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Elk Point Tragedy

By Derald Keiser

The old courthouse in Elk Point was packed during the last week of March in 1933. People lined up outside waiting for the courtroom doors to open at 7:30 each morning. When they did, seats filled immediately, leaving other curious spectators to stand in doorways, hallways and even down the stairs as they tried to catch a glimpse of the proceedings.

On trial was Moville, Iowa farmer Nile Cochran. He was accused of shooting and killing 67-year-old R. D. Markell, an Elk Point man who operated a milk hauling business with his sons and was determined to deliver milk to markets in Sioux City, despite a milk strike, a growing number of picketers and their threats.

The confrontation which erupted on Feb. 3, 1933 on Highway 77 four miles west of Sioux City was a product of the times and the culmination of events which had begun almost a year earlier as South Dakotans struggled with the Great Depression, widespread farm foreclosures and disastrously low farm prices.

Out of this sense of hopelessness and despair emerged talk of action. When the idea of withholding farm products from the market until prices rose to a more acceptable level caught on, the Farm Holiday Movement was born.

By the summer of 1932, the movement was becoming a strong force in the counties around Sioux City. Under the leadership of Mike Reno of Des Moines, members of the militant organization had begun their efforts to stop all produce — including grain, milk and livestock — from coming to market. Roads leading into major markets were picketed and truckers, except for a few of the most daring and determined, did not make it through.

R. D. Markell of Elk Point and his sons were among that determined lot. They had moved to the Union County area after plans for renting a farm near Wessington Springs fell through due to a bank failure. While other truckers sometimes had to haul their loads back to farms or have them dumped in the road ditches, the Markells were more dauntless. They strongly believed that no picketers should stop them from bringing their loads of milk into Sioux City because they were bringing milk not produced by Union County producers. The Markells hauled milk from the Vermillion area while another son, Warren, operated a truck hauling milk from farms east of Sioux City. Nevertheless, each day they had to get through picketing farmers.

Picketers at Jefferson on Aug. 13 used water hoses to stop Markell’s trucks. Markell then sought the help of Union County Sheriff G. N. Slocum. After a second dousing, Sheriff Slocum ordered Jefferson town officials to turn off water to the picketers. He then accompanied Markell’s trucks through Jefferson. At the Sioux River bridge at Riverside, 300 farmers attempted to stop the trucks, but they scattered as the Markells spread through. Sioux City police flashed guns to stop the picketers as the truck proceeded to Roberts Dairy in Sioux City.

Another night, Sheriff Slocum and four deputies attempted to help get five truckloads of cattle through the picketers. When the first truck was halted, the sheriff fired a shot into the air from a short-barreled shotgun. The picketers disarmed him and threw the gun in the weeds. Then, according to a Sioux City newspaper, “They gave orders to the sheriff, who found himself absolutely alone. His aides had fled.”

The Farm Holiday Movement continued to gain followers. Four thousand people jammed into the Ritz Ballroom, two and a half miles south of Beresford, on Aug. 17, 1932 to hear Reno, the group’s leader, speak. Amplifiers carried his three-hour oration to 6,000 more outside. After Reno’s speech, Joe Trudeau of Jefferson brought the crowd to its feet with a pledge of support and a ringing endorsement of the movement. Less than a week later, directors and owners of the elevators in Elk Point resolved to stop purchasing and shipping grain.

Roads leading into major markets were picketed and truckers, except for a few of the most daring and determined, did not make it through.

As months passed, picketers became more determined to stop the flow of milk into Sioux City and the Markells became more iron-willed in their determination to get their loads of milk into Sioux City. The inevitable happened on Feb. 3, 1933, near the Gadbois farm on paved Highway 77.

The Markells had notified Tom Collins, Union County ‘s new sheriff, that they planned to bring their truck, loaded with 1,000 gallons of milk, to Sioux City. Seventy picketers, from Plymouth and Woodbury counties in Iowa, stood on the road or along the Milwaukee’s railroad tracks. Armed with shotguns, rifles and revolvers, they waited for the Markells’ truck.

