Henderson history: Bar patron died after being thrown out of Poss Coomes’ joint
Many of you remember and loved Oswald “Poss” Coomes, Henderson’s last surviving gambling joint operator. We’re fortunate he published two soft-cover memoirs of about 90 pages each in 2004 and 2005.
He was quite the storyteller. But the following story is one that never made it into either book. That’s not surprising. There are things in my misspent youth that I also would just as soon people forget about.
Don’t assume for a minute that I’m trying to badmouth Poss. I thought the world of him. This, however, is what happened.
Henderson residents learned about it in The Gleaner of April 17, 1948, when Poss was 29 years old. One of his first businesses was the Kentucky Tavern near what is now the cloverleaf, which he owned from 1946 to 1950.
The story said a coroner’s jury had ruled a Harrisburg, Illinois, resident named George W. Broadway, 24, had died of a fractured skull “due to injuries received while being ejected from the Kentucky Tavern.” Poss was not present at the time.
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The initial story – and resulting coverage over the next 13 months – contained allegations that employees of the bar had beaten Broadway to death with blackjacks. Bar employees – and later their defense attorneys – maintained Broadway had tripped while being thrown out the door and hit his head on a car’s bumper or fender. Or maybe the doorstep.
The bar employees were Livas Horn, Johnny Davis, who apparently was bouncer, and bartender Roger Coomes, who was Poss’s brother. (In the interest of clarity, I’ll refer to Roger as Coomes and Poss as Poss.) Horn was a janitor and errand boy at the bar. On page 47 of his first book, in telling an unrelated story, Poss said Horn “was pretty mean anyhow.”
Broadway had been accompanied by William Scroggins and his brothers, James and Donald, and a young woman named Hazel Hallmark. They arrived at the Kentucky Tavern about 11:30 p.m. April 15 and settled into a booth.
Broadway left the booth, played the slot machines for a while, and then asked waitress Bertha Mabrey to dance. She declined, noting she had customers to attend to.
Mabrey told the coroner’s jury Broadway then began going around the bar asking various women to dance. “She said that Broadway was not drunk and that he did not become offensive.” Horn, however, testified that Broadway had “insisted” Mabrey dance with him.
Horn escorted Broadway back to his booth, telling him men without partners were not allowed on the dance floor.
William Scroggins and his companions testified Horn shoved Broadway into the booth. Horn denied that; he said Broadway cursed at him and told him, “You’re not big enough to put me out.”
Coomes and Davis came to help Horn eject Broadway from the bar. They got him outside, but he then tried to re-enter. That’s when he fell to the ground. He died about five hours later in the hospital.
William and Donald Scroggins testified they saw Broadway beaten with blackjacks. Hallmark said she saw Davis with a blackjack but wasn’t sure whether he used it. No one else saw a blackjack.
William Scroggins swore out warrants for murder against the three bar employees, as well as warrants for malicious striking and wounding him with intent to kill. He also swore out a warrant against Poss for setting up gambling machines, but as near as I can tell that was never prosecuted.
The three employees were indicted for murder, according to the May 6 Gleaner and the trial against only Coomes opened at the end of June. Defense attorneys were two of Henderson’s best: F.J. “Boss” Pentecost and John Dorsey.
Commonwealth Attorney Faust Simpson was assisted by County Attorney L. Allen Rhoads and Georgia Nelson of Paducah, a cousin of the dead man.
The Gleaner of June 30 reported the jury hopelessly deadlocked after 2.5 hours of consideration. “Both sides agreed that Broadway had not been boisterous or rude before the ejection.”
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At that point the case developed an attack of hiccups. The second trial of Coomes was initially set for Sept. 23 but was delayed when several witnesses failed to show up. The commonwealth attorney then decided to try all three men at once.
The new trial date was Oct. 13 – but it again was delayed until Jan. 10, 1949, because of the illness of Simpson’s baby daughter. But when January came around the trial was again delayed indefinitely because Pentecost was sick.
The next time Gleaner readers read about the case was in the May 12, 1949, issue, which said after two days of testimony (including 18 character witnesses) attorneys would give their closing arguments that day.
The verdict – after four hours of deliberation -- was not guilty, according to the May 13 Gleaner, and judging from its coverage the testimony was very similar to what had been heard by the coroner’s jury.
Four days after the verdict was rendered two civil lawsuits that had been filed April 2, 1949, were amended by the plaintiffs to erase from the complaints any mention that blackjacks had caused Broadway’s death.
The Gleaner reported the suits had been filed in its April 29 edition, but failed to follow up on how they were resolved. I had to dig into the court files to see what happened and am grateful to Circuit Court Clerk Greg Sutton for his assistance.
The first lawsuit was filed by Farmers Bank & Trust as administrator of Broadway’s estate and asked for $25,000 in actual damages (which was his projected future earnings) and $10,000 in punitive damages. It named Poss as a defendant, as well as his three employees.
The second lawsuit was much the same except it was filed by William Scroggins for injuries he suffered when he attempted to defend Broadway. It was against the same four men and asked for $2,500 in actual damages and $1,000 in punitive damages.
In the defendant answers to the lawsuits, it seems pretty clear Poss was throwing Horn under the bus. Horn was “acting wholly on his own initiative and not within the line or scope of his duties…. Oswald Coomes is therefore not responsible in any way for the acts or conduct of the said Livas Horn on said occasion.”
In the final analysis, though, it apparently didn’t make much difference. The cases were settled out of court and dismissed July 1, 1949.
100 YEARS AGO
The Henderson City Commission decided to reinforce the cage of the grizzly bear kept at Atkinson Park, according to The Gleaner of April 17, 1923.
Commissioner John A. Cunningham told his colleagues that the bear “appeared ferocious at times and the wire netting around the enclosure is inadequate for protection.” The commissioners apparently were concerned people might stick their hands through the bars, so additional heavy wire netting was installed.
50 YEARS AGO
Henderson residents got a foreshadowing of the 1973-74 energy crisis when gasoline prices shot up four cents a gallon locally, according to The Gleaner of April 21, 1973.
Gas at cut-rate stations had been selling at 33.9 cents a gallon for regular but local prices increased to 37.9 cents. Major brands were two cents higher.
The first energy crisis didn’t begin until late October 1973 when OPEC imposed an embargo because of U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. But the spring of 1973 saw the nation’s first peacetime gas shortage, which was responsible for higher prices at local pumps.
The Gleaner of May 11 flat out said in the headline of its lead story that the “energy crisis” had come to Henderson, threatening closure of some independent gas stations.
Natural gas prices were also pinching. Henderson Municipal Gas notified its 790 commercial and industrial customers that usage must be limited to the same amount each customer had used between April 1, 1972, and April 1, 1973.
25 YEARS AGO
Farmers of the Horseshoe Bend area took U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield on a hayride to show him how the Ohio River was threatening to cut a new path that would leave Evansville high and dry, according to The Gleaner of April 15, 1998.
“If it continues to come through, it’s going to change the channel,” Whitfield said, noting he had asked that $130,000 be put in the federal budget so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could study the problem.
Worries about Horseshoe Bend had dogged the Corps of Engineers for at least 120 years before Whitfield’s visit. The Corps issued its first report on the matter in 1887.
Several temporary repairs were made after Whitfield’s visit before the corps spent about $1.3 million in 2003 to place about 314,000 cubic yards of stone and broken concrete on Horseshoe Bend to prevent the river from doing what comes naturally.
Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com or on Twitter at @BoyettFrank.
This article originally appeared on Henderson Gleaner: Henderson history: Bar patron died after being thrown out of Poss Coomes’ joint
