Mona Wilson’s 1927 Mug Shot for the women’s prison in York, Nebraska

In 1927, thirty-one-year-old Mona Wilson lived with her husband of two years on her parents’ farm in rural Sheridan County, Nebraska. She was a loyal daughter who helped them on their rented farm and had little interest in the outside world. Mona and her husband, Herman, lived in a small house on the property while her father and mother, William “Dan” and Olive Loomis lived in a larger home.

On July 16, 1927, Mona Wilson and her parents felt sick and her father sent her to the town doctor, Dr. Albert Molzahn, in Hay Springs, twenty-two miles away from their farm. The doctor wrote a prescription for milk of magnesia and calomel tablets, which Mona then filled at the local pharmacy. She also bought empty capsules to put the medicine in.

Calomel is Mercurous chloride and was used as a purgative and anti-bacterial medicine during the 1800s. In simple terms, it is a mercury-based poison and deadly in large or continuous doses. The deadly effects of calomel on patients were known one-hundred years before Dr. Molzahn prescribed it. Dr. Albert Molzahn was properly educated, graduating medical school from George Washington University in Washington DC circa 1910 to 1912. It is unclear why the doctor was still prescribing calomel in 1927.

Over the night, fifty-nine-year-old Olive Loomis got worse, and in the morning Mona’s father sent her to a neighbor’s house to call for help. By the time the doctor arrived, her mother had already died. Without doing an autopsy, or conducting any tests, Dr. Molzahn declared that Olive Loomis died from strychnine poisoning. A half-empty bottle of strychnine was found in the dresser drawer in Mona’s house, next to the empty capsules she had purchased the day before. This surprised Mona because a full bottle of strychnine was kept in the china cabinet in her father’s home. She claimed she never put the half-empty bottle of strychnine in her own dresser-drawer, and had never used it.

A naïve Mona was arrested and then coerced into a confession with the belief that it would help her husband who was also arrested—even though he was in another part of the county when his mother-in-law died. Her guilty plea led to a thirty year sentence which was later overturned and a new trial ordered. During that second trial, her defense attorney arguing Mona Wilson was mentally deranged because, in part, she had epileptic seizures. The jury found her guilty and sentenced her to life in prison. The state supreme court upheld this decision.

It is unclear how the doctor concluded so quickly, and without testing, that Olive Loomis died from strychnine poisoning. Her husband, “Dan,” who also said he was sick from the poisoning but managed to recover, blamed Mona’s husband, Herman, whom he loathed. He also despised his daughter for marrying him. When Dr. Molzahn arrived that morning to find Olive Loomis dead, Dan loudly accused his son-in-law. This led to a search of Mona and Herman’s home, where the strychnine tablets were conveniently located. These same strychnine tablets had been purchased years before to poison squirrels, and were kept in her parents’ china cabinet in their house.

A year or two after his wife died, William “Dan” Loomis married a twenty-year-old woman (Ida Adams) when he was sixty-years-old. He was never investigated as a possible suspect in his wife’s death. The police only considered Mona and her husband, Herman, who was not even on the farm that day. He had found work on a farm in another part of the remote, rural county.

Since no autopsy was performed, it could never be determined if Olive Loomis did die from strychnine poisoning, or if she died from the mercury chloride.

The following article was published one month before Mona Wilson’s parole hearing in 1937 which took place at the women’s prison in York, Nebraska. By then, she had served ten years for the death of her mother whom she swore she did not poison.

Tells a Complicated Story of Death by Poison – Strange Farm Killing in 1927 May Not be Woman’s Crime – February 15, 1937, edition of The Lincoln Star, page 12.

There are people who would tell you as they have told the board of pardons that Mona Loomis Wilson is not guilty of murder. They would tell you that the state has held her for ten years for a crime she did not commit.

They would tell you that Mona Loomis as a child was a good girl, that she would not have killed anyone—least of all her mother; that she was a good wife to Herman Wilson, more than faithful to admit a crime she did not do when told he had “spilled enough” to send him to the chair. She probably would tell you that herself.

