Daughter of Frank and Myrle (Walker) Herron.
NOTE:
The husband of Mary Katherine Herron was convicted of murder in the deaths of his wife, and their three children.
================
Published: January 6, 1985
McALESTER: Thirty years ago, Dr. Ben Galbraith returned home from a business trip to find his home burned out and his wife and three small children dead from asphyxiation in the tightly closed house.
The fire, officials said, was caused by spontaneous combustion in a closet beneath the hallway staircase. The cut on Mrs. Mary Katherine "Kitty" Galbraith's head was the result of a fall as she groped her way through the smoke, people thought.
The shirt stuffed down the throat of 5-year-old Jere appeared to have been used by the youngster in an effort to breathe. The deaths were horrible, but looked innocent enough that the victims were cremated without an autopsy.
Within six days, however, the prominent McAlester heart specialist who newspapers first reported "was shocked and numbed with grief," confessed to the murders of Kitty, Jere, and the other children, Frank, 7, and Sarah Ann, 4.
He blamed his crime on "insecurity, an unhappy childhood and a haunting fear of poverty."
The 34-year-old doctor admitted to leaving McAlester March 16, 1955, ostensibly to attend an Oklahoma City medical meeting. Instead, he rented a Norman motel room and drove back to McAlester late that night.
He said he struck his young wife with a vermouth bottle, injected her and the children with morphine and insecticide, then set several fires in the early hours of March 17 to cover up his crimes.
Then he returned to Norman, spent the night, and went home to the tragedy the following day.
Today, former Pittsburg County Sheriff Dee Sanders wonders whether Galbraith would have confessed if he had not been presented with the evidence that Sanders, newspaper reporter Howard Cowan, Fire Chief Ernest Rager and Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Andrew Bidwell gathered as they suspiciously raked through the charred rubble at the McAlester home: the shattered vermouth bottle, glass syringes, blood-stained oak flooring.
Galbraith's own analysis of his troubles was found, in an unaddressed, unsigned note, in the ruins of his home. He had written, in part: "Despair, frustration, restlessness. All this haunts and tantalizes me. I have sudden yearnings to be alone, away from everything that moves, feels or reacts.
"... Have I sinned? I do not believe my plight is due to sin. I think it is the result of being born a bad apple. A cross, brooding, mean dog instead of a happy, friendly dog. How can the leopard change his spots? That is the question."
Galbraith, who was serving a double-life sentence at Oklahoma State Penitentiary here, committed suicide in 1959. It was his fifth reported attempt. Most of the jurors from his three trials (a district court jury acquitted him by reason of insanity in the death of one of the children) and other key figures in the case today also are dead.
Galbraith's story, almost 30 years old, was recalled by people involved because of its similarities to the current best-seller "Fatal Vision."
The book by Joe McGinniss is a factual account of the story of physician and former Green Beret officer Jeffery MacDonald who was found guilty in 1979 of the murders of his pregnant wife and two small daughters in their Fort Bragg, N.C., home.
MacDonald, who is still in prison, cooperated with McGinniss' research, reportedly to get McGinniss to clear his name. The writer has said that he thinks MacDonald is guilty.
The murders occurred nine years before MacDonald was convicted, and a military court at the time cleared the young officer who maintained according to newspaper and television reports that a band of Charles Manson-style hippies broke into the home, hit him over the head and murdered his family.
MacDonald's story recently was recounted in a television drama.
The Galbraith and MacDonald murders have several elements in common.
Both of the convicted were young, socially and professionally prominent physicians with picture-perfect families. Both covered up their crimes.
And in both cases, a writer played a crucial role in bringing the story to the public.
"I think about the "Fatal Vision' story and Dr. Galbraith often," said former sheriff Sanders. "People still call me about it after they've seen old detective magazine stories about the murders. One person right now is wanting to make a book out of it."
Sanders, 63, would not say who had contacted him about turning the Galbraith horror story into a book.
