HENRY ANDREW "HECK" THOMAS - LAWMAN

1/6/1850 - Not as well known as lawmen such as Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp, in Oxford, Georgia, far from the wild western territories he will become famous in, Henry Andrew "Heck" Thomas is born into the well-to-do family (he will be the youngest of five children) of tavern owner Lovick Pierce Thomas and Martha Ann Thomas.

Thomas

Intended by his parents to become a Methodist minister, the Civil War turns Heck's life totally around, when as a 12-year-old he accompanies his father (who will be a captain and quartermaster) and his uncle, Edward Lloyd Thomas (who will end the war as a brigadier general), into the Confederate Army and becomes a courier for the 35th Georgia Infantry, part of the famous brigade of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (father and uncle will fight in the famous battles of the Army of Northern Virginia and both will survive the war).  On 9/1/1862, after Union General Philip Kearney is killed at the Battle of Chantilly, young Heck is entrusted with the dead general's horse and equipment, and receives an order directly from commander Robert E. Lee to take the items (including the general's sword) through enemy lines under a flag of truce and return them to Kearney's widow (as his relatives are participating in the bloodiest single day in American history at the Battle of Antietam).  Mission accomplished, Heck's military career ends a year later when he contracts typhoid fever and is sent back to his family in Georgia.  After the war, Heck will clerk in his oldest brother Lovick's Atlanta store, before becoming an Atlanta policeman at the age of 17 (after his father becomes the city's first marshal).  As an officer of the law, he courts the daughter of an Atlanta preacher and in 1871 marries Isabel Gray and starts raising a family (the couple will have five children).  

Father

Uncle

The Death Of Kearny

Wide open spaces calling, the family soon migrates to Galveston, Texas where Heck works as a railroad guard for the Texas Express Company (getting the job through help from his cousin, Jim Thomas), watching over the trains of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad on their runs from Dennison to Galveston (as such, in 1878, though wounded twice in the effort by bullets that hit him in the neck and nick him beneath the eye, he thwarts a robbery by the infamous Sam Bass Gang by putting fake money in the express car's safe, while hiding the real money, $22,000 in cash, in an unlit stove).  Impressing his bosses, by 1879, Heck is promoted to Chief Agent for the company  working out of Fort Worth, where he learns the ins-and-outs of law enforcement from the local chief of police, gunfighter Timothy Isaiah "Longhaired Jim" Courtright (he will be shot to death at a city bar and brothel called Ella Blackwell's Shooting Gallery in 1887 at the age of 39 by gunfighter Luke Short).  At the age of 35, Heck leaves his job with the railroad and runs for the vacant job of Fort Worth police chief, but is narrowly defeated.  Defeated but not down, he next becomes a welcome addition to the Fort Worth Detective Association, leading a posse with Deputy U.S. Marshal Jim Taylor (after a two month hunt) that does away (when the men refuse to surrender) with the homicidal outlaw brothers, Jim and Pink Lee, and gains a $7,000 dead-or-alive reward.  Shortly afterwards, in 1887, Thomas is himself made a deputy U.S. marshal, bringing in Indian Territory miscreants for Fort Smith's notorious "Hanging Judge," Isaac Charles Parker. 

Courtright

Sam Bass

Parker

Moving the family to Fort Smith, on his first ride for Judge Parker, Heck apprehends eight murderers, a horse thief, a bootlegger, and several other hard cases (during his seven-year tenure with the force, Thomas will bring in more Indian Territory outlaws than any other lawman).  The move though will eventually cost him his wife and family.  Gone from home for weeks and months, worried constantly during his absences that he will be gunned down (and rightly so, fifteen Indian Territory officers will lose their lives during this period of time), and a first-hand witness to the dangers of the area when in 1886, an outlaw interrupts the couple's picnic by trying to steal horses from the buggy the pair is using (Heck will wound, handcuff, and return the bandit to Fort Smith in the buggy), Mrs. Thomas will finally have enough and move back to Georgia with the pair's children, eventually divorcing Heck.  In June of 1888, the now bachelor Thomas leads a three man posse in search of a gang of outlaws that have recently plundered a train.  Locating the outlaws at an illegal still on Snake Creek, Thomas calls on the men to surrender, a request which is greeted by gunfire from the bandit's leader Al Purdy that breaks Heck's right wrist, opens an eight inch wound his left side, and pitches the lawman out of his saddle (the three deputies hole Purdy and the rest of the crooks surrender.  Almost killed, recuperating from his wounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Heck meets a local schoolmarm and preacher's daughter named Mattie Mowbury and falls in love again, and in 1889 the couple marries at Arkansas City, Kansas (they will have one child).

