Hughes News Bits

Deputy Sheriff Bill GADDY Who Survived Deadly Barrage Of Gun Fire Tells Of Calvin Shooting!

From the Holdenville Daily News, Thursday, March 12, 1936.

With the life of Roy (Luke) CHADWICK, his severely wounded companion officer, hanging in the balance at Emergency Hospital and a bullet wound in his right shoulder sending darting pains through his own body, Bill GADDY, deputy sheriff, this afternoon related details of how the fusillade from two desperadoes moved down the officers at Calvin shortly after midnight.

GADDY, visible racked by pain, remained on duty in an effort to help a posse of state and federal officers, in cooperation with Sheriff Harve BALL, weave together fragmentary clues which might lead to identification to the two heavily- armed men.

At the sheriff's office, GADDY told how he and CHADWICK, with no warning, were mowed down by a hail of lead. After both officers had been felled by bullets, the gunmen kept firing in rapid succession at GADDY, who crawled 20 feet to a point of vantage where he could return the gunfire.

One bullet entered CHADWICK's right side, ranged downward, and cut his intestines in three places. Burns from the bullet are proving as serious to CHADWICK was struck in the right ear by another bullet which miraculously missed wounding him fatally.

During the fusillade, GADDY was wounded in the right shoulder. Another bullet pierced the left lapel of his coat, just grazing his clothes.

As soon as they could gain partial composure, both GADDY and CHADWICK emptied their revolves at the fleeing car. "I don't see how one of the men in the car could possibly have missed being struck by our bullets," GADDY declared.

Survivor of more than one harrowing gun battle, GADDY, in his usual calm and deliberate manner, continued;

 "I was parked out in front of the lunch stand, near the highway, waiting for 'Thad WILKES, bloodhound keeper at the McAlester State Penitentiary. We were going to use the hounds for investigation of the burning of an Indian's barn near Wetumka.

 "Roy CHADWICK, who had been in the lunchroom talking to John CASTLEMAN, Calvin night watchman, and Mack HARDWICK, night watchman for Moran-Buchner Construction Company, came out to my car.

Roy asked me what I was doing there. I told him I was waiting for the bloodhounds. He then told me there were two men inside and there was something wrong with them for they were armed.

I told Roy that perhaps they were officers. He said no, they were not because they acted peculiarly. Thinking nothing wrong, I reassured Roy by telling him that perhaps they were secret service men because often they wear guns in shoulder holsters.

 "That's the car one of the men got out of. We might walk over and get the tag number and see where it was issued," I told Roy.

"We got out of my car and we walked within ten feet of the other car. One man came out and got into the driver's seat. The other then came out, got in the car and said, " By -----, we don't want to break any of our whiskey."

They backed the car around even with my car, stopped for just a second, then pulled up, starting north on the highway. They drove north about 50 or 60 feet, then backed up even with us again.

One said, "What in the ____ do you call this place?"

As I turned to say something to him, I put my head in their car, and the man on the opposite side stuck an automatic in my face and told me to get 'em up.

I told him we were officers.

His companion next to me was leaning forward and the driver's hand holding the automatic was lying across the companion's back.

I grabbed the gun with my left hand and shoved it to the top of the car. As I did so, he fired and hollered, "Look out,' evidently to warn his companion. 

As the driver fired while he and I were grappling, the other man in the car nearest me, jerked out two guns, one in each hand.

By then I was partly inside their car and the man next o me holding both his guns on me while I was still holding the driver's gun above my head.

Roy was right back of my left side.

Before we could pull our guns for the holsters, both men started shooting.

While all three of their guns were being fired directly at us, Luke later told me he shot into the stomach of the man nearest us. He might have wounded him which accounts for mo more of their bullets hitting us.

I fell backwards to the ground wounded and turned my face to the ground to miss their gunfire. I then crawled 20 feet to in front of a car parked there and finished emptying my gun from there.

When I finished emptying my gun, they had pulled up 30 or 40 feet from where the shooting started. I glanced around to see where Roy was. He was lying on his right side trying to raise himself on his right arm. Blood was streaming from the right side of his head where the bullet pierced his ear. He was still holding his gun which he had emptied. Roy was soon unconscious.

I reloaded my gun and hot my other gun out of the car and hollered to somebody to take Roy to the hospital as quickly as they could.

The two men had then driven out of shooting range and were driving north from Calvin as fast as the car would travel.

After telling them to get Roy to the hospital, I ran across the street to phone Sheriff Harve BALL, telling him to cover all  the highways and only told him about Roy having been wounded.

By the time I finished phoning, I was bleeding freely from the shoulder wound. I asked what they had done with Roy and they told me they had taken him to Dr. MARTIN's residence in Calvin.

