Let’s think about time for a moment. The exercise is worth it because in 1968 a man’s freedom depended on just how accurately we tell time.
As I write this there are four clocks in my immediate vicinity. The analog clock on the wall says it is about 2:14 p.m. My computer clock says it’s 2:16. Both my cell phone clock and the digital clock on the cable box say it’s 2:13 p.m.
When you ask someone the time and they say “2:15″ or “a quarter after,” do you wonder if their watch precisely indicates 2:15 or is it showing somewhere between 2:13 and 2:17? Does anybody really know what time it is?
For Dr. John M. Branion, Jr., convicted murderer, the answers to those questions made all the difference in the world.
Dr. Branion was not the kind of man anyone would expect to kill his wife. Educated at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, he was a successful and respected African-American physician at time when discrimination against blacks was openly practiced and accepted in America. His father was one of the most prominent criminal defense attorneys in Chicago, serving as the deputy public defender for Cook County — the first black man to do so, and Branion’s brother-in-law was an equally successful attorney.
Branion’s wife, Donna, came from one of the wealthiest black families in Chicago. Dr. Branion was active in the civil rights movement and had walked beside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his visits to Chicago.
According to his defense attorney Branion once shielded King from a thrown brick with his own body. Unlike King, however, Branion’s involvement in the movement was not limited to peaceful protests; he was known to police as a doctor who tended to injured Black Panthers and other more radical activists, putting him on a U.S. Justice Department list of “undesireables.”
Although Branion had an on-going affair with a woman who shared his passion for civil rights activism, by all accounts the 30-year Branion marriage was normal and happy. The Branions had two children, a daughter and a son who was 4 years old in 1967.
The crime that put Dr. Branion in prison occurred in the morning of December 22, 1967 when Donna Branion was shot to death in her home. The evidence that pointed to Dr. Branion as the murderer was all circumstantial and at his trial Dr. Branion unsuccessfully used a defense of impossibility — it was impossible for him to have killed his wife because at the time she died he was someplace else.
That’s why time was so important in the Branion murder case.
Donna Branion was known to have been alive at about 10:15 a.m. when she spoke with her sister about some mundane topics. Donna’s sister, Joyce Tyler, testified that her sister did not sound agitated or upset about anything.
The first event occurred at 11:05 a.m. when a neighbor of the Branions returned home from shopping. Theresa Kentra later told police that about 20 minutes later she heard a “loud sound followed by two or three similar sounds” and then a commotion of some sort.
(The court opinions in this case refer to them as “sounds” or a “commotion” while Mrs. Kentra, on the stand, used the word “shots” — quite a difference in connotation)
Let’s agree that what Mrs. Kentra heard happened at 11:25 a.m because Dr. Branion’s defense and appellate counsel asserted it was so and the prosecution did not object.
Some 15 or 20 minutes after she heard those sounds, Mrs. Kentra saw Dr. Branion come out of his apartment and call for “Helen,” another doctor who lived nearby. For what it’s worth (and it might be worth a lot) Mrs. Kentra said Dr. Branion did not appear to be “agitated.”
Chicago police logged a call reporting Donna Branion’s death at 11:57 a.m. One minute later, the first patrol car was at the scene. Officer William Catizone testified at Dr. Branion’s trial that he found Donna’s body lying in the utility room of the Branion home. He said he went directly to the body and could not find a pulse.
Donna had been shot in the head, neck, and shoulder. Three bullets passed through her body and were found at the scene beneath her body while a fourth was found in her body during the autopsy.
There was no sign of forced entry and Donna had not been sexually assaulted. Robbery also did not appear to be the motive.
Almost immediately suspicion fell on Dr. Branion, despite the fact that he had no motive for killing his wife. They were a loving couple despite his unusually close relationship with Shirley Hudson, who he met in the civil rights movement and eventually married.
Money wasn’t an issue. Certainly Donna Branion came from a wealthy family, but Dr. Branion would not inherit anything as a widower; in fact, if all he cared about was his wife’s money, he had a strong motivation to keep her alive.
Police centered their attention on Dr. Branion because of the way he acted after discovering his wife’s body.
Entering the home, he turned on the light in the utility room, saw his wife lying in a pool of blood and simply turned off the light, left the room and called for help. He told police that he did not approach her because he could tell by her appearance that she was dead.
As the investigation into Donna Branion’s murder went on, other circumstantial evidence emerged. Ballistics experts determined that Donna was shot by a Walther PPK, a type of gun owned by Dr. Branion. However, when police asked him whether he had any guns capable of firing the .380 slug of the type that killed his wife, Dr. Branion did not tell them that he owned a PPK — which can fire .380 cartridges despite being a 9mm weapon.
Later, armed with a search warrant, police recovered two boxes of ammunition in the Branion home. One box was full, containing 25 cartridges. The other box was missing four shells.
That was good enough for the police. Dr. Branion was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife.
Next: “The evidence is circumstantial, but what circumstances!”

Back in January I was interviewed on camera for a Biography Channel show on “Murder, Inc.” It’s airing on Saturday, June 21, 2008 on the Biography Channel at 9 p.m. ET (US) and again on Sunday, June 22 at 1 a.m.

