By Shane Dunning
http://www.redshalereflections.com
One of the most sordid events in Montana history took place a few miles north of Ashland on November 4th in the year 1897. Two teens, Clemence “Winnie” Brown and his brother Clarence Brown were hauling a load of lumber from Miles City on the Tongue River Road. As they neared the mouth of Lay Creek, they were joined by another brother, Hersey Brown, riding on horseback. Suddenly, a rider emerged from behind them traveling at a fast pace. He was masked and held a rifle in his hands. Hersey was the first to see him, and intuitively knew who the target was.
“Look out Winnie!”
As Winnie turned around, the new rider was within fifteen yards. The rifle fired, Winnie dropped the reins and fell from the lumber wagon. He was shot through the right side of his abdomen. Clarence and Hersey ran to aid their brother as the gunman rode to the top of a nearby hill. Clarence got one shot off at the assassin on the hill and received two wayward shots in return. Then the gunman fled.
They took Winnie to the nearby ranch of his brother-in-law. It took several, painful hours for Winnie to die, and he begged his brothers to put him out of his misery. Unfortunately for his assassin, Winnie had recognized his killer. Before he died, he signed a statement that Richard Dixon had been the man who shot him.
Richard Dixon was a 22-year-old African American laborer. He was well known in the area by a nickname that is unprintable in respectable publications today, “(N-word) Dick.” Special Deputy J.M. Stafford found two empty shells at the top of the hill and followed the trail of the shooter, which took him to the ranch occupied by George and Regina Geddes. While there, he found a tomato can filled with shells hidden in a manure pile. He also found a Winchester rifle matching the shells hidden in the ceiling.
Dixon was arrested within a few days. After initially identifying Geddes Family associate Tom Welch as the shooter, he eventually confessed that he was the man who killed Winnie Brown. That confession, if believed, also detailed a shocking conspiracy that outraged the entire state.
According to Dixon, he killed Winnie Brown at the insistence of George Geddes’ wife, Regina. Mrs. Geddes had observed the Brown boys on their way to Miles City and offered Dixon $50 “for you and anyone else that will get away with that Brown boy.” Observing the Tongue River Road from her house, she identified Winnie driving the wagon on the expected return trip.
Thursday, when I killed the boy, about two o’clock, Mrs. Geddes was ironing in the kitchen; and she went into the front room and took the field glasses and looked out and she says, “Dick, there comes the Brown boys,” and she came back into the kitchen wanted to know if I was not going to do that for George Geddes, and I told her “no” and she says “go on and kill him,” so he would not go on the witness stand and swear against George Geddes, and I went and got the gun, and got on my horse and went up the river, inside the fence and the irrigating ditch and went to the mouth of Lay Creek and stayed there in a canyon and waited for the boys to come past. I shot and ran around a big butte. When I got to the ranch I says “Mrs. Geddes, I done it,” and she says “I am not a damn bit sorry. He put us to a lot of trouble.” I said, “I have done something I am sorry for, Mrs. Geddes,” and she said, “I am not.”
The motive for this awful crime, the “lot of trouble” Regina Geddes referred to, were criminal charges and an associated civil lawsuit then pending in Custer County. In June of that year, George Geddes claimed that Winnie Brown had destroyed some of his fencing and, more importantly, had said some scandalous things about his wife. Geddes lured Winnie to his ranch with an offer of work and proceeded to tie Winnie up and beat him severely with a blacksnake whip and a revolver. When he was released, Brown went to the authorities and soon George Geddes was facing criminal assault charges and a lawsuit seeking $5000 in damages.
Dixon, however, was only getting started with his story. Immediately after the shooting, Regina Geddes scolded Dixon for leaving empty shells for evidence, burned the black handkerchief Dixon used as a mask, and hid the rifle in the ceiling of the house. When she and Dixon were initially confronted by law enforcement, she claimed Dixon had been with her all day.
At the time of the shooting, George Geddes was in Chicago having surgery on his arm. According to Dixon’s confession, however, the head of the Geddes household was unambiguous regarding what should happen to Winnie Brown.
