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Apologies for the late posting. I have to sleep sometime The police bulletins from Dallas and Fort Worth were picked up by newspapers throughout the country:“Jack Griffith, 48, shot a week ago by a curly-haired bandit identified as an ex-convict wanted in Rockford, Ill., and in Dallas, died today 5 May 1937 at a hospital here ”“Dallas police expressed the belief that the bandit was still hiding there. A complaint charging Brockelhurst with robbery with firearms of an automobile was filed by City Detective John Daniel of Dallas Tuesday after the hold-up and theft of an automobile from a Dallas man. The hold-up took place Friday while officers were combing the city for a man answering the description of the Fort Worth bandit who shot Griffith ”“‘This man is the South’s Public Enemy No. 1,’ said Detective Inspector Will Fritz of Dallas.
‘He will stop at nothing. We won’t rest until he is behind bars.’ ”Surely the Brockelhurst and Felton families back in Illinois must have realized from the day they disappeared that Lester and Bernice had run off together, and we can only imagine the shock and grief that must have hit both families when Lester was identified as the killer in Fort Worth, and when he was then linked to the murder in Rockford. But so far, no one in Texas seemed to have realized that Lester was traveling with a young woman.
Perhaps that fact helped them elude the police when they thumbed their first ride out of Dallas.Encumbered by little more than the clothes they stood up in – and Lester’s gun; he had exchanged the.38 for a.42 in Dallas, and that gun was always loaded, and always in his pocket – the pair headed northeast. It took them five days to reach Little Rock, Arkansas. Hitchhiking was not nearly as easy, nor as fun, as driving – but Lester still found something to amuse him.“Once a cop stopped me and said I looked like the guy they wanted for murder in Fort Worth.
My knees got wobbly, but after a while he said he guessed I was okay. I felt like laughing then.“I couldn’t find any places to stick up in Little Rock, so we started for Memphis. We thumbed a man driving.
He said we could ride if Bernice rode in front with him. Let him have his fun, I thought.
I had other plans for him.”The man who wanted Bernice to ride next to him was Victor A. Gates, 57, a wealthy landowner of Little Rock. He was driving a new car, and headed in the direction of Lonoke, Arkansas.“After a while I told him to stop.
Bernice got out of the car. The guy grabbed for my gun, so I shot him. When he stopped kicking, I stuck his body in the rear seat and threw a coat over it.”Lester’s confession does not mention that Bernice helped him drag Gates’s body over the front seat and into the back, but she did. After driving a little ways and finding a secluded spot, the two of them, together, dragged Gates’s body out of the car. Together, they rifled his body, taking his money, his watch, even the shirt he was wearing.
Then together they rolled his body into the roadside ditch – “dropped him in a gully,” in Lester’s gangster parlance – covering it lightly with leaves and a rug from the back of Gates’s car. Then they drove east toward the Arkansas/Tennessee state line.To enter Tennessee, they had to cross the Mississippi River at Devalls Bluff, Arkansas. Claude Purvis, keeper of the tollbooth there, asked Lester to pay. Instead, Lester offered Purvis the watch taken from Gates’s body.
It was worth far more than the toll, so Purvis accepted it, and Lester and Bernice drove across into Tennessee. Purvis’s conscience bothered him, though – here was a young couple driving a new car, but they didn’t have the cash for a toll? He called the police and told them that “the man appeared to be highly nervous,” and that he resembled the pictures of Brockelhurst he was shown. Those teletypes chattered again, as police in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois were alerted to watch for Lester Brockelhurst and his female companion, who was soon identified by Illinois officials as Bernice Felton.Lester and Bernice drove to Nashville. “I tried to stick up a cleaning plant. My gun jammed, or it would have been four murders.”The couple abruptly changed directions, heading north into Pennsylvania. “We went on to Pittsburgh, pulling a stickup now and then.
