Talk:Jake Bird

Brief History of Jake Bird

I have done some looking through Google News archives and have put together information on Bird as follows. I have quoted the old newspaper articles, which are long out of copyright. The picture that arises is that he committed at least five murders, those in Omaha and the ones for which he was hanged. It is impossible to guess on the others. He spent a lot of time confessing just before his execution probably in an effort to keep delaying his execution date. He seems to have been a police informer during his earlier years, and seemed to understand how string the police along with bits of information in return for favors, etc. Most of his confessions were almost certainly false.

Nov. 27, 1928. Deseret News. Ogden, Nov. 27. D. Brown a former member of the Ogden police department, says he recalls that Jake Bird, 24, a negro, who is under arrest in Omaha on suspicion of being the "axe murderer" was at one time employed by Ogden City as an undercoverman. Bird was a good undercover man, but while working for the city in the daytime robbed houses at night time, Mr. Brown declares. Mr. Brown says - he and other officers finally arrested Bird on a charge of robbing the home of Mrs. Pearl Wheatley on Horten Avenue.

Nov. 27, 1928 Warsaw Union. Accused as the Omaha hatchet slayer, Jake Bird, Former Ogden, Utah, prisoner who broke jail has been arrested and confined in the state penitentiary at Lincoln, Neb. Bird served a term in Utah for second degree burglary and was released Jan 15, 1927

Nov. 23 1928 Lawrence Journal World May Be Ax Slayer. Jake Bird, a negro, who was a witness in prosecution of a Burlington Railway special agent here a few weeks agoo, was positively identified by Mrs. Harold Stribling, the negro's fifth victim, at a local hospital here shortly after noon, police announced. Bird was rushed to the state penitentiary at Lincoln, reaching there at 2 p.m. today. He refused to talk, saying only he wanted an attorney and mentioned "Shotwell." ... local attorney asisted in the prosecution of Conrad Barth, Burlington Railroad special agent, charged with responsibility of the death of Gordon Grigor, Cleveland youth, under the wheels of a freight train at Ashland, Neb. two months ago. Bird was the state's star witness and has been in Omaha since the death of Grigor. .... The negro was arrested this morning in a rooming houe. ... Bird is a former convict, having served terms in the Utah peitentiary for burglary and rape, officials said.

Feb 3, 1929 Reading Eagle. Jake Bird, 30, Negro, accused "hatchet man," was convicted today of assaulting Harold Stribling with a hand axe in the latter's home in Omaha last November, and the state immediately prepared to try him for a similar attack on Mrs. Stribling. ... Bird was alleged to have attacked the couple while they slept, and after Stribling was rendered unconcious to have carried Mrs. Stribling to a nearby swamp.

Oct 26 1929 The Afro American. Nebraska will not pay $5,000 killer reward. J. Bird, Victim. Bird came here from Louisiana. He was bumming his way on a freight train last July when he ran on Gordon Grigor and James Berwald, both sons of wealthy white Clevelanders who were bumming their way about the country as a vacation lark. Near a suburb of Omaha the three were ordered off the freight train. In the melee that followed Grigor was either punched or fell off the freight car and ground under the wheels. His dying words were " a ___ pushed me under the wheels." Bird said he saw Conrad Barth, white, a railroad agent, push the boy off the train. It was on Bird's testimony at the inquest that Barth was held on a second-degree murder charge. Bird was in Omaha waiting to testify at these trials, when he was arrested as the ax murder suspect. Everybody says the implication of Bird in the ax killings was revenge for his testimony against Barth. ... Bird was partially identified, and two days later positively identified by Mrs. Stribling. Mrs. Stribling had given a vastly different description of her attacker however. ... Bird said he spend the night gambling with friends. Twenty of them testified that they were all together and even his landlady testified for him. But as a juror said later, Mrs. Stribling said "before God and man Jake Bird is the man who attacked me."

Oct 28, 1947. San Jose Evening News. Mother, Girl killed with Ax. The mother of five children and her youngest daughter were hacked to death by an ax swinging slayer who forced his way into their home here today. A few minutes later, two policemen were stabbed with a pocket-knife as they grappled with Jack Bird, 45-year-old transient Negro arrested as the murder suspect, when they cornered him against a high fence at the end of a two block chase from the scene of the double slaying. The body of Mrs. Berth Kludt 52, clad only in pajama top, lay sprawled beside her bed and her 17-year old daughter, Beverley, head caved in by " sharp, heavy weapon," lay in the kitchen outside her mother's room.

Nov. 2, 1947. The Telegraph Herald - Killer Grilled in Ax Slayings. Admit Murder of Girl and Her Mother. .. .First degree murder charges were filed against him Friday, less than 36 hours after the battered bodies of the mother and daughter were found in their home. After signing the confession to the murder, Bird admitted serving 12 years of a 30 year sentence in the Iowa penitentiary for the attempted hatchet murder of Mr. and Mr. Harold tTribling, Carter Lake, Ia. He was accused at the same time of the murders of two women and one man in Omaha, Neb. He denied complicity. He contended he was innocent of the Nebraska murder and denied any connection with similar ax slayings in other cities, including Tulsa, Okla, Oakland, Calif., Ogden Utah, and Omaha. Lyons said an Ogden police detective was en route to question Bird regarding the ax murder robbery of Lee Walker, 52, in Ogden Oct. 4. Lyons said the prisoner had denied knowledge of the crime but admitted having served two year of a 20 year sentence for stealing three cases of whiskey in Ogden in 1924. Bird admitted also that he served five years in Michigan state penitentiary for burglary in which he was surprised by a woman, Lyon aid. The most recent crime Bird admitted was a midnight burglary in Pocatello Ida, on Oct. 21. He said he entered the house with his ax and threatened the husband and wife when they discovered him. The threat worked and he escaped he said.

