Part Six: Peddling Prunes
Shortly after learning that he would be bound over for trial in Olathe on the charges of robbery against Louis Breyfogle in Overland Park, Dr. Kenneth Uhls quickly returned to Hutchinson, Kansas, to face another preliminary hearing. This hearing was on murder charges against him and former sanitarium patient, Frank Leonard, in the death of Civil War veteran and recluse, William Gibbs. Justice of the Peace, Terence Francis Cox, presided over the hearing in his Reno County courtroom, which began February 26, 1924.
Dr. Uhls arrived in the courtroom accompanied by his attorneys, Judge John Roy Beeching and William Burnett. Leonard was brought to the courtroom from the county jail and was accompanied by his attorney, William Buck. The two accused men sat side by side but did not speak to each other. Both men were well groomed and showed no emotion. Leonard was immobile but Dr. Uhls was alert and frequently made notes and conferred with his attorneys. There were some fireworks at the beginning of the hearing when Uhls’ attorney sought to separate the preliminary hearings. His motion that a separate hearing be given to Uhls was quickly overruled by Justice Cox, resulting in a brief verbal skirmish. The hearing then proceeded. Judge Frank L. Martin, executor of the Gibbs estate and one of the state’s attorneys, said he intended to show the motive for Uhls’ killing Gibbs through the slovenly management of the Overland Park sanitarium he operated, through the unsavory character of some of its patients, and by tracking the movements of Dr. Uhls and Frank Leonard through Kansas the day prior to the murder.
More than an hour of the morning session was spent taking the testimony of three witnesses concerning the finding of Gibbs’ body on the morning of December 30, 1923. The first witness was Gibbs’ next-door neighbor, Mary Hartenberger, who recounted how she noticed a single light glowing in Gibbs’ kitchen window late evening and early the next morning. Knowing this was very unusual, she walked over, looked in the kitchen window and saw the feet and legs of a man on the floor. Fearing Gibbs was ill or something wrong had happened at the house, she ran to another neighbor’s home, second witness Dr. Charles Evans. He testified he was in bed when Mrs. Hartenberger rang the doorbell. He dressed immediately and after hearing Mrs. Hartenberger’s concerns, he called the sheriff’s office. The third witness, Sheriff Jesse Langford, provided chilling testimony of what he saw when he arrived on the scene. He described the dead man’s wound as a hole in the skull on the back of the head, a bad cut in the corner of the right eye, and a bruise on one ear. Dr. Evans said that the blood which was distant from the dead man’s head was congealed but that a vapor arose from the pool of blood beneath Gibbs’ head when he raised it. He said that in his opinion the slain man had not been dead a great length of time and that death had not been instantaneous. A small piece of wood, probably broken off a revolver, was found on the floor near the slain man.
The most startling new development of the hearing came with the examination of Dr. Emma DeVries, the former employee of Dr. Uhls who had just testified in the hearing in Olathe on robbery charges again Uhls. The witness testified Dr. Uhls showed her a letter from Gibbs last October in which he complained of failure to receive a dividend on his $102,000 of preferred stock. “Mr. Gibbs has much stock in the sanitarium,” the witness stated Dr. Uhls said to her. “He is an old man, and I hope he will leave his stock to the clinic or me when he dies.” DeVries testified that she jokingly suggested that Dr. Uhls write a letter to Mr. Gibbs inviting him to come and visit the clinic for a week. Dr. Uhls, she testified, instructed her to go ahead and write such a letter. She told him he would have to dictate a part of it and that he did dictate one paragraph, letting her finish it. She signed it with Dr. Uhls’ name using a rubber stamp. The letter was introduced as an exhibit of evidence.
Dr. DeVries testified that Dr. Uhls was lax with his correspondence and that much of the time he had no money with which to pay his bills. She testified that she was a practicing osteopath in Washington, D.C. for 17 years and she came to work for Dr. Uhls the previous June. She first served as manager of his downtown office maintained at Dr. Uhls’ home at 34th & Wyandotte streets. Then, in October, she became the office manager at the sanitarium at Overland Park, a ten-mile ride on the Strang Line from Kansas City. There, she was in charge of looking after patients upon their arrival at the clinic and meeting with relatives and friends. Regarding Frank Leonard, DeVries testified that Leonard and his wife had both come to the sanitarium in November, along with about a dozen other patients similarly afflicted with morphine addiction. “They were quite different from other patients we had,“ she said. “They smoke a great deal and used many oaths (swear words) in their conversation.” She also stated she had seen Leonard and the physician talking privately on several occasions.
