Deadly Hero: The High Society Murder that Created Hysteria in the Heartland by Jason Lucky Morrow

where most of the action was. It was a
different age.”
    Biscup also frequented the county jail, where he
talked directly with prisoners behind bars. “I got real friendly with all of
the criminals who were there for a long time and [would] buy them cigars sometimes.
Get magazines. First thing you know, they trust you, and tip you off,” he said.
Biscup, along with Burgess and others, worked on the Kennamer story.
    To get Phil to his newspaper job on time, the judge
bought him a car, which he wrecked a few weeks later. He bought his son another
car but it too was wrecked in less than a month. The third car he bought for
his son was wrecked a few weeks after he got it, and only a week or two before
he flew to Kansas City to meet Gorrell.
    During his short-lived time as a car owner, he was
stopped by local police for drunk driving on numerous occasions, but only once
was he cited and fined twenty dollars.
    Phil had a reputation as a liar and an
exaggerator, but he was also known for his complete lack of fear. Stories
circulated that he once jumped from the running board of one car to another when
both were traveling fifty miles per hour. During a Christmas party the year
before at the Mayo Hotel, he crawled out a window on the sixteenth floor and
walked along the ledge from one end to the other in order to impress Virginia
Wilcox, who was on a date with another boy.
    She was not impressed, and the stunt only repelled
her further.
    If his attorney wanted to build an insanity case,
his client surely had the history of outrageous behavior, and County Attorney Holly
Anderson forecast that was exactly what Moss would do.
     
    FOR ALL THAT WEEK, city and county investigators labored
long into the night, sifting the factual witness statements from the ludicrous assertions
phoned in by anonymous tipsters and amateur detectives. The Tulsa grapevinewas
thriving on rumors that outnumbered facts, rumors that seemed more credible
only because they were sensational and satisfied the public’s thirst for conspiracy
theories and complicated plots. Local officials had their own theories, which evolved
daily. Still in the matron’s room on the third floor, Kennamer read all the
newspaper coverage and followed the investigation with interest.
    “It is strange that they apparently overlook the
obvious in order to seek the mysterious,” he was overhead to say. But they were
only doing their job, and unrelenting rumors fogged the investigation.
    “There seemed no end to these startling stories,”
the Tribune reported that week. “While officers tend in time to run all
of them down, for the present the prosecutors and reporters centered on those
that seemed most probably linked with the case.”
    The World also made note of the phenomenon.
“Numerous anonymous telephone calls were being received by police in regard to
the case. Several informed detectives of interested persons who could shed more
light on the mysterious aspects of the slaying. These were all being checked,
and from the haze of rumors, whispered information, and suspicions, officers
were hopeful of abstracting salient facts.”
    Wild stories of sexual blackmail, underage
drinking, gambling, marijuana smoking, and narcotic smuggling within the young
social set of Tulsa’s most noted families became the background theme to the
entire investigation and seeped into detectives’ analyses. Those allegedly involved
were associated with the elite Hy-Hat Club, of which Kennamer was once a member.
It was a club of rich boys who were selective about who could become a member or
attend club dances.
    For a gang of young wastrels who all owned automobiles,
initiation into the club was rumored to be: “Drink ten glasses of beer, one
right after the other, hop into your automobile and drive around a corner at
sixty miles per hour.”The unsubstantiated activities of the Hy-Hat Club
coexisted with the city-wide gossip that swirled around the Gorrell murder
until their escapades became