The Formation, Development and Work of the Delaware State Police: A Teacher's Guide

The Formation, Development & Work of the Delaware State Police:

A Teacher’s Guide Robert Crimmins Editorial assistance and chapter questions by Gregory A. Warren Research by John R. Alstadt, Jr.

Delaware State Police Museum and Education Center Dover, Delaware

Copyright Š 2002 by The Delaware State Police Museum & Education Center, Inc.

ISBN 0-9648513-2-6

Design and production tasks by Pond Publishing & Productions, 5012 Killens Pond Rd., Felton, DE 19943 302-284-0200, pond@magpage.com, www.pondpub.com

Printed in the United States of America by The Dover Post Company, Dover Delaware

The Delaware State Police Museum & Education Center 1425 North DuPont Highway, Dover, Delaware, 19901 302-739-7700 www.state.de.us/dsp/museum/Default.htm

The following men provided first hand accounts of their experiences as Delaware State Police Officers. Their contribution to this work is greatly appreciated: Bill Clark, Norm Cochran, Mark Daniels, Ray Deputy, Tom Everett, Charles Hughes, Charles Lamb, Warren Schueler and Joe Swiski.

Photographs provided by: Brown University Fred Comegys The Delaware Heritage Commission The Delaware State Archives The Delaware State News The Delaware State Police The Wilmington News Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 PRECEDENTS Prehistory The First Civilizations Moses and The Ten Commandments Greece and Rome England Colonial America and the Young Republic Industrialization and Urbanization: The Birth of Modern Society The Pennsylvania State Police QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1

1 1 1 1 2 3 3 4 5

2 A GOOD START The Automobile and Public Safety World Affairs in 1923 Prohibition Official Beginning of the Delaware State Police Hard Duty On “The Wheel” The Flag System Growth In The Twenties The Stock Market Crash QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 2

7 9 9 10 10 11 11 11 13

3 THE DEPARTMENT MATURES The Depression and Its Affects On Delaware and The State Police Improvements During the Thirties The State Bureau of Identification The First High Profile Murder Case QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 3

15 16 16 17 19

4 THE FORTIES Charles Hughes’ Recollections World War II The Passing of the Flag System and The Motorcycle Other Developments in The Forties The Lonely Hearts Murders QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 4

21 21 22 24 24 25

5 THEIR FINEST HOUR Delaware’s Judiciary Rules on Segregation Others Obey the Court Contemporary and Historical Perspective Louis Redding and Thurgood Marshall Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas The Situation in Milford Bryant Bowles

27 27 28 29 30 31 32

A Crucial Mission QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 5

33 36 6 TRAIL BY FIRE

Riots in 1965 and 1966 The Mixed Message 1967 The Welfare Demonstration in Legislative Hall The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Wilmington Riot QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 6

39 40 40 41 41 42 45

7 THE PENNELL CASE The First Victim, Shirley Ellis (11/29/87) Catherine DiMauro Found Seven Months Later (6/29/88) The Serial Killer Profile The Decoy Operation (7/13/88) Margaret Lynn Finner (8/28/88) Pennell Takes The Bait (9/14/88) Two More Victims and the Formation of the Joint Task Force (9/20/88) The Ordeal Ends: The Arrest (11/29/88),Trial (9/25/89) and Execution (3/14/92) of Steven Brian Pennell QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 7

47 48 48 49 49 50 50 52 54

Conclusion

56

1 Precedents From Article 45, Magna Carta, signed in the year 1215 by King John: “We will not make men justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, unless they are such as know the law of the realm, and are minded to observe it rightly.”

The Delaware State Police force is a division of the state’s Department of Public Safety. According to Delaware code its officers have “police powers similar to those of sheriffs, constables and other police officers”. The code further requires state troopers to “be conservators of the peace throughout the State, and they shall suppress all acts of violence, and enforce all laws relating to the safety of persons and property”.

That’s what it is today but after reading the code, questions remain about the nature of the Delaware State Police. For example, what are the powers exercised by sheriffs and constables that have been bestowed upon State Troopers and what duties are they expected to perform in order to conserve the peace? Perhaps most important, what occurred in the past to establish their authority?

The answers lie in the past and for processes as fundamental as the law, law enforcement and the state’s responsibilities to its citizens we must begin beyond the ancient past to before the written word.

PREHISTORY Before the written word, in fact, to the time when people first associated with families other than their own, there were laws. Many of the principles of justice the Romans would later call Natural Law and America’s founders named unalienable rights were recognized by prehistoric man, and in those early communities enforcement of the fundamental tenets of society was natural. Should anyone not do his work, steal from the group, or injure or kill another, ostracism, banishment or worse would result. Under those circumstances justice was usually quite fair.

THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS When written language as we know it was invented by the Sumerians it was used for property records.

In order to consolidate their rule and expand it, Mesopotamian and Babylonian Kings used written

language to produce legal codes that, among other things, associated crimes with punishments, specified the form of legal decisions, and declared that the King was appointed by the gods.

From almost the very beginning people realized civilized societies are far too complex to exist without legal systems.

MOSES & THE TEN COMMANDMENTS The Mosaic Code is a key part of the first chapters of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and it contains the Ten Commandments. It stresses morality and relies on a previous code of laws developed under the Babylonian King, Hammurabi. Many biblical principals, such as proportional punishment as expressed in “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” are features of Hammurabi's Code.

Disobeying the Mosaic Code and Biblical law defied God. To do so endangered not only the soul of the offender but his community. Again, enforcement of law was a matter of ostracism, banishment and even physical punishment administered by members of the community under the order of village authorities.

GREECE AND ROME The Greeks made the law a human institution. Their leaders created the rules under which their society functioned and they didn’t claim divine guidance or inspiration. Demystifying the process and putting man’s fate in his own hands gave rise to the Greek city-state, democracy and western civilization.

Socrates exemplified Greek respect for the law when he accepted his death sentence in 399 B.C. for teaching his students what the American, Henry David Thoreau, would later name “civil disobedience”. Socrates drank the poison as ordered because he had been found guilty under the law. His adherence to the legal system he believed in made him a legend.

2

DSP Museum Teacher’s Guide

The methods developed by the Romans and their understanding of human nature are the basis for today’s legal systems in the west. The Laws of Twelve Tables, written by ten Roman men in 450 B.C. and named for the surfaces on which they were inscribed, established the fundamental rules of Roman society. Among them were the public prosecution of crimes, recognition of the concept of liability and protection of the lower class (plebes) from legal abuse by the ruling class (the patricians) particularly in the recovery of debts. It also established the basic principle that the law must be written so that justice isn’t left solely in the hands of judges.

Although Biblical and Roman Codes and principals championed by Socrates and the Greeks remain the basis of today’s legal systems in the West the enforcement methods of the ancient societies had to be abandoned.

ENGLAND In the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire the military enforced the law. In religious societies social units were small enough that disapproval within the group was often all that was needed to maintain order. In those societies, on those rare occasions when enforcement was necessary, clergymen, either directly or indirectly, were the agents.

In the Middle Ages feudal law was based on the duties the people owed to their lord, the landowner, and enforcement was once again a military matter.

As commerce and industry gradually displaced the feudal system in Western Europe, commonality of legal systems became necessary. The result was a renewed, scholarly interest in Roman law that eventually led to the adoption of many aspects of the ancient Roman codes by most of the European principalities and monarchies. Although the ancient codes began to strongly influence the hundreds of individual rulers on the Continent, the sheer number of jurisdictions made the acceptance of a unified body of law nearly impossible.

England, on the other hand, had a single, strong monarchy long before the decline of the feudal system in Europe. Alfred the Great, at the end of the tenth century organized England into counties or

shires. Shires were further divided into tithings, which were groups of ten families. Tithings were responsible for the conduct of their members and as in the tribes of Moses they were small enough that all knew each other well. Misbehavior under such conditions was a personal matter within the group.

When a serious crime was committed the reeve or chief of the shire was notified and he organized the hunt for the offender. The word sheriff is the shortened form of the title, shire reeve.

Those who broke the law in an English shire, despite the disapproval of the tithing, were tried in court and judged by men who based their decisions on what commonly happened to others under the same circumstances in the past. Over time their rulings became a body of common law which could be applied throughout the kingdom.

By the time King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, most rights of the Barons and other freemen were recognized within feudal law.

The nobles who drafted the Magna Carta weren’t concerned with peasants or ordinary freemen, who made up the vast majority of the population, but by specifying there own fundamental rights the feudal lords stated the freedoms eventually conferred to all.

Magna Carta’s primary accomplishment therefore was the declaration of the fact, and acceptance of the concept, that in order for kings and others to properly rule, they must have the consent of the governed.

By the time of King John’s rule, law enforcement was a firmly established, official function so Magna Carta, in no fewer than seven of its sixty-three articles, addressed the role of sheriffs, bailiffs, and other enforcement agents. Article fortyfive recognized the need for professionalism and integrity within the enforcement ranks by decreeing “We will not make men justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, unless they are such as know the law of the realm, and are minded to observe it rightly.”

COLONIAL AMERICA AND THE YOUNG REPUBLIC When America’s founders met in Philadelphia in 1787 to create the United States Constitution, they considered everything that had come before, thousands of years of human experience from Hammurabi to Rousseau. In the end, they settled on

Precedents

a system that closely resembled the one with which they were most familiar, the English system. There were, and are, some significant differences of course. In America the post of chief executive does not continue along hereditary lines, and seats in the aristocratic upper house are not a birthright, but by and large the new American government was a variation of the English system. The founders had practical reasons for emulating their former rulers.

One being the fact that commerce in the colonies and legal transactions of all kinds were conducted according to established practices of English Common Law. In order for contracts and commitments made before the revolution to remain valid after independence, the laws governing those commitments had to remain in effect. The King and Parliament proved themselves incapable of governing the colonies but America, as a society, was a tremendous success. So although the political institutions were badly in need of reform, in order for the new country to continue to thrive, there had to be continuity of the social institutions.

These realities guided the framers of the Constitution, as did the knowledge that Americans, like the Greeks, had tremendous respect for the law.

But the framers were perplexed by other realities, such as the institution of slavery, and the conflicts inherent in representation of individuals as well as states in a federal government. They compromised on many of the issues and some were left for future generations, but many government functions that Franklin, Washington and the others might have addressed were purposely and rightly left to the states. Leaving law enforcement to local authority was probably one issue all delegates to the Constitutional Convention insisted upon.

Prior to the Revolution, law enforcement was an entirely local matter. English watch systems were employed throughout the colonies and most counties and municipalities had sheriffs whose authority and responsibilities matched those of the English sheriff. There were some exceptions after 1776, most notably the Texas Rangers which were formed in 1835, but until the changes brought about by urbanization and industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century, the old ways were adequate.

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION: THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIETY

3

The grandchildren of Jefferson and the other founders and their children suffered greatly as they corrected some of the problems their predecessors left to them. For many the price was, as Lincoln put it, “The last full measure of devotion”, but it was a sacrifice that allowed those who followed to reap the tremendous rewards of the founders’ genius. The children and grandchildren of the Civil War generations created the tremendous wealth that transformed America and the world, a transformation that would have a profound effect on many institutions, including law enforcement.

A tremendous increase in urban populations accompanied industrialization and the rise of the financial institutions. By 1910 the number of Americans living in cities was seven times greater than it was in 1860. The communications and transportation networks set up between those cities made American society dynamic and mobile. With the rise in crime that accompanied the massive population shift, and the collective violence that labor disputes often produced, the role of law enforcement changed. Without extradition laws, records sharing and some sort of jurisdiction agreements many police departments found themselves in desperate straits. When mayors and other local leaders became overwhelmed they called on their state’s Governor who found himself having to deal with the opposite problem of his colonial counterparts. Society was changing and government hadn’t caught up.

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE Upon taking office, one of those Governors, Samuel W. Pennypacker of Pennsylvania, looked at the problems confronting him and realized he was in a serious predicament. He said, “When I assumed the office of chief executive of the state, I found myself thereby invested with the supreme executive authority. I found that no power existed to interfere with me in my duty to enforce the laws of the state, and that by the same token, no conditions could release me from my duty so to do. I then looked about me to see what instruments I possessed wherewith to accomplish this bounden obligation– what instruments on whose loyalty and obedience I could truly rely. I perceived three such instruments– my private secretary, a very small man; my woman stenographer; and the janitor, a Negro. So I made the State Police.” It was a humorous description of a

4

DSP Museum Teacher’s Guide

striking realization, one that led to perhaps the most important change ever in American law enforcement.

In contrast to all other police agencies of the day, Pennypacker’s force had jurisdiction over a large geographic area, the entire State of Pennsylvania, it had the authority to enforce all laws, and it answered, through its superintendent, directly to the state’s chief executive. These were three fundamental shifts in organization and authority that made the state police movement a success.

Texas and a few other states did have enforcement agencies with statewide jurisdiction before Pennsylvania. Massachusetts appointed “state constables” in 1865 and Connecticut established a small state force in 1903, but both of these had the specific purpose of suppressing commercialized vice. New Mexico and Arizona had border patrols prior to formation of Pennsylvania’s force, but neither survived the political trials that nearly all police agencies must weather.

The needs of the commonwealth seemed to have been the sole criteria considered as Pennsylvania formed its “State Constabulary”.

Serious labor unrest in the coal and iron regions had to be addressed, but local sheriffs were extremely sensitive to the politics of their jurisdictions and when called upon by the Governor they could simply refuse to help. Furthermore, there were vast areas in the state where enforcement generally was inadequate. In those areas people were truly at risk.

Upon considering the needs, his authority, and his responsibility, the Governor established an organization that gave administrative control to a superintendent who was responsible only to the Governor. This one sweeping, organizational stroke took the politics out of law enforcement and it was a move that helped make Pennsylvania’s State Police fundamentally different from all that had come before. Pennypacker and his superintendent then created operational branches with clear lines of command that consisted of an extensive network of troop headquarters and substations. These provided police coverage to every portion of the state right down to the minor roads and byways. In typical twentieth century, American fashion, Pennsylvania’s

leaders had seen a need, then creatively addressed it.

Their solution became a model for others.

The Pennsylvania State Police is a model of efficiency, a model of honesty, a model of absolute freedom from political contamination. . . . there is no other body so emphatically efficient for modern needs as the Pennsylvania State Police. I have seen them at work. I know personally a number of men in the ranks. I know some of the officers. I feel so strongly about them that the mere fact a man is honorably discharged from this Force would make me at once, and without hesitation, employ him for any purpose needing courage, prowess, good judgment, loyalty, and entire trustworthiness. This is a good deal to say of any organization, and I say it without qualification of the Pennsylvania Police. Teddy Roosevelt

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 1 The Delaware State Police force is a division of which department of state government?

