Strange as the Ozark back country where it was enacted was the trial last week at Mountain View, Ark. of four "hill barons" indicted for the murder of Connie Franklin (TIME, Dec. 9). Prime witness for the defense was a gaunt, sun-reddened farmhand who swore he was Connie Franklin himself.
"He ain't my Connie," insisted woebegone, calico-clad Tiller Ruminer, on whose testimony the four—Herman Greenway, Joe White, Hubert Hester, Bill Younger—were indicted. She repeated her lurid story of a night last March when, as she and Franklin set out to be married, they were attacked by the defendants. She testified: "Connie yelled out 'Till, Till, they're akillin' me!' Then Joe White slammed a big rock on his haid. I couldn't help him none because Greenway was adraggin' me into the bushes. Then Hester came and helped Greenway do what he was doin' to me. I went back later and seen Connie layin' in the road. He was daid." Later, she said, the attackers informed her that they had killed Franklin and would kill her too if she told.
Another witness for the prosecution was a deaf mute who by finger twitches testified he had seen the four attackers carry Franklin toward a big log fire. The State, contending that Franklin was burned alive, exhibited as the corpus delicti a boxful of charred bones. Because a temple bone had inadvertently been mislaid a State health officer would not swear that the remains were human. The live "Connie Franklin" said that on the night of the "murder" he had started out with Tiller. He explained: "I fell off my mule—had a few too many swigs—and cut my haid. Next day I went away. That's all they was to it." Some witnesses felt that he looked "a lot like Connie." The girl's avowal that he was not her man was corroborated by others who knew him well.
The jury acquitted the four hillmen of murder. Many a proud Arkansan, indignant at the publicity given such dark doings in the Ozarks, protested widely that they were not typical of their State, cited big city bombings and murder as equally fearful. The acquittal at Mountain View was hailed as a vindication for Arkansas.