Jan 3, 1948 The Spokesman-Review. Killer Relates Slaughter Tale. Admits Ten Murders in 20-Year Period; Used Ax, Knife. ... Most of the crimes followed a similar pattern, Bird's confession reads, with robbery as the original motive and death to the person who detected him or interfered with his activities. His first crime listed in the confession .. . was the killing of Harvey Boyd, 8 of East Omaha, Iowa. In June, 1928. . .. A few month later three persons died beneath an ax swung by the wanderer in Omaha, Neb. The first was J. W. Blackman, who was killed on November 18, 1928. Mrs. Gertrude Resso and her sister Creta Brown, 19, died the next day in the same manner. Ironically, Bird was captured a few days later after he had failed in an attempt to kill Harold Stribling in Carter Lake, Iowa, and for that he served 12 Years in the Iowa Penitentiary. Free again, in 1942 he wandered to Highland Park, Ill., where on June 24, his statement reads, he and an accomplice killed Alta Fulkerson, 36, after she screamed when he discovered them in her home. The Fulkerson woman was dragged to an alley two blocks away and choked o death after being beaten on the head with a rock. The accomplice was not named. In September, 1942, an unnamed retired watchmen his wife and 18 year old son were the next victims, this time in South Bend. Five years elapsed before Bird's next slaying on October 1, 1947, Mrs. Marie Manners, 81, was killed in her Pueblo, Colo. home. On October 4, 1947, Lee K. Walker died in Ogden Utah. This victim was killed as he slept an ax and a knife accomplishing the deed. Twenty four days later, Mrs. Kludt and her daughter, Beverly June, died to end the blood trail.

Jan 6, 1948 The Telegraph-Herald. Convicted Negro Killer Face New Questioner. Officials eekng to Verify Story of 13 Murders. . . .In Davenport Ia., Police Chief Reed Phillips said he suspected Bird's confession that he killed James Winfield, 40, there last September was false. "I don't think much of that confession," Phillips said. "We want Bird to supply more details before we mark Winfield's slaying off as solved." Winfield's body, the head crushed with blows from a harp instrument, was found September 7 near a hobo camp in West Davenport. The police chief of Highland Park, Ill., planned to go to Chicago to question George Howard, whom Bird allegedly involved in the slaying of Miss Alta Fulkeron in 1942. Howard surrendered to Chicago police when he learned that Bird had named him as an accomplice. He denied taking any part in the crime and said he was in the army at the time. . . .Bird, who wasconvicted of murdering a Tacoma Wash mother and her daguther confessed to slayings in Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, and Utah. Authorities also planned to question him about five other killings in Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Dakota.. . . . Police at Chicago said they wanted to learn whether Bird may have been connected with the killing of Mrs. Paul Galvin and her maid, Edna Sibilski, on October 22, 1942. The murder were among the most brutal in Chicago' history. The two women were killed in the Galvin home. About $28,000 worth of jewelry and three fur coats valued at $3,000 were missing. Rewards of $16,000 were offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.

Jan 13, 1948 The Telegraph Herald, Des Moines. Gov. Robert D. Blue Said Tuesday a tentative report by a state agent indicated that Jake Bird, Negro Iowa ex-convict, scheduled to hang in Washington State Friday, could not have committed two Iowa murders to which he "confessed." The governor said the cases were the slaying of Harvey Boyd, 8, near Carter Lake, Ia, in June of 1928, and the murder last summer at Davenport of Jack Winfield. The governor, in the presence of R.W. Nebergall, chief of the Iowa bureau of criminal investigation . ..related: "Bird could not have committed the Boyd murder becuse such details as the time of day of the slaying, the weather at the time and the disposition of the boy's clothing in two or three particulars did not check with the story of Bird. As to the Winfield case, investigation indicated Bird didn't know anything about it." Bird wa released from the Iowa prison in 1941, . . .the first he confessed to was a murder in Los Angeles in 1923. Bird said he participated in the holdup and slaying of an unnamed grocer on Central Avenue. . .A case in Evanston, Ill.,in which Mr. Lillian Galvin, 45 and her maid, Edna Sibilski, were killed during a robbery on October 22, 1942 was also confessed by the 6-foot negro. . ..Three killings, "too painful to discuss," occurred in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Illinoi, Bird said. Nothing specific was uncovered in these cases, except that one was in Racine, Wis., during 1932 and the New Jersey slaying might have happened as far back a 1922 or 1923. Bird did not give name or details on any of the 14 murders he said he could "clear up".

Hypercallipygian (talk) 17:56, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Brief History of Jake Bird

The second paragraph of the intro mentions that "the Bird case challenges stereotypes of serial killers, who are mostly thought to be Caucasian males..." Surely it is worth mentioning that this stereotype is false? In fact, "African Americans are... overrepresented among killers having multiple victims by about 3 times relative to their proportion of the population." [1], p.273 Andyvphil (talk) 03:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)