes.”

“Did Sidney say anything about who was in it?”
Stuart led.

“Yes, I told him what I was doing when he parked.
Sidney said, ‘He’s there alright.’ He said, ‘Be careful,’ and drove away.”

“You got in the car with Gorrell?” Stuart asked.

“Yes sir.”

“I will ask you whether or not, when you first got
in there, you saw any gun on Gorrell?”

“No sir.”

“Do you know that he had one?”

“No sir.”

After driving slowly toward Forest Hills, a sparsely
populated area at the time, where there were only two houses near the
triangular median, Kennamer said he told Gorrell, “I never had any intention of
mailing the letter. I told him that if ever at any time he considered going
through with a proposition of that nature in regard to the Wilcox family, or
another of my friends, that I would turn the letter over to the authorities.”

Gorrell responded by pulling the gun out and
screaming: “‘By God, you will never do anything with that letter!’ I couldn’t
say whether it was in the pocket or between the seat and the door. It was on
the left side. He reached over to the left-hand side with his right hand and
secured the pistol and brought it over with an upward and downward movement.”

“When he made the downward movement, where was the
gun pointing?”

“The pistol was directly in my face,” Kennamer
replied.

The courtroom grew quiet as Kennamer told this
part of the story. The jurors watched intently as he mimicked with his hands
how Gorrell tried to shoot him in the face. It looked awkward on many different
levels. First, if Gorrell was steering the car with his left hand, going
underneath his left arm with his right hand to retrieve the gun appeared to be
the longest, most cumbersome way of going about it. Second, if Kennamer was
sitting less than two feet away, it would have been problematic for Gorrell to extend
his right arm out in order to level the gun at Kennamer’s head. If Gorrell had
done so, the barrel would go past Kennamer’s head and would be hitting the
passenger’s side window because of how small the front seat was in Gorrell’s
Ford.

“What did he do then?”

“He pulled the trigger.”

“Did the gun go off?” Stuart asked.

“No sir.”

“It snapped?”

“Yes sir. There was a brief struggle. I secured
the pistol in my hand. With my left hand I was pushing him in the face. He
still had a hand on the gun. I was attempting to and did turn the pistol toward
him and away from my face, and there was one explosion. I presume I pulled the
trigger, though I couldn’t swear to that. There was another explosion
simultaneously with the car striking the curb.”

This is the explanation that had a problem. If he
was pushing John in the face with his left hand when the gun fired, how did the
bullet miss his own hand? If it happened the way he described, it was a miracle
that the bullet didn’t plow through his left forearm or hand.

After the “tragedy,” Kennamer said he wiped the
pistol clean and walked back to the Owl Tavern, where he told Robert Thomas
what he had done.

“I called him over and told him I was in an awful
jam,” Kennamer said. “He said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘I have just killed John
Gorrell.’ And he said, ‘In a wreck?’ and I said, ‘No, I shot him.’

“He laughed and said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘I had to
do it.’ And he said, ‘Take me out and show me the body,’ and he was laughing,
and I said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t laugh, this is serious!’”

Stuart then guided him back to the woman all of this
was for with questions meant to play to the jury’s softer side. “Now, Phil, I
am compelled to ask you a personal and very delicate question. When did you
first meet Virginia Wilcox?”

“Sometime in October 1931.”

“And was that her first date with you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Did you actually fall sincerely in love with that
girl?”

Everyone in the courtroom was staring at him. They
wanted to hear him say it. This was the romantic angle to the story that helped
pushed it into the national spotlight.

“Yes sir,” Kennamer whispered.

“Do you love her now?”

Kennamer nodded, and his voice cracked when he mumbled,
“Yes.”

“And from the time you got this extortion note
until the time of this tragedy, were you constantly thinking of your meeting
with Gorrell and how you could prevent this tragedy?” Stuart asked.

“Yes sir.”

“And was that your purpose in your mind from the
time you reached Tulsa with that extortion letter until the night of the
killing?”

“Yes sir.”

He was doing it all for the woman he loved. It was
a sentimental story of a brave knight going into battle, unarmed and
disadvantaged, to save the beautiful princess from the dark and powerful
antagonist. It was a clichéd plot that never grew old and should have ended
with “and they all lived happily ever after.”

