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

exaggerated and distorted, taking on a life of
their own.
    On Monday morning, Chief Deputy Evans escorted
Kennamer to Judge John Woodward’s Court of Common Pleas, where his attorney was
waiting for him. Moss waived the reading of the charges and pleaded “not guilty”
on his client’s behalf. Kennamer said nothing during his entire arraignment. He
was smartly dressed in a gray suit, gray shirt, and matching gray tie. All eyes
in the courtroom were on him, and they saw a young man who was completely at
ease—almost as if he enjoyed the attention.
    As Moss, Anderson, and Judge Woodward discussed a
timetable for the preliminary hearing, Kennamer fingered a button on his suit,
glanced down at his freshly polished shoes, and then scanned the audience.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a cigarette and match, and lit the match
off his thumbnail. He puffed away until Moss whispered something in his ear. He
then dropped the cigarette on the courtroom floor and smashed it with his foot.
    With five other murder trials in the pipeline,
Anderson was able to push the preliminary hearing to December 17. Judge
Woodward ordered Kennamer held without bail. As he was escorted from the
courtroom, he smiled at acquaintances. His father was notably absent.
    Kennamer’s immaturity was not lost on those
present, and a Tribune writer took note of his attitude.
    “When the boy went to jail, he did so, apparently,
without a word of advice from his father about his conduct in jail, or about
other matters of court and jail procedures of which a federal judge could be
presumed to know a great deal. He told the boy he was in the hands of his own
attorney. He didn’t tell him not to talk or not to pose for photographers, or
to drop his light-hearted air.”
    Moss did tell his client not to talk, but Kennamer
couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to. In the weeks leading up to the murder, he
spoke often of the necessity to kill John Gorrell to stop him from carrying out
his kidnapping plans in order to save Virginia. Sometimes, he attempted to be chivalrous
by claiming he didn’t want to drag her name into it. But he did drag her name
into it. When he got back from Kansas City, where he later claimed he talked his
adversary into an extortion plot instead, Kennamer showed the three-page letter
to ten of his peers and told them of his plans to kill Gorrell in order to save
Virginia. If they happened to see him as a hero, so be it.
    There was only one problem he didn’t count on: nobody
believed him because Phil Kennamer always “talked big.” He told Jack Snedden,
Virginia’s boyfriend, and four of his friends. He told Betty Watson, a friend
and sophomore at the University of Oklahoma. He even told Homer Wilcox Jr., who
then told his eighteen-year-old sister, Virginia, but neither one of them told
their parents because they didn’t want them to worry over nothing. In the past,
Phil had threatened to kill himself on numerous occasions because Virginia
didn’t love him, but he never went through with it. Why would they believe his
latest rantings?
    Kidnappers had been in the news a lot at that time.
About fourteen months before, George “Machine Gun” Kelly had gone to trial at
the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City for the kidnapping of wealthy oilman
Charles Urschel. He and his wife Kathryn were sentenced to life in prison. And
then there was the most sensational crime of the twentieth century, the
kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby. Bruno Hauptmann had been
arrested that September and, by the time Gorrell was murdered, the impending trial
dominated nationwide radio and newspaper coverage.
    Even with all those headlines in the background to
set the mood, nobody believed Phil Kennamer.
    When he surrendered that Saturday afternoon, Moss
relayed to newsmen that his client chose to surrender because he didn’t want an
innocent person to be charged with murder. Although noble, there was no chance
that was ever going to