Connie Franklin murder case

Connie Franklin (c.1896–1932) was an American man who became widely known in the United States for testifying at his own murder trial in 1929. Franklin was known in the popular press as the "Arkansas Ghost".

In January 1929, Connie Franklin moved to the town of St. James in Stone County, Arkansas. At the time, he claimed to be 22 years old, and worked cutting timber and as a farm hand. Soon after his arrival in the area he began courting a local 16-year-old girl, surname Ruminer, whose given name is reported variously as Tillar, Tillir, Tiller, and Tillie. In March 1929, Franklin disappeared. After an investigation, Sheriff Sam Johnson presented Bertha Burns and Tillar Ruminer as his evidence to a grand jury, but as there were at that time no witnesses willing to testify, the Grand Jury took no action in the case.

In the fall of 1929 Bertha Burns, who had found the bloody hat that supposedly belonged to Franklin back in the Spring, contacted Johnson and brought him to a pit of ashes not far from her home, claiming that there might be the evidence of Franklin's murder in the pit. Johnson found some bone fragments and teeth, which he took to the Arkansas state health officer, Dr. C. W. Garrison, who determined that at least one of the shards came from a human skull.

Some months after Franklin's disappearance, Johnson intercepted a note which provided him with some information about the case, and he renewed his efforts to find witnesses. Ruminer had told the Sheriff in May 1929 that she and Franklin had been attacked by "night riders" on March 9, 1929. She explained that she and Franklin intended to marry, and en route to the Justice of the Peace they were attacked by four men; Hubert Hester, Herman Greenway, Joe White and Bill Younger. According to her statements, Hester and Greenway took her into the woods and raped her, while the others tortured, mutilated, and then burned Franklin alive. When Ruminer was questioned about her delay in reporting these crimes, she said that she had kept quiet due to the violence inflicted upon her and the threats of further violence made against her: "One of the attackers threatened to kill her, whipped her father and mother, carried away her brother as a hostage." Without bones, or witnesses, they could not issue arrest warrants. On November 18, 1929, the Grand Jury issued indictments for first degree murder for Alex Fulks, Joe White, Herman Greenway, Hubert Hester, and Bill C. Younger following the discovery by Bertha Burns of a fire pit and bones near her home, eight and a half months after the alleged crime. A trial date was set for December 17.

On December 5, the Arkansas Gazette ran a headline claiming that Connie Franklin had been seen alive after the supposed murder. A farmer, Elmer Wingo, reported that Franklin had worked for him and for his neighbors, the Philpotts, as a farm hand in the past, and that he had passed through the area in March 1929 looking for work. Shortly after his return to Saint James, however, the case was further complicated when Johnson discovered that the man claiming to be Connie Franklin was actually Marion Franklin Rogers, who had a wife and was the father of three or four children. Further investigation revealed that in 1926 Rogers had been admitted to the State Hospital for Nervous Diseases, whence he had escaped three months later. Two days after this story broke, Rogers was found at a farm belonging to Murry Bryant near Humphrey, AR., and subsequently brought back to Saint James. There Rogers was examined and quizzed by those who had known Franklin. Coleman Foster, a cousin to Tillar Ruminer and a friend of Franklin asserted that Rogers was not Franklin. Ruminer and her father also denied that Rogers was the same person as Franklin, at first hesitantly, and then more assertively during the trial. But Rogers was able to identify Ruminer and her father, while others in the community, including the accused men, asserted that Franklin and Rogers were the same person.

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