Hers is one of the twenty-six women the parole board will hear when it meets March 10, 1937. It is one of those crimes which unfolds like a detective story you read for fun. But a jury sent Mona Wilson to prison for life.

Mona Wilson’s story will take you back to the summer of 1927, to a Sheridan county farm near Marple (Nebraska). There, she lived with her husband in a tiny house in the same farmyard with the larger home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William ‘Dan’ Loomis.

One July Day.

One July day, Don Loomis and Herman Wilson had words. Afterward Herman told his 31-year-old wife he was going to “hire out” as a “hand,” and maybe he would rent a farm and then he and Mona could move away from the home place.

Herman Wilson did hire out and Mona lived with her parents but she didn’t forsake the tiny house she and Herman had—she slept there. July 16, 1927 was a Saturday and in that night Mona and her parents were taken sick. “I felt well enough the next morning,” Mrs. Wilson relates, “to go out and milk the cows.” When she came back to the house from this task, Dan Loomis told her to go to town and have the “doc” send something out.

Events came in quick succession after that. She drove to town, saw the doctor at his house. The doctor telephoned a prescription to the drug store and Mrs. Wilson drove there to get it. “The boy who filled the prescription,” she states (in her parole application), “was not a registered pharmacist.”

She maintains she bought empty capsules from “the drug store boy,” to fill with the medicine the doctor had prescribed. Back at the farm, she and her parents all took several doses of the medicine, she says. That night Mrs. Wilson went to her house to sleep.

Mrs. Loomis Dies

“It was hot,” she declares, “and I heard father when he called—the doors were all open.” He told her to go to the nearest neighbors for help, telephone for a doctor—that her mother was worse.

She did. The neighbors returned with her. Mrs. Loomis died before the doctor arrived. When the doctor came, he wanted to see the capsules.

“Father said they were in a candy sack on the dresser.” Mrs. Wilson says. “But nothing of the kind was ever found.”

“It was decided mother died from strychnine poisoning. My father insisted my husband was to blame for it.”

“The empty capsules I had bought I took home and put in my dresser drawer. There was a full, unopened bottle of strychnine on the [property]. It was kept in the china closet in the house occupied by my father and mother. I had bought two bottles about two years before to poison ground squirrels and only used one bottle. The one in the house was the other bottle.

Strychnine Found

“When the officers searched our house they found a part of a bottle of strychnine in my dresser drawer with the empty capsules. The full bottle was gone from the china closet in my parents’ house.” Mrs. Wilson goes on to explain that her husband had written that he would be home on that eventful Sunday. When she went [to the doctor and to the pharmacy] she left a note on the table in her house telling [her husband] where she was.

“They found the note as I left it,” she states. “With what father had told them and that note, they thought he (Herman, her husband) had something to do with mother’s death so on the morning of July 19, he and I were arrested.”

Mrs. Wilson was taken to a private hospital in Hay Springs. Herman was placed in the Rushville jail. She relates how officers were to take her to her mother’s funeral, but “waited to get there just after the funeral was over.”

Later, officers told her, she declares, “my husband had told them enough to send him to the electric chair. I had always been taught to believe the officers were always fair, so I never once thought that one of them would lie to me in an effort to make me tell what they wanted me to.”

Sites A Confession

Because she thought her husband innocent, Mrs. Wilson says she ordered the county attorney to draw “any kind of a confession he wanted so long as he left my husband out of it and I would sign it.”

Pleading guilty, she was sentenced to 30 years but the state supreme court ordered that the case had to tried before a jury. It took two years for this procedure—two prison years.

Attributing her conviction to the confession, Mrs. Wilson adds “I realize all this looks very bad for me but I really don’t know how it happened. I can only say my mother was my best friend on earth, that she was always very good to me, and I loved her as well as anyone loves their mother.”

Is Trusted Inmate

During the years which have crept by, Mrs. Wilson has become one of the trusted inmates of the York reformatory. She superintends the dairy farm there. She has charge of the visitors’ gate. Officials at the reformatory recommend her (for parole). One such letter to the board said. “I have never found it in my heart to believe her guilty.”