When the Markells approached, they saw two telephone poles that picketers had placed in the road. The truck stopped and R.D. Markell, who was riding in the passenger seat, got out to move the poles. His son, Frank, was driving and two other sons, Harry and Keats, were hunched between milk cans inside.

Suddenly, a shot rang out. Some said the Markells fired first, others believed that the picketers did. Markell continued removing the poles from the road. News accounts say he was shot in the abdomen while getting back into the truck. The two Markells in the back of the truck rose up from between the milk cans and began firing at the picketers. With blood streaming down their faces, Harry and Keats Markell kept firing from the back of the truck. A rifle bullet chipped off the end of Keats Markell’s thumb. Later the bullet was found in the stock of his gun.

Sheriff Collins, who was at the scene, ducked behind a nearby building on the Gadbois farm when the battle was at its height. He reported a deafening barrage of rifle and shotgun fire. Somehow, Frank Markell was not hit by gunfire and the truck, with windshield and front tires shot out, proceeded on to Riverside.

The elder Markell was taken to St. Vincent Hospital, thought to be near death. Showing remarkable stamina, he survived for several days. Keats Markell was hospitalized for a short time with buckshot wounds on his face. From his hospital bed he declared that he was going right back on the road hauling milk, saying, “They can’t scare me out.”

Nile Cochran, a fanner and picketer from Moville, Iowa, admitted firing the shot at the truck. After treatment at Methodist Hospital for minor wounds, he was taken to the Sioux City jail before being extradited to the Union County jail.

When the case went to trial, his parents from Winner and his wife and seven children from Moville, were among the spectators packed in the courtroom. After a week-long trial, Cochran was convicted of second degree manslaughter and sentenced to three years in prison. He was taken to the penitentiary in Sioux Falls on March 30, 1933.

Editor’s Note: The author, Derald Keiser of Alcester, was a Union County historian. He died in 2004. This story is revised from the May/June 1998 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.



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The Home Kids of Dell Rapids

By Amy Dunkle

Harold Kindred, Orville McDonald, Ed Kindred and Earl Hormann were a few of the orphans housed at the Dell Rapids Home.

Note: The Odd Fellows Home, built in 1910 in Dell Rapids, was a refuge for orphans and elderly members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and their sister organization, the Daughters of Rebekah. In 2001, Amy Dunkle visited with a few of the former residents still living to learn what orphanage life was like.

The Odd Fellows Home was home in every sense of the word for about 100 children who arrived without either material belongings or the innate sense of security that someone would take care of them. In fact, for many of these youngsters, the Home in Dell Rapids was the last stop in a string of homes.

In 1927, Earl Hormann was nine years old, living on a farm southwest of Mina with his parents and his younger brother, Darwin. Then the boys’ mother, only 28, died in childbirth along with their infant sister. Days later, on a blizzardy February night, their house burned down. “Dad farmed us two boys out,” recalled Earl Hormann. “Back in them days, it was pretty slim pickings. We went from house to house. Finally, they just couldn’t take care of us.”

Ed Kindred’s dad, a fireman in Sioux Falls, died in the 1918 flu epidemic. His mother’s second marriage didn’t work out, and she couldn’t take care of Ed, then six, and his brother, Harold. Despite the turmoil in his early life, Kindred showed no trace of bitterness, no sense of being a victim at being brought to the Home in 1923. “They just put us there. We adjusted pretty good.” Referring to his mother, he said only, “There wasn’t much love there for me and my brother.”

Russell MacDonald was also six when he came to the Home from White River in 1922. Arriving alongside him were five siblings. Russ was three when his father, a farmer and veteran of the Spanish American War, died of tuberculosis. Their mother died of pneumonia.

Girls at the Dell Rapids Odd Fellows Home posed in their new overalls.

