CRIME: Wisdom & Lynchers

A mob of several hundred Kansans raced from Wichita into Oklahoma one day last week looking for a cowhand named Jack Wisdom. Two weeks before Jack Wisdom disappeared from Wichita with Mrs. Harry Pritchard and her husband, a storekeeper who had threatened to sue Wisdom for passing a worthless check. The Pritchards did not return. The body of a cowboy friend of Wisdom's was discovered soon after in a well on the ranch where Wisdom had worked.

Last week Wisdom was found asleep in a farmhouse in the foothills of the Oklahoma Ozarks. Few hours later a rabbit hunter found the body of Mrs. Pritchard in a culvert near Kingfisher, Okla. Wisdom confessed to the slaying,* offered to help police find Pritchard's body. When Wichita citizens heard of his capture they headed toward Kingfisher to lynch him. Officers hustled Wisdom into an automobile, sent him away. Determined to prevent mob violence, Oklahoma's Governor Murray called out two companies of guardsmen to patrol the roads into Kansas. Next day, as Pritchard's body was found near El Reno, Okla., authorities announced that Wisdom was safe in Kansas State Reformatory at Hutchinson.

Meanwhile in St. Joseph, Mo., a onetime policeman and amateur wrestler named John F. Zook and a junk dealer named Aaron Levin were charged with first degree murder for participating in the lynching fortnight ago of Negro Lloyd Warner (TIME. Dec. 11). Witnesses testified that Levin had obtained some gasoline which Zook poured over Warner's body as it dangled from a tree.