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Matt And His 14-Year-Old Bride, Bertha
Matt And His 14-Year-Old Bride, Bertha
A menace to the southwest region of United States for several years, Matt Kimes criminal activities as a member of the Kimes-Terrill Gang for 1927 have included hitting the Sapulpa State Bank of Sapulpa, Oklahoma for a payday of $42,950 (January), lightening the assets of the Pampa First National Bank of Pampa, Texas by $35,000 (March), as a suspect in a McClune, Kansas bank robbery that nets $207,000 (May), lifting over $18,000 from two banks in the town of Beggs, Oklahoma (three banks had actually been targeted for the May heist but a downtown clock has the robbers pulling the plug on the job minutes too early), the shotgun murder of Town Police Chief William J. McAnally (the lawman is hit with ninety pellets of lead as the town of Beggs is fled), escapes a gun firing posse by driving into the outlaw friendly Ozark Mountains (June), accidentally kidnaps an infant by stealing a car in which two-year-old Orville Noble Jr. is sleeping in the back seat (June and the child will be just fine), and escaping Oilton, Oklahoma, takes hostage the city of Jennings, Oklahoma's police chief George McAnich (June with the lawman eventually abandoned, tied with his revolver belt and pants belt to a tree). More than enough mayhem to justify fleeing Oklahoma authorities, before vanishing with a $3,000 reward on his head, Matt Kimes is spotted in Fayetteville, Arkansas driving a Nash roadster. .
Ray Terrill
Authorities seemingly given the slip by Kimes (who travels about with a full make-up kit in his car that allows him to transform into a woman when necessary), the outlaw is brought down by bank robbing colleague, Raymond "Blackie" Wilson. Captured by Texas Rangers on May 28, 1927 near Oil City, Texas, the bandit is returned to Okmulgee, Oklahoma after a thirteen hour and fifteen minute car ride. Enraged that no attempt was made to free him on the long drive back to Oklahoma, the gunman grows even more irate when more days pass without his confederates showing up to break him out of jail ... an anger that focuses on Kimes (the members of the gang are purported to have taken a blood oath to free each other from jail or die in the attempt). Bound over for trial behind the bars and walls of the state prison at McAlester, Wilson rats out Kimes to Muskogee Chief of Police Clark Compton, telling the lawman that Kimes has most likely headed to Arizona. Insight gained, the state is soon flooded by police circulars on the killer and others members of the Kimes-Terrill Gang, amid rumors that the gang might be about to rob a government payroll meant for the employees of Grand Canyon National Park. On the receiving end of one of the flyers is the constable at the Grand Canyon and custodian of the famous Bright Angel Trail, Bert Lauzon. Good info, driving a Buick in the company of another man and a woman (they are fellow hoodlum, Ray Doolin, a distant relative of infamous Oklahombre, Bill Doolin, and Doolin's wife), on the Thursday morning of June 23, Kimes is identified at one of the park's registry offices based on the wanted posters sent out by Chief Compton..
Bright Angel Trail
Identified, but not apprehended quite yet, by the time a group of lawmen arrive at the Bright Angel Motel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, only the outlaw's Buick can be found. Boxing it in with another vehicle so it can not be rapidly driven away, Sheriff John Parsons of Flagstaff keeps an eye on the car until lunch hunger gets the better of him at around 2:00 in the afternoon. Finished with lunch, Parsons discovers that the park service man he left behind to alert him if Kimes returns is gone, and the outlaw is in the Buick trying to maneuver it out of its parking place. Stepping up to the car, the lawman starts a seemingly casual conversation with the man claiming to be Harry Watson of Oklahoma. Deciding to return to the registry building to look at the photos of Kimes alongside Watson, Parsons cons his way into the Buick and has its driver proceed to the administration building on the road to the park's magnificent Grand View area. Stalling for time as he drives down the road from the El Tovar Hotel, Kimes claims the brakes of the Buick are giving out, as he reaches for the car's emergency brake with his right hand, and then with his left hand, grabs a .45 Colt from under the seat and turns it on Parsons. Not surprised, Parsons grabs the gun and the two men begin a fifteen minute struggle (with time enough for a little trash talking in which Kimes states, "You'd better give up or I'm goin' to kill you, to which Parsons replies with a grin on his face, "You've got a hell of a hard job) for the weapon that sends the car further down the road and into a ditch opposite the east end of a garage at the administration building with both men under the driver's wheel with Parsons on top (in the struggle, every window of the Buick is broken out). Almost another dead lawman at the hands of the bandit, in the contest that ensues, Parsons will turn the gun away from himself three times just as Kimes fires it, suffering a broken third finger on his right hand and a wound to the palm of his left hand caused by the firing pin of Kimes' weapon.
