True Crime Chronicles: Violent domestic revenge, greed claimed five lives in 1923 McCurtain County massacre
- Dennis McCaslin
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
On the night of April 26, 1923, gunfire tore through the Hansell family farmhouse near Haworth in McCurtain County.
ive people died: Tom H. Hansell and his wife Nannie J. (Nancy) Stone Hansell, their daughter Lydia B. Hansell Pope, Lydia’s infant son Herbert, and her seven-year-old brother Aubrey.
A shared granite headstone in Pollard Cemetery at Haworth now bears their names and the date of death.
Lydia B. Hansell was born on March 12, 1904, in Mississippi. She married Andrew Jackson “Jack” Pope on March 27, 1921, in Haworth. The couple had at least one son, Herbert, and Lydia was expecting a second child at the time of her death. By early 1923, however, the marriage had collapsed under the strain of Jack Pope’s heavy drinking and abusive behavior.
Lydia left him and sought refuge with her parents at their farm.
That decision led to the fatal attack. Pope, accompanied by Aaron “Red” Harvey, 21, and his son John Pope from a previous marriage, approached the Hansell home around midnight.
They forced entry by breaking a window and axing through a door, then fired pistols and shotguns at the sleeping family. Fourteen-year-old Ben Hansell survived, shielded in part by his sister’s body as she fell. He carried the still-living infant Herbert toward a neighbor’s house, but the child died in his arms before help arrived.
Ben himself was seriously wounded.
Jack Pope had a prior history of violence. Born in Texas in August 1878 to Benjamin F. Pope and Jane G. Beal, he had been married first to Annie Leona McPeak. That union produced several children, and Annie and at least one child reportedly died in a mysterious house fire years earlier.
Pope later married Lydia. Family accounts suggest long-standing troubles followed him across state lines. That fast that Pope was 40 years old and his new bride was a mere fifteen also may have led to less than a blessing of the union by Lydia's parents.
Law enforcement responded quickly. McCurtain County Sheriff J.B. Jones and deputies investigated the scene, described as one of the bloodiest in county history, with bodies on beds and floors amid widespread blood and tissue.
Pope, Harvey, and John Pope fled toward the Texas border and were captured in the Red River bottoms near Clarksville. Two other men, A.L. Miller and Ira Gardner, were briefly detained but released after the primary suspects exonerated them in confessions.
The case moved to McCurtain County District Court in Idabel. Pope and Harvey confessed. John Pope testified against his father, stating that Jack planned the murders to collect on a $2,000 life insurance policy on Lydia and had threatened him to secure his participation.
Harvey admitted he helped after Pope offered him $500, though both claimed limited direct involvement in the shootings. Pope reportedly admitted to planning the crime and “holding the horses.”
All three faced murder charges. The courtroom in Idabel was packed, with crowds outside reflecting high tensions. Jack Pope and Red Harvey were convicted and sentenced to death by electrocution. John Pope received a life sentence.
After legal reviews, including opinions from the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals, Pope and Harvey were executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester on January 12, 1924. Pope died at 12:14 a.m. and Harvey followed at 12:25 a.m.
The victims were initially buried together in a mass grave at Pollard Cemetery that one local resident described as resembling a storm cellar.
Years later a proper granite marker was placed to honor Tom and Nancy Hansell, Lydia Hansell Pope, Obry (Aubrey) Hansell, and Herbert Aubrey Hansell.
The Hansell family tragedy remains one of the darkest episodes in early McCurtain County history, a stark reminder of how domestic conflict could escalate into unimaginable loss in the rural communities of 1920s Oklahoma.
