Guest Post: HISTORY'S RICH WITH MYSTERIES: BELLE STARR – Her Fabled Life, Her Unsolved Murder

It has been about two months since the last time our man in Fort Worth with hos post on Dorothy Kilgallen. Nice to have Earl back on the blog with another informative post.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery.

  

BELLE STARR – Her Fabled Life, Her Unsolved Murder

by Earl Staggs

Belle Starr, according to legend, was a lovely lady who ruled outlaw gangs with her guns, her will and her personal favors. She has come down through history as an adventuress who rode with Jesse and Frank James, the Younger Brothers, and other famous outlaws of the day. According to the stories, she robbed from the rich and gave to the poor and cleaned out saloons and crooked poker games with six guns blazing.

 

Belle on Horseback

On February 3, 1889, two days before her forty-first birthday, she was gunned down on a dark country road near King Creek, Oklahoma. No one was ever convicted of her murder.

“Dime Novels” were popular at the time to appease the public’s appetite for exciting, hell-raising stories about hard-riding, fast-shooting outlaws and heroes of the old west. Writers and publishers were happy to supply them, even if they were imaginative exaggerations of the truth. In this manner, history gave legendary status to the likes of Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Kit Carson, and others, including Belle Starr. Like the others, Belle’s exploits and adventures were more fiction than fact. The manufactured but fascinating and often fantastic stories became the myth and the legend. Hollywood bolstered her status as a genuine larger-than-life figure with movies starring beauties such as Gene Tierney and Elizabeth Montgomery as Belle.

Her legend began taking shape soon after her death. Most responsible was Richard Fox, publisher of National Police Gazette and a number of dime novels. His book, Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James: A Full and Authentic History of the Dashing Female Highwayman, published the year she was killed, was supposedly an official biography of her life. Another book called her the “Petticoat Terror of the Plains.”

In actual fact, there is no evidence that Belle was ever the leader of an outlaw band or robbed banks, trains, or stagecoaches. Even though she was fond of carrying a six-shooter (sometimes two), she was not known to have ever participated in any gunfights. She knew and spent time with the James boys and the Youngers, but her experiences outside the law were limited to a little rustling here and there, and providing a place for her outlaw friends to hole up from time to time.

Not that her life was dull and uneventful. Far from it. A year before her death, she told a reporter for the Fort Smith Elevator, “I regard myself as a woman who has seen much of life.”

She was born Myra Maybelle Shirley on her father's farm near Carthage, Missouri, on February 5, 1848. Her father did well as a farmer and in 1856, sold his farm and bought a livery stable. A blacksmith shop and an inn in the town square of Carthage. Belle graduated from Missouri's Carthage Female Academy, a private institution her father helped establish. 

Belle as a Young Girl

She was a bright student, with polite manners and enjoyed the life of a spoiled rich girl. She had a talent for playing piano and liked having an audience. She also loved the outdoors and spent a lot of time roaming the countryside with her older brother Bud, who taught her to ride a horse and handle guns.

Belle’s family and their lives changed drastically, however, when the Kansas-Missouri Border War, a bloody precursor to the Civil War, broke out in the late 1850’s. Belle’s brother Bud joined Quantrill’s Raiders and rose to the rank of captain, but was killed in 1864. The constant fighting and killing took its toll on local businesses and after Bud’s death, Belle’s father sold his interests in Carthage and the family moved to Scyene, Texas, a small settlement southeast of Dallas.

The James-Younger Gang robbed their first bank in Liberty, Missouri, in 1866 and fled to Texas where they stayed with Belle and her family. Belle had grown up with the James brothers and the Youngers back in Missouri. She also became reacquainted with Jim Reed, another family friend from Missouri. A romance blossomed, and they were married on November 1, 1866. Belle was then eighteen years old. They lived with Belle’s family in Scyene and Jim worked as a salesman in Dallas. In 1867, Belle and Jim moved to the Reed’s family farm in Missouri. The following year, Belle gave birth to her first child. They named her Rosie Lee but always called her “Pearl.”

There were rumors that Belle was seduced by Cole Younger during their time in Scyene and bore him an illegitimate child, but both Belle and Cole as well as historians denied it.

Jim Reed was not good at farming and eventually became a full-fledged outlaw with his own gang. He was wanted for allegedly killing a man in Arkansas, and he and Belle fled to California with their daughter Pearl. There, in 1871, Belle gave birth to a son she named Edward.

