- Welcome to another program of the Monroe County History Club. My name is Michael Carter, and welcome
- to my wife Paulette, my cousin, my brother Steve, who will always show up to invite me up. And we have
- some other guests here today. WTIU, some folks at WTIU are taking a little video of what the History
- Club does. And they've interviewed four of us. Myself, Daniel Schlegel, Christine Friesel, and John
- Summerlake. And then they interviewed two or three people here at the meeting today, too.
- and it'll turn up on WTIU TV sometime later. I'll find out. It'll be shown sometime in the future.
- Oh yeah, I left you sheets of paper on all the tables like I always do, upcoming programs, so you can
- share amongst yourselves, take a picture of it or something. They list all the upcoming programs, end
- of next year, bar and cancellations,
- That happens from time to time. Many thanks to the American Legion for hosting these programs for the
- last 13 and a half years almost. They've been great partners and really the only ones we could do this,
- the only place we could do this. And thanks to the weight and kitchen staff here. Thanks to Amanda and
- Misty. Be generous with them for putting up with all this. And of course, CATCV.
- They've been recording our programs for 10 and a half years. Thanks to all our Laurel history enthusiasts
- who attend all our programs.
- Yeah, thanks for all the people that come to the programs and all the people that watch it on YouTube.
- We have one program that has over 9,000 views on YouTube. So a lot of people see them all over the country.
- And if you have an email address you'd like to give us to get it on a regular mailing list, just leave
- it with me and I'll give it to Steve Brewer, our helper over here, that sends out all the email
- announcements. And right now, Daniel Schlegel, the director of the History Center, would like to make
- a few comments.
- Thank you, Michael. I just had a couple quick updates. I've already had a couple people ask. Our garage
- sale was very successful, so thank you to everyone that donated, came out, and bought anything. We really
- appreciate it, and we are moving to Ellensville. The property is sold, so we do have a new location
- that's being renovated currently. We do not know when we can accept donations, but as soon as we do,
- we will publicize that far and wide.
- But I do have little flyers, so if anybody wants a flyer for next year's garage sale, please stop by
- over here and see me. We also have, this coming Thursday, a gravestone preservation workshop.
- It is free, it opens to the public. There's a company, Atlas Preservation. They're master monument
- professionals with over 35 years of experience. They will do a, the lower 48, they do one stop,
- per state. Normally Indianapolis or Northern Indiana gets the stop because they're able to cut right
- through Ohio to Indiana to Illinois. This time we were the ones selected. They liked our proposal and
- so they are coming to Bloomington this Thursday. So I have some flyers if you are interested in gravestone
- preservation or if you want to learn more, please stop by and see me. And then we also have
- We know the 4th of July is going to be a very big deal this year and a lot going on. So we're waiting
- for a week after and on July 11th, we're going to have a big party of a history on the block party.
- We have new exhibits open, new items on display, more items in the store. I brought a small sample,
- but this way we thought instead of dividing a very thin pie into another slice, we thought we would just have
- a big celebration the week after 4th of July. So it's on July 11th from 12 to 3. Admission is free.
- It's open and welcome. We'll have music, activities, programming. Like I said, we have some new exhibits
- opening up. So you can just collect a whole bunch of flyers. And I have a flyer for one of those as
- well, if anybody wants those. Otherwise, I brought some new books that we haven't had in the store.
- And stop by the History Center and see us. Thank you, everyone.
- Regards to today, an old friend, Clay Stuckey, Dr. Clay Stuckey. He's gonna do a program for us called
- The Mill Murders, Tailor Race, Sex and Murder. So he's given us, once before at Bedford, it's the first
- time new people have seen it. And Clay, we've only got the one speaker here. So I think some of the
- people over there have a little problem hearing. So Clay's pretty good at projecting. So project.
- Welcome to The Mill Murders, true tale of race, sex, and murder. Now, that's a fact. The bit about feeding
- one of the most notorious murders in Norwegian history, that's just my opinion. And I didn't do any
- research to compare this murder with any other murder. But the year was 1946, before the internet, before
- the 24-7 news cycle.
- before cell phones, before television for penicillin. And yet this story was covered in every state
- of the union in the newspapers, including the territories of Alaska and Hawaii. Now that makes it pretty
- darn notorious in my book. For those of you who subscribe to newstakers.com, you know
- but the intensity of the color of the state indicates the number of newspapers that have been scanned
- and have the story in the newspapers. And of course, Bloomington's, or Indiana is very red because it
- burns here, but the rest of it tells you about the population of the states that have the most newspapers.
- Well, certainly for a time, Bloomington had a gaggle of a whole lot of newspaper reporters and photographers,
- from both newspapers and wire services that had gathered in Bloomington to cover this story, including
- those as far away as New York. But none of them had the experience of Rita Fitzpatrick, the age crime
- reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Her editor told her, Rita, get down to Bloomington as fast as you
- can and cover the murder
- that's breaking there. And so she hopped on a plane and flew to Bloomington and immediately went to
- the chief of police and asked him, what can you tell me about the murders? And only when he replied,
- what murders? Did it dawn on her that she should have been in Bloomington, Indiana and not Bloomington, Illinois?