In Kennamer’s mind, that’s how it was supposed to
end. But since it didn’t, the fairy tale of the knight and the princess was the
version his defense attorneys needed to sell to the jury to get an acquittal.

INSTEAD OF POUNDING KENNAMER
TO DUST, King’s cross-examination was weak. It began strongly but then waned
into a conversation with the special prosecutor probing him with questions in
which King didn’t already know the answers. Even so, he was able to get
Kennamer on the record with statements he knew would be contradicted later by
rebuttal witnesses.

“Do you know right from wrong?” he began.

“I think so,” Kennamer replied.

“Have you always known right from wrong?”

“I think so.”

“If you have made any wrong statements in your
testimony, if you have made statements that are not true, that contradict with
statements of other witnesses who have testified, do you still think those
statements were true?” King grilled.

“No. I would think they were wrong.”

King tried again. “You do not understand me. If
your answers have been contrary to the answers of other witnesses, you still
think you were right in making your answers?”

“Yes sir. I know I was right,” Kennamer countered.

The boy’s answer was as expected—egotistical—and it
confirmed what Dr. Menninger had told the jury earlier that day.

King wanted the jury to hear it again. “You are
certain?”

“Yes sir.”

“This is not the first statement you have made as
to the facts in this case, is it?”

“No sir.”

“As a matter of fact, you have made several?”

“Yes sir.”

King then confronted him with an Oklahoma City newspaper
story in which he said one of the objectives for his trip to Kansas City was to
convince Gorrell to write the extortion note. Since there was never any evidence
or supporting testimony that Gorrell was ever going to kidnap anyone, King
wisely used Kennamer’s own words against him.

“‘I knew Gorrell would demur in writing this note
and one object of my trip to Kansas City was to persuade him,’” King quoted
Kennamer from the article.

“Yes sir.”

“You knew, then, Gorrell would demur?”

Kennamer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His
answer was barely audible. “Yes sir.”

“You would use your power of persuasion to have
Gorrell write that note?” King pressed.

“There should be more to that article, Mister
King. Some qualification.” But there wasn’t. And after Moss pushed King to read
the entire article to get the right context, Kennamer was still forced to acknowledge
that he’d persuaded Gorrell to write the extortion note.

“Couldn’t you have induced him to write the note
without gloves?”

“I don’t think so,” Kennamer replied.

“But you did prevail on him to write it?”

Kennamer paused before conceding with a “Yes.”

King was able to score another point with the jury
when he brought up the name of Hanley “Cadillac” Booth. The defense knew
Anderson was going to call him as a rebuttal witness.

“Did you have any conversation with this man last
July in his Oklahoma City apartment in which the kidnapping of Miss Wilcox was
discussed?”

“I did not.”

“To be exact, did you not, at that time, notify
this man, Mr. Booth, that you were interested in getting into some ‘bigger
money’ and asked him if he was interested in extortion or kidnapping some of
the wealthy oil people in Oklahoma and in which conversation you went on to
tell him about the Wilcox girl?”

He felt the sting of Virginia’s gaze. “No, I—DID—NOT!”
Kennamer shouted. It was exactly what King wanted him to say. When “Cadillac”
took the stand tomorrow, his testimony would cast doubt on Phil’s response.

Toward the end of his cross-examination, King questioned
him about what happened in Gorrell’s car, where he put Kennamer on the
defensive.

“You knew John’s car?”

“Yes.”

“When Sidney delivered you there, you saw
Gorrell’s car at the curb, the engine running and either the right-hand or
left-hand door was open?”

“I am almost certain neither door was open.”

 “You entered the car before John returned?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it a fact, that you got the gun out of the left-hand
pocket and had it in your possession when he returned?”

“No, Mr. King, that is
NOT
the truth.”

“Tell us what happened then,” King offered with a
wave of his hand.

“I got in the car from the right side. I am almost
certain the door was closed. Gorrell was seated at the wheel. I think the first
thing he said was, ‘I’ve been waiting twenty minutes.’ I told him I was sorry I
had been delayed. The next conversation was of a trivial nature.”

King grunted. “Any sign of nervousness on the part
of either of you?”

