The 1912 Arkansas Murder of Ella Barham w/ Nita Gould

In November of 1912, a young woman named Ella Barham journeyed home, on her horse, to her family farm in Boone County, Arkansas, but never arrived. After her body was discovered, murdered and dismembered, suspicions quickly centered on a neighbor, Odus Davidson, who was rumored to have been in love with Ella, a love never returned.

My guest, Nita Gould, has a very personal connection to Ella, one that led to her write the book she joins us to discuss today, called “Remembering Ella: A 1912 Murder and Mystery in the Arkansas Ozarks.”

More information can be found on her website, here: rememberingella.com

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Photos courtesy of the author, Nita Gould.

Interview transcript:

Erik

On this episode of the Most Notorious podcast, a brutal murder of a young woman in rural 1912, Arkansas.

Nita

“Of course, the men rode to the area right away, and I’m sure they were horrified by what they saw because Ella’s body had been cut into five pieces and scattered in four different places over a space of about 20 feet. And her clothing was just thrown haphazardly on the ground. And there’s no rhyme or reason to the way it was. It’s just kind of wherever somebody left it.”

Erik

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast, very, very glad to have you here with me. Thank you for tuning in. Oh, if you are an avid listener, love the show, but have never left me a review on Apple podcasts and you have a couple of minutes to do so. I would most appreciate it. Toss a handful of stories my way if you get a chance. Thanks. Well, so great to have as my guest today, Anita Gould. She is an avid scholar of Ozarks history and a preservation enthusiast who has worked hard to put multiple Boone County, Arkansas properties onto the National Register of Historic Places. Her book is called “Remembering Ella: A 1912 Murder and Mystery in the Arkansas Ozarks”. Great to have you here, thank you.

Nita

Thank you, Erik, it’s good to be here.

Erik

So tell us, what is your connection to this case?

Nita

The murder victim, her name is Ella Barham, turns out that she is my first cousin twice removed, which means that her father and my great grandfather were brothers.

Erik

Yes, this is obviously really personal to you.

Nita

Yes.

Erik

So was this cathartic writing this did you get some satisfaction knowing that you were able to document your family history in a way that hadn’t been done before?

START OF TRANSCRIPT

Nita

Yes, I certainly did. When I first learned about her story, like so many other people, I was intrigued and I wondered what had happened to her. But at that time in my life, when I first learned about her, I was quite a bit younger and my life was very busy. So I learned about her. I got a few items, a few artifacts. At that time, I got a copy of the trial transcript and a few newspaper articles, and then I just resumed my life. But what happened was several years after that, after I first learned about her, my brother and I inherited our grandparents home. And it’s in Boone County, near the area where Ella was raised, was murdered and is buried. And we restored our grandparents house. And shortly after that, I got really curious about my family’s history. And then I remembered Ella. So I started researching her life and her death. And when I first started doing that, I’m an analyst by trade and I.T. analyst by trade. So research comes kind of natural to me and staying objective comes natural to me. So I was able to maintain that for quite a while. And I think that helped me collect the information that I found about her murder. And it also gave me a little bit of a buffer. So I didn’t feel quite as affected by it at first. But as time went on, of course, I did get more emotionally involved because I realized the degree of. Horrific, the degree of the horrific crime that had happened to her and as I learned more about her, I felt closer to her.

Nita

I just felt that I had collected so much information after a period of time that it would be a crime for me not to do something with this. And then it was, oh, about five years. I think before the book came out, a relative died. The relative was Ella’s niece. And from that niece, I inherited some of Ella’s personal belongings, including this tin box. People used to keep all their possessions in tin boxes. And I inherited that tin box. And inside of it were all of these letters and postcards that men and some women had sent to Ella up from the time she was 15 years old up until the time of her death. And when I got that and I opened it and I began to read what was inside. I I had a totally different feeling, it became much more personal at that point in time, and I realized that I felt like I was really meant to tell her story. So the following several years as I work to finish this book, it ended up being very healing for me and for a number of people as well. Because there was so much pain associated with this story, not just in my own family, but in the family of the man who was convicted for her crime, and the Ozarks is a – it’s a large place, but it’s really a small place in that people who live there have lived there for generations. So many of the people that live in that area today were familiar with this crime.

Nita

They’d heard about it from their grandparents or their great grandfather or their aunts or uncles or whatever. And everybody kind of had formed their own opinion. So that made it interesting because when I talked to some of those people. I realize that the story had evolved into folklore and I had a lot of the primary source materials because I’d gotten a lot of the newspapers from the time, about five hundred of them, I had the trial transcript and all the legal documents. I had Ella’s belongings. So I could tell that what what people were saying was not really what happened. So for me, I wanted to set the story straight. And like so many crimes that happen, people tend to know the person or the people who were convicted and they remember their names and that happened. And for me in twenty sixteen, I saw publication about this crime and its correctly stated the name of the man who was convicted and his name was Odus Davidson. And he kind of an unusual spelling of his name with us. And these days we ride elevators and we see Otis and we think it’s Otis, but his name was spelled O D U S And this publication I saw got his name right, but they didn’t get Ella’s name right. They called her Edna, E D N A, and I think that was kind of the final turning point for me. As I was writing the story, I realized that I really wanted people to remember her and that’s why I named my book Remembering Ella.

Erik

Part of what makes this case a little murky in a really intriguing way are the interrelationships within this little area of Arkansas, a handful of families all living in the same tiny part of Boone County who grew up together, married into each other’s families. And this complicates the story a little.