- Our story begins on Friday, March 1st, 1946. Now you all know it was 1946 because I told you. The March
- 1st isn't important other than to me because I was born 20 days later. I took a keen interest in current
- events at the time. But Friday, the day of the week, is very important because this was a fast-breaking
- story and you need to keep track of what day of the week it is.
- Keep your pride from death as we go on. On that day, Russell Coons was 43 years old, and he was not
- going to get a day owner. His wife Ruth was 45 years old. They'd been married for 20 years. They had
- no children. He lived at 411 East University Street, and the house today looks pretty much like it did,
- although some subsequent owner has filled in the front porch
- He had formerly been the superintendent of Sunday schools at the Clear Creek Christian Church. I also
- attended that church for a brief time during the mid-1950s. In March of 1946, he was the choir director
- at that church. For the last 17 years, Russell Coons had worked at the Empire Stone Company, and he
- worked his way up to be the superintendent of their stone mill
- down just west of Sanders. Here you see Dillman Road at the top, Fairfax Road at the bottom. Here's
- what that mill looked like in 1923. And by 1940, it had expanded. Now, I know you get tired of me telling
- you this, but there's always somebody that doesn't get the word.
- TV show Jeopardy got it wrong, the Empire Stone Company has absolutely nothing to do with the Empire
- State Building. Today, the Empire Stone Company mill is some kind of a lumber processing business of
- some sort. Well, anyway, the stone for the Empire State Building came from a quarry just north of Olidick.
- It was called the Perry Matthews and Busker
- which at the time was owned by the Indiana Limestone Company. And because as the area that was worked
- north quarried in the quarry field, it finally ran to the property line that you see there on the left,
- those little white stakes running along, just to the left of those is the Hopkins Cemetery. Well, you're
- not gonna quarry any more land running there to the left, so that quarry hole remained empty after the
- Empire State Building was built.
- And so locally, everybody started referring to that as the Empire Quarry, because that's where the stone
- for the building came. And that's what it looks like today here to the right. But there's absolutely
- no correlation between that Empire Quarry and the Empire Stone Company. I'll say it again the next time
- I talk about this building. Well, just before noon on that Friday, March 1, Russell Coons
- told Ben Smith, the company sales manager, that he was going up to Hunter Valley to the abandoned Hunter
- Brothers stone mill to check out some old derricks that they might want to buy. Now, I dare say that
- very few people here today have ever heard of Hunter Valley or even know where it is. But I guarantee
- you, after today, you're all going to remember exactly where I was, not because of the murders, because you
- all drive right through that area all the time. It was started by Revit Brigadier General Morton Craig
- Hunter in 1891, who was the first to open a quarry there in the Hunter Valley district. He was in his
- Atlanta campaign with Sherman and eventually commanded a brigade when Sherman's marched from Atlanta
- to Savannah.
- Here was his house on North Corkwood, which has not survived. One of many fine old beautiful homes that
- had suffered the wrecking of here in Wilmington. Well, there we see a 1908 map of the Hunter Valley
- District. And you see there were a lot of forest and different stone mills were working there at the
- time. And the red arrow indicates the Hunter Brothers stone
- They were the sons of General Hunter. Well, it turns out when the Thor Lane 37 was built, it went right
- through the Hunter Valley stone district. So lots of quarry holes were filled in and route valves were
- taken down to fill in the holes. And then when the light path was built of 46,
- going east and west, even more quarry holes were filled in until very little was left to indicate that
- it had been a major quarry area. And then when I-69 came along and they altered it yet again, now you
- would be hard pressed to know that it was a quarry area. That upper left insert there shows an abandoned
- stone mill
- that is the only abandoned stone mill that's left more or less intact anywhere in the entire Indiana
- limestone history of which I am aware. If it's in the dead of winter and there's no leaves on the trees,
- you can just spot it down on the southwest quadrant of the interchange if you know where to look. And
- there are some open quarry holes on the west there, but otherwise that whole quarry field has been filled in
- The only operating mill in Cora is the B.G. Hoagley Company up at the very north of the Hunter Valley.
- Well, here's what the Hunter Brothers Stone Company mill looked like in 1923. It had been abandoned
- in 1939, and it was the derricks there that Russell Coons said he was going to check out. Well, that
- Friday afternoon, Lottie Finley was the secretary to Alan Busquets,
- who was the Secretary Treasurer of the M. Parnstoke Company, and she called Mrs. Coutts, and she said,
- Mrs. Coutts, if your husband decides not to come back to work today but goes directly home, be sure
- to have him called because the business has come up that's important that he needs to deal with. Remember,
- he was the superintendent of the mill. Well, Mrs. Coutts called Ben Smith, the sales manager, when Russell
- had not shown up for supper then.
- And that was totally unlike him. So she was absolutely beside herself in worry. Abandoned stone mills
- are very dangerous places to walk around in. So Ben Smith called the sheriff. Now at the time, the sheriff
- was Albert H. Skirvin. So he gathered together a search party, if you will, that contained Albert Busker.
