Lawton, Oklahoma, February 12, 1950.

Clayton Dale Elkins lay on a gurney at Comanche County Hospital with a hole in his abdomen the size of a man's fist.

Buckshot had torn through his gut and punctured his right lung. The doctors did

what they could. It was not enough. At half past five on a cold Sunday morning, Elkins died.

Four hours earlier, he had been standing in the kitchen of his old friend's house, a glass of

bootleg whiskey in his hand, his arm around a crying woman.

The shotgun blast came at 1.15 a.m.

The man who pulled the trigger, or claimed the trigger pulled itself,

was James Albert Collier Jr.

A man Elkins had known for 10 years.

A man he'd called a friend.

Word was it started as a Saturday night, the kind of

Saturday night that could happen in any small city in America in 1950. Two couples, some whiskey,

a drive-in hamburger joint, the kind of evening that should have ended with handshakes at the door

and promises to do it again sometime.

Instead, it ended with a shotgun blast in a kitchen and a man bleeding out on linoleum.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to the beginning of the week.

Clayton Dale Elkins came from a respected Lawton family. His father held the title of

chief clerk and financial secretary

at the Cameron State Agricultural College, the sprawling campus on the western outskirts of town

that had been educating farm kids and soldiers' children since 1909. The elder Elkins was a man of

standing in Comanche County, the kind of man whose name appeared on

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