by Robert Mayer
One new and frequent visitor to the loan companies was Bud Wolf. He found them useful when his paycheck at the feed mill ran short. November was one of those times; some of October’s bills had yet to be paid, what with the Indian foster boys making two more mouths to feed. Bud went to his favorite company and got a loan. While he was there, the clerk asked him to fill out an extra form.
“We’re holding a lottery,” she said. “We’re going to give away a Thanksgiving turkey to the lucky winner.”
Bud filled out the form, as he had the loan application, with his real name, Charles L. Wolf Jr. The woman looked at it. Across the top, she wrote: “BUD.”
“I hope you folks win the turkey,” the woman said. “You’re the most deserving people in town.”
It was not a sentiment they had been hearing much lately.
On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Tricia got a call from the woman at the loan company. “Congratulations!” the woman said. “You just won our lottery.”
“Do I get a hundred thousand dollars?” Tricia asked.
“I’m afraid not,” the woman said. “But you do get a free turkey.”
Tricia was very pleased to win the turkey.
She did not believe that luck had had much to do with it.
The next day, Bud and Tricia received their monthly telephone bill. It was $200. All those calls to Tulsa, to talk to Miz Ward and Joel about Tommy’s case. The loan money would not cover it. They decided to sell their microwave in order to keep their telephone.
Thanksgiving Day in Ada was sunny and mild. Some of the trees still were clinging to red and brown and orange leaves. Not a single car was parked on Main Street; everyone was at home, cooking, preparing to feast, or to visit relatives.
In the morning, while the loan company’s gift turkey was roasting, Tricia took the foster boys to the social worker, who would return them to their real mother for the holiday. Then she and Bud and the kids piled into the car with the warm turkey and went to Bud’s parents’ house, as they did every year.
Maxine had spent most of two days cooking. The table was laden with a ham in addition to the free turkey; with yams from Maxine’s garden at the budding farm in Happyland, with mashed potatoes, corn, string beans, dressing, pickles, sweet iced tea—all the Wolfs are serious Baptists; they don’t touch alcohol—and half a dozen homemade pies in three flavors: cherry, apple, and peach. On the floor in a corner of the kitchen where the whole family ate—the small house had no dining room—was a large brown paper sack filled with eighteen pounds of pecans that C.L. had had cracked by the pecan cracker. Maxine had had too much to do; she never got around to making pecan pies.
The three Wolf children—Rhonda, Buddy, and Laura Sue—took turns saying grace, thanking the Lord for the food. Little Laura Sue asked God in her prayer to watch over Uncle Tommy.
After dinner, as they called the afternoon meal, they all rode out to Happyland—unavoidably passing McAnally’s on the way—so Maxine and C.L. could feed the chickens, the two sheep, the five goats. Then they returned to the house and ate some more, buffet style.
In mid-afternoon, Bud and Tricia excused themselves; they were going over to the jail, they said, to see if they could get to visit Tommy. It being Thanksgiving and all.
They returned after fifteen minutes. They had not been allowed to see him. Only on Sundays, they’d been told.
The conversation turned, as it had on and off all day, to Tommy. Then Maxine asked about Karl Fontenot; she didn’t know him. Tricia said she had met him only once. It was one night early that fall, she recalled. Tommy and Karl were riding down to Ada from Norman when Tommy’s motorcycle broke down. Tommy and Karl walked several miles, then knocked on the door of a house near the road and asked if they could use the phone. Tommy telephoned Tricia, asked if she could come and get him. They all piled into the car. It was almost midnight when they got to the place. Tommy was in the house, chatting amiably with the man who had let him use the phone.
When they got back to Ada, Tommy asked Tricia if it would be okay for his friend Karl to spend the night. Tricia had an instant, funny feeling about Karl; he seemed strange to her somehow, though she could not say why. But he was Tommy’s friend, so she said sure, he could sleep on the living room sofa.
Soon the household was asleep. And Tricia had a nightmare. She dreamed that Karl Fontenot was standing at the foot of her bed, looking down at her eerily. She woke up and opened her eyes. There was no one at the foot of her bed.
She went back to sleep. She had the same dream again: that Fontenot was standing there, staring at her. She woke up with her heart pounding. Again there was no one there. This time she got out of bed, walked quietly to the door, peered into the living room. Karl was fast asleep on the sofa.
Tricia had no idea what was causing the dreams. There was something weird about Karl, she felt, but she couldn’t say what it was.
Now on this Thanksgiving afternoon they talked of Tommy again, recounted for each other again all the discrepancies they saw in the case against him: how Odell Titsworth had been cleared; how the house had been burned down the year before; how there was no body, no proof that the girl was even dead.
“I keep hearing she’s been seen in Texas, or Oklahoma City,” Tricia said. “Mildred Gandy told Maxine she’d seen her alive out at the Brook Trailer Park two days after she disappeared.”
They spoke of what they felt was the clinching argument: that they knew where Tommy had been on the night of April 28, that Tommy had been at home.
“Joice says he was at home with her and the kids all night,” Miz Ward said in her soft voice.