- from the Empire Stone Company, and Ben Smith from the Empire Stone Company, and two deputies, Beatrice
- and Herschel Corbett. And yes, that's correct, his name was Beatrice. And here we have the abandoned
- stone mill at some point. Well, when they got there, they found Russell Coons's chrysler that was locked.
- They looked in the window and they saw a box of chocolates in the front seat, a package of letters,
- some business documents in the back seat. And they started looking through the mill. And I need to remind
- you, March 1st in Indiana, it's dark at 8 o'clock. So they're using flashlights to look around for what
- they found inside the mill building where
- they could tell there was very little mud and very little overturn on these things. So it gave them
- a clue that maybe there was a flood, but they weren't sure. But then they found that something obviously
- had been dragged across the dusty floor. So they followed the path of the dragging until they got to
- a sludge pit. Now a sludge pit is something that most stone mills have that would be full of water that
- has been permeated with the grindings from limestone.
- So I mean, it was completely opaque. You can't see it at all. Sludge is a good name for it. And in that
- sludge pit that had about a foot and a half of water in the bottom of it, it was full of lumber that
- had been thrown into it. So one of those deputies, he had to be the guy that jumped in the sludge pit
- and started removing the lumber until they found a human leg looking at them.
- above the water, immediately the sheriff called the altar and said, it's time to call the coroner. So
- presumably somebody was left there to secure the area. And the sheriff started off to find a telephone
- to call the coroner. Now, if you're like
- was in doing the research for the manuscript. I really thought, yes, you're wondering, well, why didn't
- he just call the dispatcher with the radio in the police car? But only since writing the manuscript,
- I subscribed to newspaper.com and found the answer. But on the way to get to the telephone, the car
- had a flat tire. And you know Sheriff Skerbing about this time is thinking, this is going to be a long,
- Well, on November 19, there was a fire in the dispatcher's room that destroyed radio equipment. So for
- several months, until that was repaired, there was no radio communication between any of the law enforcement
- agencies or their cars in Monroe County. And that's why he had to find a telephone. So the sheriff found
- a filling station to get the tire fixed, and he could call the coroner.
- The coroner showed up in several cars containing not only Ray Borland, Dr. Ray Borland, the coroner,
- but the state and other local police, two Coots brothers, and two Coots brothers-in-law. There we have
- Dr. Borland in three stages of his life. Some of us old folks can remember Dr. Borland being the school
- doctor in our time.
- Cut the corner there, removed the lumber, and could find out what was buried. And all they found,
- not one, but two bodies. A man and a woman. The man had been killed with a massive blow to his head,
- and the woman was strangled with a rope or a cord. The woman is immediately identified by the Coutts
- family because they all went to the same church.
- church. Now, in case somebody just woke up, let's nail down the fact that Russell Coots and Phyllis
- Poehler are married, but not to each other. Okay, Phyllis was 32 years old at the time. Her husband
- was Kenneth Coleman, who was 35. They'd been married for 10 years and had no children. She sang in the
- choir at the Fair Creek Church.
- and both Phyllis Coleman and Russell for well-respected members of their community. Lots of friends.
- That's where she lived with her husband Kenneth Coleman in 1946, and that's what it looks like today.
- It's just a couple hundred yards northwest of what had been the Fluck Cut Stone Company, which is now
- the Textacon Stone Company.
- on Victor Pike. I grew up on a farm a few miles north on Victor Pike. Anyway, the two Fluck brothers
- had come to Monroe County back in 1931 and moved their stone mill from Chicago to the Victor Pike location.
- So Monroe County
- 15 years to have customized themselves with pronouncing the Fluck name very carefully. Unlike either
- the reporter or the editor or the typesetter, who knows what of the Indianapolis Star, which in reporting
- this thought, well, that can't be right, and it suddenly became FlexMill. And you know a lot of Monroe
- County folks had to chuckle when they read that in Indianapolis.
- Okay, so the Greene and Harrell ambulance took Mr. Coleman's body to the day funeral home and the Coot's
- body to the Greene and Harrell funeral home. Now, these bodies, I told you are the cause of death, but
- interestingly enough, both bodies had had their hands tied, I think their feet tied as well, but they
- were untied when they found the bodies. But the bodies were both gagged with portions of the slip of
- Phyllis Coleman.
- Now it's Saturday, March 2nd. The sun is up so the police can return to the scene of the crime and now
- see what's going on. And Kenneth Coleman, of course, was the leading suspect. After all, the husband
- of the wife, he's being cuckolded, so he becomes the leading suspect. He was a former grocer, had his
- 122-acre farm now, but there's the grocer that he had on West Kirkwood,
- obviously still there, but he's not a grocer anymore. And here we are at the insanity to do our search
- and look for clues. I told you about that. Now there are love letters. The prosecutor announced that
- those love letters were described as mushy and of the high school freshman type. I thought that was
- a cheap shot because to me,
- Anybody's love letters, no matter who you are and what age you are, probably contain an element of mushy
- high school freshman. But that's just me. The contents of those letters were never released because
- the prosecutor said they contained names of other people. Well, so what? Anyway. Phyllis Coleman had
- worked for a Johnson's creamery for 10 years. Well-respected employee.