All four of the McAlester men credited with discovering the evidence against Galbraith said they were suspicious at the time of the incident, though other officials had decided the deaths were accidental and autopsies were not necessary.
Sanders and Rager retired in 1959. Cowan now lives in Maine and Bidwell has since died.
The highway patrolman's widow, Mary Bidwell, said she remembered her husband's initial skepticism about the "accidental fire" and his late-night searches at the burned-out house.
"They would park their cars away from the home so no one saw them digging through the ashes," said Mrs. Bidwell, 72.
"I remember I was floored by a remark my husband made to me the night of the fire. This was a doctor most people knew, and my husband said he was suspicious. Especially about that shirt stuck down the child's throat."
Galbraith later admitted to trying to quiet his screaming son, Jere, by stuffing a shirt down his throat.
Both Sanders and Rager credit reporter Cowan with encouraging their investigations.
"I went to Howard Cowan about the fire and said, "It just doesn't add up. It just doesn't add up.' " said former fire chief Rager. "He said, "Well, then we just have to work this thing out.' He went out to the house with me. If it wasn't for him, it wouldn't have been solved.
"No one else wanted to fool with it," said Rager, 77. "I wasn't exactly threatened, but I was warned to stop pushing the case."
People in the city wanted the matter ended as soon as possible, according to one woman whose only connection to the crime was that she lived in McAlester at the time, "because it was so upsetting to the town."
Former sheriff Sanders said, "Once we found the evidence, we went to the county attorney. But he wouldn't issue the warrant. It was a Sunday and Cowan said to him, "If you don't let this man have a warrant today, you're not going to believe what you read in the paper tomorrow.' " Cowan, who was editor of The McAlester News-Capital at the time of the crime, is now publisher of the Boothbay Register in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
He still has a scrapbook of clippings from the time. It was prepared by two fellow journalists in an unsuccessful effort to win Cowan a Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Cowan wrote that the murders were solved by: "The stubborn determination of a grizzled old firefighter veteran of many, many blazes, some set, some not; the persistent inquisitiveness of a sheriff with children of his own; the patient skill of a FBI-trained highway patrol chief."
The morning after the fire when Galbraith who within three weeks of the crime was being called "Dr. Jekyll" supposedly had returned from his business trip, he went straight to the McAlester hospital to make his rounds.
"He asked the nurse how much the house was damaged," Rager said.
"He didn't ask at all about the family."
Rager said once the men began looking for clues, the mystery was not hard to unravel. Under a rug was a huge blood stain left from Mrs. Galbraith's cut head.
"The embalmer said she didn't have much blood left," Rager said.
"Why, it was all in the house."
Sanders said, "I went to a doctor and asked, "If someone got up and fell, cut her head, in a heated room, would she have bled that much?' The doctor told me the blood would have coagulated. She must have laid there a long time, the doctor said."
But Sanders said Galbraith did not appear to be a tormented, schizophrenic killer, as was contended in his trials.
"He was a quiet person, highly intelligent, courteous," the former sheriff said. "He had numerous visitors at the jail. People wanted to bring him pies. As a doctor, he had helped them or a member of their families."
Sanders said the first time he met Galbraith was when he drove with Cowan to Tennessee with a warrant for Galbraith's arrest.
"He was at his family's funeral and he was making plans to go to Brazil. ... He looked hurt. I never really thought he was insane. I felt like he knew right from wrong, but anyone who would kill his wife and three kids wasn't exactly normal."
On the way back from Tennessee, Galbraith narrowly escaped death as he jumped out of the car Cowan was driving and into the path of another car on the highway. The group decided to return to Oklahoma by train.
Galbraith finally killed himself in prison by using a piece of a razor blade to cut an artery in his groin.
The day before his death, Sanders said, the inmate had asked him to come to the prison.
"I have something to tell you real bad,' he told me.
... I've always wondered what he wanted to say."