“I couldn’t say as to myself. Gorrell seemed morose,
restrained and not as cordial as usual,” Kennamer said.

“Who suggested the route to take on leaving the
hospital?”

“No one made a suggestion.”

“John Gorrell sought the scene of his own death?”

“He was at least driving in that direction,”
Kennamer said in an exasperated tone. His annoyance with the special prosecutor
was becoming more noticeable. He then repeated the conversation he and Gorrell
had had before the actual killing.

When he was done talking, King again consulted his
Oklahoma City newspaper and asked Kennamer if he had not said this:
‘Did you
ever hear of the double-cross?’ I asked Gorrell. I told him he was getting the
double-cross now.

“It would be impossible for me to say it is
accurate, however, it is almost entirely correct so far as the conversation I
had with Gorrell.”

“Was that portion ‘double-cross’ used?”

“I think the expression was used,” Kennamer
replied.

“And you did give him the ‘double cross’ when you
fired two shots into his head, written with his own blood in the letter ‘K,’
which the blood formed on his cheek, your characteristic signature?”

“I DID NOT!”

“Phil, after John had been killed, what did you do
with the gun?”

“I either put it on the floor or seat.”

“Were you so excited you don’t recall?”

“Yes.”

He could sense Kennamer was getting frustrated,
and King wanted to keep provoking him. “Then, why did you wipe the blood off
the handle?”

“I know I didn’t wipe the blood off because there
wasn’t any there,” Kennamer replied in a flat tone.

“Did you wipe off the fingerprints?”

“I have a recollection of wiping the gun across my
coat.”

“You were certain the gun had been snapped once or
twice before it was fired?”

“I know it was snapped once but my memories,
thereafter, are incoherent.”

“How long was it before the two shots were fired?”

“One to two seconds.” That was exactly the answer
King wanted. While Moss had blocked Maddux from testifying that the wounds
indicated the second shot was fired more than a minute later, the prosecution
found a new expert—one whom Moss couldn’t get dismissed.

“Do you recall the posture of the body?”

“I couldn’t describe it, but my impression is his
head was forward when I left.”

“How did you get back to the drug store?”

“I walked all the way, two miles.” This was
disappointing to those hoping he would name his accomplice. For some reason, many
people thought his two-mile walk in bad weather was improbable.

As King wrapped up his interrogation, he scored
one final point against the nineteen-year-old.

“Did you deliver the note to anyone before you surrendered?”

“Yes, to Father Stephen Lanen, instructor at
Cascia Hall.”

“What was your reason?”

“Because I had no wish to be apprehended or killed
with the note in my possession,” Kennamer acknowledged.

King saw his opportunity, and went for the
jugular. “Yet . . . you killed John Gorrell over it?”

“In a sense.”

“You thought one death over the note was enough?”

“Yes.”

King was finished with him. He had done well
enough, but missed the opportunity to push Kennamer further with doubts about
the struggle over the gun. How did John get that bruise near his right eye? How
did the first bullet miss his hand completely if he was pushing on John’s face?
At the very least, there would be the pitting and burns from the muzzle blast
on his hand. And during his story, Kennamer said he found Sidney Born in the
drugstore drinking a coke at 11:00.
But in December, he told police and
reporters he entered the drugstore at 10:30.

Although he had missed these points, King did set Kennamer
up to fail when the rebuttal witnesses came forward.

On redirect, Stuart felt the need to undo some of
the damage.

“Who is Booth?”

“He is a bootlegger in Oklahoma City,” Kennamer
answered.

“At times you did business with him?”

“I was only there twice.”

“This Father Lanen, he is a Catholic priest, and
had been your teacher?”

“Yes.”

“You had confidence in him and that’s why you
turned this note over to him?”

“Yes sir.”

Stuart turned to consult with Moss and Coakley, and
then Moss stood up and barked, “Your Honor, the defense rests.”

There would be no testimony from Preston Cochrane or
Pat Burgess. They were not going to back up Kennamer’s claim that John Gorrell
first
told them about his Wilcox kidnapping scheme
before
they ever introduced
him to the judge’s son. The jury would just have to take the word of Phil
Kennamer that the idea originated with Gorrell. And there would be no testimony
from the beautiful Betty Watson. An unconfirmed rumor hinted in the newspapers
that Kennamer had professed his devotion to her as well. That was the supposed
reason the defense declined to call her. Phil, apparently, was dizzy for her,
too.

