Morbid Curiosity: The Murder of Lyman Stewart

Posted on by spuddled

I guess when you have a large number of individuals in your genealogy database, you’re bound to find your fair share of grim tales, including murder. Including this one. This is the story of the murder of Lyman Marion Stewart, my fifth cousin twice removed.

Lyman was born 2 February 1900 in Kansas, at least according to his headstone and most other records.1 The Kansas Births and Christenings Index states he was born 2 February 1901 instead, in Osawatomie, Kansas.2 His parents were Martha Jane (Christison) and Newton Marion Smith. On his maternal side, he is descended from our Sweeney line. His mother would later remarry a man named John William Stewart, and Lyman appears to have taken his stepfather’s surname.3

Lyman was married several times; on 28 June 1922 in Santa Ana, California, he married Grace Lillian Maude Bates. They had a son, Lyman Marion Stewart, Jr., who was born 13 September 1926 in Kansas City, Missouri.4 By 1930 Lyman, Sr., and Grace are living separately (Lyman with his married sister in Phoenix).5 Then by 1940 Lyman has remarried and is enumerated with his wife, Mary L. (Handke) at 560 Main Avenue in Phoenix. In both 1930 and 1940 Lyman is listed as a carpenter.6 Between 1943-1945 Lyman served in the U.S. Navy,7 and by 1950 he had moved to Sausalito, California, where he was married to a third wife, a Nevada native named Annabelle.8

This marriage does not appear to have lasted either, as by 1964 Lyman was living in San Antonio and renting a room from his ex-wife Mary at 320 West Laurel Street. In the years since her marriage to Lyman she had remarried as well, to Edward Delbert Dettman; Mr. Dettman died in 1955 of stomach cancer at the age of 41.9 About noon on Saturday, 5 September 1964, Lyman’s ex-wife/landlady saw him drive away, but he didn’t tell her where he was going; this was not unusual.

About 10:45 the following morning, Dana Stamper, 38, and his son, went to Eisenhower Junior High School to play tennis. There they found Lyman’s body, about 122 feet west of the school building. He had been bludgeoned 16 times and strangled with a long piece of bedspread. Details from the earliest newspaper articles note that his time of death had been estimated to be between 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday night. Lyman’s wallet was found next to his body, still containing $10 (or about $105 in 2026 money), but his 1963 maroon Ford station wagon was missing.10

An article which appeared on the Tuesday following the murder confirmed that a pipe with a heavy steel ball at the end, believed to be the one that had inflicted the bludgeoning wounds, had been found near his body. The cause of death, however, was believed to be the strangling rather than the pipe. Also, new witnesses had come forward which shed more light on the time of death, as Lyman had been seen drinking at an ice house on Fredericksburg Road shortly before midnight on Saturday.11 I had to look this one up; an “ice house” in this context is apparently an open-air bar.12

Lyman’s death certificate was signed on 8 September following an autopsy. Noting his location of death as the 8300 block of Blanco Road and his usual residence as 320 West Laurel Street, it confirmed the cause of death as ligature strangulation taking place in a school yard about 9 p.m. on 5 September (in spite of the witnesses’ statements that he had been seen alive shortly before midnight). It also noted he would be buried on 9 September at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.13

Two weeks later, more details about the ice house visit were forthcoming. Witnesses were now reporting seeing Lyman drinking with an unknown man of about 40, and that the two had left the ice house together around 11 p.m. This newspaper article also describes Lyman’s station wagon as a 1953, not 1963, but gives a more detailed description: two-door, with a cream top and faded maroon bottom, license plate JR 7337.14

Less than a week later, the San Antonio Light had breaking news to report. Murder charges were anticipated against one Richard Handke, aged 36, of 320 West Laurel. Both his surname and address should be ringing bells; he was, in fact, the brother of Lyman’s ex-wife/landlady, and he also lived at the same address. He had been arrested in Corpus Christi, ostensibly for slashing at the face of an acquaintance, Ruby Warrick, who also lived at 320 West Laurel, and stealing $600 from her. This slashing had taken place back in March. When he was interrogated, Richard confessed to police that he and Lyman had argued over Ruby, and then he had attacked Lyman and killed him. Richard Handke had been brought to police attention by a witness who had seen them together at the ice house and knew of the mens’ connection to Ruby. After police brought Ruby in for questioning, she reported to them the story of the March attack.15 Handke would also tell police that his mother had been found beaten to death with a chain two years earlier; that slaying was never solved.16

Handke was officially charged with murder on 30 September, and detectives announced they had found a pipe in the bathroom of Handke’s apartment following a phone tip telling them to “look behind the bathtub.” The police lab also indicated blood was found on this pipe.17 So was the other pipe just a red herring? Are there lots of pipes just lying around in schoolyards? Anyway…

