Kansas has had an on again off again relationship with capital punishment. For the first part of the state’s history it allowed for the death penalty, abolishing it in 1907. The state restored the death penalty in 1935, only to revoke it again after a hanging in 1965. Kansas reinstated it in 1994, but has not executed anyone since.
It was early in the state’s history, in 1867, when the first hanging occurred in Osage County – a man named Martin Bates was executed for murder.
Troubled youth
Martin Bates had a rough start in life. When he was two years old, his mother died, leaving his father to care for Martin and their other children. Not long after her death, in 1860, the widowed father moved the family to Lyon County.
Martin struggled and became such a troubled child that his father finally gave up trying. At the age of 16, Martin struck out on his own and enlisted in a Missouri regiment to serve in the Civil War. Instead of the experience encouraging him to better himself, the power of being a soldier only seemed to exacerbate Martin’s acting out. Martin became known as a fighter and was constantly in trouble, facing military prison and court martial. Each time however, he avoided major trouble by promising to reform himself.
One recorded incident was when Martin and another soldier went to a private home of an elderly couple looking to purchase whiskey. When the couple refused to sell them any, Martin knocked the man down and choked him, and then struck the woman over the eye, leaving a gash. The scene was interrupted when the military guard came in and apprehended the soldiers. Instead of going quietly though, Martin put up a struggle and was pushed to the ground and forced to finally beg for mercy. Martin eventually abandoned the Army and returned home to Lyon County, where he married Eliza Loney in February 1866.
Life as a scoundrel
As Martin settled into married life in Kansas, he worked as a laborer, but just could not stay on the straight and narrow. He was once arrested for stealing money in Lyon County. As he rode to face judgement at district court, he escaped.
Bates gathered his wife and they temporarily left their mortgaged farm in Lyon County. The couple secured employment near Burlingame on the farm of Alfred Jarboe, far from those who would want to see him back in jail. The Jarboes eventually fired the couple, but Bates returned a couple days later to get back in their good graces and the Jarboes invited him to stay for supper which he did. They also invited him to stay the night, but he refused – at least in the way the Jarboes intended.
That night as they slept, Mrs. Jarboe heard a noise in their room and woke her husband, and the intruder slipped upstairs to avoid being caught. Jarboe climbed the stairs with a revolver and found Bates standing in the room in his bare feet. He had snuck into Jarboe’s house and upstairs where he found Jarboe’s money belt and was searching for a larger amount. Jarboe and other members of the household detained him. The next morning they took him to Absalom Hoover’s shop, where shackles were riveted on his legs and fastened with a chain. As he awaited a court date, Bates took great pleasure in telling stories about those that he had robbed.
There was no jail in Osage County at the time and so Bates was taken to the log cabin of deputy sheriff J.H. Polley, who lived a mile and a half north of Burlingame. When he was away performing his duties, Polley kept Bates handcuffed, and shackled with chains secured with a staple to the log wall, and guarded by his wife, Mary.
Escapee becomes murderer
In preparation for the court day, law enforcement duties were split. Sheriff William Cozine was needed to retrieve a prisoner from the Lawrence jail where Osage County deposited their long-term prisoners, and Deputy Polley had to go 10 miles away to serve papers at a residence on Dragoon Creek. Mary Polley wanted to go with her husband, and John’s father, Abel, offered to stay and guard the prisoner.
Abel was a sympathetic gentleman and opposed to guns, and requested that Bates be given a little more freedom while he was in charge. His son allowed it but as a precaution loaded a shotgun and laid it up on the boards overhead in the kitchen, out of reach and out of sight of the prisoner. Deputy Polley called his father in and showed him the hiding place before he departed with his family.
As the day progressed, Bates played sick and had Abel make him some tea and soup. Then Bates appealed to Polley’s sympathies and got him to pull the staple out of the log so he could hobble around the cabin. Another request was for Abel to make him a bed on the floor in the kitchen where it was cool. As he set up the pallet, Abel absentmindedly spread the blankets directly under the gun, allowing Bates to see it when he lay down. Bates quickly planned an escape – get the gun, hold the old man up until he could release himself from his chains, and get to the woods.
Bates waited until the two sat near the stove and Abel became engrossed in reading his Bible. Bates left the room, the old gentleman supposed his charge was going to go lie down in the kitchen. Not long after, Abel was startled by a noise. Bates, when he stepped down from a stool he had moved to reach the gun, knocked the stool over and himself fell hard to the floor.
Abel sprang up and rushed into the kitchen where he found Bates with the gun pointed at him saying, “Old fellow, I have you now. I will kill you.”
