were settled with six-shooters, and the quickest on the draw walked away with no fear of punishment from civil authorities. Bank robbers and cattle thieves drifted to Ada because it was still Indian territory and not a part of the States. Sheriffs, when they could be found, were no match for the professional criminals who settled in and around Ada.
The town's reputation for lawlessness changed dramatically in 1909, when the locals finally got fed up with living in fear. A respected rancher named Gus Bobbitt was gunned down by a professional killer hired by a rival landowner. The killer and three conspirators were arrested, and an epidemic of hanging fever swept through the town. Led by the Masons, the upstanding members of Ada, a lynch mob formed early on the morning of April 19, 1909. Forty members marched solemnly out of the Masonic Hall on Twelfth at Broadway in downtown Ada and arrived at the jail a few minutes later. They subdued the sheriff, yanked the four thugs out of their cells, and dragged them across the street to a livery stable that had been chosen for the occasion. Each of the four had his wrists and ankles bound with baling wire, then each was ceremoniously hanged.
Early the next morning a photographer set up his camera in the barn and took some pictures. One survived over the years, a faded black and white that clearly shows all four men suspended by their ropes, motionless, almost peaceful, and quite dead. Years later, the photo was reproduced on a postcard and handed out at the Chamber of Commerce office.
For decades, the lynchings were Ada 's proudest moment.
Chapter 5
With the Carter case, Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers not only had an autopsy, hair samples, and "suspicious" polygraph exams but also were confident they had their killer.Ron Williamson was away for a spell doing time, but he would be back. They'd nail him sooner or later.
With Haraway, though, they had nothing-no body, no witnesses, not a single solid clue. The sketches by the police artist could realistically fit half the young men in Ada. The cops were due for a break.
It came out of nowhere early in October 1984, when a man named Jeff Miller walked into the Ada Police Department and asked to speak to Detective Dennis Smith. He said he had information about the Haraway case.
Miller was a local boy with no criminal record, but the police knew him vaguely as one of the many restless young people in the town who kept late hours and moved from job to job, usually in factories. Miller pulled up a chair and proceeded to tell his story. The night Denice Haraway disappeared, there had been a party near the Blue River, at a spot some twenty-five miles south of Ada. Jeff Miller had not actually been at the party, but he knew two women who were there. These two women-and he gave Smith their names-later told him that Tommy Ward was there, and that at some point early in the party there was a shortage of alcohol. Ward, who did not own a vehicle, volunteered to go get some beer, and he borrowed a pickup truck from one Janette Roberts. Ward left by himself in the truck, was gone for a few hours, and when he returned without the beer, he was distraught and crying. When asked why he was crying, he said he'd done something terrible. What? everyone at the party wanted to know. Well, for some reason he had driven all the way back to Ada, passing many beer stores along the way, and had found himself at McAnally's out east of town, where he snatched the young female clerk, raped her, killed her, disposed of her body, and now he felt awful about it.
Confessing all this to a random group of hard drinkers and dope smokers seemed like the logical thing to do.
Miller offered no clue as to why the two women would tell him and not the police, nor did he suggest any reason why they had waited five months.
As absurd as the story was, Dennis Smith quickly pursued it. He tried to find the two women, but they had already moved away from Ada. (When he finally tracked them down a month later, they denied being at the party, denied seeing Tommy Ward there or at any other party, denied ever hearing a story about a young female store clerk getting kidnapped and killed, or any other young female