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In 1967, longtime New York State Trooper Joseph Hunt was honored by the National Association of Former State Troopers for his law enforcement career. Chief among the stories told at the ceremony was an account of the arrest of Lester Brockelhurst and Bernice Felton:

On May 13, 1937, Hunt’s life was in danger when he pursued a stolen car along Route 22 between Armenia and Millerton. He was unaware that the baby face youth driving the vehicle was widely hunted as the killer of three men and for questioning about a long chain of armed robberies.

The driver, Lester Brockelhurst, was accompanied by his 18-year-old sweetheart, Bernice Felton. Hunt chased the car at high speeds and finally overtook it, forcing the operator to stop.

Bernice later told authorities that Brockelhurst had a loaded gun during the chase, and told her that he was going to shoot the cop rather than be taken into custody to face trial for murders he committed.

Once he realized how far this was from a routine stop on that day in 1937, Trooper Hunt’s greatest problem was how to transport his two prisoners to a jail cell when all he had at his command was a motorcycle without a radio. In the end, it was a passing motorist who carried a message to the nearest telephone and summoned help for the stranded officer.

In the meantime, Lester couldn’t stop talking.

“I killed a man down near Little Rock. We bummed a ride with him and shot him. I put his body in the back seat and then dumped it out along the road.”

He confessed to the first two murders, too, and recited the holdups he had committed from the time he left Rockford.

“I know I’m going to die,” he said. “But for God’s sake send me somewhere where they’ll electrocute me. I don’t want to hang.”

Finally, amidst the wail of sirens and drawn weapons, troopers arrived to relieve Officer Hunt. Lester and Bernice were taken to the police barracks in Brewster, New York where the pair were fingerprinted, photographed, and underwent their first interrogations.

Again, Brockelhurst admitted who he was and what he had done. He confessed to the murders in Illinois and Arkansas, and to shooting someone in Texas, but said he had not known the man in Texas had died. “We were just riding around the country,” he told officers. “We were just going around having a good time.”

For her part, Bernice told detectives that she loved Lester, and that she was having his baby and planned to marry him. “If you were in love, you’d understand how I feel. I’d do this all over again.” Police summoned a doctor to examine Bernice because of her claim to be pregnant. “Ridiculous,” was the doctor’s announcement after the exam. It wouldn’t be the last time that authorities would deny that Bernice was pregnant – it was too early for her pregnancy to show, and no one took the three or four days necessary for the newly developed “rabbit test” for pregnancy. But time would prove Bernice right: she was in fact in the early months of pregnancy.

“I still love him,” Bernice insisted. “He’s a boy that wouldn’t want to shoot anyone for the pleasure of it, or anything like that.”

“After you found that he killed a man, why did you continue with him?” investigators asked.

“Well, he did it more in self-defense than anything else. It wasn’t because he really wanted to.”

Bernice repeated to him her claim of being pregnant. “But there has been no time for a wedding since we left Rockford.”

Police in New York contacted authorities in other cities. Texas officials demanded that New York hold Lester for them. Arkansas authorities airmailed a warrant for his arrest. Illinois put a sheriff on an airplane to New York the next day. There was a widely held assumption that whichever state could reach Lester first would have priority for extradition and first chance at trial, conviction, and execution.

But in the meantime, New York officials had to take the legal steps necessary to hold both Lester and Bernice. They decided to charge the two of them with possession of an unregistered firearm. So anxious were they to get make this charge official that an assistant district attorney, Eli Gellert, woke the nearest justice of the peace, Seeley Johnson of Dover Plains, at 2:00 a.m. to have Lester and Bernice arraigned in the tiny room in the back of his drugstore used by Johnson as a courtroom. Gellert told the reporters who were beginning to arrive en masse that the charge was a pretext, “merely to hold the couple,” while he awaited the Monday arrival of the district attorney to determine which state would be able to extradite them. The arraignment was brief, both pleading not guilty. They were remanded without bail, and taken to the Dutchess County jail in Poughkeepsie.

Reporters besieged anyone involved with the investigation. State Police Inspector Howard W. Nugent gave a colorful interview.

“The car he was driving when Trooper Hunt overtook him was Gates’s car. Gates’s belongings and his body were tossed out of the car about ten miles out of Little Rock.

“He’s a smart kid,” he said of Lester. “He is a high school graduate [true] and had one year of pre-law at Rockford, Ill. [probably not true]. We think he is mixed up in a lot of other crimes. There is a good chance that a lot of unsolved banditry will be cleared up with this arrest. We believe he is responsible for jobs at Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and several other places in the east, especially in Pennsylvania.

