Nodaway County is a county located in the northwest part of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,241. Its county seat is Maryville. The county was organized February 14, 1845, and is named for the Nodaway River. It is the largest county by area added to Missouri in the 1836 Platte Purchase and the fifth-largest county by area in Missouri.
Nodaway County comprises the Maryville, MO Micropolitan Statistical Area.
History
The county has a rich agricultural history. It is the home of trainers Ben Jones and Jimmy Jones, whose horses won six Kentucky Derby races and two Triple Crowns.
The county is home to Northwest Missouri State University. The university's grounds were a re-creation of the landscape of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. In 1993, Northwest was designated by the Missouri State Legislature as the official Missouri Arboretum. ESPN has carried the university's participation in five national championship football games, three of which they won.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas studied to become a priest at Conception Seminary College, before giving it up for law. The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration convent in neighboring Clyde has 550 relics of saints, the largest collection in the nation.
Located in Tornado Alley, many tornadoes have struck the county, including an F4 tornado on March 29, 1979, which obliterated the town of Braddyville, Iowa across the county line. Tornadoes have damaged two of the county's largest buildings, the Administration Building on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University and Conception Abbey. The 1881 Hopkins tornado is one of the first recorded F5 tornadoes.
Early life in the county was chronicled by writer Homer Croy, a Nodaway County native, in many books, articles, films and Broadway shows in the 1920s and 1930s.
Etymology
The origin of the name "Nodaway" has been attributed to a Pottawatomie name for "placid," a Dakota Sioux name for "crossed without canoe," and various tribes names for "snake."
Crime Nodaway County was on the frontier in its earliest days and has a long history of violence.
The first execution in Nodaway County occurred in the county seat of Maryville on July 22, 1881. Two brothers, Albert P. and Charles E. Talbott, were hanged after being convicted of murdering their own father, Dr. Perry H. Talbott. Dr. Talbott, a local physician, newspaper editor, and state legislator, died on September 18, 1880, at his home northwest of Arkoe, a town he co-founded. He was found shot in his home and died of his injuries that evening, blaming his political enemies with his dying breath. Nevertheless, his sons were charged with the crime. Despite their insistence of innocence, the jury found them guilty and the judge sentenced them to death. Their tombstone in the family cemetery is a vertical column with two hands clasped in friendship. The inscription on the headstone reads: "We Died Inocent." [sic]
On December 9, 1884, Omaha Charley, whose real name was Joseph Paro, aka Charles F. Stephens, was the victim of a lynch mob. Six days earlier, he had shot Hubert Kremer in Hilgert's Saloon, in Maryville. Omaha Charley had been arrested, but others decided to take matters into their own hands. About 50 masked men broke into the jail and demanded Omaha Charley. The county sheriff, James Anderson, and his brother, Deputy Jack Anderson, fought the mob, firing shots and being fired upon in return. Ultimately, the mob overpowered the sheriff and his deputy, and dragged Omaha Charley from his cell. They carried Stephens to the bridge at Fourth and Water Streets, where they tied the rope to the bridge railing and threw him over the side. Sheriff Anderson found his prisoner there an hour later. This was not Omaha Charley's first crime, however. Five years earlier, he was convicted of 2nd degree murder in the death of John Mahan. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison. In January 1884, he was pardoned by Governor Thomas Crittenden and released, having served only four and a half years of his sentence.Murder Book I Nodaway County, Missouri, 1861–1885, Compiled by Janet Hawley
One of the most notorious murders in Nodaway County was committed by Hezekiah "Hez" Rasco, a farmer's son, who was hanged on March 26, 1912, for the murder of Oda Hubbell. Rasco and Hubbell took part in an all-night poker game in a boxcar at the Barnard Depot. Hubbell returned to his family on the morning of November 20, 1910. The next day, Hubbell and his family were all found dead. Hubbell had been killed with a shotgun and his body dragged into the house. Mrs. Hubbell was beaten to death with the shotgun butt. After killing the children, the murderer set fire to the Hubbell home, which almost incinerated the children's corpses. Little more than half of the torso of Hubbell was found after a passing neighbor had extinguished the blaze. Hez Rasco was arrested and charged with the murder of Hubbell, his wife, and their children Welton, 4, and Jessie, 6. Rasco was tried and convicted only for Oda Hubbell's murder. Rasco maintained his innocence to his death. The murders were covered in the book Hezekiah Rasco: Child of Woe — Man of Sorrow.
Raymond Gunn was arrested for the murder and attempted rape of a young white schoolteacher. He confessed his guilt. On January 12, 1931, a mob in Maryville took Gunn from the jail and marched him to the scene of the crime. They tied him to the school roof and set fire to the building, burning Gunn to death.
On the night of October 10, 1972, Benedict “Benny” Kemper, 15 years old, cut the telephone line to the Marion Merrigan family’s house that was situated west of Conception, sneaked into the basement and waited for the family to go to sleep. Once the family was asleep, Kemper went upstairs and went from bedroom to bedroom murdering four members: Marion, the father; Kathleen, the mother; William, his classmate and their son; and Helen Ann, their youngest daughter, using a .22 bolt-action rifle. The lone surviving family member, Sue Merrigan Dorrel, was a student at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville at the time. She is an aunt of former Northwest Missouri State University football coach Adam Dorrel. In 1973, Kemper was sentenced to four consecutive 45-year sentences for murder and an additional six years for an attempted jail escape.
