John Hillmon

John Wesley Hillmon, a Civil War veteran, was born in 1848 in Indiana. In the late 1860s, he moved with his family to a Kansas township called Grasshopper Springs. In October 1878, Hillmon, thirty years old, married a young waitress named Sallie Quinn. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping in Lawrence, Kansas.^[3] Hillmon, an industrious man, had worked as a foreman, miner, brick maker, cowboy, ranch hand, buffalo hunter, and occasional buffalo hide dealer in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas. Despite his many occupations, he had never made much money.^[4] Accordingly, a few weeks after his wedding, Hillmon set off on a journey west with his old friend and working partner John Brown. Hillmon told Sallie that he intended to find some land where they could start a ranch of their own.^[3]

Before leaving home, Hillmon purchased $25,000 of life insurance (which would be nearly $500,000 in current dollars) with the help of his wife's cousin, Levi Baldwin.^[5] The amount of insurance was so large for a man of ordinary means to carry that Hillmon had to go to three different insurance companies to procure four policies totaling $25,000 (one for $10,000 and three for $5,000).^[5]

In December 1878, Hillmon and Brown set out west for their journey. They traveled as far as the southwest Kansas town of Medicine Lodge before cold weather eventually drove them back to Wichita together, and then Hillmon back to Lawrence, Kansas. In late February 1879, Hillmon set off again, meeting up with Brown in Wichita and traveling to Crooked Creek on the night of March 16, 1879. The next evening, John Brown reported to a neighbor named Philip Briley that Hillmon had been shot dead at their campsite. The neighbor called the nearest coroner, George Paddock, who inspected the scene of the death and convened an inquest. On March 18, 1879, John Brown testified that he had accidentally shot and killed Hillmon when the rifle he was unloading from their wagon discharged, shooting Hillmon in the head. The corpse was dressed in John Hillmon's clothes and boots.^[6] At the inquest, witnesses from Medicine Lodge who had been in the company of Brown and Hillmon testified that the corpse was the man they had known as Hillmon. Most of them remembered Hillmon because he had passed through their town on the earlier trip.^[7] On April 10, 1879, the Medicine Lodge inquest returned a verdict of death by misadventure, or accidental death.^[8]

Once the body was buried in Medicine Lodge, Sallie requested payment of the life insurance proceeds from the three companies that had issued the policies.^[9] Suspicious, the insurance companies began to investigate the Hillmon claim.^[6] At this time, life insurance fraud was not uncommon — there had been several cases in which people had bought large amounts of insurance, killed someone, and disguised the corpse as the policy holder, who would be somewhere in hiding.^[10] (In fact, when the Hillmon case reached the Supreme Court, one of the Justices would refer to the case as one of “graveyard insurance,” meaning fraud.)^[11] Believing they were being swindled, the companies dispatched their agents to Medicine Lodge immediately.^[6]

The agents insisted that the body be disinterred and returned to Lawrence, after which it was delivered to an undertaking establishment and inspected by dozens of persons who had known John Hillmon in life.^[6] The Douglas County coroner convened another inquest. Although performed by the state-employed Douglas County coroner, the County Attorney, and in the presence of Douglas County jurors, this inquest (which the coroner much later admitted) was wholly funded by the insurance companies, who paid all the involved parties.^[12] The chief controversies at this inquest were the differences between the corpse's and Hillmon's height and teeth, in addition to the smallpox vaccination scar that the corpse carried on its shoulder.^[13] Sallie Quinn Hillmon and her cousin Levi Baldwin testified that the body belonged to John Hillmon, as did a few other acquaintances.^[13] Other witnesses testified emphatically that it was not and could not have been Hillmon.^[13] The corpse was five feet, eleven inches tall; some said it could not be Hillmon because Hillmon was at least two inches shorter, but others said he was exactly that height.^[13] Witnesses testified that Hillmon had one or more rotten teeth, while the corpse's teeth were excellent.^[13] But some witnesses testified that Hillmon too had fine teeth.^[13] Moreover, the corpse had a smallpox vaccination scar exactly where Hillmon had been vaccinated, but some of the insurance company doctors said that the scar on the corpse's arm was too fresh to be from the vaccination that Hillmon had received some weeks prior.^[13] Ultimately, this inquest, unlike the Medicine Lodge inquest, returned a finding that the death was of a “person unknown,” and had been caused “feloniously by J.H. Brown.”^[14]

Sallie Hillmon

Sallie Hillmon, John Hillmon's wife (their marriage license can be found here), was a waitress from Lawrence, Kansas. Sallie Hillmon claimed that, in 1879, her husband John had been killed by a firearm accident at a desolate Kansas campsite called Crooked Creek. It became clear to Sallie that the insurance companies were not going to pay, so she filed suit in 1880.^[15] Her case went to trial in 1882; it would eventually be tried six times.^[5] The Hillmon litigation lasted for almost 25 years, and would be argued in front of the Supreme Court twice. The first two trials, in 1882 and 1885, both produced hung juries.^[5] The third trial produced a verdict for Sallie Hillmon, possibly because of the trial judge's exclusion of the insurance companies’ most important piece of evidence: the “Dearest Alvina” letter.^[16]

