In the pre-dawn hours of April 21, 1911, the quiet of Mcloud, Oklahoma was shattered by a single gunshot that ended the life of City Marshal Arthur D. 'Doc' Arnett, a 31-year-old White male. Arnett, who had only been with the agency for three months, was making his rounds when he discovered an open cellar door at a local general store and went to investigate. Inside, he found two men, whom he ordered to come out.
As the second man emerged from the darkness, he opened fire, fatally wounding the young marshal. The cause of death was a pistol bullet wound to the left side of his head.
The investigation that followed quickly led to the arrest of two suspects, Paul Hayes and Edgar Harry White. The two men were charged with murder and held in the custody of the Pottawatomie County Sheriff. Evidence presented during a preliminary examination suggested that the motive for the killing was to silence Marshal Arnett, who had discovered them in the act of burglarizing the store. One of the suspects, Edgar Harry White, was known to Arnett, and it is believed that White feared being identified.
Following their initial examination, Hayes and White applied for a writ of habeas corpus, seeking to be dismissed from custody on the grounds of insufficient evidence. However, the court found that the circumstantial evidence presented was significant enough to proceed to trial. The evidence included testimony placing the two men in the vicinity of the crime, their physical descriptions matching those given by a witness, and a letter that suggested a conspiracy between them. Consequently, their application was denied, and they were remanded to custody to await trial for the murder of Marshal Arnett.
Marshal Arnett was survived by his wife and five children. The community was left to mourn the loss of a dedicated officer, whose life was cut short in the line of duty. The subsequent legal proceedings would determine the fate of the two men accused of his murder, bringing a measure of justice for the untimely death of the young lawman.