- to do with Mr. Coons for their trist that day was at the post office, which was up at the corner of
- 7th Street in college, and required a walk of just two blocks from the creamery to the post office.
- And the newspapers seem to indicate that that's the location of most of their meetings, although how
- they would know that, I don't know, unless the letters reveal that. But certainly, that's what they
- did on Friday.
- Now, Mr. Coleman, as I said, was the leading suspect, but he had an ironclad ally. He had been working
- on his farm that Friday afternoon. Now, it's interesting that the Indianapolis Star quoted him as saying
- he was putting up hay. Now, that's what the big city reporters said. They had no idea that in Indiana,
- nobody puts up hay on March 1st. The first cutting of hay is generally Memorial Day.
- There's nothing to cut on March 1st. All the other papers said he was pitching hay. Well, maybe he was
- feeding livestock. But the point is, whatever he was doing on his farm, he had a lot of witnesses. So
- he ceased to be a suspect and immediately was allowed to go home. At the scene of the crime, they found
- a man's hat, a handkerchief there at the scene.
- We have a sheriff renting out the handkerchief. But the critical clue in his whole murder mystery was
- a footprint. It had rained a little Friday, just enough that you could make a footprint. And one of
- the heels on one of the boots that made a footprint had a notch in it that had been accidentally caused
- by something or other. But it made that boot print absolutely unique.
- So they knew they had a wonderful clue there. So they poured a plaster cast of it. Now at this point,
- I couldn't help but be reminded of the old joke where pick a group you want to make fun of and say,
- how many of this group does it take to change a light bulb?
- How many police does it take to pour a plastered ass? At this point, either the prosecutor or the police,
- or I don't know who, you know what I regard as an incredibly stupid thing. They released that information
- in the newspaper. That's what Sherlock Holmes or Shakespeare said. I wouldn't dip that low for that
- kind of humor.
- Anyway, the Bloomington paper, the World Telephone, talked about it, and the Sunday Indianapolis Star
- talked about it. Well, what were they doing? They were telegraphing out to any murderer who was worth
- his salt, who read that in the newspaper, would say to himself, oh, shit. That's the way most murderers talk.
- I got to get rid of those boots. But apparently our murderer did not read the newspaper. Because he
- didn't get rid of the boots. Enter our hero. Carl Burks was a 37-year-old fellow who worked for Kerr
- and Riley's Hellion Filter Queen vacuum cleaners. And that Saturday night, he was reading the newspaper
- out loud, and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Carol Smith,
- and she related that her husband had pulled a truck out of the mud on bean blossom roads that had been
- stuck there. And there were two Negroes involved, and one of them was wearing boots. And our fellow
- here, new Deputy Noble Sisko, and he says, well, I'd like to tell him about that, but I can't go over
- to see him, because it's after dark, and the headlights don't work on my car.
- nor did he have a telephone. So he just sat on this information Saturday night. Now, I'd like to give
- you an assurance that this is pretty much what happened, but I can't, because the newspapers were all
- over the place in relating this part of our story. Some said that that was his wife and not
- his sister-in-law. Some said that the truck was completely overturned in an accident, and the police
- were there and started to discover the footprint.
- I chose the local coverage in the local paper because I figured that reporter knew the people involved
- as probably closer to the truth. But we know Carl Burks had an important role to play, regardless, because
- there he is in consultation with Sheriff Skirvin and Jesus.
- It is now Sunday, March 3rd. And Burks, like he intended, first thing, he drove over to his friend,
- Deputy Sheriff Noble Sisko, and they and State Trooper Hal Hober went to the scene of the formerly truck,
- stock truck, and found those footprints that had the unique boot print. And they followed that.
- and trace them to the farmer who told them, oh, yeah, that was the Warwich brothers who had a load of
- chitterlings in their pickup truck. Now, don't reach for your phones. I already did it. Chitterlings
- are hog intestines that are used for food by some people. And they would get those from the Bloomington
- Packet House. So.
- The trooper went to the slaughterhouse and determined that the Woodbrothers had been involved
- by chitterlings. It was Chester Wilrich called Psy and his younger brother Joseph Luther Wilrich who
- went by the name Luther. And they found the boots at the home of Luther Wilrich who resided with his family.
- He had no permanent residence. They kind of shifted him around from one family member to the next. And
- at that time, he was living with his sister. He was 29 years old, living at 1229 West 12th Street. Now,
- if you're wondering, did they search for those boots legally? Was that a legal search?
- It doesn't matter. It doesn't make any difference at all. The exclusionary rule states that any evidence
- that is obtained illegally without a search warrant cannot be used to trial against you. And the Supreme
- Court had ruled back in 1914 in Weeks versus the United States what that law was. The exclusionary rule
- would exist. But only in federal cases. It did not apply to states.
- until 1961 when Matt v. Ohio made it now applicable to the states. So in 1946, didn't make any difference.
- Well, Luther Lawridge had a criminal record. He had six previous arrests and two convictions.
- At age 17, a petty larceny charge. He served 16 months in Indiana Boy School.
- In 1936 he had a public indecency charge in Green Castle where he spent two months in jail. He was married
- with two children and his estranged wife was living in Benton Harbor, Michigan with their two children.