Jim fell in with the Starr gang, a Cherokee Indian family well-known for rustling and bootlegging. He was killed in August 1874 by a member of his own gang in Paris, Texas, where he and Belle had settled with their family. Belle left her children with her mother and traveled to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and became involved with an Indian outlaw known as Blue Duck. 

Belle and Blue Duck

Belle married Sam Starr in 1880, and they settled in Indian Territory. She learned the ins and outs of fencing stolen goods for rustlers and bootleggers as well as the art of harboring her outlaw friends from the law. Her illegal activities proved to be quite lucrative for her. Belle always harbored a strong sense of style, which would become a part of her later legend. She was also a crack shot and enjoyed riding sidesaddle dressed in a black velvet riding habit and a plumed hat, and carrying two pistols with cartridge belts across her hips.

In 1883, Belle and Sam were arrested for horse theft and served nine months in the House of Corrections in Detroit, Michigan.

On December 17, 1886, Sam Starr was involved in a gunfight with a police officer and both men were killed. The happiest period of Belle’s life, as she called it, abruptly ended. To maintain her residence on Indian land, Belle married Jim July Starr, a relative of Sam’s, who was fifteen years younger.

Dime novels, scandal magazines, and gossip kept her name alive over the next couple years.

On February 3, 1889, two days shy of turning forty-one, she was ambushed and killed while riding home late at night.

Statue of Belle

In one version of the story, she had been attending a dance where a man asked her to dance. When Belle refused, he became enraged and followed her. When she stopped to give her horse a drink, he shot her.

There were other suspects, including both her children. One source suggested her son, Edward, may have been her killer because she beat him for mistreating her horse. Her daughter Pearl was considered a suspect because she never forgave her mother for refusing to let her marry the man she loved.

Edgar J. Watson, one of her sharecroppers, was another suspect. He was a wanted man in Florida with a price on his head, and he was afraid she was going to turn him in. Watson was tried for her murder but was acquitted.

Officially, there were no witnesses to how it actually happened, and no one was ever convicted of the crime. The murder of Belle Starr, the “Bandit Queen,” remains an unsolved mystery in the pages of history.

 Her grave site is near Eufair Lake, southeast of Porum, Oklahoma. A horse was engraved on her tombstone, along with these words:

Belle's Tombstone

Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret
Tis but the casket that lies here,
The gem that filled it sparkles yet.

Earl Staggs ©2018

Earl Staggs is a three-time winner of the Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year and earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

He also invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.

Guest Post: HISTORY'S RICH WITH MYSTERIES: DOROTHY KILGALLEN -- Did She know Too Much? by Earl Staggs

Our man in Fort Worth, Earl Staggs, was last here back in mid April with his take on the Dean Corll murder case. Today he considers the murder of Dorothy Kilgallen.

HISTORY'S RICH WITH MYSTERIES 

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery.

DOROTHY KILGALLEN -- Did She know Too Much?

Earl Staggs

On November 8, 1965, well-known journalist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her Manhattan townhouse. A medical examiner declared her death accidental, caused by a combination of sleeping pills and alcohol.

Many people believe, however, she was silenced as a result of her investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and her plan to publish evidence which would prove that Kennedy's death was the result of a major conspiracy.

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was born on July 3. 1913 in Chicago. She began her career as a newspaper reporter at the age of eighteen. By 1938, when she was twenty-five, she began her column "The Voice of Broadway" in the New York Evening Journal, which eventually was syndicated to more than 200 papers. In 1950, she began a fifteen-year run as a panelist on the popular TV show, “What's My Line.”

Over a career spanning more than three decades, Dorothy became a household name. During those years, she married and had three children, was one of the first to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, had a long-standing feud with Frank Sinatra and, alledgely, an affair with pop singer Johnnie Ray. In 1953, she was was one of the notables who attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Ernest Hemingway called her, "The greatest female writer in the world."

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen on What's My Line?

In addition to providing news and gossip about the New York theatre world as well as Hollywood celebrities and their scandals, she dealt with political news and major crime stories. One of those stories concerned the 1954 case against Sam Sheppard, which inspired the top-rated TV drama, “The Fugitive.“ Sheppard was convicted of killing his wife, but Dorothy was so convinced of his innocence, she pursued the case for years. Eventually, partly because of information she provided, Sheppard was retried and vindicated.

