Back to the beginning of history affairs of the heart have been the impetus for murderous deeds and foul play, and our area has had more than its fair share of spouses killing spouses over alleged, and sometimes true, dalliances outside the construct of marriage.
At the turn of the last century, a number of men either killed or tried to kill their wives or their wives alleged lovers. The immortal science fiction author H.G. Wells once said "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
While a large number of these killers avoided prosecution and prison, with staid and rigid jurors that looked down on adulterous affairs often returning a not guilty verdict, the crime of spousal murder didn't always go unpunished.
We have verified almost one dozen incidents within our readership area in which a husband murdered his wife and walked away Scott free. Many times the killer would invoke the "unwritten rule" that allowed a man to use deadly force to protect his home and property.
One of those who did not escape punishment was a 55-year-old resident of the Lancaster community in rural Crawford County. Lancaster, now considered an extinct town, was located approximately seven and a half miles north west of Alma.
There is absolutely nothing left, at least on the property that is public in the area, that would indicate a town, complete with a post office and train depot. ever existed on what is now County Road 27 stretching between the Lancaster site and Rudy. The area that is open to the public crosses a precarious bridge over a creek with no railings that connects to a dirt road on the opposite side that takes you to Rudy, six miles away.
Christopher Columbus "Kit" Helton lived in Lancaster with his 48-year-old wife Ella Tyrone Steward Helton. Ella was the widow of Henry W. "Long Henry"Steward who was born in Crawford County in 1848 and died in 1887 at the age of 38.
Helton and Ella married in 1893 six years after the death of her first husband. Ella was a member of one of the pioneering families of Crawford County, and all indications are she brought one of her five children from her first marriage to live in the household. That child was 16-year-old Jacob Brazine Brush" Steward, who figures into the story later on.
Helton also had four children from his first marriage, but they were grown and on their own by the time he married Ella and they settled in the Lancaster community.
The couple was together for the better part of eight years but in the fall of 1901 the pairing became unsettled and eventually reached a boiling point.
Ella had Helton arrested at one point and he appeared before Crawford County officials and remand over for a grand jury to answer to the charges.
On September 28, 1901 Helton had growing suspicious of a possible illicit affair between Ella and Crawford County Justice of the Peace and Rudy fruit farmer John O'Kelly. O'Kelly had been the official that signed the warrant that led to Kit's arrest on the bigamy charge.
Helton, out on bail, set off for Rudy that morning on horseback. He had previously purchased some fruit from O'Kelly on a credit account and used the ruse of settling his debt to justify the six-mile ride and to get access to the man he thought was having an affair with his wife.
When Helton arrived at the O'Kelly farm, he swung down from his horse and walked up to his rival for his wife's affections.
After paying O'Kelly the fifty cents that he owed him, he said "that settles our fruit deal...I will also settle another score with you" before drawing a .44 Winchester pistol and shooting O'Kelly once in the abdomen.
While contemporary news reports at the time, including the Van Buren Press, initially reported that O'Kelly had died from his wounds, he actually survived and lived a number of years after the attack.
Helton left O'Kelly for dead, got back on his horse, and made the reverse ride back to the Lancaster community. Calling Ella out of the house, he drew his pistol once again and shot her "through the heart, killing her instantly".
His stepson, the aforementioned "Brush" Steward was now 24 years old and out of the house. with a family of his own. Reports are that Helton thought Brush had been part of the subterfuge that allowed his wife and O'Kelly to conduct their affair, which apparently had been going on for a while. He went looking for his stepson with the intent of killing him as well, but he finally fled into the mountains of Crawford County in order to avoid arrest.
A posse was formed and located Helton in his mountainous hideout. He fired on the law enforcement officials and was wounded in the arm. He only surrendered when his gun malfunctioned, and he could no longer shoot back at the posse members.
He was transported to the Van Buren jail under tight security, and lawmen were already preparing to deal with the rumors of a lynch mob once they got him back to the county seat.
Newspaper report says Helton waived a preliminary hearing in October and his case was set for the November session of the Circuit Court. Helton, refused to eat the jail food, and was reported as being "sick" with "possible dementia".
Helton's brother hired a high-powered and well-known criminal lawyer by the name of Berkeley Neal to represent Kit and he immediately entered a "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea.
A special grand jury was appointed and they declared Helton was sane. His trial was scheduled for the first week of January, 1902 and the jury deliberated just two hours before finding him guilty of first-degree murder.
Newspaper reports at the time said that Helton "showed no signs of fear when the verdict was read". A few days later he was sentenced to hang, and during that sentencing hearing he was asked if he had any complaints.
"No, I killed Ella, and do not dread the scaffold", Helton replied.
Another life killer by the name of Dave McWhorter was placed in the same cell as Helton a few weeks after he was given the death penalty. Once again, a contemporary news reporter stated "McWhorter grabs and shakes the iron bars and cries that he cannot escape while Helton sits by and laughs at Mcwhorter's display of grief."
Crawford County Sheriff James Pitcock contracted to have a gallows built on the Crawford County courthouse square in early March, 1902. The newspaper said the construction of the scaffold, which was visible from the jail, led to Helton showing his first signs of fear.
"Helton broke down and cried in his cell", said the report. "The condemned man has realized that he is but a short time to live unless granted a commutation".
After a plea to Governor Jeff Davis fell on deaf ears they court set his execution date for March 7, 1902.
In the last few days of his life, a preacher visited the cell to talk to Helton about his salvation. Helton told the preacher "the jail is no place to start a religion and join the church" and then added he felt he "has been forgiven and has no fears".
On the morning of his execution, Helton ate a hearty breakfast and breathed a momentary sigh of relief when he got a last minute stay of execution when Governor Davis called Pitcock and told him to hold off on the execution. But just thirty minutes later Davis called back and told the sheriff to go ahead with the hanging.
At 10:12 a.m., Helton was taken from his cell to be marched to the gallows. Newspaper report said a "solid mass of men and boys with a scattering of women" lined the way from the jail to the gallows and as Helton passed through the gauntlet he nodded to acquaintances.
Over 1000 citizens had applied for tickets to enter the enclosure and watch Helton die but only twenty-five witnesses, along with reporters and doctors, were allowed in.
Helton was dubbed the :coolest man that was ever seen on the scaffold here" by one journalist. "The condemned man walked to the scaffold unaided, rather pale, but showing no other signs of fright".
Six minutes later Sheriff Pitcock sprung the trap door and Helton dropped seven feet, "breaking his neck completely".
The Fort Smith Times reported "the body never quivered, every muscle was quite tense and remained so to the end".
Declared dead at 10:34 a.m. Helton's body was placed in a pine box and buried in the pauper section of Fairview Cemetery . No family member wanted to claim the body, and he was buried at the expense of the county.
"Brush" Steward, who avoided death on that fateful day in1901, married Sarah Lyon in 1892. That union produced two children, both who had been born before the murder in 1901. So Kit Helton not only murdered his wife and tried to murder his wife's lover, but also seriously thought about killing the father of his step-grandchildren.
"Brush", however, still saw his life end violently when he was bushwacked near the family home in Lancaster on March 7, 1923.
One of "Brush" Steward's grandchildren, Wallace Cole Steward Jr, lived out his entire life in Crawford County and died at the ripe old age of 83 in 2018.
Remnants of the Stewart clan populate not only western and northwest Arkansas as well as parts of Eastern Oklahoma, with descendants living in Van Buren, Alma, Bella vista, Hot Springs, and the Tulsa area.
Ella was buried in the Steward Cemetery in Lancaster.
The cemetery is now on private land and contains seventy-eight gravesites and the remains of thirty members of the pioneer Steward family.
