True Crime Chronicles: A Westville policeman was gunned down during a simple traffic stop in February 1927

Thomas Henry Rather,

In the usually quiet residential streets of Westville (Adair County) on the night of February 25, 1927, a routine check by two-night policemen turned fatal in an instant.

Thomas Henry Rather, a 48-year-old officer with five years on the Westville force, and his partner J.R. Maberry approached a stopped automobile. Inside sat Marion Jewell, Oma Kirk, and Jack Robbins. Rather asked who occupied the car. Jewell asked who Rather was, stepped out, and fired two shots into the officer’s chest.

Rather was rushed to a local hospital. He did not survive the wounds. He left behind a wife and eleven children. Family members later recalled a man much loved, a grandfather whose name they worked to place on both the Oklahoma City Peace Officers Memorial and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington.

Jewell claimed self-defense. He said he believed Rather was about to shoot him.

Testimony at trial spoke of prior ill feeling between the two men and of threats Rather had allegedly made against Jewell. The evening had begun as an ordinary stop in a small railroad town still shaped by the lingering tensions of Prohibition.

Jewell himself carried a prior conviction for violating the state’s prohibitory liquor laws.

The case moved quickly through Adair County. A preliminary hearing took place on March 3. Jewell was bound over, arraigned on March 7, and brought to trial on March 24 before District Judge J.T. Parks. Defense counsel argued for a change of venue, citing newspaper accounts and local feeling, and sought more time to prepare

. Both requests were denied. Three days after the shooting, while in jail and without a lawyer present, Jewell had given a voluntary statement to the county attorney. That statement, along with his testimony on the stand, formed part of the evidence the jury heard.

The jury found Jewell guilty of murder and fixed the punishment at death. On appeal the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed the record with care. Presiding Judge Edwards, joined by Judges Davenport and Chappell, held that the evidence amply sustained the charge of murder. The court found no reversible error in the denial of a change of venue or a continuance, or in the admission of the voluntary statement.

Yet the judges concluded that the death penalty should be reserved for the most extreme cases. In light of all the circumstances, including the claim of self-defense and the testimony of prior friction, they modified the sentence to life imprisonment at hard labor.

The modified judgment was affirmed on January 19, 1929. Jewell served roughly twenty-two years. Records indicate he was released on April 1, 1949.

The streets of Westville have changed since that February night. The railroad town of the 1920s has become a quieter place. Yet the memory of the shooting has not vanished. Descendants of Officer Rather still speak of the cost paid by a large family left without a husband and father.

 The appellate opinion remains the clearest surviving public account of the facts, the trial, and the measured decision that spared a life while affirming a conviction for the death of a policeman on a residential street in Adair County.