Young Brothers Massacre

10. The Massacre

10 THE MASSACRE The day of the Young brothers massacre, Saturday, January 2, 1932, was gloomy, cold, and gray. The low temperature of 34 rose to a high of only 40.1 Lorena and Vinita had decided to go back to Clyde Medley to sell him the stolen car. Before that, they deposited Mom, Albert, and Lorenas daughter, Natalie, in Springfield, leaving Harry and Jennings at the Young farm. In mid-morning, Lorena and Vinita set out from the Young farm in the car in which Lorena and Albert had come from Houston. They took both Mom and Natalie to the Smith home, 620 Madison Street, where the family of Jenningss estranged wife, Bessie, lived. Lorenas daughter, a pretty child, had been the subject of a picture in a Houston Chronicle supplement, '~mid Blossoms." The sisters dropped Albert in the business district to get a haircut. He was to meet them, later, at the Smith home. Lorena, Vinita, Mrs. Smith, and Mom ate lunch, and Mom went grocery shopping, agreeing to meet the girls downtown in the afternoon. Itwas justbefore 2:30 when Lorena and Vinita arrived back at the farm to pick up the stolen car that they had tried to dispose of earlier and take it back to Springfield to sell to Medley. Lorena and Vinita always insisted that when they left the Young farm that last time, only Harry and Jennings were there. Even more than fifty years later, Vinita still emphatically insists that 11 only the boys" were in the house when they left just before three o'clock that bleak January afternoon ,2 a fact much debated later. Vinita and Lorena drove directly to the Medley agency 63 64 Young Brothers Massacre with the stolen car. They expected only to deliver the Ford with no further delay and to pick up the check for $250, Medley having already put them off twice. The policemen, who had been parked across the street since early morning, spotted the girls immediately. City detectives Virgil Johnson and Lee Jones arrested the two sisters and took them to the aged city jail behind police headquarters on Market Street. The Sunday News later headlined, "Two Girls Held for Auto Theft Tipped Sheriff.II At first Vinita and Lorena denied that Harry and Jennings were anywhere near Springfield. However, as reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday, II after several hours questioning. . . the sisters of the fugitives changed their stories and admitted two of their brothers were at the Young homestead."3 From the start, the press exploited every possible angle of the Young story. A Daily News photographer posed Lorena and Vinita sitting cross-legged on a jail chair "where they had been grilled regarding every detail leading up to the slaughter." The reporter observed that on Sunday, the day after the massacre, Lorena wore II a purple silk dress with costume jewelry. Her auburn hair was pulled back tight to a knot on the back of her head." Another reporter described II slender, petite-faced Lorena." He could have added, as indeed another story did, that Lorenas chief concern and anxiety was for her daughter Natalie. Vinita was II dressed in a black sport suit with tan shirtwaist and a black beret." Another writer reported: "Vinita, her short blond straight hair giving her face a hoydenish look was more sprightly than her sister."4 While Vinita and Lorena were being arrested and questioned , Mom had finished her grocery shopping and was waiting for them downtown, as it had been agreed. When they didn't show up, she went back to the Smith home alone. There she spent the night, distraught and worried about her daughters. Under questioning, Lorena and Vinita admitted where The Massacre 65 Willie could be found. Officer Jim Hale was dispatched to the Smith horne to arrest her. Prosecuting attorney Dan Nee had her held incommunicado in the Greene County jail. The Springfield Leader reported the next day, "The bandits' mother, past 60 years old [she was, in fact, 65] was sobbing hysterically and almost exhausted from excitement and grief when officers found her." By that time she had become frantic about her missing daughters.s Mom was described by a newspaper reporter as a "grayhaired little woman." Her eyes, it was said, were blue. Vinita later described her mothers eyes as "dark blue, very blue."6 In a very short time, Willie...