- Enter our prosecutor Robert McCray. Now Robert McCray was a rookie prosecutor
- This is March. He'd only been elected the previous November. Even then, he was off in the Pacific in
- the military, and his wife had to campaign for him. But he did win the election, and he was released
- from the service. He began to be the prosecutor on the 1st of January. And he had previous experience
- as a deputy prosecutor, though, so it wasn't entirely
- Well, Woolridge was interrogated for 12 hours starting on Sunday and lasting most of the night until
- Monday morning. Then it was taken to Indianapolis for a lie detector test, which he neither failed nor
- passed because he refused to answer the questions that a lie would have been convicted of.
- He would say things like, I don't remember, and I'll have to think about that. So the lie detector test
- didn't prove much. But for whatever reason, he confessed at 5.45 in the morning in a state
- police headquarters in Indianapolis. Now, in his confession, he said that he was out with his gun shooting
- groundhogs, or hunting groundhogs, and rabbits, and whatever else you find out at the Hunter Valley
- Stolen Districts.
- Quote, I stopped and was watching the couple when the man looked up and told me to scram. I stood on
- the spot for a short time and the man asked me if I knew him. I told him I did. This man lunged at me.
- I ducked and at the same time I picked up a window sash weight and swung at the man and hit the man
- on the back of his head when he went after me. After I had tied the man's hands and feet, felt his heart
- and noticed that he was dead,
- At this point, I was scared and didn't know what to do. I finally decided that since the man was dead,
- I would have to also dispose of the woman because she was a witness to the fight. I found a piece of
- rope lying on the floor of the building, and it was at this time that I decided that I would choke the
- woman to death. That's his confession. And I don't particularly believe all of it. It may very well
- be the gospel truth. But there are several things that made me
- and some reporters, and certainly Lawrence's attorney question. First of all, what happened to the guy
- that he's out hunting groundhogs with? You don't go lunging at a man that's got a firearm. The firearm
- was never mentioned in any of the stories anywhere. Why did he tie up the couple and then untie them
- before they put them in the sludge
- here that the role of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors are to seek justice. They're not to write
- history. Once they have achieved enough evidence to convict the defendant, add on the fact that the
- defendant has confessed, they're finished with it. They don't need to dot all the i's and cross all
- the 2's and answer
- like I just brought up, like the historian is interested in. They've already done their job. One could
- only wish that they had done it a little more thoroughly. At the end of his confession, he wrote, I
- wouldn't have made this statement except for the kindness shown me by Sheriff Skirvin and Officer Ray
- Hinkle and Officer Ray
- I found that laughable and I thought in 1946 it probably appeared laughable. And I also assumed that
- that was dictated to him by the police officer. Now I don't mean to imply by that that they used rubber
- hoses to extort a confession from him. I just don't believe that this seventh grade educated man would
- come up with that quote. Nor did his lawyer who said that with his education
- There were words in that confession that he either knew how to spell or had ever even heard of their
- meaning, which is ironical, as we'll see later, in something his lawyer has to say for it. Well, now
- here's our very little secret that we don't like to think of.
- Jim Crow was alive and well in Wilmington, Indiana in 1946. The last lynching in Indiana had been in
- Marion in 1930, when two black men were lynched or hanged for allegedly raping a white woman, but did
- not kill her, but just raped her and were lynched. In 1946, there were six black men lynched
- in the South. And for that reason, the judge and the law enforcement officials decided that Luther Woolwich,
- a black man, would be kept at the prison at Pendleton, Indiana and not kept in the local jail in Bloomington.
- They wanted no trouble. And one of the headlines, and I have to admit, guilty, I used that to lure you
- in to hear me speak today,
- for those who saw it on the website, that appeared on March 5th on World Telephone. A lot of people
- don't realize that most newspapers for a long time, and maybe even today, the writer of the headline
- is not the man who writes the article. It's a different job. And so when you read the article, you find
- out it's bait and switch.
- The headline says outrageous citizens. They want us to think that there's a lynch mob that's forming.
- No, when you read the article you find out that there were large crowds of people at the jail and the
- newspaper office and they were all upset because they wanted news of what was going on. They didn't
- want to lynch anybody. Well, the real
- was the word rape. In the newspaper, it said Healy, meaning the prosecutor, said bruises were found
- on the body of Mrs. Coleman, which are not accounted for by Woolridge's story and which might have resulted
- from an attempted rape. That was in the Chicago Daily Tribune. And if that's an accurate quote, it was
- totally irresponsible. That was the only use of the word rape I read on any newspaper.
- having to do with this case. Because believe me, if you're going to get a crowd fired up in 1946 in
- the Jim Crow era, is if this black man had raped a white man. So kudos to the reporters that nobody
- used that word but this one instance, nor any evidence that ever came that he raped.
