The eight persons under arrest were taken to Port Orford, where they were
taken before Frank Tichenor, Justice of the Peace, who placed each under $2,000
bail. Being late at night, none were able to raise bond, and were taken,
because of inadequate facilities in Curry county, to the Coos county jail for
the night to await further questioning. An exception was made for Ralph Stevens
whose wife had become sick and who had requested that he be allowed to
accompany her back to the Garner ranch.
For reasons not determined at the time, neither the sheriff or the district
attorney of Curry county were to be located the evening of the preliminary
hearings in Port Orford before the justice of peace and did not appear until
quite late the following day in Coquille. Most of this day was utilized in
interrogating various members of the group, the questioning being done by the
state police. Mrs. Garner and Loren Kerr were active in the meantime in
attempting to secure legal help. Mrs. Garner contacted Collier H. Buffington, a
very able lawyer in Gold Beach, but was unable to persuade him to take her
case. Kerr wired a friend of his, who was at the time the district attorney of
Clark county, Washington and who came to Coquille the second night of Kerr's
arrest. The following morning one of the state police told me that Kerr's attorney
friend would like to see me. I met the man in the lobby of the local hotel,
where considerable effort on his part was made to reimburse me for any stolen
cattle providing I would withdraw complaint against Kerr. Needless to say, I
refused the offer. While in Coquille, however, it is possible that this
attorney was instrumental in persuading Buffington of Gold Beach to take Kerr's
case. Once on the job, Buffington's first move was to find fault with the
hearings held in Judge Tichenor's court in Port Orford the evening of the
arrest. His argument and influence with the district attorney and sheriff of
Curry county was sufficient that he was granted a re-hearing for his client,
Kerr. Automatically, this meant re-hearings for all concerned and the time was
set for the third evening following the arrests. They were held in Judge
Tichenor's court in Port Orford, and Buffington, the only lawyer retained by
any member of the group, was eventually moved to represent them all. The
session lasted from 4 o'clock until midnight but Judge Tichenor after reviewing
the evidence held tough and kept them all under $2,000 bond. In the course of
the hearings, it was brought out that two of the eight were minors, one boy of
19 and one of 14. It was recommended that these boys be released and tho this
was done both appeared at the Coquille jail where they requested a place to
sleep, a request granted by the jailor. The other six were soon out on bond
with the understanding that they were to reappear before the Grand Jury some
two months later, at Gold Beach.
In the meanwhile, some of us, including the state police and two livestock
theft investigators working out of the State Department of Agriculture, were
quite busy running down additional evidence.
It might also be relevant to bring into the story here an incident that
occurred several years before and which in the light of the above developments
began to take on considerable more significance.
Sometime in the early thirties, I leased the old Wilson range for a period
of five years for the purpose of summer grazing for a few young cattle, with
the understanding that if the place were sold I would be given 60 days to
vacate. During the third year of the lease I received notice from the owners
that the ranch had been sold to a Mrs. Garner. I went onto the property a few
weeks later to gather cattle. After considerable riding I was nine steers
short. Two more trips in an attempt to find the cattle were unsuccessful and
nothing more was ever heard of them. At the time of the gathering,
incidentally, these cattle should have been in the best of condition. Some
three years later, after writing these cattle off as an unexplained loss, I
received a telephone call one evening at my home in Myrtle Point. It was a man
calling from a restaurant downtown and since he had no car, would I come down?
Parking in front of the restaurant a small man with a club foot stepped up to
the car and asked if my name was Dement. He gave his name as Jett and said that
he was living and working on the old Wilson place for Mrs. Garner, and that
they were both of the opinion that I might be losing cattle by thieves driving
them off the back part of the range. Would I be interested, for a small monthly
wage, in hiring him ... he would be only too glad ... to look after my
interests back there. I explained to him that I had checked the cattle in that
area a few weeks before and had found nothing out of order. In fact, in the 60
years of family ownership of that section, no one had ever attributed any
livestock loss to theft, but to other more natural causes which occur from time
to time on any livestock operation. I thanked the man, however, for his
apparent interest, and drove home, and I did very shortly make a trip to that
part of the range, checking on the cattle and a couple of old unused trails
leading to the Garner ranch, a distance of three miles or so. There was no
indication of stock having been moved. It was only after the arrest of the
Garner outfit that I recalled the meeting with Jett in Myrtle Point and only
then did it occur to me the man's possible motive in wanting a job patrolling
that part of our range. During the four or five years that Mrs. Garner owned
and was on the Wilson place I had never seen her nor had any communication with
her.
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