A. B. C. D.

Corrections State Public Safety Health

What is the origin of the word “sheriff�?

What year was Magna Carta signed and by whom?

The signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 by the members of the Continental Congress marks the birth of the United States of America. What document was created in the same city eleven years later that specified the form of the government of the United States?

Explain why Pennsylvania Governor Samuel Pennypacker formed the Pennsylvania State Constabulary.

2 A Good Start The patrols and long shifts on the seat of a motorcycle were grueling, particularly in the winter, and they were dangerous. Practically every officer went down at least once and many sustained injuries. Two officers in the early years lost their legs below the knee. Both were fitted with artificial limbs and returned to duty.

Many of the same conditions that led to the formation of the Pennsylvania State Police existed in Delaware. As it often does today, Wilmington’s daily newspaper was one of the first to call for the needed reform. In the January 29, 1906 edition an item with the headline “State Police” appeared. It read, “A movement has been inaugurated looking toward the establishment of a State Police force for Delaware, to do duty in the rural districts. The matter will probably be brought to the attention of the Legislature at its next session. During the past few years there has been a great deal of lawlessness outside of the towns, which could probably be reduced with officers patrolling the county roads.”

America was undergoing a coarsening of society, an unfortunate by-product of industrialization and the increased wealth and freedom it spawned. Delaware, like all other states, had to adjust to a harsher reality, a more impersonal, dynamic, complex and most importantly, far more mobile population.

Another 1906 article sought to describe the need for a statewide force. “Although the police force of Wilmington is inadequate, there being only 85 men in the entire department, the city is able to take care of itself in time of trouble, as well as in time of peace, but this cannot be said of many of the smaller towns in the lower part of the State. The small towns near Wilmington feel reasonably safe, as it is possible to get assistance in extreme cases, although this should not be necessary. In addition to the police force, Wilmington also has four military companies, which are ready and subject to call at any time. In the towns down the State, it is not possible to get help from Wilmington in short order, and the conditions there are not the same as in the upper part of the State.” The article went on to provide a general description of the state of law enforcement outside of Delaware’s only urban center. “With the exception of Wilmington, there is

not a town in the State that has more than five officers and most of them have only one, while some of the smaller places have none.”

Although journalists and others in 1906 saw the gaps in police protection that existed at the time, it took another development, the automobile, to bring about the formation of the force that would become the Delaware State Police.

THE AUTOMOBILE AND PUBLIC SAFETY The automobile and the network of roads created to make it useful were extremely significant technological developments, which happened very rapidly. The profound social changes that accompanied this new transportation system affected many institutions. State governments, among others, had to quickly adjust. A few statistics illustrate the magnitude and rapidity of the change.

There were only 313 registered vehicles in Delaware in 1907. In 1920 there were over 18,000.

The first concrete road in the United States was built

in Detroit in 1908 but by 1924 there were 31,000 miles of concrete roads in the country. (Today there are almost four million miles of surfaced roads in the United States.) Most impressive may be the fact that the first gasoline powered automobile was built in 1893 and within twenty-five years of that date there were nearly five million cars in America.

Automobile traffic before 1908 moved just slightly faster than horse drawn conveyances on the dirt and gravel roads of the day. In order for people and businesses to fully realize the economic rewards and increased mobility made possible by automotive travel, roads designed for cars and trucks were needed. Delaware’s response included creation of the State Highway Commission in 1917. Soon after hard surface roads were put into service, other needs became apparent. One was understood by the first driver to find himself behind the wheel on one of the new roads. A newspaper article of the day described the new sensation. “Driving from a narrow, crooked, rough road, originally intended for horse drawn traffic only, onto one of the new state highways, broad and straight and smooth you feel an almost irresistible impulse to ‘let her out’ and see what your pet motor can do.”

Speed was thrilling. Suddenly, adults were hurling themselves through space at speeds they had never known, and all it took was a touch of the foot and a tightening of the grip.

The impulse to “let her out” surely got the better of farmhands and drunks and many people who were otherwise much more responsible. Engineers and managers in the new Highway Commission must have suppressed panic as they watched cars and trucks whiz by and wondered what they had wrought.

Among other things, they had created an entirely new set of responsibilities for themselves. Now that they’d built the surfaces to allow automobiles to achieve such speed they had to protect drivers and pedestrians from the resultant danger.

By the end of 1919 it was clear that something had to be done to control speeding and reckless driving on Philadelphia Pike in Wilmington. On January 1, 1920, Charles J. McGarigle began motorcycle

patrols on Philadelphia Pike as the Highway Department’s first “Traffic Officer”.

By the end of 1920 there were five Traffic Officers with the department. To save money their patrols of the Philadelphia Pike, Kennet Pike, and the road between Smyrna and Dover were carried out on motorcycles. The legislative act that established the force gave the officers, “as authorized representatives of the State Highway Department . . . powers similar to that of sheriffs, constables and police for the purpose of enforcing provisions of this act.” Five officers weren’t enough so traffic law enforcement authority was also given to the Department’s Resident Engineer and it’s maintenance foremen. A volunteer group, The Citizens Highway Police was also formed. In 1921 it had thirty members and by the end of the following year there were sixty.

Highway police were needed as were some more fundamental safety features, ones we now take for granted. C. Douglass Buck, Assistant to the Chief Engineer of the Highway Department said in his 1921 Annual Report, “For the convenience of the travelling public, and for the better control and direction of traffic, I would recommend that adequate marking of the State highway system with a carefully designed and comprehensive system of guide, mileage and danger signs, and as a further provision for safety I would recommend the marking of a line along the center of the pavement in such a manner that traffic may readily be separated into two lanes. Such marking showing each driver his exact right of way, would have an undoubted influence and materially reduce the number of accidents.”

Delaware was catching up to the automobile. Increased safety awareness was improving conditions on the roads and the Traffic Police were a highly visible and effective instrument to help bring about the change. The public noticed the patrolmen and appreciated them. A December 1921 newspaper article read, “Night and day, in fair and foul weather, the State Highway Police are endeavoring to keep the state highways safe for the

A Good Start

traveling public. You may meet one of these uniformed officers on his gray motorcycle anywhere between the Pennsylvania line and the Maryland line at Delmar and Selbyville. Do not think of him as a kill-joy, but as your protector and friend . . .

The Highway Police are there ‘lest you forget’ to protect you not only from yourself but from the other fellow even more reckless.

“To properly police the 200 miles of the state highway system now completed is a big task . . . and means long hours and hard riding for the little force but it is being done faithfully and cheerfully and with an efficiency and courtesy that has won the respect and praise of all motorists . . .

“The officers of the force are picked men, experienced in their profession, several having served in the Pennsylvania State Constabulary. The force operates directly from headquarters of the State Highway Department at Dover, where detailed records and itemized accounts are kept of the operating expenses and of the arrests made and fines imposed. The records at the department headquarters show that during November this force of four men made 101 arrests from which fines amounted to $707 were imposed and in addition to this, 186 were warned of near violations of the State Traffic Laws.

“It is hoped that for the coming year there will be funds from the State Highway Department available for increasing this force, that the public may not only be protected but may use the highways of the state with a feeling of perfect safety.”

WORLD AFFAIRS IN 1923 New roads and other local changes occupied the attention of the Governor, legislature and citizens of Delaware but developments outside the state shaped everyone’s outlook. Nineteen-twenty-three was an important year. The Union of Soviet Socialists Republics was formed in December of 1922 and throughout the next year Vladimir Ilyich Lenin promoted worldwide revolution. Inflation made the German mark essentially worthless and Adolf Hitler mounted his ill-fated “Munich Beer Hall Putsch”.

John Torrio and his right hand man, Al Capone, were wreaking havoc and making millions bootlegging in Chicago and King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in Egypt. Warren Harding was elected president of the United States in a landslide

5

in 1920, but corruption in his administration and a depression in the farm belt took a toll on him politically and possibly physically. While on a speaking tour in California in June of 1923 he contracted pneumonia and died.

PROHIBITION In 1917 Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which made the manufacture, sale and possession of alcoholic beverages a crime. Three-fourths of the states approved it by January 1919 and it took affect in 1920. By 1923 Torrio and Capone were profiting tremendously from Prohibition and Chicago was suffering, but many of the disturbing, if less violent effects, were felt elsewhere, including Delaware.

Perhaps the worst effect of a law that so many disregarded was a disregard for law in general.

Many reasoned that an occasional beer or whiskey did no harm and it was not the government’s affair.

For some it was a short step from that position to a more fundamental disregard for authority or constraint. The “Roaring Twenties” was a term that meant something different at the time than it does today. Capone’s success attests to the decline and the reasons behind it.

He moved to Chicago in 1919 to escape murder charges in New York City. After taking over for Torrio in 1925 Capone’s syndicate of speakeasies, bookie joints, gambling houses, brothels, race tracks, nightclubs, distilleries and breweries was generating between sixty and one-hundred million dollars per year. Throughout Capone’s reign it employed a small army of a thousand gangsters who were responsible for scores of murders each year. A significant number of citizens participated in the diversions and vices Capone provided and corruption among Chicago’s officials was common.

OFFICIAL BEGINNING OF THE DELAWARE STATE POLICE

In his address to Delaware’s General Assembly on January 3, 1923, Governor William Denney called for the formation of a State Police Force. It was a politically charged issue, but the legislature agreed that additional law enforcement personnel and resources were needed. All had seen the success of the small group of motorcycle officers employed by the Highway Department and all admired their dedication. Bills were introduced and amended that increased the size of the force and gave all its officers full law enforcement authority. A final amendment ensured a source of revenue for the new force. It stipulated that “all the fines, penalties and

Sussex County, and three assigned to headquarters in Dover for Kent County

forfeitures imposed and collected” for motor vehicle law violations would be “paid to the State Treasurer for the use of the Highway Department.” As this was the final piece of legislation to be enacted, the date of its being signed into law by the Governor, April 28, 1923 is regarded as the birthday of the Delaware State Police.

Early in 1923 the Highway Department asked the Pennsylvania State Police to help Delaware reorganize their force and train ten to twelve new officers. August Ahlquist, an eleven- year veteran of the country’s first real state police force, was loaned to Delaware to help with both tasks. Ahlquist arrived in Delaware on June 1, 1923. The next day he and Mr. C.D. Buck, now the Highway Department’s Chief Engineer, toured the state to survey sites for substations and Ahlquist was appointed Police Superintendent and given the rank of Captain.

The same month, eleven men were hired as “traffic police” at a salary of $115 per month. Their training in crimes and criminal procedures, traffic and motor vehicle laws, firearms, and motorcycle operation began immediately. After graduation the new officers were assigned to substations throughout the state. The reorganized department consisted of six officers working out of Wilmington for New Castle County, five out of Georgetown for

date and time of his arrival.

The patrols and long shifts on the seat of a motorcycle were grueling, particularly in the winter, and they were dangerous. Practically every officer went down at least once and many sustained injuries. Two officers in the early years lost their legs below the knee. Both were fitted with artificial limbs and returned to duty. Both retired from the police after twenty years service and one, Roger P. Elderkin, eventually became Superintendent.

By 1924 the primary function of the police remained traffic law enforcement. Of eighty arrests made in January of that year 90 per cent were for traffic, license, and registration violations. The other arrests were for assault, assault and battery and liquor law violations. The officers at Station Five in Bridgeville were commended in 1925 for defeating bands of chicken and beef thieves and breaking up an automobile theft ring that targeted Seaford, Laurel, Delmar, Bridgeville and Harrington.

Although Delaware’s bootlegging industry didn’t include violence of the magnitude found in Chicago, many rural distillers fiercely defended their operations. Sixty rounds were fired in a gunfight as officers assigned to the Georgetown station assisted Federal and State “dry” officers at the farm of Ryan Lynch in Roxanna, Sussex County in December of 1924. The same officers assisted on numerous other

HARD DUTY ON “THE WHEEL” The “State Patrol” was one of the new operations instituted with the formation of the new department.

It called for an officer assigned to Wilmington’s State Road Station to ride his Harley Davidson motorcycle from the Pennsylvania border in Claymont to the Maryland border in Delmar, and back, every day. Along the way he was to check in at every post office to see if his services were needed and to have his work sheet stamped with the

A Good Start

occasions and although every raid didn’t include a gunfight, the department was building an outstanding reputation based on service and bravery.

THE FLAG SYSTEM Their service is even more admirable considering the state of technology and the tools available at the time. For example, there were no police radios in the twenties, so how was a patrolman to communicate with his superiors or to know when someone needed his help? The answer was a simple, essentially human system. The Highway Flag System instituted in 1924 made red flags available to gas stations, stores, pharmacies, homes, auto dealerships, sweet shops, and teahouses on police patrol routes. Should anyone require police assistance they could place a phone call to a police station. The station would then call the nearby establishments with a flag and instruct them to display it, which was the signal for the officer to stop. He would then call the station to find out where he was needed. Good officers made a habit of stopping at many of the Red Flag establishments when the flags weren’t out just to keep in contact with the community. More than one arrest was made after a tip or warning was passed along during a patrolman’s daily rounds.

GROWTH IN THE TWENTIES As the twenties proceeded the State Highway Police gradually expanded under the watchful eyes of the legislature, the press and the public. By 1926 there were thirty-eight officers at five stations throughout the state: Holly Oak in Wilmington, State Road in New Castle, Dover, Georgetown and Bridgeville.

With traffic fatalities rising and the public’s support of prohibition eroding, the role of the Highway Police was once again focused on traffic law enforcement. An article in the June 5, 1929 Wilmington Evening Journal read, “Our State highway policemen well deserve the commendation that was lavished upon them yesterday by the members of the Delaware Automobile Association who held their semi-annual meeting in the Hotel duPont. Those policemen are keen, courteous, and businesslike in the discharge of their duties and free from criticism by law-abiding motorists.

7

“Several months ago there was a disposition to drag the policemen into all sorts of work, to the neglect of their prime duty as traffic regulators. It took a shooting affair near Milford to pull them out of prohibition enforcement and other lines of work with which they should have nothing to do, and restore them to their proper function.”

Although their concentration returned to highway safety and motor vehicle law enforcement they were still authorized and required to enforce all laws. As the only agency with statewide jurisdiction the State Highway Police were responsible for the enforcement of some laws simply because no one else was. That’s why in 1929 a Delaware Highway Policeman was credited with the first arrest of a pilot for flying an airplane while under the influence of intoxicating liquor.

THE STOCK MARKET CRASH Delaware and the rest of the country prospered greatly in the twenties. Since the turn of the century American industry grew tremendously and many people believed the rate of growth would not only continue but increase. Throughout the late twenties stock prices worldwide rose. In fact, the average price of common stock on the New York exchanges more than doubled between 1925 and 1929. Real economic growth was much slower however, so the value of many companies’s stock was much greater than the actual value of the companies themselves.

