Oklahoma's Most Notorious Cases

by Kent Frates

Six cases that remain the talk of courtrooms everywhere . . .
Oklahoma has had more than its share of sensational legal battles with national ramifications, but for the first time in one volume, attorney and historian Kent Frates reveals the facts behind six cases that helped shape the history of the state—and the nation.
From bloody murders, to political scandal, to acts of domestic terrorism, OKLAHOMA‘S MOST NOTORIOUS CASES captures the stories,the times, and the import of these landmark trials.
Covering a time span from 1933 to 2004, Frates begins with the trial of the Machine Gun Kelly Gang for the kidnapping of a prominent oilman and ends with the convictions of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the heart
of downtown Oklahoma City.
Populated by a host of stranger-than-fiction characters—a Cherokee outlaw, a bloodthirsty con man, a crooked governor, and a twisted soldier, the
stories reveal the cold calculation inherent in the perpetrators and the guts, guile, and tenacity required of the dedicated law enforcement professionals who brought these men and women to justice.
Rounding out the six cases profiled: The Girl Scout Murders, The Karen Silkwood Case, The Sirloin Stockade Murders, and U.S. vs. David Hall— stories of crimes solved and unsolved and all of the turmoil and controversy that comes with such crimes.

Genres: True Crime

384 pages, Hardcover

First published November 18, 2014

Reviews

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because I was really young when some of them happened. At times it was tedious in its attention to detail. I usually don't read a lot of non fiction like this. However, his research was pretty good. It is a good read from a historical standpoint.

[Keisha Frantom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm from Oklahoma and had heard of many of these cases but had minimal information on them. I read the chapters about the Sirloin Stockade murders, the Karen Silkwood case and The Girl Scout Murders.

[Codey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m from Oklahoma and love reading these sort of books about interesting cases. This book was very well written and researched with great detail. It was a fast read. Although I am from Oklahoma and watch many YouTube videos and read books about strange cases and murder mysteries I was not familiar with many of these. The only two cases I knew of was the OKC Bombing of course and The Girl Scout Murders I heard about from my mom I think but I didn’t know many details about it. The name Silkwood sounded vaguely familiar but I didn’t know much at all about that case. I’m a movie buff so maybe I had heard of the movie. I thought Machine Gun Kelly was just the name of a music artist and didn’t know it was a real person from the past. I’ll admit I found the U.S. vs. David Hall story and the Silkwood story to be pretty boring and tedious to read for my taste and found myself hoping to get through it soon to get on to the next story. The most interesting to me was the Girl Scout murders, the sirloin stockade murders and the OKC bombing. I was 5yrs old when the OKC bombing happened and I didn’t have a clue anything about it unlike the 9/11 tragedy which I remember where I was in my 5th grade class. They didn’t teach much about it in school. I know it was a horrific event but I think it’s important to know the details of it and be educated about it. I thought I knew quite a bit but this book gave me so many more details that I didn’t know. I would like to read more books by this author bc I like how he writes.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was originally four stars, but I had to knock it down to three. You can tell that Kent Frates worked hard on this book and clearly see the amount of research he put into it. This book left me furious, not because of anything the author did, but because of the formatting.

It all started, like most poorly formatted books, with commas. Sentences that were blended together could have been made much more comprehensible with the presence of a lone comma. Later into the book, there were commas: too many and often in the wrong spot.

Commas can be an annoyance, but I was able to ignore them for the most part as the book went on, which was when things got worse.

How much worse? Typos and repetitions and missing periods at the end of sentences, oh my!

While I’m not going to cite locations of comma mistakes (you’ll be able to find them easily enough), I’ll give you a couple prime examples of the more infuriating mistakes, both of which occurred in the final story of the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995.

First, Mr. Frates mentions a book called American Terrorist. Not three pages later, that same book is referred to as American Tourist.

Seriously?!

A few chapters later, there is a discussion about the numbers of dismembered legs found in the wreckage of the bombing. The sentence says something along the lines of: “There were seven left ones and nine left ones.”*
I had to read that about five times before I understood that one of those ‘left’s was supposed to be a ‘right.’

I finished the book frustrated. Looking for someone at whom I could direct my anger, I consulted the first few pages of the book to find the publisher.
I’m all for a book about Oklahoma being printed by a publisher out of Oklahoma, but when they can’t do the necessary job of editing and formatting their books properly....

The only other issue I have is more of a minor one. Throughout the course of the book—especially the scenes that went in-depth with the trials—characters, often lawyers of some sort, would be introduced by their first name, last name, and profession. From that point on, however, they would be referred to almost exclusively by only their last name. Maybe it was just me, but it got confusing. So many people were introduced in such a short amount of time I had trouble keeping up with all of them.

Reading back over this, I wonder if three stars is too high. But I did learn a lot about the cases, and, for the most part, it was an interesting read.


*: that’s not the exact sentence out of the book.

[Lisa Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a native Oklahoman, I lived through and grew up knowing several of these stories. I was a young Girl Scout at the same time as the Locust Grove murders and that tragedy forever altered how my own scouting camping experiences played out. Although I didn't know it at the time, the Sirloin Stockade (and Lorenz) murders caused my father to always have a handgun within reach on my family's extensive road travels and camping trips. I, like nearly every Oklahoman, remember vividly where I was when I learned of the OKC bombing. My grandfather was active in state politics and was friends with many of the players in the stories set in the 1960s and 1970s. The Kerr-McGee plant is not far from my hometown and my family knew people who had worked there alongside Karen Silkwood.

For all of these reasons, and as a fan of true crime tales, I enjoyed this book. However, I think the average reader would get bogged down with the extensive detail of the trials and legal proceedings. I'm a career paralegal so I "speak the language," so to speak. The author is an attorney so this clearly the perspective from which he writes. But most readers might find these portions dull. There are many places where I wished for a more dramatic telling of the events, and for more detail about the crimes themselves and subsequent investigations, and less courtroom procedure and lengthy lists of the names of the lawyers involved, with no further context.

The biggest disappointment is the quality of the publication. Several misspelled words (e.g., when describing a horrific crime, the word is "grisly," not "grizzly"), punctuation errors, sentence fragments, and just plain old typos. There's really no excuse for that.

However, I did enjoy this book overall and am recommending it to some friends who share my interest in these stories.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this book was fairly interesting. I like to support local/state authors, and this author lent a lawyer's perspective to some notable/infamous Oklahoma crimes. Most of them were pretty interesting, the Silkwood one was a little dull, but probably due to my lack of interest in the subject. The final case Frates examined, the OKC Bombing, was probably the most interesting. He had a lot of details on that one, but that case in particular is very personal for most of us Oklahomans. I did notice a few typos/grammatical errors, but beyond that, I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes true crime, especially the legal/trial aspects, and/or who wants to support Oklahoma authors.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cases were well covered. Mr. Frates utilized plain English, with very little legal jargon (I counted 3 uses of words whose definitions are not relatively well known) and where it was used, the word was italicized. I very much enjoyed learning about cases I didn’t know about and more about cases I thought I knew about. It was a great read.

[Holly B. Skinner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! It takes you through the crimes, the investigations, and all the way through the trials without losing steam. I usually get bored reading about the trials in true crime and much prefer the crime scene/investigation details, but this book held my interest.
I highly recommend this book and will definitely be reading Vol. 2!

[Dolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good one