Thomas

Going after the most dangerous outlaws for the highest rewards, Thomas in 1889 makes one of the authorities' many attempts to arrest Indian outlaw, Ned Christie.  Leading a three man posse to a location near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Thomas and company pepper Christie's hideout with rifle fire, set the structure ablaze, and as the outlaw is escaping into the woods while the posse is treating wounded member, L. P. Isbel, Heck snaps off a round from his Winchester that shatters Christie's nose and knocks out his right eye (it will take three more tries by lawmen before the outlaw is finally killed in November of 1892).  In 1890, goes after a frontier hooligan named Jim July who has jumped bail after being charged with armed robbery ... he too resists arrest, but is not as lucky as Christie and is shot to death by Heck.  In 1891, takes on one of his biggest challenges and begins a pursuit of men he knows from their time as lawmen, Bob, Emmett, and Grat Dalton (he was also an associate of their dead brother, Deputy U.S. Marshal Frank Dalton).  Chasing the Daltons for over a year (Emmett will call him the "nemesis" of the gang) he is only 20 miles away, at the gang's last campsite, when word reaches him of the gang's demise trying to rob two banks at the same time in their hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas (a foolish move to get adequate resources for the men to retire to Mexico brought on by Thomas' dogged pursuit of the desperadoes, shot to pieces, only Emmett survives the attempt).  Riding into town shortly after the gun battle that kills eight ends, Thomas officially identifies the dead Daltons for the Wells Fargo Company.

Dead Ned

Dead Bob & Grat Dalton

Arrest after arrest, by this time Thomas is considered to be one of the "Three Guardsmen" trying to bring law and order to the region (the other two are Deputy U.S. Marshals Chris Madsen and Bill Tilghman), and as such, he is next tasked with going after the outlaw band that morphs out of the Coffeyville raid, Bill Doolin's Oklahombres (also known as the Wild Bunch) and in helping Tilghman tame the city of Perry, Oklahoma, a land rush boomtown filled with 25,000 souls and 110 saloons that earns the nickname, "Hell's Half Acre" (in a period of three years, Thomas will be responsible for over 300 arrests of wanted felons).  Hunting the Doolin Gang as he had the Dalton's, in November of 1892 near Orlando, Oklahoma, Thomas, Chris Madsen, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Tom Houston (he will be shot to death in 1893 during the Battle of Ingalls by Doolin associate "Arkansas Tom" jones) take out Doolin Gang member Oliver "Ol' Yantis at the farm of the outlaw's sister when the bank robber refuses to surrender and fires on the lawmen, the first member of the gang to be killed ... there will be many more before the decade ends.  Using two Osage scouts, Spotted Dog Eater and Howling Wolf, Thomas next Doolin Gang tangle is with William "Little Bill" Raidler.  Tracked to a cave near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Thomas returns fire with his .45-90 Winchester when the outlaw fires on the lawman.  A better shot than the bandit, Thomas's bullet shatters the outlaw's hand before Raidler escapes into the brush (the posse will discover two of Raidler's self-amputated fingers nearby and the desperado will be caught a few weeks later by a posse led by Tilghman).     