Finally investors realized the folly of their hopeful speculation. Stock values were drastically higher than real wealth and the two were not about to coincide. On the day that would be known as Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, the sell-off began.

Stock prices stabilized somewhat on Friday and Saturday but dropped further the following Monday.

Then, on Tuesday, the twenty-ninth of October, panic struck and a record number of shares were sold in New York. For the next three years stock prices fell. By 1933 industrial stocks lost 80 per cent of their value. It was the beginning of the Great Depression.

Although the affects on Delaware were not immediate, eventually they became severe. It was a period of tremendous economic and profound social adjustment. Law enforcement agencies must adjust to social change quickly and effectively and the changes within Delaware’s State Highway Police during the early years of the Depression were so

significant, they constituted a change of character for the department. In many ways it was another beginning for the organization just ten years after

Charles McGarigle first mounted a motorcycle on Philadelphia Pike.

A Good Start

9

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 2 What invention precipitated the creation of the Delaware State Police?

An increase of one order of magnitude is the same as multiplying a quantity by 10. An increase of two orders of magnitude is the equivalent of multiplying by 100, or 102. How many orders of magnitude are there in the increase in the number of automobiles in Delaware in the years between 1907 and 1920? What important technological development of the last quarter of the twentieth century has improved by several orders of magnitude since it first became widely available to American consumers?

What was the predecessor to the Delaware Department of Transportation?

Who was Delaware’s first traffic officer? When was his first day on the job?

What is the root word in the term that has become synonymous with the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution? What did the authors and supporters of the Eighteenth Amendment hope to accomplish?

Why was enforcement of the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment so difficult?

What is the significance of April 28, 1923?

In what cities were the three original Highway Police stations?

With what event did the Great Depression begin? In what month and in what year did it occur?

3 The Department Matures From 1930 to the end of 1940 the number of officers would grow by over 80 per cent, from fifty to ninety-one and support personnel throughout the decade would come to include clerks, weighmasters, mechanics, a telephone operator and a statistician.

THE DEPRESSION AND ITS AFFECTS ON DELAWARE AND THE STATE POLICE Industrialization, urbanization and the affects of Prohibition were developments that changed American society, some would argue fundamentally, in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Advances in science and technology and their affects during the same period and later are also of profound importance, but for many who lived through it, the Great Depression remains more important than anything else. For various reasons it was an important period for most government agencies as well, including the Delaware State Police.

Each of the decades that followed included events of great importance but the twenties may have been the most significant decade of the twentieth century for America. It was the beginning of many of the ideas and institutions of the modern era. Communism in Russia and fascism in Germany and Italy justified the isolationist policy many Americans supported after World War I. At home the wonders of technology were put to practical use.

Industrialists were revered for not only making the automobile and home appliances affordable and available to the average working man but also for radio and motion pictures.

Advertising became a major industry in the twenties and its message was clear. Movies, cigarettes, cars, houses, refrigerators, telephones and all the other products and devices that were available and affordable for the first time made life better. Some improved the quality of life in dramatic fashion.

Many who witnessed the developments of the twenties were beneficiaries of the psychology of consumption. The idea promoted by the advertisements, business leaders and even Herbert Hoover, the President of the United States, that

Americans could buy a better life was true. So when the Great Depression struck and millions of Americans lost their jobs and savings as a direct result of their belief in what their role models and leaders told them they were not only devastated financially but spiritually. The twenties were years of prosperity and optimism. The early years of the thirties saw unemployment, foreclosures, and bank failures and as their lives were crumbling millions heard their President tell them the economy would right itself. Just wait and things would improve.

Unfortunately, waiting only brought more despair, disbelief and ultimately reevaluation.

By the presidential election of 1932 the American people were ready for a change and since Franklin Roosevelt offered solutions and Hoover didn’t, FDR took over. Essentially Roosevelt offered a redistribution of wealth through government programs and legal protections. People will argue about whether or not Roosevelt’s policies were actually good for the country but there is no doubt the New Deal changed the role of government in America right down to the local level.

Delaware was a conservative state in the thirties and the farmers, an independent, self sufficient and powerful constituency resisted government assistance for the industrial workers of New Castle County and specifically, Wilmington.

Industrialists such as P.S. du Pont, an ardent foe of the Roosevelt administration, also felt that many of the New Deal programs were poorly conceived. The legislature and C. Douglas Buck, formerly Highway Commission chief engineer, now Governor, were only partially successful in resolving the political and regional differences, so there were few New Deal type programs instituted by the State government. But many of the thousands of Delaware families with unemployed breadwinners did find relief through federal programs and since the works of the Civilian Conservation Corps, The

Tennessee Valley Authority and the WPA were in the newspapers, on the radio and in the newsreels everyone saw government in a different light.

Hoover was far more distant than Roosevelt whose “fireside chats” on the radio made him seem a benevolent provider or perhaps a partner who understood the plight of his fellow citizens.

All government entities benefited from the new perception and purpose. Police in particular along with other agencies with direct public contact and high profiles found their stature increased considerably.

IMPROVEMENTS DURING THE THIRTIES In 1931 Delaware’s General Assembly passed a bill which made the Traffic Officers of the Highway Department the “Delaware State Police”. The name change was one form of recognition that the agency’s role had moved far beyond traffic law enforcement. Another was the precipitous increase in the size of the force. From 1930 to the end of 1940 the number of officers would grow by over eighty per cent, from fifty to ninety-one and support personnel throughout the decade would come to include clerks, weighmasters, mechanics, a telephone operator and a statistician.

Because of job scarcity during the Depression, turnover in the State Police was low and those who sought to become policemen were of a higher caliber than they might have been if the economy was strong. This is reflected in the fact that in 1936 there were 255 applicants for the Police Training School and only twelve men were ultimately placed on the force. In 1938 there were 700 applicants for twenty-four positions.

Distinct improvements in the department’s equipment and operation followed. Teletype service between Delaware and police agencies in eight other states began in October 1934. Patrol cars for each

troop were purchased in 1935. In 1935 as well a radio transmitter was installed at Penny Hill and receivers were installed in patrol cars assigned to Penny Hill, State Road and Dover. And in July of 1935, the Bureau of Identification was established in a jail cell at the Penny Hill Station. The total yearly expenditures for the department, although still relatively small, nearly doubled between 1930 and 1940, a deflationary period, from $134,000 per year to $267,000.

THE STATE BUREAU OF IDENTIFICATION Creation of the Bureau of Identification was very significant. Certainty of an individual’s identity is crucial in criminal matters, but it wasn’t until late in the nineteenth century that reliable, scientific methods of positive identification were devised. In France, a young man employed by the Prefecture of Police in Paris surveyed enough individuals to conclude that everyone was physically different. He found that the size and position of certain anatomical features were measurably different in all individuals and a set of measurements could be recorded that would positively identify anyone. It was an effective method but not very efficient.

The Chinese as early as 602 A.D. used fingerprints on documents and there are other examples to indicate that man has been aware for thousands of years of the uniqueness of the intricate patterns found on the tips of fingers and toes and on the palms of the hands. Until modern times however there was no attempt to classify fingerprints that would allow for a referral system of the kind needed for law enforcement. In the eighteen eighties Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist, conducted a mathematical analysis which showed that no two fingerprints could be exactly alike. The following decade Sir Edward R. Henry, Scotland Yard’s Commissioner of Police devised a

The Department Matures

classification system for fingerprints. The Henry System was soon adopted throughout the world.

In Delaware, Sergeant William Knecht set up a fingerprinting operation in a cell at the Penny Hill Station in 1935. After attending classes at the Institute of Applied Science and visiting the Wilmington Bureau of Identification, New Jersey’s identification bureau and Pennsylvania’s, Knect began taking fingerprints and training others in the techniques he’d learned. By the end of the year, 322 criminal print records were on file and classified.

Sgt. Knecht drafted the Senate bill that established the State Bureau of Identification in 1939 and he was named head of the new bureau. By the end of the year 11,815 identification and fingerprint records were on file with the S.B.I.

13

persons except a small jury, two clergymen, two physicians and few others were barred.

“Mrs. Carey, 52, formerly of Omar . . . had been convicted of the murder of her brother Robert H. Hitchens, of Omar, and her son was as an active participant in the slaying of his uncle, their motive being to collect $2000 insurance on his life. Two women have been executed legally in Delaware before today, so far as research shows. A colored woman, Sarah Jane Bradley, was hanged in Georgetown in 1860 for killing a child. Away back in Colonial days a white woman is recorded as having been burned legally at the stake. (Mrs. Catherine Bevans on September 10, 1731 for participating in the killing of her husband). So far as can be learned, Mrs. Carey and her son are the first mother and son to have been executed legally in the THE FIRST HIGH PROFILE MURDER CASE United States . . . Eleven hangings have taken place High profile cases can enhance a police agency’s in Sussex County within the past 112 years. image, or diminish it. Since resources and methods “On November 9, 1927, Robert H. Hitchens are the same regardless of public attention the police was found dead in the kitchen of his home at Omar. work itself generally doesn’t change for cases that He was shot in the head. His skull was smashed. generate publicity, but the Whiskey glasses were about him consequences for the and his clothes reeked of liquor. department can.

The The Careys were closely Delaware State Police questioned. No clues were handled their first such case found. The State Police gave out in 1935. On December 6, word that they had come to the while questioning conclusion that Hitchens had Lawrence Carey about a been shot during a drunken burglary the day before, brawl. Not long after, Mrs. State Detective Otto Carey made claim for the life Lawrence learned Carey’s insurance of her brother. mother and brother “The death of Hitchens committed a murder eight soon became almost forgotten. A years earlier. The two were private detective and State eventually convicted and Police and State Detectives executed. The Wilmington investigated but to no avail. And ST 1 BUREAU OF IDENTIFICATION Journal gave the following so the death of Hitchens would OPERATION IN A CELL AT PENNY HILL have become an unsolved account: “Mrs. May H. Carey and Howard Carey, mystery had not young Lawrence been arrested and mother and her first born son – the former the first furnished the fatal clue. The Carey’s – mother and white woman to be hanged in Delaware – went son – were tried in the old courthouse at unfalteringly to their death by the noose at the Georgetown, April 8. Represented by Frederick A. Sussex County Prison near here (Georgetown) this Whitney, the Carey’s did not take the stand in their morning for the murder of her brother and his uncle defense. Against them and their fate, beat their in an insurance plot that for seven years was a confessions. Reconstructed from their confessions, ‘perfect crime’ mystery. They were hanged as the the story is that Mrs. Carey Promised her son, rays of their last dawn broke through the fog that Howard, a new automobile, if he would help in the shrouded the small prison yard from which all murder.”

The thirties were a formative period for the Delaware State Police and valuable preparation for what was to come.

The Department Matures

15

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 3 What was the idea promoted by advertising in the twenties that led to the “psychology of consumption”?

Who was elected to the United States Presidency in 1932? Who did he follow?

In difficult times the role of government can change. How did the Depression positively affect the Delaware State Police?

By what name were the Traffic Officers in Delaware called from 1931 on? Why was the new name more befitting the organization?

Name two new communications tools the State Police acquired in the thirties?

What is “The Henry System”?

Write a short newspaper article describing the events surrounding the murder of Robert Hitchens. Use what you know of the period and the case to speculate about motives and details of the crime. (Take your speculations to be fact.)

Has anyone ever been legally burned at the stake in Delaware?

4 The Forties “Crimes of all types are on the increase throughout the country, and crimes of a vicious nature have increased perceptibly. This is a reaction which was not unexpected. History records that crime has increased during the period of reconversion following every major war.” Colonel Paul Haviland, 1945 Annual Report.

RECOLLECTIONS Charles Hughes served with the Delaware State Police from December 1, 1942 until December 1, 1962. His recollections here are from an interview conducted on June 25, 2001.

“We were down to sixty-seven when I was appointed. Troopers were being drafted like everyone else.

“I was one of three troopers who had children and I was sent up to the Philadelphia area, Camden, New Jersey, for examination and the Marine Corps picked me and told me to get my house in order within thirty days. I came back and notified the Department, gave up my house on Scott Street in Wilmington, and moved in with my father-in-law and mother-in-law out at McDaniel Crest in Talleyville. That’s where we stayed with the baby until the Governor arranged for a waiver and after that all of us got waivers.

“Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better had I gone to the military rather than stayed here, but I have no axe to grind.

“We had to make up for the lost men.

(Eventually) they closed the Penny Hill Station and the Bridgeville Station for lack of manpower. Up North, we consolidated with State Road. When I went out on my shift I was the police department from the Wilmington City line to Duck Creek in Smyrna and from the Bay to pretty far inland.

“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds though because we were at war and once the people got home from the shipyards and the ammunition plant at Elkton we didn’t have anything on the road. If I’d stop a truck it better have a bill of lading for military goods or some other good reason to be on the road or he wouldn’t go any further, those were our orders. Gasoline was rationed and all the highway signs and lights were out except for traffic lights. I

was glad to stop a truck at four o’clock in the morning, just to talk to someone.”

In the first two years of the war decade the department experienced the same steady progress it had seen in the thirties. In November of 1940 permission was granted by the Highway Commission to work with the Delaware Safety Council to conduct driver education programs in the schools. An electric keypunch machine was acquired in April 1941 for accident data analysis and two new divisions were formed in 1940. The Bureau of Accident Prevention and Traffic Control was established, and two men from each station were assigned to The Investigation Division.

WORLD WAR II When the President declared war on the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941 life in the United States changed dramatically. In his annual report for 1942 Captain Elderkin, the department’s commanding officer and former motorcycle patrolman, revealed how keenly he felt the change when he claimed that the war “opened the scene on what proved to be the most unusual and revolutionary year in the history of the State Police organization. Criminal investigation and identification work increased tremendously (the Bureau of Identification began fingerprinting defense plant employees in 1941) while traffic enforcement decreased by one-third, a personnel recruitment and in-training program was initiated, a driver improvement program was established, and the radio communication system was completely modernized. Some of these factors were a result of the war conditions and others were accomplished in spite of the war.”

Seven women joined the force in 1943 to assist with records and other clerical duties and members who reached retirement age were asked to stay on.

These measures helped overcome the manpower shortage somewhat but they were largely offset by new duties that fell upon the State Police as the war continued. For example, additional investigations were carried out for the FBI and Army and Navy Intelligence, and in 1944, the State Police took over maintenance of the air raid warning system throughout the State.

It was in 1944 that officers became “Troopers” rather than privates. This too was due to the war and the fact that there were so many Army and Marine privates in the State.