After her good friend, President John F. Kennedy, was killed, Dorothy did not accept the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvery Oswald was the assassin and that he acted alone.

She wrote:

“It seemed to me after reading the testimony three times that the Chief Justice and the general counsel were acutely aware of the talk both here and in Europe that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. They took pains to prove to themselves and the world that no conspiracy existed.

She covered the Jack Ruby trial and interviewed him twice. Much to the consternation of J. Edgar Hoover, she obtained and published a copy of Ruby's testimony to the Commission.

In her column of November 29, 1963, she wrote:

"The case is closed, is it? Well, I'd like to know how, in a big, smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby — owner of a strip tease honky tonk — can stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it was at a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers is keeping a "tight security guard" on Oswald. Justice is a big rug. When you pull it out from under one man, a lot of others fall, too."

After her second interview with him, she wrote:

“Jack Ruby’s eyes were as shiny brown-and-white bright as the glass eyes of a doll. He tried to smile but his smile was a failure. When we shook hands, his hand trembled in mine ever so slightly, like the heartbeat of a bird.”

Dorothy with Ernest Hemmingway

According to those close to her, she carried the documentation of her investigation in a dossier which she kept with her at all times under lock and key. She claimed she had a deal with Random House to publish a boo which would reveal the truth about the Kennedy assassination.

She reportedly told close friends, This has to be a conspiracy! I'm going to break the real story and have the biggest scoop of the century." Her hairdresser, Charles Simpson, said she told him, "If the  wrong people knew what I know about the JFK assassination, it would cost me my life."

Former criminal defense lawyer, Mark Shaw, author of 25 books and legal analyst for USA Today, ESPN, and CNN, contends in his book, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, that a New Orleans mafia don ordered her death because he feared her investigation would finger him as the mastermind behind the assassinations of both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. In his scenario, Dorothy was poisoned and the crime scene staged to look like an overdose.  

Other authors, notably Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi, in their books, Case Closed and Reclaiming History respectively, sided with the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Oswald killed Kennedy and that he acted alone.

So, were left with two competing mysteries. Was Oswald the lone assassin and there was no conspiracy? Or, was there a conspiracy and Dorothy Kilgallen was killed because she could prove it?

The dossier Dorothy was said to have accumulated throughout her eighteen-month investigation was never found. 

Author Mark Shaw said, "Whoever decided to silence Dorothy, I believe, took that file and burned it." 

Which means, we'll probably never know for sure.


Earl Staggs ©2018

Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year three times.  He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars.  He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

He also invites you to visit his blog at http://earlstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES: DEAN CORLL -- Houston’s “Candy Man” Mass Murders by Earl Staggs

It has been quite some time since Earl has been around with one of his “History’s Rich With Mysteries” guest posts. He is back today with a case that caused my parents great angst and resulted in a lot of school seminars warning about strangers when I was in elementary school during this time period.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery.

DEAN CORLL -- Houston’s “Candy Man” Mass Murders

by Earl Staggs

At the time, it was the worst example of serial killings in US  history.  Although the actual number of victims may never be known, Dean Corll and two teenage companions killed at least 29 boys in the Houston, Texas, area between September 1970 and August 1973. The victims were raped, horrifically tortured and mutilated, then either strangled, shot, or both.

Dean Arnold Corll was born on December 24, 1939, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  He was considered shy, timid, and a loner who seldom socialized with other children.  His parents divorced in 1946, were remarried  in 1950, and divorced again in 1953.

  

Dean's mother married another man, and the family settled in the Houston area. She divorced her new husband in 1963.  Soon after her divorce, she established the Corll Candy Company, specializing in making and selling pecan treats. Dean was  vice-president of the family firm. A teenage male employee of the company accused him of making sexual advances.  Dean's mother's response was to fire the accuser.  

In August of 1964, Dean, at age 24, was drafted into the US Army.  He hated military service and after ten months,  applied for and received a family hardship discharge claiming the family business needed him.  After returning home, Dean told close acquaintances that while in the Army, he had homosexual experiences for the first time.

Dean developed a practice of giving candy to young boys and became known as the “Candy Man.” Twelve-year-old David Brooks was one of the many boys who received free candy. He became a close companion who accompanied Dean on business trips. Before long, their relationship became a sexual one.

On September 25, 1970, Dean, with David’s help, claimed his first known murder victim, an eighteen- year-old college student. He was strangled, covered in lime, wrapped in plastic, and buried under a large boulder in a beach area. Years later, David led police to the burial site. His body was naked and his hands and feet were bound, which led forensic investigators to surmise he had been sexually violated.

