Marion’s bloody history has been the subject of numerous books, articles and documentaries. “Bloody Williamson,” Paul M. Angle’s widely read story of our county, is still in publication after more than half a century. Perhaps one of the reasons for the intense curiosity about our past is the baffling contrast between the genuine warmth and friendliness of the people you meet today and the violent heartlessness of some who lived here just one or two generations ago. No story better illustrates this paradox than the tragedy of Lory and Ethel Price.
Lory Price was born September 13, 1890, in Rock Castle, Kentucky. His father died when he was only six. His mother re-married John Dufour, a coal miner, who treated Lory like his own son. The Dufours first lived in Lone Acre, West Virginia, where young Lory quit school and followed his stepfather into the mines.
Then, in 1911, Lory and the Dufour family came to live in the Scottsboro suburb of Marion. Lory got a job in the Peabody Number 3 coal mine. A tall, good-natured young man, he was a member of the Masons and the Odd Fellows. When America entered World War One in 1917, Lory joined the Army and became an automatic rifleman in the 78th Division.
In less than two months Price was on the front lines. When his position was overrun and his squad members all killed, Lory was taken prisoner by the Germans. They kept him in a prison camp until the end of the war.
Price was decorated by the French government for bravery, and recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross by the U.S., but the medal was never authorized because the serviceman was taken prisoner in the same battle for which he was to be cited, a disqualification in those days.
After the war, Lory returned to Southern Illinois and resumed his job in the Peabody mine. On December 24, 1923, he married Miss Ethel Prudence Jackson in a ceremony conducted by the Rev. J.H. Browning in Scottsboro. Lory was a popular figure in the Marion area. He was the First Sergeant of the local Army Reserve unit. He joined the American Legion and was elected Commander of the Marion Post in 1926. He was also a candidate for County Treasurer on the Republican ticket that year, but did not win.
On November 1, 1922, Lory Price had been appointed a State Highway Patrolman, by Governor Len Small. He was assigned badge number 78 and posted to Illinois Route 13, the “hard road” between Carbondale and Harrisburg. Wearing his star and an Army-type uniform with leather puttees and a Sam Browne belt, he rode a motorcycle patrolling the early highway for speeders and looking tor stolen cars.
Lory and Ethel lived in a house in Scottsboro just west of Illinois Route 37. Ethel taught school at Lemaster, a country school a few miles north of Marion. Born in Pope County, one of nine children, Mrs. Price was 6 years younger than her husband. (Her nephew, Robert Jackson, who still lives in Marion, is a well-known historian and art teacher in the Marion school system.)
America’s “Noble Experiment” with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the 1920’s spawned widespread lawlessness and the emergence of criminal gangs. Politicians and police officers fell victim to the lure of easy money which could be obtained by turning a blind eye to the booze being sold by the bootleggers. In Southern Illinois, the Birger Gang and the Shelton Gang rode the highways in stolen cars and fought with each other in machine gun-spattered turf wars. It was a very dangerous time for an honest motorcycle patrolman.
However it came about, it appears that Lory Price became enmeshed in the gang war between the Sheltons and Birgers. Some say that Lory was working with Charlie Birger, covering up Charlie’s auto theft racket and then splitting the rewards for finding the stolen cars with him. Others speculate that Officer Price was working for the Sheltons to destroy Charlie Birger.
On the night of January 8, 1927, an unexplained explosion and fire destroyed “Shady Rest,” the headquarters of the Birger gang, located a few miles east of Marion. Four bodies were found in the ashes of the fire. Lory Price was reported to have been one of the first to respond to the scene just after the fire. Nothing was made of this fact until, several days later; Charlie Birger spotted his pet monkey “Jocko,” which he thought had perished in the fire at another bootleg liquor joint. The people at the “barbeque stand” where the monkey was found told him that Lory Price had given it to them. This meant that Price had to have been at the hideout before the explosion.