Elaine Bokker lived on a ranch north of Bear Butte until her father died in a 1932 farm accident. She was six then, and her mother moved her and her sisters into town. Four years later, her mother died of scarlet fever. The girls’ grandmother had remarried, and her new husband came with his own family to raise, so the girls were deposited in Dell Rapids when Elaine was eleven.

They were a few of the South Dakota youngsters who spent their childhoods at the Home; they became known around Dell Rapids as the Home Kids. Despite the passage of time and the paths they took in the world, the memories of their first days remained clear.

“I was scared to death — cried my fool head out,” remembered Earl Hormann. “My brother and I hid in the closet, crying. But there was a bunch of kids there besides us. We finally made friends with one another and all that good stuff.”

In time, new Home Kids bonded with the other children and with the elderly people who lived at the Home. They experienced the simple joys of growing up and learned the invaluable lessons that would carry them through life. It was, in the words of Russell MacDonald, a good place, a good home, and good times.

The Home’s typical occupancy ran about 28 children and 15 elderly, according to Ed Kindred. “The old people had one part, and the kids usually had the north end. The old people were just like grandparents to us. When we first got there, there was maybe 10 of us. Bedtime was 7 o’clock at night, summer and winter. For the older kids, it was 9. They’d have a high school girl from downtown come up and read a story to us.”

We just kind of stuck together, played like everybody else…

“Every meal, three times a day, we lined up in the hall at the north end, from the oldest kid in the bunch to the youngest,” Kindred said. “We’d say the Lord’s Prayer, go into the dining room and the matron would say grace. The little kids had to sit with the matron. They taught us table manners. We had a nurse who took care of us. We were quarantined with measles, scarlet fever. They put a red tag on the door. We all had chores, even the little ones.”

From scrubbing hallway floors to planting potatoes and butchering farm animals, the Home Kids learned to tackle their jobs. Their dishwashing skills were nothing short of legendary, said Roberta DeVaney, a Dell Rapids historian who died in 2009. “They had a reputation for really being able to wash a sink full of dishes in record time.” Of course, with no transportation other than their own two feet, there wasn’t any alternative. Twelve blocks separated the Home from school. Youngsters got home at noon and had to eat dinner, do dishes, set the table for supper and make it back to school by the 1 p.m. bell.

“We didn’t fool around,” said Darwin Hormann. He remembered swapping labor with 10 or 12 local farmers so no one had to hire workers.

But along with the work came plenty of fun. The Home bought a pony, Flossie, and a horse, Jim, that never stopped giving rides. The kids also adopted a pup, Buster, born on July 5, 1925. A farmer had put the puppies of a Newfoundland dog in a burlap bag, placed the bag in the horse tank to drown the puppies and then buried them.

“We heard something in the hog yard — two were still alive,” said Ed Kindred. “We took them to Matron and begged her to let us keep one. He lived to be 20 years old. Wherever you saw the dog, you knew the Home Kids were around.”

Ed Kindred, Elaine Bokker and Russell MacDonald — former Home residents.

There weren’t any luxuries. No television, no radio. There was a phonograph that the boys would wind up so the girls could dance. And, said Ed, “We shared our toys. Mother sent a toboggan, sent it for Christmas, and it was community property. It only lasted half a winter. Most of our toys were stuff we made ourselves — slingshots, bows and arrows, little airplanes.”

In time, the Home Kids managed to carve out a typical childhood. “We didn’t know any better,” Elaine Bokker said. “We knew other people had parents. We just kind of stuck together, played like everybody else, met our friends downtown.”

“I tell ya, we had a wonderful matron, Eleanor Kingery,” Earl Hormann added. “She was very strict, but she was kind. I think that made the difference. She made us mind. We did a lot of foolish things, like sneaking out at night. We didn’t do anything wrong, just to prove that we could do it. We’d go swimming when we weren’t supposed to. We were the first ones to swim in the river when the ice was still in.”

When it came to discipline, the boys who stepped out of line were forced to wear dresses, complete with bloomers. “I didn’t know if I was a boy or girl till I was eight or nine, I was in a dress so much,” laughed Ed Kindred.”We’d stuff the dress in the bloomers. But the kids never teased us.”