- Bloomington ministers adopted a resolution calling on the citizens of Bloomington not to condemn the
- entire Bloomington Negro population because of Woolridge's confession. And here we are, he's signing
- that confession. Now I put this in for comic relief, bear with me. The charges read that Woolridge
- Unlawfully, feloniously, and purposely, and with premeditated malice, did kill and murder one Philip
- Cera Coleman, 32, by placing, binding, tying, twisting, fastening, and holding a certain piece of rope
- about the neck of the said Philip Cera
- Coleman, and then and there, unlawfully, feloniously, and with malice and forethought, did choke, suffocate,
- throttle, and strangle the said Philip Sear Coleman, from the effect of which choking, suffocating,
- throttling, and strangling, she, the said Philip Sear Coleman, on the aforesaid first day of March,
- 1946, and then and there, die. Now, don't you just love lawyers?
- What that translates to is that he strangled Philip Sarah Coleman to death with a royal. Now, when the
- newspaper said the confession of Joseph Luther Lawrence reads in parts, it wasn't clear just what parts
- were left out. And when the newspaper board is saying related a couple in an embrace,
- That brings up the question, well, just what was he watching and what were they doing? Now, this is
- a period part of this. The coverage seemed to be indicating that Mr. Coutts was fully clothed. But obviously,
- she wasn't if they found a female's girdle the next day and if her slip was off and used as a gag.
- So clearly, she was in some condition of nudity.
- It certainly held the attention of Mr. Woolrich for a while. Now, before any trial was undertaken, the
- prosecutor announced that there would be no need to prosecute him, which in legal terms means that he
- had decided that he would not prosecute Woolrich for murdering Mr. Coons either then or at any time
- in the future.
- That was just as far as the prosecutor was concerned, not going to be a trial matter. And that was a
- wise decision, because according to the confession, that would have been self-defense. And yet, by his
- own words, the defendant had confessed to killing Phyllis in cold blood. So try him for that.
- That Monday, a lawyer for Luther showed up, Mr. Lawrence Shaw, an Indianapolis attorney who
- was a self-described attorney for the dam. What was that? He used another word. Anyway, the man did
- the same thing. He kind of fancied himself a Clarence Darrow, I suppose, but he was also a brilliant
- attorney. He was born in Paris, graduated from IU's law school,
- spoke six languages, had been involved in Republican politics. And I want to bring your attention to
- not the man confesses, but the newsman attacked by the dead man's brother. Now, on that Monday, the
- funeral of Mr. Coons was held at the Clear Creek Christian Church.
- The former pastor, Reverend George Wyatt, was to officiate at the funeral. And by the way, the newspapers
- were full of all sorts of gossip from parishioners at Fair Creek. Some of which said, oh yeah, that
- affair had been going on for months. And other parishioners said, we had no idea that that was going
- on. Well, the first group also said, well yeah, that's why we had to send Reverend Wyatt
- to another church because he wasn't dealing properly with this shenanigans going on between the choir
- director and a member of the choir. So who knows what's true there. But anyway, Rufus and Opal Coots,
- the brothers of the dead man, attacked Ed Feeney of the Chicago Tribune for trying to get a picture
- of Ruth. The police told the reporters
- As long as you're off the church grounds, you can take all the pictures you want, but only after the
- funeral is over. Well, the Coots brothers didn't take it that way. So they charged and damaged Feeney's
- camera. And Prosecutor McCray warned Feeney to get out of town because he was afraid of what was going
- to happen to him by the Coots brothers.
- And Feeney said, I'll get out of town when I'm good and ready. Thank you. And he got a lawyer down from
- Chicago and pressed charges against the Coon brothers with assault and battery, which in a local court,
- they found him guilty. And he had to pay court costs, which involved $5 to fix his camera and apologize.
- And that was that. I could find no pictures of Ruth Coons on any newspaper anywhere. So at least it worked.
- So here we have a picture of the funeral on Monday. And I don't know whether there's a fight going on,
- that they're all watching, or the casket's being carried out. I don't know. But everybody's attention
- is turned to the East, except for that lady right there, who sees that her picture's being taken and
- wants to speak on her best side, and not with her back to the camera. Well, all the legal.
- things going on in Monroe County were done by the circuit court judge Q. Austin East, 1886 to 1959.
- He was a circuit court judge from 1945 to 1957. And the assistant prosecutor was Nat U. Hill. We've
- old folks here today can remember Nat Hill, who was the assistant prosecutor and followed Judge East
- as the Monroe County circuit court judge from 1956
- to 1980. And there's Robert McCrae, the prosecutor, and Nat Hill assisting him in this course. Well,
- the grand jury was sworn in on March 7th and began its investigation. And Wilruth was brought from Pendleton
- and then returned back to Pendleton. He didn't make his first appearance in the local jail until little
- Al, after three weeks after the murder, when the judges decided it was OK to start keeping him in the
- local jail.
- And there we have the grand jury. The gentleman to the right of the room is not there yet. Richard Walker.
- Clyde Fiscus. Well, on September 11th, Judge East set a trial date for November 12th. And a change of
- venue was granted by Judge East. And the trial was moved to be in Spencer in Owen County.
- The Owen County Circuit Court judge that would handle this was Frank M. Mark, who died in January 1957
- after serving as judge since 1938 when that court was founded. Well, three days before his scheduled
- trial, Woolridge made this statement when he withdrew his plea of not guilty and changed it to guilty.
