The two men had a lot in common. Only six years separated them in age. Both were married in 1907. Both men were oil operators and had lived the gypsy life of a wildcatter: Petrolia in Clay County, Strawn in Palo Pinto County, Fort Worth, even Mexico. Both men were wealthy, knew the same people socially and professionally.
And then one of the two men began to suspect that they had a little too much in common: his wife.
Floyd Jefferson Holmes was born in Montague County in 1885. He was the son of Thomas Jefferson Holmes—a Baptist preacher—and Madora Anne Deaton Holmes. Floyd also was the grandson of Alias Deaton, whom the Star-Telegram described as “an old-time Indian fighter,” and the nephew of Frank Deaton, a Texas Ranger who took part in the Battle of Pease River, where Cynthia Parker was “freed” from Comanche chief Peta Nocona in 1860.
In 1907 Holmes married Alma Wegener.
By 1910 Holmes, then twenty-five, was a weigher in a cotton yard in Petrolia. But he soon became an oil operator in the Petrolia oil and gas field.
Warren Wagner was born in 1879 in West Virginia.
After the oil strike at Spindletop south of Beaumont in 1901, in 1903 Wagner chartered an oil-drilling company. He was twenty-four years old.
In 1907 he married Norma Swift. By 1910 he was in El Paso, where he was an oil driller. He also lived in Mexico, Petrolia, and Strawn. In Petrolia and Strawn, Warren and Norma Wagner were friends and neighbors of Floyd and Alma Holmes.
In 1912 Wagner patented an improved underreamer for use in oil well drilling. (Photo from UNT Libraries.)
Then came 1917, when Warren Wagner earned a footnote—surely bold-faced—in the history of the Texas petroleum industry. Wagner was the oil well driller, under the supervision of Texas and Pacific Coal Company’s William Knox Gordon, who on October 17 brought in a gusher on the farm of John H. McCleskey near Ranger, triggering the west Texas oil boom and giving America and its allies the oil they would need to win World War I. (Britain’s Lord Curzon, a member of Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s war cabinet, said, “The Allied cause had floated to victory upon a wave of oil.”) (Top photo from University of Texas at Arlington Library.)
Wagner drilled six gushers for T&P and then went into business for himself. The Star-Telegram said Warren also made the first strike in the Desdemona oil field (south of Ranger) in 1918.
As the west Texas boom began, Fort Worth, as the nearest big city, quickly became the headquarters for the boom. Oil refineries were built here. Oil field supply companies opened here. Oilmen lived here, officed here, met in hotels such as the Westbrook and Metropolitan to make deals. Among those men were Warren Wagner and Floyd J. Holmes.
Fast-forward through World War I. By 1918, after living in Tulsa, Petrolia, Strawn, California, and Mexico, Holmes moved to Fort Worth, where he and R. O. Dulaney chartered Planet Petroleum Company. The company became a major driller in the west Texas oil fields, especially at Electra.
Likewise, the Warren Wagner Oil Company was active in the Ranger and Desdemona fields. Wagner also founded an oil field supply company headquartered in Fort Worth.
By 1920 the Holmeses lived at 1944 Hurley Avenue in Fairmount.
Holmes was general manager and vice president of Planet Petroleum. Dulaney was president.
It was in April 1920 that the trouble began.
Warren Wagner wrote a letter to Mrs. Holmes claiming evidence of “misconduct” between his wife and Floyd Holmes. The misconduct, Wagner claimed, had occurred when the two couples were neighbors in Strawn.
Wagner later repeated his accusation to Mrs. Holmes by telephone and in person. He also told Mrs. Holmes that her husband must leave Fort Worth and that “This country is not big enough for both of us.”
Warren tried to persuade Mrs. Holmes to leave her husband.
Floyd Holmes, after being told of Wagner’s threats, began to avoid Wagner. Holmes also began to carry a pistol.
In March 1921 Mrs. Wagner filed for divorce, accusing her husband of cruelty. She sought partition of their community property, valued at $800,000 ($11 million today).
Two months later the crude hit the fan.
Warren Wagner and Floyd J. Holmes moved in the same social and professional circles in Fort Worth, shuttling between their downtown offices and places frequented by oilmen: the Fort Worth Club, the Westbrook and Metropolitan hotels, the Waggoner buildings (father Dan and son W. T.), the Petroleum Office Building. Thus, it would be easy for Wagner to find Holmes.
