Lloyd KARNES

1891 - July 2, 1914

*Obituary
Benton County Democrat
Thursday, July 9, 1914

KARNES, Lloyd - On Thursday afternoon about 4 o'clock Russell Rice of Bentonville fatally stabbed Lloyd Karnes with a pocket-knife on the depot platform at Rogers. Young Karnes was sitting on a baggage truck waiting to take a train when he was accosted by Rice with the question: "How would you like to attend a funeral tomorrow?" Karnes return an indifferent, casual reply to the question, not paying much attention to Rice, who immediately thrust at him with his pocket-knife, plunging the same into Karnes' breast and severing the main artery just above his heart. Karnes got up, stared at Rice with surprise, walked away and dropped dead after going a short distance. The affray was so sudden and unexpected and quiet that it attracted little attention from those standing around, and it was thought in the beginning to be a joke between two boys. Rice immediately left the place and was arrested shortly afterwards by the officers at Rogers and taken before Esquire W.M. Keith, sitting as coroner. A jury was hastily summoned and after hearing sufficient of the evidence returned the verdict that Karnes came to his death as the result of a knife wound inflicted by Russell Rice. Rice was placed under a bond of $2,000 and returned to Bentonville. The preliminary hearing in the case was set for Monday following before Esquire Keith at Rogers. Rice's attorneys waived preliminary examination and he was committed to jail at Bentonville without bond to await the action of the grand jury. On Tuesday morning the question of bail was brought up before Chancellor Humphreys in chancery court and the chancellor admitted him to bail, fixing the bond at the sum of $10,000 which was furnished by friends and approved by the court. The chancellor admitted Rice to bail saying that clearly there was no element of murder in the first degree in the killing. It remains for the grand jury at the September term of the circuit court to return an indictment fixing the charge at whatever degree of homicide it may decide right under the evidence. The above are the bare facts as near as we can learn them. We do not believe that the records of crime or the pages of fiction contain a case as strange and unnatural as this in its absence of motive and the grotesque details of its commission. It is clearly the other possible explanation. Young Rice comes of a most excellent family and has had the advantages of good education and the best home surroundings. Such an act is so violently opposed to his training at home and his naturally kind disposition that this could only be the act of a mind dethroned. He is far above the average in intelligence and is a writer of some ability. No one knowing the young man and his family can doubt for a moment that he was insane. Karnes was a young man living at Rogers and engaged in railroad work. In his younger days, so we understand, he had been wild but at the time of his death was working hard and was rapidly redeeming his past. The Rice family are almost prostrated with grief over this deplorable affair and have the sympathy of the community, as do the relatives of the young man killed.

*Obituary
Rogers Democrat
Thursday, July 11, 1929

KARNES, Lloyd - (from the Fifteen Years Ago column) Lloyd Karnes, 23 years old, son of L.E. Karnes of this city, was stabbed and instantly killed last Thursday at the Frisco station in Rogers by Russell Rice of Bentonville. Rice had been drinking and the stabbing was the result of foolish by-play, with no malice or quarrel between the young men.

Contributed on 3/14/14 by wfields55
Email This Contributor

Suggest a Correction

Record #: 988791

Don't Follow