David’s primary role became finding victims and enticing them with candy and invitations to a party. Some were friends of his and some were new acquaintances he happened to meet.  Dean paid him two hundred dollars for each one.  The victims were driven to Dean’s house where they were subdued by drugs, alcohol, or simply by force, stripped naked, tied to a bed or a plywood board, then sexually assaulted and tortured before being strangled or shot to death.  Their bodies were wrapped in plastic sheeting and buried in several different areas.

In 1971, David brought fifteen-year-old Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. to Dean’s home as a potential victim. Instead, Dean thought Elmer would be a good addition to his “team” and offered him the same two hundred dollar payment David was getting for each boy he brought in.   Elmer resisted for a while, but in early 1972, accepted the offer because his family needed the money.  

The team was now in place, and the threesome lured a steady stream of teenage boys, one or two at time, into their decadent and deadly circle. Some of their victims were forced by Dean to write or phone their parents with excuses for being away from home for a while.

In one incident, two boys were tied to the torture board and told to fight until one was killed. Dean told them the survivor would be set free.  After the two boys beat each other for hours, however, Dean raped, tortured, and killed them both.

THE DEATH OF DEAN CORLL

On August 8, 1973, Elmer Henley showed up at Dean's house with nineteen-year-old Timothy Kerley and a fifteen-year-old girl named Rhonda Williams. David Brooks was not there. Dean was furious and said Elmer had ruined everything by bringing a girl. Elmer explained that Rhonda was a friend of his who had been beaten by her father and did not want to go home. Dean seemed to calm down, and the group began to drink beer, smoke marijuana and sniff glue until they passed out.

Elmer awoke later to find that Dean had bound and gagged him as well as Rhonda and Timothy. Dean eventually ungagged Elmer and said he was going to kill them all. He held a gun on Elmer and threatened to shoot him. Elmer pleaded for his life and promised to help torture and kill the other two. Dean unbound him, then tied Timothy and Rhonda to the torture board. Elmer grabbed Dean's gun and shouted, "You've gone far enough, Dean! I can't go on any longer! I can't have you kill all my friends!" Dean didn't believe Elmer would shoot him and advanced toward him. Elmer shot him a total of six times. Dean Arnold Corll was dead at the age of thirty-three.

Elmer called the police and said, "Y'all better come here right now. I just killed a man." He, Timothy, and Rhonda waited on the porch for the police to arrive. While they waited, Elmer told Timothy, "I could have gotten $200 for you."

THE TRIALS

Elmer was indicted for 6 murders. The killing of Dean Corll was ruled self-defense, so he was not charged for that one. David Brooks was charged with 4 counts of murder. Elmer and David assisted police in recovering bodies of their victims, most of whom had been buried in a boat shed in Southwest Houston owned by the Corll family, at High Island Beach, and at Lake Sam Houston. The bodies recovered showed evidence of torture as well as sexual violation and mutilation.

The 28 victims officially attributed to Dean Corll and his teen associates at the time (Increased to 29 when another victim was identified in 1983.) was the worst case of mass serial killing on record in the US until John Wayne Gacy was charged with murdering 33 young men and boys in 1978. Gacy admitted he had been influenced by Dean Corll.

District Attorney Carol Vance called the case the "most extreme example of man's inhumanity to man I have ever seen.”

After jury deliberation of only 92 minutes, Elmer Henley, now 17, was found guilty of all charges and received 6 consecutive 99-year sentences, a total of 594 years. He appealed and was granted a retrial in 1978. He was again found guilty on all counts and received the same sentence.

David Brooks was brought to trial on February 27, 1975. He had been indicted for 4 murders but was tried for only one. The trial lasted less than a week. After 90 minutes of deliberation, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. An appeal was dismissed in 1979.

Elmer Henley and David Brooks are currently serving their sentences in Texas prisons. Both have been denied parole multiple times over the years. Elmer Wayne Henley has a Facebook page, and a 2015 interview with him is available at https://tinyurl.com/yc8azdqc

While the official number of Dean Corll's victim is set at 29, there may have been more. More than 40 boys went missing in the Houston area between 1970 and 1973 when Dean and his accomplices were active. The Houston police was criticized for not aggressively searching for more bodies.

