Killing of Des Moines Policeman Ollie Thomas

Policeman Ollie Thomas

Nobody agrees on the number, but the official count says seven. Seven shots cracked through the humid August night like the city itself had snapped.

August 21, 1925, near Fourth and Grand.

Some poor bastard heard the first few go off and thought it was just a car backfiring. Then two shots boomed louder than the rest, the kind that don’t lie about what they are. Gunfire always has a signature. Anyone who’s heard it knows when the lie ends.

Moments later, a bareheaded man came flying out of an alley and tore east down Grand Avenue like hell had suddenly remembered his address. The witness said the build looked right. The speed looked right. The panic looked right. Bootlegger energy, all of it.

By the time the echoes finished bouncing off brick and glass, Patrolman Ollie Thomas lay dead.

They found him crumpled at the bottom of a stairway landing, soaked in his own blood. Two bullets did the job. One through the abdomen. One through the head. Both traveling downward. That detail stuck with the detectives like a splinter in the brain.

Senator Frank Jones Villisca Axe Murder Suspect

 

Ever since the Villisca Axe Murders, there had been rumors that Frank Jones and his son Albert had skin in the game. Some residents traced it back to when Joe Moore left Jones’ implement business and opened his John Deere dealership. Supposedly, there had been hard feelings ever since.

Another story making the rounds was that Joe Moore was sleeping with Albert Jones’ wife. But that allegation held little water; rumors had linked Dona Jones to half the men in Villisca.

Like the case against Mansfield, the charges against Jones went nowhere. Investigators brought in more suspects over the years, but nothing came of it.

West Liberty Tourist Camp Murder

Harland Gabe Simons

The West Liberty tourist camp murder hit the front pages in July 1924 like a thunderclap.

Orton and Diana Ferguson had been on the road for almost a year, wandering up and down the West Coast, drifting from camp to camp, letting the dirt roads decide their path. July 12 was Diana’s thirty-fourth birthday. They were heading home to Atlanta, Michigan, tired but happy, planning to catch a concert in town and sleep under the stars afterward.

 

They pulled into the West Liberty camp just before dusk. A man stepped out of the trees and waved them down. He called himself the park ranger.

 

He told them someone had spilled crankcase oil on the grass up front. He’d show them a better spot. Something quiet. Something private.

 

He guided them deep into the grounds, well away from the other travelers. He helped them settle in, then said he had other campers to look after, and vanished between the tents.

 

His name was Harland “Gabe” Simons.

 

Later that afternoon, he reappeared, casual as a neighbor dropping by to borrow sugar. He chatted, joked, and offered to watch their tent while they went into town. He seemed kind. Polite. Harmless.

William "Blackie" Mansfield Villisca Murder Suspect

In mid-June 1916, newspaper headlines across the state screamed, “Great crime at Villisca now solved.” William Mansfield, an ex-convict and dope fiend, better known in his circle as “Insane Blackie,” was the killer.

The key to the case was the ax murders in Blue Island, Illinois, of Mansfield’s wife, infant daughter, and mother-in-law and father-in-law. Investigators also placed him in Paola, Kansas; Aurora, Illinois, and Villisca, Iowa when those gruesome murders occurred.

Detective J. N. Wilkerson of the Burns Detective Agency ferreted out the link.

Unfortunately, the case fell apart after Mrs. Elmo Thompkins, who claimed to have overheard three men plotting the Villisca murders, failed to identify Mansfield in court.

The prosecution dismissed the case against William Mansfield on July 21, 1916.

The McGreggor Murders--Andrew Thompson

Andrew Thompson dragged Marie Haggerty and her
children across eastern Iowa and Wisconsi for over a week

The river keeps secrets until it’s ready to spit them back.

 For almost six months, the Mississippi held its tongue about what Andrew Thompson did on a frozen December night in 1868. It kept quiet while the ice tightened, the slush thickened, and the current dragged four bodies along its dark ribs. No one in Iowa or Wisconsin knew a thing. Thompson went home, fed his livestock, slept beside his wife, and pretended his hands weren’t stained.

 

Love—or whatever twisted thing he felt—had pushed him there.