Before the end of the war Paul Haviland left his post as head of the FBI office in Dover to become State Police Superintendent. In his annual report for 1945 he attributed the low traffic accident numbers to “the war, gas rationing, and the psychology of the American people.” He cited statistics for 1945 to prove the point. “During the first six-month period when the war was being fought with full vigor, when gas rationing was in full effect, and when conservation of gasoline and automotive equipment was very essential only twenty-two persons were killed. During the last six month period forty-one persons were killed, indicating that approximately 64 per cent (sic) of the fatalities occurred after V-J Day and the cessation of gas rationing.” Haviland addressed crime in the 1945 report also writing, “now that the world conflict has ended, law enforcement is faced with new problems. Crimes of all types are on the increase throughout the country, and crimes of a vicious nature have increased perceptibly. This is a reaction which was not unexpected. History records that crime has increased during the period of reconversion following every major war. As present conditions were expected, plans which had been previously formulated by the Delaware State Police to combat this menace to public safety, have been put into effect. Vigilance in this respect has been rewarded; crime increased 8.5 per cent in rural areas throughout the United States during the year 1945

yet rural Delaware shows a decrease of 21.4 per cent for the same period.”

The modernization of the communication system Captain Elderkin referred to in his report was the switch from AM equipment to FM. Five stations and thirty-five mobile transmitters were placed in operation permitting station to station, station to car, car to station and car to car communication. The new equipment greatly enhanced the department’s capabilities, but Charles Hughes’ recollection of the old flag system points out something that was lost.

THE PASSING OF THE FLAG SYSTEM AND THE MOTORCYCLE “None of us on motorcycles had radios so we communicated with the Department in those days through the Flag System. They had a flag at the Naamans Tea House going north, before you went under the underpass at Philadelphia Pike, and if they wanted you, they’d put the white flag out. You knew to stop and call the Station. ‘Two – Eight’ was the number those days. It wasn’t hard to remember.

“I had a route I rode everyday and places on the route had flags. Out on Kennett Pike at Bert Mathewson’s Garage, at Breck’s Lane they had one on each side of the road. In Greenville they kept one at Seal’s Lumber next to the Post Office. Mary Conner was the postmistress. Up in Hockessin, Old Man Antoine might have one out. If anyone had a problem, they’d call the station and then the station would call one of the places with a flag and tell them to put it out and then I’d know to stop and call the station.

“All these people were our eyes and our ears. I could stop at any of those places and tell them I was looking for someone and they usually knew something. We had a murderer one time wanted in West Virginia, and he was up in Yorklyn or Hockessin working in a mushroom house and that’s how they found him. We had to work with the people and that way they got confidence in you.

Worst thing that ever happened was when they put air conditioning in the cars. That kept the windows up.” The Forties saw the phasing out of the motorcycle as the department’s patrol vehicle. The

The Forties

advantages of the automobile are obvious and by the end of the decade the motorcycle was relegated to ceremonial duties only. Despite exposure to the elements and the inherent dangers in riding a motorcycle eight hours a day, Hughes warmly remembered his time on “the wheel”.

“We all took turns in patrol cars in bad weather.

In good weather we were on Indian motorcycles and I didn’t mind it. I’d worked for Indian so I knew a little bit about motorcycles. They made them down there on Commerce St. in Wilmington. I tested the new models and did some hill climbs up at Reading, Pennsylvania so that really helped me when I started working with the State Police.

“I preferred the motorcycle because I could avoid an accident with a motorcycle much better than I could with a car. But if you had a skidding accident with a motorcycle the Superintendent would want to know if you’d torn your breeches. He didn’t ask about you. We were issued the motorcycle just like your uniform and pistol. It was your responsibility and you better keep it clean.”

The “in-training” program Captain Elderkin mentioned in his report was a formal apprenticeship for new policemen. It included on the job training in various aspects of the job. Hughes was one of the first to be hired and trained under the program. His description of his indoctrination when the department was desperate for men was brief.

19

“We didn’t have a recruit school. When I joined in December of 1942 we were at war. I took an oath at four o’clock in the afternoon at the Magistrate’s Office and went to work right then. I rode with another man. The next day I went into Mullin’s and got measured for my uniform. They were very good. They made sure it fit. They had a lot of pride and they were very glad to have the job.”

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FORTIES There were several notable developments and events between the end of the war and 1950. In the summer of 1945 an investigation of Ferris School for Boys by the Attorney General and the State Police, resulted in one arrest and a lengthy report of the conditions and “many of the acts of cruelty perpetrated by the personnel on the inmates." In September of 1946 the Charting & Drawing Division was created. Corporal John F. Herbert, a former theatrical artist and art designer was appointed director. One of his first and most important projects was a series of posters imploring motorist to drive safely.

In May of 1947, the two Troops that were closed during the war were reopened and on March 28, 1949, Winston Churchill’s twenty-eightyear-old son, Randolph was arrested on Rt. 13 at State Road for speeding.

According to the Wilmington Morning News Churchill was “caught cold going better than ninetymiles-an-hour.”

THE LONELY HEARTS MURDERS Many of the milestones of the forties were positive, but before the decade was out the acts committed by one Dover family, crimes as vicious as any envisioned by Haviland in his 1945 report, would bring national attention to Delaware and its State Police of the kind no one wants.

Inez Brennan, forty-five-years-old and a widow moved from New Jersey to a farm on Horsepond Road near Dover Air Force Base in 1948. She and her three sons, Robert, fourteen, George, eighteen, and Raymond, twenty-two, seemed like a normal family. The Brennans were friendly toward their nearest neighbors, the Everetts. Mrs. Everett was particularly impressed with the devotion the boys seemed to have for their mother and the concern and love she clearly had for them. When the State Police took the Brennans away on April 15, 1949 Mrs.

Everett had no idea why. When the facts became known her wonder became shock.

Mrs. Brennan had been writing to and receiving letters from members of so called “lonely hearts clubs”. Ads for such clubs in the back of romance and adventure magazines invited readers to contact each other for the purpose of marriage. Mrs. Brennan wasn’t interested in romance, rather she preyed upon the men who responded to her letters and she used her sons to commit the acts that would make her family the most infamous in Delaware history.

Wade Wooldridge, a seventy-year-old carpenter from Stone Mountain, Virginia arrived at the Brennan farm on October 10, 1948. He’d already forwarded farm and carpentry tools and he came with a considerable amount of cash, so apparently he was prepared to stay with Mrs. Brennan and her sons.

After supper Wooldridge was given a tour of the farm and as he climbed into the barn’s loft Bobby shot him in the head with his twelve gauge, single barrel shotgun. The next day Bobby and Ray buried Wooldridge in the pigsty.

The following January Bobby and his mother visited another “lonely heart”, Hugo Schultz of Concord, New Hampshire. Mr. Schultz was sixtyone-years-old and he lived by himself on a farm.

Although he’d never seen Mrs. Brennan, her letters made a sufficient impression for him to tell his neighbors he was going to marry her. Mrs. Brennan tried to poison Schultz, first with sleeping pills in his food and the next day with rat poison in his soup. Apparently Hugo was of a strong constitution because the pills and poison had little effect. Having failed to dispose of her victim with poison Mrs. Brennan told her son to load the shotgun Schultz had given him as a present and kill him when she and Schultz returned from an outing. In his original confession, Bobby said he couldn’t do it and his mother was actually the one who shot Hugo Schultz. Later he changed his story and said he was the one who pulled the trigger. Mother and son put

The Forties

the body in a fifty-gallon steel drum and then went about selling Schultz’ chickens, tools and some of his household furnishings. George drove up from Delaware in the family’s pick-up and returned home with his mother and brother, and the body, in Schultz’ truck. Once home they buried Schultz in the pigsty next to Wooldridge and sold the stolen truck to one of their neighbors.

The Brennans were as stupid as they were ruthless. Since they’d made no attempt at hiding

21

their identities or covering their tracks it was almost inevitable that they would be caught. Friends and relatives of the slain men knew where to look for them and as soon as the State Police questioned Bobby he confessed. After a few days Mrs. Brennan admitted her guilt as well, and both she and her son were ultimately convicted of what became known as “The Lonely Heart Murders”. Both received long sentences and both were eventually paroled, Bobby in 1959 and his mother in 1964.

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 4 In what year did the State Police first conduct driver education classes in schools? With what organization did the Highway Department cooperate in the training?

In what year did the State Police first employ women?

What was the “flag system”? What was the technological development that made the flag system obsolete?

5 Their Finest Hour “Do you think I’ll ever let my little girl go to school with Negroes? I certainly will not,” she, “never would attend school with Negroes, as long as there is gunpowder to burn.” Bryant Bowles, Director of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, speaking at rallies in Harrington and Lincoln, Delaware, September 26, 1954.

Thomas Jefferson believed strongly that the living generations were responsible for themselves. He said, "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion." He surely was exaggerating to suggest that rebellion should be necessary so often, but his statement was a clear admission that he and the others of his and Franklin’s generations had formed a union of states with imperfect societies. The founders were aware of the imperfections in the union they’d formed and they realized it would be up to those who followed to hold on to their freedom and right past wrongs.

In the nineteen fifties Delawareans descended from Africans bravely rebelled. In Claymont, Wilmington, Hockessin, Dover and most notably in Milford, they did so as they walked through doors that had previously been closed to them, and through crowds that threatened them. If it weren’t for the reasoned rulings of Delaware’s judiciary and the protection of the State Police, the brave acts of the rebels might have ended in tragedy rather than victory.

For much of Delaware’s history, whites and people of color were strictly segregated from each other in public. World War II and the defeat of the Nazis was a catalyst for change. The discovery of Hitler’s death camps and the detailed disclosure of Germany’s policies of racial hatred during the Nuremberg trials made many Americans ashamed of discrimination in their hometowns.

In 1945 blacks throughout the state voted as freely as whites. Libraries, busses and trains served all races but restaurants, theaters, schools and most churches were segregated. Schools first began to integrate through their sports programs, which isn’t surprising. In 1943 Wilmington Friends School played Howard High, a black school, in basketball.

Salesianum, the high school operated by the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales followed, as did many of the nearby public schools.

DELAWARE’S JUDICIARY RULES ON SEGREGATION The University of Delaware in Newark led the way toward integrating public schools in Delaware and Delaware’s courts actually led the nation.

In 1948 the University admitted blacks to all courses and curricula not provided by Delaware State College in Dover, an institution founded in 1891 to educate blacks. This in itself was recognition of the disparity between the two colleges and an invalidation of the “separate but equal” premise that made segregation at least legally acceptable. In 1950 Collins J. Sietz ruled from the bench in Delaware’s Chancery Court that educational opportunities at Delaware State were not equal to those at the University. As a result of Seitz’ decision the University began to admit blacks without restriction. In 1953 Chancellor Sietz came to a similar conclusion in cases dealing with public schools in Hockessin and Claymont.

OTHERS OBEY THE COURT Delaware remained in the Union during the Civil War, but hundreds of her sons fought for the Confederacy. There has always been rural versus urban and north versus south divisions in the state, and it may have been because of Delaware’s historical dichotomy that integration got off to a fairly smooth start in the school districts in northern Delaware. In the fall of 1954 Dover and Milford, the two largest cities south of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, also opened their high schools to black children.

The transition went as well in Dover as it had further north but soon after eleven black students

arrived for classes at Milford High School in September of 1954, just four months after The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, there were very serious problems.

Fortunately, for Milford and the United States, the Pennsylvania model for a politically independent police force had been maintained in Delaware. In the days that followed, the Delaware State Police would be a highly visible and very important factor in a series of events that received worldwide attention.

CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE After the Supreme Court’s decision, public school integration and racism in general was on the minds of many. Because of the legal efforts of men like Louis Redding and Thurgood Marshall, it was the subject of newspaper and magazine commentaries, television programs, public debate and private discussion.

Other events and issues of 1954 included peace negotiations in Korea, the defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, and the restoration of the throne of Iran to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In 1954 Dr. Roger Bannister, an Englishman ran a mile in under four minutes. Willie Mays was twentythree years old and he batted .345 while leading the New York Giants to a World Series victory. Grace Kelly and Marlon Brando won Academy Awards and Bruce Catton won the Pulitzer Prize for his Civil War history, A Stillness At Appomattox. All of these, including the monumental issues of racism and equal protection under the law, were overshadowed by the very real possibility of annihilation from Soviet missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

Senator Joseph McCarthy’s televised hearings were held in 1954. In them he loudly accused men and women from many walks of American society of un-American activities. The floor of the United States Senate gave McCarthy a stage that added credibility to his accusations. So did the actions and statements of America’s actual enemies, among them Stalin’s successor, Georgi Malenkov and China’s Mao Tse Tung. For the most part, Communist dispersions were ignored, but America

was vulnerable to the dictator’s contention that ours was a deeply racist society.

Current events add perspective and therefore insight into the minds of those who were in Milford in September of 1954. History offers even more.

Much of the debate of racism and integration in Kent and Sussex Counties was among men and women whose parents and grandparents were veterans of the Civil War. Delaware was in the Union but hundreds of Delawareans fought for the Confederacy. As the first to ratify the United States Constitution, Delaware is “The First State” but it was also a slave state. In fact it was one of only two states and one territory that hadn’t ended slavery before the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in December of 1865.

The record sheds light on why Chancellor Seitz found black education in Delaware so lacking.

Before emancipation there was no public education of blacks in Delaware. At the end of the Civil War there were seven schools in Delaware for black children operated by religious and charitable societies and the combined enrollment was 250 students. This was among a black population of 22,000.

William Hilles, a Wilmington businessman and a Quaker, founded the Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement and Education of the Colored People in 1866. Friends societies in England and local philanthropists contributed to the Association and fifteen schools were built, enough for 700 students. In the final few years of the 1860s many of these schools in Kent and Sussex Counties were burned. Such actions were expected. Insurance providers refused to offer coverage even at twentyfive per cent of the value of the buildings. Insurers knew the temperament of their undereducated, rural, white neighbors who would have to compete with educated blacks. Although the government didn’t condone arson, the State’s official policy on black education was negative. In January of 1866, the State Legislature issued a statement that addressed the basis of their policy: . . . the immutable laws of God have affixed upon the brow of the white races the ineffacable stamp of superiority, and that all attempts to elevate the Negro to a social and political equality of the white man is futile and subversive of the ends and aim for which the American government was established, and contrary to the doctrines and teachings of the Father of the Republic.

Their Finest Hour

It wasn’t until 1875 that the Legislature even allowed blacks to pay property taxes to fund the education of their children, and it wasn’t until 1881 that the State Treasury contributed any funds to black education. The meager tax base was better than none and school construction proceeded at an accelerated rate. By 1886 there were over seventy schools for blacks throughout Delaware, evenly distributed throughout the three counties, but many were inferior structures and some were just one room shacks. A typical teacher’s salary was ten dollars per month and the average school session for black students was a little over four months while white schools were open for over eight months per year. Delaware State College operated one of two black high schools that existed in the State at the end of World War I. The other was Howard High School in Wilmington.