A conversation occurred then with Mr. Geddes. Mr. Geddes said: “It is a good thing my arm is hurt. I was just getting so that I could ride, or I would have killed him (Winnie Brown) long ago. I intended to kill him and roll him up in a canvas and throw him into a burning coal bank.”
Some weeks later, Dixon recalled another threat George Geddes made that involved Geddes’ friend Tom Welch:
He told me that if Tom Welch would ever catch that boy out, he would kill him. He told me that when we were passing Goodwin’s place. He said that if Tom Welch would catch that boy out in the hills, he would kill him and make way with him and they wouldn’t find him.
Tom Welch was a cowpuncher who had worked for several area ranches in the area and was a friend of the Geddes’. Dixon claimed he often came to and went from the Geddes household at unusual times of the night.
Regina Geddes told Dixon that Welch had written Winnie to offer him a quick job getting an animal from the OW Ranch on Hanging Woman and to pick up a horse at the Geddes ranch. Welch supposedly waited at the OW all day for Brown to appear. He did not, apparently suspecting a trap.
Welch was working a roundup on Bear Creek at the time of the shooting. After the shooting, he received a letter from Regina, which he promptly destroyed. He received a $50 wage check from the Circle Bar and endorsed the check to Mrs. Geddes. They were together in Miles City when the check was cashed. He had a picture of Regina Geddes in his possession when he was arrested.
After the investigation, George Geddes, Tom Welch, Richard Dixon and Regina Geddes were arrested and placed on trial. Each trial was a public spectacle and a newspaper sensation throughout the state. The prosecutor was TJ Porter, assisted by former Judge Charles Strevell. Miles City lawyer CR Middleton headed the defense, with Judge Charles Loud presiding.
George Geddes was first to trial in Miles City and was convicted of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 99 years. Tom Welch came next, also convicted by a Miles City jury of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years. Richard Dixon was the star witness in these trials. Both Geddes and Welch testified in their own defense and were placed in the same room in the jail throughout their trials, which allowed them to communicate with each other. Both men claimed that they had actually tried to reach a settlement with Brown regarding the assault case, and that Dixon was an untrustworthy witness on several fronts.
The biggest spectacle, however, was reserved for the female member of this alleged conspiracy. Due to the publicity of the first two trials, the Regina Geddes trial was moved to Billings, where the Billings Gazette reported on her attractiveness and demeanor, with headlines such as “She’s a Fine Looker,” and “Fair Female on Trial.”
When court opened yesterday morning Mrs. Geddes, faultlessly attired, occupied a seat just inside the railing, with her back to the spectators. She is prepossessing in appearance, albeit what might be termed handsome. Thus far she has maintained a calm and dignified demeanor, showing hardly a trace of nervousness. She is a woman who would attract attention in most any gathering and in most any place. Her big, coal black eyes, shaded by long lashes, are a distinguishing feature of her physiognomy. Unlike the prisoner, however, they are restless. As black as jet, they seem to look through and through a person.
Unlike Tom Welch and George Geddes, Regina Geddes did not take the stand in her own defense. When the trial ended, the jury hung with only one juror voting to convict. It is interesting to note how the same testimony convicted Welch and George Geddes (who weren’t even present the day of the killing), while Regina (who allegedly aided the shooting immediately before and after), was one juror from exoneration. The answer is probably due to the gender makeup of the jury and their inability to convict an attractive white woman with young children. Women were not allowed to sit on criminal juries in Montana until 1939.
When the prosecution sought another change of venue for a second trial, it was denied by Judge Loud. The trials were costing Custer County so much money that county attorney Porter elected to drop the charges against Regina Geddes. She was a free woman by June 1898.
George Geddes and Tom Welch appealed their convictions to the Montana Supreme Court. Because the prosecution had relied too much upon the testimony of the co-conspirator Richard Dixon, the high court ordered new trials for both. Again, Porter opted to drop these charges as well rather than bear the expense.
When Welch died in Anaconda in 1901, the Anaconda Standard marked the occasion, recalling “one of the blackest crimes that ever disgraced Eastern Montana.”
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