Her closer friends are stronger than that in their letters regarding the case.

Should the board release Mrs. Wilson. Herman Wilson will take her to his Elmwood home. Reformatory attaches say he has visited her frequently during the ten years.

Epilogue

Mona M. Wilson was paroled that spring. The 1940 US Census shows that Mona, 44, was still married to her husband Herman, 57, and they lived in Lincoln, the state capital. She worked as a maid and he worked as a house painter. Herman died in 1964 and Mona died in 1980. They are buried at Ash Hollow Cemetery, (a pioneer cemetery that is one of the most famous cemeteries in the state), in Garden County near Lewellen, Nebraska.

William Loomis married a twenty-year-old woman (Ida Adams) in 1928 or 1929, when he was sixty-years-old. His father-in-law was four years younger than he was. The 1930 census shows they all lived together in Elm Grove, Kansas. In 1940, the couple were living in Box Butte County, adjacent to Sheridan County, in Nebraska. At that time, William was seventy-one-years-old, and his wife, Ida, was twenty-eight-years-old. They had a four-month old daughter, Delores Ann. William Loomis died in 1958 at the age of ninety. Ida remarried Lyle Zimmerman in South Dakota in 1977. She died in 1992.

A poem written in 1825 warning doctors about calomel.

Since Calomel’s become their boast,

How many patients have they lost,

How many thousands they make ill,

Of poison, with their calomel.

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During the early morning hours of December 8, 1921, Wilburn Barton, 19, and his older brother, Milton, 22, robbed and tortured an elderly couple in their farm house in western Iron County, Missouri. The Barton brothers tied Bud Osborne to his bed with bailing wire, murdered him, and then set the house on fire. His wife, Mary Jane, was found alive but severely beaten in her yard by neighbors attracted by the flames of the burning home.

Before she was taken to the hospital in Ironton, Mrs. Osborne named Milton and Wilburn Barton as the assailants. She managed to live for a few more weeks before dying on December 25.

For some unclear reason, the local paper, the weekly Iron County Register, only devoted one or two column inches to the story during the arrest phase, then again during the pretrial and trial phases. Statewide newspapers also had no interest in what was a brutal torture slaying of an elderly couple.

Both brothers were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison in April 1922. Milton Barton died in prison in 1934. The life sentence for murder was his second time in prison. In 1919, he and his brother, Enoch, were sentenced to serve two years for burglary and larceny.

In an era when convicted killers given life sentences were often paroled after serving eleven to twenty years in prison, Wilburn served twenty-eight years of his sentence by the time he was paroled in 1950. The longer than average time for patrol may indicate he was a difficult prisoner.

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Categorized by year, all links open in a new window.

Workplace Violence in 1901: SOMERVILLE. MASS. July 5, 1901. With a maniacal shriek, John Murphy turned from pig-sticking to man killing in the North Packing and Provision Company’s slaughter-house today, and, driving more than a hundred of his fellow-workmen before him, slew five of them almost instantly, fatally wounding three others, and slashed several more to a lesser extent before he was overpowered.

Two Opium Dens Busted in 1901 Raids: “The two visitors were so far on their way to dreamland that they did not pay any attention to the entrance of the officer.”

The Andrea Yates Epidemic of 1901: As sad as this story is, in the course of my research for other vintage crimes I come across many similar accounts of parents murdering their children (known as filicide) due to depression, religious fervor, or other reasons. In most of these cases, poverty drives their depression. With just some light searching done of newspaper archives for 1901, I found 4 different cases.

Small Town, Vigilante Justice in Nebraska in 1907: The rope was tied to the highest beam of the bridge and after the victim made a statement he was thrown by the mob into the air and reached the end of the rope with a terrible sound, snapping his neck and producing instant death. Forty bullets were then shot into his body which was left dangling in the air for the officers to care for.

