Governors keep man behind bars
Reading 100-year-old editions of Arkansas newspapers, Old News stumbles across extraordinary ordinary lives. One such case is L.E.A. Yeager, former lawman. Yeager spent five years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit — because two governors didn’t want to be seen as soft on crime.
In 1921, a jury in Phillips County convicted Yeager of an ugly crime: carnal abuse. The teenage daughter of a man he had shot to death the year before … pause to soak that in … accused him of fathering her baby. On the weight of her declaration, the court sentenced Yeager to 21 years in prison.
Yeager definitely did kill W.P. Mansfield at Lexa (near Helena) on April 6, 1920. Yeager said so when he surrendered his badge to his boss, Sheriff F.F. Kitchens. But Yeager insisted he shot Mansfield in self-defense. Mansfield came to Yeager’s house in the night, to dispute “lumber contracts,” and when Yeager showed himself at the door, Mansfield opened fire. Yeager shot back, striking Mansfield with four bullets.
The Helena Daily World reported at the time that Judge J.M. Jackson released Yeager on $2,500 bond, that Mansfield was buried in Maple Hill, and that he was survived by a wife, a daughter and a son. A grand jury then indicted Yeager for murder.
Mrs. W.P. Mansfield — Daisy — testified for the prosecution, as did Mansfield’s brother and two friends. But a jury found Yeager not guilty.
But then, in October 1920, Daisy’s teen daughter, Elizabeth, who was pregnant, told a grand jury that Yeager was the father of her baby. Elizabeth had been taken under the wing of Mrs. W.C. Younts, president of the board of managers of the Florence Crittenden Home in Little Rock.
And then, in December, 35-yearold Daisy Mansfield married 39-year-old Lester Yeager. And if this story is beginning to read like a starring vehicle for Timothy Olyphant, I’m right there with you. Why would a woman marry the man who killed her husband and allegedly impregnated her daughter?
When Elizabeth gave birth at the hospital in Helena, her mother was allowed to visit. Daisy asked if she’d told the truth about Lester — now her stepfather. The girl said she had not, but she didn’t want to tell Daisy who the baby’s father really was. The next time Daisy tried to visit, she wasn’t allowed in. The baby was put up for adoption and seen no more.
But on Nov. 21, 1921, 17-year-old Elizabeth repeated to a packed courtroom the statement she’d made to the grand jury, and 12 jurors believed her. She said, “That man is the father of my child.” Judge Jackson sentenced Yeager to 21 years in the state penitentiary.
His friends, his attorneys, the interim Phillips County sheriff who arrested Yeager, the prosecution,
all urged him to plead guilty and take the minimum penalty, one year. “I am not guilty,” he answered them all, “and I’ll rot in prison before I’ll say I am guilty.”
After sentencing, he was released on his own recognizance to get his affairs in order before reporting to prison. This time Daisy and his friends urged him to flee. He refused: “It will come out some time that I am innocent, and I’ll stick around until the truth is known.”
And so it came to pass that by 1923, Yeager was a trusty convict tipster for Arkansas Gazette reporter Joe Wirges at The Walls in Little Rock (see arkansasonline.com/925walls). Daisy was living in town.
EXONERATION
Sometime in 1923, Elizabeth showed up at her mother’s boarding house while Daisy was away. Three other people were in the parlor, Frank Glover, Mrs. S.F. Griffin and Mrs. Ada Corney. The girl started crying, and when one of the women asked her what was wrong, the girl sobbed, “I swore a lie on a man.”
Shortly thereafter she and her mother and a lawyer appeared before a notary public and she made this confession:
“I, Elizabeth Mansfield, make the following statement of my own volition without threats or promises of reward. I was the prosecuting witness and the only witness in the case in which L.E.A. Yeager was convicted in Phillips Circuit Court of the charge of carnal abuse and was sentenced to 21 years in the state penitentiary. It was solely my testimony that convicted Yeager of that charge.
“I did not testify to the truth at the time of the trial for the reason that I had promised my father on his deathbed that I would testify that Yeager was the guilty man.
“The truth of the case is that Yeager never had immoral relations with me at any time.”
ACCUSES FATHER
The Pittsburgh Post picked up the story, too, publishing her statement almost wordfor-word as it appeared in the Gazette, with one large exception. In the Post version, Elizabeth said: “The truth of the case is that my father was the father of my child and Yeager never had immoral relations with me at any time.”
Either the Gazette edited out the accusation against a dead man, or the Post invented one. Whatever, it’s clear that the Gazette believed in Yeager’s innocence, because publisher J.N. Heiskell himself weighed in on the case, as we will see next time.
The late W.P. Mansfield still had vocal, angry friends. For instance, the Crittenden Homes’ Younts had campaigned in 1922 on behalf of Phillips County Sheriff J.D. Mays, in ads thanking him for bringing Yeager to justice so rapidly.
Also, when Gov. Thomas Chipman McRae ran for re-election in August 1922, his opponent Edward P. Toney portrayed him as a convict-coddling “sobster.” McRae supporters and the man himself took out ads insisting he had not released Yeager and never would.
So after Elizabeth’s statement, when petitions arrived on McRae’s desk seeking full pardon, nothing happened. These petitions were signed by the judge who sentenced Yeager, the interim sheriff who arrested him (Kitchens died in October 1920 and his deputy took over) and the attorneys who prosecuted him. They wrote:
“We believe that this man was convicted largely upon public sentiment and doubt very seriously whether he is guilty of any crime at all. He always very stoutly maintained that he is innocent of this charge. We know that the State of Arkansas offered to let him enter a plea of guilty to the charge and take a sentence of one year in the penitentiary. He refused to do this even after some of his friends had advised him that by so doing he could obtain a furlough within a short time. This act on the part of Mr. Yeager and other facts connected with the case create in our minds a belief that he is innocent of this charge. …”
DIVORCE
In January 1923, Daisy filed for a divorce from Lester; in February, her plea was granted. Who knows why? But we do know that the file of petitions McRae received also included a plea from “Mrs. W.P. Mansfield,” who argued, in part:
“When Mr. Yeager was permitted to return to his home for four days and nights without bond, I begged him to take what money he had and leave the state. He refused to do this, saying that he was not guilty and that someone would find out the truth about the whole thing in a few months or a year. …
“I feel sure my daughter’s testimony before the grand jury was perjured through fear of threats. I well know that Mr. Yeager is not guilty of the crime with which he is charged and it is my earnest prayer that you may see fit to release him at a very early date from further punishment.”
Her words fell on deaf ears, and gubernatorial deafness didn’t end there. Meet me back here Oct. 9 for more.