Arkansas & Michigan: Town Secrets, 1875-1912

Season 40: America's 250th — 50 states, 50 forgotten crimes. Two communities. Two murders decades apart.In the Arkansas Ozarks, a town rushed to convict a man on circumstantial evidence and may have hanged thewrong person. In northern Michigan, an entire town conspired to kill its tyrannical founder — then said nothingfor sixteen years.In 1912, eighteen-year-old Ella Barham walked to a post office in the Arkansas hills to buy cloth for a hat. Shenever came home. Her dismembered remains were found scattered across a hillside that night. The communityblamed a neighbor named Odus Davidson. He was hanged within nine months. His gravestone still declares hewas innocent.The VictimsElla Lillian Ethel Barham was born February 16, 1894, in the Pleasant Ridge community of Boone County, Arkansas— a scattering of homesteads along Crooked Creek in the Ozark hills. Her father, George Solomon Barham, wasone of the largest landowners in the county. Ella was eighteen, described by neighbors as popular and well-liked.On the morning of November 21, 1912, her world measured in creek crossings and ridge trails. Her biggest concernwas a hat.In Michigan, the victim was Albert Molitor — born 1842 in Ludwigsburg, Germany, founder of Rogers City andthe political architect of Presque Isle County. He built the sawmill, the store, the boarding house, the post office.He paid workers in scrip redeemable only at his store. He declared himself "the King of Presque Isle County." Hewas thirty-three when fifteen men decided he had to die. But the shooting that killed Molitor on August 23, 1875,also killed Edward Sullivan — a clerk working late, a bystander, a man whose death nobody conspired to avenge.The CrimesIn Arkansas, Ella Barham's remains were found around 9:00 p.m. by two boys and a hunter on a hillside south ofCrooked Creek. She had been decapitated, severed at the torso, both legs removed, and nearly every bone in herskull crushed. Doctors Taylor and Lair determined she had been sexually assaulted, possibly by more than oneperson. Neighbor Odus Davidson — twenty-nine, known to have expressed romantic interest Ella rejected —was arrested within days. His seventeen-year-old brother Lair was taken in as an accomplice.In Michigan, buckshot from at least two guns tore through the mill office where Albert Molitor and clerk EdwardSullivan worked. Fifteen to twenty pieces of shot struck Molitor in the back and side. Sullivan took a blast throughthe jaw that severed his tongue. Sullivan died the next day on a boat to Alpena. Molitor lingered approximatelythree weeks before dying in Detroit.The InvestigationsThe Davidson case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence: threatening statements Odus made after Ella'srejection, red pepper-filled socks dropped from a Davidson window to confuse bloodhounds, a bloody axe at thefamily woodpile, and Davidson's reluctance to join the search party. No confession. No eyewitness. No forensicevidence that would meet modern standards. The trial before Judge George Reed lasted five days. Davidson wasnot present when the jury returned its verdict of murder in the first degree after four hours of deliberation. Hewas sentenced to hang.Attorney E.G. Mitchell — a former circuit court judge — fought the conviction through the Arkansas SupremeCourt and lobbied the governor for clemency. Every effort failed. On August 11, 1913, Odus Davidson was hangedin Harrison before a crowd numbering in the thousands. His final words were a declaration of innocence. Therope was cut into pieces and thrown to the crowd as souvenirs.In Rogers City, there was no investigation — not a real one. Nobody particularly wanted to find the killers. Forsixteen years the community kept its silence. In 1891, farmer William Repke turned himself in and named fourteenother conspirators. He identified Hermann Hoeft, a rival store owner, as the mastermind and Andrew Banks asthe orchestrator. When authorities tried to seat a jury in Presque Isle County, they summoned, examined, anddismissed 252 prospective jurors. The entire eligible pool. The trial moved to A