Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Lester W. Brockelhurst – he was usually styled as “Jr.,” although his middle initial stood for “William” while his father’s stood for his grandmother’s maiden name of “Warfel” – was born in Peoria, Illinois, on 4 January 1914. His parents, Lester and Edyth, joined the Church in 1921, and Lester, his younger sister and brother, were baptized more or less on schedule (at 9 or 10 years) as they came of age. The family moved to Galesburg, Illinois when Lester was an infant, then to Dallas, Texas, where Lester went to elementary and high school, then back to Galesburg in 1931.

Like Lester, Bernice Felton was the oldest child in her family, born on 21 December 1918 in Marshalltown, Iowa. Her family moved to Rockford, Illinois in about 1926. Her parents, Abraham and Ruth Felton, joined the Church in 1927, and Bernice and her younger siblings were all baptized as they came of age.

Both families were active in their northern Illinois branches, the parents holding leadership positions, and Lester and Bernice both teaching Sunday School while they were still teenagers. In 1934, when Lester was 20 and Bernice was 15, both families attended a conference of the Northern States Mission held somewhere in the Tri-Cities area of northeastern Illinois. It was a classic mission conference of that era, complete with the sorts of MIA arts competitions that were a standard feature of gatherings in the western stakes and especially in the missions: Young people competed in music (both instrumental and vocal), dramatic presentations, and public speaking. Bernice was in a play. Lester took part in the public speaking contest, giving a talk about the Beatitudes. They took an instant liking to each other. Bernice “seemed so sensible,” Lester later recalled. “But it wasn’t love at first sight. I didn’t take her out for two or three months.”

.

Bernice, as she appeared in her high school yearbook.
.

But take her out he did. It wasn’t easy. The Depression was in full swing, and although neither family was in desperate straits, both had to work hard. Lester worked for his father’s painting and interior decorating business – and he didn’t get paid wages. His father gave him a little pocket money once in a while, but nothing steady, and not nearly enough to support Lester’s strong urge to travel between Galesburg and Rockford.

Lester and his father quarreled. With no steady income on the horizon, Lester decided to leave. He hitchhiked to Chicago early in January, 1935. His first act there was to open a bank account and deposit a $62 check drawn on his father’s Galesburg bank. The check was worthless. While he waited three days for the bank to clear the check – why he waited, I don’t know; he knew the check wouldn’t clear – Lester needed cash. Apparently without hesitation, he moved quickly past the fraud of passing a worthless check: Lester bought a gun, and he held up a candy store – netting him less than $10. On the way out of the store he snatched a woman’s purse, and down the street he held up another woman at gunpoint – both stickups netting him less than $4.

When Lester went to the bank the next day to withdraw $20 from his account, the bank had discovered that the check was worthless and they held him at the bank while they sent for the police. At the first question of the police, Lester admitted that the check was worthless – and without being asked, he also confessed to the three robberies.

His own parents and unnamed friends – although there is reason, as you’ll see, to think those friends might have included Bernice’s parents – rushed to Chicago. Despite their pleas for leniency, Lester was held for trial. On discovering that his friends and family could not post the $20,000 bail set by the judge, Lester fainted. He fainted again at trial, where he was convicted of all charges and sentenced to the prison at Pontiac, Illinois for a term of one year to life.

.

There was no privacy in court or in custody; a press photographer captured this image of
Lester praying before going into court to hear his sentence.
.

Depending on which cell block Lester was assigned to, he lived for the next year in a cell 8′ x 5′ x 8′ – or maybe in a slightly larger cell of 8’3″ x 7′ x 8′. If he shared a cell with another inmate, his living space was 8′ x 10′ x 8. The shared cells were newer, and came with an electrical outlet to plug in a radio, if by chance Lester was well enough off to have a radio in an otherwise sparsely furnished cell.

He could receive visitors once a month. He could write two letters – one to a parent and one to a friend – twice a month. He did write, possibly to his parents, but certainly to Bernice who wrote to him faithfully once a week all the time he was in prison. “Her letters were all that made life bearable,” he would say three years later. “I was as madly in love with her then as I am today.”

When Lester was paroled after one year, he was put in the custody not of his own parents, but of Abraham Felton, Bernice’s father, and Lester moved to Rockford. It was an act of generosity the Felton family would come to bitterly regret, but in 1936, it was an act showing faith in Lester’s rehabilitation, faith not just in a fellow Church member but as the father of a beloved daughter. The Feltons trusted Lester and did what they could to help him by taking him into their own home. Lester found work and paid the Feltons room and board. He liked the work of the department store where he worked over the Christmas rush of 1936, so he found another retail job in a dime store. When that proved to provide too little income, Lester became an apprentice in a printing shop. All the while, he dated Bernice; their romance became more intense once Bernice graduated from high school.

Lester wanted to marry Bernice, and all signs are that she was as deeply in love with him as he was with her. But her parents asked the young couple to wait for Lester to be able to support Bernice. That goal took a giant step backward when the printing plant cut Lester’s salary to $10 a week.

Although she couldn’t have known it yet, Bernice was pregnant in March, 1937. The couple’s intimacy, added to Lester’s insolvency, may have been the chief factors that drove Lester to beg Bernice to run away with him, and that caused Bernice to agree. They agreed that on March 31, Lester would leave the Felton home in the morning, as usual, but would not go to work at the print shop. Instead, he would meet Bernice on a given street corner in Rockford. Bernice was to pack a suitcase, and leave without her parents seeing her go. Lester had a plan, but whether Bernice knew what that plan was is anybody’s guess.

Early on the morning of March 31, on some street in Rockford, Lester put out his thumb to signal his hope for a ride. Albin Theander, age 45, a tailor working in a downtown Rockford clothing store, obligingly picked up the 23-year-old hitchhiker and asked him where he needed to go. They hadn’t gone far before Lester reached into his pocket and pulled out a .38 revolver. Pointing it at Theander, he directed the driver to head out of the city onto Route 5 leading toward rural Cherry Valley. When Lester decided he was far enough away from town, he ordered Theander to stop the car and get out. Theander followed directions, and walked away from the road into a brushy thicket a short distance from the highway. Undoubtedly hoping that if he did what Lester ordered his life would be spared, Theander lay face down, clasping his hands above his head.

Lester leaned over, and shot Albin Theander in the back of his head. Then he walked back to the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove back to Rockford. Bernice was waiting for him.

(To be continued)