The Pacific Junction Horror: Murder in Small Town Iowa

Helen Kuhl

Someone crept into Edith and Helen Kuhl’s bedroom overnight on March 20, 1935, and bludgeoned them nearly to death. 

The girls were taken to Mercy Hospital at Council Bluffs. Helen had a fractured skull and cuts and bruises on the right side of her head. Edith’s injuries were so severe, doctors didn’t expect her to pull through. 

 

Both girls remained unconscious late into the afternoon, so the police had very few clues to work on. Edith died the following day. Helen remained unconscious for nearly five days, and when she came to, she could shed no light on the attack. 

 

The girls roomed at the home of their aunt Ritta Graham in Pacific Junction. Their uncle, Clarence Price, also boarded in the house. Ritta was away attending a funeral in Omaha.

 

Price told authorities he rapped on George Durkee’s door at about 11 p.m. Wednesday. “Come quick!” he shouted. “Something terrible has happened.”

 

They found the girls on the bed. The glass had been broken out of their bedroom window, and the screen pulled off. Durkee told police there were signs of a struggle.

 The stove in the sitting room was burning hot when the police arrived. That led detectives to believe the girls had been beaten with a stick. And then, before he left, the attacker burned the weapon. Bloodstains found on the stove seemed to confirm that theory. 

 

Detectives sifted the ashes searching for clues. They found seven buttons from a man’s work shirt and a safety pin. 

 

Sheriff DeMoss held Price in the Mills County Jail at Glenwood, Iowa, saying it was “for his own protection.” Price suffered a minor heart attack in his cell the next day. The sheriff asked if it had occurred when he attacked the girls the previous night. Price denied any involvement.

 

He’d been switching rooms with the girls over the past several weeks, trying to fool a supposed attacker. There had been several break-ins attempted recently. He shot a man outside the girl’s bedroom window a few nights before.

 

Edith Kuhl

And it wasn’t just there. William Kuhl, the girl’s father, had been acting like a “madman” lately because of several break-ins at his home.

 

Mills County authorities grilled Price for eight hours on the day after the murder but couldn’t get him to shake his story. Price insisted he was innocent. He told other prisoners he “would rather die than keep going through this testimony.” It was too much for his weak heart.

 

The following day, Sheriff DeMoss questioned the girl’s father. Price told him there had been several attempts to break into the girl’s room, so he’d given Price a gun for protection.

 

Strangely, the sheriff didn’t ask about the girl’s living situation, but perhaps the details were well known. Still, it should have piqued the sheriff’s interest when he learned the girls lived with their aunt and uncle in town, the father lived on a farm three miles away, and their mother lived in another state.

 

Helen said Price was sitting in the living room with a shotgun guarding them when the girls went to bed. Shortly after they fell asleep, they heard a noise outside their window. Then, she woke up in the hospital.

 

The girl’s grandmother couldn’t imagine her brother committing the crime. “Just think of Clarence walking into that room and finding the girls all beaten up. He must have felt terrible.”

 

She didn’t understand how the police could even suspect Clarence. He liked the girls.

 

At first, William Kuhl was sure Price hadn’t attacked his daughters. “Clarence and I were raised together,” he told reporters. “Why he’s my mother’s brother. I don’t think he’d do it.” But later, he changed his mind and said the police were correct in holding Price.

 

Fred Franks, captain of the Omaha detectives, pointed out several holes in Price’s story. He couldn’t explain why the stove was burning full blast. Price was in the next room but couldn’t say why he hadn’t heard the attack. It seemed improbable that he hadn’t heard something.

All Price could say was, “I didn’t do it. I don’t know who did.”

 

Although the evidence was entirely circumstantial, it was enough to convince the coroner’s jury. The testimony established Price was alone in the house with the girls, not that he’d committed the crime.

 

The coroner’s jury ruled that “Edith Kuhl came to her death by an unknown assailant between 9:30 and 11 p.m. March 20. Accordingly, we recommend that Clarence Price be charged with the crime.”

 

County attorney William Wellons didn’t waste any time. He filed a first-degree murder charge against Price two days after his arrest despite the lack of evidence. Wellons, 27, might have been out of his league. It was his first murder trial. 

 

All the evidence presented to the grand jury was circumstantial. Much of it centered on the burned clothes found in the furnace. The buttons came from a pair of men’s underpants. Clarence Price bought two new pairs the week before. Since then, a pair had mysteriously disappeared. Did the buttons come from Price’s missing underwear? There was no way to know, but it seemed logical to assume they did.

 

W. H. Camden, an Omaha chemist, verified the girl’s bedroom screen was cut on the inside. That proved the attacker did not come in through the window.

 

Helen Kuhl and her sister went to bed about 9:30. Some strange noises woke them several hours later. When she went to investigate, she found Price half-dressed, carrying a shotgun.

 

He told her it might be safer if they slept in the other bedroom, so they did. The last time she saw Price, he was seated in the next room, holding a shotgun.

 

Clarence Price

Price gave the authorities the names of three men he thought might have attacked the girls. Detectives discovered that two of them had been away from town for several weeks. The other man was ruled out for undisclosed reasons.

 

The girl’s father admitted he had a violent temper. So much so that his children were often scared of him. That might explain why they stayed at their aunt’s boarding house, and their mother lived in another state. However, neither the prosecution nor the defense explained why the family lived apart.

 

Jack Griffith, 20, a farmhand on the Kuhl place, should have been a person of interest but wasn’t. He usually rode into town with William Kuhl and visited Helen on Wednesday nights. But for some unknown reason, the two men stayed home on the night of the attack.

 

Detectives found a love letter in Helen’s purse addressed to Jack. It should have set off the detective’s spidey senses, but if it raised any alerts, no mention was made of it.