In the final hour of testimony for the day, Dr. DeVries declared Dr. Uhls and Leonard were absent from the sanitarium both December 28 and 29, returning the morning of the 30th. This statement was borne out by testimony of two hotel men, C.E. Hinkle of the Arcade Hotel in Newton, Kansas, and George F. Solan, clerk of the National Hotel in Topeka. Hinkle declared the physician and Leonard had occupied adjoining rooms in his hotel the night of the 28th. Solan swore both registered with him at 6:30 the morning of the 30th, about the time the murdered recluse’s body was discovered. After Solan testified, the hearing was declared ended for the day and would resume the next morning.
When testimony resumed the following day, much of the focus was on neighbors witnessing men coming and going from the Gibbs home. Seeing this struck the neighbors as odd, for William Gibbs was a virtual recluse who rarely had company. To see more than one man enter the house was not a normal occurrence. The witnesses described the men as wearing overcoats, one light and one dark. The state then called perhaps their most valuable witness. Joseph Nohel, janitor and purchasing agent for the Uhls sanitarium, testified that both Uhls and Leonard were wearing overcoats when they left the sanitarium on December 28 in Dr. Uhls’ car. Uhls had contended he had no light overcoat. Nohel testified that he had on a light overcoat as he drove off, and that Leonard was wearing a black overcoat. R.C. Brown, a supervisor of the Uhls sanitarium, testified that Leonard “went wild when under the influence of drugs.” And that when in the sanitarium he had twice jumped out of an upper story window in his night clothes and on another occasion had drawn a razor to the neck of a nurse in attendance on him. Brown also testified that patients in the sanitarium had died of neglect in many cases. He also said that narcotics were being given to patients continually. He said he called attention of these things to Dr. Uhls, but got no results.
The preliminary hearing was concluded later in the afternoon. Within one hour, Justice of the Peace Cox ruled there was enough evidence to bound both men over for trial. A trial date was set for May 24. Dr. Uhls was released on $20,000 bond, and he once again made arrangements to return to Overland Park, where he would soon face a jury in the trial for robbery of Louis Breyfogle. When questioned by a reporter, Uhls stated “I will be very happy when these blots on my name have been wiped out. There can be but one outcome for these various actions - - acquittal. I am not guilty. I will be glad when I can resume the practice of my profession. In five more years, I would have had my clinic in an unassailable position. Today I am broke, forced to turn to anything with which to support my wife and baby. I cannot practice medicine as long as I am under the shadow of doubt. I am, for the time being, peddling prunes!”
Click Here for Part 7
Shortly after learning that he would be bound over for trial in Olathe on the charges of robbery against Louis Breyfogle in Overland Park, Dr. Kenneth Uhls quickly returned to Hutchinson, Kansas, to face another preliminary hearing. This hearing was on murder charges against him and former sanitarium patient, Frank Leonard, in the death of Civil War veteran and recluse, William Gibbs. Justice of the Peace, Terence Francis Cox, presided over the hearing in his Reno County courtroom, which began February 26, 1924.
Dr. Uhls arrived in the courtroom accompanied by his attorneys, Judge John Roy Beeching and William Burnett. Leonard was brought to the courtroom from the county jail and was accompanied by his attorney, William Buck. The two accused men sat side by side but did not speak to each other. Both men were well groomed and showed no emotion. Leonard was immobile but Dr. Uhls was alert and frequently made notes and conferred with his attorneys. There were some fireworks at the beginning of the hearing when Uhls’ attorney sought to separate the preliminary hearings. His motion that a separate hearing be given to Uhls was quickly overruled by Justice Cox, resulting in a brief verbal skirmish. The hearing then proceeded. Judge Frank L. Martin, executor of the Gibbs estate and one of the state’s attorneys, said he intended to show the motive for Uhls’ killing Gibbs through the slovenly management of the Overland Park sanitarium he operated, through the unsavory character of some of its patients, and by tracking the movements of Dr. Uhls and Frank Leonard through Kansas the day prior to the murder.
More than an hour of the morning session was spent taking the testimony of three witnesses concerning the finding of Gibbs’ body on the morning of December 30, 1923. The first witness was Gibbs’ next-door neighbor, Mary Hartenberger, who recounted how she noticed a single light glowing in Gibbs’ kitchen window late evening and early the next morning. Knowing this was very unusual, she walked over, looked in the kitchen window and saw the feet and legs of a man on the floor. Fearing Gibbs was ill or something wrong had happened at the house, she ran to another neighbor’s home, second witness Dr. Charles Evans. He testified he was in bed when Mrs. Hartenberger rang the doorbell. He dressed immediately and after hearing Mrs. Hartenberger’s concerns, he called the sheriff’s office. The third witness, Sheriff Jesse Langford, provided chilling testimony of what he saw when he arrived on the scene. He described the dead man’s wound as a hole in the skull on the back of the head, a bad cut in the corner of the right eye, and a bruise on one ear. Dr. Evans said that the blood which was distant from the dead man’s head was congealed but that a vapor arose from the pool of blood beneath Gibbs’ head when he raised it. He said that in his opinion the slain man had not been dead a great length of time and that death had not been instantaneous. A small piece of wood, probably broken off a revolver, was found on the floor near the slain man.