SOURCE:
http://newsok.com/best-seller-evokes-memories-of-mcalesters-dr.-jekyll/article/2093803
NOTE:
The husband of Mary Katherine Herron was convicted of murder in the deaths of his wife, and their three children.
================
Published: January 6, 1985
McALESTER: Thirty years ago, Dr. Ben Galbraith returned home from a business trip to find his home burned out and his wife and three small children dead from asphyxiation in the tightly closed house.
The fire, officials said, was caused by spontaneous combustion in a closet beneath the hallway staircase. The cut on Mrs. Mary Katherine "Kitty" Galbraith's head was the result of a fall as she groped her way through the smoke, people thought.
The shirt stuffed down the throat of 5-year-old Jere appeared to have been used by the youngster in an effort to breathe. The deaths were horrible, but looked innocent enough that the victims were cremated without an autopsy.
Within six days, however, the prominent McAlester heart specialist who newspapers first reported "was shocked and numbed with grief," confessed to the murders of Kitty, Jere, and the other children, Frank, 7, and Sarah Ann, 4.
He blamed his crime on "insecurity, an unhappy childhood and a haunting fear of poverty."
The 34-year-old doctor admitted to leaving McAlester March 16, 1955, ostensibly to attend an Oklahoma City medical meeting. Instead, he rented a Norman motel room and drove back to McAlester late that night.
He said he struck his young wife with a vermouth bottle, injected her and the children with morphine and insecticide, then set several fires in the early hours of March 17 to cover up his crimes.
Then he returned to Norman, spent the night, and went home to the tragedy the following day.
Today, former Pittsburg County Sheriff Dee Sanders wonders whether Galbraith would have confessed if he had not been presented with the evidence that Sanders, newspaper reporter Howard Cowan, Fire Chief Ernest Rager and Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Andrew Bidwell gathered as they suspiciously raked through the charred rubble at the McAlester home: the shattered vermouth bottle, glass syringes, blood-stained oak flooring.
Galbraith's own analysis of his troubles was found, in an unaddressed, unsigned note, in the ruins of his home. He had written, in part: "Despair, frustration, restlessness. All this haunts and tantalizes me. I have sudden yearnings to be alone, away from everything that moves, feels or reacts.
"... Have I sinned? I do not believe my plight is due to sin. I think it is the result of being born a bad apple. A cross, brooding, mean dog instead of a happy, friendly dog. How can the leopard change his spots? That is the question."
Galbraith, who was serving a double-life sentence at Oklahoma State Penitentiary here, committed suicide in 1959. It was his fifth reported attempt. Most of the jurors from his three trials (a district court jury acquitted him by reason of insanity in the death of one of the children) and other key figures in the case today also are dead.
Galbraith's story, almost 30 years old, was recalled by people involved because of its similarities to the current best-seller "Fatal Vision."
The book by Joe McGinniss is a factual account of the story of physician and former Green Beret officer Jeffery MacDonald who was found guilty in 1979 of the murders of his pregnant wife and two small daughters in their Fort Bragg, N.C., home.
MacDonald, who is still in prison, cooperated with McGinniss' research, reportedly to get McGinniss to clear his name. The writer has said that he thinks MacDonald is guilty.
The murders occurred nine years before MacDonald was convicted, and a military court at the time cleared the young officer who maintained according to newspaper and television reports that a band of Charles Manson-style hippies broke into the home, hit him over the head and murdered his family.
MacDonald's story recently was recounted in a television drama.
The Galbraith and MacDonald murders have several elements in common.
Both of the convicted were young, socially and professionally prominent physicians with picture-perfect families. Both covered up their crimes.
And in both cases, a writer played a crucial role in bringing the story to the public.
"I think about the "Fatal Vision' story and Dr. Galbraith often," said former sheriff Sanders. "People still call me about it after they've seen old detective magazine stories about the murders. One person right now is wanting to make a book out of it."
Sanders, 63, would not say who had contacted him about turning the Galbraith horror story into a book.