Home at the time was the house on Ashland Avenue. In the spring, at the time of Denice Haraway’s disappearance, not only had Miz Ward been living there, and Tommy, and Kay, who was not yet married, but also Joice and Robert Cavins and their three small children.
“Joice says she remembers she had a headache that night,” Miz Ward said. “She asked Tommy to help her put the kids to bed. That was about eight o’clock. And she stayed up for a while and then went to bed, and Tommy never left the house.”
“Robert says he come home from work about eleven-twenty that night,” Tricia put in. “And he found Tommy asleep on the sofa. So how could he have done what they say he done?”
“Robert remembers it was that night,” Miz Ward said, “because after he was home for a while he heard water running somewhere. He checked all the faucets and none of them was on. But still he heard water running. So he checked under the house and there was a leak. They’d put in new pipes the week before, and they was leaking.”
“He didn’t know where the switch was to turn off the water,” Tricia said. “So he woke up Tommy to show him where it was. And then the two of them worked under the house till four in the morning, getting them pipes fixed.”
“When we come back from Lawton Sunday night,” Miz Ward said, “me and Kay, there was water all over the yard from where the pipes had broke. And up in the bathroom sink there was Tommy’s jeans and T-shirt all balled up, all wet and covered with mud from crawlin’ under the house.”
“So how can they say he killed that girl?” Tricia said. “I don’t see what they even got him in jail for. Them tapes don’t check out, and he was at home that night, and that girl could be alive somewhere. It just ain’t right.”
Suddenly she quieted. “Listen to me,” she said, “runnin’ my mouth at ninety-to-nothin’.”
It was her favorite expression, a description of out-of-control activity. When her kids were acting up, they’d be running through the house at ninety-to-nothin’. Joice’s kids were always going ninety-to-nothin’. When she woke up from a nightmare, like the one about Karl looking down at her, she could feel her heart inside her going ninety-to-nothin’.
“But it makes me so mad!” she said. “You know?”
As she talked, the message board of the Church of Christ, directly across the street from Maxine and C.L.’s house, was visible through the glas
s storm door. It proclaimed, in black capital letters, the sermon that would be delivered on Sunday:
ALL THIS AND HEAVEN PLUS
6
GHOSTS
On April 28, 1909—seventy-five years, to the day, before Denice Haraway disappeared—a woman named Nettie V. Brown set off on a journey across the rugged new state of Oklahoma. She was accompanied by her husband, her stepson, and her niece. The journey, made in two wagons drawn by teams of horses and mules, was to prove vitally important to those involved in the Haraway case.
Nettie Brown was married in Shelbina, Missouri, in 1904, to T. H. Brown; she was twenty-nine years old; her husband was fifty-three; he had had several children by a previous marriage; one of these was A. P. “Pete” Brown, who was fifteen. After five years, the marriage began to come apart; Nettie Brown instituted divorce proceedings against her husband.
While the divorce proceedings were pending, Nettie went to Arkansas City, Kansas. So, too, did her stepson Pete, now twenty. They were arrested in bed together, at night, by the police. They pleaded guilty to charges of illegal cohabitation, and they paid a fine.
Nettie Brown was advised by her attorney that her adultery in Arkansas City would defeat her divorce suit, would make it impossible for her to win any money from her husband. Soon after, Nettie and her husband were reconciled; Nettie withdrew her suit for divorce; they lived together again as man and wife. They decided to move from their home in Osage County, Oklahoma, to Missouri. T. H. Brown converted all his property into money, except for some household goods, wagons, horses, and mules. On April 10, 1909, he drew all of his money out of the bank—a bit over $2,500. On April 28, Nettie and T.H., along with his son Pete and her niece, Ruby Waters, fourteen, left home.
On the third night of the journey they camped at a place called Aikens’s ranch. Strangers visited the camp that night. They saw all four of the travelers alive and well. After the strangers left, no one besides his wife, his stepson, and the niece ever saw T. H. Brown again.
When they awakened the next morning, T.H. was nowhere to be found. Ruby asked Pete where his father was; Pete said he didn’t know; he seemed to have left in the night. He would have had to have walked, because both wagons and all the horses and mules were there. When they resumed their journey, Nettie told her niece to tell people T.H. had gone to Kansas to look for a place for them to live. Along the way, she told other people that her husband had run off, and had left her destitute. But she began to make a series of bank deposits under assumed names. The money added up to about $2,500.
Some months later, Nettie Brown was accused of murdering her husband, despite the fact that his body had not been found, and there was no definitive proof that he was dead.
Pete Brown turned state’s evidence. He said that when they learned Nettie would not get her divorce, they decided to kill his father. He took law officers, in August, to the site where they had camped the third night of the journey. The place was grown up with grass and weeds, but they found a spot where there had been a fire. The spot had been covered with loose dirt about six inches deep; the dirt extended for five or six feet. Beneath the dirt they found ashes; in the ashes they found bones, teeth, suspender buckles. There they had killed his father, Pete Brown said.
