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.