Perry, Oklahoma

Madsen

Yantis

Raidler

The biggest catch of Thomas' career comes on August 25, 1896, outside of Lawson, Oklahoma ... gang leader Bill Doolin.  Naked and without a gun (it is hanging from a nearby post) when he is finally caught while nursing an old foot wound in one of the the Sulphur springs bathhouses of Eureka Springs, Arkansas by Tilghman (pointing a .45 caliber revolver at the outlaw's heart from four feet away), Doolin is jailed in Guthrie, Oklahoma, but not for long.  Accompanied by fellow captive and gang member, Dan "Dynamite Dick" Clifton (and twelve other crooks), Doolin breaks out of the jail on the evening of Sunday, July 5, 1896 and makes plans to flee into New Mexico with his wife and start a new life.  Pursuit of the desperado immediate, Thomas uses his knowledge of the outlaw to stake out the home of Doolin's father-in-law (with a posse that includes members of the murderous Dunn Family ... a group of former outlaw "friends" that have recently murdered "Bittercreek" George Newcomb and Charley Pierce for the reward money while the pair are visiting Newcomb's amour, the "Rose of Cimarron," Rose Elizabeth Dunn), where the outlaw's bride is residing.  Posse set up on both sides of a road leading to the farm, when Doolin shows up on the evening of the 25th, carrying a rifle and leading his horse up the farmhouse, a familiar pattern of surrender asked and refused with gunfire is played out again ... and once more an outlaw is sent to Boot Hill wearing his boots.  Whipping up his rifle, Doolin fires into the night and has his rifle knocked out of his hands, but then foolishly continues his fight by pulling a Colt .45 and getting off two rounds before Thomas puts a slug in the outlaw's chest as Bill Dunn hits him with a full blast of shotgun buckshot.

Tilghman

Dynamite Dick

The End Of Doolin - True West Magazine

Adios Bill

Wild Bunch leader gone, there is one more gunfight with the gang Thomas participates in.  Later in 1896, with his son Albert from Georgia participating, along with two of the Dunn brothers, Thomas tracks down "Dynamite Dick" and a couple of other thieves to a wilderness camp twenty miles west of Sapulpa, Oklahoma and a pitched battle breaks out.  Sadly, despite all the lead sent the outlaws' way, no deaths or arrests result from the encounter.  Slowed by injuries (he will be wounded six times during his career in law enforcement) and age, in 1902 Thomas is posted to Lawton, Oklahoma where, when he resigns as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, is elected the growing town's first chief of police, a job he will hold for seven years.  And during his time as Lawton's head cop, Thomas will also briefly flirt with the world of entertainment, organizing a fake posse that chases after a group of outlaws (led by reformed real bandit, Al Jennings) in a 1908 silent one-reeler called "The Bank Robbery," produced by the Oklahoma Natural Mutoscene Company and directed by Heck's former comrade, Bill Tilghman (former Comanche leader, Quanah Parker and lawman Frank Canton also briefly appear in the movie).  Still in Lawton, the wild life of Thomas finally ends on August 14, 1912, when the legendary lawman dies of Bright's disease (a kidney ailment associated with high blood pressure and heart problems) at the age of 62.

Early Lawton

Scene From "The Bank Robbery"

Old Heck

A lawman's lawman, the violent adventure that is Thomas' life all begins in Georgia on this day in 1850.

"Heck" Thomas

  

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THE BATTLE OF PRINCETON

1/3/1777 - Concluding a wonderous ten days of combat and endurance stretching from Christmas night of 1776 to 1777 that historians will one day dub the "Ten Crucial Days, American fortunes that see General George Washington and his Continental Army chased out of New York and the government moving from Philadelphia to the safer climes of Maryland completely do a turnaround.  Genius on display, Washington and his army will cross the semi-frozen Delaware River three times during the period, surprise and best a a hungover force of 1,500 mercenary Hessians under the command of German Colonel Johann Rall (struck twice by rebel bullets, Rall will not survive the encounter) at the day-after-Christmas Battle of Trenton, talk most of the Continental Army into reenlisting after their service time expires after the victory, stop three assaults on a bridge over Assunpink Creek by 5,000 British regulars (under the command of Lt. General Charles Cornwallis who had been about to board ship to return to Great Britain before General William Howe orders him to restore order in New Jersey) trying to retake Trenton, and slipping away from Cornwallis, take the town of Princeton (and its supplies and victuals) from a British rearguard force of 1,400 troops under the command of Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood at the Battle of Princeton.