In January 1965 Lyman’s car was finally located, in a Corpus Christi garage. On 13 January Richard Handke was indicted for Lyman’s murder.18 It must have seemed to the public like everything was progressing toward a fairly straightforward conclusion. The front page of the 6 March Express and News, however, proves otherwise:

The article goes on to state that the trial, which was to have started the following Monday, would most likely be postponed because Handke’s confession had been thrown out as evidence. Handke had originally answered police questions after having been administered sodium penthothal, and even though this had been done at his own request, this still meant the testimony he had given was not admissible. Now, in March 1965, he claimed that detectives and pulled his hair and beaten him, and that this coercion was what led to his eventual confession.19

Two days later came even more startling news. The murder indictment against Handke had officially been dropped, though if further evidence came to light, a new indictment could still be filed.20 Not only was the confession no longer available as evidence, but an important witness in the case, now listed as Handke’s girlfriend “Ruth” Warrick, who had apparently been going to testify for the state, had now changed her story and was willing to provide an alibi for Handke.21

As one of my favorite podcasts always says, “So where are we now?” Unfortunately, it appears no one was ever brought to justice for Lyman Stewart’s murder. Richard Handke would live until March 1984, dying in San Antonio at the age of 55. He is buried in the San Fernando Cemetery in San Antonio alongside his parents and older sister Eleanor. His sister (and Lyman’s ex-wife) Mary Dettman died the following year; she and her husband Edward Dettman are buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, as is Lyman.22

One of many details I haven’t been able to answer to my own satisfaction is: what of that story about Richard Handke’s mother’s murder at the hands of a chain-wielding maniac? I mean, that seems too coincidental. So I eagerly looked up Mrs. Handke’s death certificate, and found it! And discovered that…she wasn’t even dead yet when Lyman Stewart was killed, and when she did die in 1967, it was not from a chain attack but from uremia, congestive heart failure, and arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. So I looked again…and it wasn’t Richard’s mother, but his sister, Eleanor, the one with whom he shares a headstone, who was killed in this way. And her death certificate does confirm the basic facts; her cause of death is listed as “contusion of the brain” as a result of her being “beaten on [the] head with [a] heavy iron chain.” This took place early on 28 December 1961 at the Cassin Farm on Highway 281 in Bexar County.23 Though there was a suspect named early on (and it wasn’t Eleanor’s brother but a mentally ill man who created a scene in a grocery store where he and Eleanor had both bought hams the evening of her death), it appears that, as Richard stated, her murder also went unsolved. So there you have it – certainly morbid, but definitely not providing answers that satisfy my curiosity.

  1. Ancestry, Texas, Death Certificates, 1903–1982, 54754. ↩︎
  2. FamilySearch, “Kansas, Births and Christenings Index, 1885-1911,” extracted birth and christening records, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 1 February 2021), Smith. ↩︎
  3. Ancestry, Texas, Death Certificates, 1903–1982, 54754. ↩︎
  4. Ancestry.com, U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, SSN 091180798. ↩︎
  5. 1930 Census, Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona; Enum 7-17, SUp 2, Sheet 1A. ↩︎
  6. Ancestry.com, 1940 Census, Bexar, Texas; SD 20, ED 15-31, Sheet 13A. ↩︎
  7. www.ancestry.com, U.S. Veterans Gravesites, ca. 1775-2019 (n.p: 2019, n.d). ↩︎
  8. National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: Sausalito, Marin, California; Roll: 552; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 21-100 ↩︎
  9. Ancestry, Texas, Death Certificates, 1903–1982, 32123. ↩︎
  10. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 7 September 1964, pg. 1 ↩︎
  11. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 8 September 1964, pg. 40 ↩︎
  12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building)#:~:text=In%20some%20parts%20of%20Texas,the%20sale%20of%20cold%20beer. ↩︎
  13. Ancestry, Texas, Death Certificates, 1903–1982, 54754. ↩︎
  14. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 23 September 1964, pg. 31 ↩︎
  15. San Antonio [Texas] Light, 29 September 1964, pg. 1 ↩︎
  16. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 29 September 1964, pg. 12 ↩︎
  17. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 1 October 1964, pg. 88 ↩︎
  18. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 14 January 1965, pg. 24 ↩︎
  19. San Antonio [Texas] Express-News, 6 March 1965, pg. 1 ↩︎
  20. San Antonio [Texas] Light, 8 March 1965, pg. 29 ↩︎
  21. The News [San Antonio, Texas], 8 March 1965, pg. 12 ↩︎
  22. Find a Grave, www.findagrave.com ↩︎
  23. Texas Department of State Health Services; Austin Texas, USA; Texas Death Certificates, 1903–1982 ↩︎

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