Nita

Oh, definitely. Like you said, this is a small rural farming community. I guess I don’t know if I told you it was farming, but it was a farming community. The barrooms in the Davidsons lived probably about a mile and a half apart. In between them was a creek called Crooked Creek, and there was a cemetery that’s oddly enough called the Davidson Cemetery, even though aren’t any people with the last name Davidson buried in that cemetery. The terrain was – it’s in the Ozarks, so it’s very hilly. There’s at that point in time, there were just – there weren’t really roads. There were more like trails. Sometimes it was just cow paths. Other times it was wagon paths, because that’s what people used for transportation, horses, wagons on foot. They they didn’t have any cars in the area. There weren’t any real roads. Bicycles existed, but I’m sure no one had them. And they weren’t practical because it was just the terrain. It was too rough. So it was a very woodsy area. But it was it was populated, but not like we think of today when we think of a small town even.

Erik

It’s hard sometimes I know when researching people who lived so long ago, someone like Ella who had not lived a full life. She came from a modest background. But but there’s just so little information sometimes to draw on. But then, as you’ve mentioned, you came across these wonderful postcards. Right. Which really helped to bring her personality to life on the page.

Nita

Yes, I, I, I was of course, they’re my family, that some of my family still lives there, and there was one lady in particular who was Ella’s niece, and right before she passed away, she gave me a tin box that had belonged to Ella. And inside that tin box were a bunch of letters and postcards. That men and some women wrote to Ella from 1909 when she was 15 years old up until the time of her death, there were also some other letters in there that women in other parts of the country had sent to Ella’s mother after Ella was killed. They wrote her expressing their sympathy, offering compassion, that sort of thing. That was really interesting. So, yes, from those letters and postcards, I learned a lot. But when I first looked at them, I didn’t understand what I was reading because they were describing the entertainment customs at the time and I had to take a step back and go research those. So I dug back into some of my Ozark history books and I learned all about the entertainment customs at the time. And then when I did that, I could reconstruct her social life.

Nita

There were things like pie suppers and singings and spelling bees, church gatherings, dances, picnics, parties. All of a sudden when I put all of this together, the contents of that box just came to life. And what I discovered was that Ella was a very popular. Some might call a flirtatious young woman, she had a lot of suitors, some of them didn’t even know her, they had just heard of her and they wrote to her asking for a chance to meet her. So she was very popular from the trial transcript materials. I learned what she looked like and I also learned that from pictures. But the pictures at the time, you know, they’re black and white and people look so stern and you can’t really tell color sometimes. Actually, I’m looking at a picture of her right now and her hair looks like it’s very dark. But it wasn’t it was blonde. She’d blonde hair, blue eyes, very slender build, really very pretty, I would say attractive. And like I said, she had a very vivacious personality, attracted many people and really enjoyed life

Erik

And turned down many suitors as well.

Nita

And turned down many -yes. And at the time she was killed and I’ve heard this both from my own family as well as the Davidson side of the house. Again, Davidson is the name of the man that was ultimately convicted. She was engaged to be married to a man named Cam Edmonson. And some of his letters survive and they are completely different than the letters that other men had sent her. The letters that other men sent her were more flirtatious, I would say, whereas Cam’s letters were just straightforward and just to the point. And he clearly wasn’t going to put up with any of her shenanigans. If she was interested in him, fine. If she wasn’t, that was fine, too. And I, I think that might have been one reason she was attracted to him because he was not like the other suitors.

Erik

Right, right. And there’s a lot of desperation in the words of her suitors. Why won’t you pay attention to me? Why won’t you write me back?

Nita

That’s right. That’s right. Right. I wrote a whole chapter using those letters and postcards and the chapters called Courting Ella. So it tells you all about those social customs at the time and and lets you read what these men wrote to her, including the letters from camp.

Erik

So if you wouldn’t mind, tell us about Thursday, November 21st, 1912, and why Ella chose to leave home that late autumn morning, where was she off to?

Nita

So she got up and had breakfast with her family, first of all. And then she walked to the nearby post office and general store in the town called Pleasant Ridge. Because they didn’t deliver mail to your house like they do today, you had to go get it at the post office, but she went there not only to get the mail, but she went there to buy material to make a hat for her sister. Like most women her age, Ella could cook. She could so she could do all kinds of things. But she went on to make a hat for her sister. So she went to get this material. She came back home. She didn’t stay at home very long. She saddled her brother’s horse. The horse’s name was Nellie, and she rode a mile and a half or so to a neighbor’s house to see if the neighbor could help her make the hat. And while she was riding, she passed the cemetery. And I point this out because I think it’s pertinent to the case. When she passed the cemetery, there’s a big ravine on the west side of the cemetery and she rode on the edge of that river and along the cemetery line. And as she did, she would have noticed that there was a big fallen tree top, which is just what it sounds like.

Nita

There had been a big tree and somebody cut it down and rolled it off out of the way. And she would have seen that. And she went to the neighbor’s house. And unfortunately, the neighbor couldn’t help her make the hat. So she she went back home. On her way there and on the way back, she passed by the Davidsons’ house. And and talk to them because they were neighbors and friends, I don’t think she got off her horse, she just talked to them as she was passing the first time when she passed on her way to the parents house where she was going to make the hat. A man named Lair Davidson was on the front porch. He was one of the I guess you could call them offspring of the Davidson family. He was 17 years old. And Ella said hello to him. And on the way back, the mother of the Davidson family was there and Ella spoke to her, too. And after she passed the Davison’s house on her way back home, she just disappeared. And no one ever saw her alive again.

Erik

Now, the Davidsons were a family closely connected to the Barhams, not only geographically, but some familial connections as well. Right. And Kansas Davidson had some authority. He was a justice of the peace.

Nita

That’s right. Kansas Davidson was a justice of the peace. He was serving his second term and his father was James Monroe Davidson. He was at one time a Boone County judge. Now, he was not alive at this point in time in 1912. He died several years before, but partly because he was a judge. The family was well respected and considered more prosperous than others. And the Barhams too. Ella’s father at one time owned as much as seven hundred and twenty five acres of land in Boone County alone. At that time, the average Ozark farm was only about one hundred acres. And I looked at some census records for that time period and there were only 18 landowners in the area that owned more than one hundred acres. So I think it’s pretty safe to say that both families were fairly well-off, probably more so than some of their neighbors. And that means they were also probably a little more educated. Right, and they were very well respected, both the Davidsons and the Barhams were pillars of their community.

