Virgil Russell
Virgil James Russell (1929-2002) was a Scott County native who was convicted of robbing First National Bank of Oneida in March 1958. He was also accused of murdering an elderly Scott County man, Baty Byrd, but was acquitted.
Biography
Born Aug. 23, 1929, Virgil James Russell was the son of Edward Crampton “Ed” Russell (1888-1963) and Oma Sexton (1902-1996) of the Straight Fork community. His family later moved to Caryville, in Campbell County.
Russell’s siblings included Glennis Aileen Russell Hughett (1926-1993), Charles Edward Russell (1928-2001), Clyde Haynes Russell (1931-2020), and Francis June Russell Tharpe (1936-2015). He also had a half-sibling, Georgia Willie Russell Phillips (1916-1999).
Russell’s paternal grandparents were George Washington Russell (1865-1948) and Anna Isabelle Brooke (1870-1933) of Iowa. His maternal grandparens were James Monroe Sexton (1865-1948) and Julia Bell Bridges (1881-1949) of Oneida. He was a descendant of Revolutionary War veterans Timothy Sexton and Joseph Hatfield.
Russell married Bernice Betty Besnia (1926-1981). They had a son, James Erroll Russell (1947-2021).
As a young adult
Virgil Russell and his family moved from Straight Fork to Pioneer, in Campbell County, after 1940. After one year of high school, Russell enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in January 1946.
By 1950, Russell had left the army and moved to Holyoke, Mass., where he was living with his wife and their young son, James. He worked on a press in the paper industry.
Russell and his wife were granted a divorce in 1953. The reason given for the divorce by Bernice Russell was “cruelty.” She was granted custody of their child. A newspaper account at the time stated that they were married in 1948.
Russell had registered for the draft during the Korean War era in 1951. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard and was stationed in Seattle, Wash.
Events of 1958
On March 14, 1958, Virgil Russell was arrested at a U.S. Marshals roadblock in London, Ky., and charged with robbing First National Bank of Oneida. He was on leave from the Coast Guard at the time. Authorities alleged that he had stolen more than $6,000 from the bank, because he needed money to marry a New Zealand woman living in Vancouver, who he had met while stationed in Seattle.
A clerk at the bank, William E. York Jr., provided authorities with a description of Russell and the license plate number of his getaway car, which helped lead to his arrest. When he was apprehended, he was found in possession of a .38-caliber handgun, which he would later claim he had not brandished during the robbery. Employees of the bank said otherwise.
Authorities linked the handgun to Baty Byrd, a 73-year-old Straight Fork resident. Russell said that he had borrowed the gun from Byrd.
The Byrd and Russell families were formerly neighbors. In fact, Ed Russell’s first wife was Rosetta Byrd, who was a cousin to Baty Byrd. She died in 1924, and Ed married Virgil’s mother in 1925.
Two days later, on March 16, 1958, Byrd’s nephew discovered his uncle dead in his Straight Fork home, sitting upright in a chair. Authorities said he had been bludgeoned to death. Sheriff Dorsey Rosser speculated that the weapon used to murder Byrd was a hatchet, but it was never proven.
The coroner, Dr. W.S. Cooper, determined that Byrd had been killed on March 14, 1958, and suspicion immediately centered on Russell. Authorities alleged that he had killed Byrd the morning of the bank robbery in order to steal his handgun, which he used in the robbery. Russell said that Byrd was a lifelong friend who had loaned him the gun the night before, without knowing how Russell intended to use it.
A witness for the state, Byrd’s neighbor, testified at court that she had seen Russell drive by her house the morning of March 14. However, Russell’s attorneys presented a witness saying that he was in Oneida the morning of March 14, and another witness saying that she had seen Byrd, her neighbor, alive at about the time Russell was being arrested in London, Ky.
Russell was convicted in a federal court of robbing the bank and sentenced to 20 years in an Atlanta prison. He was also charged with first degree murder by state authorities and tried twice.
At the first trial, in August 1958, the state sought the death penalty. The trial ended in mistrial after the jury declared itself hopelessly deadlocked, 8-4. At a second trial, in January 1959, Russell was acquitted.
Aftermath
Russell served the prison sentence for robbing the bank, then returned to civilian life. He lived in Clermont, Ohio, where he died on March 13, 2002, at a nursing home. His marital status at the time was listed as widowed. He was buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.