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5 Things You Should Know About Under A Full Moon: The Last Lynching in Kansas
⦁ Could Pleasant Richardson Read have committed crimes against women in California? Here is an intriguing hint found in the April 18, 1932 edition of the Denver Post:
APEMAN SUSPECTED OF SAN DIEGO MURDER – (I.N.S.) Captain of Detectives harry Kelley Monday wired Kansas authorities asking them to determine whether Richard Read, who was lynched by a mob for attacking a young girl had been in San Diego in February 1931, when Virginia Brooks was murdered.
The author pursued this question as far as she was able and found that while there was a family connection in that part of California and Richard’s parents and sister did travel there to visit, there was nothing to prove he had made the journey.
The details of Virginia’s murder were horrendous and had some similarities to the death of Dorothy Hunter. According to research the following was found: ten-year-old Virginia was kidnapped while on her way to school on February 11, 1931. A month later, on a mesa near the Fort Kearney military reservation her dismembered body was found by a shepherd and his border collie. Examination revealed she had been strangled and chopped up with an ax. She had been placed in a burlap bag with blood-soaked newspapers dated four years earlier. Curiously, the shepherd stated the sack with her remains had not been there the day before, as this site was part of his routine daily path.
This case appears to have gone unsolved.
⦁ Dr. Charles Ellsworth Henneberger, the coroner in Rawlins County, KS at the time of Dorothy’s murder and Richard Read’s lynching, whose documentation of the two cases is recorded on facing pages of his ledger book, practiced in Atwood for 58 years. He had come to northwest Kansas during the Spanish Influenza and remained there the rest of his life. In the wee hours of a summer night in 1964 he was called to administer an injection of penicillin into the rump of the author, eight-years-old at the time, who was in delirium from a high fever caused by strep throat.
⦁ In the closing pages of UNDER A FULL MOON the author details several connections to the characters in the book. One of those connections is the relationship she had with the grandson of Sheriff Ed McGinley, who carried the same name. As certified family teachers, the author, her husband, and their two daughters shared a home with six to eight developmentally delayed adult men. One of those men recently died. Within his obituary was the tragic notation that he had been placed in the State Mental Hospital at the age of four after the death of his mother. It is not known at what age Ed McGinley was placed in state custody, but the effects were permanent.
⦁ The author found that census records were valuable in tracking the age, location, and occupation of her primary characters. They helped establish patterns of movement, family relationships, and changing economic status. As the census reports are filled this year, it is interesting to consider who might be tracking our own data in years to come.
⦁ In the late 1920s and 1930s America was in turmoil, much as it is today. UNDER A FULL MOON captures the increasing tensions felt by farmers who were impacted by social changes, catastrophic drought and dust storms, bottomed out crop and livestock prices, and the looming loss of their homes and farms from unpayable taxes. America’s current agricultural picture is not far removed. Nearly half of family farms carry more than one million in debt. Bank foreclosure is looming just as it did in the 1980s. Reading UNDER A FULL MOON, while recording a historic event and a long passage of time, should bring awareness of today’s farming conditions. The struggle is just as real now as then.
APEMAN SUSPECTED OF SAN DIEGO MURDER – (I.N.S.) Captain of Detectives harry Kelley Monday wired Kansas authorities asking them to determine whether Richard Read, who was lynched by a mob for attacking a young girl had been in San Diego in February 1931, when Virginia Brooks was murdered.
The author pursued this question as far as she was able and found that while there was a family connection in that part of California and Richard’s parents and sister did travel there to visit, there was nothing to prove he had made the journey.
The details of Virginia’s murder were horrendous and had some similarities to the death of Dorothy Hunter. According to research the following was found: ten-year-old Virginia was kidnapped while on her way to school on February 11, 1931. A month later, on a mesa near the Fort Kearney military reservation her dismembered body was found by a shepherd and his border collie. Examination revealed she had been strangled and chopped up with an ax. She had been placed in a burlap bag with blood-soaked newspapers dated four years earlier. Curiously, the shepherd stated the sack with her remains had not been there the day before, as this site was part of his routine daily path.
This case appears to have gone unsolved.
⦁ Dr. Charles Ellsworth Henneberger, the coroner in Rawlins County, KS at the time of Dorothy’s murder and Richard Read’s lynching, whose documentation of the two cases is recorded on facing pages of his ledger book, practiced in Atwood for 58 years. He had come to northwest Kansas during the Spanish Influenza and remained there the rest of his life. In the wee hours of a summer night in 1964 he was called to administer an injection of penicillin into the rump of the author, eight-years-old at the time, who was in delirium from a high fever caused by strep throat.
⦁ In the closing pages of UNDER A FULL MOON the author details several connections to the characters in the book. One of those connections is the relationship she had with the grandson of Sheriff Ed McGinley, who carried the same name. As certified family teachers, the author, her husband, and their two daughters shared a home with six to eight developmentally delayed adult men. One of those men recently died. Within his obituary was the tragic notation that he had been placed in the State Mental Hospital at the age of four after the death of his mother. It is not known at what age Ed McGinley was placed in state custody, but the effects were permanent.
⦁ The author found that census records were valuable in tracking the age, location, and occupation of her primary characters. They helped establish patterns of movement, family relationships, and changing economic status. As the census reports are filled this year, it is interesting to consider who might be tracking our own data in years to come.
⦁ In the late 1920s and 1930s America was in turmoil, much as it is today. UNDER A FULL MOON captures the increasing tensions felt by farmers who were impacted by social changes, catastrophic drought and dust storms, bottomed out crop and livestock prices, and the looming loss of their homes and farms from unpayable taxes. America’s current agricultural picture is not far removed. Nearly half of family farms carry more than one million in debt. Bank foreclosure is looming just as it did in the 1980s. Reading UNDER A FULL MOON, while recording a historic event and a long passage of time, should bring awareness of today’s farming conditions. The struggle is just as real now as then.
Title: UNDER A FULL MOON: THE LAST LYNCHING IN KANSAS
Author: Alice Kay Hill
Publisher: WildBlue Press
Pages: 356
Genre: True Crime
Author: Alice Kay Hill
Publisher: WildBlue Press
Pages: 356
Genre: True Crime
BOOK BLURB:
Beginning in the year 1881, and written in a chronological narrative non-fiction format, author Alice Kay Hill vividly weaves the stories of the victims and the families involved. She reveals how mental and physical abuse, social isolation, privations of homesteading, strong dreams and even stronger personalities all factored into the criminal and his crimes.
Spanning the years of settlement to the beginnings of the Dust Bowl, historic events are lived as daily news by the seven families whose lives become intertwined. Historically accurate and written with an intimate knowledge of the area, UNDER A FULL MOON is as personal as a family diary, as vivid as a photo album found in an attic trunk, and will remain with the reader long after the book is closed.
ORDER YOUR COPY
Amazon → https://amzn.to/3kI18XG
Barnes & Noble → https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/under-a-full-moon-alice-kay-hill/1137286542?ean=9781952225192WildBlue Press → https://wildbluepress.com/under-a-full-moon-alice-k-hill-true-crime/
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