Dilworth Family Tagged By Murder

1916

NEW YORK LAWYER FIFTH IN LINE TO BE SLAIN.

Mother of Man Murdered in East Tells of the Series of Violent Deaths.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — The murder of Dwight P. Dilworth, a New York lawyer, formerly of this city, while driving his motor car thru Van Cortlandt Park in New York City, is the last of a series of five murders in the Dilworth family that began in Civil War times. All of the deaths have been caused by assassins. Three of the murdered men were uncles of Dilworth and the other his father.

Mrs. William P. Dilworth, mother of the man murdered in New York told about the hand of fate that has pursued her husband's family and that has almost wiped out the masculine line of the family. Mrs. Dilworth has been visiting her sister, Mrs. Chas. Clark of this city.

"It began during the Civil War," Mrs. Dilworth said, "when George Dilworth, a lieutenant in the Federal Army, was shot by a 'sniper' while he was delivering a message. He had never been injured in battle, and the war was then about over. He was killed while on a mission of peace. We never learned who killed him. That was the first of the series of fatalities that nearly wiped out my husband's family.

"James Dilworth, a ranchman in Montana, was the next to die. He had upbraided one of his cowboys for failing to cut some hay, and that night the cowboy half crazed with liquor, waited for James and killed him. Thomas Dilworth walked into a hotel at Fort Scott, Kan., one afternoon to attend a meeting.

"Two men were quarreling and one drew a revolver and fired at the other. The bullet missed the man shot at and struck my brother-in-law. He died immediately.

William Slain by a Robber.

"My husband, William P. Dilworth, was next. On Thanksgiving morning, ten years ago, he went to his store to open it. We were living in Oklahoma City then. He was counting his cash when a man walked in the store and commanded him to throw up his hands. There never was a Dilworth living that could ever raise his hands above his shoulders, and my husband was killed as a result. The man who killed him is now serving a life term in the penitentiary.

"The only one of my husband's family now living is Richard Dilworth, a minister in Pennsylvania. He escaped death by a miracle. He was a missionary in Alaska years ago, and was a very bitter enemy of the whisky element. He always talked prohibition. After an extremely bitter attack on liquor in a small mining town one night he was waylaid and assaulted. He was left for dead. He was found by friends and recovered."

Mrs. Dilworth has always feared the fate that seemed to follow the family.

"We often talked about it," she said, "and often wondered who would he next. I would laugh at the boys and tell them it was only a string of coincidences, because I didn't want them to worry.

"But down in my heart I was always sure that it would follow us, and it has."

Mrs. Dilworth, the wife of Dwight P. Dilworth, was visiting in this city when her husband was slain in New York. She was accompanied here by her 3-year-old son, Dwight P. Dilworth, Jr.

Mrs. Dilworth has no idea who killed her husband. She said he didn't have any enemies that she knew of and had never received any threats. She said the young woman who accompanied him probably was either one of his clients or a friend of some of their friends. Dilworth's funeral and burial was at Fort Scott, Kan., Friday.

Mrs. Dilworth left immediately afterward for the East to settle Dilworth's business affairs and help the police in the puzzle of the Golf Links road tragedy.

Like Cliff Drive Slaying.

The murder of Dwight P. Dilworth while motoring with a young woman in a lonely by-path in Van Cortlandt Park in New York City, according to accounts in New York papers, has many of the aspects of the shooting of motorists on Cliff Drive in Kansas City a year or two ago. The circumstances leading up to the attack on Dilworth were identical with those of the Cliff Drive cases.

For weeks a band of young men have been haunting the road which was the scene of the New York crime, terrorizing motorists, but, despite this, the road has not been properly policed, according to the New York papers.

Within 400 feet of the road is the Mosholu Parkway, a much traveled highway, and locally known as "Lovers' Lane," yet no one heard the shots that killed Dilworth. A railroad watchman near the scene heard no shots and was informed of the crime by Miss Mary McNiff, Dilworth's companion, who came to his shanty to seek aid. The road is a secluded one and has been the scene of a number of robberies recently, the last one occurring a week before the murder.

The story of Miss McNiff has been substantiated by police investigation and they are positive that she knows nothing more of the murder than given in her first statement.

Two theories are being advanced by the police as an explanation of the mystery of the murder — one that the two men were highwaymen, and the second that Dilworth was murdered by enemies who were responsible for the large number of similar casualties in his family.

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Three Arrested as Suspects.