Abel, undeterred, jumped on the prisoner before he got to his feet and the men struggled. The two ended up in a deadlock with Able’s hands around Bates’ throat, a move that both surely knew the older man could not maintain. Bates promised surrender.
Grabbing his chance, Bates used Abel’s hesitation and bit the older gentleman’s thumb off, stunning him momentarily. Abel then struck Bates on the head with the gun, breaking the stock in two, damaging the lock. This didn’t slow Bates down though. While Abel ended up holding the stock and the piece with the hammers on it, Bates had the part with the caps attached.
Abel presumed the danger was over and started to town for help, while Bates called for him to come back. When he didn’t, Bates desperately picked up the gun barrels with a cap still attached, and with a stove lifter, struck the cap and fired the gun. The old gentleman fell, wounded in the arm and in the side.
With Abel incapacitated, Bates went to a woodpile for an axe, chopped his shackles in two, and escaped. The injured Abel again attempted to reach town, but only made it a short way, where he fell down in the road and was found a couple hours later. As soon as the town was alerted of Bates’ escape, runners were sent in every direction. All crossings were patrolled, and a reward offered. Abel’s injuries were fatal and he died within the week.
Fugitive on the run
The first place Bates ran was his home on Eagle Creek in the southeastern part of Lyon County. Just north of Emporia, he came upon a house that was directly on the road but totally shielded by an orchard and shade trees. Bates quietly stole a horse among those trees to aid him the rest of the way home, daring to stay at his house briefly.
He then hastened to Johnson County, where he worked for a farmer for a few days, quickly gaining his trust. And just as quickly Bates broke that trust and stole $20 and started towards Kansas City and the Missouri border. The offended farmer took matters into his own hands and followed Bates, catching him east of Olathe. The farmer then brought him to justice by turning him into the Johnson County sheriff at Olathe.
As Bates considered his situation, he hastily wrote a letter to his father telling him to come quickly and bring both money and a gun, as he had to leave before it was found out that he had killed the deputy sheriff’s father in Osage County. Bates trustingly gave the letter to a boy who was in jail for stealing a coat. Instead though, the boy gave the letter to the sheriff who secured Bates more firmly in his cell with chains and quickly wrote to Sheriff Cozine.
It was mid-November and Bates had been on the run for weeks, when Sheriff Cozine went to retrieve the prisoner for court. Cozine was accompanied by Deputy John Polley, who was still in the early stages of grief over the loss of his father.
Osage County justice
A special session of the district court was called on Christmas Eve. Bates came into court with his chains over his shoulder and a nonchalant air about him. No family was there to support him, nor had they visited. He was represented by James Rogers, of Burlingame, as his legal counsel, who defended him fairly despite his crime.
Judge John Watson, who presided over the Fifth District, oversaw the proceedings, and undoubtedly was familiar with Bates and his past transgressions. Bates arrogantly pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
The jury found Bates guilty of first degree murder. And still Bates did not show emotion. He just stared with his dark and mellow eyes and he seemed unaffected as the verdict was read.
The judge with his snow white head of hair and hand shaking with palsy, addressed the courtroom, “For the first time since the commencement of this trial, do I experience a feeling of satisfaction; and this I derive from a prospect of our soon being relieved from the painful responsibilities which have rested upon us. Conscious of being to any extent the arbiter of a destiny involving the happiness or misery of a fellow being, must inspire every heart not insensible to the emotions of Christian sympathy with feelings of anxious care; but how oppressive the solitude, how crushing the weight of responsibility, when the matter of life and death hangs trembling in the scales placed in our hands and which may be turned – irrevocably fixed, as it were, by our lightest breath.”
Judge Watson went on for 30 minutes in total explaining the charge of first degree murder and how it compared to other murder and manslaughter charges according to the legal system. Watson spoke about Bates’ wife who had just given birth to twins and hoped they would never hear their father’s name spoken. The judge commented that he thought in passing sentence, it would evoke some kind of feeling from the stoic prisoner, but to no avail.
After supper that night, Bates sent for his attorney James Rogers, and tearfully and shamelessly pleaded with him to apply for a new trial. He said if he could only get a life sentence instead, he would break out within a year and steal $1,000 and give it all to Rogers for his services. Rogers declined.
Begging for mercy
Bates was returned to the Lawrence jail, where he awaited execution in February of 1867. Further complicating the matter was not only did Osage County not have a jail, but it had no gallows. Judge Watson ordered that an enclosure be built to house gallows to meet the impending need. After some deliberation, however, county officers determined that the expense of lumber for temporary stockade was not justified. Local newspaperman Marshall Murdock suggested that a scaffold be erected in the courthouse on the second floor in order to save money for lumber – a move that Judge Watson later called a “desecration” but others deemed more practical than concern with dignity of a person or the courtroom.
