Dead Woman’s Crossing
View of Deer Creek from the bridge at Dead Woman’s Crossing east of Weatherford, Oklahoma, site of a 1905 murder that remains puzzling to this day.
From Bushyhead and Greasy in Eastern Oklahoma to Frogville down at the Texas border, Oklahoma is full of places with unusual names. There’s even IXL, population 59, between Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
My candidate for most unusual place sits along a creek near Weatherford in Southwestern Oklahoma. Thirty-year-old Katie James was murdered there in 1905. Within three years, people were calling it Dead Woman’s Crossing.
I drove out there last week. Looking into the Katie James story is a lot like peeling back an onion, with each layer revealing a new plot twist – and leaving you hungry for more onion.
It starts off simply enough, albeit tragically.
Layer One
On July 6, 1905, Katie James files for divorce from husband Martin Luther James in the Oklahoma Territory town of Taloga, west of Oklahoma City. She alleges cruelty. They have been married four years and have a 13-month-old daughter, Lulu Blanche.
Katie’s father, Henry DeWitt, accompanies her to the courthouse for the filing. The next day, he buys Katie a new skirt and shoes and takes her and Lulu Blanche south to Custer City. There, he puts them on a train for a trip to her sister’s home in Ripley, about 150 miles to the northeast.
Katie and Lulu Blanche disembark at a railroad junction near Clinton so they can catch an eastbound train for Ripley. While waiting, they meet a woman who introduces herself as Fannie Norton and says she, too, is recently separated from her husband. She boards with them and persuades Katie to get off in Weatherford, just 15 miles down the line, and spend the night at the home of Fannie’s sister.
At the sister’s house, Fannie steals a glance into Katie’s purse and sees she is carrying 24 dollars (about 800 dollars today).
Fannie suggests that Katie and Lulu Blanche join her on a buggy ride to nearby Hydro early the next morning, and Katie agrees. At 6:30 am, they climb aboard a rented buggy and head east out of town. Fannie returns alone three hours later to the Weatherford livery stable and tells the owner that they encountered a man driving a covered wagon who was on his way to Hydro, and Katie and Lulu Blanche joined him.
Katie and Lulu Blanche never arrive at the home of Katie’s sister in Ripley. Henry DeWitt hires private investigator Sam Bartell to find them.
Bartell traces them to Weatherford and learns about the buggy ride. Witnesses report seeing two women and a small child ride into a field near Deer Creek about five miles northeast of Weatherford. One woman and the infant emerge 45 minutes later.
Bartell finds Lulu Blanche at the home of a farmer, John Bierscheid, who says a woman matching Norton’s description gave the child to his youngest son, telling him to keep her for a day.
Bartell traces Norton to Shawnee, some 100 miles east of Weatherford. Police arrest her, and she repeats the story that Katie and the infant boarded a wagon heading east. Before she could give much further information, she starts vomiting – and dies.
Coming Soon:
Layer Two – A body detached from its head