Case of 'phantom' Dallas officer ends with honor
Posted on 05/05/2002 3:38:09 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Case of 'phantom' Dallas officer ends with honor
Police show they leave no man behind - even after 79 years
05/05/2002
When Dallas police Sgt. Steve Rattan started going through some old police memorabilia, he was simply looking for a story idea. What he found resurrected a hero.
Sgt. Rattan produces the Dallas Police News, an internal department newsletter. He'd been going through photos, papers and books donated by the family of deceased Assistant Chief Jack A. Tanner. He was thumbing through a sheaf of yellowed typewritten pages that chronicled events from 1920 through 1952.
June 9, 1923, caught his attention.
The police commissioner had armed his motorcycle patrols with sawed-off shotguns. This was in response to a spate of drugstore robberies that turned deadly for police.
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That was a familiar name. A portrait of Officer John C. Gibson hangs in the police academy, and his name is etched on the Dallas Police Memorial across from City Hall.
It was the next line that stopped Sgt. Rattan cold.
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"Another officer JR Crain was the next to fall."
Sgt. Rattan thought he knew all the names on the Police Memorial. "Crain" was not one of them.
"You go back to make sure it's not your memory failing," he said, "and you realize, where did this come from?"
He checked with Senior Cpl. Jesse Lucio, the unofficial historian for the department.
They scoured a book listing every officer who left for reasons other than retirement. They searched through shelf after shelf of personnel files. They called the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington.
"No trace of Crain," Cpl. Lucio said. "He was a phantom."
Cpl. Lucio didn't even know what J.R. stood for.
He couldn't let it go.
"There was no possibility that I could miss the opportunity to discover an officer who rightfully belonged on our memorial wall," he said.
Search for proof
Adding the name, however, would require proof. Proof that J.R. Crain was an officer. Proof that he died in the line of duty. Proof Cpl. Lucio didn't have.
He called on Terry Baker, a retired assistant chief deputy with the Dallas County Sheriff's Department. Chief Baker's passion is tracking down long-forgotten officers who died in the line of duty.
Because the note indicated that Officer Crain died after his colleague, Chief Baker started with the date of Officer Gibson's death.
"I knew it was somewhere in that time frame," he said.
On the seventh floor of the Dallas Public Library downtown, he examined box after box of microfilm, carefully scrutinizing each page of The Dallas Morning News and The Daily Times Herald. Tedious, eye-straining work, but essential.
"That's what you do," Chief Baker said. "You look for this kind of stuff."
Then May 24, 1923, rolled onto the screen. The Daily Times Herald 's banner headline read: WATCHMAN SLAIN; ASSASSIN ESCAPES.
The paper reported that Special Officer John Richard Crain was on his rounds about 3:30 a.m. in Old East Dallas when he spotted a light on inside the Browne Pharmacy on Junius Street.
"Imprints on the door indicated the watchman had pressed his face close to the glass, shading his eyes with his hand," the article says.
Someone inside the store fired a shot. The bullet went into Officer Crain's head.
"He died instantly with his pistol still in its holster," Cpl. Lucio said.
Four weeks later, police arrested two ex-convicts, Ernest Lawson and Blaine Dyer, for the murders of Officer Crain and Officer Gibson. A Coke bottle at the scene of the Gibson slaying helped crack the case. According to an expert in Bertillon, now known as fingerprinting, Mr. Dyer's prints were on the bottle.
"When they got those fingerprints on me, I confessed," Mr. Dyer is quoted as saying. "There ain't no use trying to stand up against them. I know I'll be hung, and it's them fingerprints that did it."
Both suspects were sentenced to death.
They were "some of the first ones to be executed in Huntsville in the electric chair, which they called old Sparky," Chief Baker said.
The articles not only provided details of Officer Crain's death, they proved he was a Dallas police officer.
In addition, the City Secretary's office found a May 30, 1923, City Council resolution calling "J.R. Crane [sic] a noble and faithful Police Officer of the City of Dallas."
Chief's approval
Cpl. Lucio's next step was to get the material to Dallas Police Chief Terrell Bolton.
"It caught my breath," Chief Bolton said. He said he greeted the news with mixed emotions – "sad at the tragedy but happy that we found him."
Chief Bolton approved the request to place Officer Crain's name on the memorial.
The large stainless steel plates were recently removed from the structure to add the name of the latest fallen Dallas officer, Christopher Kevin James, who was killed in November.
John Crain's name was added at the same time. Both men will be honored at a ceremony May 15.
But it's not clear yet whether any of Officer Crain's family will be there. No one knows who or where they are.
Officer Crain was buried in a small country cemetery outside Cumby, in Hopkins County east of Dallas.
The Crain family plot includes a pair of white marble obelisks for the officer's mother and father, as well as one with a carved lamb on it for his 5-year-old son.
John R. Crain's granite ground-level marker was the last one added to the plot. There the trail runs cold.
According to newspaper reports, Officer Crain left behind a wife, Lucy, and two sons, Noel and Taylor, as well as three daughters, Lillie, Lorene, and Mrs. J.W. Humphries. Police think some descendants still live in the area. But so far, they've found nothing.
Until they do, Cpl. Lucio said, this is one case that won't be closed.
"This is the first time John Richard Crain's name has been mentioned in the manner it should be mentioned – as a fallen hero – in 79 years," he said.
Cpl. Lucio hopes this part of the mystery will be solved in time for the May 15 ceremony.
"I think his family should be a part of it."
E-mail cheinbaugh@wfaa.com
I'll try to remember to attach the video link if this story is updated
in the morning with the video from the 10 o'clock story tonight.....
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