One time, the Kindred boys ran away from the Home. Ed was about eight. They got as far as Lone Tree. Upon their safe return, he said, the brothers got a spanking and solitary confinement with bread and water. But the older kids snuck in food. “They were pretty tough,” Ed said of the matron and others who meted out discipline. “If they caught you in the apple orchard when the apples were green, Matron had a big jug of castor oil. We all hated that stuff. Me and my brother, one time, we had to kneel on buttons with our chin up against the wall. That hurt.”

Time passed, and the Home Kids went out into the world. Most of the boys served their country in World War II. They married, had children and settled into steady jobs. Ed Kindred was at Pearl Harbor in WWII, and made a career of military service. Earl Hormann became a truck driver after service as a medic. Darwin Hormann flew B-29s over the Pacific, and worked in construction when he came home. Russell MacDonald farmed and quarried stone. Elaine Bokker married her downtown boyfriend and was the mother she lost to her three kids. Wherever they went, Ed Kindred said, “Every one of those kids were successful in what they did. They were taxpaying citizens. Never had serious trouble.”

He contemplated what exactly it was that built such a solid foundation for these children who had lost parents and homes, and weathered the Depression. “The Odd Fellows, they got us off on the right foot,” he said. “When we left the Home, we knew we had two strikes against us, that times would be tough. We didn’t have anything and we didn’t expect to have anything.”

As the Home Kids carved out their niches in life, Kindred said, they found they were just as good as anybody else. What’s more, despite the hard knocks early on, they looked back on their childhoods with fondness and appreciation — the discipline, the dishes, the small town of Dell Rapids, and the elderly Home residents who filled the role of grandparents. And, of course, with her castor oil and caring, matron Eleanor Kingery.

Years later, Ed Kindred mused about how lucky he and his fellow Home Kids were. “The penitentiary,” he said, “it’s full of ëem up there. Kids that never had any love at all.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from our July/August 2001 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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The Verne Miller Story: From Lawman To Outlaw

By Brad Smith

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

No stone would be left unturned in the search for Verne Miller in the aftermath of the Kansas City Massacre of June 17, 1933. FBI photo.


In November of 1920 the Huron newspaper, the Evening Huronite, promoted a young candidate for Beadle County sheriff by editorializing that with his election “crooks and licentious characters will have no protection and the safety of our wives and children and the future well-being of our families will be fully guaranteed.” Thirteen years later the U.S. Justice Department announced a nationwide manhunt for a man they identified as “the most dangerous criminal in the country.”

Both observations were accurate and, incredibly, both referred to the same enigmatic man: Verne Miller. He has been described as “easily the most contradictory and mysterious figure of the 1930s Public Enemy community.” A handsome blue-eyed redhead, he did not drink or gamble and abhorred swearing. However, he was the chief suspect in from five to 12 murders and was rumored to have participated in many more. His path from respected South Dakota lawman to reviled national outlaw is a puzzling one, with unanswered questions at every turn. Even his early life is shrouded in mystery. Various documents list his birth date as 1892, 1895 and 1896, and his birthplace as Interior, S.D., Kimball, S.D. and Illinois.

What is known is that Miller’s parents divorced when he was young, leaving him on his own at an early age. He dropped out of school at the age of ten. In 1914 he moved to Huron to work as a mechanic. In 1916 he joined the Army and served on the Mexican border. In the spring of 1917 he returned to Huron and married. A month later he was recalled to military service. On April 17, 1918, Miller landed in France with the 164th Infantry. Color Sergeant Verne Miller returned from World War I a genuine hero. A decorated marksman and sniper, he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for bravery. He was wounded twice and suffered lung damage in a poison gas attack.

Soon after his return from Europe, Miller joined the Huron city police force. The local newspaper heralded his arrival. “Lawbreakers had better watch out,” the editor announced, “if they want to keep their health.”

