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Overview
On January 2, 1932, near Springfield, Missouri, ten poorly armed law enforcement officers set out to arrest two local farm boys for auto theft. A few minutes later, six of the officers lay dead and three were wounded, setting a record that stands to this day for the greatest number of police officers killed in one incident in the history of the United States. This is the story of how it happened and of the unlikely people whose lives were forever changed.
The two killers, Jennings and Harry Young, were from a peaceful, tiny community named Brookline in central Greene County, Missouri. The "massacre" itself took place at the quiet orderly farm home of the J. D. Young family. Paul and Mary Barrett trace the personalities of those involved in the incident, describe the events of the fateful day, and examine the aftermath of the killings, detailing what was called "the greatest man hunt in the history of Texas," which culminated in the brothers' deaths in Houston.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826272997 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Missouri Press |
| Publication date: | 04/22/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Paul W. Barrett is a retired senior judge of the Missouri Supreme Court. In childhood, he was a neighbor and friend of the Young family. In 1929, as Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, he became intimately acquainted with all the Springfield people mentioned in the narrative, and he has studied the court records and conducted extensive correspondence and personal interviews to fill in all the details of the case. Mary H. Barrett, a short-story writer, a feature writer for the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and an editor of books and encyclopedias, is currently editor of Mills College alumnae publications.
Read an Excerpt
Young Brothers Massacre
By Paul W. Barrett, Mary H. Barrett
University of Missouri Press
Copyright © 1988 The Curators of the University of MissouriAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-7299-7
CHAPTER 1
HEARTBREAK FARMING IN OKLAHOMA
For more than seventy years a formal photograph of the J. D. Young family has been preserved in the family archives. Frozen in the stiff poses typical of the days before fast photography, the father, mother, aunt, a married daughter's child, and all eleven children are lined up in order of age. Two dogs are included. The children are almost exactly two years apart in age. This photograph, taken in 1913, was made in front of the house that the Youngs built two miles east of Frederick in Tillman County, Oklahoma.
An earlier family album photograph, probably taken in 1908, was later printed in a history of Tillman County. This picture, too, shows James David and Willie Florence Young and their eleven children, each with his or her full name spelled out. Here the boys are decked out in hats, galluses, and imitation cowboy outfits. No one seeing these pictures of agrarian innocence could imagine that three of the sons would eventually establish long criminal records, much less that two of them would make history by killing the largest number of law enforcement officers in a single episode in the entire history of the United States.
In the formal photographs the family members are proudly dressed in their best finery. In the earlier picture, Vinita is a baby in her mother's arms. In the other, she wears a knee-length white dress and long black stockings and is the only one sporting a white hat. Although one cannot see the color of her blue eyes, she is obviously a cherubic blonde. Beside her stands her sister Lorena in a lace-trimmed dress, black stockings, and high-laced shoes. A person looking at such well-dressed naivete would find it impossible to imagine that the two sisters would one day ineptly trigger the events that would end in the deaths not only of six police officers but also, four days later, of the Young brothers, Jennings and Harry, in a hail of bullets in Houston, Texas.
The 1913 picture shows boys in peg-topped trousers, long coats, and ties. Their hair is close-cropped and brushed. Willie, the mother, in her black dress with high collar and tie, typifies the dozens of overworked but proud women pictured in the ten-pound, handsomely bound history of Tillman County. It took hardy women to follow the explorers, trappers, trailmakers, and squatters westward. Here, preserved forever in these photographs, are the homesteaders who settled and permanently established farm communities in the course of the westward movement of population.
In fact, the people in these portraits, dressed in their best, are shown at the culmination of a colonizing process, not at the beginning. The pictures do not give a glimpse of the backbreaking hardships that were necessary to farm and to build homes after the Kiowas and Comanches, the Plains Indians of Oklahoma, were ousted from the land.
Tillman County had been a part of an Indian reservation of 4,639 square miles. In 1901 and 1906, the government declared two openings for homesteaders for the grasslands known as the Big Pasture. Adventurers and opportunists poured in from all over the United States, Germany, and Russia. In August 1901 alone, 200,000 registrants waited anxiously in Lawton for the land lottery. Among them was James David Young. He came from Christian County, Missouri, where he had been a farm renter.