Washington Rallying His Men At Princeton

After a day of fighting at Assunpink Creek, on Thursday evening Washington calls a war council with a dozen of his senior officers at the home of army quartermaster Alexander Douglas.  Stay in Trenton, retreat, or attack, looking at a map of the area (with alternate routes and back roads documented by a Princeton spy two days before) and knowing Cornwallis will attack in full force the next day, Washington sees opportunity in the peril his men finds themselves in, and formulates a plan to slip away from Cornwallis, use a group of back roads, and fall on the lightly defended town of Princeton.  Explaining what he wants done, the other men at the council soon see the chance too and orders go out that will result in the colonials turning the left flank of the British in the night.  Ground frozen that only the day before had been mud, excess baggage is sent off to the town of Burlington and cloth is wrapped around the wheels of the artillery to muffle the sound of the gun's wheels, while 500 men and two cannons march back and forth and potshot at the British to prevent Cornwallis from knowing Washington has left.  By 2:00 in the morning the entire army, including the actors of the rearguard, are in motion towards Princeton along Quaker Bridge Road (roughly 4,500 men and 35 guns).

Assunpink

Cornwallis

A hard march through frozen woods and icy roads that cause horses to slip and fall and men to break through icy ponds, at Friday's dawn, when Washington wanted to attack, the army is behind schedule (they have covered nine miles in six hours) and still two miles from Princeton (it is roughly 21 degrees at 8:00 in the morning).  Sending off 350 soldiers under Brigadier General Hugh Mercer to the right to destroy a bridge into town that Cornwallis will need to mount a counterattack once he discovers Washington's true intent, the men instead blunder into a British force (the 17th and 55th regiments, fifty horsemen, and two cannons) commanded by Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood, marching to Trenton to support the Cornwallis offensive.  Sudden confrontation outside a small apple orchard, at only about fifty paces from each other the battle for Princeton begins.  During the intense firing from both sides that results, Mercer's grey horse is hit and spills the general to the ground, where thinking they have unhorsed Washington, Mercer is brained by a British musket butt and then bayoneted repeatedly.  Bayonets bloodied, as the rate of American rifle fire falls off, Mawhood orders a bayonet charge that sends Mercer's command scurrying and also causes the support Washington has sent the mortally wounded commander (Colonel John Cadwalader's brigade of of 1,100) to flee the clash.  Disaster apparent as the two French-made 4-pound guns open fire on the Americans, the clash instead turns into a British defeat when Washington arrives on the scene and rallies Mercer's and Cadwalader's men into first stopping their flight (leadership by actually leading, at one point with bullets flying all about, Washington is only thirty yards away from the Redcoat line), and then going over to the attack.  Ten gunners killed, the artillery horses down, and gun carriages on fire, Mowhood's cannons go silent and the rout is soon on, with the lieutenant colonel fleeing into the woods with his two Springer spaniel dogs in close pursuit (still leading British troops, Mowhood will survive the battle and die in 1780 during a siege of Gibraltar at the age of 50).  Ecstatic at the turnaround in fortunes, Cadwalader will call to his troops, "They fly.  The day is our own!"  Indeed, but not quite yet.

Mawhood

The Death Of Mercer

Bayonet Charge

Cadwalader & Family

The majority of the British forces in the area dead, in flight, or captured (WASHINGTON IS REPORTED TO HAVE CALLED OUT, "It's a fine fox chase my boys!", the fighting then turned to the town of Princeton, at the time a village of about sixty houses scattered about a single street, dominated by a the large stone college building known as Nassau House (now the center of Princeton University, at the time the campus is known as the College of New Jersey).  Pushing through British forces at a ravine just outside of town, and then a breastwork (a flanking attack by the British is cut to pieces), the men of Brigadier General John Sullivan and Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair flow into town, quickly surrounding Princeton's remaining Redcoats in Nassau Hall.  Firing on their tormentors from the upper broken windows of the stone stronghold, the British resistance is ended when Captain Alexander Hamilton (the gentleman who will one day become the first United States Secretary of the Treasury and be killed in 1804 during a duel with Aaron Burr) moves a battery of 6-pound cannons forward and begins peppering the building with rebel balls (kismet, Hamilton shoots up the college that had denied him accelerated studies before the war, and one of his cannonballs, takes off the head of an oil portrait of King George III that hung on one of the hall's walls).  Enough, an officer soon puts a white handkerchief on the point of a sword and waves it out a window in surrender.  Arms dropped, about two hundred soldiers walk out of Nassau House and into captivity.  Plundering the village of anything that will help support the army during winter quarters, fearing retribution from Cornwallis' still potent force at Trenton, a drum roll sounding assembly signals the army to assemble and then move out and at 11:00 in the morning, an hour after the fighting stops, the men are on the march again ... a march that will take them to the relative safety of their winter camp of 1777 near the town of Morristown, New Jersey (Washington at first wants to go on and attack the British supply depot at New Brunswick for its British pay chest of 70,000 pounds, but is talked out of the gamble by trusted lieutenants, Major General Henry Knox and Major General Nathanael Greene)  .   