Erik

So she headed back home that morning, but her family did not expect her to return that early.

Nita

That’s right.

Erik

So it wasn’t actually until evening that they really began growing concerned.

Nita

That’s right. It was around sundown, which at that time was about five o’clock. Her mother started to worry about her because they really thought she’d be home by then. So her mother sent her sons out to look for her. One of them was Peel. That was Ella’s oldest brother that still lived in the area. And he rode his horse and went to the creek and kind of traced the path that he thought Ella would have taken. And as he did so, he talked to people along the way. So the word of her disappearance, if we want to go ahead and call it that at this point in time, spread quickly. And so everyone in the community banded together to begin looking for her. They went everywhere. They went through the woods. They looked up and down the road. They checked the creek. They called out for her. And she she never answered. Some of the family camped out on the creek bank. Ella’s mother, I think, and one or two of her sisters stayed on the creek bank and other people were searching. So her family and other people were waiting for these search parties to come back and tell them what they had found. And of course, no one found anything. So it was really cold and it was getting very late.

Nita

And everyone knew at that point in time that something bad had probably happened to her. Her mother was crying. Her sisters were crying. It was it was terrifying, I’m sure. So the men made the women and children go home, and then the men kept searching for Ella. Finally it was about eight thirty that night, they found Ella’s horse. The horse was Nellie, I think I mentioned her name earlier, Nellie was wandering around in the Barhams’ field just near by the creek, and the horse was saddle, but she didn’t have a bridle on. It was about half an hour later after that, about nine o’clock when Ella’s brother Peel was searching with some other men around the creek and he started to go, they all start to go down into this hollow when all of a sudden some boys ran to them. They had been on the other side of the creek and they were they were terrified because they had found Ella’s body. So, of course, the men rode to the area right away. And I’m sure they were horrified by what they saw because his body had been cut into five pieces and scattered in four different places over a space of about 20 feet. And her clothing was just thrown haphazardly on the ground.

Nita

And there’s no rhyme or reason to the way it was. It’s just kind of wherever somebody left it. So one of the men went to get Kansas Davidson because he was a justice of the peace and the other man stayed at the scene. And today, you know, we would we would know better than to touch a crime scene. But at that time, they weren’t thinking that way. They were thinking out of respect for what they should do. So what they did is they they gathered up all the pieces of her body and they laid them closely together and they covered them with her clothes and waited for Kansas to arrive. And they also sent some messengers to Harrison and to Yellville – Yellville’s in the next county and Marion County to notify the county sheriffs. So Kansas came and I don’t know exactly what happened there. Couldn’t find any records that tell me specifically. But eventually, you know, they men took his body and close to her home. And her mother collapsed, of course, when she found out what had happened and her family would not let her mother see Ella’s body because it was just it would have been just too much for her.

Erik

So, yeah. As the search was going on, clues were being looked for, people were noticing Odus’s noninvolvement in the search. He seemed standoffish, kind of sat by himself. He didn’t really seem all that concerned with finding her. That’s it. And it was suspicious to some people there.

Nita

That’s right. During the search, he and his brother Lair brought their sisters to the creek and Odus was standing. At one point, I think he was sitting by himself. So he wasn’t actively searching. And one of his brothers, the stepbrother named Doy, ask him if he would go search with him. And Odus stood and started to walk and then stopped. And and what happened was one of his sisters reminded Odus that he had to walk them back home. But Doy, the man who asked him to search, didn’t hear that. So he interpreted it as Odus doesn’t want to – doesn’t want to go with me. He thought that was odd. But the reality was Odus had to take his sisters back home. However, after he and Lair took their sisters back home, neither of them went back out to search. So that was strange.

Erik

Right, and it’s not a lot of time that goes by right before Odus becomes the primary suspect.

Nita

That’s right. The next day there was talk about it during the initial coroner’s inquest, which was held at the Barhams’ house for an autopsy, and there was also some other investigations that were going on. And what’s really strange at this point in time is that those investigations are being led by Odus’s father because he’s the justice of the peace. But, yes, there was some talk about it at the time.

Erik

Now, Odus is a little bit different. You write in your book.

Nita

Um, yeah, you know, he is. He’s he’s twenty nine years old and he’s still living at home with his mother and father and several siblings. That’s a little bit unusual because most of the men at that point in time were married. I think I did some research on the statistics on it, and I think it was like 80 percent of the men his age. In his age group that lived in rural areas of Boone County were married, so it was a little odd that he was still at home. He was known to be a very quiet person, kind of kept to himself unless he was with the crowd of younger men. And then he was more jovial. He was educated pretty much the same as everyone else at that point in time, which meant an eighth grade education in one room schoolhouses. And I believe that he probably had access to more education and than that in terms of just being able to read books and things because his grandfather had been a county judge and also because people receive newspapers. This was not completely as closed off as you might be led to believe. The Ozarks was secluded. It was hard to reach. There weren’t many ways to get into it for a long time until they built railroads and things like that. But people could still receive magazines and catalogs and newspapers and things of that note. So they did have an opportunity to know more than you might think. And Odus would have been around that because his family was prosperous. He played the violin and he he trapped and hunted, just like every other boy in that area, every other man in that area. But he was very quiet and he kept to himself. And I think people thought that was a little odd.

Erik

So tell us, if you don’t mind, about some of the evidence discovered during the search.