NEW YORK. — Police engaged in solving the Dilworth murder case arrested Bernard Decio, 21 years old, near the scene of the shooting. Tony Gadina was arrested in Mount Vernon following a hold-up there, and George Teyden, who was with Gadina at the time of his arrest, also is held.

Stories have come to light of Dilworth's life. The police were told he had a wide acquaintance in theatrical circles. They were also told of Dilworth's fondness for women, which ended in his forced withdrawal from a firm here.

That Dilworth was well known along Broadway and in its resorts became known when "Dolly" Rogers, an actress, said she had introduced Dilworth to Mary McNiff, who was his companion on the night of the crime.

Jealousy of some of Broadway's women is being put forward as a possible cause for the murder.

"Dolly" Rogers, however, expressed the opinion to detectives that "Dear old Dwight" might have been murdered by private detectives frightened out of their caution while trying to "get something on him."

A new witness is a woman who claims to have seen "a woman in a large hat" running from the scene of the crime just after the shots were fired.

Miss McNiff was in the district attorney's office three hours in the afternoon retelling the story of the crime. She could identify none of the three men now under arrest.

The autopsy showed it was possible that only one pistol was used, instead of the two Miss McNiff said she believed she saw. The body had three wounds. The first was a mere chin-scrape.

Miss McNiff said Dilworth phoned the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Corwin, where she lived, asking that the Corwins and Miss McNiff go for an automobile ride, the girl said. Mrs. Corwin was out of town, she said, and as Corwin was ill she consented to go with Dilworth alone.

Wife Denies Reports.

Mrs. Dwight P. Dilworth still has absolute confidence in her husband. Statements that Dilworth was fond of other women and bohemian companions were indignantly denied by his widow. She declared it absurd that Dilworth ever returned to his home in Montclair, N. J., in an intoxicated condition, or that he ever associated with women other than relatives and friends of the family outside of business hours.

"It is absolutely ridiculous," Mrs. Dilworth declared. "My husband never came home intoxicated and I knew all his women friends. But even if it were true, do you think I would tell it? Do you think I am such a fool as to try to blacken my husband's name after he is dead? I do not believe a woman killed my husband. and I know nothing on which to base such a belief."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 4.

Flag Again On Pike's Peak

1916

Thanks to a Patriotic Kansas City Woman.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Mrs. Emma Howell, 2614 Olive Street, while on her vacation in Colorado this summer, stirred Colorado Springs to provide funds for keeping the American flag waving above the summit house on top of Pike's Peak. It is said to be the highest point in the world where the Stars and Stripes are displayed regularly.

While on the peak, Mrs. Howell noted the absence of the flag. She asked about it when in Colorado Springs and was told a flag was whipped out by the wind on the mountain top in a few weeks and "it cost so much to buy new ones."

"For shame," the Kansas City woman said. And when she was asked to address a meeting of an auxiliary of the G. A. R. she advocated obtaining a permanent fund to buy flags. The money was found.

Mrs. Howell is a member of the women's auxiliary of the Sons of Veterans here.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.

The Queer Joke That Eugene Field Played on a Printer

1907

A Maddening Prank

When Eugene Field was city editor of the Kansas City Times he found great amusement in annoying one of the characters employed on the paper. Ferguson was one of the "makeups" on the paper, and in Wyandotte, where he resided, just over the line from Kansas City, he was the leader of a local temperance society. For over a year Field, on coming down to the paper to go to work, would write a personal concerning Ferguson. Generally it ran like this: "Mr. John Ferguson, the well known 'makeup' of the Times composing room, appeared for work yesterday evening in his usual beastly state of intoxication." This entertaining bit Field would send down in a bundle of copy, and the others of the composing room would set it up and say nothing.

Poor Ferguson knew that this awful personal was in their midst and every night would go carefully over every galley for the purpose of locating and killing it. It gave him vast trouble. Every now and then Field would not write his personal about Ferguson, and then the bewildered Ferguson was worse off than ever. As long as he could not find it it might still be there. It almost drove the poor man off the paper. Now and then it escaped his eagle eye and was printed. On such occasions Ferguson's burdens were beyond the power of even a Christian spirit to bear.

