Gruesome Missouri: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre in the Show Me State: Gruesome, #3

By Nick Vulich

Have you ever wondered where the skeletons are buried in your hometown? Gruesome Missouri is a collection of murder mysteries from St. Louis, St. Joseph, Catawissa, Kirbyville, Bull Creek, and more.

Only a few of the events in this book have ever made it into print, except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph.

Included inside:

Bertha Gifford wasn't your typical grandma. She had a fascination with gory wrecks and accidents, and poisoned 19 people, rather than watch them suffer.

Myrtle Eberly killed her boyfriend, then told police about an unwritten law that said if he promised to marry her and did not, it was only right that she should kill him.

Dan Greenhill, and his brother William, killed their sister Sadie Uren and her fiancé John Meloy, rather than see them marry. William Greenhill quickly broke down and confessed. "We would rather see her dead than his wife." All he wanted was her money.

Bob Ford and his brother Charlie Ford, made a deal with Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden to kill Jesse James. Not long after that they killed the famous outlaw in his St. Joseph, Missouri home.

Bloody Island, now the site of East St. Louis, served as the field of honor in Missouri's dueling days. Thomas Hart Benton fought Charles Lucas there twice - first in 1816, and again in 1817. Joshua Barton, the United States District Attorney, met Thomas C. Rector there in 1823, and Major Thomas Biddle fought Spencer Pettis to the death in 1831.

Though not as famous for its feuds as West Virginia, Missouri had more than its share of famous feuds. This book details the Payton-Matthews Feud in Taney County, the Bilyeu-Meadows Feud on Bull Creek, and the Dooley-Harris Feud at Doe Creek.

Of course, there's more, but you get the idea. Gruesome Missouri covers 16 brutal murders that occurred in Illinois between 1867 and 1920.

Read them, if you dare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Vulich
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393840688

Book preview

Gruesome Missouri

Murder, Madness, and the Macabre

in the Show-Me State

Copyright 2019 / 2023 ©Nick Vulich

A person with a beard Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Table of Contents

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Duels of Bloody Island

Some Famous Missouri Feuds

Payton-Matthews Feud

Bilyeu-Meadows Feud on Bull Creek

Dooley-Harris Feud at Doe Creek

A Christmas Eve Slaying in Savannah

Lord Barrington in St. Louis

The Meeks Murders

It Was Just the Meanness, and the Devil That Was in Me

She Killed Her Husband

If It Hadn’t Been for That Damn Woman

Bob Ford—The Dirty Little Coward Who Shot Jesse James

The Spencer Tragedy

We Decided We Would Rather See Her Dead Than His Wife

It Was Only Right That I Should Kill Him

Peace at Home, I Guess

Double Murder in Kirbyville

House of Mystery Murders in Catawissa

Bunglers in Death Valley

The Black Widow of St. Louis

Birth and Death of the Bottoms Gang

When They’re Shot, They Don’t Squeal

Haunted Houses, Ghosts, and Other Things That Go Bump in the Night

About the Author

Sources

Duels of Bloody Island

B

loody Island, the location of so many duels, is now the site of East St. Louis, Illinois—crisscrossed by railroad tracks in the industrial district. It was little more than a sandbar covered with a dense growth of willow and cottonwood trees back in the day. No one was sure if it belonged to Missouri or Illinois, and neither state seemed anxious to find out. A bridge ran across the slough, and a ferry ran to St. Louis from there. On Sundays, a beer garden drew hundreds of visitors to the island. 

When tempers flared, it served as the field of honor. Two men accompanied by their seconds and surgeons rowed across. When they returned, one or both were bloodied and dead or dying.

The seconds tried to pick sites where the trees and brush obscured the view of the fighting from people on the St. Louis shore, but that didn’t stop gawkers from piling up on shore where they hoped to catch sight of the contest. If nothing else, they could hear the thunder of bullets and feel satisfied someone fell dead or wounded—another victim of Bloody Island’s awful curse.

Very little information is known about the first duels on Bloody Island.

Dr. Bernard G. Farrar and James A. Graham battled there, supposedly over a card game, sometime in 1810. Farrar’s brother-in-law, an army officer, was challenged to a duel for cheating at cards. When he failed to attend the contest, Dr. Farrar felt honor-bound to take his place. Both men were wounded, but Graham’s injury was more serious. He died from it nearly a year later. Dr. Farrar later served as the surgeon for Thomas Hart Benton in his famous 1817 duel.

Captain George H. Kennerly challenged Captain Henry S. Geyer to a duel in 1816. Kennerly received a severe wound and remained a cripple for the remainder of his life.

No matter what we think today, duels weren’t haphazard encounters. A strict code of honor governed their performance.

The rules of dueling were still being thrashed out at the time of the Geyer-Kennerly duel in 1816.

The ground shall be measured off to six paces.

The gentlemen shall stand back to back at the distance of six yards from each other.

At the word March, the gentlemen shall immediately step off three paces and turn and fire without further order.

