Removed.
Interesting Marcia, thanks!
Thanks Marcia,
What would we expect the verdict would be today?
In those days, "twelve good men" knew what was right.
Wonder how many doctors would be around today to respond to the victim's cry for help?
If he was rejected for the draft, wonder why he had military pallbearers?
Someone, today, would be complaining about a derelict jury taking only forty minutes to come to a decision.
I think this might have been decided by justice, not by points of law.
It was once considered okay for a man to kill another man if he happened to come home and catch his wife with another man. This decision may have been an offshoot of that thought.
Another noticeable item was that the post office had twenty people in it on Christmas Eve. Today, one would be hard pressed to find twenty people on all the streets of Howard on Christmas Eve.
The story says that the knife wielder cut "his collars" which must have meant the men wore suits (probably with straw hats) on an everyday basis—at least when going to town.
The Camp Funston mentioned in the article is still around and is part of Fort Riley.
I am wondering what the victim's relationship to the females of the perp's household was. Was he tarrying with them or was he harrassing them?
Maybe it was a warm winter that year.
Marcia, that is a good post, I knew several of the people mentioned in the article. The most memorable was the Town Marshall, Walter Platz, Mr Platz lived by the High Scool and Grade School and when the weather was good he would set on his front porch and wave to the kids coming and going from school. Mr Platz was the Tax Assessor up into his mid 90s, he was quite a gentlemen, always wore a suit and a Stetson hat.
Frank
A photo in the Elk County history book is of the D. Platz and Son grocery and a next door millinery shop.
About forty people and a team are posed in front of the two buildings.
Perhaps the Son part of the grocery store was Walter.
In 1903, a Mrs Platz operated a Millinery.
I remember Charley Shipman as an older man in Howard when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. It looks like he might have been the brother of James Shipman, the man in this post who was killed.
I found this article very interesting. I was doing a web search of my name and this article came up. I'm Walter Platz, born thirty years after the murder. When I was in college in Kirkisville, Missouri. I worked at a gas station for a man named Bob Barrackman. The station was Barrackman's Service. No one was ever murdered there though. I never knew any Platzes migrated west of Missouri until I moved to Utah in 1980. My Grandfather was also named Walter Platz, but not the one in Howard. Thought you might find the coincidences interesting.
Walter Platz
Ogden, Utah
I did find it interesting.
Now if there were an Ingle or Shipman around there somewhere, it would have been right out of the Twilight Zone.