- I do not believe I am guilty of first degree murder, but I'm doing this in consideration of my family,
- my people, and the people of the community. Now remember when his attorney was upset because he thought
- the confession was not in the words that Luther would use? Does anybody think that the seventh grade
- education fellow would compose that paragraph? I think not.
- That's clearly out of the mouth of his attorney. Then the circuit judge court, Frank Martin,
- circuit judge, court judge, he publishes in the newspaper a letter he sent to the governor and the parole
- board saying, I earnestly request that no governor or commission ever pardon, parole, or commute for
- any reason the life sentence. It is my concern
- firm conviction that this man is entirely too dangerous an individual to ever be at large, and that
- he should never be permitted to be released from the Indiana State prison, but should remain there during
- his entire life. Strong letter to follow. Well, Luther's lawyer was upset. He said that that letter
- was outside the agreement, not in any
- it's part of the court records and beyond the jurisdiction of the judge at the time. Well, I have a
- friend who is a retired federal magistrate judge and I asked him, what about this? It was his attorney
- correct or was it okay for the judge to do that? And he said, well, off the top of my head, I would
- think that today that would clearly be
- out of line for the Judge Martin to do that. I don't know what it was, been in 1946. And he actually
- did some research on that and came back and told me, I have researched it and it would have been not
- proper for a judge to do that in 1946. It is proper for a judge to render an opinion to a parole board
- if he had handled the case, if they ask him, but only if they ask him.
- for him to volunteer that information is strictly out of line. Once then, it is now. However, he pointed
- out to me something that I should have thought of, but didn't, and for that I'm embarrassed. Circuit
- court judges in Indiana are elected. Judge Martin wrote this letter to the governor and to the future
- parole boards, but in between the lines, that letter was going to the voters in Owen County.
- He wanted to make sure they all knew that if it was left up to him, he would have sent Luther to the
- chair and enjoyed doing it. But his hands were tied, and he couldn't. Smart politician, Judge Martin.
- Well, here we are, poor old Luther's going to the penitentiary. And we know that, because the only time
- in this whole thing where he wore a coat of tie was when he went up before Judge Martin, who had sentenced
- him to a life sentence in prison because of the plea mark.
- Now, his attorney, when he died in 1956, all of his obituaries mentioned this case. So you know he was
- proud of what he did in this case. And what he did, and I'm sure going into it was all he could anticipate
- doing, was saving Luther Wilrich from the chair and getting him a license.
- Well, he was released, the first time he was up for parole, the parole board did quote that letter from
- Judge America. And he went up for parole another time or two, but they always denied it. But in 1978,
- he was released by Governor Otis Bowman because of his age and medical problems. And then in 1981,
- he died, so he clearly had medical problems. And he currently resides in a ground hill cemetery in Indiana.
- Coleman is all by herself in the Clear Creek Cemetery. Kenneth Coleman remarried. Russell Coons was
- married and a headstone was provided by his wife, Ruth, who clearly anticipated that she would join
- him later, but she remarried. She remarried, Earl Stansford,
- who stands for radio here in Bloomington and lived to the ripe old age. Now you would think that any
- program that ends with pictures of the tombstones of the principals would be an end. Well,
- you'd be wrong. In the words of the newspaper man, this story had legs. From 1949 to 1957, there was
- a show on the NBC
- television network called The Biggest Story, where the Palmol Cigarette Company, the sponsors of the
- show, saluted journalists who, in their opinion, had been involved in stories that were less than Pulitzer
- Prize-type material, but nonetheless deserve recognition. So on season five, episode 31, Grady Bennett,
- the reporter for The Bloomington World, telephoned
- came to Herald Telephone, was the hero of the story. It was written by Norman Lessing, directed by Dick
- Schneider, and starring Richard Carlyle as Grady Bennett. And here's Grady Bennett. He died not too
- long after that, unfortunately, so he didn't have a lot of time to spend on a big story award at $500,
- which was a lot of money at 19. And here's Richard Carlyle, the actor who portrayed him.
- Now, I tried every way I could on the internet to watch that episode, and my skills are such that going
- on YouTube and all, I could not find it. So I don't know how accurately they portray our story. But
- Christine Friesel, who's given several talks here from the library, provided me with a September 1950
- issue of Detective World. Now, that's not a
- That's the picture of Pristino. That's the picture of detecting the world. And in that magazine is the
- story, whoa, in that story, in that magazine is the story of the choir singer and the peeping tom. Does
- that sound familiar? By J. Filler. Now I tried also every way I could to find out who J. Filler was
- and met a dead end every time.
- It is my considered opinion that J. Filler is a pseudonym, a pen name. And if I wrote as badly as J.
- Filler did, I would have a pen name as well. Even the name itself is suspicious. Filler? Well, the bad
- writing starts off in the first paragraph. The girl's body was soft, voluptuous,
- graceful lines, her face had a bewitching beauty outlined delicately by her gorgeous copper-colored
- hair. She lay back in the man's arms in the room of an old abandoned quarry and sighed. Now, I don't
- read pulp mystery fiction, but I dare say if you change the hair color back and forth, you have got
- a description of every woman that was ever murdered in a mystery story that was ever written, or hired
- a detective, or was even a lead witness.