If either party reserves his fire and continues to take aim after the other has fired, he shall be shot instantly by the adverse second.

The seconds shall decide by lot, which gives the word. 

The words shall be, Are you ready? and being answered in the affirmative, the word March shall be the order for stepping off and turning and firing as above stated.

The weapons are smooth-bore pistols.

The pistols to be delivered cocked to the gentlemen after they have taken their places and to be held hanging down by the side until after the word March.

Not too many years later, Colonel Thomas Hart Benton worked up a list of nearly thirty rules that duelists needed to follow.

Colonel Thomas Hart Benton and Charles Lucas fought one of the best-known duels on Bloody Island in September 1817. They blew up at each other during a legal case they fought in 1816—something about Lucas taking liberties with the evidence.

Lucas sent Benton a challenge:

Sir: I am informed that you applied to me on the day of the election, the epithet of puppy. If so, I shall demand that satisfaction, which is due from one gentleman to another for such an indignity. I am, etc. Charles Lucas.

The men stepped off ten paces, then turned and fired. Lucas took a bullet in the neck. Benton demanded to take another shot. Prodded by his seconds, Lucas shook Benton’s hand and said his honor was satisfied. 

Just days later, they met on the street and, like schoolboys, picked a new fight. The hatred festered for nearly a year.

During the elections in 1817, Lucas challenged Benton’s right to vote since he did not pay his taxes on time. After that, more bad words were exchanged that ended with Benton calling Lucas a worthless cur, a puppy, or some such thing.

Rules were thrashed out and eventually agreed to by both parties.

It was stipulated that the principals were to meet at 6 o’clock the following morning, on the upper end of the island opposite Madame Roy’s, with pistols not exceeding eleven inches in length. They were to stand thirty feet apart, each man having stripped off his coat and waistcoat. The seconds, also, were to be furnished with loaded pistols, and in the event of one of the principals discharging his weapon before the order fire was given, the other man’s second, or friend as the articles put it, was immediately to shoot the man so firing. It was also stipulated that no other persons than those in the immediate party, so far as any member of the party could prevent, were to be on the island at the time of the interview.

Charles Lucas, age 25, died during their second meeting at Bloody Island on September 26, 1817.

Captain Martin Thomas fought a duel with Captain Thomas Ramsay somewhere near St. Louis in August 1818. Captain Ramsay died in the encounter.

Joshua Barton, the United States District Attorney for Missouri, met Thomas C. Rector on the dueling grounds at Bloody Island on June 10, 1823. The duel grew out of an article published in the Missouri Republican that accused General William Rector of corruption in his office as the Government Surveyor of Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. He had appointed several of his relatives as deputy surveyors.

When Rector learned that Barton was the article's author, he challenged him to a duel. They met on Bloody Island at sunset. Barton fell dead on the first shot. 

Major Thomas Biddle served as the army's paymaster at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. His brother, Nicholas Biddle, headed the United States Bank that Andrew Jackson intended to shut down. 

Congressman Spencer Pettis, a Jackson Democrat, attacked Nicholas Biddle and his bank party during the elections of 1831. Thomas Biddle responded in a newspaper article signed Missouri. It attacked the Jackson party, and Pettis, in particular, saying he was unfit to represent Missouri in Congress. In another missive, Biddle called Pettis a dish of skimmed milk.

Pettis exposed Biddle as the article's author and published a public challenge in a St. Louis paper. All this may be true as to myself, said Pettis, but has Maj. Biddle ever given evidence to the world of his manhood?

Just after daylight on July 10, 1831, Biddle grabbed a rawhide whip and headed for Pettis’ lodgings at the City Hotel. He found Pettis sleeping on the hotel piazza and thrashed him good. 

Pettis wanted to issue an immediate challenge, but Thomas Hart Benton urged caution. If, by some chance, Pettis died in the duel, Barton would win the election. So Benton suggested that he wait until the elections were over and seek satisfaction. 

After Pettis beat David Barton in the August elections, his thoughts turned to revenge. He took dueling lessons under Captain Martin Thomas, an experienced duelist.

On August 22, Captain Thomas took Pettis’ challenge to Biddle. They decided the weapons and distance should be deadly. Biddle accepted the challenge and named Bloody Island as the meeting place. The weapons selected were pistols at five feet.

The men met on the island at 3 p.m. on August 26, 1831. Biddle’s Second was Major Benjamin O’Fallon and his surgeon, Dr. Henry Lane.

Across the river, spectators watched wide-eyed from the windows and rooftops along the levee—many of them with a spyglass in hand, hoping to get a close-up view of the day’s match.

The words were given. One. Two. Three. Fire. 

The 15-inch long pistols almost touched their opponents when the duelists extended their arms. Biddle took a bullet in his right hip that passed clear through and lodged in the opposite hip. A bullet ripped through Pettis’ stomach, fatally wounding him. Spencer Pettis died the next day, and Thomas Biddle died two days later.

Pettis was avenged, and thanks to the intervention of Colonel Thomas Hart Benton,