Law Enforcement

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Entry Category: Law Enforcement

Schumann, Clarence (Trial and Execution of)

Clarence Schumann was the second of only two people legally executed in Garland County (Harry Poe, an African–American teenager, was the first). On July 11, 1912, Schumann, a white man, murdered his wife after she refused to grant him a divorce. At trial, Schumann’s lawyers argued that his addiction to morphine rendered him insane and that he should be spared the death penalty. On October 29, 1912, however, a Garland County jury found Schumann guilty and sentenced him to death. He was executed on June 2, 1913.   On July 11, 1912, Clarence Schumann came home from work to find his wife, Lula, gathering clothes in the backyard. He shot her twice with his pistol, killing her. Garland County authorities arrested him that evening. When questioned, Schumann explained that he was angry that his wife would not grant him …

Scott, George Washington

George Washington Scott was Arkansas Territory’s first U.S. marshal, serving from 1820 to 1831, as well as the state’s first auditor and the first clerk of the Territorial General Assembly. However, his volatile personality negated many of his early accomplishments, and he died a violent death in almost total obscurity. George Washington Scott was born in June 1798 in Virginia. He was one of six children of Andrew and Elizabeth Scott; his older brother, Andrew Horatio Scott, was later appointed as one of the first judges of the Arkansas Territory Superior Court. The family was living near St. Louis in the new Louisiana Territory as early as 1805. In 1808, they moved to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. By 1815, they were …

Scott, Ralph Downing, Sr.

Ralph Downing Scott Sr. had a long career in law enforcement and served as director of the Arkansas State Police during most of Governor Winthrop Rockefeller’s administration. In this capacity, Scott enacted many reforms to the Arkansas State Police that improved the professionalism of the department. Ralph Scott was born in McCaskill (Hempstead County) on February 2, 1914, to Burton L. Scott and Grace Bonner Scott. He was the oldest of the couple’s three sons and graduated in 1931 from high school in Prescott (Nevada County). He received a BA in chemistry from Hendrix College in 1935. In 1939, he received a Bachelor of Commercial Science in accounting from Southeastern University in Washington DC. Scott married Ruth Hirst in 1940, …

Shank, Mark H. (Execution of)

Mark H. Shank was an Akron, Ohio, attorney executed at Tucker State Prison Farm on March 8, 1935, for poisoning four members of the Alvin Colley family in Arkansas. Mark H. Shank was a partner in Akron’s Cain & Shank law firm. He was defending a man named Clarence Braucher on a forgery charge and hired Alvin Colley, a young machine operator who lived in Medina, Ohio, in 1930, to steal documents in the case from the prosecutor’s office. After bragging around Akron about the crime and Shank’s role in it, Colley and his family fled to Arkansas, living in Hot Springs (Garland County) as the Roy Fetty family. On August 15, 1933, Shank and the Colleys went for a …

Sharp, William (Murder of)

Several online lynching lists and the Equal Justice Initiative indicate that an African American man named George Bert was lynched in Desha County on July 21, 1883. Investigation of this lynching reveals a number of confusing reports. While the Wheeling Intelligencer lists the victim as George Bert, other papers identify him as Albert Beth, Albert Best, Albert Vess, and Albert Vest. The incident also led to an interesting discussion at the time on the state’s practice of leasing state prisoners to convict farms across Arkansas. The reported lynching arose out of the murder of a prisoner named William Sharp by an overseer named Alfred Werner (occasionally referred to as Warner) on the Desha County prison farm. (The Wheeling Intelligencer gives …

Simms, Lee (Trial and Execution of)

A young African-American man named Lee Simms (sometimes identified as Sims) was executed in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on September 5, 1913; he was the first person to die in Arkansas’s new electric chair. In June 1913, the Arkansas General Assembly passed a law specifying that future executions would be carried out at the state penitentiary in Little Rock using the electric chair. Prior to this, executions had been performed in the county where the crime occurred, and hanging was used. According to the Newark Journal, Arkansas’s chair was a “home-made product,” built at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) at a cost of $702.05. It was tested successfully in mid-August on a large steer and found …

Smith, Pamela A.