The Battle Of Princeton

Fighting In Princeton

Victory instead of defeat, the ten days and victory at Princeton reverse the situation in New Jersey ... troops and fodder expected by General Howe will not be forthcoming, the American army once again discovers it can fight and beat trained European troops, the British presence in New Jersey basically comes to an end, overseas, the French are now interested in an alliance with the American government, the Continental Congress grants General Washington dictatorial powers to fight on against the British, and the Continental Army wins a brief period of respite in which to prepare itself for the coming battles of 1777.  Consider nothing more than a problematic minor skirmish at the time by the English, a century later British historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan will put the clash (and the Battle of Trenton) in their proper prospective, writing, "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a span of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."  Or as the orderly book of the 2nd New York Regiment reads, "The rising world shall sing of us a thousand years to come, and tell our children's children the wonders we have done."  Amen to that!

Washington At Princeton

1784 Portrait By

Charles Wilson Peale

 

    

  

ONE CRAZY CREE - 12/20

12/20/1879 - Just three years removed from the Sioux victory over General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, on a cold winter Saturday, citizens of Fort Saskatchewan in Alberta, Canada witness their town's first official hanging when a Cree Indian named Swift Runner (Ka-Ki-Si-Kutchin) is executed for being a Wendigo (or at least thinking he is one) that murders his entire family and eats the corpses.

Swift Runner

Part of the folklore of the First Nations Algonquin tribes that populate the northern forests of Nova Scotia, the eastern coast of Canada, and the Great Lakes region of both Canada and the United States, the Wendigo is said to be a malevolent monster with spirit and human characteristics that wanders the forests seeking victims ... in some cases it kills and eats its prey, in others, its spirit possesses the human it victimizes, transforming the person it encounters into flesh seeking monster too, capable of rape, murder, and an insatiable need (the more it consumes, the more it wants more) for human flesh.  The creature is associated with winter, cold, famine, and starvation and appears as a giant gaunt figure almost skeletal in nature covered in suppurating, death smelling, ash-grey skin, with eye eyes, and talons and fangs for disposing of its prey  Much as clinical lycanthropy designates a psychological condition in which a human believes they can transform into a wolf, the Wendigo has lent its name to a mental disorder, Wendigo psychosis, in which an individual transforms into a monster cannibal with an massive, unending appetite.  It is a psychosis that will consume Swift Runner.

Wendigo

Hunting

A member of the Cree Nation (he is born in Alberta, Canada), Swift Runner grows up to be a huge, thickly muscled outdoorsman, standing over 6'3" tall.  Prior to 1878, Swift Runner is considered a pillar of the Indian community of Alberta ... he has a mild personality, is considered a smart and trustworthy individual by fellow Crees and fur traders of the Hudson Bay Company.  He is considered to be a good husband to his wife, and a loving father to his six children.  Supplementing his hunting skills, he puts food on the table with his pay from whites, for a time being employed as a scout and trapper for Canada's Northwest Mounted Police (an organization born only six years before, in May of 1873).  There is a problem though, as Swift Runner develops a taste for whiskey (illegal to the region, it is snuck into the area disguised as patent medicines), and when drunk, he is a completely different person, a mean lush who will be described by some as "the terror of the whole region."  One too many incidents of violent drunkenness (some of his benders last up to three months, and Swift Runner's tribe finally sends he and his family (his wife, Charlotte, mother-in-law, brother, and six children) packing into the woods.  Out of sight, out of mind, Swift Runner and his family are forgotten until in the spring of 1879, the Indian stumbles out of the wilderness and into a Catholic mission and relates a horrific story of his wife's suicide and the entire rest of the family's demise from starvation (although the family is only twenty-five miles away from emergency supplies at a Hudson Bay Co. trading post).  The priests at the mission though notice that Swift Runner appears to be very healthy.  That fact, combined with knowledge that other Crees in the area have had successful winter hunts, Swift Runner having screaming nightmares every night, constant small changes in his tale, and his attempt to lead a group of children into the woods finally cause the mission to contact the mounted police.  Given the task of finding out what took place out in the woods, Inspector Severe Gagnon and a small squad of police take Swift Runner back into the woods and have the Indian take them to his camp.  Eventually finding the camp, Swift Runner points out where his eldest son is buried, and the police dig up the grave and find the corpse undisturbed, the rest of the dead they discover have been terribly disturbed ... and more!

