AUTHOR’S NOTE: During the evening of Jan. 19, 1948, in Kenai, William Franke shot dead Ethen Cunningham near Cunningham’s home along the lower Kenai River. Franke confessed to the killing and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder charges. On March 5, a hearing was held to determine the length of his prison sentence.
Regrets
According to U.S. Army medical records, Private Ethen Cunningham was treated in March 1943 for a condition that kept him in the hospital for several months. Doctors at Fort Sill, in Oklahoma, termed this condition “dementia praecox, paranoid type,” and they determined that it had existed prior to his enlistment.
Dementia praecox — a now-outdated term indicating a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder usually originating in one’s late teens or early adulthood — has since been replaced by the term schizophrenia.
By July, Cunningham had been discharged from the hospital and from the service.
In district court in Anchorage five years later, William Franke — a former Kenai neighbor of Cunningham’s — found himself attempting to explain that Cunningham had told him of his mental problems. Consequently, when Cunningham blamed Franke for poisoning his dogs and began making threatening gestures toward him, Franke took the threats seriously.
He wasn’t sure, he said, what a man like Cunningham might do. He knew only that he wanted to protect himself, his pregnant wife Nancy and their infant daughter. Perhaps that was the reason that, on Jan. 19, 1948, Franke shot Cunningham dead.
Franke confessed to the killing and in court on March 5 he was about to be sentenced to prison for second-degree murder. He testified, however, that he regretted failing to alert local authorities to Cunningham’s erratic behavior.
Another neighbor, Charles “Windy” Wagner, voiced similar regrets on the stand. He, too, had known of Cunningham’s mental history and wished he had taken his concerns to the local U.S. deputy marshal.
Wagner said he’d told a friend named George that he was thinking of alerting Allan Petersen, the local deputy U.S. marshal: “’I don’t trust a crazy man,’ I said (to George). ‘I am going in and tell Petersen to take care of that man.’” George told him the whole thing would probably blow over. “Now I’m sorry I didn’t go in and complain,” said Wagner, “because if I did, it would have stopped all this trouble.”
“We tried to keep the peace all along,” testified Franke. “Little things came up, and I ignored them and let the stories pass by that I had heard that he had circulated against us. I just wanted to have some peace, and I thought the best way was to leave him alone and leave him go his own way, but it didn’t work that way…. I hated to start trouble … so I didn’t say anything to the marshal.”
The Fateful Night
About six weeks before his sentencing, Franke had been formally charged with murder. At a hearing on that same day, FBI agent Clinton W. Stein had testified that the shooting “evidently was the culmination of hard feeling between the two men,” which had apparently been initiated in early December 1947. The genesis of this “hard feeling,” said Stein, was an accusation by Cunningham that Franke had poisoned Cunningham’s dogs.
Franke denied this, said Stein, but Cunningham ordered the Frankes to move out of the small cabin he had been renting to them while William was building a place of his own on his adjoining property. The Frankes did as they were told, moving out of the Cunningham structure and into their own partially completed, two-story log cabin.
From then on, Franke said, he worried about what Cunningham might do. And he took precautions.
“I didn’t trust Cunningham,” Franke testified. “I didn’t know if he was really mad or — he acted it to me — he acted crazy — and so I loaded a double-barreled shotgun, and I put two spikes above the door (to hold the gun in place), and I left it there, and I said (to Nancy), if he ever bothered you and ever came and tried to get in the door, use it. I told her to keep the door locked at all times when I wasn’t there.
“I didn’t know if he would come around trying to harm her or just what he would do,” Franke added. “I didn’t know.” As the days passed, doubt and fear gnawed at him.
At about noon on Jan. 19, Franke made a trip into Kenai — a 3-mile walk from his home. On the way to town, he stopped by Wagner’s place to see if Windy had any mail he wanted delivered to the post office. Wagner had two visitors — Jimmy Minano and another, unnamed man — and he collected their mail as well. One of the men handed Franke some money and asked him to buy him a pint of whiskey.
Franke said he arrived in Kenai between 1 and 1:30 p.m. First, he went to the post office. Then he visited a general store and purchased a tides table, a pint of whiskey for Windy’s friend, and another pint of whiskey for himself.
He met an acquaintance named Dean Rounds and went to Rounds’s home for 20-30 minutes to chat and share a couple of drinks. Later, he went across the street to visit another friend, Alex Whitrow. Franke and Rounds had drunk half of the whiskey; he and Whitrow polished off the bottle.
While they were drinking and talking, Whitrow produced a white cat and offered it as a gift to Franke’s daughter. Before they parted company, Franke and Whitrow discussed a dory that Whitrow had for sale. Then Franke returned to the store to buy a second pint of whiskey for himself and began walking home. Shortly thereafter, Philip Wilson came by in his truck and offered Franke a ride to the end of the road.
From there, Franke walked the trail to Wagner’s place and handed out the mail he had collected for the three men and the pint of whiskey he’d purchased for Windy’s visitor. Then Franke went directly home. Nancy testified that William arrived home between 4:45 and 5 p.m. “I knew he had been drinking,” she told the court, “but he wasn’t drunk. He didn’t stagger or anything.”
After he arrived home, Franke testified, he experienced some gaps in his memory. He remembered handing the mail and the cat to his wife. He could not remember climbing the ladder to the upper floor and retrieving his rifle. He did remember his wife trying to convince him to stay at home after he told her that he was “going out” and was planning to “pay a visit” to Cunningham.
Franke said he did not recall the walk to Cunningham’s home but did remember arriving there. Cunningham’s dogs barked at his approach. Then Cunningham himself came out his cabin door. About 70 yards away in the darkness, Franke stopped on the trail and waited, his rifle in hand.
Defense attorney William Renfrew, in court, asked Franke what his intentions were at that moment. “I don’t know what was in my mind,” Franke responded. “I don’t remember.”
Cunningham, he said, returned to his cabin, and Franke actually turned in the trail and began walking back home. After Franke had retreated only a few paces, however, Cunningham reappeared with a flashlight and walked out past his dogs and down the trail toward Franke.
“I took a step off the trail — not off, just beside the trail a foot — and turned around,” Franke testified, “and, well, I guess when he got up close to me, I shot him.”
According to FBI agent Wallace F. Estill, who had interviewed Franke shortly after the shooting, Franke’s memory was somewhat clearer at that time. His story remained the same, but he recalled more details about the incident.
“He knew what he was doing when he did it,” Agent Estill told the court. Franke wanted to “settle the matter once and for all so he could live in peace.”
Estill said that Franke told him he did not know whether Cunningham was armed. He said he could not honestly say that he felt endangered at that moment, nor could he say that he had shot Cunningham in self-defense.
Franke fired his first shot, said Estill, from about 20 yards away. “Franke says he thinks he hit him with the first shot,” Estill continued, “and he heard Cunningham moan or yell, but not loudly. Cunningham turned and started to go back to (his) house, and Franke followed him, shooting at the same time. Cunningham ran about 10 or 15 yards and fell. Franke continued to shoot and fired the last shot about four yards from Cunningham after Cunningham had fallen.”
During the entire incident, said Estill, neither man apparently said a word.
Pictured in an online public portrait is Anthony J. Dimond, the Anchorage judge who presided over the sentencing hearing of William Franke, who pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Ethen Cunningham in January 1948.