It should be a good show even though I’m in it …

In 1989, Bostonian Charles Stuart called 911 and reported that he and his pregnant wife had been shot by an unidentified black gunman. Carol Stuart died from her gunshot wound; the child she was carrying lived 17 days before he was disconnected from life support by order of his father.
Shortly after, Charles’s allegations that the family was attacked by an African American gunman began to fall apart and he committed suicide by jumping into the Mystic River.
Eventually, the true story came out: Stuart killed his wife and shot himself as either part of an insurance fraud or get her out of the way so he could be free to pursue another woman. It doesn’t really matter why he did it, just that he did.
As shocking as Stuart’s crime is, it proves the rule that in crime there is no such thing as an original idea. Pardon the pun, but every manner of killing has been done to death.
So it is with the robber-killed-the-wife story.
Stuart should have known that he couldn’t get away with it, because in 1920, an even more audacious murderer tried the same scam and ended up on the gallows in Joliet prison.
Carl Wanderer was bolder than Charles Stuart; he convinced a Chicago bum to help him out with a fake robbery under the ruse that Wanderer wanted to appear to be a hero in front of his pregnant wife, Ruth.
The bum, who agreed to the plan in return for $1.25, wasn’t privy to the whole plan and it cost him his life.
The man, collateral damage in Wanderer’s plot, has never been positively identified. Various names have been assigned to him, but the facts of the Wanderer murder have been so distorted over time that it is best to refer to him by the name he was given by the Chicago press: “The Ragged Stranger.”
The Wanderer case is a part of Chicago lore; the site of the crime is a frequent stop on those “bloody Chicago” tours and Ben Hecht, the noted Second City journalist, claimed that it was his skeptical detective work that eventually cracked the case.
That’s not true, but Hecht should get credit at least for not being sucked in by Wanderer’s scheme. The newsman visited Wanderer the day after the murder and was aghast to find him whistling while he pressed his trousers. His was the first article to portray the tragic hero/widower in a negative light.
In fact the police were fairly quick to poke holes in Wanderer’s story.
Why, wondered the Chicago dicks, was this bum penniless but in possession of a pistol? Wouldn’t he have pawned that? The going rate for a Colt automatic like that in the 1920s was $50.
On the subject of guns, why was Wanderer carrying one? And was it just coincidence that a robber would have the same kind of weapon as Wanderer?
With a little bit more checking the story quickly fell apart. First off, Wanderer did serve in the Great War as a lieutenant, but he wasn’t the decorated hero he claimed to be, according to his commanding officer.
Next, it turns out that Wanderer was infatuated with a 16-year-old girl who frequented his father’s meat shop, and was not quite the dedicated husband who was ready to settle down to life as a Chicago butcher. There was never any indication that his lust was anything more than just idle fantasy.
Under-reported, but hinted at in one account of the crime, was the allegation that Wanderer’s paramour was another man. Wanderer only mentions the allegation in one reply to a reporter’s question about his relationship with the girl.
“There was never another woman,” he replied. “Or another man. I hated married life. I wanted to get back to the army. I grew to love the army life and serving in France. It’s free and easy; it’s the life for me.”
The idea that Wanderer was a closeted homosexual who killed because he did not want to tied to a woman and a baby was played up in Hecht’s autobiography, but because the rest of Hecht’s role in cracking the case was overstated, there is no reason to believe that allegation — especially because it does not appear anywhere else. Of course it’s interesting to note that no two newspaper reports of the Wanderer murder have identical facts except that Ruth Wanderer and another man were murdered by her husband. So feel free to pick the story that best appeals to you.
Perhaps that’s the most interesting thing about the Wanderer tale. Every newspaper chose to create the crime it thought best and no one let the facts stand in the way.
Wanderer himself was not much help. When the detectives confronted him with the fact that the gun held by the ragged stranger could be traced from the factory to Wanderer’s brother and to him, he admitted setting the whole thing up but never gave the same reason why twice. It was for another woman, he said. It was to get his hands on Ruth’s $1,500 savings. He didn’t want to be a father, he told them once. He wanted to get back into the army, another time.
Who cares.
There are a few things that we can all agree on, however:

• Wanderer killed two people with the same gun;
• He stood trial first for killing his wife;
• When the jurors convicted him but chose not to sentence him to death the newspapers were incensed and published their names, addresses, and telephone numbers. One even published their pictures and called them “12 soft-boiled eggs.”
• The Ragged Stranger was never positively identified but was buried in Glen Oak Cemetery through the largess of a Chicago saloonkeeper named Barney Clamage.

Because no one was satisfied with the verdict in the Ruth Wanderer trial, Carl Wanderer was tried for the killing of the ragged stranger. This time the jury knew what the people wanted and he received the death penalty.
On September 30, 1921 Wanderer was hanged. As the hangman was going about his business, Wanderer began to sing “Old gal, old pal, you left me all alone/Old gal, old pal, I’m just a rolling stone/Old pal, why don’t you answer me?”
At that point the trap was sprung and Carl Wanderer was dropped into eternity.
It’s probably apocryphal, but someone reportedly said Wanderer should have been hanged for his singing alone. Since facts aren’t important to the story of the Ragged Stranger, let’s all agree that it really happened.