Famous Ghost Stories of Kansas City, 1895

1895

KANSAS CITY GHOSTS

FAMOUS SPOOKS OF THE TOWN ON THE BIG MUDDY

The Original Ghost Is From a Case of Fratricide — How the Santa Fe Spook Was Laid — How a Man With the "Jimjams" Stirred Up a Jail Full of Criminals

It may be true that conscience makes cowards of us all, but with the ignorant and superstitious conscience is not a circumstance when compared to a vivid imagination. The greatest coward on earth is the person who sees in every dark shadow, in each deserted house and around every dismal building the restless spirit of some departed sinner whose crimes will not allow him to enter heaven, who is doomed to wander around this earth until Gabriel's trumpet is sounded, who must hover near the scene of his former misdeeds until the last day.

The place by popular consent most adapted to ghost wanderings and the place most fruitful in the production of the bona fide article is naturally the graveyard. The drearier, gloomier and more mournful the aspect of the graveyard the more ghosts. But the real believer in spooks and spirits does not deem it necessary to go among the tombs and graves of the dead to find a spirit.

Ghosts are numerous. They can be found in all sections of the country. There is not a village nor a deserted country house nor a railroad bridge but has its ghost. But the ghosts are not all confined to the country by any means. There have been several in Kansas City that have gained extensive notoriety on account of their many visitations, and the parts of the city in which they are wont to disport themselves are still eyed with suspicion and looked upon askance by the inhabitants of Belvidere Hollow, Hick's Hollow and other portions of the city thickly settled by the descendants of Ham.

The oldest, the original ghost that is most vividly in the memory of the superstitious and is most often the topic of grewsome whispers among the people mentioned, walked the levee between Main street and Broadway 12 years ago. One winter's night, the story goes, a man was lying in wait for an enemy on the levee. In his hand he clutched a ponderous double barreled shotgun loaded with nails and slugs. He saw a man walking down the levee. In the dim, flickering light he thought he recognized his enemy. He raised his gun, fired and hurried away. The next day he read in the papers that his brother's body had been found on the levee, horribly mangled and torn. The murderer winced, but kept his secret. Then the dead brother's ghost began to walk. Every night, at the same hour of the shooting, it could be seen on the levee. Each time it would walk straight to the spot where the body had fallen. Then the ghost would fall, go through a death struggle and disappear. It kept this up for years, and there are those who say it does it still.

The second healthy, well developed ghost disported itself in the ruins of the old Santa Fe Stage Coach company's office at Second and Main streets in 1886. So generally known did it become that often large crowds would congregate and await the appearance of the nocturnal visitor. Early one evening a young man who wished to investigate a little went into the ruins. When he emerged from them an hour later, he found a large crowd standing on the opposite side of the street, near the jail, watching for ghosts. Someone in the crowd, thinking that the young man had been playing ghost, threw a brick at the investigator, striking him on the head. He fell senseless with a gaping wound in his head. The Santa Fe ghost has not been seen since.

In 1887 there was a story afloat that at 12 o'clock each night a ghostly cable train glided down the incline between Walnut and Main streets and disappeared into space. In the grip car, guiding the tram, was the ghost of a gripman who had died a short time before, after having been insane for some time, the result of grief over the fact that his train had run down and killed a pedestrian. Crowds congregated at the junction nightly to see the strange sight. For the most part they went away disappointed, although there was plenty who declared they had seen "it."

Another story, in which a ghost was never seen, but which smacked strongly of spooks, was the Conway murder on East Eighteenth street, between Oak and Locust, in 1885. Mrs. Conway, a young woman, and her little girl were beaten to death with a coupling pin. The murderer or murderers were never caught. Suspicion pointed toward two men, but there was no evidence. Both of them afterward died horrible deaths — one of the glanders and the other of cancer. The ghost of the victims never walked openly, but that section of the city was given a wide berth by the true believers for many months afterward.

Last, but not least, were the ghosts of Clark and Jones, the men hung for murdering Mme. Wright in 1893. These ghosts materialized in the jails, one at Independence and one in Kansas City. The scare lasted for some weeks, and the negro prisoners were thrown into a state of terror by any strange sounds. One night, when the jail was in a state of comparative quiet, a drunken prisoner, who had just been brought in, had an attack of "jimjams." By some strange coincidence he was placed in the cell once occupied by Clark, and the prisoners soon located the groaning of the unfortunate man. The negroes, not knowing that the cell was occupied, supposed that the noise was made by a departed spirit, and all started to howling with the "ghost." The effect was something that can be imagined better than it can be described. Since the Clark ghost left the jail Kansas City has been bereft of spirits, and Belvidere Hollow is breathing more easily than it has for years. — Kansas City Times.

—Warren Ledger, Warren, Pennsylvania, May 3, 1895, page 6.