The next day, Cleo called McKenzie crying, “I never dreamed they’d do something like that. What if that little girl had gotten into that car with her daddy?”
In November of that year, Tulsa District Attorney S.M. "Buddy" Fallis, Jr. called a grand jury investigation into the attempted assassination of Judge Nelson. Cleo agreed to testify as long as she could be in disguise. She now understood how dangerous her alliance had become with McDonald and Pugh. She wore a long dark coat and a red wig. Law enforcement secretly transported her from her home to the courthouse. Cleo testified how she gave McDonald and Pugh dynamite just days before the car bombing. As she left the courthouse, Cleo paused one last time to speak with Fallis. She told him that if she is murdered her “assassins would be Lester and Albert.”
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On the 25th of August 1970 in Tulsa, Judge Fred Nelson opened his driver’s side door to his blue Chevrolet station wagon parked in the driveway of his Tulsa home. He rolled the window all the way down; it had been left partially open during the night to allow for the heat to dissipate. This was Oklahoma in August; at night the temperatures stayed easily in the 80s. He had put his key in the ignition. He paused for a moment to secure his briefcase on the bench seat on the passenger side. He settled back and turned the key. KABOOM! The hood of the car exploded upward with a force that broke the glass of the windows of the house facing the driveway. The engine was a tangled burning twist of metal. Thrown back, Judge Nelson lied awkwardly on the bench seat behind the driver’s seat unconscious and bleeding. Within a minute, neighbors along with the Judge’s wife and little girl ran outside to see what happened. Sirens began to wail in the distance.
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AuthorAndrea Chase ArchivesChapters |