Law Enforcement

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Entry Category: Law Enforcement - Starting with M

Mahone, Hall (Execution of)

Hall (or Hal) Mahone was a young African American man hanged at Van Buren (Crawford County) on November 7, 1902, for rape. His was one of five public executions of rapists in the state between 1901 and 1904. Mrs. Rebecca McCloud, “a small woman, only 16 years old,” was staying with a Mrs. Clark at Haroldton (Crawford County) on September 5, 1902. She and ten-year-old Edgar Clark walked to the home of Dr. J. L. Young to get some medicine for Mrs. Clark’s sick infant. While they were heading home, Hall Mahone, “but 22 years of age and a giant physically,” allegedly came out of the undergrowth around the Bazort plantation just south of Van Buren and “dragged her into …

Maledon, George

While much of his life is shrouded in legend, according to a number of sources, George Maledon was the most prolific executioner in the United States in the last third of the nineteenth century. Working as the hangman for the famed Judge Isaac Parker for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), he reportedly performed as many as eighty-one executions, although more recent historical accounts put the number at closer to fifty. George Maledon was born in Germany on June 10, 1830. He immigrated with his parents, about whom little is known, to the United States, settling in the Detroit, Michigan, area, where they joined the small German Catholic community that had …

Mankiller, Smoker (Execution of)

An eighteen- or nineteen-year-old Cherokee man named Smoker Mankiller was one of six prisoners executed at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on September 3, 1875. He was accused of shooting and then fatally stabbing a white man named William Short a year earlier. In a September 4, 1875, article, the Arkansas Gazette noted that Mankiller could both read and write in Cherokee and, employing stereotypes, described him as having the “usual Indian stoic indifference” of his tribe. On July 15, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat had given a fuller description, noting that Mankiller was “Medium-sized, full-faced, thick-lipped, [had] coarse hair of intense, dull blackness, face pock-marked and yellowish tinted, dark eyes and countenance apathetic and apparently listless.” At the time of his …

McCurtain, Amos (Execution of)

Amos McCurtain was a Choctaw man hanged at Van Buren (Crawford County) on June 24, 1870, for a double murder in what would be the first public execution in Crawford County since the end of the Civil War. Amos McCurtain and William Fry, another Choctaw man, were traveling by wagon between Scullyville and Boggy Depot in the Indian Territory on September 7, 1869, when they encountered a wagon driven by James McClain, who was Choctaw, and James Blakely, a Black man. McCurtain and Fry stopped to camp for the night, and the other two men stopped and camped near them. As McClain and Blakely slept, McCurtain proposed killing the pair and stealing the goods from their wagon. Fry opposed the …

McDonald, Maurice Neal “Nick”

Maurice Neal “Nick” McDonald was a patrolman for the Dallas Police Department who achieved international renown for arresting Lee Harvey Oswald shortly after the murder of John F. Kennedy. Nick McDonald was born on March 21, 1928, in Camden (Ouachita County), the second of three sons born to Beulah Lee Womack McDonald and Thomas “Bid” McDonald, a laborer in the southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana oil industry. After McDonald’s younger brother died, his parents divorced, and his mother moved to Maine; McDonald remained in Arkansas with his grandparents, Charles Womack, a local businessman, and his wife, Laura. While attending Camden High School, McDonald was given the moniker “Nick,” and, with his grandmother’s reluctant permission, he joined the U.S. Navy at …

McKee, William (Execution of)

William F. McKee was executed on May 26, 1837, for the murder of his brother’s brother-in-law, though he continually proclaimed his innocence, blaming his brother for the crime. Buford P. Scott was shot in the back on December 24, 1836, near his father’s home about twelve miles from Little Rock (Pulaski County), the fatal bullet entering his back to the left of his spinal column and exiting his chest. Two brothers, William and Alexander McKee, were arrested the next day and charged with Scott’s murder. At their trial on April 13, 1837, a parade of witnesses testified that William McKee had a history of conflict with Scott, whose sister Catherine was married to Alexander McKee, with several recounting threats William McKee …

