Oscar and Harriet McDaniel

Source: St. Joseph News-Press, 01 July 1979 Harold Slater

McDaniel Trial Most Sensational Held Here

Since this newspaper started covering trials from its opening day 100 yeas ago, there have been tens of thousands of stories about trials in St. Joseph on its pages, possible 100,000 or more trial stories. Yet it still is easy to select the most sensational trial ever held here. That was the trial of Prosecuting Attorney Oscar McDaniel, accused of murder in the first degree in the bludgeoning death of his wife. McDaniel vehemently denied the crime. He presented an alibi for a defense and was acquitted. The death of Harriet Moss McDaniel presents an enigma to this day and in all probability will ever be one, for all associated with that death have been taken from the scene by death. Sensational elements were numerous in the case from the July 15, 1916, morning when The Gazette carried a story that Mrs. McDaniel had been savagely beaten at the McDaniel home at 1806 South 20th street and was dying. That same morning she died, with the kiss of her husband on her lips as life ebbed away. Just for openers on the high drama of the case were things like this: McDaniel was held in the county jail for 16 days after his arrest and conducted the official business of the prosecutor's office from there. He was freed only after some of the most prominent citizens of the town signed the $50,000 bond for his release. The governor of Missouri, Elliott J. Major, got into the act and ordered the state attorney general to handle the prosecution of McDaniel along with Bart M. Lockwood, the special prosecutor who had ordered the arrest of McDaniel after issuing a murder warrant. The Hartley Detective Agency was called in to use its bloodhounds in an effort to find a possible trail. The bloodhounds flunked out on the assignment. The Commerce Club - forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce - adopted a resolution that declared the city was shocked by the diabolical murder and called for full cooperation with the authorities. Then, in the dark of night, investigators exhumed the body of Mrs. McDaniel at Mount Mora cemetery in searching for new evidence. They found none. A handsome young man, McDaniel continued his campaign for re-election as preparations went ahead for his trial on the murder charge. He rented the Lyceum Theater for the night of Nov. 1, 1916, to make an eloquent plea for vindication and re-election. A few days later Lawrence Bothwell, Republican, defeated him for re-election. Even the presence of his three children, his father and other relatives with him on the stage didn't help enough. Colorful John T. Barker, the attorney general of Missouri, gave the case his best shot. His prominence in the Democratic party was a factor in bringing national coverage for the trial. McDaniel was known as a relentless prosecutor, and he had received threats to this life before the murder that shocked the community. The poised McDaniel told the trial jury that at about 11:30 the night his wife was fatally beaten, he had received a call that a relative of his had been drinking and should be taken home from Hart and Blakesley's saloon at Eighth and Messanie. He went there and was told no one there knew anything about the call. So, McDaniel said, he decided to check if the call had come from a saloon at Sixth and Messanie. The relative wasn't there either. McDaniel bought drinks for several men and started home. As he did so, he said, he began to wonder if he had been lured away from home for a purpose. McDaniel said as he slowed his car at his home, pistol shots were fired at him and he fired back. Entering the house he found his wife in bed with her head caved in from blows of a blunt instrument. The death weapon was never found. Rumors were rife. Judge Thomas F. Ryan of the criminal court appointed Lockwood as the special prosecutor. But it was not until two months and ten days after the murder that Lockwood issued the warrant accusing McDaniel. McDaniel walked the two miles from his home to old Central Police Station with two detectives who had served the warrant on him. They had planned to take him to the police station by the way they had come to his home by a Messanie streetcar but McDaniel asked if they could walk, saying he had been in the house all day and needed the fresh air. A wagon guard at the police station thought it was a joke when the detectives told him to lock up McDaniel. It wasn't. A grand jury indicted him for murder Oct. 10, that year. The trial started Nov. 18 and continued for 17 days--sensation after sensation. Charles F. Strop, Lew Gabbert and Kay Porter defended McDaniel. Attorney General Barker and Special Prosecutor ripped into the McDaniel alibi, charging McDaniel had beaten his wife at 10:30 that night and then gone to the saloons to create an alibi. They charged McDaniel on the evening of the slaying had told his wife he was going to a lodge meeting. That she checked and found he had stayed at the meeting only briefly. The state charged she had confronted McDaniel with the evidence, that an argument developed and that he beat her fatally. The defense countered with testimony McDaniel had left the lodge meeting to check on purported gambling operations at two places; that he arrived home at 10:30 and an hour later received the call about the drunken relative. Defense Attorney Strop delivered a six-hour summation to the jury in a courtroom jammed with spectators and newsmen from many parts of the country. Attorney General Barker was of the same school of fiery and dramatic oratory. He closed with "I call on the spirit of Harriet Moss McDaniel to give us some sign that the defendant is guilty. The state asked for death by hanging for McDaniel, who seemingly was about the calmest man in the courtroom. Those who knew him said he was a man of iron. As the attorney general completed his jury plea, McDaniel stepped up to him and said "General Barker, that is the finest speech I have ever heard." The first two ballots were 10 to 2 for acquittal, the third, 11 to 1, and the fourth, 12 to 0. It was out for two hours. The next morning McDaniel was back at his prosecutor's office at the courthouse, carrying on business as usual. Less than a year after he was cleared of the murder, McDaniel married Zora Lee Cook, and they lived at the house on South 20th where the murder had taken place. But McDaniel was ever to be a man of drama. A year after his marriage he emerged as a hero in the newspapers when fire destroyed that house. He apparently saved the lives of his wife and two of his daughters by lowering them by a rope from a second-story bedroom. In the meantime, he had been practicing law in the Donnell Court building. Then suddenly, in 1919, McDaniel, his wife and three children departed the St. Joseph scene. Maybe some close friends knew where they went, but they weren't talking. The Credit Bureau, with its national contacts, was unable to locate him. Reportedly he owed $4,000. A report came from the Far West a few years later that his second wife had died. Then came a news tip that McDaniel had died in Washington, D.C., where he had been an employee of the federal government under an assumed name, something like Oscar Mack. The funeral home that supposedly was handling the body would not talk. However, this newsman went to Mount Mora cemetery and saw that McDaniel had been buried at the side of the wife for whose slaying he had been acquitted. A friend volunteered the information that had been McDaniel's last wish.

Drama had followed him to the grave.

McDaniel Trial Most Sensational Held in St. Joseph. Regarded still as St. Joseph's most sensational trial ever held was the trial of Prosecuting Attorney Oscar McDaniel in 1916. McDaniel's wife, Harriet, had been discovered savagely bludgeoned to death with a never found blunt instrument. After three ballots the former prosecutor was acquitted and was back at work the next day. McDaniel and his children would leave town, but in May of 1936 a cab driver tipped off a newspaper man that a secret burial was going on at Mount Mora of a man named Russell McDrew. Mr. McDrew is buried next to Harriett McDaniel in an unmarked, but recorded grave.