The El Tovar Hotel
Desperate to gain an advantage on the outlaw and hoping bystanders that have run up to the wreck can help out, Parsons braces his legs on the interior of the Buick, pivots, and throws Kimes out of the vehicle as he calls out for someone to grab the desperado (a 12-gauge Remington automatic shotgun with an extension magazine and a .30-30 rifle are later found in the wreck). Confronted by Kimes and his Colt though, both Curley Ennis of the nearby garage (who at first thinks he is witnessing two drunks in a fist fight) and trail foreman, George Cravey, back off and Kimes is able to cross the road and run up the hill, putting about fifty yards between himself and the wrecked Buick. Ignoring his injuries, Parsons clambers out of the car and starts off in pursuit of the outlaw, an action that draws a fourth miss from Kimes' gun ... which Parsons answers with three bullet misses of his own (both men are exhausted from their fight). Sending one more miss Parsons way, Kimes continues up the hill towards the complex's Verkamp store before vanishing over the edge of the rim (a 12-foot drop off a small cliff) and into the Grand Canyon (trapped, if Kimes stays on the trail he can be seen and shot, and if he manages to make it all the way down, he has no way to get out of the canyon without risking a journey over the drowning rapids of the Colorado River or an endurance hike of miles and miles, and if he leaves the trail, he risks plummeting hundreds of feet into the canyon and his death).
Ennis & Cravey On The Rim
A hunt for the outlaw immediately organized, within ten minutes of Kimes' disappearance into the canyon, more than thirty armed men (many are Grand Canyon residents) are deployed along the rim path in a semi-circle line that stretches from the El Tovar Hotel to Yavapai Point for 150 yards, each wearing a bright handkerchief on their arm for identification (another group of men will block all the roads into and out of the area, including Parsons, who despite his injuries, stations himself at the hotel until Kimes is caught or killed ... after the outlaw is caught, Parsons will arrest Ray Doolin and his wife back at the Bright Angel Motel). Experienced outdoorsmen, leading the hunt for the bandit are former bystanders, Ennis and Cravey. Staying out of sight as much as possible (and off the trail), reading the broken twigs and displaced rocks Kimes has left behind, it takes the duo roughly two hours to locate where the bandit is hiding ... behind a boulder, three hundred feet down the canyon at the edge of 1,00-foot cliff, one hand holding his gun, the other hand clinging to the rock. Nowhere to go, Kimes calls out, "I give up. I know when I've had enough," when he sees weapons pointed his way, but refuses to raise his hands when told to for fear he will plummet into the canyon. Inching his way forward, Ennis takes Kimes gun away, pulls the bandit to a safer perch, and then the trio start back up the canyon (a $3,000 reward offered by the Oklahoma Bankers Association for the capture of Kimes divided up, Clarke Compton will receive $750, Gravey and Ennis will both get $750, Parsons will get $375, and for first identifying Kimes at the registry station, Leo Smith will get $375). Hunt over, along with his canyon adventures, Kimes day in Arizona concludes with a train ride to the town of Williams, and then from there, a car ride to the Coconino County jail in Flagstaff (asked why he wnt to the Grand Canyon, Kimes will state, "Why does anyone go there? It's a beauty spot. I wanted to see it.").
