Tag Archives: New Mexico

A THRILL KILLING ON ROUTE 66

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Ed Marso

It was midnight on Route 66 on February 5, 1952, and a slow night for state policeman Nash Garcia who was patrolling the road in Grants. Then a dark green 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan barrelled towards him at a rapid rate of knots. Patrolman Garcia stopped the car and the driver identified himself as Edward Marso, a 31-year-old Iowan who was returning to Le Mars, Iowa, after visiting friends in California. Having telephoned his employer to say he was driving straight through to get back to Iowa where his father Nick, was seriously ill, he was a hurry, as he explained. Garcia gave him a warning, told him to slow down and let him go.

Edward Marso never made it to Iowa.

Around 18 hours later his Lincoln was found on fire just south of Tijeras but there was no sign of Marso, nor of his luggage, tools or the $300 and travellers cheques he had been carrying when he left California.  

Born on October 10, 1930, to Elizabeth and Nick Marso, Edward Marso lost his mother when he was just 17. Shortly after he became engaged to Dorothy Luschen, a pretty young woman from Brunsville, Iowa. Two weeks before Christmas 1942, he, Dorothy, Dorothy’s brother Leonard and a 16-year-old girl called Clara Sawin were riding in a car driven by CJ Noonan. It seems that Noonan failed to see a railroad crossing just as a train was coming. The car struck the centre of the train and was dragged along, catching fire. Dorothy and Ed were in the rear seat and the back doors jammed. While Ed broke a window and escaped, he was unable to rescue Dorothy. She and her brother both died in the blaze, Clara suffered terrible burns to which she would succumb three days later while both Noonan and Ed escaped with minor injuries. Friends reported that he never really recovered from not being able to save Dorothy and he would remain single for the rest of his life.

Ed’s fiancee Dorothy Luschen who perished in a blazing car

Because of this tragedy, some surmised that he had either chosen to disappear in New Mexico or was suffering from amnesia. An Albuquerque insurance agent claimed he had seen the 6ft, 180lb black-haired Marso days after the car was found at a Salvation Army service. But by now both the police and Ed’s older brother Paul suspected foul play, a theory given weight when police discovered a bullet hole in the front bumper of the Lincoln.

A further check of the ashes in the car found what was thought to be human remains. Was it a simple case of Ed failing asleep and running off the road and then, like his fiancée, burning to death in the car? Results were delayed by the scientist responsible for testing the ashes having broken his leg but finally he concluded that they were not human. By the end of February little more could be done until the snow in the area melted.

Jess Mann of the Oden Motor Co which recovered the Lincoln points to a bullet hole in the front bumper

Then, on April 13, 1952, two 12-year-old boys found a body hidden under brush in an arroyo five miles from where the car had burned. It was Ed Marso; he had been beaten, strangled, shot and robbed. All his possessions, with the exception of two cigarette lighters and a pack of cigarettes, were missing. (Tragically the day after Ed’s body was found, Nash Garcia, the last witness to see him alive, was found shot dead in similar circumstances, but that’s a story for a future post.)

State Police Sergeant Lonnie Dennis theorised that, feeling sleepy, Ed had stopped by the side of the road where he had been robbed and killed, but the truth was even more terrifying.

Within two weeks of the discovery of Ed’s body, three men had been arrested, Francisco ‘Frank’ Francia, 22, Nasareno Paz, 17, and his cousin Juanito ‘Johnny’ who was also 17. The arrests followed a report by tourists from Oklahoma of being fired upon while driving through Tijeras Canyon on Route 66, They managed to get a description and the license plate of the gunmen’s car and it tracked straight back to one of the Paz boys. Nasareno and Johnny confessed immediately and when police searched Nasareno Paz’s house they found tools and a wristwatch belonging to Ed Marso.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Ed Jackson interviewing Francisco Francia

The trio soon gave up another name and 16-year-old Antonio ‘Tony’ Riboni was extradited from Washington where he had fled. All four pled guilty. They had lain in wait in a car along Route 66 in Tijeras Canyon, close to their homes, and ambushed Ed’s car by shooting out his tyres. When Ed stopped, the quartet beat him and then shot him, before putting his body in the Lincoln and driving to where they dumped the body and set fire to the car five miles away. They’d done it for the money and for the thrill and if the Oklahoma tourists hadn’t had the presence of mind to note their license plate they would probably have killed again – right on their doorstep. But they were allowed to plead guilty to second degree murder; Tony Riboni and Nazareno Paz received a sentence of 50-70 years, Johnny Paz got 60-70 and Frank Francia who had admitted firing three bullets into Ed Marso was sentenced to 90-99 years.