Gagnon

Bones Of The Swift Runner Family

A graveyard in the woods, the camp gound is covered in bones, many snapped open with the marrow sucked out.  Producing a skull that belonged to his wife, Swift Runner's original story of starvation falls apart and his family, excepting the eldest son, now are identified by Swift Runner as being victims of a Wendigo.  It is a Wendigo that came to Swift Runner in his dreams, telling the Indian to eat those around him and transforms the Indian into a monster.  Wendigo rampage, the monster kills Swift Runner's wife first, then that murder accomplished, forces one brother to kill another and then butcher the remains, hangs the family's infant from a lodge pole and then for the pure barbaric pleasure of the screams it produces, tugs on the baby's dangling limbs, and eventually murders the rest of the family, including his mother-in-law (who Swift Runner will state was "a little tough") and brother, then dines on the flesh of the victims as needed through the winter.  Evidence gathered, the horrified mounties return to Fort Saskatchewan with Swift Runner in irons.  Put on trial before Stipendiary Magistrate Hugh Richardson on August 8, 1879, Swift Runner faces a jury that includes three English speaking half-Crees and four men familiar with the Cree language.  Additionally, to make sure everything is on the up-and-up and Swift Runner doesn't get railroaded by proceedings he doesn't understand, a Cree man translates the entire court proceedings and there is a Cree/English scholar on hand as an observer  to make sure Swift Runner understands what is happening.  No defense presented, Swift Runner sits calmly through witness testimony against him.  His only comments during the proceedings when asked if he has anything to say, he states quite simply, "I did it."  Indeed, and the trial does not last long with no one believing Swift Runner actually turned into a Wendigo (the jury deliberations last all of twenty short minutes).  Found guilty of murder and cannibalism, Richardson sentences Swift Runner to be hung on 12/20/1879 at 7:30 in the morning.

Richardson

The Fort These Days

The sentence however presents a problem for the authorities ... the wilds of Alberta have never before been the site of an official execution.  First timers doing the best they can, Staff Sergeant Fred Bagley, a bugler for the Northwest Mounted Police, is put in charge of arranging the hanging ,,, arrangements that include building a gallows when the walls of Fort Saskatchewan and hiring a hangman from among the locals for $50 (the "winner" is an old Army pensioner in need of money named Rogers).  The night before his execution, Swift Runner refuses to spend the evening with a priest, stating, "The white man has ruined me.  I don't think their God could amount to much."  Pitch black, bitterly cold, and snowing when Swift Runner is brought out of his cell on Saturday, the 20th, the hanging is delayed when it is discovered that folks (there are about 60 people at the hanging) waiting to witness the execution have taken the gallows' trap and burnt it to keep warm in the storm, Sheriff Edouard Richard is late to arrive due to the snow and cold, and the hangman has forgotten to bring the straps meant to bind the prisoner's arms (the necessary length of rope required for the job is soon procured) .  Two extra hours of life granted by the delays, wearing the noose around his neck that will snuff out his life, Swift Runner sits next to one of the fires burning within the fort, chatting with witnesses, and having a last meal of a pound of pemmican as repair work is done on the gallows.  Commenting on the proceedings, the killer makes the authorities an offer, "I could kill myself with a tomahawk and save the hangman further trouble."  Finally ready to go, Swift Runner is led to the scaffold and a black hood is placed over his head.  Last words time, Swift Runner admits his guilt once more, then thanks his jailers for their kindness during his incarceration, before berating his guard that morning for making him wait two hours in the cold for his ending.  Dropped five feet to his death (and the Wendigo's demise too) seconds later, Swift Runner is left hanging for an hour, then cut down and buried in the snows outside the fort.  One old time sourdough veteran of the California gold rush named Jim Reade that witnesses the execution sums up the event for readers of the Daily Evening Mercury newspaper ... "Boys, that's the purtiest hangin' I ever seen, and it's the twenty-ninth."

