The Mounties got their men — and hanged them

In January 1933, something unusual happened in Scott County.

In fact, it might have been the only time in Scott County’s history that it happened: The Canadian Mounties rolled into town.

The Mounties — Royal Canadian Mounted Police — were on a very specific mission: William McLean, a Scott County young man, was in the jail at Huntsville. And the Mounties didn’t just want to chat with him. They wanted to take him back to Canada. To hang.

McLean and his father, Kenneth McLean, were wanted on murder charges in Canada. Allegations were that they had murdered a wheat farmer in a rural part of the Alberta province. They had landed in the Scott County Jail after stealing a Chevrolet in Montana, near the Canadian line, and then making their way back to their former hometown of Huntsville.

The Mounties, SSgt. Robson Armitage and Cpl. Francis Russill, traveled more than a thousand miles to get from Canada to Scott County. Their visit wasn’t a secret; a reporter for the Knoxville News Sentinel learned of it and traveled up to Huntsville to interview them. But they didn’t have much to say; wouldn’t even say whether young McClain had actually committed the murder or was just wanted for questioning as a witness. “Armitage and Russill aren’t saying a word about the case. You needn’t bother asking them,” the reporter wrote. “Perfectly courteous, with a stiff British manner, they will discuss the weather with you but not their mission.”

As it turned out, the Alberta farmer wasn’t the first person Kenneth McLean had killed. In 1911, he murdered Harrison Lowe in Huntsville and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, he managed to escape from the county jail — twice. The first time was before his trial, and he was later apprehended in Virginia. He was returned to Scott County to face the charges against him, but escaped again before serving his sentence. He may very well have been the only person in history to escape the castle-like stone fortress that served as the county jail from 1904 to 2007 on two different occasions.

When he was arrested a third time, in 1933, they held him at a jail in Chattanooga. For obvious reasons, perhaps.

In any event, his 1933 arrest set off a short standoff between authorities from different jurisdictions. All wanted McLean. As the News Sentinel described it: “A conference will be held between state, federal and Canadian authorities as to which will have the older McLean first.”

The Canadian Mounties had a way of “getting their man.” And in 1933, they once again got their man.

The McLeans were whisked away to Alberta to answer to charges that they had murdered a farmer named Walter James Parsille, described as being 55 to 60 years of age, found dead of a bullet through the heart at his “lonely ranch near Manville, Alberta” on Oct. 2, 1932.

It was three months later that the Mounties arrived in Scott County to get their man.

As it turned out, the McLeans had worked for Parsille. They had learned that he had cash money on him. Not a lot — a little less than $400. But enough to make them want it. And, apparently, enough to make them kill him to get it. The Depression was raging in 1932, and there wasn’t much cash to be had. Parsille’s folding money was what remained of a $571 payment to him from the Alberta Wheat Pool.

H.M. Barnett, a federal commissioner from the U.S., said that the case against the McLeans was “entirely built up on circumstantial evidence.” Nevertheless, he extradited the father and son, allowing the Mounties to take them back to Canada. The duo was represented at that hearing in Knoxville by local attorney and future Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr.

Kenneth McLean was married and had six other children besides William. After killing Parsille, Canadian authorities contended, the family came back to Tennessee to visit McLean’s mother. Along the way, they stole the vehicle in Montana, and then were traced to Scott County by the Mounties.

And although Commissioner Barnett said the evidence against the McLeans was “entirely circumstantial,” Canadian authorities produced an interesting witness: Eugene B. Ward, described by the Knoxville Journal as a “rotund, bald former candy salesman.” Ward was William McLean’s cellmate, jailed on allegations of assaulting a woman. He appeared in court to testify that McLean had told him all about the murder while they shared the cell — about how the father and son duo had laid in wait at Parsille’s farm, about how Kenneth shot him with a rifle when he came out of the house, about how William took the cash off Parsille’s body, and about how the pair took Parsille’s rifle and fled the scene.

William McLean vowed to kill Ward for the testimony, but didn’t get the chance.

If Kenneth McLean wasn’t good at anything else in life, he was apparently good at busting out of jail. Before the Mounties could return him to Canada, he and another prisoner sawed their way out of the jail he was being held in at Knoxville. It was his third jailbreak. But, again, he was captured.

Later, after the pair had been transported to Alberta, William McLean was found to have two thin saws hidden inside his suit. Canadian authorities managed to discover the concealed tools before the McLeans made another escape attempt.

Odell Sexton, a deputy U.S. Marshal from Knoxville, traveled to Canada to attend the trial, spending two months in Alberta, during which time he lived with the Mounties. Apparently, the counterparts were quite curious about one another. If Tennesseans had expected the Mounties to show up in their red tunics (they didn’t; they were plain-clothed; the red tunics had been reserved for formal dress occasions by 1933), the Canadians expected a U.S. marshal to be whiskered and wearing boots, like an Old West cowboy. But Sexton wasn’t; he appeared in a neat gray suit and a light felt hat.

The court proceedings in Alberta were quite a sensation. The earlier killing that had occurred in Tennessee, and the McLeans’ jail escapes, made them infamous before they ever arrived in Canada. When shots were fired at a witness who was expected to testify for prosecutors, the sensation heightened. Huge crowds showed up to see the men escorted into court.

