Torture and murder in Searcy County

Last week’s column on the deadly feud between the Barnett and Henley families in 1930s Searcy County ended with a Christmas Eve 1933 shootout in downtown Marshall, the county seat. This led to Gov. J.M. Futrell sending in a small National Guard detachment to enforce a truce and allow a search for peace.

Members of both families were arrested, including Marshall city marshal J.H. Barnett and his two sons. However, Leland Henley, a convicted murderer on furlough from the state penitentiary, was not to be found.

Prosecuting Attorney Jack Holt hoped that by arresting and charging members of both factions with attempted murder he could work out a permanent end to the feud. Local community leaders, reacting to a Movietone newsreel about the feud which was being broadcast nationally, were anxious to bring an end to the bad publicity, adding to the impetus for a settlement. And things looked up for a while.

On Dec. 28, 1933, the Arkansas Gazette announced that “peace terms under which one member of each faction would leave this section permanently were offered by the Henleys to the Barnetts today as a means of ending the long-standing feud …” Marshall Mayor Frank Smith was quoted as saying that if the Barnetts accept the proposal, “the agreement will be put in writing and signed by all parties.”

The mayor further explained that the truce specifically calls for Nobe Henley and Rupert Barnett “to leave the country [county].” Further, convicted murderer Leland Henley would be barred from returning. If accepted by both sides, pending attempted murder charges would be dropped.

The written record does not explain the fate of the peace proposal, but developing circumstances soon spelled its doom. On Jan. 6, 1934, the governor’s office announced that Leland Henley, having failed to return to the state prison from his Christmas holiday parole to see his mother in Harrison, was a fugitive. About a month later, Rupert Barnett, son of the city marshal and reputed to have a violent temper, killed Mack Wilcox during a quarrel over a card game.

All prospects of a truce came to an abrupt end about 10 p.m. Saturday, June 9, 1934, when Marshal J.H. Barnett was shot down as he crossed a street near the courthouse square. The Barnett patriarch was struck by both shotgun pellets and rifle bullets, dying immediately.

The general belief was that Leland Henley had sneaked into Marshall and killed Barnett, finishing the job he attempted two years earlier when former sheriff W.W. “Bud” Fendley was killed by mistake.

Leland Henley, murderer or not, kept the fires of hatred burning brightly by taunting the authorities. In a postcard mailed from Youngstown, Ohio, and signed “a boy from Marshall, Ark.,” the writer claimed to be “safe and away from Marshall,” and on his way “out of the USA.”

The Barnett brothers, meantime, made their own search for Leland much closer to home. A week after the murder of their father, Rupert Barnett kidnapped Essie Jackson, a relative of the Henleys, believing she knew where Leland was hiding.

This kidnapping gained widespread attention, no doubt due to the victim being a young woman and the fact that she was tortured. At this point the feud drew renewed attention of the media and, more importantly, folklorist and writer Vance Randolph.

In an account published some months after the kidnapping, Randolph claimed that he served as a freelance photographer for the Kansas City Star, which sent a reporter named Bill Draper to interview Essie Jackson.

At first Frank Reeves, a local lawyer and Essie’s employer, would not divulge where she was hiding. However, the reporter and Randolph showed him Rupert Barnett’s denial of the kidnapping, and an indignant Reeves said Essie was living with friends in neighboring Van Buren County.

Accompanied by a guide trusted by the Henleys, Draper and Randolph journeyed deep into the mountains to a “ramshackle farmhouse.” After a while “Essie Jackson herself limped out and sat down in a chair on the porch, behind some sheltering vines.”

She said Rupert Barnett and an accomplice named Tex Johnson took her off the street at gunpoint and held her in a room behind Rupert’s pool hall.

“‘Rupe’ kept saying that he was going to make me talk,” Essie recalled. When asked what they wanted to know, “Rupert said, ‘Lee Henley, that so-and-so who murdered my paw!’” Essie said she had no idea where Leland was hiding. At that point, Essie said her kidnappers tied her in a chair. “Then he [Rupert] pulled off one of my slippers and my stocking, and set two big boxes of matches down on the floor,” Essie said.

“He began to light matches and hold them to the bottom of my foot,” Essie continued, saying, “it hurt so bad I thought I would die.” The torture continued, only interrupted by Rupert’s stuffing “a dirty rag in my mouth so I couldn’t holler.” Eventually Essie was freed after a stern warning upon pain of death not to report the kidnapping.

Essie not only reported the kidnapping and torture, she accompanied her employer on a hurried trip to Little Rock to meet with Gov. Futrell in a quest for state involvement in settling the feud. Futrell, a tight-fisted conservative with a possible bias in favor of the Henleys, wanted no part of the affair and refused to call out the National Guard.

Meantime, Rupert Barnett and two accomplices (one was a woman) kidnapped Jack Henley of St. Joe and held him for seven hours, during which time he was questioned. Jack was dressed in Rupert’s coat and hat and positioned by the side of the road with the hope it would draw fire from any Henleys out searching for Jack.

Once released, Jack Henley made his way to Harrison where he reported the kidnapping. Since there were no witnesses, many—including the FBI—were skeptical.

The Barnett-Henley feud was fought with intensity, but died a whimpering and prolonged death. Oscar Barnett, the new leader of his family, was elected sheriff in 1934, and four days after being sworn in arrested Vance Baker, a 31-year-old St. Joe resident, for the murder of Oscar’s father, Marshal J.H. Barnett.

Baker was found innocent. The new sheriff’s determined efforts to locate and arrest Leland Henley were finally rewarded in April 1935, when the sheriff and a posse arrested Leland at his mother’s log cabin on the Buffalo River. He was sent back to the penitentiary, but a move was afoot to gain his freedom.

Gov. Carl Bailey pardoned Leland Henley in January 1941, citing Leland’s help in apprehending “a large number of escaped prisoners” on Labor Day 1940. Bailey also said his own investigation caused him to realize that “either Leland Henley did not kill Mr. Fendley, or if he did, it was without intention to do so.”