And just as easy for Holmes to find Wagner.
At 4:30 in the afternoon of May 10, 1921 Wagner was walking on the west side of Houston Street between 6th and 7th streets. He was looking down at the sidewalk as he passed the front of Ladd Furniture & Carpet Company (yellow circle on aerial photo).
Floyd J. Holmes was standing at the passenger side of his car, which was parked in front of the furniture store. He concealed a pistol under his coat.
As Wagner passed, Holmes stepped around his car and fired three shots at Wagner, hitting him in the abdomen and leg. Holmes then sped away in his car.
Wagner was taken to St. Joseph Infirmary.
A few minutes after the shooting, Holmes telephoned the sheriff’s office.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be up in a few minutes” Holmes said. “I’m the man who did the shooting a few minutes ago—my name is Holmes.”
Soon after, Holmes arrived at the sheriff’s office and surrendered the pistol that had been used in the shooting. It contained three empty shells.
A complaint of assault to murder was filed against Holmes. He remained in the sheriff’s office until officers could determine how seriously Wagner was wounded.
Wagner said in his dying statement: “He [Holmes] didn’t give me a chance—he shot me through jealousy.”
When Wagner’s wife came to his hospital bedside he said to her: “I don’t want to talk to you. You done me dirty.”
Wagner died soon after, and the charge against Holmes was upgraded to murder. Bond, set at $10,000, was promptly furnished by, among others, J. B. Googins, manager of Swift packing plant (and father of Elliott Roosevelt’s second wife).
Holmes retained the law firm of McLean, Scott & McLean, which had a high rate of acquittals in murder cases.
(May 10, 1921 was a bloody day downtown. Four hours after and two blocks from the Wagner shooting, J. S. Street was fatally wounded in a gunfight.)
Warren Wagner was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
Mrs. Wagner told a Star-Telegram reporter that she did not know why Holmes had killed her husband.
“I haven’t seen Mr. Holmes in a year,” she said. “We knew him while we lived in Strawn, and he came to our home for dinner only once. While we lived in Dallas I never heard Mr. Wagner speak of him. Nor have I heard him mention Mr. Holmes lately. I can imagine no reason for him killing my husband.”
Mrs. Wagner said that she and her husband had reconciled just before the shooting.
“We had just now reached the place where we could have been reasonably comfortable. And happiness was just beginning to dawn. I was ready to withdraw my divorce suit Tuesday. We talked it all over Sunday night. After we had a long talk Sunday night, Warren came over at 5 o’clock Monday morning, and we talked until 7, when he went to his office. We were in the best humor with each other. I sat on his lap all the time he was here, and he promised to do the right thing by me. . . . At noon Monday I was in his office. He seemed so happy. At that time he repeated to me that he had found himself and that he was glad. . . . Warren cried and said he knew he had been the cause of our trouble and he wanted to make restitution. I pledged him then that I would not push the divorce suit and that as soon as he arranged . . . business matters to my satisfaction that I would withdraw my suit.”
Six hours later Warren Wagner was dead.
Floyd J. Holmes was indicted for murder and again released on bond.
As Holmes awaited trial, he became even wealthier: Planet Petroleum’s twenty-first well came in near Electra. Planet had a large lease there on the land of Samuel Burk Burnett.
As Holmes was about to go on trial in November, his defense attorneys said they would attempt to prove that when Holmes had confronted Wagner on the sidewalk on Houston Street, Wagner made a “hip-pocket” play, causing Holmes to fear that Wagner was about to draw a pistol from his pocket and shot Wagner in self-defense.
The defense also was expected to argue that Wagner had falsely accused Holmes of being “friendly” with Wagner’s wife and that Wagner had written Holmes a threatening letter.
(The “hip-pocket” defense had worked for Luke Short when he killed Jim Courtright in 1887 and for J. Frank Norris when he killed Dexter Chipps in 1926.)
As testimony in the Holmes trial began, Mrs. Holmes testified that Warren Wagner had threatened her husband. Likewise, Wichita Falls oilman L. B. Hammond testified that at the Metropolitan Hotel a few weeks before the shooting he heard Wagner say, “Holmes is the cause of my troubles, and I am going to kill him.”