McLendon, Will (Reported Lynching of)

In many cases, newspapers across the country published reports on lynchings, which were then listed in books and other resources. In some cases, even though subsequent reports indicated that the lynching had not happened, initial accounts were not corrected. Such was the case with an African American man, Will McLendon of Woodruff County, who was reportedly lynched in August 1893. In his 1993 dissertation, citing an August 6 report in the Memphis Appeal Avalanche, historian Richard Buckelew commented on this presumed lynching, which he dated at August 5. In her 1894 book A Red Record, Ida Wells Barnett gave the date of the lynching as August 9. It seems, however, that McLendon actually died in jail in Newport (Jackson County) …

Mills, Lee (Execution of)

aka:
Lee Mills was hanged at Heber Springs (Cleburne County) on September 16, 1898, for a murder and robbery in Van Buren County. His accomplice, Will H. Hardin, was murdered in his jail cell in Clinton (Van Buren County) on April 17, 1899. Mills and Hardin—the latter a former deputy sheriff—both of whom lived near Scotland (Van Buren County), rode to the home of Hugh Patterson on Culpepper Mountain about six miles southwest of Clinton on the evening of December 13, 1897, intending to rob him of between $1,000 and $1,800 believed to be in his house. Patterson’s son Jim, Jim’s wife Rebecca and their five children, and Patterson’s brother William James Patterson were also at the house when the robbers …

Mississippi County Executions of 1880

A pair of African American men were hanged for the crime of murder at Osceola (Mississippi County) on July 9, 1880, in the first legal public execution in Mississippi County. Armstead Penn of Memphis, Tennessee, was picking cotton in Mississippi County in late 1879 when he befriended George Sanford and Richard McKee, two local Black men. On November 26, 1879, they murdered Penn, “falling upon their victim in a lonely and unfrequented place.” They first shot him in the back, then smashed his skull with a club and “finished and made certain the devilish deed by cutting his throat.” The two men stole about forty dollars from their victim. Penn’s body was found in a wooded area ten or twelve …

Moffatt, Columbus (Execution of)

Columbus William Moffatt (sometimes spelled as Moffat or Moffett) was hanged on April 24, 1885, in Dallas (Polk County) for the murder of a local farmer, a crime he denied to the last moments of his life. Sources differ as whether Moffatt was white or African American. Bell Weehunt, a prominent local farmer, was working on his Polk County farm on June 17, 1882, when, as the Arkansas Democrat reported, J. B. Fowler and Columbus Moffatt “secreted themselves behind the fence and shot him through the heart while at work in the field” before going to his home and robbing his wife. The two were quickly apprehended, and Moffatt confessed that Fowler “worked on me for two weeks before I …

Morgan Nick Alert

The Morgan Nick Alert is the Arkansas name for the nationally recognized Amber Alert Program designed to alert citizens that a juvenile is missing. For this reason, the Morgan Nick Alert is more formally known as the Morgan Nick Amber Alert. Named after Morgan Nick, a then six-year-old girl who went missing from Alma (Crawford County) in 1995, the Morgan Nick Alert is a partnered approach by local law enforcement, media, and civic groups to increase awareness of a possible abduction and thereby increase the probability of locating a missing child. On June 9, 1995, Morgan Chauntel Nick was presumably abducted from the parking lot of a city park in Alma. Although thousands of leads have been investigated by the …

Murton, Thomas Orhelius

Tom Murton is best known for his attempts to reform the Arkansas prison system during the governorship of Winthrop Rockefeller. Intelligent and conscientious with a dry sense of humor, Murton could also prove abrasive and uncompromising with others, especially his superiors. His uncovering of three skeletons at Cummins prison farm in early 1968 gained national attention, and his handling of the matter drew the ire of the Rockefeller administration. Murton wrote a bestselling book about his time in Arkansas, Accomplices to the Crime (1969), on which the 1980 movie starring Robert Redford was loosely based. Thomas Orhelius Murton was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 15, 1928, the son of Oregon native Edmund T. Murton and Oklahoma native Bessie Glass Stevens …