I told them he needed to be taken to a hospital right now." Dr. SPETTEL came up about that time and told me I was bleeding quite a bit, having noticed the blood coming through my coat.

Dr. SPETTEL told me I needed to go to a doctor, but I was more interested in seeing Roy taken care of, so I got Broaddus MARTIN to drive my car since my arm was them becoming numb, and we started to Holdenville with Roy.

I stayed with Roy at the emergency hospital until 3:30 o'clock this morning when Dr. FLOYD and Dr. DAVENPORT told me I had better get home. I would not let them take care of me until I knew they had done everything that could be done for Roy.

With but a few hours sleep and showing no strain of the withering gunfire of a short time previously, GADDY arose at his usual hour this morning and joined fellow officers in an effort to obtain clues as to the identity of the two assailants.

GADDY has had an uncanny experience in emerging from gun battles with desperadoes, without fatal injuries. In February 1935, he was forced to the curb on North Hinckley Street by Red KUYKENDALL, Dale STAMPHILL, and three companions, all escaped convicts, who attempted to rob him. Although greatly outnumbered and with a sawed-off shotgun staring him in the face, GADDY shot STAMPHILL, armed with a shotgun, knocking him down. after riddling GADDY's car with buckshot, the quintet fled. 

 

Deputies Are Shot Down; Gunmen Flee Into Hills After Battle At Calvin

Suspects Surprise Investigating Officers With Shots From Car, Escape In Hail Of Bullets; Youth Held In Chase At Norman

From The Daily Oklahoma, Thursday, March 12, 1936.

Luke CHADWICK, Hughes County constable, lay critically injured in a Holdenville hospital Thursday from bullet wounds received in midnight battle with two gunmen in front of a Calvin cafe.

Bill GADDY, deputy sheriff of Hughes County, was shot twice in the shoulder when he and CHADWICK clashed with the gunmen after following them out of the cafe to question them. GADDY's condition was said not to be serious. Hospital attendants said CHADWICK 'has a chance' to survive. He was shot in the stomach and in the head.

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old youth who gave his name as John BARKLEY, Houston, Texas, was held in the Cleveland County jail at Norman as climax to an early morning pursuit of an Oklahoma City stolen car.

Norman peace officers flushed BARKLEY out of a clump of shrubbery on the north edge of Noble where he had been hiding for an hour, they said, after his car overturned in the chase.

Officers said there was no connection between the Calvin and Noble incidents.

Had Two Autos

 According to Mack HARDWICK, former Hughes County peace officer and witness of the Calvin shooting, CHADWICK suspected the two gunmen when they entered the cafe a few minutes before midnight. They had driven two cars into Calvin about 15 minutes earlier, leaving one in a garage across the street and parking the other in front of the cafe.

Noting that the men were armed, CHADWICK followed them out of the cafe when they had finished eating and entered GADDY's car as the other pair boarded their machine parked nearby. The gunmen pulled away, stopped and backed up alongside GADDY's car, asked road information and then suddenly opened fire into the officers' machine.

The chase of Norman officers started when Clifford MCINTYRE and Elmer BURK, night radio car patrolmen, saw an auto reported as stolen Wednesday night from Joe TAYLOR, 1219 Northeast 18th Street, Oklahoma City. The officers pursued the car to the north edge of Noble where the fugitive machine failed to make a turn and crashed into a ditch.

Its driver crawled into a nursery beside the road. MCINTYRE and BURK telephoned for deputy sheriffs who surrounded the nursery. An hour later, according to George MCKINNEY, Cleveland County deputy, BARKLEY crawled from under shrubbery to the highway almost into the arms of C. I. ADAM, another deputy.

MCKINNEY said BARKLEY denied he was the driver of the car and quoted him as saying he had been struck by  hit-and-run driver as he walked along the highway. The youth suffered bruises and a gash over his eye.

Car Held At Calvin

Officers said tracks made by the hiding driver near the nursery tallied those of BARKLEY. The youth told officers he formerly lived in Oklahoma City.

At Calvin, officials were holding the second of the gunmen's two cars which carried as Arkansas license tag.    

 

Gunshot Wounds May Be Fatal

CHADWICK Critically Wounded In Calvin Gun Battle Early Today

GADDY Evades Severe Injury As Pair Flees

Gunmen Being Tracked by County, Federal Officers

Holdenville Daily News, March 12, 1936 by Bill TUCKER

A veteran Hughes County peace officer lay near death in a Holdenville hospital this afternoon while county, state and federal authorities searched for his attackers in one of the greatest and most united manhunts since Chester COMER, the mad hitch-hiker, was tracked to his doom last January

The officer, Luke CHADWICK, 41-year-old Calvin constable, was given only a slight chance to recover by the attending physician. He was wounded along with a companion officer, Deputy Sheriff Bill GADDY, shortly after midnight today by two unidentified gunmen on the deserted streets of Calvin, 20 miles southeast of Holdenville.

