The Way It Was

100 years ago

Cashier Casey admits agreement

KANSAS CITY, Mo., -- The taking of depositions in a suit institution by the trustee in bankruptcy of Salmon & Salmon State Bank of Clinton, Mo., to recover notes amounting to $236,000 which the trustee alleges were illegally transferred to the Kansas City State bank of this city, ended abruptly yesterday when Thomas M. Casey, ex-cashier of the Salmon bank, admitted under oath that in the present suit he had testified to irregularities in the management of the Salmon bank, admitting among other things that more than $70,000 of the bank paper had been forged, in pursuance with an agreement with the prosecuting officers of Cass County, that he was to be allowed to plead guilty and receive a sentence of not more than five years in prison.

50 years ago

Murderer Brown is executed

JEFFERSON CITY -- Sweating nervously but otherwise showing no emotion, Arthur Ross Brown gulped cyanide gas and died quickly early today, reaching the end he had sought for his crime-filled life.

He was executed in the Missouri prison's gas chamber for kidnaping, robbing, raping and slaying Mrs. Wilma Allen, 34-year-old Kansas City mother of two, last August.

Brown, 30, readily admitted the crime when he was arrested in San Francisco in November. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Kansas City and welcomed the death penalty because "I couldn't live in prison with that crime on my mind."