Harry E. Dilley (1936)

DILLEY

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 12/28/2011 at 10:00:27

The Winterset Madisonian
Winterset, Iowa
Thursday, September 24, 1936
Page 1

HARRY DILLEY COMMITS SUICIDE, NOTE CONFESSES OLD SLAYING

Winterset Painter Uses Carbon Monoxide Fumes from His Car to End Life Near Macksburg Friday Night.

Harry E. Dilley, 53-year-old Winterset painter, committed suicide by asphyxiation near Macksburg Friday night, and left a note in which he confessed to the slaying of Sheriff Fred Collins, of Union county, about 11 years ago, a crime for which George Gibson, of Thayer is serving a life sentence.

Dilley, who came from a good family in Thayer and had the advantage of two years of study at Northwestern University as a young man, had led a troublesome life since that time. He served a short sentence at Ft. Madison penitentiary and had police records in most of the other communities in which he had lived. He came to Winterset about six years ago after an incident at Thayer in which he had attempted to shoot a man. Here he had managed to stay out of serious trouble until recently, although he had been arrested several times, principally for drunkeness.

Last Thursday night he was arrested by Sheriff A. E. Null, on the complaint of a Winterset woman that he had attempted to attack her. He was released that night, but was to have been rearrested soon as the woman involved was planning to file information against him.

Some time Friday night, Dilley drove to Macksburg where he had been doing work, and parked his car on the Grand River bridge northwest of the town. Taking a rubber hose, he attached one end of it to the exhaust pipe of his car and placed the other end in the car window. Letting the engine run, he seated himself in the back seat until overcome with the carbon monoxide fumes.

Dilley’s body was found the next morning about 8:30 o’clock by Arch Harpole and William Wright of Macksburg and Fred Enders of Greenfield. On the seat beside him he had left a farewell note to his wife. The paragraph referring to the Collins killing reads as follows: The one thing I want to tell you is this: I killed Fred Collins, sheriff of Union county, and George Gibson is doing life for it. Collins and Al Burke ran into me at Thayer when I was hauling booze out of St. Joe. So to keep them from coming into the barn, I had to burn Collins.

Collins had been killed as he visited the Gibson farm to serve some papers on the owner. Gibson had had some previous trouble with Collins and had threatened to shoot the sheriff if the latter “ever set foot on my place.” As Collins and Burke entered the barn lot, someone fired from the barn, fatally wounding the sheriff. Gibson was arrested, convicted of the murder by a Union county jury, and has subsequently been serving a life sentence at Ft. Madison.

Sheriff Null has turned Dilley’s confession over to Union county authorities, and it may become the instrument for freeing Gibson from prison. The problem is whether or not to believe Dilley’s confession. Most persons acquainted with the man are inclined to accept it as fact. For some time, vague rumors had been reaching local authorities that “Dilley once killed a man some place.” When Null was questioning him Thursday night, Dilley had made some thinly veiled threats against the life of a former Clarke county sheriff who had beaten him severely at one time. Null then asked Dilley if he had ever killed a man, and the latter looked startled and did not answer. Null thought little of it at the time, but Dilley’s confession instantly recalled it to his mind.

Null theorizes that the question might have given Dilley the idea that he “had something on him” in the Collins case. His suicide the next night gives some support to that theory. On the other hand, Dilley served a sentence at Ft. Madison while Gibson was there, and such a confession might have been planned while the two were together.

Funeral services were held for Dilley from the Ramsey-Richards funeral home, Sunday. He was buried in the Winterset cemetery. He is survived by his wife, but no children.

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