1907 Med Students use Fresh Grave for Anatomy Lab: Detectives are working on several theories today with a view to discovering the fiends who desecrated the grave of little Margaret Kuhlewind, eight years old, in the cemetery at Bernardsville, New Jersey and mutilated the body. A few hours after the burial the grave was opened, the coffin forced out and the body taken out and horribly mutilated. Thrown back into the casket without even smoothing the shroud over the mutilated body, the coffin was lowered into the grave and the dirt hastily piled back.

Female Colorado Farm Hand Marries Girlfriend in 1913: “Well, when Anna and I met we liked each other from the start. We got to going together. Of course, I knew I was a woman and she knew I was a woman but other people didn’t. We got to going to each other’s rooms a good deal. Of course, with us it didn’t make any difference but other people didn’t know and they talked. We knew they were talking a lot and gossiping about us, so we just decided to end the whole thing by getting married. And that’s what we did. We couldn’t very well do anything else. You see, I’d worn men’s clothes around here all the time and I couldn’t come out and say I was a woman. That would cause more talk than ever. So we just got married.”

The Genesis of the Lie-Detector Test 1913: The most unique and scientific “third degree’ ever administered to a criminal in this country is to be given Charles Kopf, arrested in Vallejo, Cal, and charged with having committed a murder In Nebraska fourteen years ago, when he is brought back to this State for trial. Arrangements for the examination are now being made by the Omaha police and scientists connected with the medical school, University of Nebraska.

Kardashian Murdered in 1916: It is alleged that Tamerian, who is little more than 21 years of age, attacked Kardashian with a pair of scissors in a dispute over the proper way to press trousers. Kardashian died at the Newton Hospital nine days later from a wound in his abdomen. 

One of the first college fraternity hazing deaths in America, 1918: Robert Wellons, roommate of Rand, was also forced to dance and sing, and in a fall received slight injuries. Rand dropped from the barrel, fell upon the broken bottle, which pierced the jugular vein and carotid artery, and bled to death in ten minutes.

The Crazy-Ass Blackburn Cult of California in the 1920s: Two of the cult’s followers, a married couple, preserve the dead body of their foster daughter for almost five years. During the first year of preservation, they moved around a lot with the cult and were naturally obliged to take their daughter’s body with them. In order to transport her from one residence to the next, they propped her up in the back seat of their automobile. “The remains were so well preserved that passers-by thought they saw a living girl.”

The Botched Execution of Eva Dugan in Arizona in 1930: Mrs. Eva Dugan, the first woman to be legally executed in Arizona, paid with her life on the gallows shortly before dawn today for the slaying in 1927 of A. P. Mathis, Tucson rancher. The trap was sprung at 5:02 a. m. As the trap clanged and she dropped more than six feet, the noose tightened, severing her head, and the body catapulted to the floor. Dr. L. A. Love, prison physician, pronounced her dead immediately.

The Witch Craft Murder of Clothilde Marchand, 1930: “What came out of that trial is a bizarre tale with the following ingredients: A Ouija board, witchcraft, an Indian faith healer, manipulation and coercion to kill, and a philandering sculptor who claimed it was necessary for him to “make love”  with his models out of “professional necessity.”

The Story of a ‘Gangster Queen,’ Cecil Valore, 1931: She accused her husband of the following crimes:

• Murder of Dr. Scully [on March 3, 1930]: She said that Valore and a relative went to Scully’s office and that the doctor was slain when he resisted robbery.
• Killing in the county jail of Anthony Colletto who was being held on charge of murder for the killing of his wife. The coroner said lie hanged himself although his attorneys insisted it was a murder.
• Slaying of a guard at Mansfield. Another man was convicted and died in the electric chair.
• Killing of a man in the robbery of the Blue Pig Inn here. The killing was attributed to policemen.
• Killing of another man, in a crime the details of which she had forgotten.
• Bombing of the homes of two Loraiu county attorneys who failed to get Valore out of trouble after accepting a fee.

Innocent Man Freed After 15 Years in Missouri Prison & Asylum, 1932-1947: The account of a miscarriage of justice in the Frank Werther case, in which an innocent man was kicked around for 15 long years, reads like something out of a fiction magazine.

