MEGAPHONE
Elwood, Indiana Elwood High School(s)
Volume 5, No. 5 Saturday, May 1, 2004
Contents
Page 1 . . . Elwood's Gun Girl (Part Five) -- Nancy Sumner
Elmer Eisaman Accepts Position -- Nancy Sumner
Adventures of Isabelle
Messmer
Elwood’s Gun-Girl
Part 5
“Gun
Girl Goes On Rampage In Jail At Tipton
Isabelle,
Stripped to Waist, Attacks Mother and Officers In Wild Rage
Isabelle Messmer, 24, Elwood gun
girl, fugitive from a Texas murder sentence and varied other charges in half a
dozen other states, staged a wild tantrum at the jail in Tipton shortly after
noon Monday in which she attempted to strangle her mother, threw dinner dishes
at Sheriff C. D. Hobbs, hacked at him with a razor blade, and tore her clothes
from her body leaving it half nude and bloody, the sheriff said.
Word was received here yesterday evening that Sheriff Reeder Webb and
Prosecuting Attorney O. E. Gerron of
Sheriff said that the girl’s fit of wild rage has been brewing since
her arrest Wednesday with each visit of her mother. He said that after each
visit the girl became more sullen and the climax came Monday morning when the
mother was admitted to the girl’s cell. Screaming, Hobbs said that she
didn’t want her mother to put her in an insane asylum, she attacked her
mother, beat her down, and ripping her own clothes from her body, twisted a silk
skirt into a cord and twisted it around her mother’s neck. Sheriff Hobbs said
he rescued the mother from the cell and told her to leave and not come back.
From then, on the sheriff recounted the gun girl went into a rampage such
has not been staged at the jail in a long time. Naked toher waist, her only
garment a thin underskirt, she threw her dinner dishes through the cell bars at
the sheriff and presented a bloody sight from gashes in her wrist which she had
inflicted with a razor blade which she had obtained in some mysterious manner.
Cursing the sheriff, Deputy Sheriff Bury Lilly and State Patrolman
Kenneth Wines and screaming that she would kill somebody before it was all
over., she brandished the razor blade and defied the officers,
Sheriff Hobbs said that she is the most vicious criminal he has had in
jail here during the almost four years of his tenure in office. Despite her lack
of appetite which has taken on the aspect of a hunger strike, the sheriff said,
her strength was uncanny during the officers’ attempt to subdue and quiet her.
Feeling that she is more or less a victim of circumstances, the sheriff said
that he is unwilling to treat her with the severity with which he would have
treated a man under similar conditions.
He says he does not believe that she is insane nor that she really wants
to take her own life. He said that she is vicious with a sort of desperate
courage and of reckless, wildcat temper. She told that she would kill a matron
if she is taken back to the
Sheriff Hobbs was informed by
Isabelle
Goes Back To
Shrieks
Out Last Chapter of Sojourn As She Board Plane At
Calling repeatedly for her mother, whom she is said to have tried to
strangle Monday, Isabelle Messmer, 24, shrieked out the last chapter of her
sojourn in jail here yesterday when she was loaded in a state police car, bound
for the Indianapolis airport and an airplane for Texas.
Manacled with handcuffs and leg irons, the erstwhile Elwood gun girl
shrieked threats to kill, screamed that she wanted her mother and fought Sheriff
Hobbs as he carried her from her cell in the jail to the waiting police car with
State Policeman Kenneth Wines under the wheel and Mrs. Wines and Mrs. Hobbs
beside him. But her mother was not there.
Told to stay away from the jail by Sheriff Hobbs, the mother was not on
Trying to quiet her, the sheriff and Mrs. Hobbs assured her that they
would see her mother was given the money; but the disheveled gun woman screamed
with maniacal fury, threw herself at the sheriff in the back seat of the car
with imprecations and threats to kill and called for her mother as the car bore
her away.
Just before she was loaded into the car, Dr. R. L. Fullerton, county
health physician, administered a sedative in an effort to quiet her shattered
nerves which carried over from her tantrum in jail Monday.
The officers reported on their return here that her fury did not abate
until the sedative began to force sleep on her at the edge of
At the
The 250-pound sheriff chatted with Sheriff Al G. Feeney and when asked
why he didn’t wear a holster, the Texan replied that “holster is like puttin’
harness on a wild mule – it slows down the action.” He has been sheriff of
his county 18 years and is a candidate for renomination in the July primary. His
campaign card read: “Don’t swap
horses in the middle of the stream – re-elect Reeder Webb sheriff, tax
assessor and collector of Ector county.
