Craig Rice - 14 Aug

A Collection of True Crime Stories

Craig Rice

The time was 1911, heydey of buxom burlesque queens and hijinks under the gaslights. The place, St. Louis, Missouri, rich, powerful, proud, but already disputing with New Orleans, her sister city to the south, a more doubtful renown as the original Babylon of barrel-house boogie, City of Songand Sin.

It was night, and elsewhere the city was at rest, but in the tenderloin district the lights blazed and doors swung in, swung out, as the old song goes. The street lamps threw their golden circles of light on the sidewalk, to guide unsteady feet on the path to ruin. Into one of these dens of vice stepped the tall figure of a stranger.

The tanned face under the broad-brimmed hat marked him as a rancher, but the rest of his garb was a study in contrasts. The high, tight collar would have gone better with a derby hat, and the fancy vest was out of keeping with the sturdy, square cut shoes. The stranger looked around him, flashed a roll of bills and announced in a loud voice:

Im from Oklahoma and I want to meet an Oklahoma girl!

The men at the bar turned slowly round, took one look at the stranger, smiled, and returned to their drinks. Just another rancher, fresh from the hinterland and out for a good time. One of them shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about a fool and his money as he saw a girl approaching the table where the stranger had seated himself and was ordering a drink.

I used to live in Oklahoma.

It was a small, weak voice. The stranger turned and looked at the girl. For a moment a flash of recognition lit up his face, but only for a moment.

Sit down, the stranger whispered. Sit down and sip that drink, but dont look at me. Theyre watching us.

Under the glare of the gas lamp he could see the girl more plainly now. She couldnt have been more than eighteen, but her face, though heavily rouged, bore the livid scars of violence. She was trembling.

The stranger whispered, Ive come to get you out of this, Dolly Slade.

The girl started. No! she gasped. No! Please! But it was clear that she was not denying her identity. It was just plain fear. The stranger mentioned another name, and this time the girl nodded, fighting back the tears that seemed about to overwhelm her.

Keep drinking, keep smiling, the stranger warned. Dont look at me, but keep talking. Tell me all about it. Im here to help you.

It was him, all right, the girl breathed. He took us to a place and left us with a strange man. He was a horrible man. He beat me and knocked my teeth out. I was unconsciousI dont know how longand when I recovered Ina was gone. I havent seen or heard of her since. They said they would kill me if I ever told this. You wont give me away, please! You wont!

Enough, the stranger whispered back. Not a word of this to anyone. A waiter was approaching the table. There was a look of dim suspicion in his gimlet eyes.

The stranger scowled at the girl and, in a loud, rude voice Finish your drink and be off with you! he said, and, in a whisper again, Ill be back.

With this he rose, paid his bill and left.

If all this seems a bit theatrical, there is a good reason for itit was. Sheer theater. For the stranger was not just a rancher on the loose. He was Sheriff Ben Totten of Ottowa County, Oklahoma, and he was playing a role. A role in a real life drama of blood and violence that was destined to become one of the worlds great classics of crime detection.

When the country Sheriff set out from his native Ozark mountains to go sleuthing in the big city it was not for the purpose of rescuing girls from a life of shame. Important as this was, it was only incidental to his main task. What Sheriff Totten had on his mind wasmurder.

It must have seemed a long time to Ben Totten since that September day when a farmer rode in to the Sheriffs office in Miami, Oklahoma, and, dismounting from his horse, said:

Ben, theres death in them hills. Saw her mself, just a young un, poor thing. No tellin how long shes been there.

It may not have been a long time as the clock ticks, but even a few weeks is a long time when youre investigating a murder, long enough for the trail to get mighty cold.

He remembered the pathetic little face of the victim, ravaged almost beyond recognition by death and foul weather. The heavy autumn rains had washed out all trace of the slayer, who had committed the crime, so medical examination revealed, at least two weeks before, on September 15, 1911, if their reckoning was correct.

For days the body of the beautiful girl lay in the undertaking parlors at Miami while hundreds of people filed by, trying to identify her, and police at neighboring Fayetteville, Springfield and Tulsa searched their Missing Persons files for a clue. Result: no missing girls reported, and no one who could even guess who the dead girl was or where she came from. It was beginning to look as if the crime would remain unsolved.

It was then that Sheriff Tottens mind turned to the mysterious house in the hills.

Ben Totten had passed by the place before and he remembered it as a large house, larger than any he had ever seen in these hills. The path leading up to it was matted with thick underbrush. The trees that all but concealed it from view stood tall against the sky, and gnarled with the wounds of tornado, hail and lightning. Its high, arched windows were perpetually shuttered against the sun, and its doors were reputed to be forbiddingly locked against intrusion day and night.

The hill people for miles around spoke of the house with awe. They said it was a house of worship, a kind of mission, and its worshippers called it The House of Deuteronomy.

Its pastor was Dr. Allen Heeber, a patriarchial little man with old-fashioned sideburns, whose favorite Bible text was said to be the Eighteenth Chapter of Deuteronomy:

And this shall be the priests due from the people, from them that offer a sacrifice the first fruit of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the first fleece of thy sheep, shalt thou give him.

Dr. Heebers flock took this biblical injunction seriously, for, as Ben Totten learned on his first visit to the house, the barns back of the place were bulging with free will offerings. It was also on the occasion of this first visit that he met Mrs. Cora Wentworth, who was the matron in charge, in the absence of Dr. Heeber and his assistant pastor, James Garrett. When he asked Mrs. Wentworth whether she had knowledge of any missing girl and told her about the young murder victim who lay unidentified at Miami, the matron shook her head.

Im sure none of our girls has been lost, she said. This is a training school, you know, and as they complete their studies our girls go out into the field as missionaries. What was she like, this girl you say was murdered?

She was around twenty, said the Sheriff, medium height, slender, with a lot of unusually long, fair hair. She must have been right prettyonce.