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When Lester and Bernice walked into the courtroom on the morning of 23 June 1937, a photographer captured a somewhat intimate moment between them.

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It must have been one of the last pleasant moments of Lester’s day. The trial had not gone well for him; the prosecution had one witness after another lined up to present testimony to Lester’s presence in his victim’s car, his possession of the victim’s effects, and his confessions to having committed murder. Lonoke County Sheriff Troy Carroll had been particularly forceful as he described Lester’s confession. “He put the pistol against Mr. Gates’s head and told him to drive off to the side of the road. Then he told Bernice to get out of the car and he pulled the trigger, shooting Mr. Gates in the back of the head. He told me the girl helped him search Mr. Gates and that he then dumped him over in the rear seat. They drove down a side road and the two of them dragged him from the car and down into a ditch.”

Lester’s attorney, Robert J. Brown, had been unable to present much of a case either for Lester’s actual innocence or for his being not guilty by reason of insanity. Neither side called Bernice to testify.

The trial had lasted 10 hours. The jury reached its verdict after only 22 minutes.

Lester, so cavalier about welcoming the electric chair over the horror of hanging, was pale when the judge directed him to rise and face the jury. He began to cry when the jury foreman announced, “Guilty of murder in the first degree.” And moments later, as the judge polled each juror for his agreement to the verdict, Lester fainted into the arms of his father. His mother gathered him into her arms, crying, “Oh, my boy, my boy.” On their way out of the courtroom, Lester’s father collapsed, moaning “Oh, why did he do it? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

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The confusion was so great that Judge Waggoner ordered guards to take Lester back to his cell to recover. He postponed the setting of a date for Lester’s execution until after Bernice’s trial.

Bernice went on trial the next morning, accused of being an accessory to the murder of Victor A. Gates. The room was not as crowded as it had been the day before. Bernice’s parents, an aunt, an uncle, and her little brother and sister were there. Just as the Feltons had supported the Brockelhurst parents during their son’s trial, Lester’s parents, despite having lost nearly all hope for their son, came to court and stood by the Feltons.

Because of course they did, reporters took note of Bernice’s fashion choices: She was wearing a pink dress and white shoes. One wrote, “Attired in a summery dress and looking neat and fresh in the hot court room, Bernice watched calmly as the task of selecting a jury went forward.” All of the jurors on her panel were local farmers.

In his opening statement, the prosecutor declared that he was seeking the death penalty for Bernice’s involvement in the murder of Victor A. Gates. Then he called his first witness.

Lester Brockelhurst.

Upon regaining consciousness in his cell after hearing the jury’s verdict the night before, Lester had sent a message to the prosecutor. He volunteered – begged – to testify against Bernice.

On the stand that morning, Lester began by telling how he had met Bernice at that Mormon conference in the spring of 1934. He told of Bernice’s father Abraham Felton acting as his “parole guardian” when he was released from prison after his Chicago crimes in 1935.

“I loved Bernice,” he continued. “But her parents wouldn’t let us get married. So March 31, we decided to run away. I shot a fellow in Rockford and stole his car. We went out to Utah and Salt Lake City for a while. To get money, I robbed some small stores, filling stations and the like.

“Bernice knew all about them and kept account of the money. We went down to Dallas and she begged for a new dress for her birthday. I went over to Fort Worth and killed another man but didn’t get any money and had to try another stickup. I finally got $17.50 from a grocery and went back to Dallas.

“We left the car there and decided to hitch-hike to Little Rock.”

Lester continued with the story of the slaying, admitting that Bernice was not in the car when he shot Gates, but insisting that she had helped him dispose of the body and had helped to search Gates three times to be certain they had found all his money and anything else of value. He insisted that Bernice had refused to leave him, but said, “I don’t think she loves me now.”

Bernice testified in her own behalf, an edge to her voice, calm and speaking clearly, in contrast to Lester’s nervousness. She corroborated Lester’s outline of what they had done, but contended that she had taken no part in any of Lester’s crimes. She said that she was afraid of Lester, and that he had made her aid him in dragging Gates’s body from car to ditch. She testified she had never assisted him in any of the robberies, or in Lester’s first two murders. She said she no longer loved Lester and had no intention of marrying him. Although Lester had been asked whether he was the father of Bernice’s baby, for some reason Bernice herself was not allowed to testify as to her pregnant condition.

The prosecutor was blunt in his summation, asking the jury to “put her down in the same ditch that she put Victor A. Gates in. Don’t be chicken hearted.”

Bernice’s trial was much shorter than Lester’s, lasting only a couple of hours from start to finish, with Lester being the chief witness against her. The jury needed more time to deliberate in her case, though, but reported back to the judge after one hour and 20 minutes that they had reached a verdict.

While the jury was out, Judge Waggoner called on Lester to stand and hear his sentence of death. He ordered Lester to be taken to the Tucker Prison Farm, there to die on 27 August in the electric chair. By now, you will be unsurprised by what followed: Lester fainted.

Bernice listened to the sentence meted out to her former lover, the father of her unborn child, without betraying any sign of emotion. She did not say goodbye to him when state police escorted Lester, barely conscious, out of the courtroom.

A few minutes later, her own jury returned to the courtroom. The verdict: Not guilty. Bernice did not face the same electric chair. A chorus of half-subdued “Oh’s,” one witness reported, ran through the crowded courtroom.

Bernice responded as though she had just been elected rodeo queen: She shook each juror by the hand, exclaiming, “It’s too wonderful to believe! I can’t thank this jury enough. Arkansas is the greatest state in the world!”

Abraham Felton hugged his daughter, then thanked the jury. “I owe you people everything,” he told them. Bernice’s aunt broke into tears of relief. Bernice sat down by her mother, who squeezed her hand convulsively.

When they could break free of the crowds surrounding and congratulating them, Abraham Felton took his family to a tourist camp outside town, with the permission of the federal district attorney from Little Rock. Bernice was free of Arkansas’s hold, but before she could go home she would need to post bail – she was still charged under federal statutes with transporting Victor Gates’s stolen car across state lines.

Not everyone was happy with the verdict. Deputy Prosecutor Joseph P. Melton pouted, “I did my best, and if the jury didn’t want to carry out the law, I can’t help it.”

Lonoke’s mayor George Bailey was angrier, his comments carrying a barely concealed threat. He told the Feltons to leave town as quickly as possible. To reporters, he made the unlikely claim that “The Feltons, who have been staying at a tourist camp here, were parading up and down the street tonight, apparently gloating over their victory.”

On the morning after her trial, Bernice was taken back to Little Rock to await word on her bail. The Feltons, without their daughter but knowing she would sooner or later return home went back to Rockford. Abraham Felton went to work to raise the money needed for Bernice’s bail.

The Brockelhursts, without their son and not knowing whether they would ever see him again, returned home as well.

Lester was taken to a cell at Arkansas’s Tucker Prison Farm.

But he was not put to death on 27 August.

(To be continued)