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WHAT WAS THE MOST
SENSATIONAL MURDER CASE
IN DOUGLAS COUNTY?
Written by Professor Don Good
Part I | Part II
As measured by the amount of press attention, it seems to have been the Richard
M. Brumfield case. At the time, July 13, 1921, it was said to be the most
atrocious crime ever committed in the state.
R. M. Brumfield had been a high school principal in Indiana. He had then gone to
Dental School in Chicago and moved to Roseburg. He was a cultured person with a
refined way of speaking and was highly respected as a leading citizen of
Roseburg. His dental office at first was 615 S. Jackson. Today his name is on
the second floor window facing the Jackson St. above the office of Paul Bentley
Architect. Brumfield's second office was in the Perkins Bldg. (now called the
Pacific Bldg. on Cass Street). He lived on a farm in the Melrose area and was
looking for a laborer to come and blow up stumps at the farm. He had contacted a
hermit named Dennis Russel who lived north of Myrtle Creek near the Dole area.
The prosecution claimed that Brumfield went in his Elgin car to pick up Russel
and then shot him and drove with the body to a hill near Melrose. He then ran
the car and body down a steep hill and set it on fire after cutting off Russel's
head. He placed certain I.D. materials of his own near the body and then
Brumfield disappeared from Roseburg leaving a wife and 3 sons behind. He wanted
her to get the Life Insurance. No evidence ever surfaced that the wife knew
anything about his plans.
Forensic science being not well developed in 1921, the identification of the
body took a week or so with conflicting conclusions. People were brought in to
view the remains and claimed it was different men. Finally it was judged to be
Dennis Russel. The body had now underwear but Brumfield always wore underwear.
The search for Brumfield began by Sheriff Sam Stamer. Brumfield was seen near
Klamath Falls
Part II
The Brumfield murder case had a very large effect on public alarm and curiosity.
"Excitement was as while hear on the streets of Roseburg." The News Review had
one and sometimes two stories every day for a month. The paper hired a special
phone receptionist to answer calls only on the case. The telegraph company sent
a special telegraph to Roseburg to send out to the nation the latest news on the
case. The News Review published an extra on the crime and as it was brought out
on the street for sale citizens fought each other over who was to get a copy.
People had trouble believing that Brumfield could have done such a horrendous
thing. They were also afraid because he as still at large. Sheriff Stamer was
told by a postal clerk in Myrtle Creek that Broomfield had mailed a package a few
days before the murder. He remembered most of the address so the package was
found in Seattle waiting to be picked up. It contained woman's clothing giving
rise to the theory that Brumfield was a "Cross Dresser" or that he had a
girlfriend. The most likely explanation was that he, in contracting a shipping
line abut passage to Australia intended to dress as a woman for a disguise on
the trip.
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Brumfield eventually wrote to the Seattle P.O. with a forwarding address in
Calgary, Alberta where he was arrested on August 12th, 1921. He had found a job
there plowing fields behind a horse. He was brought to Portland by Dep. Percy
Webb (later Sheriff of D.C.) and Dep. Frank Hopkins. In Portland, Brumfield was
giving a physical and mental examination. Sheriff Stamer brought him to Roseburg
to the County jail. A lot of planning went into how to keep Brumfield from
citizen attack and how to keep him from escaping.
Brumfield never confessed. He said he could not remember anything so awful and
did not believe he could do such a thing. This he maintained to the end. He was
found guilty by a jury and sentenced to hang. He appealed but lost. He tried to
commit suicide by cutting himself with a removable partial dental plate. This
did not work, but eventually hung himself on 9/13/22 in prison using a bed sheet
attached to his bed.
His motivation for the murder as never fully discovered. He was under a lot of
pressure to run his dental practice and manage his farm. He did have financial
problems. He seemed to have wanted his family to get his life insurance. A
Portland paper advanced the theory that he just could not stand living in
Roseburg anymore because it was such a backward, dull and boring place.
The pressure on the Sheriff to manage his responsibilities in the situation was
very intense. The office itself was said to resemble the H. Q. of the American
Expeditionary Force in Europe in WWI. Deputy Percy Webb was transferred to D. A.
Neuners (later he became the first president of the Roseburg Chamber of
Commerce) office to assist him in case preparation. Dep. Webb complained to the
press that the Sheriff still expected him to carry out all of his previous
deputy duties and that was just too much to expect . Dep. Hopkins, known as the
"shooting sheriff" and as "two gun Hopkins" resigned after the trail because his
heavy schedule had made him put off doing things he needed to do at home. His
nicknames were acquired as a result of his work in South County rounding up of
prohibition violators.
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