Juanito Paz
Nasareno Paz
The oldest at 22, Francisco Francia confessed to shooting Ed Marso

Effectively this should have meant life in prison. It was nowhere near that. Tony Riboni was paroled in 1961 having served less than nine years (he and the Paz pair had actually appeared before a parole board less than two years after starting their sentences). The Paz cousins were incarcerated a little longer but were still free by 1964. At the time they were released three were still younger than Ed Marso had been when they killed him. Francisco Francia served 17 years of his 90 to 99-sentence and was paroled in August 1969.

The youngest of the four, Antonio Riboni served less than 10 years and died in 1992
Ed Marso’s grave in Le Mars, Iowa

THE ENDURING MYTH OF HOTEL EL RANCHO

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Hotel El Rancho as it looked when it opened in 1936.

Hotel El Rancho in Gallup, New Mexico, is as much a draw for tourists as it was when it opened in 1937 and one of the first things anyone is told about the hotel is that it was owned by the brother of the most famous film director of the early 20th century, David Wark ‘DW’ Griffith. Given its history as home to the stars, commemorated today by named rooms and copious photographs through the hotel, it’s easy to see why the idea that RE Griffith was related to such a movie legend has been repeated over and over again, by everyone from the National Parks Service to Wikipedia.

There’s one problem; it isn’t true.

There has always been something that has troubled me about the Griffith connection; I have a degree in film and have researched DW Griffith and I knew that, of his siblings, not one had a name beginning with R. So down the rabbit hole I went.

Rupert Earl Griffith, movie theatre mogul but no relation to DW.

Rupert Earl Griffith was born in 1893 in Hallettville, Texas, the second son of Henry and Minnie Griffith. He had two brothers neither of which were David Wark and his only relationship with DW was that they shared a surname.  In 1920, putting a spell as a grocery salesman and one marriage behind him, RE Griffith – as he would be known for most of his life – found a job working as a commercial salesman in the motion picture industry selling film. He then opened his own theatre before moving to Oklahoma in 1931. From there he began the Griffith Amusement Company with his brothers Louis Clyde and Henry Jefferson, known in the family tradition as ‘LC’ and ‘HJ’.

David Wark Griffith, legendary movie director, but no relation to RE…

Despite the Great Depression, the movie industry – and the Griffith brothers – prospered. By the early 1940s they were the operators of the largest independent chain of theatres in America, owning some 290 picture houses. In 1936 RE had come to Gallup to build the Chief and Navaho theatres; New Mexico was, at that time, very popular with Hollywood filmmakers and Griffith, who adored all things Old West, decided what Gallup needed was a top-notch hotel.

He was right. Hotel El Rancho opened in 1936 and, over the next two or three decades would play host to countless stars. Did DW Griffith ever stay there? It’s quite likely he didn’t, for he had made his last film, the unsuccessful ‘The Struggle’, in 1932, five years before the hotel opened.

RE Griffith also went on to open The Last Frontier hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada (it would be renamed the New Frontier in 1955 and was where Elvis Presley made his Las Vegas debut the following year) which was designed by his nephew William J Moore who owned the El Cortez and Showboat hotels in Vegas. Incidentally, The Last Frontier had originally been planned to be built in Deming, New Mexico, but on a buying trip for the new venture, Griffith and Moore stopped in Las Vegas and realised the potential of the growing city.

The interior of Hotel El Rancho in the 1940s, still instantly recognisable today.

The Last Frontier, Vegas’ first themed hotel, opened its doors in 1942, but RE Griffith would have only months to enjoy its success. On November 24, he died of a second heart attack, days after he had suffered the first at the Beverly Hills Hotel while on a business trip to California. It was just five miles from where DW Griffith would also die of a coronary at the Knickerbocker Hotel in 1948. And the myth continues to persist that they were brothers.

THE AXE MURDERER OF TUCUMCARI

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18 December 1947 was a cold winter’s morning like any other in Tucumcari. Bertha Eugene Wagnon Kappel had got up at 4.45am to prepare for her shift at the Home Café in the Vorenberg Hotel. (The Vorenberg was a grand hotel in downtown Tucumcari which boasted suites with private baths, a large lobby, dining room and barber shop as well as the Home Café. After the First World War it was owned by Floyd B Redman who built quite a property portfolio over the years. In the 1950s he bought another motel which was managed by a lady called Lillian Leigon; romance blossomed and he presented the motel to her as an engagement present. The motel was the famous Blue Swallow.)

The Vorenberg Hotel. The Home Cafe where Bertha Kappel was employed can be seen at the right.

Bertha had only been working at the Home Café for a couple of months while her husband Gus Adolph did various odd jobs. They had been married in Oklahoma in 1938 but several of the family – Bertha was one of 13 children – had moved to Tucumcari where Adolph also had links. They and their daughter were staying with Bertha’s brother, Roy, and his wife Catalina, in Roy’s home on North 1st Street, although the Kappels had purchased a lot nearby on which they intended to build a rudimentary house. To this end, Bertha had bought some lumber and, after finishing work on 17 December, she visited the lot to inspect progress. She found that the lumber was missing and this set into inexorable motion the events of the next few hours.

