No Justice For Evelyn Lee

Evelyn Lee

Nine-year-old Evelyn Lee was playing near her Des Moines home on Saturday afternoon, May 10, 1930, when she disappeared in the woods along Four Mile Creek. 

Two days later, E.M. Wessels stumbled upon Evelyn’s battered body while digging up shrubs in the same woods, just south of the Youngstown Bridge on Scott Street. Investigators quickly determined she had been choked to death by a left-handed attacker. Footprints found at the scene matched Evelyn’s shoes, and showed her attacker might have been a man with a crippled right foot. 

Detectives wasted no time in narrowing their search to two suspects—Carl McCune, 34, and Elmer Gibson, 35—scrappers who had been spotted driving a beat-up 1926 Ford roadster loaded with barrels and scavenged items. Witnesses recalled seeing the pair in South Des Moines that Saturday, drinking heavily and behaving erratically. 

The manhunt ended on May 15 when police apprehended McCune and Gibson at McCune’s mother’s house in Des Moines.

Evelyn’s parents were devastated. Her stepmother learned of Evelyn’s death when Agnes Arney, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, showed up at her door.

“Evelyn’s been found,” she said. “But she’s dead.”

Mrs. Lee stood motionless for a moment, then threw herself in a chair and shook. Tobias Lee learned of his daughter’s death a few moments later when he took a break from searching for her and returned home.

“Where was the body?” he asked. “Have they any clues? What are they doing to get the man? Can I go to the place where they found her?”

Elmer Gibson

Back at the police station, detectives fingerprinted the suspects and placed them in separate cells pending questioning. Gibson was cooperative and tried to establish an alibi, telling detectives he’d been with McCune until 3 p.m. Saturday. He went to a movie on Saturday evening, then had gotten so drunk that a friend took him home. Police confirmed the story with his friend. 

He met up with McCune again on Sunday afternoon and drove to Marengo, where they had a job lined up for Monday. They spent the night in West Liberty, then headed back to Des Moines, where the police arrested them at the home of McCune’s mother.

When Gibson saw Detective George Welch enter the house, he said, “I’ve been expecting you, George.” 

That was suspicious.

The case presented several firsts in scientific evidence gathering in Iowa Dr. Leonard Keeler, a Chicago criminologist, and Dr. John A. Larson, a psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, ran lie detector tests on Gibson and McCune, as well as many of the witnesses.

Before administering the tests, Keeler was given the entire case history. Then he developed a series of questions to test the suspects. 

The Des Moines Register explained that the lie detector machine “makes two distinct ink lines on the chart, one line being the result of blood pressure and the other recording respiration.” Deviations from the line showed the subject was lying. 

Sheriff Park Findley hoped the results would help prove the guilt or innocence of the suspects. Overall, he was pleased with the results.

Gibson was caught up in a lie about his alibi and forced to admit he’d been drinking at a roadhouse when the girl disappeared. The test showed Carl McCune lied about not killing Evelyn Lee. It also showed that three witnesses had lied in their statements.

After taking the lie detector test, Gibson told McCune: “You might as well tell the truth. It caught me in a lie, and it will do the same to you.” 

Carl McCune

Luckily for Gibson, his lie eliminated him as a suspect in the girl’s murder. The question that tripped him up was about drinking. He admitted visiting an east side bootlegging establishment the night Evelyn Lee disappeared. 

McCune’s first run through the lie detector showed he’d lied consistently. When he was retested, the results stayed the same. Sheriff Findley said the lie detector showed McCune was lying when he said he didn’t kill the girl.

The biggest disappointment was that neither man confessed. Going into the tests, Dr. Keeler had said 75 percent of those tested wound up confessing when confronted with the results. But McCune and Gibson maintained their innocence.

Dependence on physical evidence was another first for Iowa. Detectives pinned their hope of convicting the men on two strands of hair found on Evelyn Lee’s body. The strands were sent to a Chicago laboratory along with samples from McCune and Gibson. After that, they planned on sending them to a laboratory in Los Angeles, and then to another lab in Des Moines.

J. Wake Galloway, a professor at the Des Moines School of Pharmacy, said the human and cat hairs taken from Carl McCune matched those found on Evelyn Lee’s clothing, making it sound like he was the guy. But later at the trial, he admitted “there was no possible way to identify the hairs.”

That eliminated the hair as evidence.

The evidence against McCune and Gibson was circumstantial at best. No one had seen them kill Evelyn Lee, so detectives couldn’t say for certain they’d killed her, but several witnesses placed them at or near the murder scene.

An unnamed witness saw the girl playing in the woods with two men about 3:30 p.m. that Sunday. She had a stick in her hand and ran back and forth on the riverbank. He was certain that the man he saw was Carl McCune. Another witness saw McCune and Gibson seven blocks away from where Evelyn Lee was abducted. They were coming out of the woods onto Scott Street. 

“I don’t know how anyone can look more like the man,” he said, pointing to Gibson. “Those eyes and hat, dark hair, and the mark on the face that looks like dirt. I could not be mistaken.”

The grand jury indicted Carl McCune for murder and “child Stealing” on June 9. They were still investigating the case against Elmer Gibson. It was more complicated since it’d been decided he wasn’t involved in the actual killing of the girl. 

Two days later, the grand jury indicted Elmer Gibson for “child stealing,” which carried a maximum penalty of ten years.

Carl McCune went to trial on September 24.

E. A. Nickerson testified he had a drink with McCune and Gibson at the Mule Barn at about 3:30 p.m. on May 10. Five witnesses saw McCune and Gibson on South Union Street on the night Evelyn disappeared.

Alice Gibbs lived less than a half mile from where Evelyn Lee’s body was found. She saw McCune drive by her house with a girl who looked like Evelyn sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. A reporter for the Des Moines Register noted McCune jumped about nervously and placed his hand over his mouth as she testified.

The jury deliberated for less than three hours before returning a verdict of not guilty. County attorney Carl Missildine dismissed the “child stealing” charges against Elmer Gibson two days later.

After that, the case went dead. Sheriff Findley reopened it in 1932 and 1933, but the investigation went nowhere.

Then, in December 1943, assistant county attorney Edwin S. Thayer said Sheriff Findley had solved the case back in the early 1930s but hadn’t disclosed the killer’s name because he was an insane “sex pervert” and former serviceman. Apparently, the sheriff had served in the military and had a soft spot for soldiers. He didn’t want to cast a negative light on veterans, so he kept his mouth closed.

If that were true and the case had been solved, the current county attorney and sheriff were unaware of it.

Officially, the case is still open.