Snipers Are Nothing New. Does Anyone Remember Frank Carter The Omaha Sniper?

 

Frank Carter, the Omaha sniper

The Omaha Sniper didn’t rob banks, kick in doors, hold up payroll wagons, or swagger through saloons with two pistols blazing.

 

He hid in the dark and shot strangers.

 

That was worse.

 

People understand greed, revenge, and drunken rage. A man who steals money has a purpose. A man who kills over jealousy has a reason, twisted as it may be.

 

A hidden gunman firing at people he didn’t know was something colder.

 

His name was Frank Carter.

In the winter of 1926, Omaha was a rough river city with stockyards, rail yards, labor trouble, and gambling rooms. Freight whistles blew through the night. Streetcars rattled past rows of houses. Men worked late shifts and walked home after midnight through alleys and side streets glazed with snow and soot.

The Des Moines Register printed this image of the Omaha Sniper

Then the shootings started.

 

The sniper’s first victim was William McDevitt, a mechanic. He was shot several times with a .22 caliber pistol fitted with a silencer. One bullet passed through his head and lodged behind an eye. He died from the wounds.

 

“I shot that guy,” Carter said, “because I was trying to rob him and the ——— ——— wouldn’t stand still.”

 

He explained that the killings were necessary because he only worked as a farmhand in the summer. He committed robberies to get him through the winter. “I decided that no one could get away from me to tell the story. That’s why I shot to kill.”

 

Soon after, Dr. A. D. Searles was found shot to death in his office. “That was a good shot,” he later told detectives. “A dandy shot! Not every man could hit a fellow behind the ear as he ran.”

 

Other bullets tore through lighted windows. Shots were fired at pedestrians. A girl standing at a downtown drugstore counter narrowly escaped when a bullet smashed past her. Carter later told the police that it would have been easy enough to kill her. He just wanted to scare her.

Some victims of the Omaha Sniper

No one saw much. That was part of the fear. A holdup man had to show himself. A man with a knife had to come close. A sniper could be anywhere.

 

Curtains were drawn tighter across Omaha. Men who laughed at danger started walking faster after sunset. Families kept lamps low and windows shut. Every shadow seemed to hold a gun barrel.

 

Police chased rumors. A suspicious man on a rooftop. A figure in an alley. Shots fired near the yards. A stranger carrying a long case.

 

The newspapers gave the unknown gunman a name that fueled people’s fears.

 

The Omaha Sniper.

 

One report said Omaha had come “to a standstill.” Another described streets clearing after dark and theaters going empty. City papers urged residents to darken homes at night because several victims had been shot while standing in lighted windows.

 

A police officer told the Omaha World-Herald he thought the sniper was “a degenerate, probably suffering from a social disease.”

 

Frank Carter was eventually tied to the attacks, but for nearly two weeks he was more ghost than man. He moved through a city linked by rail lines, roads, river crossings, and industrial noise. If a man wanted confusion, Omaha had it.

Frank Carter behind bars

So did Iowa.

 

Council Bluffs was just across the river. It understood movement better than most places. Trains came and went at all hours. Freight drifted in. Passengers changed lines. Yard crews worked nights under lantern light. Men rented rooms by the week and disappeared by morning.

 

If Omaha was trouble, Council Bluffs was an easy place for it to keep moving. That made western Iowa part of the story, whether or not it wanted to be.

 

As the manhunt widened, authorities believed Carter crossed into Iowa. Once he crossed the Missouri, the chase stopped being Nebraska’s problem.

 

Council Bluffs police, county deputies, railroad detectives, and Omaha officers joined the search.

 

Farmers cleaned shotguns at kitchen tables. Merchants kept their eyes peeled , watching every stranger who came through the door. Night clerks at hotels studied faces longer than usual. A man asking for a room without baggage could attract more attention than he wanted.

 

Then came the shooting in Council Bluffs.

 

Railroad detective Ross Johnson encountered Carter in the Wabash yards. Carter shot Johnson six times. He survived long enough to describe the man who shot him. For the first time, the police had more than shadows and guesses.