There was also evidence Dean had other victims prior to 1970.  Former employees of the Corll Candy Company recalled seeing Dean digging holes on company property and cementing over them several years before. They also reported he kept a supply of plastic sheeting and nylon cord similar to what he used on victims later on. After the Corll Candy Company closed, Dean went to work for the Houston Lighting and Power Company. His coworkers there also remembered him keeping a supply of those materials on hand.

THE BIGGEST MYSTERY

I'll never understand how someone like Dean Corll can exist. How is it possible that a human being can inflict extreme torture, pain, and suffering upon other human beings up to and including their death with no more thought or emotion than to wonder where the next victim will be found? Are we not all born with an inate respect and concern not only for the rights of others but for their very lives? Aren't the abilities to feel guilt and remorse as much a part of our make up as the needs to eat and sleep? There must be something about serial killers and mass murderers that is different from the rest of us. Perhaps further development and research into DNA will expose a common thread among people like Dean Corll, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway and others. Perhaps even a cure.

Earl Staggs ©2018

Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

He also invites you to visit his blog site at https://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com/ to learn more about his novels and stories.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES: "ROSEANN QUINN – The Looking for Mr. Goodbar girl" by Earl Staggs

Texas author Earl Staggs is back this month with his latest “History’s Rich With Mysteries” guest blog. This time he considers the case of ROSEANN QUINN – The Looking for Mr. Goodbar girl.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery.

ROSEANN QUINN – The Looking for Mr. Goodbar girl

by Earl Staggs

Twenty-eight-year-old Roseann Quinn, a school teacher of deaf children, met a man in a neighborhood bar on the evening of January 1, 1973, and after conversation and a few drinks, invited him to her apartment on New York's West Side. Two days later, when she hadn't shown up for work, hadn't called, and was not answering her phone, the school sent someone to check on her. The building's superintendent opened the apartment door where they found Roseann's body. She'd been beaten and had more than a dozen stab wounds to her neck and abdomen.

Roseann's death inspired the 1975 novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner which was adapted into a movie starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Tom Berenger, and Tuesday Weld two years later. There were other books and movies based on the story as well. 

The investigation quickly revealed that Roseann led a double life. While on the surface, she was a quiet, intelligent, and reserved girl from a fine Irish Catholic family and a gifted and caring teacher, she also indulged in casual sex with men she met in bars. Apparently, she liked it rough, and the men she met seemed on the rough side and lacking in education.

Neighbors would later say they often heard Roseann fighting with men in her apartment. One neighbor reported hearing screams coming from the apartment. The neighbor saw a man running away yelling obscenities and found Roseann beaten and bruised.

The 1970's was a period of change in America during which women exhibited more freedom than ever before. The mainstream population, however, was not ready to accept some of those freedoms. Men had always been able to openly prowl for casual sex partners (“one night stands”), but women who did so were looked down upon. As a result, once Roseann's story became known, she became a tabloid favorite. Many people were quick to dismiss her as a sex-crazed single woman who willingly put herself in danger. Some people felt she had “asked for it” and got what she deserved. Her murder was a punishment for her actions.

There was nothing in her early life to indicate how she would turn out. She was born in the Bronx in 1944. She had two brothers and a sister. She was eleven when her family moved to New Jersey. Her father was an executive with Bell Laboratories in Parsippany. When she was 13, she spent a year in a hospital recovering from polio, which left her with a slight limp. She graduated high school in 1962. Her yearbook said she was "Easy to meet” and “Nice to know."

After high school, she enrolled in Newark State Teachers College, graduated in 1966, and moved to New York City to begin her teaching career. A spokesman for the school where she worked said, "The students loved her." A classmate said she had "a terrific sense of humor and was down to earth. She had no phony pretenses. Also, she was very generous. No matter how much she had, if you needed it, she'd share with you.”

Her neighbors liked her too. "We get some weird people around here," said the owner of the local dry cleaner, "but this girl was different. She was very nice and quiet and shy. She wore skirts and blouses, not this hippy stuff."

Acquaintances and neighbors said Roseann would sit by herself and read books at bars on the West Side. Police Captain John M. McMahon said, "She was an affable, outgoing, friendly girl. She knew teachers and artists and her circle of friends was a very large, interracial group. She knew an awful lot of people." She attended night courses at Hunter College, and by By December 1972, was halfway to earning a masters degree in her specialty of teaching deaf children.