Even with the Dearest Alvina letter in evidence, the fourth trial of 1895 and the fifth trial of 1896 ended in hung juries.^[17] In the sixth trial matters became even more interesting with the testimony of a Leavenworth cigar factory owner, Arthur Simmons.^[18] Simmons testified that he had employed an F. Walters at his cigar making shop two months after Frederick Adolph Walters’ alleged death at Crooked Creek.^[19] He produced employment records and identified a picture of Frederick A. Walters as the Walters who was formerly in his employ.^[20] This evidence was persuasive to the jury and they returned a unanimous verdict for Sallie Hillmon.^[21] The insurance companies managed in 1903 to persuade the Supreme Court again to overturn Sallie Hillmon's victory, on less memorable evidentiary grounds.^[21] But eventually all of the insurance companies settled with Sallie, for the full face amount of the policies plus accumulated interest.^[21]

Frederick Walters

The crux of the insurance company's case was a letter headed "Wichita, Kansas, March 1, 1879" and beginning "Dearest Alvina." It appeared to be from Frederick Adolph Walters to his fiancée, Miss Alvina Kasten.^[22] Walters and Kasten had been sweethearts in Fort Madison Iowa, but Walters had left his Iowa home in the spring of the previous year to pursue his trade as an itinerant cigarmaker.^[23] Alvina Katsen, in a pretrial deposition, swore that she had received this letter from the post office early in March 1879.^[24] In the letter, Walters wrote that he planned to leave Wichita “with a certain Mr. Hillmon, a sheep-trader, for Colorado or parts unknown to me.”^[25] It was this intention to travel with Mr. Hillmon that was crucial to the 1892 decision. According to Alivina Kasten and members of the Walters family, this was the last correspondence any of them received from Frederick, and they had not seen him since.^[26]

Judge Oliver Perry Shiras, presiding in the third trial of the Hillmon case, had excluded this letter from the jury's knowledge, agreeing with Sallie Hillmon's lawyers that it was hearsay.^[27] (Her lawyers apparently had not thought to make this objection in the first two trials.) The letter certainly was hearsay according to the usual definition: an out of court statement offered in court to prove the truth of the matter asserted. There were certain recognized exceptions to the hearsay rule, but the Dearest Alvina letter did not seem to qualify for any of them. The insurance companies’ lawyers could do no better than to argue that it was a business record; there was such an exception to the hearsay rule, but a love letter certainly did not satisfy its requirements.^[28]

John Brown

John Brown was John Hillmon's traveling companion. After John Brown reported the shooting death at Crooked Creek to some nearby rural residents, two inquests were conducted under the auspices of the coroner at Medicine Lodge, seat of Barbour County. The first coroner's jury failed to agree whether the death was accident or otherwise (one account says the jury “did not know how to render a verdict,” an odd circumstance suggesting that homicide, or at least investigations into it, were not common in Barbour County); the second concluded that the shooting was accidental. The body was then buried at Medicine Lodge, and Brown wrote a letter to Sallie Hillmon explaining what had happened and conveying his regret and condolences.

In each of the inquests, Brown told the same story of an accidental shooting. However, after the Douglas County inquest's finding, Brown went to stay at his brother's home to Missouri, and soon afterward his story changed.^[13] Over the summer of 1879, Brown was approached several times by an attorney who claimed he had been hired by Brown's father to represent the son and protect him from the consequences of the second inquest verdict.^[29] But the attorney, J.R. Buchan, was really retained by the insurance companies.^[30] It is undisputed that Brown then signed an affidavit prepared by Buchan that was wholly inconsistent with his previous tale.^[31] Brown's new story stated that he and Hillmon had picked up a traveler called Joe, whose last name sounded like Burgess or Berkley.^[32] This traveler, according to the affidavit, was naïve and agreed to travel unseen, hiding at times under the blanket in the wagon so people would only note two men traveling together.^[32] The document went on to say that “Joe” was chosen because he was a passable lookalike for Hillmon, and that Hillmon had inoculated the intended victim by using a pocket knife and serum from Hillmon's own vaccination site.^[32]

Brown's affidavit stated that it was Hillmon who murdered the Joe Burgess/Berkley and switched clothes with the victim, as well as planting his own journal in the victim's inside jacket pocket.^[32] The affidavit also described a conversation Brown had with Sallie, in which she said she knew of Hillmon's whereabouts and that he was not dead.^[33] After Buchan showed this affidavit to Mrs. Hillmon, in an unsuccessful effort to persuade her to withdraw her insurance claims, Brown tore up it up and threw it in the stove.^[34] (Buchan retrieved it and repaired it for use in court later, making clear that his real client was the insurance companies.^[35]) Later, Brown further repudiated this statement, and he testified in 1882 that he had only signed the affidavit because Buchan had told him he would be arrested and convicted of murder if he refused.^[36]