Pamela A. Smith became the first African American woman to head the United States Park Police when she was appointed in 2021. She served for a little over a year before resigning to take a position with the Washington DC Police Department, later rising to the position of chief of police. Pamela A. Smith was born on January 4, 1968, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to Walter Lee Smith Sr. and Eddie Mae Bass Sanders. Her parents divorced when she was young, and Smith was raised by her mother and her grandmother, Ellatrise Bass. Growing up on the east side of Pine Bluff, she went through the local schools—Forrest Park and Oak Park Elementary Schools, Southeast Middle School, and Dial …

Speers, J. E. (Execution of)

J. E. Speers was hanged on May 27, 1892, in Magnolia (Columbia County) for the slaying of a Ouachita County timber man, a crime he claimed was committed in self-defense. J. E. Speers was born in 1863 in St. Francis County. He married Annie Hutson, “a rustic beauty,” near Brinkley (Monroe County) twenty years later, and they would have five children, two of whom lived. Speers worked as a railroad engineer for some time, but by 1892 “for several years ha[d] been employed in various capacities about saw mills.” The Arkansas Gazette described him as “one of the Smith and Wesson gentry, and an all around tough.” Speers was working at a mill near Camden (Ouachita County) as a night …

Staner, Tom (Trial and Execution of)

The execution of Thomas Preston (Tom) Staner, sometimes spelled “Stainer,” on November 2, 1877, was the last execution to take place in Saline County. Staner was hanged for the murder of Harriet “Hattie” Staner (his uncle’s wife) and her neighbor, Parcell (or “Parlee”) Taylor, at the Staner house on Sulfur Springs Road about eighteen miles northwest of Benton (Saline County). Staner’s weapon of an iron poker, as well as the Staner family Bible and a framed photograph of Mack Staner, are all on display in the front room of the Gann Museum of Saline County. On January 23, 1877, McHenry “Mack” Staner left his home with a load of cotton bound for Little Rock (Pulaski County). His wife Harriet “remained …

Stansberry, John (Execution of)

John Stansberry was hanged on July 9, 1890, at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for the murder of his wife, a crime he denied committing to the end. John Stansberry and Mollie Eubanks were married in Newton County, Missouri, in October 1885. Stansberry visited the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in early 1889, and he moved with his wife and one-year-old daughter to the Pottawatomie Nation that August. A month later, his wife returned from visiting a neighbor and found the child “with a ghastly wound in its head and it soon expired.” Stansberry told his wife the little girl had fallen off a piece of furniture. The Stansberrys then moved to the Creek Nation. Mollie Stansberry was murdered on the night …

Strickland, Jacob (Execution of)

Jacob Strickland was a U.S. Army infantryman who was executed in 1828 for the murder of a fellow soldier in one of the earliest public judicial executions in the Arkansas Territory. Jacob Strickland, a twenty-seven-year-old farmer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, enlisted in Company H of the Seventh U.S. Infantry Regiment on December 13, 1826; he was listed as five feet seven inches tall with hazel eyes, sandy hair, and a ruddy complexion. He proved not to be a very dedicated soldier, as he was reported as deserting from a base at Natchez, Mississippi, on March 22, 1827, being apprehended the next day. He apparently returned to service. Private Strickland was serving with the Seventh at Cantonment Gibson in what is now …

Tatum, Luke (Execution of)

Luke Tatum was an African American preacher who was executed at Camden (Ouachita County) on January 31, 1893, for murdering his wife in Union County, though he denied committing the crime to the end. Luke Tatum, described as “a large man, coal black and of ordinary intelligence,” lived with his wife Eliza about eleven miles east of El Dorado (Union County). On July 13, 1892, her body was found in a wooded area, “the skull…crushed in and the neck broken” and a bloody pine knot lying nearby. An inquest concluded that “Eliza Tatum…came to her death at the hands of Luke Tatum, on or about July 10, 1892.” Tatum waived his preliminary hearing so the case would go to a …

Taylor, Henry (Execution of)

Henry Taylor was an African American Baptist preacher who was hanged at Forrest City (St. Francis County) on June 27, 1879, for the rape of a seven-year-old Black girl, a crime he denied up to his death. Henry Taylor was a hired hand on the farm of the family of Martha Anthony, aged seven, near Wheatley (St. Francis County). He was left in charge of the children while the parents went to church on September 13, 1878, and when they left, the Arkansas Democrat reported, “he threw the child upon the ground and attempted to outrage her.” Taylor was arrested and jailed in Forrest City until his trial in April 1879. During the trial, he claimed that Martha’s mother had …