The last man she took home was John Wayne Wilson. They left the bar together and went to her apartment where they smoked marijuana and attempted to have sex. He would later tell his attorney that when he was unable to perform, she insulted him and demanded he leave. They argued and fought and he picked up a knife and stabbed her multiple times. Once she was dead, he said he was then able to perform and had sex with her dead body. He shoved a candle inside her, covered her with a bathrobe, showered, wiped his prints off everything he had touched, and left.

He had been roaming the country since he dropped out of high school after two years, and had been arrested at least five times in Florida and Kansas City. On January 11, 1973, police arrested twenty-three-year old Wilson for the murder of Roseann Quinn.

He was a complex and conflicted man. He had been married and was the father of two children. At the time he met Roseann Quinn, however, he was in a homosexual relationship with a man.  Although Wilson had been arrested numerous times, there was nothing in his past to indicate he was a violent and dangerous man. On May 5, 1973, five months after Roseann's death, he hanged himself with bed sheets in his jail cell.

There will always be people who feel Roseann Quinn's death was the result of the lifestyle she led. Given the kind of men she chose and the things she did with them, it was only a matter of time until one of them killed her. Others will feel John Wayne Wilson was a sexually confused and tortured man who was destined to kill someone. When Roseann berated him for being unable to perform sexually, she pushed him over the edge.

I think it was a combination of the two. Between the two of them, they had all the elements of a catastrophe needing to happen.  When all the right components of stormy weather converge at one point, forecasters call the disastrous result a “perfect storm.” I think Roseann Quinn and John Wayne Wilson were two badly damaged people who possessed all the components for the perfect murder. If either one of then had been a different person, they might both be alive today.

Earl Staggs ©2016

Texas author Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars.

He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

He also invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES: "ELVIS PRESLEY – TBI Killed the King, not Drugs" by Earl Staggs

Texas author Earl Staggs is back this month with his latest “History’s Rich With Mysteries” guest blog. This time he takes a look at the death of the legendary Elvis Presley.

  

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery.

ELVIS PRESLEY – TBI Killed the King, not Drugs

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. His twin brother (Jesse Garon) died at birth. As a youth, during his time in the Army, and all through his early performing years, Elvis was active, healthy, and a bundle of energy.

On August 16, 1977, forty-two years old and known worldwide as the King of Rock and Roll, he collapsed on the bathroom floor of Graceland, his mansion in Memphis, Tennessee. He was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital at 3:36 p.m.

At the time of his death, Elvis weighed an estimated 350 pounds. He was practically bed-ridden and required permanent nursing care. His heart was enlarged to twice its normal size with evidence of cardiovascular disease. His lungs showed signs of emphysema even though he'd never smoked, and his bowel was twice the length of normal. In addition, he suffered from an immune disorder.

Three days later, the coroner issued a death certificate stating the cause of death as“hypertensive cardiovascular disease with atherosclerotic heart disease.” In plain English, a heart attack. Officially, the King had died of natural causes.

Since 1967, Elvis had been under the primary care of Dr. George Nichopoulos a well-known doctor to celebrities. Then, Elvis was 32 and weighed 163 pounds. His only known medical ailment was slightly high blood pressure, presumably due to his high-fat diet.  That same year, however, he began to experience progressive chronic pain throughout his body, insomnia, hypertension, lethargy, irrational behavior, and weight gain. Over the next few years, he was hospitalized several times and began self-medicating with an assortment of drugs. 

Doctor Nick, as Nichopoulos was called, remained Elvis’s personal physician till the end and was present at the death scene as well as during the autopsy. He concurred with the coroner’s conclusion that the cause of death was a natural cardiac event.

When the toxicology report was released, however, everything changed. The report said:

“Diazepam, methaqualone, phenobarbital, ethchlorvynol, and ethinamate are below or within their respective ranges. Codeine was present at a level approximately 10 times those concentrations found therapeutically. In view of the polypharmacy aspects, this case must be looked at in terms of the cumulative pharmacological effect of the drugs identified by the report.”

Because the tox report appeared to contradict the autopsy report’s stated cardiac cause of death, a prominent toxicologist was asked to review the findings. In his opinion:

“. . .all this information points to a conclusion that, whatever tolerance the deceased may have acquired to the many drugs found in his system, the strong probability is that these drugs were the major contribution to his demise.”