 

Maria Haggerty. Thirty-six. Pretty, dark-haired, sharp-eyed. She ran the Bull’s Head Saloon after her husband left for the Union Army. Thompson was a regular. A big, soft-bellied farmer from Monona Township with money in his pockets and hunger under his skin. When Maria poured the whiskey, he fell hard and stupid.

 

People whispered. John Haggerty came home from the war and didn’t even try to fight it. He divorced her, turned the saloon over to her, and headed west.

Murder of Mrytle Cooke in Vinton Iowa 1925

Myrtle Cook

Myrtle Cook’s murder had everything police hate—politics, booze, the Klan, and an estranged husband whose alibi kept springing leaks. On September 7, 1925, someone walked up to the living-room window of her Vinton, Iowa home at 703 Third Avenue, confirmed she was sitting at her desk writing a speech for the next day’s W.C.T.U. meeting, and put a bullet straight through her heart.

She stayed alive long enough to whisper a name to her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Cook—a name the town didn’t expect. A man the local police practically trusted with the keys to the city. Detectives didn’t buy it. They chalked it up to shock, pain, and wishful thinking.

Her husband, Clifford B. Cook, wasn’t so dismissive. He said the family reenacted the shooting angle. If Myrtle saw the shooter, she could have identified him. That made everything messier.

Investigators first chased the obvious suspects: rumrunners. Myrtle was one of the loudest prohibition activists in Iowa. She harassed mayors, sheriffs, and state officials. She wrote down license plates and took notes on her neighbors. She treated Prohibition like a personal crusade and made enemies the way some people collect stamps.

Boxcar Murder in West Davenport, 1922

Harry Carey (aka Walter Baum)

Manuel Rodriguez didn’t expect anything unusual when he walked into his friend’s boxcar shack on May 4, 1922. He just pushed open the door—and froze. Manuel Rocha was on the floor, head in a pool of dried blood. Three ax blows to the skull. Then the killer flipped the ax and smashed his face in. Rocha hadn’t even gotten off the soapbox he used as a chair.

Police barely had time to process the scene before the rumors started: Rocha had been sleeping with his friend Harry Carey’s wife, Margaret. In that part of Davenport, an affair was a fast way to end up dead.

 

Margaret wasn’t hard to track down. Detectives found her half out of her mind at Evelyn Locke’s brothel on Warren Street—drugged up, covered in blood, and rambling. Locke said she’d shown up around ten the night before, screaming, “The Mexican has killed Harry. My poor Harry. He will never have to go to jail no more.”

Murder At The Handy Grocery Store Davenport Iowa 1913

Floyd Sheets

February 5, 1913. Davenport was half-frozen and half-drunk. Somewhere on Rockingham Road, a boy with a .38 in his pocket decided he’d had enough of being hungry.

The Handy Grocery was open late. Ernest Dalldorf, twenty, and Clyde Jager, seventeen, were closing up when a skinny shape shuffled through the snow and pressed his face to the glass.

 

Dalldorf felt sorry for him, and unlocked the door. “Come on in and warm up.”

 

The boy stepped inside, pulled a gun, and shouted, “Throw up your hands.”

 

That’s how fast life goes sideways.

 

He shoved them against the counter, grabbed what he could from their pockets. Then nodded at the cash register.

 

Dalldorf raised one hand, pretending to open it. He grabbed a bread case with the other and hurled it. The boy panicked. Three shots cracked through the store.

 

Murder in Lyons, Iowa The Death of Fritz Dolph

Irene Dolph

The morning of February 29, 1908, started cold and gray over Lyons, Iowa. By noon, seventeen-year-old Irene Dolph had killed her husband, Fritz, and was halfway to Joliet, Illinois, telling her mother she was “in trouble.” That was an understatement.

Her mother, Ella Goldsmith, didn’t blink. Trouble had been the family business for years. She bought two train tickets back to Clinton and found a lawyer before the sheriff even heard the name “Dolph.” It was the most organized thing either of them had ever done.

 

Attorney F. L. Holleran told Sheriff T. J. Burke that Fritz Dolph “either murdered himself or was murdered.” The sheriff found out quickly which one it was. The Dolph house smelled like beer and gunpowder. Fritz was on the floor in a mess of sheets, his skull blown apart. A shotgun leaned against the wall with one shell missing. The Daily Times described it as “blowing out his brains,” which was accurate but not helpful to anyone trying to eat breakfast that morning.

