1910 Garland County killing basis of new book

HOT SPRINGS — There are many cold cases in Garland County, but one of the oldest is the murder of Oscar Chitwood.

Chitwood was shot on Dec. 26, 1910, while he was being transported from the county jail to the city jail, which was near the train station. The reason for the move was because Chitwood was to be taken to the state penitentiary in Little Rock to await trial in Benton after a judge granted a defense motion for a change of venue.

While early reports of the shooting were that an armed group of masked men confronted and threatened one of the deputies before shooting Chitwood at point-blank range, two deputies were charged with his murder but not convicted.

The episode is the basis of a new book by former National Park College history professor Christopher Thrasher and Encyclopedia of Arkansas editor Guy Lancaster entitled “The Murder of Oscar Chitwood in Hot Springs, Arkansas.”

“The Chitwood story hadn’t really been approached all that much,” Lancaster said, noting the pair had originally tried to focus on a pair of lynchings in the city before paring it back to focus on the Chitwood case.

“There’s a lot on lynching in general, but the Chitwood case is unique in that it was police acting like vigilantes. It was reported as a lynching then discovered it wasn’t. There was actually a trial. There’s just all sorts of good meat for analysis here,” he said.

Thrasher said he did much of the research into the Chitwood case, starting at the Garland County Historical Society and looking through old case files at the Garland County Courthouse.

“I felt like I was playing Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out ‘OK, where would these be if they existed?’” he said. “And I finally went to the old Garland County Courthouse, hoping that they might have something, and the clerk was very helpful and said, ‘Well, we have a basement that may have some old stuff, if you want to take a look.’

“So she led me through this labyrinth of the courthouse, and then I walked down this rickety metal spiral staircase into what felt like a dungeon,” he said.

“I get down into the basement, and there is just wall to wall just jam-packed with all these old court records, 100-plus-year-old court records that I think have really just been ignored for the most part. They kind of just got stuck down there. And it was a bit of an adventure down there with my flashlight and my cellphone trying to find what I was looking for.”

George and Oscar Chitwood were originally wanted for stealing cattle and horses near Amity, and the Clark County sheriff asked Garland County Sheriff Jake Houpt to help apprehend the pair, the book recounts. The brothers were found and informed the sheriff wanted to speak with them, and they went of their own accord to his office on Aug. 17, 1910.

Upon learning of the warrant for their arrest, the brothers pulled their revolvers, herding the sheriff and three deputies toward the stairs before racing to the first floor and outside. The officers grabbed their guns and gave chase, and Oscar Chitwood fired a shot in the air to threaten them.

Houpt and the three deputies continued to advance, leading to a shootout that led to the death of the sheriff and George Chitwood. Oscar Chitwood was later charged with the murder of Houpt.

With the case of Oscar Chitwood, “it’s surprising to me that these deputies decided to carry out this midnight assassination, when they knew they had him. They could have easily just had the trial and execution. There was no need for this elaborate charade,” he said.

While many picture Hot Springs’ history full of “gentlemen gangsters,” Thrasher said the truth is less clean-cut.

“I think what the story of Oscar Chitwood shows, it helps us understand that the real history of crime and the real history of crime even in a place like Hot Springs, it’s not the story of Al Capone. It’s not the story of those gangsters you’ve heard about, and it’s something far more kind of gritty and messy and confusing.”

He said the story also gives “competing visions of Southern manhood” with the lawmen on one side and the Chitwoods on the other.

“You have kind of this very clean-cut sheriff’s department,” he said. “They all go to the right church; they’re members of the Masonic Lodge. They’ve kind of trained themselves as these good men, and may have been in some ways, but clearly are involved in some corruption and some nefarious things.

“And then you have this model of masculinity when these guys are modeling themselves after Wild West heroes, and they want to look like cowboys. They at first glance may kind of appear the bad guys, but they’re pretty adamant that they were the good guys in this, or at least Oscar Chitwood was adamant that he was.”

“The Murder of Oscar Chitwood in Hot Springs, Arkansas” was released by The History Press in Charleston, S.C., on Oct. 31.