Dead Woman’s Crossing: Layer Two

We pick up the story in the summer of 1905 in the Oklahoma Territory town of Shawnee. A detective has tracked down Fannie Norton. She is the last person seen with Katie James, who disappeared two days after filing for divorce from her husband.

Under questioning, Fannie says Katie joined a wagon train heading east from Weatherford. Then Fannie collapses and dies.

Three doctors are summoned, and they determine that Fannie Norton ingested poison. Where she got it is anybody’s guess. Nobody believes the wagon train story. Detective Sam Bartell is nowhere closer to learning what became of Katie James.

Katie’s father posts a reward of $500 ($17,000 today) for anyone who finds her alive – or $75 for recovering her body. The governor of Oklahoma Territory, Thompson Ferguson, offers $300 for the arrest of anyone who may have murdered her.

Thirty people join a search party and scour the area near Deer Creek northeast of Weatherford where Katie James was last seen. Nothing turns up. The sheriff ultimately concludes she was killed and her body thrown into Deer Creek where it floated downstream, possibly never to be found.

On August 30, 1905, nearly two months after Katie’s disappearance, lawyer G.B. Cornell rides out in a buggy to Deer Creek to fish with his two sons, K.B. and Theodore.

While K.B. ties the horse, Theodore and their father go down to the creek to catch minnows for bait.

“Come take a look!” K.B. shouts. “It might be the dead woman!”

K.B. had almost stepped on the skull of Katie James.  

Strangely, it lies three feet away from the body.

All that remains of Katie James is a clothed skeleton.

Attorney Cornell summons the authorities, and they discover a bullet hole in the skull. Katie had been shot behind her right ear.

They also recover a .38 revolver that matches a slug found inside the skull.

A coroner’s jury opens an inquest the next day, August 31. Katie’s husband, Martin Luther James, is among the witnesses. So is her father, Henry DeWitt, who testifies about the couple’s marital troubles. That prompts some to wonder if Katie’s husband had something to do with the crime.

On September 2, jurors announce their verdict, laying all the blame on Fannie Norton.

That same day, Katie James is laid to rest in the Weatherford cemetery. The town’s newspaper writes that the burial “marks the close of a tragedy to be forever remembered by a great many Weatherford people.”

But it’s not closed. Not at all, as we’ll see in Dead Woman’s Crossing Layer Three: A tantalizing confession.