 

Everyone in town agreed: Irene did it.

Murder on the Brunner Farm Mason City Iowa

Jennie Brunner

The morning of September 30, 1941, started quietly on the Brunner farm, a few miles northwest of Mason City. By noon, Sam Brunner was dead, and his twenty-two-year-old wife, Jennie, was running for her life.

They had known each other eight weeks before marrying. Long enough for a smile and a dance. Not long enough to see the violence underneath. Within two weeks, the fights began—sharp, fast, unpredictable. Once, Sam pressed a gun to his own chest and dared her to watch him pull the trigger.

That morning, they were in bed. Jennie reached over, teasing him, tickling his ribs. He told her to stop. She laughed. Then he reached under his pillow for the pistol he always kept there. “Quit it,” he said, “or I’ll shoot you.”

Belle Plaine Witch Murder

John Geyer killed his mother with his bare hands because he thought she’d hexed his cattle. That’s what he told the sheriff. “She bewitched the herd. The voices told me to do it.”

 

Neighbors said he’d been off for months. Muttering about curses. Watching the barn at night. One man at the feed store told a reporter, “He talked about the cows like they were possessed. We thought he’d just lost money on bad hay.”

 

He was broke. The cattle were dying. His head wasn’t right.

 

One November morning, he took a lamp into the old woman’s room. The farm was quiet and cold. She was whispering spells in her sleep. The light flickered and told him to strike.

 

When the neighbors found him, he was standing over her, calm as Sunday. “It’s done,” he said.

Allie Haradon She Wanted A Baby, But...

In February 1916, Allie Haradon placed an ad in the Des Moines Register saying she wanted to adopt a baby. Ernest and Emma Ohrtman of Bagley, Iowa, answered it. They had a child they wanted to get rid of, and Allie wanted one. It should have been simple a simple exchange.

 It wasn’t.

 

Allie brought the baby home and showed it to her husband, William. He wasn’t thrilled. He didn’t yell or hit her—just said no.

 

The next day, Allie left the baby in a shed behind the Salvation Army home, figuring they’d find it soon enough. They didn’t. The janitor hauled the basket out with the rest of the trash.

 

A month later, a worker at the city dump on Southeast Sixth Street found what was left of the baby.

 

Detectives arrested Ben Dudi and his wife because someone said they had a baby before they moved to Minneapolis. They had to come back to Iowa and watch a coroner dig up their child to prove they weren’t murderers.

Mother Place Mitchelville Iowa Baby Farmer

A young woman handing her baby over to Mother Place

Back in 1895, Mother Place was just Mrs. Martha Place, a widow who looked exactly like every widow looked in rural Iowa—gray dress, gray bun, gray outlook on life. She lived on a little patch of land near Mitchellville, and kept to herself, which everyone said was respectable until it suddenly wasn’t.

Her business was simple, if you didn’t think too hard about it. Women from Des Moines or nearby towns would arrive, holding bundles they didn’t want to hold anymore. They’d hand them to Mrs. Place—and she’d take them in exchange for a few crumpled bills and the promise they’d be “well cared for.” Nobody used words like “adoption” or “surrender.” It was more like handing over a problem that couldn’t be fixed.

To the neighbors, it all looked perfectly ordinary. They’d see her hanging laundry, waving from her porch, or tending her garden. Maybe a baby’s cry drifted through the open window now and then, but it wasn’t anything you asked about. In 1895, if someone said they were running a “baby farm,” that was just what it was called. Nobody stopped to ask why it sounded so terrible.

Murder of the Huber Brothers in Carroll County Iowa

The sheriff gave it one more look before removing the bodies

There’s something foul in the soil of Carroll County. You can feel it even now — that twitch behind the eyes of the people who still talk about “the Huber boys.” Two brothers, Henry and John, farmers, hard cases by every account. Dead in their own kitchen in 1874 — skulls split like kindling, blood on the stove door, an axe standing proud in the corner like it had just finished its shift.