Right from the start, Miller’s law enforcement career was marked by dedication and courage, sometimes to the point of foolhardiness. Less than three months on the force, Miller arrested W.S. Davis, a member of a prominent Huron family, for blocking traffic with his car. Davis argued vehemently but his protests held little sway with the conscientious young patrolman and only earned him a night in jail.

On another occasion Miller’s courage may have saved a life. M.B. Balsiger, manager of the local theater, engaged R.E. Beckwith, a war veteran and popular speaker, to lecture on his military experiences. On the night of the lecture a disagreement arose regarding the speaker ‘s fee and Balsiger knocked the young man unconscious. The war was fresh in everyone’s mind and patriotic fervor was high. When news that Balsiger had beaten up a war hero reached the street, an angry mob gathered outside the theater. The building was doused with yellow paint and the mob demanded that the manager give himself up. A frightened Balsiger turned to Officer Miller for help. Miller first ordered the crowd to disperse. When they ignored him, Miller led Balsiger toward the protection of the police station. Someone in the mob threw a brick, striking the manager in the head. Miller drew his pistol and advanced on the mob. Finally the rioters dispersed and Balsiger’s life was spared.

This sometimes reckless devotion to duty did not go over well with everyone in Huron. In May of 1920 Miller resigned from the police force, saying that he and Police Chief Johnson suffered fundamental disagreements over the conduct of police business. But Miller had no intention of leaving law enforcement. By this time he had already been named the Republican candidate for Beadle County Sheriff. The 1920 sheriff’s campaign was hotly contested with Miller the focus of numerous rumors and accusations. Still he managed to eke out a 41-vote victory.

The career of the once-feared Beadle County Sheriff would come to an abrupt and startling end as Verne Miller turned gangster.

Sheriff Miller was an active community leader. He was a founder of the Huron American Legion post and served as its delegate to the state convention. He was an avid fisherman and amateur boxer. He proved to be an active sheriff as well. Records note that he located and destroyed nine moonshine stills during his first six months in office. So much bootlegged liquor was confiscated that Miller began using it as antifreeze in the radiators of the sheriff’s department vehicles.

Miller gained a reputation for being quick to use his weapon. It was said that, while a city officer, he twice fired on tourists for violating traffic ordinances. After the election the county commission warned Miller of the legal ramifications of an over-eager trigger finger.

On at least one occasion this reputation proved useful. A prison escapee turned himself over to authorities when, while hiding in a pasture, he heard what was apparently the backfire of a passing car. He told a reporter, “I thought Verne Miller was on my trail and had started shooting at me. I sure wished that I was back in jail again.”

In the spring of 1922 Sheriff Miller was well on his way to re-election and a second term. Then Miller’s wife, Mildred, was admitted to a Rochester, Minn., hospital. Miller told his deputies that he was taking a short leave to visit his wife and from Rochester they would go to a Washington, D.C. sanitarium to take treatments for his lungs. After a couple of weeks with no contact from the sheriff, his deputies became worried and then suspicious. They discovered that, shortly before he left, Miller had withdrawn $4,000 from various bank accounts, money that had apparently come from county property tax collections. The career of Sheriff Verne Miller came to an abrupt and startling end. The career of Verne Miller, gangster, was just beginning.

The State Sheriff’s Office was called in and a search begun for Miller and the missing funds. For three months there was no sign of the sheriff, then South Dakota officials received a call from a St. Paul, Minn., hotel operator wondering if they were still looking for Miller.

In the 1920s and 1930s there were several places where bandits and outlaws could go to “cool off”; communities where a tacit agreement had been reached between local officials and the criminal element. The most popular of these havens was St. Paul. As one criminal noted, “In those days if you hadn’t seen a friend for a few months you looked two places — prison or St. Paul.” The St. Paul police force of the 1920s was the most corrupt in the country, so it was inevitable that a renegade lawman like Miller would seek refuge there. Before the hotel owner notified South Dakota officials he had called the St. Paul chief of detectives and was assured that Miller was no longer wanted. The S.D. State Sheriff’s deputy who arrested Miller reported that Miller’s first phone call while in custody was to that same chief of detectives.