 

The other day, Clarence [apparently Price] went down to the garage where Jim was, and Jim told him about you drinking Saturday. Clarence came home and said to me at the dinner table, “I heard Jack was celebrating last week.” It hurt me clear to the bottom of my heart.

 

Don’t drink anymore.

 

If it would’ve been anybody else besides you, he wouldn’t even have mentioned it. He just needed to see what I’d say. I felt like saying, “If you had as many troubles and worries as Jack, you’d do worse than that.” I didn’t say a word. All I said was “yes.”

 

Then Helen switched gears and began talking about her father.

 

I knew what you did it for. I didn’t dare tell Papa. He’ll find out later, won’t he, sweetheart? I wonder what he drinks for? Of course, to drown his troubles. He was half-crocked Saturday when he was giving me hell. 

 

That’s one reason he got so mad. I know I do need someone to just beat the hell out of me, but it wouldn’t do any good. I know because I’d go right back for more. I do every time.

 

I’m like you. I feel that I’m no good on earth. Especially if I am going to cause trouble in the family. There’s enough now without more.

 

“I didn’t dare tell Papa. He’ll find out later.”

 

That sounded like she was pregnant and didn’t want anyone to know. It’s more than enough reason for investigators to question Jack Griffith, but no one did. Why? If Helen was pregnant, Jack Griffith might have had more reason to kill her than Clarence Price. But of course it depended on how he took the news. If it made him drink, that should have been a red flag.

 

Clarence Price went to trial in May 1935 for the death of his 13-year-old niece, Edith Kuhl. A blood-stained mattress, a butcher knife, and a slashed screen in the courtroom told the prosecution’s story.

 

In his opening statement, special prosecutor Karl Cook inferred Price had a sexual fascination with the girls. Everything Price said on the day of the attack revolved around the girls. 

 

Helen Kuhl, the star witness, changed her story from what she said at the coroner’s inquest and to the grand jury. She appeared to implicate Price, saying he stood in the doorway as they went to bed. She woke up about 10 p.m. and heard Price in their bedroom. He was “talking in low tones” to Edith.

 

When Price saw Helen looking at him, he said he was going to Plattsmouth, Nebraska, and wasn’t sure when he’d be getting back. They better leave the door unlocked so he could let himself in when he returned.               

 

She was struck on the head a few minutes later, and everything went blank. Before leaving the stand, Helen said she never believed her uncle’s story about prowlers.

 

George Durkee, a minister who lived next door to the Graham house, testified next.

 

He thought Price was getting ready to run for it. When he suggested returning to the murder house, Price shook his head and refused to go in.

When Durkee asked him what he planned to tell the girl’s parents, all Price could say was, “My God, I don’t know.”

 

The stove was red hot when Durkee entered the house at 11 p.m. Helen said it was cold at 9:30 when she went to bed. So why did Price fire it up? The obvious answer was to dispose of his bloody clothes after the attack.

 

Durkee’s wife saw Price run around the house, peek in the girl’s bedroom window and then hurry back to the front of the house.

 

Sheriff DeMoss testified there was no sign of entry from the outside, so the screen had to have been cut from the inside. Besides, the opening wasn’t big enough for a man to climb through. 

 

Special prosecutor Karl Cook said no footprints were found outside the window. If that was the case, the killer came from inside the house.

 

The girl’s mother blamed Price. A few days before the attack, he warned her, “Something awful is going to happen. I’m going away, and you’ll never know where I’ve gone.” 

 

Mrs. Kuhl didn’t give it much thought, but afterward... it sounded like a confession.

 

Clarence Price took the stand on the last day of the trial... 

 

He fixed the fire at about 9:30. Shortly after that, Helen walked out of her room with her nightgown over her arm. He didn’t see Edith because she was in her bedroom. After that, he went to bed fully dressed.

 

He heard a sound followed by a groan at about 11 p.m., so he grabbed his shotgun and ran into the girl’s room to investigate.

 

When he pulled the covers back, Edith’s face was covered with blood. Unsure what to do, he ran across the street to George Durkee’s house. And no, it wasn’t anything sinister that kept him out of the house. His heart problems kept him from going back in.

 

Prosecutor Karl Cook summed things up, saying he had “welded together all the links in the chain of circumstantial evidence.” The only thing he couldn’t provide was a motive because there was no motive for such a gruesome crime. He dismissed Price’s story of the previous break-in attempts because they never happened. They were figments of his imagination. Price was just biding his time, building an alibi. 

 

Defense attorney Norman Genung made his closing statement after Cook. He made a feeble argument that the state didn’t have the evidence to convict Price. Everything was circumstantial—chain or no chain.

 

“Someone else did it,” he told the jury. “Who—I don’t know.”

 

The jury deliberated for five hours before returning a guilty verdict and recommending a life sentence in the Fort Madison Penitentiary. 

 

William Kuhl was satisfied with the verdict. It wouldn’t bring his daughter back, but Price “got what he deserved.”

 

“You know,” he said with a twisted smile, “it will be good for him to serve at hard labor.”

 

Price died in the Fort Madison Penitentiary a year later, in May 1936. Prison officials said he suffered from heart problems since his arrival and had been in the hospital for the past month.

 

Price had an appeal pending at the time of his death. Assistant Attorney General Walter Maley explained that when a defendant dies while appealing their case, “the defense ordinarily moves to set aside his conviction and dismiss the indictment upon which he was convicted.” The prosecutor rarely protests the motion.

 

In essence, Price would be cleared of the charges because he died while appealing his conviction. Fortunately, it didn’t happen that way. In July, Price’s attorneys signed a stipulation, agreeing to dismiss the appeal, so his conviction stood.