Father Poisons Family, 1934, Oklahoma: A father who said he “could not bear to see my family starve” was held without bond here tonight on a murder charge after three of his small children had died from poison he allegedly administered. Sebe Christian, Creek County Attorney, said the father, Chester Barrett, 32 years old, signed a full confession after several hours questioning today. A murder charge was filed immediately. The father’s excuse for the act, which not only killed the three little girls, but endangered the lives of his wife and four of his five other children, was that he was ill and had no money.

1935 The False Confession of a “Mercy Killer” Nurse Reveal Harsh Police Tactics: “Apparently proceeding on a premise that there was no question about Miss Sevigny’s guilt, they did not bother to find out whether or not there was any testimony other than that used to build up their own case. — We deplore the fact that the young woman, whom we all believed to be innocent of any criminal action, has been branded by sensation-seeking newspapers and a careless police department as a murderer. — We believe that, the methods to gain her ‘confession’ should be not part of the procedure of a civilized police department in these days and we hope that our long and carefully considered action in thus freeing Miss Sevigny from the stigma attached to her, may, in part, at least, bring about a favorable reaction from the public.

Alcide (Frenchy) Benoit Murders Michigan State Policeman Richards F. Hammond in 1935: County Prosecutor Francis Ready announced the confession of the 24 year-old black-haired gunman shortly after Benoit’s desperate game of hide-and-seek over sleet-covered country areas with officers or three states and the federal government ended In Monroe—a short distance from the spot where he abducted Trooper Hammond.

Prince Yogi of Tulsa, 1935: In jail Tuesday night, Yogi told of having used his hypnotic powers to put two fellow prisoners to sleep. He said he predicted future events by consulting the stars. Then he was inspired by sudden concern.

“Say,” he addressed a jailer, “what do you suppose the judge will do with me tomorrow?”

The jailer considered with some disdain before replying: “Well, it is a cloudy night and I’ll admit you can’t see the stars, but if you see all and know all, why should you wonder?”

Rented Husband Loses Lawsuit for His Share in 1941: In blasé, nonchalant tones, Samuel Brummel, 56-year-old insurance salesman, testified Thursday that his wife rented him out to another woman for a year for S10,000, promising him half of the money. Brummel, a dark, cigar-chewing little man, told the story as trial of his suit to divorce Mrs. Lillian Brummel, 55, and to collect his half of the “fee.”

Oklahoma Executioner Rich Owens Discusses His Long Career in 1948 Article. During his life, he killed a total of 75 men: sixty-six of those were by execution, and the other nine were men he killed under various circumstances.

The Amazing, Multi-State Crime Spree of a 14 year-old boy in 1949: Since then, officers say he has: 1. Stolen a long string of automobiles, motorcycles and even a motor-scooter. 2. Burglarized an ex-police commissioner’s home of $580. 3. Escaped from officers three times. Once was a thrilling getaway from a 50-man posse when he jumped from a car handcuffed.

Leon Turner and the Whitt Brothers, 1950, Missippippi: Leon Turner had suffered the shame of being convicted for molesting a black girl and his drunken rage gave him the courage to get revenge seven days later. Grabbing their guns, the three men headed toward the dilapidated house of the girl’s step-father, Tom Harris. 

Army Wife Acquitted for Murder of Horrible Husband in 1955, Japan: On his last night he bragged of his love life. “There isn’t a man around who’s had as many women as I’ve had.” Then he told her how he’d seduced her best friend, as well as the wife of a colonel, a New York TV actress, numerous army nurses, and once, a Japanese airline hostess “on one of the plane’s seats, in front of a general.” — Then he told her, “You haven’t had a beating in a long time,” and started whacking her. He choked her, kicked her, flung her across the room. At breakfast he stabbed her with a fork, and threatened to have her killed.

Arizona Student with Poor Grades Gets Revenge in 1964: A bitter argument over his poor marks in English triggered a wild rampage early today by an enraged 16-year-old Tucson High School student which ended in the death of a woman and beatings of two other persons.