Back in the Beadle County jail where, just a few months before, he had been jailer rather than jailed, Miller displayed his resolute self-reliance. He turned down offers from friends to raise the $ 10,000 bond. Miller pleaded guilty to the embezzlement of $2,600 in county funds and was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary.

Verne Miller’s 1923 FBI Photo.

Verne Miller entered the South Dakota State Penitentiary on April 4, 1923. Armed with numerous character references, including one from the states’ attorney who had prosecuted him, Miller soon landed the cushy position of warden’s chauffeur. He passed his prison term driving the warden about the city and corresponding with his many friends and supporters. Miller was released on parole in September of 1924. According to records, he found work as a farm laborer near Doland, making $70 a month. But Miller had sampled the good life and it could not be lived on that sum. Within a year he was indicted for bootlegging. He paid a $200 fine in Sioux Falls federal court in October 1925 and disappeared.

The next few years offer infrequent glimpses of Verne Miller and his activities. In February of 1928 he was indicted for his part in a Minneapolis speakeasy shootout. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence. In 1929 Miller was running Canadian gambling interests for Lepke Buchalter, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime on the East Coast and an important connection in Miller’s growing criminal resume.

In late 1930 Miller was back in the Twin Cities. He held up the Wilmar, Minn., bank with Machine Gun Kelly and the dean of American bank robbers, Harvey Bailey. In 1931 with Harvey Bailey and Oklahoma outlaw Frank Nash, Miller robbed a bank in Sherman, Texas.

In the summer of 1932 Miller paid his last visit to his father’s farm near White Lake. Friends and relatives remember that the gangster’s shiny new car and expensive clothes made quite an impression in that Depression-ravaged farm community.

In December of 1932 Miller drove a getaway car for the infamous Barker gang when they held up the Third Northwestern Bank of Minneapolis. That robbery resulted in tragedy when two city officers happened on the scene and were slain in a hail of machine-gun fire. The Barker gang split up after the Minneapolis bank robbery. Miller moved to Kansas City to cool off.

A few months later Miller received a frantic call from the wife of his old friend, Frank Nash, saying that her husband had been arrested by federal agents. That phone call touched off events that would culminate the next day in the bloody outrage that will forever be known as the Kansas City Massacre.

On the morning of June 17, 1933, the parking lot of the Kansas City Union Railroad Station was crowded with arriving and departing passengers, their family and friends. Few in the crowd paid any attention to the group of men moving warily among the parked cars. If they had they would have seen seven nervous lawmen surrounding a handcuffed prisoner. The prisoner was Frank Nash. The lawmen, FBI agents Vetterli, Caffrey, Smith and Lackey, Kansas City detectives Grooms and Hermanson, and Oklahoma Police Chief Otto Reed, had reason to be nervous. Nash was a well-known criminal with strong ties in the underworld. They feared that some of his friends might attempt a rescue.

As they loaded Nash into a waiting patrol car, their fears were realized. Three men jumped from a nearby car. One of them, brandishing a Tommy gun, commanded the law officers to “Hold it!” Time froze as the two armed camps regarded each other. Then one of the officers went for his pistol and all hell broke loose.

Within seconds it was over. Bodies were scattered about the parking lot. Grooms, Hermanson, Reed and FBI agent Caffrey were dead. Agents Vetterli and Lackey were seriously wounded. Nash, the object of the ill-fated delivery, was also among the dead. One woman, surveying the bloody scene, moaned, “It’s just like Chicago.” The bandits escaped unscathed.

The late 1920s and early 1930s marked a decade of lawlessness. Colorful outlaws such as Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and Ma Barker were as familiar to the public as politicians and movie celebrities. Even in that context the Kansas City Massacre was a shocking and galvanizing event. The attorney general declared the massacre “a challenge to the government. The army of crime has declared war against the United States.” It took the FBI two weeks to identify Miller as the leader of the Kansas City gang and their reaction was certain and instantaneous. No stone would go unturned in their search for the gangster.