Nita

The day after the murder, the community kind of banded together and people were looking everywhere and of course, some were drawn from curiosity, they wanted to see what was going on. They’d heard about this awful crime and they just wanted to be spectators. Other people came because they wanted to help find clues, because they wanted to know who had done this awful thing. One of the men, his name was J.H. Stewart, he lived, I think, right at the creek in between the Barhams and the Davidsons was one of the first to find some of the evidence. He was walking along the west side of the cemetery that I told you about earlier that Ella had ridden by. And he he found some blood drops in the road there. And he followed them and they led to this fallen tree top that I mentioned earlier. And he found the outline of a body there in the leaves and sticks. And when he uncovered some of the leaves and sticks, he found a lot of blood. So he. He was really the first to find those, and as he was doing that, he heard some men calling from the ravine that was just a few feet away. So he went down into the ravine and many other men were there and they had found some rocks that had blood on them. One of the rocks had hair stuck to it. They found Ella’s shoes and stockings and a back cone, which was a decorative cone that women wore at their head at the time, and it was broken in two.

Nita

That was some of the earliest evidence that was discovered. Some of the evidence discovery was postponed because the coroner’s inquest took place that day in the Barhams’ home. And so there were men that were brought together to be part of this coroner’s jury. And they had a doctor who did an autopsy and reported his findings to the man as he did the autopsy. They were all crowded into Ella’s bedroom. So I imagine that was a pretty horrific scene. And then after that, they laid her to rest and the inquest resumed, but it didn’t really get that far because Ella’s father believed that Odus was guilty and there was never anything stated to give particular reasons for that, why he thought that. But he thought Odus was guilty and he was able to persuade Sheriff Helm to post a warrant for his arrest. So Friday night, around 10:00 o’clock when the Davidsons are asleep, Sheriff Helm brought a posse with him and came to the Davidsons’ house, had his – he had his men surround the house. And then he knocked on the door and Kansas Davidson woke up and came to the door and Sheriff Helm told him that he was there and wanted to talk to Odus. Well, about that same time, the men outside on the east side of the house noticed something really strange. Now, this was a two story house, so best I can describe it.

Nita

And the men outside noticed this hand that stuck out of one of the upstairs windows and through something. And when the men looked, they found it was a pair of socks. So they picked it up and someone lit a match so they could see what it was. And they saw that these socks had red pepper inside and they were also wet with sand and gravel. So. The red pepper was thought to throw off the scent of bloodhounds, and that’s why they think he put the pepper in his socks, because the sheriff earlier in the day had made an effort to secure bloodhounds, but he was unable to do so. And it was public knowledge that he tried to do this. So the implication is that I just threw his socks out the window because he didn’t want someone to find them. Of course, that backfired. So they arrested Odus and took him to jail. The next day, the sheriff came back with some men to do a search of the Davidson property. And long story short, they found an ax at the Davidson woodpile, which doesn’t sound like it would be anything strange. That’s exactly where you would expect to find an ax. But this ax was a little different because it has it had some red stains on it and some material that looked like fibers of some kind stuck to it, suspicious enough that the sheriff took it and locked it up in a vault in Harrison.

Nita

So that was a major piece of evidence. And then later that night, sheriff came back with this man and they arrested 17 year old Lair Davidson, Odus’s brother, because they thought he might be involved or know something about it. Some of the other evidence that came up during this time, men found footprints on the creek bank and a man measured them using a stick, measured the length and the width of the footprints. He cut a stick and then he notched big notches into it. I guess they had a knife or something that he used to make notches with. He measured the width of the foot, the length of it, the length of the big toe. And then when he was finished, he took that back supposedly to his home or wherever. He had some paper and he kind of drew that out and he put measurements on it. And we actually used a measuring device of some kind. I don’t know what he had then, but it was a crude way to do it. But it was effective. And they found rocks covered with blood in the bottom of the ravine. One of them was said to have weighed somewhere between 75 and 100 pounds. There was a smaller rock that had blonde hair stuck to it and some blood. So those rocks were used as evidence in the later trial as well.

Erik

So the coroner basically concluded that Ella had been first killed with a rock to the head and then the killer had proceeded to cut up her body, probably to make it easier to move, right?

Nita

Yes, the doctor did say that the cause of death was a blow to the head by by something like a rock. Exactly. So the theory was that she was raped and then the theory was that she was murdered to cover up that crime. And then, like you said, she was dismembered in an attempt to make it easier to move her body to another area. To hide it, to conceal it.

Erik

So something else found by the coroner was semen in Ella’s body, supposedly more than a single male would likely produce, which raised some eyebrows.

Nita

That’s correct. He thought perhaps there were two men involved in that.

Erik

And yeah, that becomes one of the big mysteries of the book, right, how many men were involved in this?

Nita

Right. Keep in mind that forensics at that time were not what they are today. You know, this was a country doctor and all he had with him was what he carried in his medical bag there. There were no microscopes in the county, according to the doctor. There weren’t. And there were no labs to analyze substances of any kind. So all he had was the tools that were in his bag, in the knowledge that he’d acquired through the years as both a doctor and a man. That’s all he had to go on.

Erik

Right, so the people in this community were not used to dealing with murder at all, let alone one committed with such horrific, this brutality.

Nita

No, I think this was obviously it was horrible, and if it had happened today, it would still be horrible. I mean, it was an extreme case. This was not someone. Shooting somebody in a poker game or something like that, this was. This was a terrible, terrible thing, and there had never been anything like it before in that area, probably not even in the state for that matter.

Erik

So he was taken to jail and he was lucky that his family had some money, so he was able to put up a decent defense.