- Dorothy Parker said that men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. She did not point out that
- it also saved them from being murdered in pulp mystery stories. The writing gets worse. Quotes, the
- three officers
- quickly pulled the boards away and stared down into the yawn-in pit. The sheriff said hoarsely, there
- they are, two bodies, a man and a woman, and they haven't many clothes on. Now the sheriff must have
- either had a bad cold or was a heavy smoker, because he spoke hoarsely. But he was very considerate
- and an astute observer, because he pointed out to his two deputies
- the fact that they were looking at two bodies, a man and a woman, and they haven't many clothes on,
- and they couldn't possibly have figured that out for themselves. There were 11 people in the real truthful
- story that were mentioned in the magazine story doing the jobs that they had done as part of the real
- story. And they were all spelled correctly except the prosecutor, whose name was misspelled.
- His 15 minutes of fame was over. He was not mentioned. They had a whole fabricated plot element of who
- discovered the hood prints by the truck at all. It was absurd. Transit Gloria Mundi, how fleeting is
- the glory of this world. Poor Carl. Interestingly enough, Luther Woolridge does not make an appearance
- in our story.
- Nor was the fact that the murderer was a black man. It would have seemed to me that any kind of a pulp
- magazine would want to include that, just to make the story all that more titillating, exciting, whatever.
- But it didn't. They never mentioned it. And in fact, the last paragraph of the magazine story said that
- three months later, Jester Warwich was found guilty by a jury
- a first degree murder of a citizen to spend the rest of his life in a state penitentiary. Well, we know
- it was a plea bargain. It wasn't a trial, but there's nothing sexy about a plea bargain, so they had
- to call the trial. But what did they just do? Who's Chester Woolridge? Chester Woolridge is the innocent
- older brother of the murderer. Where's a good libel lawyer when you need one? Well, where are we? Why
- don't we have to think about all
- It was kind of summed up by the Indianapolis Reporter, which was a black newspaper, and his coverage
- of the story was very responsible. They said, respect for the law and order deeply rooted in the traditions
- of this university town has bravely withstood the stunning emotional impact of the twin slaves. And
- they were right. And after doing a research of this, it made me kind of proud to have Bloomington as
- my own hometown, because as I look,
- Everybody was behaving very responsibly. The newspaper coverage was very responsible. The police hadn't
- brown beat some poor black suspect into confessing something he didn't do. They really had the murderer.
- They had the foot pest, which was, the evidence doesn't get any better than that. So all in all, it
- was a credit to everybody involved. And if you want to know any more details,
- There's a manuscript of mine in the library and in the museum. And I have added on to that later when
- I got to newspaper.com. But the most important thing is there is a copy of that mystery magazine article
- in there with all my sarcastic comments in it where I've annotated how much of what's in there is true
- and how much is not. And so we find ourselves today, 80 years after all the people
- involved in this story. We're doing our thing. And now, those folks and this program have all reached
- the same state of affairs in that it is the end. I'm happy to try to answer any questions.
- I have no idea what Judge Hill's farm was. He wanted to know if Judge Hill had a farm out in the area
- where the murders occurred. Any other questions?
- No, that's a question that I always wanted to know. If you're having a tryst with your lover, both of
- them have spouses elsewhere, why do you bring along the letters? Was he wanting them back? Was she wanting
- to give them back? I don't know. Also,
- Ruth Coutts, who immediately was calling people because her husband not showing up, Mr. Coleman, who
- took his wife to work, but she did not drive, and normally picked her up. Well, she wasn't pick upable,
- presumably, when he showed up Friday. So he made a couple of calls. He called the hospital. Then he
- went to a lodge meeting.
- and then waited around to the police to call him on Saturday morning. But he also had an iron plan.
- Any other questions? Oh, yeah. Judge McCracken's two sons have a law firm in Bloomington today. Any
- other questions? Sir? The motive is this poor black
- is watching this couple in some extraordinarily intimate behavior. And the man there is concerned they're
- being watched. Now, what happened next? We'll never know. Do you attack the black man who is holding
- a gun? The black man who whacks him with a, he says, a window sash that he later said he threw the murder
- weapon in a quarry home. Because the murder weapon was never found.
- His description of it led the prosecutor and the law enforcement authorities to assume it was a part
- of a window frame. But they couldn't find that either. But whatever it was, it went into a quarry. But
- this poor befuddled murderer wasn't thinking clearly because he just killed the only witness that would
- testify if his story is true that it was a matter of self-defense.
- Did he kill Russell Coons? But then who's thinking clearly after he just murdered someone or killed
- someone? The being at the wrong place at the wrong time is the source of this tragedy. Any other questions?
- Sir? Not a question, but a comment. The 12-hour interrogation would never be allowed today.
- to think that Bloomington or any law enforcement here had anything to do with soliciting that confession,
- particularly after what used to be an hour and a half drive or so to Atlas, but along the Peloton area,
- which would be even further, it reeks of problems. Well, problems today, not in 1946.
- It was a different world in 1946, with different rules and regulations. Any other questions? Thank you,
- folks, very much.