Murder of Edward Stuart At Lone Grave Bluff In Clinton

 

Harold Riggs (The Daily Times. October 8, 1926)

The place already had a bad reputation before Edward Stewart was murdered there.

 

People around Clinton called it Lone Grave Bluff. Legend says a steamboat stopped there once so the crew could bury a dead river pilot. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t. By 1926, nobody cared much either way. The name fit. High bluffs. Thick brush. River fog rolling off the Mississippi. The place kids dared each other to visit after dark, then ran all the way home afterward.

 

It was where Harold Riggs took Edward Stewart.

 

Riggs was young, but the police already knew him well. According to the Clinton Advertiser, officers first arrested him when he was eight for breaking into automobiles. Not long after, they picked him up again for stealing a gun from a local house. He pleaded guilty and was supposed to go to reform school, but got paroled at the last minute.

 

The city watched him grow up mean.

 

Teachers complained. Police hauled him in over and over. Neighbors said he was always looking for trouble. Even as a teenager, he had a bad temper and could fly off over almost nothing.

During the murder trial, his defense attorney tried building a case around insanity. Riggs’ mother, Sadie Coopman, spent years in and out of the state hospital for the insane at Clarinda. She suffered hallucinations and threatened to kill her children. Two weeks before Harold was born, she set several buildings on fire.

 

Mental illness ran through the family. One relative committed suicide after going insane. Others were described as unstable. His foster mother said Harold had fallen and hit his head as a child and never seemed right afterward.

 

“He was too childish, always getting into trouble.”

 

Edward Stewart didn’t know any of that the day he crossed paths with Harold Riggs in Lyons.

 

Riggs acted like the killing was no big deal, almost accidental.

Edward Stewart (The Daily Times. October 7, 1926)

Stewart pulled up beside him in a Chevrolet coach while driving through Lyons. They talked for a few minutes before Riggs mentioned he had liquor hidden near Lone Grave Bluff. That caught Stewart’s attention.

 

Riggs climbed into the car.

 

Somewhere near Pearl Street, Dale Hendrix joined them, and they rode north toward the bluffs above the river.

 

At trial, Riggs said they climbed halfway up the bluff before things turned ugly.

 

“We had a little quarrel and a fight,” he said. “I shot him. That’s all.”

 

That wasn’t all.

 

The first shot didn’t kill Stewart. The gun jammed. While Stewart lay there groaning and crying out, Riggs stopped to fix the weapon before firing again.

 

“Stewart hollered, and I shot him again.”

 

Hendrix heard the shots from a nearby lime kiln and came running uphill. By then, it was too late.

 

Then things got worse.

 

Riggs shoved Stewart’s body over the side of the bluff. After climbing down, he searched the dying man’s pockets for money and valuables. When the police asked how much he got, Riggs said he didn’t know.

 

He buried some of the money near the scene. Some at Stony Point. The rest he carried with him while he wandered around Clinton.

 

Then he tried covering the body.

 

“He was still groaning and crying when we rolled down the path,” Riggs said. “I got some weeds and grass near my father’s shanty and tried to cover him up. I found an old boiler and put it over his head.”

 

Even by 1926 standards, people thought that sounded cold.

 

The autopsy made the case even uglier.

 

Dr. J. M. Mansfield testified Stewart had been shot twice with buckshot. His skull was fractured in two places, and the deep cuts on his head and face appeared to have been made with a sharp instrument.

 

That didn’t fit Riggs’ version of events.

 

Judge William Barker was sure Riggs deliberately murdered Stewart, then beat him over the head with the gun afterward. He didn’t think Riggs had told the full truth about what happened on the bluff.

 

Riggs didn’t help himself on the witness stand.

 

“Did you strike him over the head with anything?” his attorney asked.

 

“I didn’t strike him,” Riggs answered.

 

Then he paused.

 

“Don’t think I did, anyway.”

 

After hiding the body, Riggs returned to Stewart’s car. That should have ended it.

 

Instead, he drove back into Clinton and started running errands like it were any other day.

 

He stopped at a hardware store on Main Street looking for cartridges. When they didn’t have any, he went to Roeh’s Hardware Store and bought four boxes of ammunition for four dollars.

 

Police figured he expected a shootout if officers caught up with him.

 

He abandoned Stewart’s car near the post office, then went to a cigar store at Elm and Second Streets where he bought six packs of cigarettes.

 

Then he headed for the river.

 

Along the way, he spotted Catherine Goldsmith near the bluff road. Seeing her rattled him. He thought right then he’d been caught.

 

Goldsmith became a key prosecution witness. Clinton Police Chief Peter Oster knew Riggs was the killer before the confession because of what Goldsmith saw. At the coroner’s inquest, she only told part of the story. Police believed she feared retaliation.

 

Meanwhile, Riggs wandered around town and along the river like he hadn’t decided what to do next.

 

He visited a clammer named Abel Rice, who lived across the tracks on Reznor Street, and talked him into ferrying him across the Mississippi River to a cabin near Fulton, Illinois. Riggs switched boats there and returned to Clinton.

 

At Stony Point, he stopped to talk with a fisherman.

 

At first, Riggs hinted that the police were after him for writing bad checks. Then he casually mentioned a man had been killed across the river and said officers would probably blame him for that, too.

 

The fisherman told him to get rid of the gun. If the police caught him carrying it, he could end up doing time in prison.

 

Riggs spent some time target shooting near the riverbank before tossing the pistol and ammunition into the Mississippi River.

 

Sheriff E. R. Cooke and Deputy George Snell recovered the weapon after Riggs led them to the spot near Stony Point. Divers also found the missing magazine.

 

The stolen money was another story. Most of it was never recovered.

 

That night, Riggs rowed back toward Clinton. Detectives thought he got nervous staying alone along the river after dark.

 

A few hours later, the police closed in. Riggs’s confession came quick. But the details kept changing every time Riggs told the story.

 

His murder trial started in November 1926.

 

County Attorney George Mattinson pushed for the death penalty. Defense attorney Homer Smith argued Riggs was mentally damaged and deserved mercy because of his condition and family history.

 

On the witness stand, Riggs sounded detached. Almost bored. When asked what kind of temper he had, he shrugged.

 

“I get mad awfully easy.”

 

When his attorney asked, “Are you sorry you killed Stewart?” Riggs answered, “Well, it can’t be helped now.”

 

“Do you think you would do such a thing over again?”

 

“It’s hard telling. I don’t know.”

 

People inside the courtroom shifted in their seats after that.

 

Martin Duffy, the first officer at the scene, testified Stewart’s body was still warm when police found it. The face had been beaten and bloodied so badly he barely recognized him.

 

Judge Barker spared Riggs from execution, pointing to Riggs’ age and what he called his “plainly subnormal” mind. Otherwise, Barker admitted, he would have sentenced him to death.

 

Instead, he ordered Harold Riggs to spend the rest of his life in prison.

 

Barker told him he had witnessed executions and visited inmates serving life sentences. In his opinion, life behind prison walls was the harsher punishment.

 

“I will do everything in my power,” Barker warned, “to see that you spend the remainder of your life in prison.”

 

Even after sentencing, Riggs kept causing trouble.

 

Cleo Arndt and Clarence Atwood briefly shared the Clinton jail with him. Authorities later discovered the pair had smuggled Riggs a hacksaw hidden inside a loaf of bread.

 

After that, officials moved him out-of-town fast.

 

Back at Lone Grave Bluff, the weeds eventually grew over the place where Stewart died.

 

But people around Clinton remembered the bluff with the strange name. The body hidden beneath weeds and an old boiler. And the young killer who never really sounded sorry about any of it.

Before you go ...

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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