Controversy still surrounds the Kansas City Massacre. Historians disagree on the identity of Miller’s two accomplices. Even the motives behind the massacre are in dispute. Many say that Miller was trying to rescue Nash while a nearly equal number believe Nash’s death was a gangland hit. Regardless of motive, it is doubtful that the intent was to murder the law officers. Even someone as impetuous as Verne Miller would have foreseen the outrage that followed the unprovoked slaughter.

Miller left Kansas City immediately but the FBI, in their efforts to find the fugitive, put the heat on all of the underworld. Alvin Karpis, a member of the Barker gang, was called before representatives of the old Capone Syndicate. “Where,” they demanded, “is Miller?” Karpis asked what they wanted of his one-time partner. “Everybody’s after that bastard,” he was told.

Miller fled to New York, seeking protection from his old friend, Lepke Buchalter, but the word was out that anyone suspected of harboring Miller would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. No place was safe.

In October of 1933, the FBI traced Miller to Chicago. They surrounded his apartment but Miller escaped in a flurry of bullets. Miller’s escape, though, was an omen of the tightening dragnet. With every lawman in the nation as well as the might of the criminal underworld after him , Miller’s days were numbered.

On the evening of November 29, 1933, a motorist on the outskirts of Detroit discovered a naked mutilated body alongside the road. Fingerprints taken by the FBI confirmed that the search for Verne Miller was over.

News of Miller’s death was greeted by his family and friends in South Dakota with a mixture of regret and resignation. The Evening Huronite reported that most of the citizens of Miller’s hometown “refused to remember his reputation of a life of crime and grieved the Verne Miller, fearless sheriff and valiant soldier, they knew.” His wife, Mildred, though legally separated from Miller since 1929, stuck by him, saying “I don’t believe all the things they say about Verne. Because he became involved in a few scrapes nearly every major crime in the country was laid to him. He was wonderful to me and I have nothing against him.”

His grief-stricken father made plans for the funeral; plans that, like most of Verne’s life, were plagued with controversy. Miller, as a veteran and American Legion member, was entitled to full military rites. However, the national American Legion commander forbade the local post from participating, saying it would only bring embarrassment to the organization. National proclamation notwithstanding, Miller’s flag-draped casket was escorted from White Lake to Huron by a contingent of uniformed ex-servicemen, Miller’s friends. There, following a simple ceremony before an overflow crowd, Verne Miller’s doomed journey came to an end.

In one final twist in the tragedy of Verne Miller’s life, the erstwhile lawman contributed greatly to the future of law enforcement. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover used the outrage generated by the Kansas City Massacre to lobby Congress for a true national crime-fighting force. Prior to the massacre, FBI agents could not carry weapons and were not even empowered to make arrests. Within months of the Kansas City killings, Congress passed a comprehensive crime bill giving the FBI all the powers they sought.

Perhaps it is this that provides some final sense and purpose to the otherwise squandered life of Verne Miller–a lawman gone bad.

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The State of Absaroka

Redrawing our borders would have left us without the Badlands, Black Hills and Mount Rushmore.

By Nate Pedersen

When disgruntled westerners tried to redraw the map of the United States in 1939, one of the big land-losers would have been South Dakota. If the secessionists had their way, the Great State of Absaroka (pronounced ab-SOHR-ka) would have consisted of western South Dakota, northern Wyoming, and southeastern Montana.

The exact origins of the movement are hard to trace, but rumors of secession found willing ears in the 1930s. Ranchers and small town citizens, ravaged by repeated years of droughts and grasshopper plagues, were frustrated with the lack of federal aid from the New Deal sweeping the nation. Several South Dakotans met with like-minded residents of northern Wyoming to contemplate secession. Rock-ribbed Republicans with a libertarian bent populated both regions.