All four of the McAlester men credited with discovering the evidence against Galbraith said they were suspicious at the time of the incident, though other officials had decided the deaths were accidental and autopsies were not necessary.
Sanders and Rager retired in 1959. Cowan now lives in Maine and Bidwell has since died.
The highway patrolman's widow, Mary Bidwell, said she remembered her husband's initial skepticism about the "accidental fire" and his late-night searches at the burned-out house.
"They would park their cars away from the home so no one saw them digging through the ashes," said Mrs. Bidwell, 72.
"I remember I was floored by a remark my husband made to me the night of the fire. This was a doctor most people knew, and my husband said he was suspicious. Especially about that shirt stuck down the child's throat."
Galbraith later admitted to trying to quiet his screaming son, Jere, by stuffing a shirt down his throat.
Both Sanders and Rager credit reporter Cowan with encouraging their investigations.
"I went to Howard Cowan about the fire and said, "It just doesn't add up. It just doesn't add up.' " said former fire chief Rager. "He said, "Well, then we just have to work this thing out.' He went out to the house with me. If it wasn't for him, it wouldn't have been solved.
"No one else wanted to fool with it," said Rager, 77. "I wasn't exactly threatened, but I was warned to stop pushing the case."
People in the city wanted the matter ended as soon as possible, according to one woman whose only connection to the crime was that she lived in McAlester at the time, "because it was so upsetting to the town."
Former sheriff Sanders said, "Once we found the evidence, we went to the county attorney. But he wouldn't issue the warrant. It was a Sunday and Cowan said to him, "If you don't let this man have a warrant today, you're not going to believe what you read in the paper tomorrow.' " Cowan, who was editor of The McAlester News-Capital at the time of the crime, is now publisher of the Boothbay Register in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
He still has a scrapbook of clippings from the time. It was prepared by two fellow journalists in an unsuccessful effort to win Cowan a Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Cowan wrote that the murders were solved by: "The stubborn determination of a grizzled old firefighter veteran of many, many blazes, some set, some not; the persistent inquisitiveness of a sheriff with children of his own; the patient skill of a FBI-trained highway patrol chief."
The morning after the fire when Galbraith who within three weeks of the crime was being called "Dr. Jekyll" supposedly had returned from his business trip, he went straight to the McAlester hospital to make his rounds.
"He asked the nurse how much the house was damaged," Rager said.
"He didn't ask at all about the family."
Rager said once the men began looking for clues, the mystery was not hard to unravel. Under a rug was a huge blood stain left from Mrs. Galbraith's cut head.
"The embalmer said she didn't have much blood left," Rager said.
"Why, it was all in the house."
Sanders said, "I went to a doctor and asked, "If someone got up and fell, cut her head, in a heated room, would she have bled that much?' The doctor told me the blood would have coagulated. She must have laid there a long time, the doctor said."
But Sanders said Galbraith did not appear to be a tormented, schizophrenic killer, as was contended in his trials.
"He was a quiet person, highly intelligent, courteous," the former sheriff said. "He had numerous visitors at the jail. People wanted to bring him pies. As a doctor, he had helped them or a member of their families."
Sanders said the first time he met Galbraith was when he drove with Cowan to Tennessee with a warrant for Galbraith's arrest.
"He was at his family's funeral and he was making plans to go to Brazil. ... He looked hurt. I never really thought he was insane. I felt like he knew right from wrong, but anyone who would kill his wife and three kids wasn't exactly normal."
On the way back from Tennessee, Galbraith narrowly escaped death as he jumped out of the car Cowan was driving and into the path of another car on the highway. The group decided to return to Oklahoma by train.
Galbraith finally killed himself in prison by using a piece of a razor blade to cut an artery in his groin.
The day before his death, Sanders said, the inmate had asked him to come to the prison.
"I have something to tell you real bad,' he told me.
... I've always wondered what he wanted to say."
SOURCE:
http://newsok.com/best-seller-evokes-memories-of-mcalesters-dr.-jekyll/article/2093803
Daughter of Frank and Myrle (Walker) Herron.
