A 1952 murder case

There was a murder about twenty minutes down the freeway from here 67 years ago.

I had gone digging through microfilm for the local newspaper at the library. I was looking for a theater review from 1952. I didn't find it but I started reading the local news. Back then, a married woman with a baby was sentenced to sixty days in jail for drinking a beer because she was under 21, a blind couple got five years for writing bad checks, and a sixteen-year-old boy got six months for vagrancy.

I was shocked at how expensive things were. A clock radio cost $50 ($485 today). I looked at the classified ads. A lot of people lived in single rooms and, adjusting for inflation, rent wasn't cheap even in a small city.

I guess gas wasn't all that cheap then. There were ads for a brand of English car I never heard of and its only selling point was gas mileage.

At the university, frat-boys staged a failed panty raid, but it inspired a charity clothing drive.

And a 15-year-old was the youngest person in state history at the time to be charged with first degree murder. His name was Elmer.

I read the news that Elmer was found guilty of the crime first. It disturbed me because law enforcement and juvenile justice must have been terrible back then. I wondered if he really did it. So I looked at the newspapers from several days earlier and read about the trial.

The victim was an 18-year-old girl named Mary. She lived on a farm near the defendant's home. She was deaf and mute. She had never gone to school because of her disabilities. She was pregnant and had been shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber pistol while she was picking flowers.

I don't know what made them suspect Elmer, but the evidence against him was that the girl was shot with a Colt Woodsman pistol that belonged to his father and footprints made by his boots were found in the mud. The boots were later found stuffed in a hollow tree trunk.

Elmer was the only defense witness at the trial. His attorney asked him a question to get him started and he told the story.

He said that he and another guy were doing some farm work, hauling something in a Model A truck. The engine quit. He started working on getting it started again. While doing this, a mean-looking old man came walking up behind him. He was startled and almost jump two feet.

Your father got any guns? the mean-looking old man asked.

Yes, sir, he does, Elmer replied.

Go get me one!

Oh, no, sir, Elmer said.  I'm not allowed to touch any of the guns.

But the old man looked really mean, so Elmer went in and got one.

Now gimme them boots! the old man said.

Elmer gave him his boots. The old man put them on. He walked off to Mary's house. Elmer saw the old man motion to Mary who was inside. She came out. They walked off. Elmer heard a shot. Then the old man came walking back. He gave Elmer the gun and told him to put it back where he got it, gave him boots back and told him to get rid of them and warned him to tell no one about it or he would kill him, too.

He said he didn't know who the old man was at the time, but now he knew that it was the victim's grandfather.

The prosecutor ripped him apart on cross examination.

Elmer was convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison. He went to regular adult prison. He would be eligible for parole in seven years and people thought he'd probably be released then.

There was an editorial in the paper after his conviction. They speculated about what would become of him in prison. "He will probably become a homosexual," it actually said.

It was probably twenty-five years ago that I read about that case. I've told a few people the story over the years. I thought it was funny how stupid this kid was, but the story just seems depressing now.

I started thinking back to it for some reason. I googled it and with some effort was able to find the old newspaper articles online.

The only new thing I found in the news about Elmer was published three years later. When he was eighteen, it was reported that he had escaped from prison. This turned out not to be the case. He was in the prison hiding in a pile of hay to avoid going to the dentist the next day. I imagine that would have kept him in prison longer.

Obviously he wasn't the brightest guy in the world.

I did some google searches. It's surprising how many people there are with the same name, but I found him. I don't know when he got out of prison, but he was living in Idaho. He died about ten years ago at 72.

I did some more searching on an ancestry site. He had two siblings who died in infancy, his grandfather was born in Kentucky and moved to Oregon and was in the Spanish-American War. His paternal grandmother died at a young age. I got the impression that his family wanted to forget he existed or at least wanted other people to forget. I found obituaries for other members of his family and he wasn't listed as one of their survivors.

According to the newspaper, his mother cried when he was convicted, but, really, did she want to take him home after that?

If you're going to have guns in the house, at least lock them up.