Tommy Duncan's death & a conspiracy of silence

When 14-year-old Tommy Duncan vanished without apparent trace on Friday, May 3, 1912, a conspiracy of silence enveloped the circumstances in mystery. Most in Chariton thought they knew what had happened, of course, but divided into two camps regarding theory as his parents worried and grieved.

When the truth emerged two weeks later, there was considerable shock --- not so much at the circumstances of his death, which many had been expecting, but at the conspiracy. How could his little friends have been so devious?

Tommy was a son of Thomas and Margaret Duncan, one of nine children --- two of whom had preceded him in death. Johnnie Duncan had died during 1895 age 10 days and was the first to be buried on the family lot in Calvary Cemetery. Agness had died on Christmas day, 1911, at the age of 9 as the result of complications from spina bifida. Tommy shares a tombstone with Agness.

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Tommy's disappearance was reported first in The Chariton Leader of May 9, a brief item under the headline "Boy Disappears," as follows:

Tommy, the fifteen year old son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Duncan, disappeared on Friday afternoon and has not been heard from. He was last seen down by the creek, southwest of town, and his parents fear he might have been drowned. An investigation was made and every effort put forth to find the missing lad but up to this time no tidings have come. It is generally believed that the boy has decided to leave home for some unknown reason, and will later turn up all right, but the suspense of the family can scarcely be imagined during the hours that they anxiously wait for some word.

Most of the attention that week had gone to the drowning deaths on Monday, May 6, of Stuart Israel, 8, and Willard Larimer, 10, while playing in Bartholomew Pond, near the current intersection of Stuart Avenue and South 8th Street. These were the sons of prominent Chariton families and there was no doubt about the circumstances of their deaths. Thomas Duncan Sr. was a veteran employee of the C. B. & Q. Railroad with a big family to support, so there was no money to spare at the family home in the southwest part of town.

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There still had been no sign of Tommy by the next week, when his parents placed following notice in the Chariton and perhaps other nearby newspapers:

Thomas Duncan, of southwest Chariton, disappeared on Friday afternoon, May 3rd. Age 14, height about 4 feet 4 or 6 inches. Brown hair, blue eyes; blue cap, crown pinned to bill of cap; small wire yellow striped shirt, blue overalls torn over back pocket, high top shoes. We fear that he is drowned in the Chariton river but no trace of him has yet been found. Would be glad to hear of him any place. 

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On the Thursday following (May 16) Tommy's badly decomposed remains were found not far from where he had last been sighted --- in the Chariton River bottom south of the cemetery --- by the father of one of the boys who reportedly had been nearby when Tommy disappeared.

"The boy who disappeared from his home here on May 3d, and who it was feared was drowned in the Chariton river, although some of his playmates claimed that he had run away from home, was really drowned on the day he disappeared, his body being found by Ray Cornett last Thursday about noon on the flat land this side of the river, south of the Chariton cemetery," The Herald-Patriot of May 23 reported.

"The drowning took place when the river was out of its banks and covering the flat land, and the body was probably lying just where it has first sunk. The river  had receded, leaving the body lying on the muddy ground, and it had decomposed fearfully."

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Once the body had been discovered, it took a coroner's jury the equivalent of a full day to pry the truth of what actually had happened from the boys who had been with Tommy when he vanished. The Herald-Patriot report continues:

"The drowning of Tommy Duncan is one of the most mysterious that has ever occurred here, and the full truth may never be known because the boys who were with him have told so many different stories that no one knows just what the truth is. A coroner's jury composed of Clint Milthorpe, Howard Culbertson and Walter Schreiber was impaneled by Coroner John Stanton Thursday as soon as the body was found, and with the assistance of Mayor Larimer, Sheriff Engebretsen, County Attorney Collinson and others, the whole afternoon and most of the next day was spent in an effort to get the boys who knew the truth of the drowning to tell what really happened. From different sources it is gathered that it happened about like this:

"Six boys who should have been in school played truant on Friday, May 3d, and went down to the river south of the cemetery. They were Lloyd Howard, 13 years of age, Frank Wilson, 14, Otis Wilson, 12, Raymond Douglass, 13, Lester Cornett, 14, and Tommy Duncan, 14. they met Marion Davis going south in a wagon and asked to ride across the bottom, as the water was knee deep or more. He let them ride, and when they got across he asked them how they were going to get back. They told him they would get back all right.