Wendigo And Victim

Wendigo

         
  

  

 

COP KILLER COOKED

12/19/1958 - Providing the raw material and framework (along with the 1952 ordeal of the Hill Family of Whitemarsh Township in Pennsylvania) for a best selling novel, a Tony winning play (featuring Paul Newman in the role of escaped convict Glenn Griffin), and three films (the first, in 1955 stars Humphrey Bogart as Griffin, the second, a 1967 TV remake has George Segal playing Griffin, and the 1990 remake features Mikey Rourke as the chief bad guy), all called "The Desperate Hours," the brief criminal career of  29-year-old Richard Carpenter comes to an electrical end in the death house chair of the Cook County jail in Chicago, Illinois.

Carpenter

Born in 1932 as a public enemy crime wave sweeps over the Midwest of the United States, Carpenter grows up in a world of strife ... the family strife of two parents who grow to hate each other until the father finally leaves his family, and the strife of the Great Depression that causes Carpenter's doting mother (there are also two daughters to take care of) to park him in an orphanage for lack of funds; behavioral problems soon are evident.  Joining the Army at the age of 18, he is also 18 when he is issued a dishonorable discharge and kicked out of the Army.  Returning to Chicago, Carpenter begins a life of low-level crimes that sees the young thug committing dozens of petty robberies for chump change.  In 1951 he is captured by police for the first time after robbing a local cabbie at gunpoint of eight dollars ... a crime for which Carpenter spends a year of his life behind bars.  Trying to go straight upon his release, Carpenter becomes a cabbie himself, but the money he makes at the legit occupation is not enough for the hoodlum, and soon a new Carpenter crime wave hits the city.  His modus operandi is to show up at a bar or tavern just before closing time (sometimes he even has a drink before getting down to business), whip out a pistol, and then help himself to whatever money is in the cash register (usually a sum between thirty and three-hundred dollars).  Loot secured, he then runs out of the business on crepe-soled shoes and vanishes into the night ... no getaway car is ever used.  For months, in almost seventy robberies, Carpenter terrorizes Chicago's many gin-mills, and the authorities don't know the culprit's name.  Carpenter's phantom days however end on April Fool's Day of 1955.

Carpenter's Family

Following his regular routine, entering a small tavern just before its closing time of 2:00 in the morning, Carpenter pulls his pistol and demands whatever cash is in the till, but there is a difference to the robbery this time around ... one of the patrons in the bar is off-duty police officer, Medard Bosacki.  Pulling his weapon and targeting Carpenter, Bosacki turns into a statue when the gunman points his weapon at the bartender's head and says he will pull the trigger if Bosacki doesn't put his weapon on the bar.  Complying with the crook instead of risking bloodshed, Bosacki does what the thief says and Carpenter grabs the registers cash, pockets the police revolver and exits into the night.  The robbery though is the beginning of Carpenter's problems ... Bosacki identifies the robber as local troublemaker, Carpenter, and there are repercussions for taking a police officer's gun and soon the city is flooded with wanted posters for Carpenter.  Manhunt begun, it finally bears sour fruit that summer (it is August 15, 1955) when on his way to work on the subway, Chicago Police Detective William Murphy spots Carpenter and attempts to arrest the "Lone Wolf" robber.  Taking his eyes off Carpenter for only a second as the officer reaches for his handcuffs, rattlesnake quick, the thief whips out a pistol and shoots the police officer in the chest with Bosacki's stolen pistol, transforming himself into a killer as he flees the subway platform where Murphy's bleeds (only 33, Murphy leaves behind a wife and two daughters).

Murphy

Incensed at the loss of one of their own, the authorities flood the area with cops but Carpenter seems to have vanished again, until two days later, off duty officer Clarence Kerr decides to take in a movie with his wife at the Biltmore Theatre at 2046 Division Street.  Movie over, Kerr sees a man asleep in a back row of the movie house that he believes might be Carpenter, and gun at the ready he decides to rouse the man (a decision his wife tries to talk him out of) ... and suddenly is confronted by a growling bear holding a revolver.  "Well I guess you got me," Carpenter states as he comes awake and then bolts out of his seat.  Gunfire exchanged, the thug runs out of a side door while Kerr slumps to the floor of the theater, shot in the chest (almost a second cop notch for the killer's gun, the surgeon that saves Kerr's life says that if the round had hit the officer while his heart was expanded instead of contracted, Kerr would be a corpse ... showing his fortitude, Kerr gets off five shots at the Carpenter before collapsing).  In minutes seem to be everyone as Chicago's finest react as if John Dillinger had come back to life, as newspapers, televisions, and radios are filled with the story of the hunt for Carpenter, but he is gone again ... briefly.