From there we went to Philadelphia.” In Philadelphia, Lester decided to change the license plates on Gates’s car. He had removed one plate when he was startled by something, and ran before he had removed the second plate. Nevertheless, he ditched whatever plates were on Gates’s car – Lester had probably already changed them once or twice in Tennessee or earlier in Pennsylvania – and put the lone new plate on the back of Gates’s car.Lester and Bernice conferred in Philadelphia. They knew from having been stopped by one officer while hitchhiking through Arkansas that Lester was wanted, and newspapers along their route had shown them first that Lester had been identified, and then that Bernice had also become known. They decided it would be safest for them to go to Canada, at least until their trail had gone cold.
But their trail never would grow cold, as long as Lester continued to hold up grocery stores and gas stations and other small businesses.They headed north, crossing into Dutchess County, New York – the 18th state of their six-week crime spree. A few miles north of the state line, near the town of Hawthorne, New York State Trooper Joseph S. Hunt noticed that their car had only one plate. He decided to investigate. Hunt had to chase Lester quite a distance before he pulled over. Hunt strode up to the driver’s side window and asked Lester for his license.While Lester fumbled through his clothes feigning to search for a license he would never find, Hunt happened to look into the back seat and noticed stains of blood on the upholstery.
Hunt couldn’t know it at the time, but Lester was wearing the shirt Victor Gates had worn when he was slain – Lester’s own shirt had been bloodied.On a hunch, Hunt said, “You’ve been pulling stickups all over the country, haven’t you?”And just like Lester had been unable, two years earlier, to refrain from confessing his Chicago robberies when the police asked only about his bad check, Lester couldn’t control his tongue that day in Hawthorne. “Yes,” he confessed, “and I pulled off a couple of murders, too.”That’s when Hunt saw Lester’s gun, on the seat between Lester and Bernice. His hand on his own weapon, Hunt ordered the two to get out of the car. “He’s a meek looking guy,” Hunt would tell reporters, “but he’d kill you in a minute. His eyes are set way back in his head, and they look dull, but every once in a while, while you’re talking to him, they flame up and seem to flash fire.”But now what? Lester and Bernice were nominally under arrest, but Hunt could hardly take them into custody on his motorcycle – and he had no radio to contact headquarters for help.(To be continued). 15 Comments.Way to prolong the suspense!
I’ll be on the edge of my seat all day!Comment by Fiona — May 16, 2018 @.Yeah, sorry-not-sorry. ? The next parts will likely be rather long, with lots of photographs, so I needed to break this part out Comment by Ardis E. Parshall — May 16, 2018 @.Sorry, Ardis, needing sleep is not an excuse ?Comment by — May 16, 2018 @.And now I’ll be up all night wondering how that cop is going to take them in!
Thanks for that Ardis! ?Comment by — May 16, 2018 @.I’ll allow you a few hours sleep. ?Comment by Bruce — May 16, 2018 @.Such an intrigue!
Even better when I read it with dramatic music playing in the background. Has the feeling of a serialized radio thriller from the 1930s. Keep ‘ep coming, Keepa!Comment by Brian Whitney — May 16, 2018 @.This is every bit as good as the best fiction serials.Comment by Matt — May 16, 2018 @.Apparently Lester’s conscience won’t let him lie, but murder and robbery? No problem.This is like binge-watching TV on Netflix, only you can’t keep going as long as your snacks and sleep deprivation will let you.
This is a great story. Fun, until you remember that Lester committed his first murder on the way to the temple with his girlfriend to get married. Ultimately, though, you can’t make this stuff up.Comment by kevinf — May 16, 2018 @.Aaaaaa! What’s going to happen next?? That poor cop is going to end up dead, I just know it.I’m so glad you’re posting these daily instead of every other day.Comment by — May 16, 2018 @.I read Tom Wolfe’s obituary a day or two ago. He claimed the best writers (who created “New Journalism”)did so by combining a reporter’s dogged research techniques with a novelist’s eye for story lines and scene changes.This series is a great example.
Serious excellence on display with both the research and writing.I only wish I could binge-read the entire serial at one go.