NOTE:
The husband of Mary Katherine Herron was convicted of murder in the deaths of his wife, and their three children.
================
Published: January 6, 1985
McALESTER: Thirty years ago, Dr. Ben Galbraith returned home from a business trip to find his home burned out and his wife and three small children dead from asphyxiation in the tightly closed house.
The fire, officials said, was caused by spontaneous combustion in a closet beneath the hallway staircase. The cut on Mrs. Mary Katherine "Kitty" Galbraith's head was the result of a fall as she groped her way through the smoke, people thought.
The shirt stuffed down the throat of 5-year-old Jere appeared to have been used by the youngster in an effort to breathe. The deaths were horrible, but looked innocent enough that the victims were cremated without an autopsy.
Within six days, however, the prominent McAlester heart specialist who newspapers first reported "was shocked and numbed with grief," confessed to the murders of Kitty, Jere, and the other children, Frank, 7, and Sarah Ann, 4.
He blamed his crime on "insecurity, an unhappy childhood and a haunting fear of poverty."
The 34-year-old doctor admitted to leaving McAlester March 16, 1955, ostensibly to attend an Oklahoma City medical meeting. Instead, he rented a Norman motel room and drove back to McAlester late that night.
He said he struck his young wife with a vermouth bottle, injected her and the children with morphine and insecticide, then set several fires in the early hours of March 17 to cover up his crimes.
Then he returned to Norman, spent the night, and went home to the tragedy the following day.
Today, former Pittsburg County Sheriff Dee Sanders wonders whether Galbraith would have confessed if he had not been presented with the evidence that Sanders, newspaper reporter Howard Cowan, Fire Chief Ernest Rager and Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Andrew Bidwell gathered as they suspiciously raked through the charred rubble at the McAlester home: the shattered vermouth bottle, glass syringes, blood-stained oak flooring.
Galbraith's own analysis of his troubles was found, in an unaddressed, unsigned note, in the ruins of his home. He had written, in part: "Despair, frustration, restlessness. All this haunts and tantalizes me. I have sudden yearnings to be alone, away from everything that moves, feels or reacts.
"... Have I sinned? I do not believe my plight is due to sin. I think it is the result of being born a bad apple. A cross, brooding, mean dog instead of a happy, friendly dog. How can the leopard change his spots? That is the question."
Galbraith, who was serving a double-life sentence at Oklahoma State Penitentiary here, committed suicide in 1959. It was his fifth reported attempt. Most of the jurors from his three trials (a district court jury acquitted him by reason of insanity in the death of one of the children) and other key figures in the case today also are dead.
Galbraith's story, almost 30 years old, was recalled by people involved because of its similarities to the current best-seller "Fatal Vision."
The book by Joe McGinniss is a factual account of the story of physician and former Green Beret officer Jeffery MacDonald who was found guilty in 1979 of the murders of his pregnant wife and two small daughters in their Fort Bragg, N.C., home.
MacDonald, who is still in prison, cooperated with McGinniss' research, reportedly to get McGinniss to clear his name. The writer has said that he thinks MacDonald is guilty.
The murders occurred nine years before MacDonald was convicted, and a military court at the time cleared the young officer who maintained according to newspaper and television reports that a band of Charles Manson-style hippies broke into the home, hit him over the head and murdered his family.
MacDonald's story recently was recounted in a television drama.
The Galbraith and MacDonald murders have several elements in common.
Both of the convicted were young, socially and professionally prominent physicians with picture-perfect families. Both covered up their crimes.
And in both cases, a writer played a crucial role in bringing the story to the public.
"I think about the "Fatal Vision' story and Dr. Galbraith often," said former sheriff Sanders. "People still call me about it after they've seen old detective magazine stories about the murders. One person right now is wanting to make a book out of it."
Sanders, 63, would not say who had contacted him about turning the Galbraith horror story into a book.