“A stickup to him was like going out and buying a newspaper. He would decide on what place he wanted to stick up and go out and look it over and then just stick it up. There was nothing to it as far as Brockelhurst was concerned.

“He killed for money and transportation.”

Bernice, though, according to Nugent, was “just a young Hoosier – she blames everything on love.”

Assistant DA Gellert told reporters that “Brockelhurst, who although a high school graduate, does not seem to realize the full significance of his plight. He did ask at his arraignment if the judge would consider admitting him to bail. I told him it was out of the question.” He also recited versions of the murders told to him by Lester. Lester insisted that Bernice had nothing to do with any of the killings, but Gellert contradicted that, saying that Bernice had admitted having witnessed the killing of Victor Gates in Arkansas.

Reporters clamored for access to Lester and Bernice. Officials denied them the opportunity for interviews, but did allow access for photos. Their faces became familiar to millions over the weekend.

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Even their meals were photographed – Lester chose hamburgers, Bernice requested roast beef.

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Generally characterizing them as “crime tourists” in newspaper stories, reporters quickly learned that Lester and Bernice had been Mormon Sunday School teachers, and had met at a Mormon gathering. Surprisingly, though, no one seemed interested in blaming their crimes on Mormonism, or in playing up the Mormon connection in any way. Instead, the public seemed fascinated by the “sweethearts” angle; the fact that they had been Mormon Sunday School teachers merely highlighted the incongruity between their well bred, well educated upbringing, and the criminals they had become due to a perverted love. They were the “honeymoon murderers,” not the “Mormon murderers.”

To their families, however, Lester and Bernice were still beloved children. The fathers of both families conferred in Rockford, and allowed reporters to interview them.

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(Abraham R. Felton, left; Lester W. Brockelhurst, Sr., right)

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Stunned, Lester Brockelhurst, Sr. announced that he would go “wherever they take” Lester and would “stay with him to the end. “I’d gladly die to atone for the sins of my boy,” he said. “This breaks my heart. I love my son even if he did wrong.” Abraham Felton, Bernice’s father, responded to questions by saying that he was arranging for an attorney to defend his daughter.

News of Bernice’s involvement in the crime spree had caused her mother to suffer a heart attack. As a kindness to the gravely ill Ruth Felton, jail authorities allowed Bernice to speak to her mother by telephone and took note of Bernice’s side of the conversation. “Please, mother, don’t worry about me,” Bernice told her. “I’m all right. Your little girl will soon be back home with you. I’m sorry about all the trouble I have caused. It wouldn’t have happened if I had sought your advice.”

In a day when commercial air travel was neither routine nor convenient, Abraham Felton flew from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, then took a train to Poughkeepsie in order to reach Bernice. Denied privacy even for this, the father’s meeting with his daughter was photographed and broadcast to the world.

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By Monday, May 17, representatives from the three states making claims for extradition, as well as the federal government who wanted to charge both Lester and Bernice with the interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle, arrived in Dutchess County. Speculation ran that “Illinois has the inside track so far, because Rockford is Brockelhurst’s home town and was first to send a murder warrant here.”

When Lester and Bernice were brought into court for their extradition hearing, Lester was brought face-to-face with Abraham Felton for the first time since eloping with Bernice. That meeting, too, fed the public’s insatiable curiosity.

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His hands shackled, Lester made an effort to shake Felton’s hand. Felton stepped back. “I couldn’t do that, Lester. You know I couldn’t – not after what you’ve done to me.” The two spoke briefly, and Felton offered to carry a message to Lester’s parents. Lester turned down the offer. “I don’t want to see my mother and father at the trial. I want to go alone and pay for what I’ve done. I know I’ll get the electric chair and I want to get it over with as quickly as I can.”

When the three states seeking extradition, the federal government, and the Dutchess County district attorney could not agree who should take custody of Lester and Bernice and have first opportunity to try them, the matter was laid on the desk of New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman. “After a review of all three cases presented by representatives of the three states concerned,” the governor said, “I have decided to turn the defendants over to Arkansas. It seems to me that state has the strongest case against them. None of the other states,” he added,” has a case against the girl.”

Abraham Felton was devastated. “[I] wanted to take her back to Illinois where I think she will have more of a chance.”

Arkansas greeted the decision with jubilation, saying prosecutors would demand the death penalty for both Lester and Bernice.

On Tuesday, May 18, Lester and Bernice were put on a train bound for Lonoke, Arkansas, handcuffed together, and escorted by an Arkansas officer.

Lester asked the officer how soon he could expect to be executed.

“Six days at the least after trial starts, and 30 days at most.”

As it turns out, the officer was a poor fortune teller.

(To be continued)