 No robbery. No fire. Just two men beaten to a pulp on a weekday morning, and a county that couldn’t decide whether to pray or sharpen its knives.

 

The papers called it “the Carroll County Horror.” What they meant was: somebody ended a family with a tool meant for chopping wood. The sheriff rode out with one deputy, two cigars, and no idea what he was walking into. The neighbors had already turned the place into a sideshow—poking at footprints, whispering about money, jealousy, the usual frontier rot.

They Caught Him With His Pants Falling Down

Whynak Johann

Every murder story starts with a question. This one has three: Where does love end? Where does insanity begin? And why do they always live in a rented room above someone named Bessie?

 In 1910, Whynak Johann married Marie in Vienna, Austria. He was built like a bull—five-nine, 190 pounds, all muscle. She was tiny, ninety-five pounds soaking wet, with a face that said, I could survive anything except this marriage.

 

Two weeks in, he marched off with the Austrian Army. Marie got sick and went home to her parents. When Whynak returned, she was living with her ex-boyfriend, Franzl Hervieu. Most people would take the hint. Whynak didn’t.

 

In 1913, moved to Davenport, Iowa, and got a job at Kohl’s Packing Company, making $2.50 a day turning animals into dinner. He sent for Marie. To his shock—she came.

 

They rented a two-room apartment at 1226½ Harrison Street for a dollar a month from Bessie Estess. Marie took in boarders; Whynack brought home paychecks. Love in the immigrant slums—cheap beer, sausage smells, and dreams of not freezing to death.

 

Then Franzl showed up. Again.

Hanging of William Barger Jackson County Iowa

William Barger was hung in June 1857 by a group known as the Iron Hill Vigilance Committee. Barger had killed his wife in 1854 at Bellevue in Jackson County, Iowa. He had accused her of infidelity. She sued for divorce. At the time of her murder, Mrs. Barger lived with a relative in Bellevue. Barger bored a hole in a fence near the house. Then he waited for her to open the door. When she did, he shot her dead.  

He pleaded insanity and was tried for murder twice. The first jury was hung, and the second found him guilty. After that, Barger’s lawyer didn’t think his client could get a fair trial in Bellevue, so he got a change of venue to De Witt in Clinton County for his third trial.  

The Tipton Advertiser justified the hanging, saying, “That the law was sluggish is evidenced in the time Barger has been suffered to lay in the jail at the expense of the county, even when it was judged and positively known that he was guilty.” In effect, they said, if the law doesn’t do it, the people will.

Hanging of Bennett Warren Scott County

Bennett Warren had a small farm in Liberty Township in Scott County, Iowa. Not much farming got done there. Instead, his house served as a meeting place for the more unsavory element—horse thieves, counterfeiters, occasional burglars, and other frontier badasses. 

Warren never stole horses or counterfeited money, but he helped the banditti by letting them keep the stolen horses on his property. In return, he took and passed counterfeit currency. Each time the authorities arrested Warren, no one would testify against him, so he got off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

On June 24, 1857, two hundred vigilantes crossed into Clinton County from their rendezvous spot at Big Rock. They marched to Warren’s house and took him to a nearby grove.   

Murder in Davenport's Fairmount Cemetery

Kate Ryan

They found her at dawn in Fairmount Cemetery. A workman on his way to the gate saw a horse first—head down, reins slack. Then a buggy smashed against a tree. Then, farther down a ravine, a woman in black.

She was face-down, her hat in the grass. A hatpin was still in her hand. When the police rolled her over, they found a bullet hole between her eyes.

Her name was Kate Ryan, though in Bucktown she went by Rose Earl. She worked at Babe Foreman’s house, one of the licensed brothels in Davenport’s red-light district.

Since 1893, the city had made vice official business. The police collected monthly fines from the madams, and the girls worked without fear of raids. It was cleaner that way, they said. Predictable. Kate’s boss paid twenty-five dollars for the house license and ten more for each girl. Kate Ryan was legal. Until she wasn’t.

The man everyone blamed was Peter Shardis, known to the streets as Pete Sardine. He was thirty-five, short, with a limp and a bottle habit. He’d come from Greece eight years earlier, drifted between Moline and Davenport, working in foundries until he drank his way out of them.