View From Yavapai Point
Front Page News - Kimes Handcuffed To Doolin
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Driven back to Oklahoma (it takes three days), Kimes is sentenced to death in the state's electric chair for the shootings of Police Chief William McAnnally in 1927 (he had already been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Perry Chuculate in 1926 when he is broken out of jail). Matt Kimes story should have then ended with his execution, but he escapes that justice when his lawyer gets a mistrial (for the venue not being changed) and with a second trial, Kimes draws another life in prison sentence. And again, doesn't remain behind bars the rest of his life. Incredibly, instead, in 1932 both Kimes brothers, with guard supervision, are given five-day passes by Oklahoma Governor William H. Murray to visit their ill sister, Nellie, in the town of Anadarko. The following year, the governor grants the boys a one-day pass to attend the funeral of a different sister, Bertha Lova Kimes. one day, in which along with their two guards, the men drive out to the home of sister Nellie's boyfriend, 32-year-old escaped convict (from a life sentence on murder charges), George Noland ... who ends up at the morgue with eleven bullets in his body (overkill ... one bullet takes out the man's left eye, another goes straight through his heart, and there are also bullet wounds just above and just below the blood pumping organ) and the guards claiming they shot the man in self-defense (an alternate theory is the Kimes boys bribe the guards to look the other way and murder Noland for beating up their sister). By 1934, Matt Kimes manages to turn his talents in crafting wood, metal, and other cons into a trusty position (while running the prisoner's canteen) with the penitentiary that allows the convicted murderer and bank robber to make innumerable errand visits to downtown McAlester (he even has a fifteen-year-old girlfriend in town) ... and beyond, even receiving a six-day pass to go quail hunting with a shotgun.
Kimes
Governor Murray
Not real smart, in 1945 the authorities grant Matt Kimes a sixty-day leave from prison, and when that is about to run out, grant him a six-month leave ... time which the thankless hoodlum uses to take $17,692 out of the First State Bank of Morton, Texas with two associates. Leave revoked, a fugitive from justice yet again, Matt Kimes then robs a movie theater in Wewoka, Oklahoma of $1,200 in box office receipts. Before another Kimes crime wave can get rolling though, a poultry truck in North Little Rock, Arkansas comes to the rescue of the authorities on the evening of December 1, 1945. One too many drinks in his system, as Kimes is crossing the street at Eighteenth and Pike at the wrong time (stepping out from behind a parked car) he is hit by a chicken-carrying truck driven by 23-year-old Joe Chamblee (reckless driving charges are soon dismissed). Serious injuries received, covered in blood, Kimes is taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital (the accident causes internal injuries along with badly fracturing the outlaw's left leg, along with causing bloody lacerations of head, face, and hand) his where he claims to be Leo A. Woods of Miami, Oklahoma (he is found to be carrying $1,635 in a large roll of cash and a loaded .38 caliber revolver) ... a lie that quickly unravels when the real Mr. Woods is contacted and advises officers he had recently had his car stolen. Admitting his true identity, Kimes dies from a hemorrhaging kidney on the morning of December 14, 1945 ... the outlaw and tourist-for-a-day is only forty when he passes (his brother will eventually be paroled and dies of cancer in Lincoln, California on January 3, 1970 at the age sixty-five.
Final Resting Place
Ray Terrill
Authorities seemingly given the slip by Kimes (who travels about with a full make-up kit in his car that allows him to transform into a woman when necessary), the outlaw is brought down by bank robbing colleague, Raymond "Blackie" Wilson. Captured by Texas Rangers on May 28, 1927 near Oil City, Texas, the bandit is returned to Okmulgee, Oklahoma after a thirteen hour and fifteen minute car ride. Enraged that no attempt was made to free him on the long drive back to Oklahoma, the gunman grows even more irate when more days pass without his confederates showing up to break him out of jail ... an anger that focuses on Kimes (the members of the gang are purported to have taken a blood oath to free each other from jail or die in the attempt). Bound over for trial behind the bars and walls of the state prison at McAlester, Wilson rats out Kimes to Muskogee Chief of Police Clark Compton, telling the lawman that Kimes has most likely headed to Arizona. Insight gained, the state is soon flooded by police circulars on the killer and others members of the Kimes-Terrill Gang, amid rumors that the gang might be about to rob a government payroll meant for the employees of Grand Canyon National Park. On the receiving end of one of the flyers is the constable at the Grand Canyon and custodian of the famous Bright Angel Trail, Bert Lauzon. Good info, driving a Buick in the company of another man and a woman (they are fellow hoodlum, Ray Doolin, a distant relative of infamous Oklahombre, Bill Doolin, and Doolin's wife), on the Thursday morning of June 23, Kimes is identified at one of the park's registry offices based on the wanted posters sent out by Chief Compton..