Twenty-one-year-old William was the first to stand trial. Described by newspapers as a “tall blond Scott County youth,” he was found guilty and was sentenced to hang at Fort Saskatchewan on Oct. 6, almost exactly one year after Parsille had been killed.

Kenneth McLean was later convicted. One of the witnesses against him: his son, William, who placed the blame for Parsille’s death on his father and admitted that he was doing so in an effort to save his own skin. “If my father comes clean,” the younger McLean said, he would admit to the court that William had nothing to do with the farmer’s death, and acknowledge that William had tried to stop him from killing Parsille.

When he was sentenced to hang alongside his son on Oct. 6 and was asked if he had anything to say, Kenneth McLean reportedly said: “Not much. I’m ready for the rap. I have faced death too often to try to squeal out of it now.”

So how did authorities build their case against the McLeans? It was revealed after the trial that Parsille’s body was found on his farm two days after he was killed. Authorities immediately focused on his 10-man wheat fleshing work crew, and discovered that two of them were missing — John and Jim Shea, which were the aliases that Kenneth and William McLean were working under.

Authorities were able to trace the duo to Calgary by uncovering records where John Shea had signed for liquor — and the signature matched Shea’s signature from Parsille’s payroll records. Authorities had no further clues to go on, until an unidentified witness stepped forward to say that he knew a man named Kenneth McLean who was a “bad man” and matched John Shea’s description.

Armed with the suspects’ true identity, the Mounties discovered that they had formerly lived in Scott County. They flooded Tennessee with information about the wanted men. Authorities in Chattanooga had arrested a man calling himself James Peart, who had been charged with stealing a car in Montana. They believed he matched the description of William McLean. And that led the Mounties to Tennessee.

Shell casings found at the scene of Parsille’s death were linked to a gun known to be owned by the McLeans. That gun was never recovered. It was said to have been turned over to a garage owner in Oneida, but its whereabouts after that were forever a mystery.

On the eve of the men’s execution, a stay was granted to allow for an appeal. Kenneth McLean hadn’t exonerated his son in court, as William had hoped, but he finally did so as the date of their execution approached. A delay was granted to allow for William to plead his case to the nation’s Supreme Court.

But it turned out to be only a temporary delay. A court ruled in November 1933 that both men must hang. When he learned of his final fate, Kenneth McLean was not surprised, but said he had hoped that “they would spare Bill.”

The two men were hanged on Nov. 24, 1933, a Friday morning. William was the first to hang, at 3:47 a.m. As he was being led from his cell to the gallows, he said, “Goodbye father.” Kenneth responded: “Goodbye, son. We’ve traveled many a rough trail together and we’ll travel this one. We’ll keep going along the same way.”

Kenneth was hanged 22 minutes after his son.

Kenneth’s wife — William’s mother — was in Saskatchewan when the hangings took place, having made the trip to Canada from Tennessee. A solicitor assigned to her told newspaper reporters that the hanging of 21-year-old William was “wicked.”

“That boy ought never to be hanged,” the solicitor, Ernest Hay, said. “He was under the domination of his father. He wanted to give evidence at the trial. They would not let him. It is wicked I tell you. That boy should never hang.”

The newspapers went quiet on the case after the trial was held. There was no mention in the American papers of the McLeans meeting their fate at the gallows that October. But meet their fate they did. And five years later, in 1938, the story burst back into the headlines when William’s brother, Joseph Kenneth McClean, was charged with stealing a car in Canada to seek a job in the U.S.

McLean and two others, brothers Woldeman and Hans Sagstuen, were captured by Scott County Sheriff Frank Butler and turned over to the FBI. Once again, trying to return home to Scott County had proven fateful for the McLean family.

Editor’s Note: Harrison Lowe, killed in Scott County by Kenneth McLean, was 30 years old at the time of his death on Nov. 15, 1911. He was the son of Phillip Lowe and Jemima Hembree. His death certificate noted that he was killed with a shotgun. He killed his brother, Nelson Lowe, 25, a week before his death during a dispute that had seen Nelson shoot and wound another man. Both Harrison and Nelson are buried at Hembree Cemetery on Smokey Creek.

Cassie McLean, Kenneth’s wife and William’s mother, was Cassie Sharp. She was a sister to historian Ester Sharp Sanderson. Her mother, who the McLeans were said to be visiting when they returned to Scott County and were captured in 1933, was Caroline Lewallen Sharp of Huntsville. Her father, Joseph Sharp, was ailing and died just months later. Canadian newspapers hinted that the death of Kenneth McLean’s brother-in-law, Lemuel “Lem” Phillips, who was Ester Sharp Sanderson’s first husband and died in 1930, was somehow linked to the McLeans but didn’t expand on the suggestion. Cassie never remarried. She died in 1952 and was buried at Potter Cemetery in Huntsville. Joseph Kenneth McLean, her son who was accused of stealing a car in Canada so he could return to the U.S. and seek work, died in 2001 and is also buried at Potter Cemetery.

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This is the latest installment of Murders in the Heartland, the Independent Herald‘s reimagined series of murders that have defined Scott County through the years. At the conclusion of the series, our book by the same name will be republished in a second edition. Please note that, in many cases, descendants of both the victims and perpetrators still live in the community. This series is not intended to judge actions that occurred or to rehash old wounds, but to examine tragedies that have had an indelible impact on the community’s history.