When Charlie Birger found out about this, he became enraged. With several members of his gang, he drove late on the night of January 17th to Price’s house. Rousing Lory and Ethel from their beds, he loaded them into separate cars and drove them away at gun point. Lory’s revolver and holster were left on the dining room table, next to his leather leggings and uniform cap. The pair disappeared.
John Dufour noticed that they were missing two days later. After calling around to relatives, who were also worried, he reported the missing persons to Sheriff Oren Coleman. A search began. The Illinois State Police were contacted and sent officers to assist in the hunt. It soon became apparent that a kidnapping had taken place. Leads were followed up; rumors were reported and were investigated. Nothing yielded results.
Then, 19 days later, on February 5th, a farmer near DuBois in Washington County found a dead body in his field. It had 18 bullet holes in it and a state police star number 78 pinned to its belt. Sergeant John O’Keefe of the State Highway Patrol identified the body as that of Lory Price. Three days later, following services at the First Baptist Church in Marion, Lory Price’s body was laid to rest with full military honors. But where was Ethel Price? The community was outraged.
Chief John Stack of the Highway Patrol took personal charge of the case and his efforts were unrelenting. Feeling the heat of the intense manhunt, Birger’s henchmen scattered out and tried to hide from the law. Police in several states were on the lookout for Birger Gang members. The first to be arrested was Jack Crews in Akron, Ohio, on March 12th. Birger himself had been arrested for the murder of West City Mayor Joe Adams. He was lodged in the Sangamon County Jail in Springfield, for safekeeping, awaiting trial in Benton.
Acting on a tip from the Sheriff of Bond County, Illinois, Chief Stack was able to trace Art Newman, Birger’s lieutenant, to Long Beach, California, where he was hiding under the name of “John Rogers.” He was arrested on Sunday morning, May 22nd . Illinois authorities went to California and extradited Newman.
Back in the Washington County Jail in Nashville, Newman began to sing. He told the whole story of taking the Prices from their home and executing them gangland style on the night of January 17th. Mrs. Newman, Art’s wife, led Chief Stack and a party of Highway Patrol officers to the old Carterville District Mine, four miles north of Marion. The site of this old colliery lies under what is now the parking lot of the Williamson County Shrine Club. A large party of workers began working, hauling rubble out of the abandoned mine shaft.
After 43 hours of digging, miners uncovered Ethel Price’s body on June 12, 1927, almost five months after she was kidnapped. She had been shot in the back and thrown down the mine shaft. They found her entombed 34 feet below the surface of the ground, lying face down, covered with a big piece of sheet iron and a block of concrete weighing over a ton. The newspapers of the state were full of tales about this latest lawlessness from “Bloody Williamson” county.
State’s Attorney Arlie Boswell convened a Grand Jury and obtained indictments for Charlie Birger and nine of his gang members. But before he could be brought to trial for the Price murders, Birger was hanged in Benton on April 19th, 1928, for the murder of Mayor Joe Adams of West City.
On January 7, 1929, the trial date set in Marion for hearing the case against the rest of the murderers, each of them entered stipulated pleas of guilty in return for negotiated prison sentences. Most of them ended their lives in prison or were released as old men in the 1950’s.
With Charlie Birger dead, and his gang in prison, the scourge of gangster domination of Williamson County was ended. The Sheltons left the area, never to return. But it took the savage deaths of a State Highway Patrolman and his lovely school teacher wife to bring justice back to our community in the Roaring Twenties. The stain of those lawless days still lives on 75 years later. You could say that Lory and Ethel Price were martyrs to the social experiment of Prohibition.
Sam’s Notes: For those who may not be old enough to remember, Illinois Route 13 used to be a narrow, dangerous, extremely winding route that wound its way from Harrisburg through the strip pits east of Crab Orchard, past Shady Rest and through the town of Crab Orchard itself. The route passed directly through Marion on what is now West Main Street and on its route to Carbondale formed the northern limits of the Illinois Ordinance Plant, now the National Wildlife Refuge. Sections of the route are submerged under Crab Orchard Lake and now serve as boat launches.
(Article written by Bernard Paul and published in Marion Living Magazine, January 2005)