The Girls Scout Murders of 1977, Locust Grove, Oklahoma: The story of what happened on the night of June 12, 1977, is what fiction horror movies are made of — if a horror movie ever dared to depict female victims between the ages of 8 and 10.

DNA Evidence in 1984 Murder Leads to Suicide by Criminologist: Two gruesome murders from 1978 and 1984 are seemingly related and lead police to three good suspects who all go on to commit suicide. There are about five or six left turns in this article and at the end, you will have to make a decision about an unlikely suspect on your own.

The Foss Lake Mystery in Oklahoma–Two Cars, 6 People Missing 43 & 44 years Found at Bottom of Lake in Oklahoma:

Feature Story Comes to Life With Video – This story related to the 1924 Philadelphia kidnapping of Corrine Modell in which her granddaughter contacted me. There is a short video with this post.

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[The following information was provided by the authors.]

Gitchie Girl is a fast-paced, quick read at 164 pages that has been on several #1 true crime national bestseller lists since its January 2016 release. It profiles one of the most heinous mass murders in the Midwest. What happened at Gitchie Manitou State Park over a span of several hours was a true life nightmare for five teenagers. Only one survived. Find out why her life was spared and the challenges she faced being the lone survivor of a mass murder. Below is the back cover summary of Gitchie Girl. A portion of the proceeds benefits the lone survivor as well as the Council on Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence. Order from Amazon at: http://amzn.to/1mSk9rP

A TERRIFIED VOICE CRIED OUT IN THE NIGHT.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

            The sound of snapping twigs closed in on the five teenagers enjoying an evening around a glowing campfire at Gitchie Manitou State Park. The night of music and laughter had taken a dark turn. Evil loomed just beyond the tree line, and before the night was over, one of the Midwest’s most horrific mass murders had left its bloodstains spewed across the campsite. One managed to survive and would come to be known as the “Gitchie Girl.” Harrowing memories of the terrifying crime sent her spiraling out of control, and she grasped at every avenue to rebuild her life. Can one man, a rescue dog, and a glimmer of faith salvage a broken soul? This true story will touch your heart and leave you cheering that good can prevail over the depravity of mankind.

            Through extensive research, interviews, and personal insight the authors bring a riveting look at the heinous crime that shook the Midwest in the early 1970s. Written from rare, inside interviews with the lone survivor who broke nearly four decades of silence, this story brings the reader a shocking yet moving story that will not soon be forgotten.

Charles “Chucky” Rumbaugh

Charles Rumbaugh’s minor notoriety as a killer and criminal only came after he committed the murder that put him on Texas death row.

On April 4, 1975, Rumbaugh shot and killed an Amarillo jewelry store owner, fifty-eight-year-old Michael Fiorillo, during a robbery. When he was arrested the next day, he pulled a gun on the officer who pulled his own weapon and shot Rumbaugh in the right hand.

Rumbaugh, who was only seventeen-years-old at the time of his arrest, was charged with capital murder. A few days prior to the jewelry store robbery, he used two pistols to rob a motel in San Angelo and got away with $350.

His troubles with the law started long before he was seventeen. At age six, he committed his first burglary and at age twelve, his first armed robbery. He was in and out of mental institutions, county jails, and reform schools before he was arrested for murder.

In May, one month after his arrest, Rumbaugh tried to commit suicide with a razor blade. One month later, he tried again by taking an overdose of drugs. (His prison record doesn’t indicate whether these were prescription or illegal drugs smuggled into prison).

In December 1975, Rumbaugh and two other inmates escaped from the Potter County jail by cutting an eleven-inch by eleven-inch square hole out of piece of steel 3/8-inch thick. From the hole they had cut, they tied bed sheets together to drop themselves down to street level where a girlfriend to one of the other inmates was waiting with a car.

The car with all four of them in it was later stopped during a routine traffic check near Snyder, Texas, approximately 200 miles south of Amarillo. Since the girlfriend had forgotten to bring her driver’s license, all four were taken to the courthouse. There, the three boys overpowered the officer and took his gun. As they were leading him back to their car, another officer, who was arriving at the courthouse, saw what was going on and pulled his own weapon. The first officer then broke free and overpowered the escapee who had his gun.