Nita

Yes, they were for both sons, because remember, both of them were in jail. Odus and Lair are both in jail at this point in time. And that jail was in Harrison, Arkansas, which was the county seat, but within twenty four hours, if not less, of when Lair was arrested, the mob activity was so great that the sheriff, James Helm, was afraid that the mob was going to break into his jail and lynch them. So he secretly had Odus and Lair taken out of the Harrison jail and moved over to the next county, which was Carroll County, and they were incarcerated in Berryville’s jail. That was where they spent most of their time after that. And his father, Kansas’ Davidson, their father. Acquired an attorney named B.B. Hudgins to defend them, and B.B. Hudgins was a former circuit court judge. He had a spotless reputation. Everyone thought very highly of this man in Kansas. Davidson hired him probably for those reasons because he knew he would need somebody really good to defend his sons, so B.B. Hudgens was the first attorney that was hired for this. Later on as the case and ensued another attorney named E.G. Mitchell was hired. And E.G. Mitchell was probably my favorite character in this whole story. And I’ve often thought if I could go back in time and meet even one person that was associated with this case, who would that be? And of course, you know, obviously, I would like to meet Ella first, find out what happened to her. But I would also like to meet and know more about E.G. Mitchell because he was just such a fascinating character. E.G. stood for Eldridge Gerry Mitchell, and he was born in eighteen sixty three during the Civil War and three months before he was born, his father, who was a Confederate captain, was home at the time and was shot dead by unionist in front of Mitchell’s mother and her little little son, so E.G.

Nita

had a rough start before he even was born. He attended school at West Point and he also went to Cumberland law school in Tennessee. Like B.B. Hudgens, he was a circuit court judge, too, and he had a lot of misfortune in his life. One day he was on his way to court. This was not for Odus’s case, but just another case he had when I believe he was a circuit court judge at the time, he was crossing a river in his horse and buggy. And I guess the stream was too swift or too deep and they capsized and he almost drowned. And then one time in 1890, he caught his finger in the spring of a chair and cut it off at the first joint. He had several children and one of his sons when he was a teenager, was playing with a pistol and accidentally shot and killed himself. He had a daughter who died as a toddler from an illness. And then Mitchell had a problem with fires. Lightning struck his barn and burned it down. And another time he had an oil stove in his house and it ignited and burned his house down, along with everything else.

Nita

So Mitchell had a lot of misfortune in his life. He was a great big round man. And he weighed, I think, around two hundred and sixty pounds. I read somewhere he was really passionate about the things in which he believed and he was an absolute spitfire. He was just a real flamboyant character. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One time when he was in the legislature, he got so angry at one of the other legislators that he threw an inkstand at the man. And of course, that sprayed everybody nearby with ink. And the other man retaliated by throwing a spittoon back. And then another time he was in court, he got into an argument with the opposing attorney. I think this was over a divorce case. And Mitchell got so upset that he made a move to draw his gun. So we got arrested in court. Then in early nineteen twelve, the same year that l was murdered, he actually shot a man when he was standing in another attorney’s office. So he was arrested for that. But he lived and all the charges were cleared. So all this to say that Mitchell knew what it was like to be down on your luck, he knew that. So he often fought for the underdog. And I think that may have been one of the reasons why he took Odus Davidson’s case because he fought for the underdog.

Erik

Part of the problem, though, for him, Odus, was that there weren’t really any other viable suspects, at least on the surface, except for his brother Lair, and the plan was for them to be tried separately.

Nita

Right. Well, the grand jury proceedings found both brothers guilty of first degree murder. But for later, they also found him guilty of being an accessory before the fact. And the criminal law at the time gave the attorneys the choice of which to be which person to be tried for. So they decided to try Odus first and actually Lair was never tried. His case came up in July. I think it was July of 1913. But it was continued and then in January of 1914, it was dismissed altogether, and I think that’s because they really just didn’t have enough evidence to hold him. But I think it’s important to note here that he was indicted as an accessory before the crime. I think that’s a really important fact to keep in mind as you think about this case. So, yes, Otis is the only one that went to trial. And E.G. Mitchell was the primary defense attorney who did the majority of questioning of the witnesses. B.B. Hudgins did some, too. But B.B Hudgins during the trial became ill with appendicitis. He was not a well man throughout his life. He’d been plagued by multiple illnesses. So he just wasn’t as strong as E.G. Mitchell. Plus, Mitchell had a much stronger courtroom presence. He was like a like I pointed out, very flamboyant kind of man. But but something very interesting about the trial that I found was the trial itself lasted six days and it occurred in January of nineteen thirteen in the first two days where jury selection and in order to find 12 suitable jurors, the court had to examine two hundred and seven men.

Nita

So poor Boone County Sheriff James Helm really got the short end of the stick on a lot of this, because he’s the one that had to go out and find these men who could serve as jurors or potential jurors. But what I was going to tell you about the trial is two things I want to tell you about. One has to do with the crowd size and the other has to do with the testimony of the state chemist. But I had read newspaper accounts of the trial that explained how many people were there. Apparently, the courtroom was just packed and there were people overflowing the courtroom. They were in the hallways. There were outside in the yard, which was bad because it was raining and and cold at the time that people were there nonetheless. But I didn’t really get a good idea of what that looked like. There was a newspaper article that mentioned that a photograph had been taken out of the courtroom, but I never could locate that until it turned up. After my book came out, a lady that lived not too far from the crime scene discovered that she had an 8 by 10 photo, a really good one two of the inside of the courtroom. It was incredible. It was in great shape and it was simply astonishing. There was not one square inch left in that courtroom. And this courtroom was in a rather large courthouse and it was a county seat and it took up the entire top floor of the courthouse.

Nita

So it was – it was good sized, but there were simply no boundaries between the spectators or the attorneys or even the judge. Every possible space was taken up. And when I looked at the photo, it actually took me a few minutes to even find the judge because there were so many people there. So, wow. So during the trial, when that picture was taken, the photographer used this type of technology called flashlight technology, which meant that he he ignited this powder charge to create the flash. And when he did that, it when the flash went off, it filled the courtroom with smoke. And it was so bad that they had to evacuate the courtroom until the smoke cleared. So I don’t have a picture of that in my book because it came out after the book was published. But the photo, if anybody wants to see it, along with any other photos, is published online in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas – that it’s called the EOA. It’s a free source of information about the history, culture and geography of Arkansas, and it’s part of the central Arkansas library system in Little Rock. So I encourage everyone to go look at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas and find the article I wrote on Ella Barham, and you’ll be able to see that courtroom picture. It’s really quite phenomenal. And then I mentioned – I mentioned the state chemist. I didn’t know if that was something that you would want to hear about or not. He has some interesting testimony.

