Wide Search On For Embezzler

GILBERT, NORRIS, MCKIBBEN, CUNNINGHAM, HANLEY, LUMPKINS

Posted By: Marilyn Norris Holmes
Date: 1/16/2015 at 20:57:14

The Neosho (MO) Daily News
Friday, June 6, 1947

WIDE SEARCH ON
FOR EMBEZZLER
-------------------------
Stepfather Takes Car Be-
longing to Ex-Wife's
Estate.
-------------------------

An extensive country-wide search is being conducted by Newton county authorities for an alleged embezzler who has taken property belonging to three destitute children, aged 9, 11 and 13.

The property in question, a 1938 Oldsmobile, belonged to the estate of the children's dead mother and, according to Nolan "Doc" Russell, executor of her estate, needs to be found and sold in order to pay for the children's keep in St. Francis academy at Nevada.

Warrants have been sent out to several states in search of the alleged embezzler, Leland Hanley, a former husband of the dead woman--Mrs. Ruth Mae Hanley Lumpkins--and one time cab driver here in Neosho.

Hanley, Russell said, was given permission to drive the children to a home in Minneapolis, Minn., where their mother wanted them to be kept upon her death. He delivered the children to the home, and has not been heard from since.

The home was subsequently closed and the children were returned to Missouri.

At the time of her death, Mrs. Lumpkins had been married five times, and was the mother of five children.

Two boys were born to her first marriage -- with Fred Norris in Minneapolis [see notes], and a daughter to her second marriage -- with William McKibben, also in Minneapolis.

Her third husband, William Cunningham, whom she married in Iowa City in 1934 [see notes], adopted that daughter and the couple later had two daughters of their own.

The three girls were named as Mrs. Lumpkins' heirs in her will, filed after her death for probate. Her last husband, George Lumpkins, waived all rights to the estate, and asked that his dower rights be turned over to the children.

Mrs. Lumpkins moved to Neosho in November of 1942, and set up in business as a cab stand operator with her husband at that time -- Hanley. When she and Hanley were divorced, and she later married Lumpkins, the three remained domiciled amicably under the same roof in Zig Zag Heights, Prosecutor Wayne Slankard said. The third husband, Cunningham, also stayed there for a time, Slankard said.
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NOTES: Ruth May Gilbert and Fred Norris were married in Grinnell, Iowa and their two sons were Kenneth Lloyd and Wilbur Eugene Norris, both were born in Grinnell, Iowa. The Gilbert Bible gives the daughter, Carol's, birthplace, in 1933, in Des Moines.

Ruth married William Francis Cunningham in Mason City in 1934, not Iowa City. Their two daughters were born in Minneapolis.