Private funding was once again behind the next major advance in black education in Delaware. In the twenties Pierre S. du Pont provided five million dollars and eighty-six new schools for AfricanAmericans were built. Mr. du Pont’s gift, originally offered in 1917, was initially rejected because of the reasonable reforms he insisted be attached to it. First was modification of the school code that had been in effect since 1875 to relieve the unfair tax burden placed on black property owners. Because there were so few of them their rates were typically three times greater than those of whites. Other conditions du Pont placed on granting of the gift were adequate staff and maintenance support for the new schools and equalization of teacher’s salaries. Lawmakers from Kent and Sussex had little interest in the issue but ultimately du Pont’s grant was accepted and the reforms enacted.

LOUIS REDDING AND THURGOOD MARSHALL Louis Redding, a graduate of Brown University and Harvard law school, was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1929. For the next twenty years he would represent African-Americas all over the state and for the entire period he would be Delaware’s only black lawyer. He was a key figure in Milford and elsewhere, in many ways.

25

After being denied admission to the Law School at the University of Maryland because of his color, Thurgood Marshall attended the Howard University Law School. Upon graduation in 1933 Marshall performed legal work for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1936 Donald Murray brought suit against the University of Maryland Law School for the same form of discrimination Marshall had suffered. The NAACP through its Legal Defense Education Fund assisted Murray, and Marshall argued the case before the Maryland Supreme Court. The court accepted Marshal’s argument against the laws known as “Jim Crow”, and it was the first victory in the battle against segregation of publicly funded schools in America.

BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS By the time the U.S. Supreme Court took the issue under consideration in 1952, there had been many challenges to segregation in courts throughout the country. The NAACP and Thurgood Marshall were deeply involved in many of them. The High Court agreed to hear cases from the District of Columbia and four states: Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, and since all dealt with the same issue they were consolidated under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

In all the cases the plaintiffs were black children seeking admission to white schools. The cases from D.C., Kansas, South Carolina and Virginia came on appeal from the plaintiffs who were denied the relief they sought by U.S. District Courts. Delaware’s case was the only one of the four that ended in favor of the plaintiffs and it made its way to Washington through the Delaware Supreme Court via a writ of certiorari, not an appeal. It was the case that started in the Court of Chancery where Collins Sietz ruled (as Chief Justice Warren quoted in his opinion) “that segregation itself results in an inferior education for Negro children.”

The implications of the Court’s position, issued in May of 1954, were stunning. Chief Justice Warren wrote the opinion on the case. On education he wrote:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right, which must be made available to all on equal term.

He also wrote about the likely affects of segregation on children: To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:

tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

In the portion of the opinion which has had profound effects on nearly every state, thousands of communities and millions of Americans he wrote: We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Louis Redding and Thurgood Marshall together argued Delaware’s portion of the case before America’s highest court. Redding was driving to New York when he heard the news of the ruling on the radio. Realizing what his work and his faith had accomplished he was overcome with emotion and had to stop driving until the flow of tears ceased.

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children.

The impact is THE SITUATION greater when it IN MILFORD has the sanction BENJAMIN BANNEKER SCHOOL, MILFORD, DELAWARE In the thirties and of the law, for forties blacks in the policy of separating the races is usually Milford in first through eighth grades attended the interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Benjamin Banneker School. If they went on to high Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the school, which many didn’t, they attended the school motivation of a child to learn. Segregation on the campus of Delaware State College in Dover, with the sanction of law, therefore, has a twenty-three miles north. In 1950 another high

Their Finest Hour

school for blacks was built in Georgetown, seventeen miles southwest. Whites in Milford went to Milford High School on Lake View Avenue in the middle of town. After the Supreme Court ruling, black parents believed the long bus rides their children had endured in previous years might no longer be required. Some may have even hoped the racism they themselves had endured might be ending as well. Parents, along with black community leaders and the ever present Louis Redding, pressured the Milford School Board to implement integration.

On July 12, 1954 the board met and discussed the State Board of Education desegregation policies and other matters. At their meeting on August 9, it was decided a committee to include members of civic and religious groups should be formed to help formulate a process for the eventual integration of Milford’s schools. Pressure from the black community began to build. Some members of the board realized their situation was different than Wilmington’s and Dover’s, but on August 13 they agreed to allow black students entering the tenth grade to enroll in the Lake View Avenue School. No notice was given of the change and many parents were not aware of it until their children returned from the first few days of school and told them.

School opened on Wednesday, September 8.

For the first week there were no problems. The children got along and none of their parents expressed any concern about the new arrangement.

Alex Glasmire, the principal, was relieved that everything was going so well. It seemed the students were far more concerned with class work and football than Supreme Court opinions or skin color. Attitudes in town changed however sometime during the first full week of classes when residents realized that blacks and whites would be together at a dance scheduled for the following Saturday, September 18. Rumors about black boys with white girls and the possibility that blacks would overrun the affair got some of the townspeople very agitated.

A meeting at the American Legion Hall attracted 1,500 people on Friday and over 800 signed a petition that expressed their objections to integration. These numbers are a strong testament to the importance of the issue considering Milford’s population at the time was 5,700.

The school board met on Sunday, September 19. Because of the tension in town they decided to

27

close school for one day in order to hold an open meeting at which they could explain the board’s position. Hundreds attended the meeting on Monday afternoon and the atmosphere was heated. After the public meeting the board met again in the shop building behind the school. They decided to ask Reverend Randolph Fisher, the black Methodist Minister who was their primary contact with the black community, to ask the parents of the eleven black students to keep them home until the following Monday, to let things cool down.

During the Board’s discussions, residents pounded the windows and shouted. Finally one of the board members went outside and told the protestors that guidance would be sought from the Governor, J. Caleb Boggs. The board was in a very difficult position and they wanted guidance, and hopefully support, from the state’s chief executive on two fundamental questions. First they wanted to know if the board acted within their authority when they opened Milford High School to black students.

They also asked if they would be legally liable if they decided to return to segregation. The first question should have been asked sooner and the fact that it wasn’t reveals how ill prepared the board was.

At this point the board was responding to events. At 11 P.M. the school district’s superintendent, Dr. Cobbs, delivered a news release to WKSB, the local radio station. It announced that school would reopen the following day and the black students would return to school the following week. Integration would remain the Board’s policy.

Board members received threatening and vicious telephone calls at their homes that night. They responded by having Dr. Cobbs release this statement at 1 A.M.: The members of the Milford Board of Education, since they made their announcement of the 11 o’clock news broadcast, have received numerous calls threatening violence in case any Negro children attend the Milford schools today. In the interest of the safety of all children, the Milford Board of Education has announced Milford schools will be closed until further notice.

On Tuesday higher authorities got involved.

Governor Boggs asked Delaware’s Attorney General, H. Albert Young, to offer his opinion.

Young told the board they had acted properly in admitting the black students to Milford High. The rulings by Chancellor Sietz and the Delaware Supreme Court were clear and the United States Supreme Court upheld them.

Thursday the State Board of Education met.

They decided that classes in Milford would resume under the supervision of the State Department of Public Instruction Superintendent, Dr. George Miller and the State Board of Education. They further directed that the black students should remain enrolled. They also criticized the Milford Board for not submitting their integration plan to the State Board sooner and withheld their approval of the plan the Milford Board submitted on September 10.

One of the Milford board members had resigned the Monday before. The remaining three resigned after the State Board issued their judgement. Howard Lynch, Milford’s attorney, reported the Board’s reasons: Since the state board has not seen fit to approve or disapprove their (Milford Board of Education) action, they do not wish to continue in their position. They feel that they are too close to the situation to accept responsibility of opening the Milford School Monday with Negroes attending without the full backing of the state board.

By “too close to the situation” they meant figuratively and literally and the responsibilities they mentioned included their own safety and their family’s. At this point, if they could see beyond their own predicaments, they surely realized the bravery the eleven black students and their parents possessed.

Governor Boggs chose not to take a position on integration. He did however ask for “calmness” and insisted that “no disorders, threats, or violence take place.” The final words of his statement, published in the Delaware State News on Saturday the twentyfifth said, “I must say frankly that law and order will be preserved under the law and the American way.”

BRYANT BOWLES A professional con man and agitator saw an opportunity in Milford. On Sunday, the day after

Governor Boggs’ statement calling for order was published, and the day before school was to reopen, Bryant Bowles dramatically appeared.

His con relied on emotion, both noble and base, those motivated by a parent’s concern for their children as well as the destructive impulses of fear, prejudice and anger. To maximize the con’s return, it included drama. Timing was also crucial, as was disregard for the consequences.

It began with the flight of four small airplanes over Kent and Sussex Counties on Sunday morning.

Loudspeakers attached to the aircraft called to people leaving church and otherwise going about their business to attend a rally at the Harrington Airport. The blaring messages urged everyone with a stake in “keeping segregation as it always has been in Delaware” to attend.

That afternoon between two and five thousand people went to the airport to hear Bowles, the thirtyfour-year-old founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People. The State Police were there too. The traffic was so heavy police were needed to direct the traffic and since they would be employed the following day to carry out Governor Boggs’ order they gained intelligence regarding the numbers of people they might encounter and their likely temperament.

Their Finest Hour

29

Bowles took full advantage of the situation to arouse his listeners by holding up his own threeyear-old daughter before them and crying out, “Do you think I’ll ever let my little girl go to school with Negroes? I certainly will not.” To prolong the situation and increase its volatility Bowles called for

The crowds at the N.A.A.W.P. rallies let their fear and instincts guide them and that was exactly what Bowles wanted. Once aroused, the opportunity to join Bowles’ organization was always offered, at five dollars per membership. He also collected money by passing around peach baskets in which

a school boycott. Other speakers took their turns, and one, an older man who identified himself as the mayor of Cedar Neck said, “If we keep our children home from school maybe somebody’ll do something about this situation. Anyone who joins forces with the other race is a traitor to his race.”

Bowles also said, “if we use violence we will never win.” But at another meeting later that evening at the Lincoln crossroads on Rt. 113 he once again referred to his little daughter and said she, “never would attend school with Negroes, as long as there is gunpowder to burn.” This remark elicited a long applause by the crowd of 1000.

Bowles aroused the crowd with debasing appeals saying, “The Negro will never be satisfied until he moves into the front bedroom of the white man’s home.” Some took the bait. One female speaker said, “. . . they’re after our girls, that’s all. It isn’t the schools so much, it’s what they’re leading up too.”

people dropped five, ten and even fifty-dollar bills.

Bowles told one Life Magazine reporter he’d raised $3,510 in one week, this from frugal farmers and other working class men and women.

For a man to profit through incitement to violence is contemptible. To do so over such an issue when the safety of children and the welfare of a society are at stake is beyond contempt.

While ambassador to France during the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin managed funds collected for the relief of American prisoners being kept under horrible conditions in English prisons.

When he learned that America’s agent in England stole from each man’s account every week he said, “We have no name in our language for such atrocious wickedness. If such a fellow is not damned, it is not worthwhile to keep a devil.” Our language still lacks for words to describe Bowles’ brand of wickedness.

A CRUCIAL MISSION After Governor Boggs promised order, Colonel Harry Shew, superintendent of the Delaware State Police, was asked about his preparations. He simply said, “We’ll be ready for anything.”

The crowd began to gather in front of the school on Lake Avenue early Monday morning. By the time the first busses arrived there were 500 people on the sidewalks in front of the school. As empty and near empty busses pulled up, the crowd cheered.

Reporters from the New York Times, Time Magazine, Life and U.S. News and World Report were there. Icons of journalism, John Cameron Swayze and Edward R. Murrow interviewed the mayor of Milford and the black families embroiled in the crisis.

With the country watching, fifteen State Troopers and seven Milford City policemen under the command of Major Frederick Lamb, unarmed and without riot gear or any crowd control equipment, maintained order. Their presence and their authority was all that was needed to keep the large crowd calm. When the black students arrived, two on a bus and eight in a private car escorted front and rear by police cars, the crowd was quiet. The cordon of policeman tightened as the black children approached the school and walked through the door, held open by a Delaware State Trooper.

The white boycott was successful. Less than one-third of the 1,562 enrolled students came to school on Monday, September 27, and the segregationists enjoyed other successes that day and in the tense weeks, months and years that followed.

Disruptions and threats continued after the black students returned to Milford High on the twenty-seventh. The boycott spread to four other Sussex County schools. In Millsboro, Ellendale, Gumboro and Lincoln school attendance on September 29 was between 3 per cent and 14 per cent. All schools in those districts closed by Friday.

The families of children who did not honor the boycotts received telephone threats and children were threatened and insulted as they walked to school. Young white men with shotguns and rifles rode in the back of pick-up trucks through black neighborhoods. A cross was burned within view of the high school and another was burned near Banneker School.

A new school board was formed and on September 30 they announced that they would return to a segregated system. Their statement said that it was “. . . in the interest of the welfare of the

children and the community as a whole, to remove the eleven Negro students from the enrollment records of the Milford School, effective 3:10 P.M. September 30, 1954. The school assignment and necessary transportation of these children shall be the responsibility of the State Board of Education.”

Louis Redding continued to work on the case and the citizens of Sussex and Kent Counties had to live with the consequences of what had happened.

Those consequences were significant. In April of 1955 the nationally circulated women’s magazine, Redbook, carried an article on the affair in Milford entitled, “The Town that Surrendered to Hate.”

The overwhelming majority of residents in Kent and Sussex Counties opposed integration.

Only candidates committed to segregation would win school board seats in Milford for over a decade.

Unofficial and non-binding referenda were held in fourteen downstate communities two weeks after the general election in 1954. They were sponsored by individuals with segregationist leanings, but without ties to segregationist groups. In answer to the question, ‘Do you favor school integration?’ only 115 ballots of the 10,167 cast said yes. Despite this disparity school districts in lower Delaware proceeded toward integration. In 1962, just eight years after the cross burnings and death threats black students once again walked through the doors of Milford High School for class. In 1962 state troopers didn’t have to open them. The students opened the doors themselves.

Integration was a reality in all of Delaware’s schools by the mid-sixties and according to the federal civil rights office, Delaware was the first border or southern state to be in full compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The city policemen, the state troopers and their commander were members of the community they stood before on that Monday in September of 1954.

Most were born and raised in Kent and Sussex Counties. All the blacks their fathers knew might have been illiterate and shunned. Their grandfathers could have owned slaves. Most were probably against integration just like their neighbors.

Fortunately, none of that was as important to them as their duty. Their commanders did their duty too and they did so with near perfect understanding of their circumstances. The results attest to that, an astounding outcome that was tremendously important. Astounding because despite incitement, and the passion of thousands of people over a highly charged and personal issue, no one was hurt.