"They evidently started to play in the water, as most of them were good swimmers. They did not have their clothes off, and in crossing the flat bottom land on the north side of the river, going towards the Mathews railroad camp, Tommy Duncan got into a hole and the cold water gave him a cramp. He called to the other boys and one of them at least, the little Douglass boy, went in and tried to help him out, but could not do it, and fearful that he himself would be drowned, the Douglass boy got back to his companions and the Duncan boy was drowned.

"The five boys then made a compact to not tell of the drowning, for fear they would in some way be blamed, and they kept their word so well that, though it was suspected that the boy was drowned and that some of his companions knew about it, nothing was known for sure until the body was found and the coroner's jury worked for a whole day to get the truth from the boys. Other boys who were suspected of being implicated were Emmett Matheney, Rex Hickman and Walter Eggert. They were at the river the same day and probably knew of the drowning, but no evidence showed that they were with the crowd that saw the drowning.

"The glibness with which some of the boys who were on the witness stand swore to one lie after another was shocking and appalling, and made it very hard for the jury to learn the truth. There are still some mysterious phases of the affair that have not been cleared up. One of the boys who was present at the drowning says he told his older brother of the tragedy, and his parents probably knew of it, too. Why then, if it was but an accidental drowning, did the older folks not notify the authorities or the parents of the boy at once, instead of waiting until the body was found, after lying in the water and mud for nearly two weeks? A purely accidental drowning is not usually concealed by people old enough to know better."

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Tommy's remains were released to his parents after the coronor's jury had finished its work and last rites were conducted the next morning at graveside by the Rev. James McGillan, pastor of the St. Mary's parish (now Sacred Heart).  "The stricken parents have the sympathy of the whole community in their terrible bereavement," the Herald-Patriot noted.

Herald-Patriot editor Sam Greene also took the opportunity offered by Tommy's death to scold the parents of Chariton in his editorial of May 23:

The drowning of Tommy Duncan discovered only last week, shows that many parents in Chariton do not keep close enough track of their boys. At least two crowds of boys were at the river on Friday, May 3d, all of whom should have been in school. Some of their parents may have known that they were playing truant, but some of them did not know it. Most of the boys took excuses from their parents to school the next week. Truant Officer Andrew had tried on different occasions before the day of the drowning to make some of the very boys in the crowd that day go to school when they were playing truant, but the parents did not seem to care, and the boys defied him. Of course the drowning might have occurred just the same if the boys had had permission from their parents to go to the river, but the incident calls terrible attention to the fact that many parents in Chariton, hundreds of them we have no doubt, do not pretend to keep any track of what their boys, and probably their girls also, are doing.

"As Supt. McGlalde showed in his talk at the Presbyterian church the other day, such lack of cooperation by parents is bound to help to raise children who are defiant of authority, ignorant and shiftless in their habits, and practically sure to be a load upon the community from a financial as well as a moral standpoint. Every father and mother in Chariton had better wake up and see if they are fulfilling the real duties of parents in raising their boys and girls to keep regular hours, attend school every possible moment, be obedient to the rules of the home --- not merely to prevent them from being drowned or some such fate, but to prevent them from what is even  worse than drowning --- growing up into worthless and inefficient men and women, a drag and a burden to the communities in which they will live."

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I'm guessing that there were those in Chariton who thought Sam had overshot his mark somewhat while aboard that editorial high horse, suggesting a fate worse than death.

And he was obligated in his edition of May 30 to acknowledge (in an obscure corner of the Herald-Patriot) the fact that he'd incorrectly implicated three boys in the drowning: "Some of the boys who were reported to have been at the river swimming on the day Tommy Duncan was drowned were not there. Emmett Matheney was not there, and Walter Eggert and Rex Hickman were playing at the river, but were out of school on a quarter holiday and were nowhere near where the Duncan boy was drowned."

Sam had two boys of his own at the time, one age 12 and the other, 7, so it would be interesting to know if they turned out to be paragons of virtue. Since the family moved to California not too long after 1912, we'll most likely never know.