On the night of August 4, 1973, Teresa "Tessie" Hilt, a student at Northwest Missouri State, was strangled and stabbed to death in her off-campus apartment in Maryville, and found the next day in her blood-soaked bed by friends. This crime has never been solved and is still considered an open/cold case by the Maryville Department of Public Safety.
On July 10, 1981, several unknown people killed Ken McElroy, in the middle of Skidmore, in what is one of the county's best-kept secrets. An abusive man suspected of many crimes and convicted of attempted murder, McElroy was shot in his truck in Skidmore's main street, in full view of a crowd. The different caliber bullets showed there had been several people involved. However, when questioned by the county sheriff, everyone insisted they had ducked under the pool table in the local bar and saw nothing. Sheriff Danny Estes remarked, "That must have been the biggest damn pool table in the world." A local and federal law enforcement task force was set up to investigate the crime, but they could not find anyone willing to step forward to discuss the crime. The book and movie In Broad Daylight are based on this event.
In 1990, BATF informant Christine ElkinsChristine Elkins disappeared. She was beaten to death by cousins Tony and Steven "Tug" Emery, joined by an unnamed associate. Elkins' body was wrapped in a carpet rug, thrown into the trunk of her car, and driven to the Missouri River. The Emerys used a board to hold the steering column in place and another piece to hold down the accelerator, and ran the car off a boat ramp near Nodaway. The car was found in 1997, with Elkins' bones in the trunk. Dental records identified the remains. Tony Emery was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, and is currently incarcerated at United States Penitentiary (USP) in Terre Haute, Indiana. He appealed the conviction, which was affirmed in 1999. Tug Emery is incarcerated on charges related to the murder at Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota and has a projected release date of June 21, 2016.
In the fall of 1994, a local farmer, William Taylor, murdered his wife Debra, by using the family's cat to lure her underneath a combine and causing the combine to roll over her. Taylor told authorities that he had killed the cat with a hammer and threw it under the combine, to lure his wife under the machine. Once she was under the combine attempting to retrieve the cat, he used twine to pull a lever on the combine, to cause it to roll over his wife when she tried to retrieve it. After he ran over her, he stated that he had moved the combine back from his wife's body, hid the twine and called 9-1-1, stating that there had been an accident at his farm south of Maryville. Taylor was convicted of murder and received a 25-year sentence.
In the spring of 1995, Dennis Lee Jones, of Maryville, assaulted and murdered Karen Hawkins, a student at Northwest Missouri State, and a friend of his since high school at Maryville. Jones sexually assaulted her, killed her by strangulation and stomping/kicking her, then dumped her body in the 102 River east of Maryville, near the Maryville City Dog Pound, where it was recovered days later downstream by the Missouri State Water Patrol (now part of the Missouri State Highway Patrol). Before Jones could go to trial, he hanged himself in the Nodaway County Jail.
On October 16, 2000, Greg N. Dragoo beat and dragged his girlfriend, Wendy Gillenwater, down several country roads outside of Skidmore, causing her to die. Gillenwater's body was found outside her Skidmore home. Dragoo was charged with murder and given a life sentence by a Nodaway County judge. Dragoo is currently incarcerated in the Jefferson City Correctional Center.
On April 11, 2001, Branson Perry was last seen in his home in the 300 block of West Oak Street in Skidmore, at around 3:00 p.m. He went outside to put some jumper cables in a shed. He never returned, and has never been heard from again. The Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Nodaway County Sheriff's Office still have an open/active case on this.
On June 10, 2002, 71-year-old Lloyd Robert Jeffress, of Kearney, wielding two semi-automatic rifles, opened fire in the hallways of the Conception Abbey, murdering two monks and wounding two others, before committing suicide in the chapel. The victims were identified as the Rev. Philip Schuster, 85, and Brother Damian Larson, 64. Schuster was a greeter at the monastery's front door; Larson worked as a weatherman/groundskeeper. The Rev. Kenneth Reichert, 68, an assistant to the abbot, was shot in the stomach and was in serious condition. The Rev. Norbert Schappler, 73, who was shot twice, was listed in stable condition. Schappler oversees the dining room and works as director at the printing house.
On December 16, 2004, Bobbie Jo Stinnett was murdered in her home in Skidmore, and had her unborn baby cut from her womb. Lisa Montgomery was located (along with the baby named Victoria Jo) due to computer forensic evidence, in Melvern, Kansas, where she was arrested by the FBI, a Maryville Public Safety Detective, and a detective from the Cameron Police Dept. Montgomery was convicted of Stinnett's murder and sentenced to death in 2007 by a Federal Court in the Western District of Missouri. Victoria Jo was re-united with her father Zeb. Montgomery was executed on January 13, 2021.