 

“I saw a man coming up, throwing his flashlight around,” said Carter. “I started shooting. The desire to kill was on me.”

 

Then he bragged a little. “I did some mighty fine shooting right there. Eight shots and six hits. Can you beat it? And the other fellow was shooting, too.”

 

The sniper wasn’t a phantom anymore. He was armed, moving, and willing to kill anyone who got in the way.

Frank Carter entering the police wagon. Inset Frank Carter in court.

That changed everything. Officers came ready for a gunfight. People who might’ve offered a ride to a stranded traveler thought twice. Every lonely road in southwest Iowa suddenly felt longer.

 

The area around the river was ideal country for a fugitive who kept moving. Roads were rough. Winter weather covered tracks and slowed pursuers. Small communities were scattered. Barns, sheds, culverts, timber patches, and abandoned structures offered shelter.

 

Sightings came in from western Iowa towns. Some were nonsense. Others were likely genuine. But sorting one from the other took time and manpower detectives didn’t have.

 

The chase narrowed toward the hills and farm country near Bartlett, about thirty miles south of Council Bluffs.

 

Bartlett was a small town, surrounded by ravines, fields, brush, and roads that twisted more than they ran straight. A place where a man might think he could lie low for a day or two until the search cooled.

 

Instead, officers closed in.

 

On February 22, searchers found Carter near railroad tracks outside town after local reports placed a suspicious man in the area. He was tired, dirty, and hungry.

Frank Carter and pistol he used in killings

His real name was Patrick Murphy. He deserted the army in 1909 and spent time in Fort Leavenworth, then served time in Fort Madison from September 1916 to July 1920 for malicious mischief for the shooting of some cattle. At that time he went by the name Louis Clark.

 

One paper said, “Omaha gets sniper.” Another reported he was captured without a shot.

 

People want monsters to look monstrous. Usually, they don’t.

 

The captured man had dirt on his clothes, worn shoes, and a pistol strapped to his chest under two shirts and two coats. Once in custody, he quickly admitted the known crimes and claimed responsibility for many more—45 murders in all.

 

“I just get the inclination to shoot,” he said. 

 

The Des Moines Register had him saying, “Sometimes I want to kill, kill, kill. I don’t care much who it is, either.”

 

That proved he was a monster, fit for nothing better than the chair—electric death.

 

When asked if he intended to plead guilty, Carter said he’d do whatever his lawyer said. “They’re going to send me to the chair for the long sleep anyway, so what’s the difference?”

One of the ways people made money exploitning the sniper's legend

At his trial, the defense alienist said that Carter was a “moral imbecile.” He had the “intellectually of an adult, but the moral ideas of a child ranging from 3 to 7 years in age.” In later life, the condition developed into strong viscous or criminal tendencies. Maybe murder.

 

He was executed on June 24, 1927. As he was being strapped in, Carter told the executioner, “Be sure to fix this right so it will get me the first time.”

 

People remembered reading about the manhunt. Checking locks and listening harder at night. They remembered that a crime beginning in one city could roll across state lines before dawn.

 

That idea was still new.

 

Older crime stories belonged to fixed places. A feud stayed in one county. A burglar worked one neighborhood. A horse thief ran until the next posse caught him.

 

Modern crime traveled by automobile, rail connection, and hard road. The Omaha Sniper case showed how fast fear could spread.

 

It also showed how thin the line was between city violence and country quiet. A man could fire shots in Omaha one night and hide among Iowa hills the next day.

 

People in small towns didn’t like learning that lesson.

 

Frank Carter is a distant memory today, buried in courthouse files and yellowing newspapers.

 

But for a few short days in 1926, he was the boogeyman.

 

If you lived in western Iowa that winter and heard dogs barking at nothing and cars on the road, you’d understand why people remember him.

 

Not because he was special, but because he was close.

 

Too close.

 

Stuff like this is what I always end up chasing—the little lines in old newspapers and magazines, the parts most books skip over.

 

I pulled a bunch of those stories together into Iowa Crime Time if you want more of it.

 

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