This is the answer to the “small game” post, about the mystery photo.
It’s Mississippi outlaw Kinnie Wagner.
Kinnie Wagner was born in the border area of Tennessee and Virginia near Bristol. By the time he was a teenager, he was such a marksman with a pistol that he got a job in the circus, performing as Texas Kid. He left the circus and began running moonshine in Mississippi. He was arrested for theft of a watch, and thought he was framed by the local sheriff, because the federal authorities were moving into the area and Kinnie suspected the sheriff thought he would talk and trumped up the charges. He escaped from the jail in Lucedale, and later, when law enforcement ambushed him on Christmas Eve in 1924, he shot and killed the two deputy sheriffs and fled home to the Virginia-Tennessee Border.
There was a reward for him, and law enforcement trapped him when they suspected he was going to meet his sister near Kingsport, Tennessee. In the ensuing shoot-out, two more deputies were killed and another seriously wounded. Kinnie escaped but later surrendered, and was sentenced to death by the electric chair. Before he could be executed, he managed another escape.
In August of 1926, he decided to surrender again, this time in Texarkana, Arkansas. Time Magazine described the arrest:
Mrs. Lillie Barber, sheriff of Texarkana, Ark., arose from bed, donned a kimono, opened the door in response to insistent ringing. The tall, dark, handsome man at the door spoke quietly, “Please lock me up. I have killed two men and wounded another.”
Keenie Wagner, alias Harvey Logan, alias “Texas Slim,” confessed killer of deputy-sheriff Mclntosh at McClain, Miss.; of two police officers at Kingsburg, Tenn., wagged garrulously of the $3,000 reward on his capture as Sheriff Lillie put him in a county cell. Asked why he surrendered, “Texas Slim” said: “The novelty…. I never gave up to a woman before.”
A contemporary AP described the arrest:
Carl “Kinnie” Wagner, 23, alleged slayer of six men, is in custody today after quietly surrendering himself to sheriff Lillie Barber, woman executive of Miller County. “I’m tired of being hunted,” Wagner said. “I don’t want to dodge people anymore.”
Posses had been searching for the notorious gunmen since Tuesday, as the result of his latest shooting escapade. On that day he is alleged to have fatally shot Sam and Will Carper and wounded Bob Carper on a farm near Texarkana. Wagner, formerly an expert rifle and pistol performer with a circus, declared, “I would have gotten Bob, but it was so dark I couldn’t see to shoot straight.”
He was sent back to Mississippi, on the charges of murder there, and sentenced to Parchman. He escaped from Parchman yet again in 1943 (when he was on the FBI Most Wanted List) and again in 1948. He had worked up to trustee– Parchman at the time was largely internally operated by trustee guards (a notorious system that is worth a later post). Wagner was assigned to work with the prison bloodhounds, and decided to train them not to track him by setting them to follow a trail of his scent and punishing them when they followed it. When he had them fully trained, he escaped, they failed to track him, and he lived for several years under the pseudonym “Big Jim” near Wahalak, Mississippi, in Kemper County (I’d call that out in the woods). He was later recaptured, and died in Parchman in 1958 at age 55.
In the 20s, he was the subject of three ballads recorded by early country star Vernon Dalhart. The ballads were written by a Georgia blind preacher and songwriter named Andrew Jenkins (pictured below), who was mostly known for gospel songs but also wrote event songs like “The Death of Floyd Collins” about a cave disaster) and the “The Fate of Frank Dupre” (a robbery tale ). One of Jenkins’s ballads (“Kinnie Wagner’s Surrender”) provided the title for this post.
Information on Wagner can largely be found here (with the AP story), and at the FindAGrave Site (where I got the picture), among other places. Thanks to Rodney in comments for the link to the Time account of his arrest.
Update: Be sure and read Researcher’s commentpost (#5 at least until we get rid of nested replies) with an account of Wagner possibly being hired as a hit man in 1922.
Update2: Another post with more information about Wagner is here.
Is he the trustee about whom the then-Governor said, “If you can’t trust a trustee, whom can you trust?”
Nope. He was dead by then But sounds like it coulda been.
EU @ 1: I assure you: the guvnah (Ross R. Barnett) who uttered that memorable line never in his life used “whom” in a statement.
N.B.: “trustees” are banks’ problems, jails got “trusties” (singular: “trusty”).
I was going for strike three on the small game when the answer came around.
I asked my Mom about Kinnie Wagner. Mom is a retired local history and geneology librarian. Turns out, Wagner may have murdered my great grandfather’s brother.
“The Historical Museum on the top floor of the Greene Co Courthouse in Leakesville has a large display, history of him, including his guns.
He is supposedly the man who murdered your great grandfather’s brother, John Harrell Hobdy, at the train depot in Leakesville, 1922. According to Audrey Saxon who researched the death of John, the death was ruled a suicide. But when the body was shipped to Moss Point to be buried in Machpelah Cem, Mr. Fails of Fails Funeral Home, called the family and said that John was SHOT IN THE BACK and it was impossible for him to have committed suicide.
He was doing a secret audit of the books of the railroad. Lots of money was missing and some one unknown hired him, an experienced railroad agent, to audit the books in secret, on a Sunday in 1922. Mack Hobdy and family all
tried to find proof that Wagner was hired to kill John, but I guess they were never able to prove it. The railroad was to be sold or had been sold. Supposedly Kinnie Wagner told that he killed a railroad auditor in Leakesville one time and was paid good for it.”
Fascinating response, Researcher. I’d love to know any other responses your mom has to the piece I wrote.
Thinking about what you wrote, Researcher, it would fit this: Wagner thought his first arrest in Mississippi a couple of years later was a frame-up by the local sheriff. Perhaps the local sheriff arranged the ruling of suicide, too, to cover up the killing of the auditor.
For those who don’t know the geography, Lucedale (where Wagner first escaped) and Leakesville (the place Researcher mentions) are 20 miles apart and in neighboring counties.
More cause for chills, Researcher. So you have a Hobdy connection — reckon you’re distantly related to Hobdy Bryan?
Perhaps Billy Joe Johnson had it all figgered out and was about to publish a tell-all … that would explain a lot ….
Looking for more information on the Leakesville connection, I found a 1907 MS Railroad Commission case regarding the railroad that my great great uncle was auditing when he was shot in 1922.
The Alabama & Mississippi Railroad ran daily between Leakesville and Vinegar Bend, AL where passengers and freight connected with the Mobile and Ohio RR. In the 1907 case, the citizens of Leakesville were represented by future District Attorney, Congressman and US Senator Pat Harrison. The MS RR Commission ruled for the citizens and demanded that the RR run on time and provide better coaches with separate white and black accommodations.
Citizens of Leakesville v. Ala. & Miss. R.R. Co., 1907
Edit to add:
“The Alabama & Mississippi Railroad was started in 1902 by the Vinegar Bend Lumber Company of Vinegar Bend Alabama. In 1922 when the Lumber Company and Railroad both went bankrupt. The part from Vinegar Bend to Leakesville was sold to local businessmen and renamed the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad.”
Mississippi and Alabama Railroad