Weapons weren’t displayed much less drawn. Hands

Their Finest Hour

weren’t even raised in anger. There wasn’t a single act of actual violence over the affair from the time it started until the present. The actions and success of the police were tremendously important. Those immensely brave black children and their parents led the way. Their names were withheld and today they are practically unknown. But they are not anonymous. They are on record in the courts. Louis Redding and Thurgood Marshal knew their names.

They preceded Rosa Parks and inspired Martin Luther King. He knew what they did. They were Jefferson’s Rebels. Milford Policemen and State Troopers protected them, so in Delaware, their stand for freedom could end in victory.

31

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 5 What did Thomas Jefferson mean when he said, “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing”?

In the opinion he wrote for Brown vs. Board of Education, what function of state and local government did Chief Justice Warren say was perhaps the most important?

Among the cases that were grouped together in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, how was Delaware’s unique?

Fill in the blanks from Chief Justice Warren’s landmark opinion: We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place.

Separate educational facilities are _______________ unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the _______________ ___________________ of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Two black attorneys argued Delaware’s portion of the case before America’s highest court. One was Thurgood Marshall. Who was the Delaware lawyer who argued the case with Marshall?

Pretend you are a writer for Time Magazine and a witness to the events in Milford on September 27, 1954.

Write a description of what occurred and use what you know of the events of the previous two months and the history of black education in Delaware in your article.

Possible outline for the article Synopsis of black education in Sussex County prior to 1954 Post Civil War Pierre du Pont’s efforts Black schools in the fifties Supreme Court case Milford school board’s actions during the summer of 1954 The events of September including the arrival of Bryant Bowles The scene at the Lake Avenue school on September 27 Who issued a statement on the weekend before September 27 that said, “I must say frankly that law and order will be preserved under the law and the American way”?

Why do you suppose the author chose “Their Finest Hour” as the title for this section?

6 Trial by Fire “A fuse of destruction has been set off . . . The loss of this great martyr, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, disturbs the mood and philosophies of the entire world.” Roy Wagstaff, president of the Wilmington Branch, NAACP “The Attorney General, Dave Buckson, talked to us and told us we had to get this thing under control. The city was out of control and if order was to be restored, we would have to do it. We went in, four men to a car so it was a long, unbroken line of State Police cruisers all the way down Rt. 13, with lights on headed into town and it was on fire. It was an amazing site, that long line of cars and lights as far as you could see. And they were burning blocks. As we drove in, there were big clouds of black smoke over the city.” Captain Bill Clark.

The nineteen-fifties, in Delaware and the rest of America, were years of prosperity and promise.

There are parallels with the twenties. Both decades were preceded by tremendous wars, won by America and her allies. Economic growth and the standard of living during both periods rose steadily and during both decades the world benefited from the commercialization of communications technologies, radio in the twenties and television in the fifties. The Depression and war delayed the promise of the twenties. The optimism of the fifties was not unrealistic but it was nearly devastated by the turmoil of the decade that followed, a period that presented a great challenge to American society and law enforcement.

RIOTS IN 1965 AND 1966 The plight of America’s poor, specifically the descendents of slaves, became critically important in the sixties. Although capitalism was providing a very high standard of living for most Americans there were pockets of abject poverty, most visibly in the black ghettos of major urban centers. There, the living conditions for millions of Americans were poor. Their frustrations were compounded every evening as they saw on television how others were better off. Although they were encouraged by the progress made by Martin Luther King, Jr., without violence, toward voting rights and integration they heard a new voice, called black militancy, tell them King’s approach was too slow. It told them to fight.

They also saw the Viet Nam war on their televisions, a graphic portrayal of violence, the

political act of last resort. The militants claimed the war was a verification of the path they advocated.

Even some middle and upper class Americans began to strongly question capitalism and its first reward, materialism, and their doubts produced what came to be called the counterculture.

Through all the reevaluation, institutions at the heart of society, such as law enforcement, industry and even marriage came under question. Most Americans were beneficiaries of capitalism. For those with successful lives, the questions weren’t disturbing. For some, however, the answer was rejection.

It started in Watts, the huge black ghetto, in southeast Los Angeles on August 11, 1965 when a white policeman stopped a black motorist on a main thoroughfare. The motorist, who had been drinking, resisted arrest and people gathered, much like moths to a flame. Within an hour the crowd had grown to 1000. That night, groups of young black men attacked whites, pulling them from their cars and beating them. The next night the looting and destruction spread and the call “burn baby burn”, coined by a local radio host, could be heard. The National Guard arrived on the morning of the fourth day. Martin Luther King was there, calling for peace, and his presence probably helped. Their actions and those of their neighbors shamed many, but thousands of others joined in the mayhem. By the time it was over, thirty-four people had been killed. Over a thousand were injured, 977 buildings damaged, and there were 4000 arrests. Riots

occurred in two other cities that year, Chicago and Americus, Georgia.

The following year there were riots in San Francisco, Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, Grenada, Alabama, and Portland, Oregon. Eight people died in the riots of 1966.

Many reasons have been cited for the riots of the sixties, poverty, discrimination, racial hatred, and oppression among them. The first California State commission that looked into the causes of the Watts riot, The McCone Commission, concluded the riots were largely due to a rapid population increase and unrealistic expectations by the new arrivals.

Others believed that explanation was too simplistic.

High jobless rates, poor housing and bad schools were among the persistent hardships of those who had recently arrived as well as long time residents.

THE MIXED MESSAGE One problem the black population and the country’s elected officials faced was the fragmentation of the black leadership and the multitude of messages they delivered. Dr. King, whose influences were Christianity and Ghandi, promoted a peaceful, methodical approach to inclusion. Black Muslims preached a doctrine that included scraps of the Muslim Faith as written in the Koran, but was racist at its core with a central belief that the white race is a devilish and degenerate offspring of black ancestors. Followers were told to prepare for the destruction of the whites and an era of black supremacy. Malcolm X adhered to the doctrine until his pilgrimage to Mecca and exposure to truer aspects of the faith. Afterward he promoted separate economic and political development of blacks and peaceful coexistence with whites. Huey Newton and the Black Panthers openly promoted violent revolution. Stokely Carmichael, responsible for popularization of the term “Black Power”, went to North Vietnam and delivered a speech to their legislature stating that black Americans were in solidarity with the communists in their war with America. He was one of the most strident promoters of revolution.

The riots were interpreted by many, particularly the revolutionists, as political expressions, even though no one but the perpetrator of violence knows what motivates him.

Socioeconomic conditions certainly were a factor, but the typical initiator of the riots, a young and restless black man was an opportunist and more susceptible to the influence of the mob than politics

or a particular cause. Although the government was concerned with the possibility that communists or subversives were behind the disorders, there were virtually no ties between any of the rioters and organized movements or revolts.

1967 In 1967 the mayhem continued. There were riots in dozens of American cities, from Cambridge, Maryland to San Francisco. In two cities, Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, the violence resulted in scores of deaths, twenty-six in Newark and fortythree in Detroit. Thirty-three of the disorders in 1967 required intervention of state police and in eight cities the National Guard was called in. In Detroit where 1,300 buildings were destroyed and 2,700 businesses were looted, elements of U.S. Army Airborne divisions were brought in. Tanks were used on the streets and 50-caliber machine guns were fired into buildings occupied by snipers.

All this was covered extensively in the newspapers and on television. Leaders around the country knew that violence is contagious and they prepared for it in their states and communities.

Late in July, Delaware State Police public information officer, Captain F.E. Melvin said, “We get rumors all the time, but there is no doubt they’ve increased since Newark, New Jersey.” Captain Melville was referring to the riot in Newark that started on July 13. Delaware authorities were concerned Wilmington could erupt. The State Police Intelligence Unit and the Wilmington PD had been busy for months evaluating and responding to tips from informants and other intelligence.

Based on their experience and what had happened in other cities over the past two years Wilmington’s Mayor, John Babiarz, Delaware’s Governor, Charles L. Terry, Jr., and the police knew how they would react, at least initially. Quick response was critical. If the police were to keep disturbances isolated and contained it was important to break them up quickly. On July 29, while the fires in Detroit were still smoldering, their preparedness paid off.

Around 2:30 A.M. three shotgun blasts were fired from a car “full of Negroes” into a social club at Sixth and Lincoln Streets, “Little Italy”. Three men were injured. Many in and around Wilmington were prepared to defend themselves and their families, and some of the men in the club playing cards returned fire. Vehicles loaded with angry, armed Italians formed a caravan and headed toward “the Valley”, the twenty block, black neighborhood

Trial by Fire

west of Center City bordered by Washington and Adams Streets on the east and west and Fourth and Ninth Streets on the south and north.

The young men who fired into the social club couldn’t have chosen a group more likely to respond to provocation than Wilmington’s Italians. Men with rifles and shotguns waited for the invaders from Little Italy on Madison Street rooftops and in second story windows. Fortunately, the Wilmington Police knew about both groups of combatants and they intercepted the Italians at Broom Street, before they entered the field of fire in the Valley. The State Police increased patrols near the city and they were prepared to move in if the city police called them.

With no one to fight, Valley residents turned their anger on some of the homes and businesses in their own neighborhood, breaking windows and looting. The Wilmington Police acted quickly so the damage wasn’t extensive and the injuries were limited to seven gunshot wounds. The next day was Saturday. It rained heavily that night so most people stayed indoors and the disturbance ended.

Delaware’s two largest police agencies, the Wilmington Police Department and the State Police remained vigilant. The intelligence units of each continued to receive and respond to tips from neighborhood connections and informants. Extreme care had to be applied in responding to much of the information. Force has to be applied when needed, but an unnecessarily strong response can cause a minor incident to escalate. It was possible too that some informants could be setting up the police for ambush.

THE WELFARE DEMONSTRATION IN LEGISLATIVE HALL There were racial demonstrations elsewhere in Delaware the next year. On March 27, 1968 two hundred welfare recipients, mostly women and children, tried to occupy Legislative Hall in Dover to support passage of a welfare bill. Governor Terry ordered Brig. Gen. D. Preston Lee to station one hundred Delaware National Guardsmen at the Dover armory. The State Police were also called in and Captain Melvin said they, “Will, of course, be prepared to handle anything that may come up.”

When the protesters refused to leave the building at the end of the day, sixty Troopers came out of offices where they’d been cloistered to remove them. The protestors fought with the

37

Troopers and many were arrested. According to the report of the incident in the Wilmington Evening Journal, the State Police once again demonstrated superior professionalism despite insults and abuse.

“They were goaded, slandered and physically threatened by a number of the demonstrators. They did not let this interfere with the discharge of their orders, however. They maintained order calmly and firmly to their credit and to the good fortune of all Delawareans.”

THE ASSASSINATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. The week after the confrontation in Legislative Hall, Martin Luther King was in Memphis, Tennessee supporting a strike by black sanitation workers. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, at about 6 P.M. he was leaning on a rail outside his second story hotel room having a conversation with Jesse Jackson and Ben Branch, a musician from Chicago, who were standing in the parking lot below. The three were discussing the rally they were all to attend that evening and the music that Mr. Branch would play when a bullet from a high powered rifle struck Dr. King in the neck.

The Associated Press carried Jackson’s account the next day. He said, “When I looked up, the police and the sheriff’s deputies were running all around.

The bullet exploded in his face.

“We didn’t need to call the police. They were here all over the place.”

“When I turned around,” Jackson went on bitterly, “I saw police coming from everywhere.

They said, ‘Where did it come from?’ and I said ‘Behind you.’ The police were coming from where the shot came."

The Wilmington News Journal sought reaction from Delaware’s leadership. Littleton P. Mitchell, Delaware’s NAACP head said, “Without him a vacuum has been created . . . I wonder with anxiety what type of leadership will assume his position.”

Rev. Msgr. Paul J. Taggart, administrator of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, said, “Few men have been blessed by god with such gifts of vision, faith, Christian love, and leadership, and fewer have used those gifts as well as Dr. King in the service of his fellow man. His loss will be counted as one of the great tragedies of our time.”

Roy Wagstaff, president of the Wilmington Branch, NAACP, issued a statement that among

other things said, “A fuse of destruction has been set off” and, “The loss of this great martyr, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, disturbs the mood and philosophies of the entire world.”

“A fuse of destruction” had indeed been lit.

The night of King’s assassination there were riots in eighty cities. Five were killed and 350 injured in Washington, D.C. Troops were called into Washington, Baltimore and Chicago. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley ordered police to shoot to kill arsonists and to maim looters.

On Friday, the fifth of April, Stokely Charmichael, in a speech in Washington, declared white America killed King and the blacks should “take up arms and kill the real enemy.” Riots continued and spread that night. Including those from the night before there were twelve deaths nationwide. Four thousand National Guard and Army troops were sent in to Washington to assist one thousand District policemen. Snipers killed two people in Chicago.

The trouble in Wilmington that night was mild by comparison.

Four Molotov cocktails were thrown in a fiveblock area near Fourth and Orange Streets and there was some vandalism earlier in the day. Firefighters extinguished all the fires in three hours.

Other cities fared much worse over the weekend. Four people died in Baltimore and President Johnson ordered 1900 soldiers from the Eighteenth Airborne Artillery Brigade from Ft. Bragg, N.C. into the city.

THE WILMINGTON RIOT On Monday a memorial service was held on Wilmington’s Rodney Square. About 1,500 blacks and whites attended. Students from Wilmington’s four high schools, which were closed for the day, marched to the service to hear tributes from State Representative Raymond Evans and Municipal

Court Judge Leonard Williams. They delivered eulogies for Dr. King and praised the black community for not following the course of anger and destruction that other cities had suffered over the weekend. Evans addressed the political aspects of the crisis by calling for the General Assembly and the business community “to come forward and show their good will” by taking steps to improve conditions in the black community. In a sharp departure from King’s philosophy Evan’s said, “I couldn’t call on you to remain nonviolent and peaceful unless the community leadership, those who control your destiny, also show their faith in freedom and democracy by seeing that the Negro participates fully in it.” Those gathered at Rodney Square had once again received a mixed message.

Shortly before noon, some who attended the service in Rodney Square marched south on Market Street. Others joined them. Within minutes the marchers became a mob, smashing windows and looting stores.

Extra Wilmington Policemen were on duty at the time and they were able to control the crowd on Market Street, but soon violence erupted a few blocks away, in the portion of the Valley bounded by Fourth, Sixth, Madison and Washington Streets.

Disturbances subsided and started again before 7 P.M. Another lull followed, but problems arose again after eight o’clock and intensified after nine with snipers firing at police, Molotov cocktails being thrown and more looting and window smashing.