James (J. D.) Young filed a claim on 160 acres of farmland two miles east of present-day Frederick. In 1902 he went back to Ozark, Missouri, to gather up his family—his wife, Willie Florence, and seven of the eight children living at that time (one remained in Ozark)—and returned to Tillman County to"prove up" his claim by what was rightly famed as "heartbreak farming."
Like others, J. D. chartered a boxcar to make the trip. In one end were the Youngs' household goods, in the other their livestock. J. D., Jarrett, Oscar, and Paul occupied the middle section, while Willie and the other four children—Mary Ellen, William Jennings, Holly Gladys, and Florence Willie—rode, only slightly more comfortably, in a passenger train. (The remaining three Young children were born in later years.)
The journey ended for the train passengers in Lawton, a tent city. Three days later, J. D. and the boys arrived with their livestock and belongings. Together the family began a grueling two-day trip over all-but-impassable roads from Lawton to their campsite. On the first night, the pioneering Young homesteaders camped out beside the wagons, on Cache Creek. The next day camp was established on the bare 160 acres, and J. D. returned to Lawton for lumber.
Most homesteaders lived in tents or half-dugouts before breaking the sod and setting up even a one-room shack. Some lived in covered wagons while constructing a half-dugout. The Youngs built a two-room house in which the family lived for two years. A large cooking room was added later, and then a side room for washing and bathing. Not until 1911 would they construct the imposing two-story frame house of which they were so proud. They dug a cistern, and neighboring homesteaders camped out near the only drinking water. Two horses, a wagon, a one-row planter, a plow, a harrow, a disc, and a go-devil were standard farm equipment with which to make a living for nine people.
The principal crops in the early 1900s, according to Oklahoma's Department of Agriculture, were corn, oats, wheat, hay, and some cotton. Even in the days of heartbreak farming, Tillman County produced 141,749 acres of wheat (17.4 bushels to the acre) and 113,391 acres of corn. Tillman County's per-acre value of farmland was among the highest in Oklahoma—$34.21 an acre. There were frequent droughts and other plagues. One "heartbreak farm" daughter described "too few rains coming too late, hot winds blasting the wheat and corn tassels, hail that wiped out the crops and storms that wrecked the buildings." All farms had gardens, plowed and harrowed by the men and tended by women and children. One year the wheat crop yield was 38 bushels to the acre. All farms raised their own hogs and chickens, and, of course, had two or more milk cows.
Although there is no way of knowing how much labor was required by each member of the Young family in "proving up" the 160-acre hard-scrabble land, it is a fair guess that everyone, regardless of inclination, worked hard. Every member of a homesteading farm family living on the land, in seasons of planting, cultivating, and harvesting, was compelled by circumstance to take some part. In the early 1900s all farm work—plowing, preparing the soil, planting, and harvesting—was done by horses or mules and hand labor. J. D., the father, was the dominant force of the family, and it is inconceivable that his healthy boys did not contribute to the labor force.
Jarrett stayed only long enough to help build the barn, and then he left home and Oklahoma forever, to an honorable and successful life. Oscar, Paul, and Jennings were left to help with the farm work, even though throughout their lives Paul and Jennings, at least, were notoriously opposed to physical labor. At best, a neighbor reported, they were "afternoon farmers." In the speech of the time and place, they were not "work brittle." Nevertheless, the official records of their prison careers sometimes list their occupations as "farmers." In their first detected burglaries, Jennings and Paul remained loyal enough to the homestead to ship their stolen merchandise to Frederick.
Of the homesteaders who failed, sold out, or abandoned their claims, there are few records. In off-seasons and droughts, J. D. walked into Frederick and did carpenter work on many buildings and houses, including the first red brick church. J. D., Willie, and Mary Ellen were charter members of the First Baptist Church.
Although Vinita was only four years old at the time, she remembers the family's moving from the four-room house into the large one. "Daddy bought the boys everything," she says, including bicycles. She remembers a "surrey with a fringe on top." At a county fair, "Mom" won a large "buggy blanket with a red rose in the center." Gladys, years later, remembered a "piano that sat in the parlor."