Tuesday, February 19, 1935

FOR HIS REBUTTAL, ANDERSON AIMED to prove two facts
to the jury on the last day of the trial: Phil Kennamer was not insane, and in
fact, he was the original architect of any crime aimed at Virginia Wilcox.

The base-run hitters for Anderson’s rebuttal were
three psychiatrists, who did agree with Menninger’s medical diagnosis, but not
his legal opinion. Yes, Phil was a psychopath, they all said, but he wasn’t
insane, and he knew right from wrong. The most intriguing testimony came from “ol’
Doc Adams,” whose definition of psychopathic personality disorder seemed to fit
the life of Phil Kennamer perfectly.

“A psychopathic person is an individual of unstable
emotion, usually showing from early childhood. The symptoms are restlessness
and they are uncontrollable, and as children are unable to be properly trained and
are unresponsive to guidance of the parents. In school, there are certain types
that are brilliant and other types that do not do so well and are on the border
line of being feeble-minded,” Adams testified.

As he spoke, Harmon Phillips looked over at the
defendant to get his reaction. He looked bored as he sat with his right arm on
the table and his chin cupped in his hand. All that day he stole long, furtive
glances at Virginia, who never returned his stare.

“As they advance in school and age they are hard
to control and cause parents and school authorities trouble,” Dr. Adams
continued. “They are hard to keep in school and as they leave school, they are
restless and stubborn, go from one job to another, chasing a rainbow, staying
with work only a few months, losing interest usually. Quite a number of them
become alcoholics, drug addicts, and sex perverts. A lot of them do not come in
contact with the law.”

Although their medical experts may have been heavy
hitters, they were not Anderson’s homerun hitters. His Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig,
and Jimmy Fox were an ex-bootlegger, a former confidant of Kennamer’s, and a
blood expert.

Bail bondsman Hanley “Cadillac” Booth was forced
to testify by subpoena. He didn’t want to tell his story but Anderson needed Cadillac
to refute Kennamer’s claim that Gorrell was the one who had hatched the
kidnapping plot.

“Do you know Phil Kennamer?” King began.

“Yes,” Cadillac said as he pointed at him. “I
first met him in July 1934, at my home with Jeff Griffin and Billy Harper,
Oklahoma City newspapermen.”

“Did you see him again after that?”

“I saw Phil about two weeks later, in August.”

“What was the purpose of his visit to your home at
that time?”

“Phil and a friend came to my home to purchase
some whiskey, which was my business at the time. I sold them some.”

King framed his next question as slowly and
clearly as he could. “Did Phil Kennamer, at that time and in that conversation,
discuss with you extortion, kidnapping, or robbery of some of the wealthy oil
people in Tulsa, in which conversation he went on to tell you about the Wilcox
girl?”

“Yes sir.”

King wanted him to say that again, so he repeated
his question. “When Phil was at your home was extortion, kidnapping or robbery
mentioned by Phil?”

“Yes sir.”

This was bad. Moss had to shut this down. “Did you
think he was serious or not serious?” Moss interrupted.

“I couldn’t tell,” Booth said as he shrugged his
shoulders. “I didn’t pay any attention to him.”

“Why didn’t you pay any attention to him?”

“It didn’t mean anything to me,” Booth said
flatly. It was true. He had told Kennamer he was in the bootlegging business,
not the kidnapping business.

“How many times have you been convicted?” Moss inquired.
He knew the answer, and wanted to discredit the witness as he had done with
Huff.

“About one hundred times. I never was convicted, I
always pleaded guilty. A hundred times in municipal court, two sentences to the
county jail, one fine, one term served and fine paid in federal court.”

It was a strong answer and it left Moss with no
place to go.

The prosecution’s Lou Gehrig was Kennamer pal Otto
Kramer, and when he took the stand, he knocked it out of the park. The twenty-one-year-old
accountant began by explaining that for the last three years, he was a close
friend of Phil Kennamer, who often discussed with him his infatuation with Virginia
Wilcox.