Bertha returned to her brother’s house and accused Adolph of selling the materials. He denied it but she discovered that he had, in fact, sold the lumber to a neighbour and, even worse, he hadn’t been paid for it. Bertha told him to get the lumber back within three days or “she would turn him in”. Now, the lumber may have been from a dubious source and Kappel did have a prior conviction for theft, so it might have been a well-aimed threat on her part. The quarrel continued into the evening although Adolph would later claim that the couple had been made up by the time they went to bed.

Even before the lumber incident it doesn’t appear to have been a happy marriage. Bertha had moved to Tucumcari some eight months before while her husband tried to find work in Oregon. When he returned to New Mexico she had sworn out a warrant on him for non-support of their 12-year-old daughter, Mary Frances.

Unsurprisingly next morning, the arguing flared up again when Adolph was slow to accompany Bertha on her walk to work. She left the house without him and when he called out to her to wait, she replied; “You dirty son-of-a-bitch, if you are going with me, come on.” It was an unfortunate choice of words and Bertha probably knew that it was a term that particularly offended her husband.

At around 6am, near an overpass, the body of Bertha Kappel was discovered just three blocks from her brother’s house. She lay in a pool of blood, her head cracked open by three blows from an axe and her left ear almost severed. When she was found, Kappel was taking a nap, having returned home, vomited and then taken two aspirins for a headache and then slept for an hour. When he woke up, he had a hearty breakfast and then went to the Home Café to say that his wife wouldn’t be coming to work that day. He was then arrested close to where Bertha’s body lay.

kappel-1

Adolph Kappel had a limited mental capacity but he knew enough to get rid of the axe, tossing it onto the roof of a neighbour’s house where it was later found. He signed a confession, saying that he had no recollection of killing his wife but remembered “I was standing over her and I struck a match and seen what I had done.” At his trial, he was charged with first degree murder and the jury took less than an hour to find him guilty. He was sentenced to be executed in New Mexico’s electric chair.

Kappel appealed and was granted a second trial on the grounds that the jury had not been given the option of convicting him of second degree murder. This jury decided that the murder had been conducted in the heat of the moment and was not planned or deliberate. He was once again found guilty but this time the sentence was 90-99 years rather than death. Kappel proved to be a model prisoner – for at least a year…

Gus Adolph Kappel

Assigned to a prison work gang at the penitentiary’s clay pits, on the last day of October 1950, Adolph Kappel made his escape aboard a black mule called Pete (one newspaper reported the beast was called Pegasus which seems a little fanciful). For five days he managed to stay ahead of police and prison guards in freezing cold weather until he was finally captured 35 miles south east of Las Vegas, New Mexico. He gave various reasons for his escape, saying that he had wanted to find out why he hadn’t heard from his daughter and believed that his brother was preventing her from writing to him. He also said he wanted to see his sister-in-law who had been involved in a road accident and then intended on going to Oklahoma to visit his mother and other relatives. But he also told reporters that “I am not the man who killed my wife” and that had he been able to get to Tucumcari he “could have cleaned up the whole mess”. Given that he had signed a confession which formed the basis of his first trial and pleaded guilty to second degree murder at the second trial it’s difficult to see how anyone else might have killed Bertha.

In 1953, Governor Edwin Mechem commuted Kappel’s sentence to a flat 70 years while the Warden commented, perhaps a little tongue in cheek, that Kappel was “now a plumber. He does not have access to a mule”.

Governor Erwin L Mechem who commuted Adolph Kappel’s 90-99 sentence to 70 years.

Adolph Kappel applied for parole at every chance and was denied for many years. When was he released? The short answer; I don’t know. He died in 1978 at the age of 63 and is buried in the Santa Fe National Cemetery. However, he was also incarcerated in the Penitentiary of New Mexico which is just 15 miles from Santa Fe but I found that he had won a newspaper competition in 1976 when living in Ojo Caliente near Taos so it appeared he stayed in the area after his release. Perhaps he just had nowhere else to go.

John Frederick Kappel whose bound body was found in a Sayre lake in an unsolved homicide.

It is perhaps a little ironic that, with one brother behind bars for homicide, another brother should also meet his end by murder. In September 1963, the youngest Kappel son, John Frederick, was found floating in a pond in Sayre, Oklahoma. This was no natural drowning; John’s hands and feet were tied and he had also suffered a blow on the head before being thrown into the lake to drown. He had previously been working as a union picket for the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers Union protesting at the construction site for a grocery store in Elk City. Police stated that his job had nothing to do with his death, although they were bemused at the lack of signs of a struggle as John was a large man – 6’4” and 240lbs as well as being a karate expert – and throwing him in the pond had required lifting him over a barbed wire fence. The case was never solved.

The lower walls are all that remains of the Vorenberg Hotel after a fire in the 1970s. The house where Bertha and Adolph were living with her brother is also long gone.