Taylor, Luther (Execution of)

Luther B. Taylor was hanged at Corning (Clay County) on April 21, 1882, for a murder he claimed was committed by another man. Luther B. Taylor was born in Clay County around 1858, the son of “industrious and respectable” parents. He was of medium height and had “dark blue eyes and an intelligent countenance” but, by the early 1880s, “had been regarded as a dangerous character” who had been involved in Reconstruction-era violence in southern Missouri, where “he was credited with having killed as many men as the most ferocious partisan.” On December 29, 1881, Taylor left the Iron Mountain Railroad depot at Nellville (Clay County) with Riley Black and William Mullholland. As they were walking home, Taylor reportedly pulled …

Taylor, Marion

Marion Taylor Jr. was the first African American officer in the Arkansas State Police, serving as a public service spokesman and an instructor at the state police academy. Marion Taylor Jr. was born on January 18, 1940, in Dermott (Chicot County) to Marion Taylor Sr. and Bessie White Taylor. His father supported the family with employment at Missouri Pacific Hospital and Our Lady of Nazareth Nursing Home, and the family attended St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Little Rock (Pulaski County). A 1957 graduate of Horace Mann High School, Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock and an MS in education at what is now Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Taylor …

Tee-o-lit-es (Execution of)

On June 29, 1883, a Native American man (some sources say Creek or Seminole) named Tee-o-lit-es (sometimes referred to as Tualista, Teolitse, and other names as well) was executed in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for the 1881 murder of Emanuel Cochran. Little is known about either Tee-o-lit-es or Cochran, except that the Arkansas Gazette reported that Tee-o-lit-es was twenty-five years old. In some accounts, Tee-o-lit-es was vilified. An article in the Gazette headlined “Human Fiends” referred to him as “a trifling, lazy vagabond” and commented on his “wicked face.” In his book Hell on the Border, S. W. Harman refers to him as “a fair sample of the uneducated Indian, uncouth and only half civilized.” According to accounts, in the …

Thomas, Henry Andrew “Heck”

Henry Andrew “Heck” Thomas became one of the best-known officers of the law in Arkansas and Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). His reputation as a fearless crime fighter stemmed from a determination to bring felons to justice and from the notorious characters he encountered. Tall and lean, with dark eyes and a mustache, Thomas was the image of the frontier lawman, usually attired in knee-high boots, corduroy trousers, and a flannel shirt. Thomas, and others like him, helped combat frontier criminals in order to make the region safe for settlers. Heck Thomas was born on January 6, 1850, in Oxford, Georgia, the last child of twelve of Martha Ann Fullwood Bedell Thomas and Lovick Pierce Thomas. He acquired the nickname “Heck” …

Thompson, William B. “Buck” (Execution of)

William B. “Buck” Thompson was hanged on December 17, 1875, in Lewisburg (Conway County) for the fatal wounding of Rebecca Stover, a local widow. The 1870 federal census shows John B. Stover, a wealthy farmer, living at Perry County’s Bentley Township south of Lewisburg with wife Mary and five children, including seventeen-year-old Thomas. Mary Stover died in 1872, and John Stover apparently married a woman named Rebecca. John Stover died in May 1875, and his sons-in-law, including John R. Snapp, were made executors of his estate. In a letter to the Arkansas Gazette, someone identified as A. W. R. wrote that “it appears that Stover was married to a woman unlawfully and the heirs were anxious to get her off …

Three Guardsmen

The Three Guardsmen were three U.S. marshals based in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) who became famous for their effort to track down the Doolin Gang, also known as the Wild Bunch, in Oklahoma in the early 1890s. When the three accomplished lawmen teamed up in 1891, they spent the next five years pursuing the group, finally capturing gang leader Bill Doolin in January 1896, only to have him escape from the Guthrie Federal Prison less than six months later. They tracked him down again, but refusing to surrender, Doolin was killed in a shootout on August 25, 1896. The leader of the Three Guardsmen was Henry Andrew “Heck” Thomas, who was born in 1850 in Athens, Georgia. Thomas was joined …