OK Family Of Man Who Killed Sheriff In 1908 Shares Artifacts

Kim Edwards's family history is heavy - his great uncle, Alfred Hunter, killed a prominent Oklahoma sheriff in 1908. Edwards read all about Hunter's life in a book written by the man himself.

“Couldn’t put it down and I started asking questions which no one could answer, so I had to start doing research on my own,” Edwards said.

His research started with an ad in a Watonga newspaper asking the public for information. Back then Hunter was wanted for the murder of Susie Pride. Hunter claimed killing her was self-defense.

“He wasn’t looking for trouble, but trouble found him,” Edwards explained.

And on June 5, 1908, Sheriff G.W. Garrison and his posse went to arrest Hunter outside Watonga.

“He was in the hayfield shooting through haystacks and he shot the sheriff and killed him,” Edwards continued.

10/13/2015 Related Story: First Oklahoma Sheriff, Killed In 1908, Gets New Headstone

And the rest of the story arrived in packages at Edwards’s home in Oklahoma City in response to his ad. He received the verdict that convicted Hunter of the crime, a photo of the jury members who sentenced him to death by hanging and even postcards sold at the execution in Blaine County.

“‘Well friends, I bid you goodbye. I die in a good faith and pray for you all, that you may meet me in the land of rest. Amen. Amen,’” Edwards read from an article clipping. “That’s what he said just before he was hung.”

Edwards also has an interview he conducted with one of the last surviving witnesses to the hanging several years ago. At 95-years-old, the woman remembered her dad lifting her up in the courtroom when she was just 6, to sit on the window sill so she could see Hunter die.

“That’s the history that we’ve lived with and I’ve just kept it dear to me because you know, I feel that he didn’t have a voice back then,” Edwards told News 9.

But now more than 100 years later, he hopes this new voice provides the past with more objective story to stand on, so we can continue to learn from it in the future.

“If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you’re going to go,” Edwards said.

Hunter is buried in Arkansas, where Edwards said he was from. Edwards has attempted to put his relative’s story into a book, but has yet to receive significant interest from a publisher.

Garrison was laid to rest in Oklahoma City. In September 2015, a present-day deputy discovered Garrison was in an unmarked grave at Fairlawn Cemetery. A retired Oklahoma City police officer rounded up funds to purchase Garrison a new headstone. The headstone was dedicated in a special ceremony in October 2015.