Hammond testified that a few minutes after Wagner’s threat, Hammond was walking from the Metropolitan to the Westbrook Hotel when he encountered Holmes. Hammond told Holmes of Wagner’s threat, and Holmes turned and walked the other way.
Another oilman, A. M. Wilburn, testified that while he was at the Westbrook Hotel with Wagner in November 1920 Holmes entered the hotel and that Wagner said of Holmes, “That is the ——— I want. He is the cause of my troubles.”
During Holmes’s trial, prosecutors reminded jurors that
- They had only Holmes’s word for his claim that Wagner had made a “hip-pocket play,” causing Holmes to fear for his life. (Holmes had testified: “I shot him [Wagner] because I thought he was going to shoot me.”)
- Wagner was, in fact, unarmed when Holmes shot him.
Indeed, as the jury began its deliberations, the Star-Telegram wrote: “Whether Warren Wagner, slain Fort Worth business man, swung his hand toward his hip pocket an instant before he was shot and killed became the pivotal point Wednesday upon which the jury which is trying Floyd Holmes, oil operator, for Wagner’s death will either convict or acquit him.”
(On the same front page was a story about comedian Fatty Arbuckle being tried for manslaughter in the death of a woman.)
The jury acquitted Holmes on the first ballot. Upon hearing the verdict, Holmes shook the hand of each juror.
For Floyd J. Holmes, life was coming up gushers. Nine months after he was acquitted of murder, his Planet Petroleum sold its holdings in the Electra oil field for $3 million ($47 million today).
Holmes and R. O. Dulaney became even wealthier. Both men used their money to build fine homes. Dulaney also built the Petroleum Building (1927) and the Sinclair Building (1930).
And Holmes bought the Fort Worth Club building. Amon Carter, president of the club, signed the deed over to Holmes. George W. Haltom’s jewelry store occupied the first floor. The club leased space in the building until 1926, when the club built a new clubhouse.
Photo by W. D. Smith in Fort Worth in Pictures, 1940.
In 1923 Holmes renamed the building.
The building later was owned by Holmes’s son Woodrow and then by Ken Davis, father of Cullen, who renamed the building yet again: “Mid-Continent Building.” Today the building, built by William Bryce, houses the Ashton Hotel. (Photo from UTA Libraries W.D. Smith Commercial Photography Collection.)
By 1923 both Holmes and Dulaney were living in Ryan Place, Holmes at 2516 Ryan Place Drive (top photo) in a house designed by Wiley G. Clarkson and built in 1922, Dulaney at 1001 Elizabeth Boulevard in a house built in 1923.
By 1925 Holmes was president of Comet Petroleum and Duho Petroleum with offices in the Holmes Building. Floyd Jefferson Holmes was rich and only forty years old.
Two years later he was dead of meningitis.
Like the man he had killed in 1921, Holmes is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
But trouble was not done with the family of Floyd J. Holmes.
In 1942 the widow Holmes was living in the Forest Park Tower apartments on Park Place Avenue.
On Sunday, January 11, Grover Cole of Harveson and Cole Funeral Home drove Mrs. Holmes to her apartment after services at Broadway Baptist Church.
Building elevator operator G. W. Jolliff later said that Mrs. Holmes returned from church about 10 p.m.
“I took her up to the tenth floor, and in a few minutes she rang for the elevator. When we started down she said, ‘Stop. Go back! Go back! I want to use the telephone!’”
Jolliff said he returned Mrs. Holmes to the tenth floor and waited with the elevator door open for her to go into her apartment, make her phone call, and return.
“She told me to go on, not to wait,” Jolliff said. “I kept expecting her to ring for the elevator, but she did not.”
Jolliff, who kept a portable radio in the elevator, told police that Mrs. Holmes usually asked him about the latest news when she came into the building.
“A while back,” Jolliff said, “she asked me about the war, and I told her what had happened. I don’t remember what it was, but it wasn’t good news, and she said, ‘Isn’t it awful. Sometimes I feel like jumping out a window and ending it all.’”
About six hours later, before dawn, she did.
Alma Holmes was fifty-two years old.
She is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
(Thanks to Eric Fogleman for the tip.)
