In 1939 Marshall, Illinois, was the site of
the “celebrated Spencer robbery case.”
The tale of the Spencer Case
starts with the marriage of Georgia Josephine Spencer to William Woodrow Rease
(also “Reece,” “Reese”) in Detroit, Michigan, around Jan 1936. Georgia had been
born on 6 Jun 1912 in Clark County, Illinois, to Martha E. (Siverly) and Carroll
Elmer Spencer. Since Martha (usually called “Mattie”) was a daughter of Nancy
Tapscott, Georgia was a great granddaughter of Henry the Traveler, a fourth-generation
Clark County “Tapscott,” and my second cousin once removed.
What Georgia was doing in Michigan,
where she married, we don’t know, but William and Georgia ended up back in the
Marshall area, where Georgia’s now-divorced mother, Mattie was living.
On 13 Jan 1939 Marshall’s tranquility
was broken. For two or three nights before that date, Mattie Spencer thought
she had seen prowlers around her home. Then on the night of the 12th
a brick was thrown through a window. Becoming alarmed, Mattie went to the home
of her daughter and son-in-law the next evening along with several thousand
dollars which she kept in her house. Mattie did not believe in banks and was
known to take her savings with her when she traveled.
About 7:30 that evening (the 13th)
William Rease went to the back of his house to throw out a pan of water. He claimed
that someone slugged him while he was outside and then went into the house and
severely beat his wife, Georgia, and mother-in-law, Mattie. Taking Mattie Spencer’s purse, filled
with money and resting in her lap, the robbers had fled. Georgia was two months pregnant and her four-year-old daughter was in the house.
Police cracked the case when they
observed someone connected with the family was spending large amounts of money.
That someone turned out to be William Rease. Knowing that his mother-in-law kept
a large amount of unbanked cash, William, it was claimed, had gathered a group of conspirators
and had planned the robbery. Following the theft, the gang had divided their
proceeds in a Terre Haute nightclub and had then decamped. William was arrested
in Madisonville, Kentucky. Nine more
suspects (not all, it turned out, guilty) were arrested, at places as far away as Hot Springs,
Arkansas.
 |
| Marshall,
Illinois, courthouse, site of the 1939 Spencer Case trials |
In March 1939 a Marshall grand
jury brought indictments ranging from accessory to burglary to assault to
robbery with a dangerous weapon against seven individuals. (Forrest Tapscott, Georgia’s
second cousin, was one of the jurors.) Four men were eventually sentenced to a penitentiary
term of 1 to 20 years. One of the four was William Rease, who had pleaded guilty.
Two more suspects, who “had some connection with the robbing,” were given one
year’s probation.
On 2 May 1939, citing her husband's felony as grounds, Georgia was granted
a divorce from William Rease. Georgia
went on to own and operate the East Marshall Motel (a collection of green-roofed
and white-walled cabins that opened in 1950) for more than forty-years. She died
two months shy of age 93 on 28 Mar 2005 near Marshall. What became of William is the subject of a future post.