Kerr At The Theater Receiving The Last Rites

Kerr, His Wife, And Surgeon

Two blocks away, just returned home after a long day driving his truck, Leonard Powell is confronted at the screen door of his kitchen by a sweaty stranger holding a gun with blood stains on his pants ... Richard Carpenter.  No introduction necessary but one given anyway, the gunman forces his way into the home stating, "I'm Carpenter.  I just shot another policeman.  If you behave you won't get hurt.  If not, I'll shoot you.  Now let me in."  Taking Powell, Powell's wife Stella, and their two children hostage (Diane, 2, and Robert, 7), the family suffers through an ordeal which newspapers will call the family's "desperate hours."  Seconds to minutes and the minutes become hours, Carpenter paces about the house and his hostages blathering endlessly about his life and crimes, while occasionally pausing briefly to peer out from behind the curtains of the Powell abode at the police search going on outside.  Not the sharpest blade in the kitchen, when the next morning arrives, Powell convinces Carpenter that he will be missed if he is not allowed to go to work.  With warnings of what will happen to his family if he talks to anyone about who is in the Powell residence, Mr. Powell completes a full day of work worrying constantly about his family, but returns to his home without telling a soul his secret.  A rerun of the first evening, after 23-hours with Carpenter, Mr. Powell decides he has enough and expands on his tale of the day before ... if the rest of his family is not allowed to go about their normal routines, it will be noticed and will draw the authorities to the Powell home ... and with the result of nothing happening the first time he released Powell, the pinhead killer allows the rest of the family to also vacate their home.

Outside The Hostage House After

  A horribly bad decision that will end up costing the killer his life, as the family reaches their front porch, Powell whispers to his wife to get everyone out of range as quick as possible without bringing attention to herself, then he walks off in the direction of his father-in-laws home, stopping as soon as he is out of sight of Carpenter to call the police.  Already in the neighborhood, three minutes after the call over thirty police squads respond and have the area cordoned off and are at Powell's front door.  Immediate exit required, Carpenter leaps through a window at the side of the house and enters the neighboring apartment of Stanley Sciblo.  He is quickly located inside and after he refuses to surrender, the Chicago authorities flood the unit with tear gas before entering,  Fighting back at first (the thug will be described as reacting like a vicious, cornered animal), Carpenter gets a well-deserved beat-down, before finally accepting his arrest as he whimpers for the arresting officers, "Don't shoot."  Taken to the nearby Bridewell Hospital to have his wounds treated, Carpenter confesses to a host of robberies and to shooting police officers Murphy and Kerr.

Busted

In For Attention

Arraigned

At trial, Carpenter's lawyer tries to blame all the killer's crimes on him being nuts, which the hoodlum backs up by acting the fool during the proceedings and constantly being aggressive with his handlers.  The insanity plea of course falls on deaf ears and it takes his jury only 90 minutes to find him guilty of first degree murder in the shooting death of Detective Murphy.  Sentenced to death in the state's electric chair, appeals last three long years before the Illinois Supreme Court rules that his execution should be carried out.  And so it is ... at 12:04 in the morning of 12/19/1958, Carpenter's Chicago crime spree ends with the 29-year-old killer receiving three massive jolts from the chair that stop the killer's heart.

Fighting Officers

Drug Into Court

Before Carpenter dies however, there is one more moment of craziness the killer leaves behind.  In his last act other than walking to the chair and getting juiced, Carpenter takes the heel off of one of his shoes.  Asked what he is doing by one of his guards, Carpenter replies, "I don't want anybody else to stand in my shoes."  Walking to his death, Carpenter states that he doesn't believe in God, and that he is going to the chair and there is nothing he can do about it.  As reported by the Chicago Daily Tribune, Carpenter's last muffled words as a black hood is pulled over his head are, "Get it over with quick." 

Electric Chair