Erik

Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, so there were a couple of witnesses that were of special interest to me and he was one of them. Her sister was another. And we can talk about her in a moment. But, yeah, if you could go over the state chemist’s testimony, especially as it pertained to the axe, that would be great.

Nita

Sure. So the state chemist that was called to testify, his name was Dr. William F. Mangelsdorf, and he was a highly educated man. He earned a chemistry degree in Memphis, Tennessee. He was a graduate of the Physicians and Surgeons College in Little Rock. He’d done some postgraduate work in Chicago. He was clearly an expert in his field and he had had experience determine the presence of human blood. So he ran some tests on the axe and found that, first of all, the fibers that were on the actually concluded those were fibers from a woolen cloth. And then he he ran a couple of tests to determine if the red stains that were on the axe were blood. One of them was called a Teichmann Crystal test and it was positive. And then the other one that was really interesting was called a precipitant reaction test. And I’ve explained that in my book, he ran that test three times. And lucky for us, he explained that in such graphic detail during the trial that it really explains how he did the test. So for people who are curious about that, I included all of that in the book because it’s really fascinating for me at the top to hear about how they did things like that. So he definitely concluded that the blood on the axe was human blood. There was no question.

Erik

And that was a huge conclusion that he drew because the defense was arguing that Kansas, Odus’s father, had killed a pig the week before and that’s why there was blood on the ax.

Nita

Right. And he actually had slaughtered a pig the week before because this was in the fall. And that’s what people did at that time of year, you know, to prepare for the long winter. So there may have been some animal blood on it also, but there was definitely human blood.

Erik

Right. And the defense tried to explain away the fabric by bringing up the fact that the axe had changed hands so many times before finally arriving at the courtroom, and they suggested that it could have been easily tampered with in some way.

Nita

Tainted. Yes. And also the defense said that because the axe was found at the woodpile, that anybody could have put it there because the woodpile was located outside of Davidson’s fenced yard and it was near a well traveled road. So and it wasn’t found until Saturday, two days after the murder. So it could have been it could have been put there by someone else or if that’s what the defense claimed. Right. And the chain of custody was questioned. But when you actually look at what the chain of custody was, I don’t think it was handled inappropriately, not inordinately anyway.

Erik

So we don’t have to get too in-depth into this, because I think it would take a long time to go through, but but many of Odus’s siblings were called to the stand in an attempt by the defense to establish an alibi for Odus. Creating a timeline that was extremely important so jurors could understand how Odus could have or could not have had the time to murder Ella.

Nita

Right. The timelines in the trial transcript that the witness testified about were very hard to understand. And you have to remember that people didn’t carry watches with them. They don’t have they didn’t have things like that that we have now. So and a sense of time to someone was based on the activities that they performed during the day on the farm. And there was a lot of conflicting testimony. Some of the people who testified, including his family members, testified one thing during the coroner’s inquest in the grand jury and then changed their testimony during the circuit court trial. So that made it more difficult to ascertain what was going on, too. But I think I think it was pretty clear that Odus was not at home when Ella came back from her venture that morning to the Bryants’ house to get the hat made. He was not at home and he was absent again later in the day. So in my opinion, he did have an opportunity.

Erik

And that would have been to kill her in the morning, correct, and go back later and dispose of the body.

Nita

Possibly, yes.

Erik

Yes, Yeah. So could you talk about the relationship between Ella and Odus? It’s obviously important in establishing a motive.

Nita

Sure. Well, of course, like I said, the Barhams and the Davidsons were good friends, as were all of the members of that small community, and they had known each other basically all their lives. Odus was quite a bit older than Ella. Odus was twenty nine when Ella died. She was 18, but he was interested in her. He was attracted to her from the time she was 12 years old and had tried to date her, if you will, at the time they called to keep company with, but he obviously tried to court her several times over the years and she’d always refused. And during the trial, they questioned her sister and two local men about him and his feelings towards her. And it was revealed that there had been a dance at one time the time, which is vague because there’s some confusing testimony over the time frame of when this dance occurred. But basically Ella was there and Odus was there and Odus wanted to walk her home and she refused. And when that happened, he said something awful to her that no one knows what that was, because Ella, sister Gertie, who testified to this, she refused to say what was said, but he was obviously very angry that she had refused his advances. And that was a pattern. He’d done that several times and she consistently refused. And the night of that dance, as Odus left the dance and was going to another – another person’s party at a different house, there were some other men that testified that basically he had said some threatening – made some threatening remarks about Ella because she had rejected him. So long story short, he was thought of as being an angry, rejected suitor. And if indeed he was the killer, then that is most likely what his motive was.

Erik

And Ella had confessed to her sister, who likely told her father pretty quickly, and that was probably why the family was so insistent that Odus was responsible.

Nita

Right. And also, one of the men had told Gertie, Ella’s sister what had happened, and, of course, Gertie would have told Ella and her father, too. So they were aware that this man had had been less than courteous to their daughter.

Erik

Hmm. And one of the controversies involved the judge’s decision to remove Odus from the courtroom for his own safety while his verdict was read, and this was because there was so much talk of of a lynching.