On Feb. 19, 1867, Sheriff Cozine, Deputy Polley and Bates left Lawrence around sunrise on a chilly and misty, disagreeable morning. Bates wasn’t dressed for the weather and begged to walk on the slow and muddy trip. The request tugged at the sheriff’s heartstrings and he took off one of Bates’ shackles and tied a strap to it so it could be carried.
After a full day of travel, it was nearly dark and they were tired and still about three miles from the stage station at 110 Mile Creek, so Deputy Polley told the sheriff, who was also walking, to get in the wagon because he was going to drive faster to get to the station for supper.
Not long after they changed pace though, Bates used the distraction of the extra movement of the wagon, leapt from his seat behind Sheriff Cozine, and ran for his life. He was slowed only by a stone fence over 100 yards away. Cozine lunged at him grabbing his foot as he tried to jump over the wall and held him until his deputy arrived.
Bates cried, begged for them to shoot him rather than have him face the gallows. The sheriff was at his end, Bates had been searching for sympathy all day, wearing on the patience of his guards. Bates continued, calling the sheriff cruel in blaming him for trying to save his life. Bates was finally again secured and they reached the station at 110 Mile Creek. Cozine employed two more men to help guard the prisoner for the rest of the way to Burlingame.
Reformed by death
The next day, Bates waited in a holding room on the first floor as curiosity seekers wandered through the second-floor courtroom to view the scaffolding. A brand new rope was brought in because it was feared that the older one would not hold Bates’ six-foot, 200-pound frame. At noon, the sheriff and his deputies cleared the courtroom and brought out Bates.
Bates was reported to have addressed the crowd from the courthouse steps before he entered the courtroom saying, “Dear friends, I am about to appear in judgment. If I have wronged or grievously injured any of you, I hope you will forgive me, as I feel that God, for Christ’s sake has forgiven me.”
He went on to address the young people to obey their parents, and blamed his father for all his sorrows and current status, and then asked forgiveness of John Polley, the deputy whose father he’d taken from him.
Six witnesses were allowed in the courtroom to watch or assist in the execution. Among them, four county officials, including newspaperman Marshall Murdock, a Catholic priest, and local Methodist minister.
The priest was Father Joseph Perrier, from Emporia, who was there to attend the professing Catholic prisoner, who would have had his acquaintance in Lyon County. At the request of Father Perrier, Bates knelt near the foot of the scaffold stairs with a crucifix in hand and kissed it. The clergymen together prayed for 10 minutes, Father Perrier holding the crucifix in front of the condemned man’s face so he could fix his eyes on it.
When the prayer was over, the priest hugged Bates and kissed him on both cheeks, and the prisoner began his ascent of the stairs with Sheriff William Cozine leading the way. At one point Bates lost his composure at the top of the scaffold causing him to stumble, but just momentarily.
Before the black cowl was drawn over his face, Bates shook the Sheriff William Cozine and Deputy John Polley’s hands and thanked them for being kind to him. As Bates rose to his feet from the chair in preparation to be hung, he said, “Jesus, let me be with you in Paradise.”
As Sheriff Cozine awaited the signal to pull the lever to drop the floor from under Bates, Bates kept repeating “good bye friends, goodbye” which rattled Cozine so much that he did not see the cue of a handkerchief being waved to drop the board from under Bates. Someone finally yelled “For God’s sake, Billy, pull the lever!”
Jarred out of his thousand-yard-stare, the sheriff pulled the lever and Bates dropped more than four feet. As Bates hung and life drained from him, the brand-new rope that had been installed unwound and slowly rotated the executed prisoner who was pronounced dead 18 minutes later.
Bates was buried without ceremony during a blinding snowstorm in the original Burlingame Cemetery located west of town.
Kansas debates fatal retribution
Almost exactly a year later, the man who had defended Martin Bates, James Rogers, was serving in the Kansas Senate, and made a motion for Kansas to abolish capital punishment. Rogers had long been opposed to capital punishment, but did not initiate change because the new state did not have adequate ways to imprison criminals. However, with the Kansas State Prison ready to open its doors, and undoubtedly his involvement with the Bates trial, Rogers was prompted to take action. His motion was debated and defeated.
Newspaperman Marshall Murdock, who also witnessed Bates’ execution, advocated for capital punishment to be repealed. It would be decades though before it became a reality.
Wendi Bevitt is owner of Buried Past Consulting LLC. She lived in Osage County for 20 years and her research interests include Osage County Civil War veterans and Osage County history.