Bright Angel Trail
Identified, but not apprehended quite yet, by the time a group of lawmen arrive at the Bright Angel Motel on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, only the outlaw's Buick can be found. Boxing it in with another vehicle so it can not be rapidly driven away, Sheriff John Parsons of Flagstaff keeps an eye on the car until lunch hunger gets the better of him at around 2:00 in the afternoon. Finished with lunch, Parsons discovers that the park service man he left behind to alert him if Kimes returns is gone, and the outlaw is in the Buick trying to maneuver it out of its parking place. Stepping up to the car, the lawman starts a seemingly casual conversation with the man claiming to be Harry Watson of Oklahoma. Deciding to return to the registry building to look at the photos of Kimes alongside Watson, Parsons cons his way into the Buick and has its driver proceed to the administration building on the road to the park's magnificent Grand View area. Stalling for time as he drives down the road from the El Tovar Hotel, Kimes claims the brakes of the Buick are giving out, as he reaches for the car's emergency brake with his right hand, and then with his left hand, grabs a .45 Colt from under the seat and turns it on Parsons. Not surprised, Parsons grabs the gun and the two men begin a fifteen minute struggle (with time enough for a little trash talking in which Kimes states, "You'd better give up or I'm goin' to kill you, to which Parsons replies with a grin on his face, "You've got a hell of a hard job) for the weapon that sends the car further down the road and into a ditch opposite the east end of a garage at the administration building with both men under the driver's wheel with Parsons on top (in the struggle, every window of the Buick is broken out). Almost another dead lawman at the hands of the bandit, in the contest that ensues, Parsons will turn the gun away from himself three times just as Kimes fires it, suffering a broken third finger on his right hand and a wound to the palm of his left hand caused by the firing pin of Kimes' weapon.
The El Tovar Hotel
Desperate to gain an advantage on the outlaw and hoping bystanders that have run up to the wreck can help out, Parsons braces his legs on the interior of the Buick, pivots, and throws Kimes out of the vehicle as he calls out for someone to grab the desperado (a 12-gauge Remington automatic shotgun with an extension magazine and a .30-30 rifle are later found in the wreck). Confronted by Kimes and his Colt though, both Curley Ennis of the nearby garage (who at first thinks he is witnessing two drunks in a fist fight) and trail foreman, George Cravey, back off and Kimes is able to cross the road and run up the hill, putting about fifty yards between himself and the wrecked Buick. Ignoring his injuries, Parsons clambers out of the car and starts off in pursuit of the outlaw, an action that draws a fourth miss from Kimes' gun ... which Parsons answers with three bullet misses of his own (both men are exhausted from their fight). Sending one more miss Parsons way, Kimes continues up the hill towards the complex's Verkamp store before vanishing over the edge of the rim (a 12-foot drop off a small cliff) and into the Grand Canyon (trapped, if Kimes stays on the trail he can be seen and shot, and if he manages to make it all the way down, he has no way to get out of the canyon without risking a journey over the drowning rapids of the Colorado River or an endurance hike of miles and miles, and if he leaves the trail, he risks plummeting hundreds of feet into the canyon and his death).
Ennis & Cravey On The Rim
A hunt for the outlaw immediately organized, within ten minutes of Kimes' disappearance into the canyon, more than thirty armed men (many are Grand Canyon residents) are deployed along the rim path in a semi-circle line that stretches from the El Tovar Hotel to Yavapai Point for 150 yards, each wearing a bright handkerchief on their arm for identification (another group of men will block all the roads into and out of the area, including Parsons, who despite his injuries, stations himself at the hotel until Kimes is caught or killed ... after the outlaw is caught, Parsons will arrest Ray Doolin and his wife back at the Bright Angel Motel). Experienced outdoorsmen, leading the hunt for the bandit are former bystanders, Ennis and Cravey. Staying out of sight as much as possible (and off the trail), reading the broken twigs and displaced rocks Kimes has left behind, it takes the duo roughly two hours to locate where the bandit is hiding ... behind a boulder, three hundred feet down the canyon at the edge of 1,00-foot cliff, one hand holding his gun, the other hand clinging to the rock. Nowhere to go, Kimes calls out, "I give up. I know when I've had enough," when he sees weapons pointed his way, but refuses to raise his hands when told to for fear he will plummet into the canyon. Inching his way forward, Ennis takes Kimes gun away, pulls the bandit to a safer perch, and then the trio start back up the canyon (a $3,000 reward offered by the Oklahoma Bankers Association for the capture of Kimes divided up, Clarke Compton will receive $750, Gravey and Ennis will both get $750, Parsons will get $375, and for first identifying Kimes at the registry station, Leo Smith will get $375). Hunt over, along with his canyon adventures, Kimes day in Arizona concludes with a train ride to the town of Williams, and then from there, a car ride to the Coconino County jail in Flagstaff (asked why he wnt to the Grand Canyon, Kimes will state, "Why does anyone go there? It's a beauty spot. I wanted to see it.").
