Arvie Hurst

In the small, rural community of Delaware in Nowata County, Oklahoma, Arvie Hurst lived with his wife, Safrania. Their home was a modest, two-room house, typical of the agricultural region in the early 20th century. A neighbor who had recently moved in about 50 feet away, Mrs. Anna Grissom, knew Mr. Hurst by sight but had not yet been formally introduced. Also living in the Hurst home was a 15-year-old girl named Elsie Adams. The town of Delaware, named for the Eastern Delaware tribe that settled in the area, was a quiet settlement that had sprung up along the Kansas and Arkansas Valley Railway line. In 1912, it was a community where farming and cattle were the primary industries, on the cusp of a dramatic change with the discovery of oil nearby.

The night of Saturday, February 3, 1912, shattered the community’s peace. Around 10:30 p.m., Mrs. Grissom was in bed when she noticed a bright light outside. Her neighbors' small house was on fire. The flames appeared to have started in the east end of the building and quickly engulfed the structure. Mrs. Grissom fired a gun into the air to sound the alarm, and soon other residents and a local doctor rushed to the scene. By the time they arrived, the east end of the house had already collapsed. Inside the west room, firefighters and neighbors made a horrific discovery: the badly burned bodies of Arvie Hurst, Safrania Hurst, and young Elsie Adams.

Investigators with the Nowata County Sheriff's Office quickly determined this was no accident. An undertaker, A.J. Barbre, noted the positions of the bodies; Arvie was found near a window, his wife in a corner, and Elsie about six feet away. A post-mortem examination conducted by the county physician revealed a more sinister story. Dr. Edwin De Barr, a chemistry professor from the state university, analyzed the victims' remains. He found morphine in Arvie Hurst’s stomach and liver, likely ingested with whiskey. He also determined that Arvie had not inhaled any flames or gas, concluding he was drugged before the fire was set, possibly with oil used as an accelerant. Elsie Adams’s remains tested positive for potassium cyanide, a fast-acting and deadly poison. The examination also revealed that the teenager was four to five weeks pregnant.

Suspicion soon fell upon C. L. Harkins, a local man who had been seen with Elsie Adams on the evening of the murders. Prosecutors established that Harkins was the last person known to have seen her alive, having bought her a bag of candy and walked her home around 9:30 p.m. The investigation revealed that Harkins had been sexually abusing the girl for years and was the father of her unborn child. Authorities alleged that Harkins, who had medical knowledge, used poison to kill all three residents of the house to cover up his crime before setting the fire to destroy the evidence.

C. L. Harkins was arrested and charged with the murders. The case went to trial, where prosecutors presented the evidence of the poisonings, the pregnancy, and Harkins's relationship with Elsie. They painted him as a man with a "lascivious disposition" toward young girls and a clear motive to silence his victim. Despite the evidence, the jury in his first trial could not reach a unanimous verdict, and a mistrial was declared. A second trial was held, but it too ended with a hung jury. With two juries unable to convict, C. L. Harkins was never held legally responsible for the brutal deaths of Arvie Hurst, Safrania Hurst, and Elsie Adams.

Though he escaped conviction for the triple homicide, Harkins’s freedom was short-lived. In 1916, he was tried and convicted for the rape of another young girl and sentenced to fifty years in prison. His life ended violently on July 30, 1920, when he was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. The murders of the Hurst family and Elsie Adams, however, were never officially solved. The case remains a dark chapter in the history of Nowata County, a brutal crime from a bygone era for which no one was ever brought to justice.