As a result, the Tennessee Board of Health began an investigation which resulted in Dr. Nick being criminally charged with murder because he had been the main physician prescribing medications to Elvis. Evidence showed that during the seven and a half months preceding Elvis’s death, Doctor Nick wrote prescriptions for him for more than 8,800 pills, tablets, vials, and injectables. The drugs included uppers, downers, and powerful painkillers such as Dilaudid, Quaalude, Percodan, Demerol, and Cocaine Hydrochloride in quantities more appropriate for those terminally ill with cancer.

The trial of Dr. Nick was not intended to settle the cause of death, but whether he treated Elvis with "good faith."

Dr. Nick's defense was that Elvis was addicted to pain killers, so he prescribed medications to keep him away from dangerous street drugs, thereby controlling the addiction. If he found  street drugs in Elvis's house or on tours, he destroyed them. He tried to prescribe the least harmful drugs while keeping Elvis functional and substituted placebos when he could. He tried to get Elvis to enter a chemical dependency treatment unit, but he always refused.

The State retained the former coroner of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Joseph Davis, MD, who had done thousands of autopsies. He rendered the opinion that Elvis Presley died of a heart attack, which settled the public controversy. His conclusion was:

"The position of Elvis Presley's body was such that he was about to sit down on the commode when the seizure occurred. He pitched forward onto the carpet, his rear in the air, and was dead by the time he hit the floor. If it had been a drug overdose, he would have slipped into an increasing state of slumber. He would have pulled up his pajama bottoms and crawled to the door to seek help. It takes hours to die from drugs."

In addition, Dr. Davis noted that Elvis was grossly obese, more than 50 lbs of which were gained in the last few months, which put an enormous strain on his heart. There was no pulmonary edema, a sign of drug overdose. It was established that Elvis obtained codeine pills from a dentist the day before his death and Doctor Nick had no knowledge of it.

One of the defense witnesses was Dr. Forest Torrent, a prominent California physician and a pioneer in the use of opiates in pain treatment, who presented a concept few people had even heard of.

Dr. Torrent was intrigued by the sudden change in Elvis since 1967. He discovered that during that year, while filming the movie “Clambake,” Elvis tripped over an electrical cord, fell, and cracked his head on the edge of a porcelain bathtub. He was knocked unconscious and had to be hospitalized. Dr. Torrent found three other incidents where Elvis suffered head blows and suspected he suffered from what’s now known as Traumatic Brain Injury—TBI.  That’s what caused the progressive ailments which had to be treated with powerful painkillers, which weakened his heart and other organs, and eventually led to his death.

TBI may not only produce pain in the form of headaches but also spine, joint, and muscular pain. TBI patients are often misdiagnosed as having "fibromyalgia."

Dr. Torrent believed that Elvis’s bathtub head injury in 1967 was so severe it caused brain tissue to be jarred loose and leak into his general blood circulation. This is now known to be a leading cause of autoimmune disorder which causes a breakdown of organs. TBI causes bizarre behaviors such as reclusivity, obsessive-compulsive habits, paranoia, hostility, peculiar sex habits, and poor hygiene, among others. Side effects are chronic pain, irrational behavior, severe bodily changes such as obesity, and enlarged organs like hearts and bowels. Elvis exhibited all these symptoms and more. He also experienced progressive headaches and lumbar spine pain between 1967 and his death in 1977. X-rays of his lumbar spine showed a disc protrusion at L4.

TBI was unknown during Elvis' lifetime. Today, it is a recognized health issue in professional contact sports, particularly in boxing and football.

Doctor Nick was absolved of negligence in directly causing Elvis Presley’s death. Shortly thereafter, however, the district attorney general's office brought a criminal indictment against him for willfully and feloniously prescribing controlled substances to Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. He was found guilty.

With a change in mental state and suffering chronic pain and failure of body functions due to TBI, Elvis Presley entered a ten-year spiral towards death. He became addicted to pain killers to offset the pain raging through his body as well as other ailments and practiced an unhealthy diet and lethargic lifestyle. This led to early coronary vascular disease and, combined with his escalating weight and pill consumption, Elvis was a heart attack ready to happen.

If Dr. Tennant is right about Traumatic Brain Injury, and if it had been diagnosed and treated early enough in his life, Elvis might not have been driven to the drug usage which affected him so drastically both emotionally and physically.  He might have continued performing for many more years and treating us to his inimitable and dynamic form of entertainment.  

I, for one, wish that had been the case.

Earl Staggs ©2016

Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year.  He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. 

He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net
 

He also invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.