All four of the McAlester men credited with discovering the evidence against Galbraith said they were suspicious at the time of the incident, though other officials had decided the deaths were accidental and autopsies were not necessary.
Sanders and Rager retired in 1959. Cowan now lives in Maine and Bidwell has since died.
The highway patrolman's widow, Mary Bidwell, said she remembered her husband's initial skepticism about the "accidental fire" and his late-night searches at the burned-out house.
"They would park their cars away from the home so no one saw them digging through the ashes," said Mrs. Bidwell, 72.
"I remember I was floored by a remark my husband made to me the night of the fire. This was a doctor most people knew, and my husband said he was suspicious. Especially about that shirt stuck down the child's throat."
Galbraith later admitted to trying to quiet his screaming son, Jere, by stuffing a shirt down his throat.
Both Sanders and Rager credit reporter Cowan with encouraging their investigations.
"I went to Howard Cowan about the fire and said, "It just doesn't add up. It just doesn't add up.' " said former fire chief Rager. "He said, "Well, then we just have to work this thing out.' He went out to the house with me. If it wasn't for him, it wouldn't have been solved.
"No one else wanted to fool with it," said Rager, 77. "I wasn't exactly threatened, but I was warned to stop pushing the case."
People in the city wanted the matter ended as soon as possible, according to one woman whose only connection to the crime was that she lived in McAlester at the time, "because it was so upsetting to the town."
Former sheriff Sanders said, "Once we found the evidence, we went to the county attorney. But he wouldn't issue the warrant. It was a Sunday and Cowan said to him, "If you don't let this man have a warrant today, you're not going to believe what you read in the paper tomorrow.' " Cowan, who was editor of The McAlester News-Capital at the time of the crime, is now publisher of the Boothbay Register in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
He still has a scrapbook of clippings from the time. It was prepared by two fellow journalists in an unsuccessful effort to win Cowan a Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Cowan wrote that the murders were solved by: "The stubborn determination of a grizzled old firefighter veteran of many, many blazes, some set, some not; the persistent inquisitiveness of a sheriff with children of his own; the patient skill of a FBI-trained highway patrol chief."
The morning after the fire when Galbraith who within three weeks of the crime was being called "Dr. Jekyll" supposedly had returned from his business trip, he went straight to the McAlester hospital to make his rounds.
"He asked the nurse how much the house was damaged," Rager said.
"He didn't ask at all about the family."
Rager said once the men began looking for clues, the mystery was not hard to unravel. Under a rug was a huge blood stain left from Mrs. Galbraith's cut head.
"The embalmer said she didn't have much blood left," Rager said.
"Why, it was all in the house."
Sanders said, "I went to a doctor and asked, "If someone got up and fell, cut her head, in a heated room, would she have bled that much?' The doctor told me the blood would have coagulated. She must have laid there a long time, the doctor said."
But Sanders said Galbraith did not appear to be a tormented, schizophrenic killer, as was contended in his trials.
"He was a quiet person, highly intelligent, courteous," the former sheriff said. "He had numerous visitors at the jail. People wanted to bring him pies. As a doctor, he had helped them or a member of their families."
Sanders said the first time he met Galbraith was when he drove with Cowan to Tennessee with a warrant for Galbraith's arrest.
"He was at his family's funeral and he was making plans to go to Brazil. ... He looked hurt. I never really thought he was insane. I felt like he knew right from wrong, but anyone who would kill his wife and three kids wasn't exactly normal."
On the way back from Tennessee, Galbraith narrowly escaped death as he jumped out of the car Cowan was driving and into the path of another car on the highway. The group decided to return to Oklahoma by train.
Galbraith finally killed himself in prison by using a piece of a razor blade to cut an artery in his groin.
The day before his death, Sanders said, the inmate had asked him to come to the prison.
"I have something to tell you real bad,' he told me.
... I've always wondered what he wanted to say."
