On November 4, 1921, the Paragould Soliphone’s headlines trumpeted a development in a local mystery: “FORD SEDAN PROVES TO HAVE BEEN THE ONE OWNED BY E.B. ROGERS, MURDERED DEPUTY². ” It only took this single headline to send me down that rabbit hole (which sometimes felt more like a goose chase) and led to an obscure and fascinating series of events, with a central focus on a single man, E.B. Rogers. Initial reporting from the Soliphone recounts details from the crime including the following that I have summarized (in printed order from the Nov. 4 article):

• Deputy E.B. Rogers’ newly purchased car was found in downtown Paragould;
• Witnesses said “there was a woman associated with the murder of Deputy Rogers”;
• The woman was allegedly seen driving Rogers’ new car around town, along with an unidentified man. It was believed the two spent the night Sunday evening and left by train the next morning;
• As a result of seeing other people driving Rogers’ car, it was suspected the car was used to transport the body to an unknown location;
• The body of Deputy E.B. Rogers had not been located. A search party was sent out to drag rivers and lakes and to search for the location of the body;
• Only a bloody hat, that of E.B. Rogers, was found;
• Theories started to develop about who may have had motivation to kill Rogers which included moonshiners and disgruntled tenants on property he owned around the county;
• A timeline of events is proposed: Rogers left his home Sunday morning to visit the properties he owned in the area. Sunday afternoon he was seen driving near one of his farms. At 6pm he was seen again, in the same area. Some reports say Rogers was seen with a group of men, entering the woods. There are witness accounts that someone in this party was heard pleading “not to hurt him.” Another witness said he heard cries and when he went to investigate, he was intimidated by “some men who told him he would be killed if he didn’t turn back”.

After reading all of this, my interest was piqued.

I started looking at subsequent issues for an update to the case. In a November 9^th story, the Soliphone reported, “REPORTS INDICATE DEPUTY ROGERS WAS NOT MURDERED NEAR MANILA SUNDAY, OCT. 30.” The article states that an audit of the sheriff’s books revealed a shortage of $64,000³, “attributed to the manipulations of the missing deputy during his seven years’ association with that department...”. Despite Rogers’ “exemplary reputation for honesty and efficiency in handling the county’s affairs” evidence indicated a pattern of hidden and unreported funds. The article goes on to state that people were beginning to question whether Rogers was murdered, hence the headline⁴.

On November 11, two days later, the Soliphone reported that it was believed that Rogers was not dead, and instead had fled, perhaps disguised as a woman. The article detailed how Rogers had manipulated checks and ledgers to hide missing funds and recounted the events which led to the discovery of the accounting irregularities. It was also reported that Rogers was seen with a woman in his car while driving around on Sunday afternoon, prior to his disappearance⁵. I believe this detail, reinforced by previous reports of a woman being involved, contributed to a confusing report from the Soliphone’s November 21 issue. The headline reads, “BLYTHEVILLE HAS ANOTHER UGLY EPISODE.” Reports indicated that a Blytheville resident, Mrs. Maud Murphy, along with her young child, fled with E.B. Rogers. The article recounted the timeline of events which led to Murphy’s disappearance and the suspected connection of her disappearance with that of Rogers⁶.

After the reports of missing monies and fraud, and the inference that Rogers was not in fact murdered but that he had faked his own murder and fled the city, the trail of E.B. Rogers grows very cold. I was left with many questions – whatever happened to Rogers? Did investigators find him and was he extradited back to Arkansas? Where was Maud Murphy and was there a connection between the two⁷?

Then, nearly 2.5 years after the trail ran cold, on the front page of the February 22, 1924 issue of The Osceola Times, a headline read, “ALLEGED DEFAULTER RETURNS.” The article indicated Rogers had been in Norfolk, VA since the time he left and there were rumors that “criminal proceedings against Mr. Rogers were to be dropped...” So, from a research perspective, this gave me renewed energy and more paths to traverse⁸.

Several months after his reappearance in the Arkansas newspapers, on April 4, 1924 The Osceola Times reports “ROGERS GETS NINE YEARS.” Rogers pled guilty (the charges are unclear) and was sentenced to serve nine years in the state penitentiary. The article also indicates that Rogers would likely be “paroled or pardoned after serving a short time^9.” One of the mysteries that remains for me is how long Rogers actually served in prison. It was a detail that I was unable to track down. However, once again turning to the historic newspapers, I came across a May 16, 1930 article with the headline, “ROGERS WAS HERE; NOT SUSPECTED OF SLUGGING” followed by a May 22 article, “E.B. ROGERS CONFESSES NIGHT ATTACK” proving that E.B. was no longer in jail¹⁰. The articles reported that E.B.’s now ex-wife¹¹ was attacked and beaten by an unknown assailant but that it quickly became known that Rogers had in fact been the attacker.

It seems that after the “night attack” incident with his ex-wife, Rogers settled back to his hometown of De Valls Bluff in Prairie County. In April 1945 Rogers married Myrtle Moore.  It appears, from several very small articles scattered through the years, that Rogers continued his work in the public sector, despite his previous conviction. In an October 11, 1947 article in The Camden News, E.B. was listed as the Justice of Peace in Devalls Bluff¹². According to death records, Rogers died in October, 1950¹³.

When I started looking at the first article in the Soliphone, I had no idea that I would follow the trail of E.B. Rogers. The research process was not straightforward. My initial research came from Chronicling America but after I was unable to find any more information about E.B. Rogers beyond November 1921 I turned to ancestry.com and newspapers.com to continue to piece together the story. Using census records, birth and death dates, marriage and divorce documents, I was able to answer many questions (though admittedly not all). Research rarely results in a tidy package but instead gives us answers and produces even more questions that must be left unanswered.

What happened to E.B. Rogers between November 1921 and February 1924? As more newspapers continue to be digitized and content is put up online, it may be that some of these questions will be answered. In the meantime, my team and I will continue to work to get Arkansas newspapers digitized and promote Chronicling America and the National Digital Newspaper Program. For more information about our project, visit https://www.arkansasheritage.com/chronicling-america-digitized-newspapers.

Katie Adkins is project manager for Arkansas’s digital newspaper project, part of the National Digital Newspaper Program. For questions about how to use Chronicling America, what titles are being digitized or if you’d like to share with us your own research from Chronicling America, email us at [email protected].