1910 Old Opera House Murder

Old Opera House Mystery - 1910

This next 1910 news article came from The Woods County Socialist, a Woods County for Socialism -- Published weekly at Alva, Oklahoma, in the interest of all the people. Managing Editor, S. A. Beauchamp and Associate Editor, A. S. Hankins.

Correspondents were... D. C. Marr, Alva; D. J. Riley, Waynoka; C. E. McOsker, Dacoma; J. H. Morgan, Capron; Roy Seger, Cora; C. J. Swain, Avard; J. B. McMurphy, Farry; and E. C. Neal, Jefferson. Subscription were 50-cents per year in advance. As to the date of this paper (Nov. 11, 1910) they had 365 subscribers. and printed out 1500 copies.

It gives us another look of what it was like back then. This murder also followed a county election with Democrats, Republicans and Socialists on the ticket. The Alva local of Socialists had a membership of 47, but some of these were from remote parts of the county. I added local news article to show what it was like back then... (I have left the typos and mis-spelled words as they were in the article.)

A Black Crime - news article

Is it possible that we have the detestable institution of white slavery in our midst? Mabel Oakes, aged 23, daughter of George Oakes, robbed of her virtue, and choked to death by violent hands in the old opera house.

N. L. Miller, a justice of the peace of the city of Alva, the husband of as noble a woman, the father of as fine a family of children as any place can boast of -- deep suspicion rests upon the head of this monstrous perverter of justice, this unfaithful husband and unnatural father, that he was criminally intimate with unfortunate Mabel Oakes and that she met her death at his hands.

Circumstantial evidence taken at the coroner's inquest seems to point him out as the traducer and murderer. Three conscientious physicians have testified under oath that the victim would have been a mother within a few months, that she was in normal and healthy condition, and that she met death by strangulation and that she could not possible have inflicted such a death upon herself.

The girl had worked in Miller's office, her father had taken her away, but she had returned. She had left home about ten in the morning and was found dead in a portion of the building in which Miller's office was located about three in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 9, 1910, -- still warm, but from whose body the spirit had passed to that realm from whose bourne no traveler has ever returned.

We say that suspicion rests upon this man Miller. It is possible that he is innocent. Let's drop the mantle of charity there. It may be that some other man is the guilty person, the facts remain that poor Mabel Oakes is dead and some man is guilty of her ruin and death. One thing is sure -- wrong has been committed and another thing equally sure that another wrong done by society cannot make amends.

Let the guilty man be sought out in order that the community may know who it was -- not so much to deter others from evil, as to root out the cause of the evil. If N. L. Miller has been keeping a dive, a disorderly house, a booze joint or a bad place of any kind -- he could not have kept such a place without the co-operation of others. On the heads of his confederates should also fall the wrath of the law.

If such a dive has been here many citizens must have known or suspected it and allowed it to go on unchallenged. They also are not above censure. In fact the whole community -- the whole of society -- is responsible in a remote sense for the ruin of this girl, the heart-breaking of her mother, and the grief of her father. Under a sane system of making a living no girl would be thrown under such influences.