SOURCE:
http://newsok.com/best-seller-evokes-memories-of-mcalesters-dr.-jekyll/article/2093803
NOTE:
The husband of Mary Katherine Herron was convicted of murder in the deaths of his wife, and their three children.
================
Published: January 6, 1985
McALESTER: Thirty years ago, Dr. Ben Galbraith returned home from a business trip to find his home burned out and his wife and three small children dead from asphyxiation in the tightly closed house.
The fire, officials said, was caused by spontaneous combustion in a closet beneath the hallway staircase. The cut on Mrs. Mary Katherine "Kitty" Galbraith's head was the result of a fall as she groped her way through the smoke, people thought.
The shirt stuffed down the throat of 5-year-old Jere appeared to have been used by the youngster in an effort to breathe. The deaths were horrible, but looked innocent enough that the victims were cremated without an autopsy.
Within six days, however, the prominent McAlester heart specialist who newspapers first reported "was shocked and numbed with grief," confessed to the murders of Kitty, Jere, and the other children, Frank, 7, and Sarah Ann, 4.
He blamed his crime on "insecurity, an unhappy childhood and a haunting fear of poverty."
The 34-year-old doctor admitted to leaving McAlester March 16, 1955, ostensibly to attend an Oklahoma City medical meeting. Instead, he rented a Norman motel room and drove back to McAlester late that night.
He said he struck his young wife with a vermouth bottle, injected her and the children with morphine and insecticide, then set several fires in the early hours of March 17 to cover up his crimes.
Then he returned to Norman, spent the night, and went home to the tragedy the following day.
Today, former Pittsburg County Sheriff Dee Sanders wonders whether Galbraith would have confessed if he had not been presented with the evidence that Sanders, newspaper reporter Howard Cowan, Fire Chief Ernest Rager and Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Andrew Bidwell gathered as they suspiciously raked through the charred rubble at the McAlester home: the shattered vermouth bottle, glass syringes, blood-stained oak flooring.
Galbraith's own analysis of his troubles was found, in an unaddressed, unsigned note, in the ruins of his home. He had written, in part: "Despair, frustration, restlessness. All this haunts and tantalizes me. I have sudden yearnings to be alone, away from everything that moves, feels or reacts.
"... Have I sinned? I do not believe my plight is due to sin. I think it is the result of being born a bad apple. A cross, brooding, mean dog instead of a happy, friendly dog. How can the leopard change his spots? That is the question."
Galbraith, who was serving a double-life sentence at Oklahoma State Penitentiary here, committed suicide in 1959. It was his fifth reported attempt. Most of the jurors from his three trials (a district court jury acquitted him by reason of insanity in the death of one of the children) and other key figures in the case today also are dead.
Galbraith's story, almost 30 years old, was recalled by people involved because of its similarities to the current best-seller "Fatal Vision."
The book by Joe McGinniss is a factual account of the story of physician and former Green Beret officer Jeffery MacDonald who was found guilty in 1979 of the murders of his pregnant wife and two small daughters in their Fort Bragg, N.C., home.
MacDonald, who is still in prison, cooperated with McGinniss' research, reportedly to get McGinniss to clear his name. The writer has said that he thinks MacDonald is guilty.
The murders occurred nine years before MacDonald was convicted, and a military court at the time cleared the young officer who maintained according to newspaper and television reports that a band of Charles Manson-style hippies broke into the home, hit him over the head and murdered his family.
MacDonald's story recently was recounted in a television drama.
The Galbraith and MacDonald murders have several elements in common.
Both of the convicted were young, socially and professionally prominent physicians with picture-perfect families. Both covered up their crimes.
And in both cases, a writer played a crucial role in bringing the story to the public.
"I think about the "Fatal Vision' story and Dr. Galbraith often," said former sheriff Sanders. "People still call me about it after they've seen old detective magazine stories about the murders. One person right now is wanting to make a book out of it."
Sanders, 63, would not say who had contacted him about turning the Galbraith horror story into a book.