Nita

Yeah. So what happened was when the jury left to deliberate, Odus was taken back to jail and Harrison because it was expected that it might be a while. So while he was in jail, the defense attorneys could not help but notice all of the activity that was on the street and worried that if he was acquitted, that he would be lynched still. So they approach Judge George Reid about this, and the men talked it over and decided that it would be better if Odus was not in the courtroom when the jury rendered their verdict. And they the judge had the attorneys draw up a waiver, which they did, and they signed. And then Odus was taken by train back to Berryville, where he had been previously incarcerated. So when the jury rendered their verdict of guilty, he was not in the courtroom to hear it. And that was a major basis for the appeal that ensued after the trial. It was one of the primary factors in it. It wasn’t the only thing – and E.G. Mitchell is the one that pursued the appeal to the Arkansas state Supreme Court, which occurred in May of nineteen thirteen and concluded in June of nineteen thirteen. And the state Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the lower court so he did not win on appeal. So Odus Davidson was sentenced to be hanged. And initially the date that was set for his hanging was in March of nineteen thirteen. But that was delayed because of the appeal process. Once the appeal came through and the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with the circuit court, then it was up to the governor to set the date of the execution, which is what he did. He set the execution date to be August 11th. Nineteen thirteen. It had to be in Boone County. And he ordered Sheriff James Helm to carry that sentence out. So poor James Helm, the man who is riding around looking for evidence, trying to find bloodhounds, trying to find jurors, he’s really an unsung hero in this story, I think, because he was involved in everything that happened from start to finish.

Erik

Yeah, that was a really interesting part of the story. He really tried hard to get bloodhounds there to the crime scene and they’re very effective in cases like this. But he just couldn’t do it.

Nita

He couldn’t do it. They first tried to get them from the Arkansas penitentiary, but the dogs were not there. They were there were somewhere else at a prison farm, I believe. And then he tried to get someone that was near that prison farm to take the dogs to the railroad that was about 100 miles from there and bring them to Harrison. And that didn’t work. So he all he finally tried to get bloodhounds from the police detective in Springfield, Springfield, Missouri. And that police detective was going to bring the dogs but missed the train. So. Right. There were no bloodhounds. But it’s interesting because the press at the time, many of the newspapers at the time reported varying stories about those bloodhounds. And it was it was really interesting to me. I mean, I enjoyed researching that because I didn’t know much about those kinds of animals before, but the dogs didn’t get there in time. And so they didn’t have that to use, which was too bad.

Erik

So Odus was a model prisoner, not talkative, never confessed at all. As far as the days leading up to his execution. He didn’t handle the stress well, as one might imagine. He cried a lot, lost his appetite.

Nita

Towards the end. Yes, the last two nights of his life, I don’t think he slept. Yeah, that he did display emotion then, which was surprising because most of the other time he was, like I had mentioned before, very stoic, didn’t talk much during the trial. He didn’t he didn’t show too much emotion. According to the newspaper accounts, there was a time or two when he might have looked surprised at something that someone said or whatever. But he was and he didn’t testify. He didn’t testify on his own behalf. And many people thought that was unusual. And I don’t know why that was. It was that because the defense attorney was afraid of what he might say? Was the defense attorney afraid that he might incriminate someone else? I guess we’re never going to know the answer to that. But yes, while he was in jail, he was a model prisoner in Berryville. Ladies brought him things to eat. I think one of my readers that I have not met in person, I think I would like to, as I think she would have some more interesting things to tell me. She’s a licensed clinical social worker and she lives in Boone County. And I think she’s working on her Ph.D. But she read my book and was fascinated by Odus Davidson. And believes very much that he meets all of the criteria to be considered a psychopath, so I don’t know if that’s correct or not, I’m certainly not in a position to make that assessment. But I thought it was interesting that someone with her education and background would make that observation. She said that these people are damaged. Somehow -she calls -she refers to them as being broken and says that they lack the capacity to feel really anything, any remorse, any guilt, anything like that. And she surmises that that is the reason why he did not show emotion.

Erik

Sure. So he was hanged and it was one of those weird festive executions, right? There were vendors – I mean, it was kind of a party atmosphere.

Nita

Right. Hangings during that day and age were considered to be entertainment, which seems really strange to us now. But they were. But this one, I think, was especially important for people because of the heinous nature of the crime. And many of them had known her. So there were there were more people at the hanging than there would have been, I hate to say, at any other time. And any other kind of hanging. But I think that’s probably true. It was it was packed. And again, there are pictures of the crowd at the hanging in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas on that website I mentioned. And also on my Web site, there’s a picture of Odus on the scaffold, Sheriff Helm. Again, the the man who had to deal with everything here had to have that scaffold built. And it was – he built a scaffold and he built a wooden enclosure around it. It was about a 10 to 15 foot tall wooden fence. And the platform was wedged in between the north side of the jail and a smaller building on the other side of it, on the north side of it. And the wooden enclosure was just on the east and west sides and they had rows of black canvas on the top of it that they were going to –

Nita

and they did – spread open before the actual hanging because people would do anything for a good view. There were men and women in second story windows overlooking this. Some of the younger boys climbed up on street poles, anything they could find to get a good seat, which is just remarkable to me that that people would go to such an extent to try to view such a thing. But they did. So they unrolled the canvas on top before they actually hanged him. And Odus was was pretty calm, I think, when he was walking from the courthouse where he was kept before his hanging to the scaffold. And there’s mixed stories about whether or not he broke down emotionally before being hanged or not. But there is no doubt that he made a statement to the crowd from the scaffold before he was hanged, claiming he was innocent and hoping that someday people would find out who the real killer was after he was hanged. They, the sheriff and other people that were up there, cut the rope into pieces and tossed them into the crowd to have as souvenirs.

Erik

That seems to be a pretty common thing to happen in that era. True crime souvenirs were really popular.

