Unsolved murders ravaged Iola’s innocence

Betty Cantrell went to work at an Iola cafe more than 45 years ago. She never returned home.
Though officially her murder remains unsolved, Tom Williams, a crime-fighter here for years with the KBI and as sheriff, is confident he knows who did it — the late Jack Shoemaker, a suspect from the start.
Early on Sept. 30, 1969, Cantrell arrived at the small diner on Jefferson Avenue, just north of the square, to ready things for the coming breakfast crowd. She brewed coffee, tidied up and waved at a passing police officer working graveyard.
At 5 a.m., before the usual influx of early risers and a night owl or two, trudging home from a nocturnal adventure, another employee arrived for work. Surprised to find the place dark, she flipped on the lights, and found blood smeared over the lunch counter. Cantrell and her car were gone.
Later in the day, Cantrell’s car was found along a street at the south edge of Iola, immediately suspicious since it was parked where no car should have been. Iola cops leaped to action, although one’s earlier order to clean up blood so the cafe could reopen didn’t do the investigation any favors.
Another murder occurred the same day. Sally Hutton, 14, went to a junior high football game that night and never again was seen alive.

FRIDAY, Oct. 3, 1969, was a balmy fall day. Students at Iola High were prepping for a football game; folks in Humboldt were feverishly putting finishing touches on their signature event, Biblesta.
A little before noon, a passerby saw Cantrell’s battered body floating in Elm Creek, near the old Kentucky Street bridge. Officers flew to the scene.
That afternoon Hutton’s crumpled body was found lying in a deep ditch next to a dirt road a mile north of Allen County Country Club. She had been struck by a vehicle, but it was blatantly evident her death came when she was struck repeatedly in the head, probably with a tire iron.
Iola, normally as quiet as a mouse, was fear-struck. Rumors and innuendo flowed. Guns usually tucked away in the corner of a closet were loaded; doors seldom locked were bolted from every imaginable angle.
      First reaction was an ogre was prowling the town, with a mind to serially kill. However, investigators never found a connection between the two, and it was 13 years before so vile an act occurred again — when two teenaged boys and an older women were killed.
No suspects — at least with enough evidence for an arrest — surfaced in the Hutton girl’s murder. Her sister, Carolyn Henry, Madison, still hopes that someone will feel enough remorse to provide information. That could occur, although the clock clicks quicker each year.
Cantrell’s case is another story.
Shoemaker was by any measure the town drunk. His chiseled features covered by taunt, leathery skin with atypical pallor were dead giveaways that alcohol was a constant companion. He was notorious for bumming a dollar or two from anyone who would listen to buy cheap booze.
He began as a suspect, landed in jail and when plied with a fifth of whiskey — interrogation then didn’t have restraints of today — Shoemaker admitted the fatal transgression.
County Attorney Mitchell Bushey put together his case. Bob Talkington was appointed to represent the indigent Shoemaker.
At the preliminary hearing, a proceeding to determine if a case should go to trial, Bushey sprang the key piece of what he thought was lock-down incriminating evidence. When Cantrell’s body was found, a large rock was lying on the corpse, put there by the killer to hold it underwater.
Bushey assured no one but the killer — Shoemaker mentioned the rock in his confession — and a handful of officers, sworn to secrecy, knew particulars of what was found.

THAT’S WHEN, on hand to report for the Register, I became part of the story.
Bushey’s declaration about the rock came as a surprise, but not as intended. For several days before the hearing, the rock being on the body was a topic among coffee drinkers in the old Menegay’s Restaurant in downtown Iola.
That evening I called Talkington, told what I knew and found myself on the witness stand the next day. Whether my testimony was the keystone in Shoemaker’s eventual acquittal, I don’t know, but it had a role.
When Williams reviewed the Cantrell case years later he was led to an old man, hanging to life by a thread, who confirmed, to William’s satisfaction, that he and Shoemaker were responsible for Cantrell’s death.
Williams also thinks whoever killed Hutton is dead.
We’re about to the point that’s the best that ever can be hoped for in resolution of the two murders.