The Wyoming contingent was upset with the Democratic control of the state legislature in Cheyenne. They felt misunderstood and largely ignored by the southern half of the state. The movement gained momentum when residents of southeastern Montana joined the cause.

Named after the Crow word for”children of the large-beaked bird,” Absaroka was short-grass country populated primarily by self-reliant ranchers who eked a living from the land. Suspicious of federal involvement, they were united by the desire to be left alone — unless they needed help with those grasshoppers.

Some of the same regionalism that inspired the secessionists is present today. In the height of the Depression, state funds found their way more easily to towns with institutions, such as a college or hospital. Communities under the Absaroka banner were more sparsely populated and, especially in the days of the Model A, a tedious drive from the state capital and decision-makers who wrote relief checks. Feeling short-changed by state officials and by the federal New Deal programs, the rural leaders found common cause in the Absaroka movement.

The secessionist fervor peaked in 1939 when A.R. Swickard, the street commissioner of Sheridan and a former baseball player, took charge of the movement and proclaimed himself governor of Absaroka. Half kidding and half serious, Swickard and his compatriots drew a map of their proposed state in the basement of the Sheridan Rotary Club, which served as rebel headquarters. The map cut a straight line through northern Wyoming, a straight line through western South Dakota, and took a square chunk out of southeastern Montana. Swickard wasn’t particularly concerned about natural boundaries such as the Missouri River.

With borders established, the secessionists turned to the obvious next steps to forming a new state: printing license plates and holding a Miss Absaroka contest. Every legitimate state needs a beauty queen. The one and only Miss Absaroka was crowned in 1939. A few surviving photographs show her with a demure smile and an Absaroka banner draped proudly over her shoulder.

License plates were printed and distributed to rebels and their supporters. The year 1939 also saw the first and only”state visit” for Absaroka, when the King of Norway toured southeast Montana. Absarokians claimed the event for their own, portraying it as an official recognition of their claim to statehood.

Helen Graham was a teenager at Belle Fourche High School during the’30s. Her family lived in the southeast corner of Montana where all three states meet. She doesn’t recall that her parents were unhappy Montana residents.”It wasn’t a well-known movement,” she told us in 2009.”I always felt it was a group of men, like Rotary Club members, getting together and throwing ideas around. I don’t think it was anything serious,” she laughs.

Graham, who worked 31 years at the Sheridan Public Library, doesn’t regret that the attempt was unsuccessful. “I hardly think anyone would have been happy with that deal, do you?”

Well, perhaps A.R. Swickard would have been pleased. Capitalizing on publicity from the Miss Absaroka contest, Governor Swickard held grievance hearings in Sheridan. Residents of Absaroka came to seek redress for wrongs committed against them by the state of Wyoming. With the hearings came the media, and the news coverage attracted the overdue attention of legislators in Cheyenne. Slightly embarrassed by the publicity generated by a secessionist movement within their borders, Wyoming and Montana leaders began to pay more attention to their eastern ranchers. South Dakota’s governor during the New Deal was Belvidere rancher Tom Berry, so it’s unlikely that the West River people felt as neglected as their counterparts in would-be western Absaroka.

Pacified by increased attention, the secessionist activities subsided toward the end 1939 and ceased entirely with the onset of World War II. Absarokians united with their fellow citizens in common dedication and sacrifice. After the war, the country set about healing itself from its wounds and enjoying its first brush with prosperity in 20 years. The Eisenhower era descended on the U.S. and the Absaroka movement was largely forgotten.

However, South Dakotans still debate the geographic and cultural differences between East and West, and whether they impact the character of the people. Is West River a land of rough-and-ready ranchers and libertarians? Is East River the place for farm populists and business types who more willingly embrace government as a means to solve peoples’ problems?

A.R. Swickard sought to exploit such differences — real or imagined — to create a new state. He either ignored or failed to recognize the thought that a state’s diversity might make it stronger economically, as well as a more interesting place to call home.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.