Following a short trial in April 1976, the jury recommended the death sentence for Rumbaugh, in part, after listening to tape recorded conversations of him after his escape in which he called himself an assassin, and said he would have killed the officer in Snyder—if he had had the gun.

A few days later, during his formal sentencing given by the judge, Rumbaugh was being transported from the jail to the courthouse when he threatened to murder the judge, the district attorney, the bailiff, and his own attorney. Later that same day, they found he was carrying a metal strip seven-inches long and one and one-half inches wide.

In 1980, Rumbaugh won a new trial in which he was again found guilty and again sentenced to death.

During a February 1983, during a mental competency hearing, Rumbaugh was shot in the chest in the courtroom after he lunged at a US Deputy Marshal with a makeshift weapon (a six-inch pick made from wire) while screaming “Shoot me!” He survived after a long hospital stay that involved a chunk of his right lung being removed.

The hearing was called by the American with Civil Liberties Union who questioned Rumbaugh’s mental state for trying to hasten his own execution. The lunge at the US Marshall was an attempt to enforce his own execution, his biographer, D.J. Day Stubben, told reporters. Although she had been friends with the murdered jewelry store owner, she became fascinated with Rumbaugh and his troubled youth and wrote a book about him, #555 Death Row. The number, 555, was his assigned death row number. Stubben, who was married, denied having any romantic interest in Rumbaugh.

In the months leading up to his September 1985 execution, Amnesty International protested his death sentence because he committed the crime while still a juvenile.

On the eve of his September 11 lethal injection, Stubben told reporters that Rumbaugh’s execution was preordained. “He was destined to end up where he is tonight,” she said. “If he hadn’t killed Mr. Fiorillo, he would have ended up killing someone else.”

When asked if he had a last statement, the twenty-eight-year-old said: “D.J. (Stubben), Laurie, Dr. Wheat, about all I can say is goodbye, and for all the rest of you, although you don’t forgive me for my transgressions, I forgive yours against me. I am ready to begin my journey and that’s all I have to say.”

Michael Fiorillo would have been sixty-eight-years-old. He was a bachelor.

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   by Jason Lucky Morrow

This story is no longer available on this blog. Please look for it in my soon to be published book, Famous Crimes the World Forgot, Volume II. Kindle Price Only $2.99

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Executed for the Robbery/Torture/Murder of a Jacksonville, Florida, furniture store owner in 1976.

On July 30, 1976, Ronald Straight received a mandatory conditional parole from the Florida Parole and Probation Commission. By early September, he had drifted to Jacksonville, where he moved into an apartment occupied by Timothy Palmes, Palme’s girlfriend Jane Albert, and Albert’s seven-year old daughter. Jane Albert worked as a secretary for James Stone, forty-one, who owned a furniture store called Scott’s Furniture Company.

After discussing Stone’s business with Jane Albert, Straight and Palmes proposed that they would collect old debts of Stone’s customers in exchange for forty-percent of the monies collected. Stone rejected their offer because they contemplated using violence against the uncooperative debtors. However, Stone did offer Straight one hundred dollars for new clothes, and told Palmes there might soon be a full-time job opening in the store.

By late September, Stone had decided not to employ Palmes, who then told Straight and another person, “You know, I’m going to kill him.”

Straight replied that he should take that opportunity because Stone’s offer of money was insulting. They agreed to wait until after the first of October, when customers’ monthly payments would be in the store.

On Sunday, October 3, 1976, Straight, Palmes, and Albert purchased lumber, cement, metal supports and screws to construct a heavily weighted coffin. The next morning, Albert lured Stone from the store to her apartment, where her daughter told him to go to the back bedroom. Straight and Palmes were waiting for him and there struck him with a hammer, bound his hands and feet with wire and placed him in the box.

For approximately thirty minutes, they beat him, amputated several of his fingers and otherwise tortured him. During this time the victim repeatedly begged for his life. Finally, with a machete and butcher knife, Straight and Palmes stabbed Stone eighteen times, eventually killing him. They took his watch, money and car. Meanwhile, Albert took $2,800.00 from the store.