All four of the McAlester men credited with discovering the evidence against Galbraith said they were suspicious at the time of the incident, though other officials had decided the deaths were accidental and autopsies were not necessary.
Sanders and Rager retired in 1959. Cowan now lives in Maine and Bidwell has since died.
The highway patrolman's widow, Mary Bidwell, said she remembered her husband's initial skepticism about the "accidental fire" and his late-night searches at the burned-out house.
"They would park their cars away from the home so no one saw them digging through the ashes," said Mrs. Bidwell, 72.
"I remember I was floored by a remark my husband made to me the night of the fire. This was a doctor most people knew, and my husband said he was suspicious. Especially about that shirt stuck down the child's throat."
Galbraith later admitted to trying to quiet his screaming son, Jere, by stuffing a shirt down his throat.
Both Sanders and Rager credit reporter Cowan with encouraging their investigations.
"I went to Howard Cowan about the fire and said, "It just doesn't add up. It just doesn't add up.' " said former fire chief Rager. "He said, "Well, then we just have to work this thing out.' He went out to the house with me. If it wasn't for him, it wouldn't have been solved.
"No one else wanted to fool with it," said Rager, 77. "I wasn't exactly threatened, but I was warned to stop pushing the case."
People in the city wanted the matter ended as soon as possible, according to one woman whose only connection to the crime was that she lived in McAlester at the time, "because it was so upsetting to the town."
Former sheriff Sanders said, "Once we found the evidence, we went to the county attorney. But he wouldn't issue the warrant. It was a Sunday and Cowan said to him, "If you don't let this man have a warrant today, you're not going to believe what you read in the paper tomorrow.' " Cowan, who was editor of The McAlester News-Capital at the time of the crime, is now publisher of the Boothbay Register in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
He still has a scrapbook of clippings from the time. It was prepared by two fellow journalists in an unsuccessful effort to win Cowan a Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Cowan wrote that the murders were solved by: "The stubborn determination of a grizzled old firefighter veteran of many, many blazes, some set, some not; the persistent inquisitiveness of a sheriff with children of his own; the patient skill of a FBI-trained highway patrol chief."
The morning after the fire when Galbraith who within three weeks of the crime was being called "Dr. Jekyll" supposedly had returned from his business trip, he went straight to the McAlester hospital to make his rounds.
"He asked the nurse how much the house was damaged," Rager said.
"He didn't ask at all about the family."
Rager said once the men began looking for clues, the mystery was not hard to unravel. Under a rug was a huge blood stain left from Mrs. Galbraith's cut head.
"The embalmer said she didn't have much blood left," Rager said.
"Why, it was all in the house."
Sanders said, "I went to a doctor and asked, "If someone got up and fell, cut her head, in a heated room, would she have bled that much?' The doctor told me the blood would have coagulated. She must have laid there a long time, the doctor said."
But Sanders said Galbraith did not appear to be a tormented, schizophrenic killer, as was contended in his trials.
"He was a quiet person, highly intelligent, courteous," the former sheriff said. "He had numerous visitors at the jail. People wanted to bring him pies. As a doctor, he had helped them or a member of their families."
Sanders said the first time he met Galbraith was when he drove with Cowan to Tennessee with a warrant for Galbraith's arrest.
"He was at his family's funeral and he was making plans to go to Brazil. ... He looked hurt. I never really thought he was insane. I felt like he knew right from wrong, but anyone who would kill his wife and three kids wasn't exactly normal."
On the way back from Tennessee, Galbraith narrowly escaped death as he jumped out of the car Cowan was driving and into the path of another car on the highway. The group decided to return to Oklahoma by train.
Galbraith finally killed himself in prison by using a piece of a razor blade to cut an artery in his groin.
The day before his death, Sanders said, the inmate had asked him to come to the prison.
"I have something to tell you real bad,' he told me.
... I've always wondered what he wanted to say."
SOURCE:
http://newsok.com/best-seller-evokes-memories-of-mcalesters-dr.-jekyll/article/2093803
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