The snipers caused the most problems. In addition to the direct threat, snipers prevented police from getting to other trouble spots and once an officer began to receive fire he had to remain behind cover until other officers came to his aid. To make

Trial by Fire

matters much worse, one of the stores that was looted while the snipers were firing was Huber’s Sporting Goods in the 200 block of West Ninth Street, just four blocks away from the area where the officers were pinned down. Rifles, shotguns and ammunition were taken from Huber’s and some were thrown out in the street.

When Mayor Babiarz became aware of how the situation had deteriorated and the danger his police force was in, he called Governor Terry for help and a state of emergency was declared. Terry’s first act was to order in the State Police who were already assembled and in riot gear at Troop Two on State Road about eight miles south of the city near Rt. 13.

Bill Clark joined the force two years before. He was among fifty Troopers who had been on stand-by at Wilmington Police headquarters since the previous Friday. His group and nearly every other State Policeman were ordered to Troop Two for staging and deployment into the city.

Recalling that night he said, “Major Horney, the Field Force Commander, and a pretty astute guy, addressed the troops and gave us a pep talk, he was an ex-marine.

The Attorney General, Dave Buckson, talked to us and told us we had to get this thing under control.

The city was out of control and if order was to be restored we would have to do it. We went in, four men to a car so it was a long, unbroken line of State Police cruisers all the way down Rt. 13, with lights on headed into town and it was on fire. It was an amazing site, that long line of cars and lights as far as you could see. And they were burning blocks. As we drove in, there were big clouds of black smoke over the city.”

The State Troopers joined National Guard Troops (1,300 were ordered into the city) at the Wilmington Police Headquarters. There they formed units of between ten and fifteen soldiers, Troopers and Wilmington police officers who responded to dozens of disturbances, some involving hundreds of rioters. A first priority was to aid the policemen who were pinned down by snipers. Moving to them in small squads they were able to provide enough

39

covering fire to get them out. Another priority was to close off the area with roadblocks and armed men. With the additional support, the police and National Guard were able to contain, but not end, the violence. That night there were fifty-one arrests, twelve injuries, two by gunshot, and numerous looting incidents and fire bombings.

According to the Associated Press 61,000 National Guard and Army troops were deployed nationwide. There were 1,900 federal troops in Baltimore and 1,800 in Cincinnati where a white college teacher was pulled from his car and stabbed to death. The death toll nationwide stood at twentyeight since Thursday night, all but four were black.

There were 1,600 people injured and 10,000 arrested.

The next day, Tuesday, there were fires in Wilmington in the 500 and 600 blocks of Madison Street.

Helmeted city and state police armed with carbines, submachine guns and shotguns cordoned off a twenty-four-block section of west Center City. Snipers fired on them during one four-hour period. Fire bombs struck police cars at Twenty-fourth and Bowers and Twelfth and Thatcher. Police responded to disturbances in other parts of town including the Northeast and in the neighborhoods east of Market Street. Commuters, intent on escaping the city, created massive traffic jams.

During the previous two days twenty-four buildings burned. There were forty-four injuries and 160 arrests. Firemen and newsmen were injured.

Luckily, there were no deaths.

Skeleton crews were left at the State Police Troops across the state allowing nearly the entire force to operate with city policemen and National Guardsmen in tactical teams. Wilmington Police Chief, Paul Tidwell was in overall tactical control with Col. Charles Lamb in command of the State Troopers and the National Guard.

Motorists were attacked in many parts of the city. In one incident, passengers aboard a Delaware Coach Company bus watched as a mob attacked a small car occupied by two white women in their early twenties and two children. According to the bus driver the mob, which included women and children as young as nine, shattered the car widows and attempted to drag the women out. Appalled, the

people in the bus got out to help. The mob then turned on the bus passengers allowing the driver of the car time to start it and speed away. With the numbers equalized, the mob hurled bricks and other objects so the passengers quickly returned to the bus. Some were injured, one seriously. After waiting for an ambulance at a nearby service station, where others were trapped, the bus driver took them all directly to a hospital.

Wednesday, April 10, 1968 was relatively calm.

Besides a few isolated fires and stone throwing the Wilmington riots were over. The State Police and the National Guard stayed in Wilmington, however, until the following January, when Governor Terry left office. Terry was roundly criticized for this decision, but he believed the added security was necessary and he also claimed most of Wilmington’s residents wanted the Guard and the State Troopers to stay.

Depending on conditions and intelligence reports the number of State Troopers on duty in Wilmington varied between less than ten to over one hundred. One thing the state police did regularly was to accompany the National Guard on what came to be known as “Rat Patrols”. Named after a popular television show of the day, Rat Patrols were convoys of one police cruiser with Troopers followed by two to four Jeeps manned by Guardsmen under the command of a senior NCO. Their job was to quickly respond to fights and other trouble before it spread. Although most nights were uneventful there were cases of arson, fights and even sniping while the Rat Patrols were operating.

Issues of race continue to be of paramount importance. Thankfully the means of expression, if that’s what the riots of the sixties were, have changed. Martin Luther King and his methods of achieving lasting reform have been vindicated.

The free speech of the Militants was never impaired even when it became seditious. The institutions they objected to were stronger than many realized so the result of their protests was constructive reform, not revolution. Law enforcement throughout the country was severely tested in those years of progress and strife. The conditions at the time were extraordinary and it is a testament to the nature of the institution and its embodiment in Delaware that it performed so well.

Trial by Fire

41

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 6 What two influences on Martin Luther King, Jr. are identified in this chapter?

When and where was the phrase “burn baby burn� first heard?

List at least five major U.S. cities in which there were riots in the sixties.

How had the Wilmington Police and the State Police prepared for the disturbance in July of 1967 and the riot in April of 1968?

What was the nature of the demonstration held in Dover two weeks before the 1968 riot?

Why was Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968?

Why did Chicago Mayor Richard Daley feel justified in ordering police to shoot to kill arsonists during the riots in his city?

A memorial service for King was held in Wilmington on the morning of Monday, April 8, 1968. What is the name of the Square in which that service was held?

Write a newspaper article that describes the role of the Delaware State Police during the riots in Wilmington in April of 1968, and the period afterward when the State Police and the National Guard remained in the city.

7 The Pennell Case “Renee (Officer Lano) knew immediately that this encounter was different than any of the others. He was demanding, solemn, very angry, not upbeat at all. He ordered her to get in the van. We had a rule she not enter any vehicle so that was not an option. We didn’t know at what point the killer took control. It was possible that he struck as soon as the victim got into the van so we couldn’t take that chance.” Joe Swiski, State Police investigator.

THE FIRST VICTIM, SHIRLEY ELLIS On the evening of Thursday, November 29, 1987 a young couple wanted to be alone. They found a dark, secluded portion of an industrial park and when they were leaving, at about 9:30, they saw what they thought was a mannequin lying by the side of the road. They stopped to see what it was and discovered that it wasn’t a mannequin, but rather the lifeless body of Shirley Ellis, a young woman who, until that evening, lived with her parents in Brookmont Farms, just two miles southeast.

The first officer on the scene was a New Castle County police officer. Homicides committed where Shirley Ellis was found fall under the jurisdiction of the State Police. Troop Two personnel were notified and State Police Detectives Michael Connelly and Joseph Swiski were assigned to the case.

Detective (now Major) Swiski described the scene. “We found a partially nude female lying on her back in mud, two feet from the curb. She had injuries to her head. We noticed that the ground around her was totally undisturbed so it was apparent she was not killed there.

“Soon after we arrived it started raining heavily, so it became important to remove the body to the medical examiner’s office so it could be examined in a controlled environment. Beyond the body itself there was virtually no other evidence, no hairs or fibers or anything else that could help us.

“The autopsy the next day revealed quite a bit.

Her death was classified a torture murder, which was a first for us . . . The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head;

three hammer blows, and ligature strangulation to the neck.

“We began the investigation by learning about the victim, particularly her last forty-eight hours.

Shirley Ellis spent part of her life on the streets and there were quite a few people she could have come in contact with. . . . Miss Ellis was twenty-three years old at the time of her death, 5 feet 6 inches tall with brown hair and brown eyes. She weighed about 160 pounds.

“She had what are called classic defense wounds, bruising and lacerations to the knuckles which indicate she was striking her assailant, and bruised knees which is another indication that she had struggled.

“Our next step was to reconstruct the events of the last two days of her life. It’s a line of reasoning that says if you know what a person did and those they were with before they died, you’ll be able to determine who killed them. We found out she’d been with her family most of her last day. Relatives came over to her parent’s house for dinner and after dinner she prepared two plates of food for friends who were in the hospital, and it was her intention to visit them. Her sister, who had just received her license, took her part of the way, but since it was raining very hard she didn’t want to drive in traffic on Rt. 40. She was afraid. So Shirley told her that was no problem and she got out at the entrance to their development so she could hitchhike the rest of the way to the hospital. It was a normal way for her to get around. She was last seen at about six o’clock on the shoulder of Rt. 40 on her way to Wilmington.

“The investigation got off-track at the very beginning when the people she went to see in the hospital told us she’d visited them the night she

died. Turns out the visit they remembered took place the night before. Shirley’s mother gave us a letter Shirley wrote to her boyfriend just before she left for the hospital on Thursday, and it had information in it that helped us figure out the discrepancy. She mentioned a gift she’d taken to her friends, a rose, and her friends verified receiving it.

The letter also mentioned the food and it said she’d given them the rose the night before. After reading the note we knew her friends were mixed up.

Unfortunately, by the time Shirley’s mother found it we’d spent a few days looking for leads in the wrong place.

“With the chronology clear we looked for people who may have seen her and acquaintances who might have had a grudge or who knew someone with a reason to hurt her. We interviewed fifty people or more and got nowhere. We were even contacted by a friend of Shirley’s who had moved to Louisiana and heard about the murder and offered to come back to Delaware and resume a life on the streets to see what she could find out. She did too.

She came back and tried to find out what happened but nothing came of it.

“Unsolved homicides are never closed. When you get to the point that you’ve done all that can be done you have to stop. The case is put on the shelf and everyone tries to keep it in his or her mind until something comes up to revive the investigation.

That’s where we were with Shirley Ellis.”

CATHERINE DIMAURO FOUND On June 29, 1988, exactly seven months after Shirley Ellis’ murder, the body of another young woman was found at a residential construction site less than two miles from Ellis’ home and three miles from the industrial park where her body was discovered. Catherine DiMauro was last seen at about 11:30 P.M. the night before. She had been hitchhiking, which was her habit, and was picked up by a friend of her brother’s, who was with his girlfriend. They dropped her off at the entrance to her apartment complex. Her body was discovered at approximately 7 A.M. the next morning.

Catherine DiMauro was thirty-one years old, eight years older than Shirley Ellis. She was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 143 pounds. She had brown hair and blue eyes. Unlike Shirley Ellis, Catherine DiMauro had never engaged in prostitution or other illegal activity. The circumstances around the DiMauro and Ellis murders were very similar. From

the criminologist’s point of view they were nearly identical. Catherine’s death was also a torture murder, and the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, three hammer blows, and ligature strangulation to the neck, as was the cause of death for Miss Ellis. It was also determined the instruments used to kill the victims and to inflict the torture were similar in both cases.

Catherine DiMauro was unclothed and like Shirley Ellis, she was left at the side of the road, just a few feet from the curb. There was no evidence at the scene other than tire tracks. Tire casting impressions were taken from impressions near and around Miss DiMauro’s body.

THE SERIAL KILLER PROFILE The Fox Run residential development where Catherine DiMauro was found was under construction at the time. It’s in the jurisdiction of the New Castle County Police so they were responsible for the case. The detectives assigned, James Hedrick and Jack Reyes, were aware of the murder that had taken place seven months before. The similarities between the two were such that there was no doubt both crimes were committed by the same individual.

A serial murderer was on the loose. Hedrick contacted the State Police and from then on the two agencies worked together.

Once it is established that a crime is one of a series certain assumptions can be drawn. This is particularly true of serial murders. The most valid and valuable assumptions for the investigators have to do with behavioral and physical characteristics of the serial killer.

Major Swiski: “We discussed what we could do to enhance our chances of solving this case. Jim Hedrick had some experience with the behavioral science unit of the FBI, the profilers. Jim knew Special Agent Jim Zopp who arranged for Hedrick and I to visit the Profiling Unit office in Quantico, Virginia where we met John Douglas who was in charge of the unit. He’s the same individual who was featured in the movie, The Silence of the Lambs. He’s written a number of books on profiling as well.

“The profiler reads all the crime reports, looks at the crime scene photographs, everything the investigators have and then asks questions.

“After about an hour and a half they came to the conclusion that we were in fact dealing with a serial killer. They told us the characteristics that we

The Pennell Case would find in the man who committed the crimes. I was very impressed. They told us the killer was a white male approximately thirty-years-old. He would work in the trades. If he was involved in a relationship with a woman he would be abusive and domineering and the relationship would be problematic. He’ll drive a truck or a van or some other kind of macho vehicle, which he’ll keep very clean. If he uses alcohol or drugs it will be only to reduce his inhibitions but he will be in control during the commission of his crimes. The last two things they told us were chilling, the killer will have no remorse and if he isn’t caught he’ll keep on killing.

“The point about not feeling remorse was important. It’s something police rely on. If you do something wrong and you feel remorse, you are probably going to tell someone to relieve some of the bad feelings. It’s cleansing. The person who hears about the crime tells someone else and eventually it gets back to the police. But the serial killer has no feelings for his victims and doesn’t believe his conduct is deplorable, so he has no remorse. We won’t hear about his actions from others because he won’t tell anyone.”

THE DECOY OPERATION The profile gave the investigators a lot to go on. In addition to psychological and physical descriptions of the killer they knew what kind of vehicle he was likely to drive. Along with information on the habits of the victims, the profile provides an accurate picture of the killer’s method of operation and since serial killers usually operate in familiar territory it was probable the killer lived in or near the area where the victims were last seen and found.

With all that knowledge of the killer the search could become focused, but the investigators were still a long way from getting their man. They decided their best approach would be to lure the killer to them.

A New Castle County policewomen volunteered to serve as a decoy and the operation began on July 13. It was a difficult assignment. She was asked to behave in a manner that was foreign to her and although professional actors make it appear easy, role-playing is tricky. Policewomen and prostitutes are very different and the pretense was too difficult. She was unable to play the role well enough to quickly qualify the men who stopped as

45

suspects. After a few weeks, another officer, Renee C. Lano, took the assignment. Her acting skills were far better. In fact her performance was exemplary.

She was able to quickly establish whether or not the man who approached her fit the profile. If he did, the license plate was run and more information on the owner of the vehicle was gathered. First, she took note of the type of vehicle. Then Officer Lano would engage in what seemed to be small talk, but the answers to her questions quickly established aspects of the profile. ‘Where do you work?’ and ‘Where do you live?’ are not at all suspicious.