The weighted coffin with Stone’s corpse was dumped in the St. Johns River. Albert, her daughter, Palmes, and Straight then left for California. When police there apprehended them, Straight resisted arrest by shooting at the officers.

Albert was granted immunity from prosecution by the state in exchange for her testimony as a witness. Palmes confessed and the coffin was recovered from the river. Tried separately, Palmes and Straight were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death.

After his appeals and stays of execution ran out, Palmes was executed on November 8, 1984, at 10:03 a.m in Florida’s electric chair in Starke, Florida. His last words were, “My family’s love has been my strength. That’s all. Good-bye.” The thirty-seven-year-old was the hit with 2,000 volts of electricity.
Straight was executed in the same chair on May 20, 1986. Unlike Palmes, no family members were present. Straight refused a last meal, nor made any final statements.

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While conducting research for a story about a double-homicide in 1898, I came across an account of all known lynchings for that year. The statistics were interesting and confirmed what you might suspect, but also revealed some surprising information.

Out of 127 lynchings in 1898, five of them were women. As expected, African-Americans represent the majority with 102 black men and women murdered, while only 23 whites and two Indians met a similar fate. By far, most of the lynchings occurred in the south with 118.

The report also reveals the reason for each lynching—and that’s where it gets interesting.

I do not possess the academic qualifications to comment on all the social injustice this document contains. I will leave that for the experts. However, there are few cases from this point worth spotlighting. Some of the more outrageous reasons to lynch a man include: “insults;” “paying attention to a white girl” (I looked up this case and read that the white girl enjoyed the attention); “resisting assault (so, he was just supposed to take a beating and not fight back?); and “violation of contract (whatever that means).

In a few of these cases, there are links to where I looked up the case and copied a newspaper article which described the events that surround the lynching.

Also worth noting is that in 1898, lynching didn’t necessarily mean hanging. Instead, it could mean a homicide inflicted in any manner by a group, gang, or vigilante mob that denied the individual his or her right to due process.

If you would like to search for more information on any of the names listed below, you can try the Library of Congress newspaper archives. You will have to use the advanced search option and exact match for search terms.

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In August 1925, neighbors of Prague, Nebraska, farmer John Smetak grew suspicious when they hadn’t seen him since March. His son, Adolph, told neighbors he had gone back to the “old country” (Bohemia) to visit relatives. Their suspicions led them to report the missing man to county deputies who began their search on the Smetak property. There, down a water well, was the body of John Smetak.

His son twenty-one-year-old son, Adolph, confessed to murdering his father during a physical confrontation—one of many John Smetak had with his six children and his wife. During that fight, Adolph hit his father on the head with a hammer and then killed him.

Afterward, Smetak also confessed to taking more than $1,000 in cash savings from his father, and forged his name to three certificates of deposit totaling $2,500.

Smetak was sentenced to life in prison. He came up for parole in 1935, but was denied. At his next parole hearing in 1940, relatives and citizens from Prague attended the hearing and petitioned for his release. A former school teacher told the board how John Smetak had brutalized his six children and wives.

“All the children, but Adolph, had been driven away by their father’s tyranny,” the Lincoln Star reported as it paraphrased the teacher. His brothers Frank and Anton expressed the belief that their father had poisoned their mother to death. The also pointed out that their father’s second wife was brutally beaten and driven to take refuge in an insane asylum.

A local banker also testified and called the boys’ father a “brute, moron, and pervert.” The newspaper avoided reporting on exactly why he thought John Smetak was a pervert.

After that hearing, Smetak’s sentence was reduced to 22 and one-half years, and he was released in March, 1940, after serving fifteen years which was approximately three-fourths of his sentence plus “good-time.”

In 1941, Adolph Smetak married thirty-seven-year-old Marie Vrana. For their entire marriage, the couple lived in the same county where Adolph murdered his father in 1925. He died on May 25, 1967. Marie died on September 19, 2001 at the age of ninety-seven. They had no children.

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