By Phil Brown Commentary

In the early days of our town, John Cannon was a jailer at the Garfield County Jail. He was regarded by most as a decent kind of guy. The late Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marquis James described Cannon as “the hale fellow everybody liked and wished well.”

He was the instigator of the famous “Sucker’s Convention” at the jail on April 1, 1905, when he lured 150 Enid professional and businessmen to the jail, telling some there had been a riot at the jail, or that a dying prisoner wanted to draw up a last will and testament, or a variety of other hoaxes.

Cannon would lead each one into a back room at the jail where an empty beer bottle lay on a bunk, and exclaim “April Fool!” In those days the slang term for an empty beer bottle was “a dead soldier.”

It was a great joke and was preserved for posterity by a group photo of the “suckers” in the jail yard.

It’s like James said, Cannon seemed like a fun-loving guy. He was one of Enid’s popular characters, and was never in any kind of trouble. Yet, at about the same time Cannon pulled off the April Fool’s joke he became so intimately involved with a female prisoner in the jail, Miss Lillie Long, a lady of the evening, Sheriff Campbell was forced to fire him, and shortly after Cannon became the perpetrator in the murder of an Enid law enforcement officer.

Shortly after Lillie was released from jail, Cannon married her.

James writes in his book “The Cherokee Strip A Tale of An Oklahoma Boyhood,” Lillie opened an establishment of her own, which attracted the attention of local law enforcement officers when a man was killed there, as James put it, “involving rivalry for the friendly notice” of one of Lillie’s prostitutes.

It was during the police investigation into the man’s death words passed between Town Marshal Tom Radford and Cannon. James said Cannon threatened to kill Radford, and Radford replied he didn’t believe Cannon had the nerve to try it.

It was a bitterly cold winter day not long after Cannon had made his threat Marshal Radford, dressed in a heavy overcoat buttoned over his gun and wearing gloves, was standing in the front of the Tony Faust saloon on the southeast corner of Grand and Broadway in downtown Enid, warming himself at a radiator, when Cannon entered through a side door.

According to James, Cannon walked up to Radford, and said, “Bad day, ain’t it?”

Radford turned to face him, and Cannon shoved a .38-caliber pistol into the marshal’s chest and fired. As Radford struggled to unbutton his overcoat, Cannon fired again. Radford staggered through the front door. Cannon followed him and fired again. Radford fell on the sidewalk. Cannon bent over him and seemed ready to fire a fourth shot when a policeman rushed from Mill’s barbershop and drew his revolver, forcing Cannon to drop his pistol.

Radford’s death angered many in early day Enid, and according to James, knots of armed men gathered around the county that night with the intention of dragging Cannon out of the jail and lynching him, despite the fact Cannon had been one of Enid’s popular characters. He had killed a popular law enforcement officer.

Sheriff Campbell avoided a confrontation with the armed mob by sneaking Cannon out of town. The trial was held at Watonga, in a change of venue, for obvious reasons. Cannon was charged with first-degree murder. It appeared to be an open and shut case.

He was defended by an Enid attorney, Henry Sturgis, whom James described as “probably the most gifted of the legal luminaries of the early-day Strip.” Among other things, Sturgis told the court the harlot Lillie Long had Cannon in her spell.

Sturgis’ defense of Cannon was so good the jury brought in a verdict of guilty of a lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter. But District Judge M.C. Garber, who would later purchase the old Enid Morning News and serve in Congress, was not moved by Sturgis’ salty oratory. He sentenced Cannon to 40 years in prison. According to James, the length of the sentence was unprecedented in this part of the country.

Cannon was four years into his sentence when a plan was uncovered to pardon him. The movement to pardon him was exposed in the Enid Daily Eagle in a story by James. A friend of his — the local Western Union telegraph operator — was the source of his information.

Cannon, however, was paroled later, according to James. Some other versions of the story say he eventually was pardoned.



Brown is a retired News & Eagle editor.