Renee would also ask about the man’s wife and make a judgement about that aspect of the profile.

And one of the most important bits of information was simply whether or not the man was hostile.

Most men seeking female companionship will try to be pleasant. Officer Lano knew the man she was looking for would be angry and dark.

MARGARET LYNN FINNER While they were running the decoy and investigating men who fit the profile, another woman was killed. On August 28, 1988 Margaret Lynn Finner was engaged in prostitution near the intersection of Routes 40 and 13 in New Castle. The press had been reporting on the murders of Shirley Ellis and Catherine DiMauro so Finner knew a serial killer was stalking women in the area. For safety, a young man accompanied her and watched from his car as Finner screened potential customers.

She accepted a ride with a man and returned later to the same spot, a crossover in the highway in front of a hotel south of Hare’s Corner (Rt. 13 and 273).

Moments after getting out of her customer’s car her escort watched as a blue Ford van pulled into the crossover from the northbound side of the highway.

Finner’s friend was some distance away and was unable to provide a description of the driver. She and the driver spoke briefly and she signaled her friend that she was going with the man in the van.

Their plan was not very good because it didn’t include actions her friend would take after Finner was picked up. He looked for the van when she didn’t return but couldn’t find it, or her. Her parents reported her missing the next day. Unlike the first two victims, whose bodies were found hours after they died, Margaret Finner’s body wasn’t found until eleven weeks after she was last seen. Hunters

found her remains on the south bank of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal on November 12.

PENNELL TAKES THE BAIT The investigation into Finner’s disappearance provided one significant piece of information that aided the police conducting the decoy operation, the blue van. On September 14 they were operating near the White Clay Shopping Center at Rt. 40 and Salem Church Road. Officer Lano reported a blue Ford van had repeatedly passed her, slowed down for a look but hadn’t stopped. She suggested their location wasn’t ideal and they should move to a different spot. Another officer in an undercover car picked her up and after a reasonable amount of time dropped her off at a spot on the highway near Walther Road that was darker and more secluded.

Minutes later the van showed up.

The driver rolled down his window, and as soon as he spoke Officer Lano knew this man was trouble. According to Major Swiski, “Renee knew immediately that this encounter was different than any of the others. He was demanding, solemn, very angry, not upbeat at all. He ordered her to get in the van. We had a rule she not enter any vehicle so that was not an option. We didn’t know at what point the killer took control. It was possible that he struck as soon as the victim got into the van so we couldn’t take that chance. All of her conversations took place with her outside the vehicles, and after she established whether or not we had a suspect she would decline to go with him for one of a number of reasons. Renee was very smart about that and she would not get in the van.

“She engaged him in conversation and found that he lived nearby. He was married. He spoke very unfavorably about his wife. He was an electrician and he worked in the area. He ordered her into the van repeatedly and she told him to relax, ‘Let’s talk a little while’. He was real pushy. He really wanted her in the van. Renee sized things up and realized this guy is weird.

“Then she did something that was one of the most important acts in the entire investigation.

While the conversation was going on she noticed that the entire inside of the van was lined with blue carpet. She knew blue fibers were found all over Catherine DiMauro’s body. At some point in the conversation she let her hand drop inside the vehicle and she plucked out some fibers and put them in her pocket. By then she felt strongly that this was our

man so she broke off the conversation. As the van pulled away she called into her body mic “RV 2059”. The surveillance team followed him. He drove over 120 miles that night, just circling Rt. 40 and Rt. 13 down to the White Clay Shopping Center.”

The van was registered to Steven Brian Pennell of Newark, Delaware. His name was added to the list of suspects that, at that time, numbered about ten. The predator had become the prey.

The fibers from Pennell’s van were sent to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis and comparison with the fibers found on DiMauro. At the time there were five serial killers at large in the United States, and the FBI lab was working on evidence in all of them, so it would be weeks before the test results would be available.

Based on Lano’s encounter and observations of his behavior, Pennell became the prime suspect, but there was very compelling evidence against others who couldn’t be ruled out. For example a search of one suspect’s car produced paperwork belonging to one of the victims and a child’s doll with a wire tie around its neck.

TWO MORE VICTIMS AND THE FORMATION OF THE JOINT TASK FORCE The police were keeping track of Pennell and the others on September 18, 1988, when another woman, twenty-six-year-old Kathleen Meyer, a rental car agency manager, was last seen. Two days later the body of yet another woman was found on the banks of the C & D Canal. Michelle Gordon, a known prostitute, was last seen at a bar just north of the intersection of Routes 13 and 40.

At that point there had been five murders in ten months and three in the last twenty-three days.

Colonel McCarnan, Chief of the New Castle County Police and Colonel Graviet, Superintendent of the State Police decided to combine elements of the two agencies to capture the killer.

A joint task force, an entity that became the fifth largest agency in the state, was formed almost overnight. It included secretaries, its own public information officer, surveillance teams, cell phones and a dedicated radio frequency, rental cars, the State Police Aviation Unit, evidence teams, and of course the investigators who had been assigned since the beginning. An attorney general was assigned to the task force and a chain of command was established. Lt. Colonel Robert McDonald of

The Pennell Case the State Police was the task force commander, Captain Thomas Gordon was assigned as the ranking officer for the County Police and Captain

47

Major Swiski explains: “Throughout the time the surveillance teams were following Pennell they learned his driving habits were atrocious. Not when

Alan Ellingsworth was Gordon’s counterpart for the he was trolling. Then he was extremely careful but State Police. the rest of the time he broke every law . . . speeding, Others were kept under surveillance, but reckless driving, not using turn signals, just Pennell became the prime suspect. To make their deplorable driving. case they needed more evidence, particularly the “One of the options we have in Delaware is FBI lab results on the fibers, but with the killer still you can obtain a warrant for a violation you witness, loose and the public at risk, the so we did. We watched him one day pressure to wrap the case up was commit numerous traffic violations and intense. Action had to be taken to get obtained a summons, which we then had the evidence they were sure existed. turned into a warrant. Another option we Pennell did his killing in the van, have in Delaware is you can take a they were confident of that, so if they person ‘forthwith’. You can take them could listen to what was said inside directly to a judge. It isn’t done often, the van they could intervene before but it is an option. harm was done. As long as they “So the next day we followed Pennell could keep Pennell under very close to work, and on the way, on 495, he surveillance the public safety issue went over the speed limit. We stopped could be managed. To do so the task him, gave him a summons for speeding force implemented an ingenious plan and since there was a warrant filed for Michelle Gordon to bug the van, track it and search it the violations we’d witnessed before, he without Pennell’s knowledge. was taken to Court Eleven. As soon as the patrol car Warrants were granted for the search and for with Pennell in it was out of sight we took the van installation of the electronics. Implementing them to a warehouse where evidence teams from the State without Pennell’s knowledge involved some careful Police and the County Police went over it. coordination. An aspect of Pennell’s behavior would “Most of the evidence we used at the trial was help them. obtained during that search. It included Michelle Gordon’s hair, which was found in the sink trap,

Catherine DiMauro’s blood and Kathleen Meyer’s blood. Her body was never recovered. We took samples of the carpet and fibers from a red cover on a bench. There was a red fiber on Cathy DiMauro’s cheek and it looked like it might have come from that bench. Turned out it did. Underneath the sink we found a roll of duct tape that had a drop of blood on it. He put duct tape over the mouths of his first two victims and pieces were found on the victims.

The first two victims had been bound at the wrists and ankles with what appeared to be a strapping device. We found large wire ties, common to electrical work, and we recovered one that was set and partially pulled through. In that state it is useless to an electrician, but it was ready for binding hands or feet, if that was to be its use. The impression from that tie matched almost exactly the impressions made on the victim’s necks, wrists and ankles.

“We found pornographic material of the type the Behavioral Science Unit said we might find, S & M, bondage type material.

“We found a hammer, pliers, various types of tools that were similar to those used in the torture.

“While evidence was being gathered, electronics teams installed the listening device and a tracking device. We call it a ‘bird dog’.

“And it was all done in about forty-five minutes. We couldn’t keep Pennell at court longer than it took for the arraignment, so we had to finish quickly and get the van back to where he left it.”

With the listening device installed, the investigators were operating with a degree of safety they didn’t have before. The team trailing Pennell received outstanding assistance from the Aviation Unit also. Every time Pennell left home a fixed wing aircraft was overhead. (Helicopters generate more noise so they are more likely to be spotted from low altitude.) The surveillance team had to keep its distance and on more than one occasion they lost the trail. In every case the airborne observers were able to get the ground unit back on track.

Another of Pennell’s behaviors brought the clandestine surveillance operation to an end. He kept the van very clean and on Sunday, October 7, 1988, in the evening, Pennell was tidying up his torture chamber. His daughter was with him so the team that was keeping an eye on him used the opportunity to test the equipment. The warrant allowed them to do so once a day. Because the

system was operating at the time, they actually heard the conversation between Pennell and his daughter as he spotted a wire he hadn’t installed, a wire wrapped with electrical tape. When an electrician sees electrical tape he starts to think.

Within seconds he traced the wire to the microphone and the transmission ended.

Search warrants had already been prepared for Pennell’s home, the two sheds on his property, his van, and his wife’s car, and now that he knew he was being watched, the decision was made to quickly conduct the searches before he could destroy any evidence. The searches were conducted that night and Pennell was brought in for questioning. He refused to talk except to offer what Major Swiski describes as a “very low level of denial”, never saying flatly he wasn’t the killer. At that time search warrants were executed that allowed the police to take a quantity of Pennell’s blood and samples of his hair.

Experts in the DuPont Company examined the carpet samples taken from the van. They were able to determine the fibers were a DuPont product and they traced the carpet to a manufacturer in Georgia.

A fiber match isn’t strong evidence if it is a common fiber, but very little of this carpet had been produced, a small quantity was shipped to Airbase Carpet in New Castle and all of that was sold to one customer, the original owners of Pennell’s van. The match was conclusive proof that the fibers found on the victims came from Pennell’s van.

THE ORDEAL ENDS Lab results came in during November and Pennell was kept under open surveillance until the twentyninth of November when he was finally arrested for the murders of Shirley Ellis and Michelle Gordon.

The trial began on September 25, 1989 and it lasted several weeks. The State’s evidence was nearly incontrovertible. Perhaps the toughest aspect of the case was getting the court to accept the DNA evidence. It had never been used in a Delaware criminal prosecution, but this was primarily a matter of clearly explaining the science and hearing from credible experts. One of whom was Dr. Henry Lee, then the director of the Connecticut State Police Crime Lab, and later an expert witness in the O.J. Simpson trail.

Pennell finally did deny that he’d committed the murders, but his explanations of why the victim’s blood and hair were in his van were very

The Pennell Case weak, to say the least. He claimed to have met each and had sex with them in the van and maybe they cut themselves, or the blood was menstrual blood.

His attempts to explain the existence of much of the other evidence were no more convincing.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1989 the jury returned

49

Margaret Finner. Apparently he’d had enough, so he plead guilty to both charges and was sentenced to death. He was never charged with the death of Kathleen Meyer, but her blood was found in the van and she was declared a victim of homicide.

On March 14, 1992 Steven Pennell was put to

This drawing of Pennell appears to be a composite created from witness descriptions. In fact, it was made from a photograph of Pennell after he was identified as the prime suspect. It was within sight when he was initially questioned by the police in order to make him uneasy and hopefully more prone to confess or at least incriminate himself.

their verdict. Steven Brian Pennell was guilty of the murders of Shirley Ellis and Catherine DiMauro. A minority of the jury was unconvinced that he’d killed Michelle Gordon, so they were hung on that charge.

In early 1990 Pennell was re-indicted by the New Castle County Grand Jury for the murder of Michelle Gordon and charged with the murder of

death by lethal injection at the Delaware Correctional Center in Smyrna, the first execution in Delaware since 1946.

There were crosses on his collar. He’d taken to speaking with a priest while awaiting death.

When asked if he had any final words he said nothing. He offered no apology. True to his profile until the end, he expressed no remorse.

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER 7 Why did the investigators assume the murders were committed by a serial killer after examination of the second victim?

How does establishing the fact that a crime is one of a series affect the investigation?

Name at least two crimes other than murder that are often committed in a series by the same person.

What common human emotion helps police solve crimes that result in harm to others?

How do the police use profiles to solve crimes?

Why was Officer Lano a good decoy?

Name at least five resources the Joint Task Force employed.

A certain kind of evidence had never been used in a criminal prosecution in Delaware before Pennell. What kind of evidence was it?

Make a timeline of the significant events of this case. Include the names of the victims.

Conclusion In Common Sense, the pamphlet that fanned the spark into the flame of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.” Restraining our vices is one of government’s most difficult functions.

Unfortunately it is also one of the most necessary.

For the safety of Delaware’s citizens the State Police use many forms of restraint on those who would harm others, including physical force, handcuffs, and jail cells.

They are experts in the application of physical restraint but they know, better than anyone, that there are much better ways to keep the public safe.

Self-discipline and selfrestraint are far more effective.

Once those characteristics are broadly developed, society is not only safer it is successful. That is why education has become an important function of many law enforcement agencies.

The Delaware State Police Museum and Education Center is a result of nearly a century of law enforcement in Delaware which was preceded by a steady development of legal systems and codes intended to bring order to our lives and to “restrain our vices”. Today’s public is the beneficiary of that experience. The Museum and others like it show how the benefits we now rely on came to be.

Artifacts on display include early motorcycles, squad cars, weapons and uniforms as well as many of today’s tools. Photographs of the past and audio clips enhance displays on everything from early communications equipment to the K9 Unit and the Academy. The “Crime Scene” demonstrates the use of forensics science and the importance of keen observation in the investigation of crime, and the Museum theater and interactive displays give the visitor the chance to see police in action.

There is quite a lot to see and do. Because law enforcement is such a vital task and because police work demands strong bodies and keen minds the field of law enforcement includes dozens of sciences, technologies and disciplines. For the professional educator opportunities at the Museum to engage the student abound. This Teacher’s Guide is intended not so much as a text, but more as a source of ideas. The exercises at the end of each chapter are merely examples of what a teacher might ask to get her students thinking about the problems the police face, their accomplishments, and why both exist. The answer sheet is offered to provide the educator with insight into the workbook author’s thoughts and the purpose of each chapter.

Please call the museum at 302-739-7700 to arrange a group tour or to discuss educational programs. The museum is just north of the Dover Mall on Delaware Rt. 13, next to the State Police Headquarters in the same complex with the State Bureau of Identification, The Academy and the State Police Crime Lab. The address is 1425 North DuPont Highway, Dover, Delaware, 19901.