True Crime Chronicles: Misguided revenge took thirteen lives and sent railroad man to prison for 34 years

It was just past 1:30 a.m. on August 18, 1929, when the shriek of metal shattered the stillness near Henryetta, Oklahoma. A northbound Frisco passenger train, pulling seven cars, met a violent end at a sabotaged switch just south of the town.

Thirteen lives were lost--among them the train’s fireman and eleven passengers--and at least ten more were badly injured.

The engineer, Pete Wolfe, would later say he saw something “didn’t look right” as the train approached the switch. His instincts were sharp: he released the throttle, applied emergency brakes, and braced.

But it was too late.

The locomotive jumped the tracks and flipped on its side. The baggage and mail cars crumpled behind it, and the chair car packed with sleeping passengers was engulfed in escaping steam.

Of the eleven passengers killed eight were African Americans who were riding in the chair back section at the front of a segregated car that was hooked directly to the baggage car behind the coal care and the engine.

When responders arrived, bodies were so burned they could only be identified by the rings on their fingers.

At the center of the tragedy was 36-year-old George Washington Darnell, a local section hand who had been fired from his job less than 24 hours earlier. He told authorities later that he hadn’t meant to kill anyone.

His plan, he claimed, was to derail a freight train and get his foreman fired in revenge. But the switch he sabotaged, just 500 yards south of Henryetta’s city limits, sent a passenger train to ruin instead.

In the immediate aftermath, Darnell was just another shaken worker helping clear the wreckage. For nearly two years, he evaded suspicion.

But in April 1931, after a domestic dispute in Parsons, Kansas, and a tip from someone close to him, railroad detectives tracked him down.

Exhausted and remorseful, he confessed: “I could feel the dead folks’ hands on me,” he reportedly told investigators.

During his court appearance in Okmulgee, he broke down when shown images of the devastation. He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in McAlester State Penitentiary.

According to newspaper reports, Darnell’s mental faculties were in question even at the time--his confession showed a man crushed by guilt but lacking full comprehension of the scale of his crime.

In fact, he voluntarily took on the job of cleaning the prison systems septic tanks in an act of attrition he called "punishment for what I did."

Parole was denied in 1947 after railroad workers rallied against his release. A photograph from 1951 shows him gaunt and aged—an image of quiet resignation. He was paroled in the early 1960's and traveled to California and worked on a farm before returning to Oklahoma in 1964.

He died at the age of 73 in Okmulgee in 1966. Acquaintances said he was remorseful and repentant for his deed until the very end.

Today, the Henryetta wreck is remembered as one of Oklahoma’s deadliest railroad tragedies--and as a chilling reminder of how a single act of revenge can cost innocent lives.

Darnell, the reluctant saboteur, remained haunted by what he’d done long after the tracks were cleared.