“Yea man! The sheriff is the whole works down our way.”
Sheriff Webb, with his typical Southern drawl, joked with the girl and said
“You ought to feel lucky getting off with three years,” and that appeared to
console her.
Wines
Finds New Duties As Copper
Gallantry
Ceases When ‘Gun Girl’ Is Concerned
State Policeman Kenneth Wines returned
to Elwood today, unscratched but hardly unscathed.
A state policeman supposedly has a
comfortable task to do and does it in a nonchalant manner-of-fact way. He is
commissioned to patrol the highways, slow down aspiring Wilbur Shaws, capture
any and all bandits who operate in his area and in his spare time act the
perfect citizen.
That’s all well and good and isn’t
such a hard job when the other fellow cooperates a little, but when the other
fellow is Isabelle Messmer, Elwood’s 24-year old gun-girl, change that word
comfortable to embarrassing and all the metaphors that accompany it.
State Patrolman Kenneth Wines,
operating in the Elwood and Tipton area, is just such a model policeman, friend
and protector of the weak and all such gallantry. But he is spending today and
perhaps the next couple of weeks recuperating from the most harrowing experience
a policeman could have.
He had the ‘unfortunate luck” to
capture the fugitive dynamite from a
That apparently was a mistake for the
nourishment added vitality to those slim shoulders and kicking legs and she
proceeded to cause scene after scene with Sheriff C. D. Hobbs of
Yesterday morning with extradition
papers, Ector County Sheriff Reeder Webb of
If he thought that the journey – in
which he was forced to shackle her hand and foot to the car – was trouble
enough, he was to be greeted with a surprise. At the Indianapolis Municipal
airport, reporters and photographers gathered to ‘shoot’ the fighting Elwood
gal.
Isabelle was far from a model subject.
She lashed out at the reporters and ‘photogs’ and attempted to commit
mayhem. The lashing wasn’t bad but the act of pulling her dress to the extreme
limits of her cranium was unbearable. Picture after picture was spoiled by her
acrobatic strip-teasing.
Finally 250 pound Sheriff Webb grabbed
one hand, sturdy Sheriff Hobbs grabbed the other and (tsk tsk) Kenny Wines held
her dress down as the picture was taken.
With that episode over and Isabelle
technically in the custody of
Today, Mr. Wines patrolled his area
feeling like the Allied soldiers who were rescued from Flanders. In fact he felt worse, for the allies didn’t have Isabelle with which to
contend.
‘Gun
Girl’ Arrives At
Stages
Another ‘Show’ Before Returning To Jail
Isabelle Messmer, convicted murderess
who faces a three year sentence for the slaying of Buford Armstrong, House of
David semi-professional baseball pitcher, was back in Ector County
jail here today after a wild and hectic airplane flight from
The Tiger-like murderess didn’t
disappoint a curious crowd of some 400 Odessans upon arrival at the airport as
she went into another of her tantrums. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill every one
of you. If it hadn’t been for you and Gerron, I never would have been
convicted," the brunette screamed at Sheriff Reeder Webb and County Attorney O.
E. Gerron who returned her here by plane. “I’ll
get out somehow. I got out before and I’ll do it again and I’ll kill you. I
killed one man and I will kill you,” she continued.
She was rushed to a waiting police car
and taken to the third floor cell in the women’s block. It was a different
cell from the one which she escaped last April 8. When placed in the cell block,
she threw jail utensils at two Negro women. She is awaiting transfer to the
BULLETIN!
It was the second time that she had escaped from
this
Miss Messmer is believed to have
escaped sometime last night. The door to her cell was found open this morning.
She was at the jail awaiting transfer to the state prison.
Miss Messmer was under sentence of
three years for the murder of Buford Armstrong, semi-pro baseball player.
It's Not Quite Over Yet Folks!!
Submitted by . . .
Nancy Sumner, EHS/FHS '66
The Elwood Call-Leader
Elmer
Eisaman Accepts Position
Elmer E. Eisaman, son of Mrs. Anna Eisaman of
Elmer is filling a position for a gentleman who is retiring after 25 years of service. He will have complete charge of the western coast area.
Elmer is a graduate of the local high school with the class of 1942 and was president of his class and editor of the “Megaphone” the school paper.
During
the war, Elmer served in the Volunteer Ambulance Corps in
Note
from
While doing research in our local paper on microfilm, I came across this article on our one and only, "Mean-Gene." I thought it was a great article and wanted to share with the Denites. Hope Elmer…aka…Mean Gene doesn’t mind!
Nancy Sumner, EHS/FHS ‘66
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