Eventually, as Vinita recalls, "Daddy couldn't make it and we moved back to Missouri." J. D. was tired, she says, of eating out of tin cans because it was impossible to raise a garden or crops in the dry, sandy land. Even so, a knowledgeable and successful Frederick lawyer points out, in 1911 the farm was valued at $4,000 and on August 18, 1917, J. D. sold the 160 acres to Joel C. Barnes for $15,000. "So it would seem he made a good profit, finally."
When the Youngs sold the Tillman County farm, they returned to Christian County, where they rented farmland. However, by March 1, 1918, they had bought that Finley River bottomland farm from L. P and Missouri Gibson for $13,000, less than the sale price of the Oklahoma farm. Within four months, they transferred the title of this farm to John and Belle Canard for $13,500 and thus, ultimately, had an equity in the transaction.
It was during this time that Paul and Jennings firmly established their careers in crime. It was charged in Christian County that on December 11, 14, and 15, 1918, they burglarized the Bingham Hardware, the Ozark Mercantile in Ozark, and, five miles away, the Efton Hawkins Hardware in Nixa. All stores were owned and operated by friends and neighbors of "the boys." Their father was so highly respected that he was accepted as their bondsman in all the cases without even the formality of putting up his property as security.
Meanwhile, with proceeds from farm sales, J. D. and Willie Young were able to upgrade their place of residence. On July 12, 1918, they bought a highly desirable 98.92-acre farm in Greene County from Ed R. and Maude Jackson for $13,000. Although small in acres, this was an attractive piece of property in the community of Brookline, about five miles west of Springfield. One neighbor was the renowned Haseltine Orchards; another was the home of Lillard Hendrix. Hendrix was the brother of the sheriff of Greene County, who was fated to be the first person killed in the massacre of January 2, 1932.
The house was surrounded by eleven large soft maple trees and a few smaller saplings. Impressive as the trees may have seemed, they were to give inadequate protection during the massacre to Tony Oliver, chief of detectives, Sid Meadows, patrolman, and Charley Houser, the paddy-wagon driver.
At the rear of the house was an earth-domed cellar and, in the words of the wife of a later owner, "a cistern and little pitcher-pump." It was from this vantage point that, during the massacre, Ollie Crosswhite protected the rear of the house only to be shot as he moved from the cellar's mound to the corner of the house.
A porch with four posts stretched across the front of the house, the ceiling just below the second floor. It was from in front of this porch that Virgil Johnson ineffectively fired a "gas gun" into an upstairs window. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, so located as to afford a clear view of the wooded lawn in all directions. The two-story frame house was painted white. It was from the rear door, off the kitchen, that Sheriff Hendrix was hit by a shotgun blast and Wiley Mashburn was mortally wounded. The red barn, down a lane from the house, closer to the road, was the refuge of several civilians and perhaps one or more police officers.
The tillable land was fenced, and on the west side there was an old hedgerow. In the southeast corner was an unusual spring-fed pond, clean and blue. Vinita reported that J. D. stocked it with fish. One of her boyfriends, more than fifty years after the fact, remembers swimming in the pond and being served cookies and lemonade by "Mom." Vinita was surprised to learn, recently, that the pond has been drained and has totally disappeared.
Today, in fact, the site of the "Young Brothers Massacre" is almost beyond recognition. Former owners Edgar and Priscilla Miller sold it in 1974. Now the old trees are gone, the house has been remodeled, all landmarks have been destroyed. More than fifty years later, the farm has gone full circle, returning to its pristine state. Its appearance as it was in 1932 cannot be reconstructed. The scene is pastoral, peaceful, and quiet. It is impossible to imagine the carnage that took place there.
CHAPTER 2CRIMINAL CAREERS COUNTRY STYLE
Their paths would cross repeatedly, and "Van" (William Luther Vandeventer) was a character worthy of notice in his own right. He stood out in any group for both his physical and his mental traits. He was tall and trim, almost totally bald. His face had a slightly Oriental cast. His sparkling brown eyes were alert at all times for an amusing aspect to any situation. Van was well known to the Young brothers in his official capacity.