Nita

Yeah, it’s awful. It’s awful. Right. And if he had been sentenced or if he’d been found guilty and sentenced just a few weeks later than he was, he would not have been hanged because the state of Arkansas changed their method of capital punishment and ruled that anyone convicted of a capital offense after I think it was like February 13th of 1913 would be electrocuted instead. And that same law prohibited newspapers from publishing anything about the execution other than the fact that it had happened. So if he had been convicted, sentenced just a few weeks later, that whole ordeal would not have happened and his execution would have been done in Little Rock and it would have been private, which I think would have been better. But so he was the last man to be legally hanged in Boone County.

Erik

So there may be some listeners wondering, what about his clothes with such a violent death? There must have been a lot of blood. It’s complicated, right? And you definitely address that in your book. But just so listeners are aware, that was definitely evidence and part of the trial and we’ll just leave it at that. I do want to ask you, because this is a mystery still today for some and I don’t know if a lot of people out there question whether Odus was a killer or not. I mean, I was convinced after reading your book that he was guilty.

Nita

That is your conclusion?

Erik

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is.

Nita

Do you think he was alone?

Erik

Well, that’s the question. Did he do it alone or with his brother or was there even a third suspect, another family member you mentioned named Charles Martin?

Nita

That’s right. That’s right. So let me say this about that. I found something really intriguing in a July 1913 edition of the Arkansas Gazette newspaper. So this newspaper reporter said that while Odus was in jail and Berryville, remember, this is 1913, he told his jailer. That he hated to be hanged for what three men did. Three men, I don’t know if he actually said that or not, but I think it’s really interesting that a newspaper in 1913 made a reference to three men being involved in this and that the gentleman that you referred to, Charles Martin, was Odus’s brother in law. He was quite a bit older than Francis, his wife, who was Odus’s sister, and he was a worldly man. He was from Chicago. And I get the impression he was kind of a drifter type. He fought in the Spanish American war and he actually saw active duty there. And if anyone knows anything about that war. You’ll know it was it was very violent, extremely violent. And he would have been the kind of man that if if you really got in over your head on something, he could have been someone that you could turn to for help, in my opinion.

Erik

Yeah, really interesting, yeah, and there is this added dimension, a rumor that he had had a land dispute of some sort with Ella’s father.

Nita

That’s right, that’s right, and it is Ella’s niece, the one that gave me all of Ella’s possessions. She is the one that talked to me about this. She and her mother,Gertie, believed that there was a land dispute between George Barham and Charles Martin. And I could not find any evidence of that in any of the county records or land records of any kind, I couldn’t, but I did find evidence that they both owned adjoining properties around this period of time. So they they did own adjoining properties. But I found no no absolute proof of a dispute. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t occur. And apparently, however, it was resolved. Again, I don’t have any evidence to support that. How it was resolved that however it was resolved, it appears that it was done to George Barham’s favor. And what I was told was that Ella was in a store. Maybe it could have been the store in Pleasant Ridge, I’m not sure at one time. And she saw Charles Martin and made a comment to him about her dad, her dad winning that case, whatever kind of case that was. And that may have angered him, I don’t know for sure. But there was a land dispute potentially, and then there was some evidence that came out that I learned about while I was writing this book that indicated that Charles Martin might have been attracted to Ella, as so many men were. So that’s all I can really say about him. Like I said, I really want to stay objective in this. That’s been my intention through this whole book. And I just wanted to lay things out and let people make their own decisions.

Erik

Right. And you mentioned in your book that there’s a lot out there about Ella’s murder on ghost hunting sites, et cetera.

Nita

There is, there is.

Erik

Lot’s of misinformation, mythology even.

Nita

That’s right. That’s right. And again, that’s why I I didn’t rely on what I heard from other people that are living right. Most of them, except for my one cousin, the one that gave me the materials that belonged to Ella because the story has been been turned into folklore. And I actually have a whole chapter in my book about that folklore. So for that reason, when I wrote this book, I relied the most on primary sources, newspapers at the time and predominantly all of the legal documents, the trial transcript, the appeal documents, things of that nature. I really use that as the backbone and and filled it out from there. And that’s why I did it, because the current materials that you find or or not, they’re just not practical. They’re not they don’t agree with the source materials.

Erik

Is your family happy with the way your book turned out?

Nita

I think so, yeah, I think so, most of them are, and there were some that were especially supportive and then there was one, though, that was really unhappy about it. When she first learned that, I was surprised because she’d always been able to talk to me about it freely and didn’t seem to have any issues with telling me what she knew. But when she learned that I was writing the book, I don’t think she was very happy. You have to understand this was very painful for everyone involved, not just the Barhams and the Davidsons, but the community at large. This hurt people for years. There’s a -there’s something that happens when something that major occurs. It’s called historical trauma. And so the remnants of a major, major pain like this can manifest from generation to generation. And I think it has done that in my family. I now I understand so much more about my own family and the way that I was raised than I did before I wrote this book, because I think there was that much influence, that much pain that manifests itself in extreme overprotectiveness, kind of paranoia sometimes about other people. That’s really a strong term. Just reserve nature, I guess maybe that’s a better word, being reserved, a little cautious and very overprotective, more than normal.

Erik

Very understandable, yeah. So what is your website?

Nita

rememberingella.com

Erik

You have a lot of photographs, even some of those postcards she’d received posted on your website.

Nita

Yes, I included some of that there. And I I think I have every picture on the website that I have available to me, which, as far as I know, were the only ones that exist. So. Yeah.

Erik

And your book is available online, in bookstores.

Nita

Yes. Wherever books are sold.

Erik

Well, perfect. Thank you so much for your time today.

Nita

Thank you, Erik. I appreciate your time as well.

Erik

Again, I have been speaking to Nita Gould, she is the author of “Remembering Ella, A 1912 Murder and Mystery in the Arkansas Ozarks”. This has been another episode of the Most Notorious podcast broadcasting to every dark and cobwebbed corner of the world, I’m Erik Rivenes and have a safe tomorrow.