At her murder trial, Nettie Brown denied that she had killed her husband. Technology at the time was not advanced enough to determine if these were in fact his bones; there was no definitive proof that T. H. Brown was dead. Yet Nettie Brown was convicted. Her attorney appealed, on the ground that the state had failed to prove the corpus delicti.
There is a common misconception that the phrase “corpus delicti” in a murder case refers to the presence of a body. It doesn’t. The phrase means “body of the crime”; it refers to the criminal act and those involved in it. Nettie Brown’s attorneys argued that in the absence of definitive proof that T. H. Brown was dead, the state had not proved that the crime of murder had been committed; had not proved the corpus delicti. Such proof is a requirement for every conviction.
The appeal in the case of Nettie V. Brown vs. the State of Oklahoma was ruled on, on May 18, 1913. A judge named Furman wrote the opinion, which was concurred in by Judges Doyle and Armstrong.
Judge Furman wrote, in part:
Counsel in their brief say: “The facts testified to in this case are not sufficient in law to establish the corpus delicti of the crime charged.” This contention is based upon the rule of the common law that there can be no conviction for murder unless the body of the deceased or some vital part thereof has been found and identified. This rule is based upon an ancient arbitrary act of Parliament. It was brought to America in the days of the colonies…
The law in Oklahoma upon this subject is as follows…
No person can be convicted of murder or manslaughter or of aiding suicide, unless the death of the person alleged to have been killed and the fact of the killing by the accused are each established as independent facts beyond a reasonable doubt…A conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice unless he be corroborated by such other evidence as tends to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense…
To prove corpus delicti, it is not necessary that the corpus delicti should be established by direct and positive proof. It may be proved as well by circumstantial evidence, if on all the evidence the jury are satisfied of defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt…
It has been considered a rule that no person should be convicted of murder unless the body of the deceased has been found; and a very great judge says, “I would never convict any person of murder or manslaughter, unless the fact were proven to be done, or at least the body be found dead.” But this rule, it seems, must be taken with some qualifications; and circumstances may be sufficiently strong to show the fact of the murder, though the body has never been found.
Having cited these assorted legal opinions, the court then turned to the specifics of the Nettie Brown case.
The evidence is positive and direct that T. H. Brown was last seen by disinterested persons in company with appellant and A. P. Brown at night at a camp near Aikens’ ranch in Osage County. There is not a scintilla of evidence in the record that he has ever been seen or heard of since. The statement that he went away during the night and left appellant is an insult to human intelligence and human experience. He only had about $2,500…Appellant is proven to have had this amount of money in her possession when she reached Missouri. Where did she get this money? Why would T. H. Brown leave the camp at night in a penniless condition and on foot?…There is not a semblance of reason in the statement that T. H. Brown walked off at night and mysteriously disappeared and has never been heard of since. No possible cause for his leaving in any manner appears in the record…
The court went on to question why a six-foot fire would have been built at the campsite on an April night, were it not for the purpose of burning the body. It continued:
Even under the strictest rule of the common law requiring the identification of the body of the deceased, this was never necessary where the deceased had been killed by being burned to death. We are not willing to establish the doctrine in Oklahoma that there can be no conviction for murder in any case unless the body of the deceased is recognized and identified by direct and positive evidence. Such a rule would make murder safe and would place a premium upon the most vile and brutal kind of assassination. All that the murderer would have to do to escape punishment would be to so mutilate and disfigure the body of his victim, which could easily be done, as to make identification impossible…This court will never consent to the establishment of a doctrine in Oklahoma which would result in such monstrous consequences.
The only just and logical position consistent with the safety of society and the sanctity of human life which courts can assume is that the corpus delicti may be proven by circumstantial evidence.
District Attorney Bill Peterson still wanted the police, the OSBI, civilian searchers, somebody, to find Denice Haraway’
s body; between the body and the confessions of Ward and Fontenot, a conviction would be easy, despite the apparent falsehoods on the tapes. But there it was in the austere lawbooks: you didn’t need a body. Not if the circumstantial evidence was strong enough. It was a wonderful opinion, the Nettie Brown case, he felt. Sensible. Logical. Two qualities Bill Peterson felt were the tenets of his own work, the underpinnings of his own approach to the law.
There were parts of the opinion that were eloquent—“grandiloquent” would be a better word—in an old-fashioned way. So fond of the case did Peterson become that he at times read aloud from the opinion to his fellows, once uncharacteristically proclaiming it loudly in the courthouse halls.
Peterson did not find any “no-body” cases occurring in Oklahoma in the succeeding decade; nor in the next six decades thereafter. Not until 1983 did another “no-body” case turn up in Oklahoma law.
It was called the Rawlings case. He knew of it; many people did. A man in Oklahoma County had been accused of killing his wife, transporting her body in his car to an airplane, taking it up in the airplane, and tossing it into the ocean. Her body had never been recovered. Despite this, he was convicted of murder.
The major evidence was traces of blood found in the trunk of his car and in the airplane. It could not be proved that the blood had been his wife’s. Still, the jury had convicted. The Brown case had laid the groundwork.