GADDY suffered gunshot wounds in his right shoulder. CHADWICK was struck twice, the first bullet hitting him in the right ribs and ranging downward, entering his abdomen and lodging in his left hip. The second split his right ear, momentarily dazing him and knocking him to the ground.

Although no trace of the fleeing attackers has been uncovered, officers were of the opinion one of the two gunmen was Pete TRAXLER, last of Oklahoma's notorious killers and wanted for the slaying of George LOOPER, Pauls Valley peace officer.

The officers were struck down in front of a Calvin pig stand at 12:30 a.m. this morning while there awaiting the arrival of bloodhounds from the state prison at McAlester which they planned to use in the investigation of the burning of an Indian's barn near Wetumka.

Search for the attackers had extended late this afternoon throughout all east central Oklahoma and into Arkansas. The pair was last seen cutting north on HW 270 which leads to /Wetumka. Sheriff Harve BALL, assisted by Department of Justice agents and state crime experts, was of the opinion the pair fled north, probably into the wooded section of northeastern Hughes County and western McIntosh.

Evidence upon which BALL and others based their theory that TRAXLER and possibly his brother-in-law might have been the GADDY-CHADWICK attackers was found in an abandoned Ford coupe, left behind at a Calvin garage.

In the coupe officers found coffee, food, cooking utensils, a "bullet proof" vest similar to the one said to have been purchased by TRAXLER in Arkansas several weeks ago and additional clothing. The two men were described by GADDY, who narrowly escaped serious injury in a similar gun battle on local streets last year, as being well-dressed. Both wore brown cowboy hats and were taken at first to be officers themselves.

The car in which the pair fled bore a Texas license the number of which could not be obtained before the battle started.

While state crime bureau experts were completing their fingerprint work at Calvin, BALL, his staff and department of justice officers were spreading a purported dragnet into Pittsburg, Coal and Pontotoc counties in event the gunmen circled back and went into hiding in the Coal "whiskey" hills.

GADDY was unable to furnish a description of the gunmen. Charley LITTLE, a Calvin filling station attendant, said the men bought gasoline at his place shortly before the shooting. He said one answered the description of TRAXLER and had a scar on his cheek. TRAXLER also has a scar on his cheek.

CHADWICK, the only person who might be able to identify the other gunman in the event TRAXLER was the leader of the attack, is in an unconscious condition. He was inside the pig stand for nearly 30 minutes with the two men. Pig stand attendants were unable however, to give an accurate description of the men, saying they were "well-dressed".

Before losing consciousness, CHADWICK, en route to the emergency hospital where he is now confined, told officers he believed he had shot one of the pair in the "middle". He said he did so when he saw then "get GADDY". Both CHADWICK and GADDY emptied their revolvers at the fleeing gunmen who were armed with both shoulder and pocket weapons. They too, GADDY said, emptied their guns at the officers.

The shooting attracted sleeping residents of Calvin and Police Chief John CASTLEMAN, but CASTLEMAN with a hurriedly assembled posse was unable to find a trace of the would-be killers.

Both CHADWICK and GADDY were rushed to Holdenville for treatment and neither was reported to be in a serious condition. CHADWICK's condition became critical shortly before dawn and Dr. W. E. FLOYD, chief attending physician, said his recovery chances were "about 25%."

CHADWICK's relatives were summoned to his bedside today. He has been a resident of Hughes County for 30 years and is active in American Legion activities. The Legion commander, Adjutant C. E. GRAHAM, of the American Legion Breeding Post volunteered to join in a mass manhunt. During the day Calvin was the liveliest of all county communities. State, federal and county officials established headquarters in town.      

 

Holdenville Daily News, Friday Feb. 25, 1955 pg. 1

Ike Sends Greetings To City Resident On 100th Birthday

The "only president we have had since the Civil War" has sent his best wishes to Mrs. Emma TAYLOR. She is 100 years old today.
She won't back up that quote with elaboration but it is only one of many pronounced views Mrs. TAYLOR has on subjects ranging from politics to religion.
As far as anyone could determine this week, Mrs. TAYLOR is the oldest living resident in Holdenville at the present.
Today she is celebrating the occasion with a big Birthday party and an open house from 1 until 5 p.m. There will be more than one cake she has been told but she doesn't know who is going to bake them.
"Please accept my sincere congratulations upon you birthday. May good health be yours through many more happy years. Dwight D. EISENHOWER"
Mrs. TAYLOR has the run of the house at 208 N. Kelker, where she lives with her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. C. W. TAYLOR.
 

 

 

Last update 10/30/2014 08:02 PM