Van was born in 1889 in the obscure village of Garrison in Christian County. He made the most of that heritage throughout his life by assuming with the unwary the role of unsophisticated hillbilly. In his youth he worked as a railway mail clerk, once a vital link in the nation's mail service. He attended the night Benton School of Law in St. Louis and later became nationally renowned in legal circles as a raconteur of Ozark tales of the law and courtroom anecdotes. He honed "Justice In The Rough," a humorous speech in the idiom of the Ozarks hillbilly, and delivered it many times, finally to American and English bars. The people and pieces that inspired him were "Comic History of the United States" by Bill Nye (founder of the Laramie [Wyoming] Daily Boomerang in 1881) and the English author Warren's classic satire, "Ten Thousand A Year," with its hero Tittlebat Titmouse and the law firm of Quirk, Gammon, and Snap.
Van was prosecuting attorney of Christian County from 1916 to 1918. He was the state representative from Christian County in 1920 and practiced law in Wright County withArthur M. Curtis. He was assistant attorney general of Missouri from 1924 to 1926 and first assistant and then United States district attorney from 1926 to 1934, the period in which the Young family encountered him as an adversary again. In 1944, after practicing law in Springfield for fourteen years, he became a judge on the Springfield Court of Appeals, a post he most competently graced until his death November 15, 1953.
While the rest of the Young family worked on the new farm in Greene County, Paul and Jennings firmly established their careers in crime, in country rather than city fashion.
It was only forty-six days after Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I. Patriotism still ran high. Most people thought that the Americans had primarily been responsible for winning "the war to end all wars." On December 27, 1918, the Christian County Republican, a weekly newspaper published in Ozark, ran a story praising the work of the local draft board.
The draft board may have been efficient, but even so, Paul and Jennings, who were of eligible draft ages (twenty-four and twenty-one), were exempted from service as "farm laborers." Their older brothers, Jarrett and Oscar, did serve, however, and were to be discharged at Camp Pike, Arkansas, in June and July 1919.
The Republican, along with testimonials for Foley's Honey and Tar Compound as a cure for "flu and grippe," carried an important proclamation by the editor, who also happened to be the mayor of Ozark. This proclamation rescinded an order that had shut down public meetings, schools, and Sunday school and church services during the devastating influenza epidemic that would kill more than one-half million Americans. The war was over. The flu epidemic had subsided. Paul and Jennings escaped the epidemic as well as military service.
Ozark, population 798, was a typical rural county seat, dependent on farming. The town's sole industry was a cheese factory. Business buildings surrounded the courthouse square on all four sides, and alleys ran in back of the stores.
The automobile age was new. Only recently had the hitching posts around the square been abandoned. Citizens who were lucky enough to be able to buy the new-fangled machines could get them at local hardware stores. There were no garages in town; car owners had to depend on local handymen for repairs. Fred Estes and "Rooster" Forester (whose wife was a first cousin of the Youngs) were the town mechanics, the only fellows around who could fix a car. There were no paved highways, and highly inflated "casings" (tires) had a short life span, being quickly battered to bits by flint rocks and rutted red clay roads. The Young brothers took an early fancy to automobiles, even though they lacked visible means of support. This caused quite a bit of talk in town.
Ozark harbored no secrets; the town was too small for that. Gossip was the major local recreation. Paul and Jennings knew that people were talking about the fact that, although neither of them had a job, they were among the few people in town to drive a car.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Young Brothers Massacre by Paul W. Barrett, Mary H. Barrett. Copyright © 1988 The Curators of the University of Missouri. Excerpted by permission of University of Missouri Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
CONTENTSPreface
1. Heartbreak Farming in Oklahoma
2. Criminal Careers Country Style
3. Youngs Accused of Boxcar Burglary
4. Paul on a Career Path of His Own
5. A Busy Year for Harry
6. Harry Slays Mark S. Noe
7. Jennings in Jail Again
8. Springfield's Finest—Victims of the Massacre
9. Clouds of Disaster Gather
10. The Massacre
11. Word Goes Out: “Find the Killers”
12. The Second Shootout
13. The Survivors' Tales
14. Aftermath of Disaster
Epilogue
Notes