The most startling new development of the hearing came with the examination of Dr. Emma DeVries, the former employee of Dr. Uhls who had just testified in the hearing in Olathe on robbery charges again Uhls. The witness testified Dr. Uhls showed her a letter from Gibbs last October in which he complained of failure to receive a dividend on his $102,000 of preferred stock. “Mr. Gibbs has much stock in the sanitarium,” the witness stated Dr. Uhls said to her. “He is an old man, and I hope he will leave his stock to the clinic or me when he dies.” DeVries testified that she jokingly suggested that Dr. Uhls write a letter to Mr. Gibbs inviting him to come and visit the clinic for a week. Dr. Uhls, she testified, instructed her to go ahead and write such a letter. She told him he would have to dictate a part of it and that he did dictate one paragraph, letting her finish it. She signed it with Dr. Uhls’ name using a rubber stamp. The letter was introduced as an exhibit of evidence.
Dr. DeVries testified that Dr. Uhls was lax with his correspondence and that much of the time he had no money with which to pay his bills. She testified that she was a practicing osteopath in Washington, D.C. for 17 years and she came to work for Dr. Uhls the previous June. She first served as manager of his downtown office maintained at Dr. Uhls’ home at 34th & Wyandotte streets. Then, in October, she became the office manager at the sanitarium at Overland Park, a ten-mile ride on the Strang Line from Kansas City. There, she was in charge of looking after patients upon their arrival at the clinic and meeting with relatives and friends. Regarding Frank Leonard, DeVries testified that Leonard and his wife had both come to the sanitarium in November, along with about a dozen other patients similarly afflicted with morphine addiction. “They were quite different from other patients we had,“ she said. “They smoke a great deal and used many oaths (swear words) in their conversation.” She also stated she had seen Leonard and the physician talking privately on several occasions.
In the final hour of testimony for the day, Dr. DeVries declared Dr. Uhls and Leonard were absent from the sanitarium both December 28 and 29, returning the morning of the 30th. This statement was borne out by testimony of two hotel men, C.E. Hinkle of the Arcade Hotel in Newton, Kansas, and George F. Solan, clerk of the National Hotel in Topeka. Hinkle declared the physician and Leonard had occupied adjoining rooms in his hotel the night of the 28th. Solan swore both registered with him at 6:30 the morning of the 30th, about the time the murdered recluse’s body was discovered. After Solan testified, the hearing was declared ended for the day and would resume the next morning.
When testimony resumed the following day, much of the focus was on neighbors witnessing men coming and going from the Gibbs home. Seeing this struck the neighbors as odd, for William Gibbs was a virtual recluse who rarely had company. To see more than one man enter the house was not a normal occurrence. The witnesses described the men as wearing overcoats, one light and one dark. The state then called perhaps their most valuable witness. Joseph Nohel, janitor and purchasing agent for the Uhls sanitarium, testified that both Uhls and Leonard were wearing overcoats when they left the sanitarium on December 28 in Dr. Uhls’ car. Uhls had contended he had no light overcoat. Nohel testified that he had on a light overcoat as he drove off, and that Leonard was wearing a black overcoat. R.C. Brown, a supervisor of the Uhls sanitarium, testified that Leonard “went wild when under the influence of drugs.” And that when in the sanitarium he had twice jumped out of an upper story window in his night clothes and on another occasion had drawn a razor to the neck of a nurse in attendance on him. Brown also testified that patients in the sanitarium had died of neglect in many cases. He also said that narcotics were being given to patients continually. He said he called attention of these things to Dr. Uhls, but got no results.
The preliminary hearing was concluded later in the afternoon. Within one hour, Justice of the Peace Cox ruled there was enough evidence to bound both men over for trial. A trial date was set for May 24. Dr. Uhls was released on $20,000 bond, and he once again made arrangements to return to Overland Park, where he would soon face a jury in the trial for robbery of Louis Breyfogle. When questioned by a reporter, Uhls stated “I will be very happy when these blots on my name have been wiped out. There can be but one outcome for these various actions - - acquittal. I am not guilty. I will be glad when I can resume the practice of my profession. In five more years, I would have had my clinic in an unassailable position. Today I am broke, forced to turn to anything with which to support my wife and baby. I cannot practice medicine as long as I am under the shadow of doubt. I am, for the time being, peddling prunes!”
Click Here for Part 7