View From Yavapai Point
Front Page News - Kimes Handcuffed To Doolin
More Headlines
Driven back to Oklahoma (it takes three days), Kimes is sentenced to death in the state's electric chair for the shootings of Police Chief William McAnnally in 1927 (he had already been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Perry Chuculate in 1926 when he is broken out of jail). Matt Kimes story should have then ended with his execution, but he escapes that justice when his lawyer gets a mistrial (for the venue not being changed) and with a second trial, Kimes draws another life in prison sentence. And again, doesn't remain behind bars the rest of his life. Incredibly, instead, in 1932 both Kimes brothers, with guard supervision, are given five-day passes by Oklahoma Governor William H. Murray to visit their ill sister, Nellie, in the town of Anadarko. The following year, the governor grants the boys a one-day pass to attend the funeral of a different sister, Bertha Lova Kimes. one day, in which along with their two guards, the men drive out to the home of sister Nellie's boyfriend, 32-year-old escaped convict (from a life sentence on murder charges), George Noland ... who ends up at the morgue with eleven bullets in his body (overkill ... one bullet takes out the man's left eye, another goes straight through his heart, and there are also bullet wounds just above and just below the blood pumping organ) and the guards claiming they shot the man in self-defense (an alternate theory is the Kimes boys bribe the guards to look the other way and murder Noland for beating up their sister). By 1934, Matt Kimes manages to turn his talents in crafting wood, metal, and other cons into a trusty position (while running the prisoner's canteen) with the penitentiary that allows the convicted murderer and bank robber to make innumerable errand visits to downtown McAlester (he even has a fifteen-year-old girlfriend in town) ... and beyond, even receiving a six-day pass to go quail hunting with a shotgun.
Kimes
Governor Murray
Not real smart, in 1945 the authorities grant Matt Kimes a sixty-day leave from prison, and when that is about to run out, grant him a six-month leave ... time which the thankless hoodlum uses to take $17,692 out of the First State Bank of Morton, Texas with two associates. Leave revoked, a fugitive from justice yet again, Matt Kimes then robs a movie theater in Wewoka, Oklahoma of $1,200 in box office receipts. Before another Kimes crime wave can get rolling though, a poultry truck in North Little Rock, Arkansas comes to the rescue of the authorities on the evening of December 1, 1945. One too many drinks in his system, as Kimes is crossing the street at Eighteenth and Pike at the wrong time (stepping out from behind a parked car) he is hit by a chicken-carrying truck driven by 23-year-old Joe Chamblee (reckless driving charges are soon dismissed). Serious injuries received, covered in blood, Kimes is taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital (the accident causes internal injuries along with badly fracturing the outlaw's left leg, along with causing bloody lacerations of head, face, and hand) his where he claims to be Leo A. Woods of Miami, Oklahoma (he is found to be carrying $1,635 in a large roll of cash and a loaded .38 caliber revolver) ... a lie that quickly unravels when the real Mr. Woods is contacted and advises officers he had recently had his car stolen. Admitting his true identity, Kimes dies from a hemorrhaging kidney on the morning of December 14, 1945 ... the outlaw and tourist-for-a-day is only forty when he passes (his brother will eventually be paroled and dies of cancer in Lincoln, California on January 3, 1970 at the age sixty-five.
Final Resting Place
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