Reeds Spring, Missouri

Episode 187 / 3 September 2020 / 164 min / full

Remorse Is For Suckers

"It's Reeds Spring Missouri ... This is in Stone County, Missouri." about 0:06:48

The case: Murder of Lloyd, Frankie and Willie Lawrence (May 15, 1988). Read the case file.

The figures, as told in 2020

Population

1,093

Median age

about 37

Median household income

$37,500

Median home value

$189,300

Two-bedroom rent

$730 a month

Cost of living

87

Religious

28%

Property crime

▼ about one third under

Violent crime

▼ about two-thirds under

History, in brief

• Named after Fitzhew Reed, who settled at a spring near the original town site; the name became Reed's Spring. about 0:07:51
• Written records of settlement begin about 1851, when Stone County became Stone County. about 0:08:04
• The first people there were white settlers and Delaware Indians; the Delaware had arrived about 1800. about 0:08:26
• The Delaware remained until the government pushed them out. about 0:08:33
• After their evacuation in 1830, the Delaware returned annually to hunt and fish until 1836. about 0:08:49
• In 1836 white settlers mistook a returning Delaware hunting party for a military attack and sent out the cavalry, starting a skirmish. about 0:09:04
• The first white settler was James Yoakum, a French trader at the junction of the White and James Rivers. about 0:09:51
• Yoakum traded coffee, blankets, cloth, shoes and rifles to Indians and settlers for furs and pelts. about 0:10:07
• The early settlers were extremely religious and mostly fundamentalist. about 0:10:36
• Stone County was named in 1851 after William Stone, an English pioneer and settler in Maryland. about 0:10:52
• Divorces were frowned upon and anyone divorced was disgraced, whatever the circumstances. about 0:11:03
• In 1904 the White River Railway was extended through the rugged terrain of Stone and Taney counties. about 0:14:46
• Both Stone and Taney counties were sundown counties, with black people forbidden to live there. about 0:15:06
• A 1904 newspaper article described the railway labourers as picturesque Austrian labourers who baked bread in stone and clay Austrian ovens. about 0:16:14

The reviews read out

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