It is not my intentions to judge or to express any opinion in this matter. Some family members feel that what happen was okay, others think that it is a black-mark on our family's history.   We must all remember that this happen over 100 years ago, and at that time the laws and way things were handled were quite different than they are today. None of us lived in that era and we can not say for sure which way our opinion would have gone if we had been there. After reading the records, newspaper articles and other items recorded about this, I do not know who told the truth at the trial about the events that took place that night.

Many years ago I attended a family reunion, ( around 1982 ). While there, my father's cousin, Ellis, told some of us about something that had happened when he was a young boy.   While staying with his grandpa (Thomas Ulmer), he had received a whipping for getting into a trunk in the attic of the house. He did not know why his grandpa had spanked him for doing this. He decided to return to "the scene of the crime", and find out what he had gotten into that caused his grandpa to be so upset. In the old trunk, after looking at it's contents more closely, he found old newspaper clippings about the trial and murders that his Uncle Charles had been charged with.   Ellis stated that Grandpa George McCullough Ulmer (his great grandpa) was very wealthy at the time of the murders, and he (Ellis) believed that his great grandpa had spent a large amount of his fortune trying to save his son (Ellis's great uncle Charley) from prison after the shootings took place.   R. Ulmer

Summary of Newspaper Articles About Charles Ulmer’s Divorce, Arrest, and Trial For the Murders of Bailey Dawes and Les Sutter 1896-1916 ___________________________ By Jack Ulmer Dec. 18. 2000     Several newspaper articles are collected in the referenced book. I also have some original newspaper clippings that my Grandmother Ella Ulmer saved. I will retrieve the clippings, at a later date, and revise this summary, if necessary. I will at least add copies of the newspaper sketches.     The referenced book contains about 30 text pages, no photos, concerning the title of this summary. I have decided to summarize these articles for the Ulmer family genealogy. ___________________________________     Charles G. Ulmer shot and killed Bailey Dawes and Les Sutter on May 13, 1896 in Hopkins, MO.     Charley, as he was known, had been to Maryville, MO., the Nodaway County Seat, to reach a divorce agreement with his wife Susan Grace Johnson Ulmer. They, Charley and Grace, had gone to Maryville with Grace’s father Jehu Johnson, Charley's brother Thomas (Tom) and Les Sutter (a long time employee and apparently friend of Charley’s) on the morning train, and returned on the evening train to Hopkins.  According to the news accounts,  an agreement had been reached, relative to the divorce and everyone seemed to accept the situation. Apparently Charley liked his liquor and had imbibed during the trip.     Upon their return to Hopkins, Grace and her father, Jehu Johnson, set out for Jehu’s home, in Hopkins, across the street West from the Baptist Church. Charley said he observed Sutter going in the same direction and followed. Different newspaper accounts, from trial proceedings and interviews, vary somewhat on what happened after that.     One version of the incident that followed was told by Charley in an interview with a Maryville Tribune reporter: ___________________________________________       After arriving in Hopkins he and Sutter parted, the latter saying he was going home, but Ulmer suspected, he says, that this was not the case, and he followed him. “Sutter,” he continued, "went into the house".  Sutter and Mrs Ulmer went down into the basement. Note: the kitchen and dinning room were in the basement. "I was looking through the window and saw him kiss her. She kept looking toward the window where I was standing and finally said she was afraid somebody might see them. Sutter said, 'If Charley Ulmer ever says anything to me about this by G_, I'll kill him'. Then I said through the window. 'all right, you better get your gun.' Then I went away and went up town to Sid Frayne's and got two revolvers. They were 38 Forehand & Wadsworths, just little guns with a barrel about so long, (indicating the length by measuring a little longer then his first finger) then I went back down, and knocked. Sutter said, 'Come in', and I walked right in and shot at him” Here Charley hesitated, and then continued: "They say, that I hit him." On being asked in regard to his killing Dawes (Dawes was Charley's brother in law and staying overnight at the house with his wife), said that when he was upstairs he heard somebody yell from downstairs, “Kill him.” Just about the time he got downstairs somebody struck him. and he turned and fired again. This was the shot that resulted in Dawes's death. In regard to the rest of the shooting, Ulmer does not seem to remember distinctly and it is probable that he had by this time become so crazed with rage that he had no realization of what he was doing.     Ulmer also says that he did not leave town at once, but remained in the city until four o’clock in the morning, when he went to the home of his brother, Tom, and went upstairs to bed. He says that he slept soundly until this morning, when at about 5.30 o’clock, his brother came into the house. Before coming up, he called, “It’s Tom Charley", that Charley might not think it was somebody coming to get him. When he came up he said, "Charley, they are here after you” Charley replied that he would not be arrested, that he would sooner die then go to Hopkins, because he was afraid of what the people there might do, and that he would not go anywhere until he had had an opportunity to talk to his father. However, he went to the window of the bedroom upstairs and after placing his Winchester on the window, he talked to the fellows below. He says he was not afraid of any of the fellows there, because he knew them and they were his friends, and he was their's, but he would not go to Hopkins and he did not give himself up until the constable had pledged him his word that he would be brought at once to Maryville.     Ulmer admits having been drinking a little during the day, but he says that Sutter, who was with him most of the day, had drank much more and had vainly tried to get him to drink enough to intoxicate him.     Ulmer’s father, George McCullough Ulmer, who by the way, is one of the finest men in Hopkins township, and has the respect of everybody, is in the city today, and will back his son in fighting the case. As the elder Ulmer is a man of considerable wealth this means that the case will be, before its close, one of the most hard fought and famous legal battles ever known in Nodaway county. ____________________________________     During the trial, the news articles display various other versions of the incidents given by those present. Grace’s parents and sister were also in the house. The defendant’s lawyers elected to make a plea for insanity, since there was no doubt that Charley actually killed both men. They apparently went to great lengths, citing mental problems from the present and past, including several relatives all the way back to ancestors in Indiana. At one time they even mentioned George Mac as having difficulty remembering things. Some of these problems could have been what we call “Alzheimer” today, some could be due to strokes, and other conditions. My own father Roy Ulmer, George Mac’s grandson suffered from what they called “Hardening of the Arteries” in the 1960s. He mentioned several times, in years prior to this, of having a fear that this might happen to him because it had happened to some of his ancestors.     Eventually, Charley was sentenced to 15 years in prison, after being convicted of 2nd degree murder of Bailey Dawes. One article said that “nothing saved Ulmer's neck excepting the fact that the state was unable to prove that he knew of Dawes’s  presence when he went to the Johnson home.” He was never tried for Sutter’s death.     On June 7, 1900, a news article says: "At 11:00, Monday morning Gov. Stephens signed the pardon of Charles Ulmer. The news of Ulmer's pardon will be received with surprise in Maryville, and yet his attorneys and Judge W. W. Ramsy and W. A. Blagg, have been laboring to secure it for six months." The article describes how Charley’s attorney traveled to Jefferson City, MO. to see the Governor, only to find the Governor was called to St. Louis because of a street car strike and was leaving on the train. The Governor invited the attorney, Mr. Blagg, to accompany him, and so Blagg had the opportunity to present the case on the train on the way to St. Louis and back. The Governor signed the pardon the day after his return. The news article describes his rationale. _________________________________ See the book (pages 33-62) compiled by Janet Hawley in 1995 titled: Murder book 2, Nodaway County, Missouri 1886-1899