In the late summer of 1926, a violent encounter on a farm in rural Arkansas brought a tragic end to the life of Sam Carper, a man of about 30. The events of that day would become entangled in the sprawling criminal legend of one of the era's most notorious outlaws, but for the Carper family, it was a story of profound and sudden loss. Sam and his brother, William "Will" F.
Carper, were shot and killed on August 17, 1926, in a dispute near Texarkana, in Miller County, Arkansas.
The man responsible for their deaths was William Kenneth Wagner, a man better known as Kinnie Wagner or "The Texas Kid." Wagner, already a fugitive wanted for the murder of a deputy sheriff in Mississippi and two lawmen in Tennessee, had been living in the area under the alias Harvey Logan. He had become acquainted with the Carper family. According to an account from Will Carper’s wife, Mary Jane, her brother-in-law Sam had brought the tall, slim stranger to their home near Garland, Arkansas, in April of that year. Wagner, who claimed to be 21, became a familiar presence around the family.
On that fateful August evening, a quarrel erupted on the E.P. Williams farm, about 10 miles southeast of Fouke. The disagreement, which had reportedly been simmering through the afternoon, finally boiled over after nightfall. The precise details of what happened remain contested, caught between the killer's claims and the testimony of the sole surviving brother. Wagner would later maintain that he acted in self-defense, alleging the Carper brothers attacked him, with one wielding a singletree.
However, the third brother, Bob Carper, who was shot in the hip but survived, told a different story. He testified that he witnessed Wagner holding Sam around the neck. As Sam struggled to break free, Wagner shot him first in the neck and then again in the body. Wagner then turned his gun on Will, killing him instantly. As Bob tried to flee for his life, Wagner fired at him, hitting him as he jumped a fence and fell. Wagner himself later expressed regret that the darkness had prevented him from killing Bob as well.
In a move that added to his mystique, Wagner did not flee far. A few hours after the killings, in the early morning of August 18, he walked into the Miller County sheriff's office in Texarkana and surrendered. He handed his guns over to Sheriff Lillie Barber, the first female sheriff in Arkansas, who was filling her late husband's term. "I'm tired of being hunted," Wagner reportedly told her, admitting he had just killed two men.
Wagner was held in the Miller County jail for the murders of Sam and Will Carper. Authorities from Mississippi and Tennessee, where he was already a convicted killer who had escaped death row, vied for his custody. Ultimately, Arkansas officials decided not to prosecute him for the Carper slayings. He was instead turned over to Mississippi to face justice for the 1924 murder of Deputy Sheriff Murdock Macintosh.
A jury in Mississippi convicted Wagner of Macintosh's murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment at the notorious Parchman Farm. Though charged with the deaths of Sam and Will Carper, he was never brought to trial for their murders. His life sentence did little to tame him; Wagner became famous for multiple escapes and recaptures over the next several decades before his death in prison in 1958. For the Carper family, however, the legal maneuvers and Wagner's subsequent notoriety offered no solace for the loss of Sam and Will, two brothers killed on a summer night in a field in Arkansas.
