Searching for Family History

Back when I was a kid, my grandpa would always tell me stories about his past and his family heritage. One story that was always brought up was about a man named Clifford Rhea. According to my grandpa, Clifford Rhea was his great grandfather. All that I ever heard about him was that he used to be a wealthy hog farmer, lived in Missouri and had been brutally shot to death in 1921.
I remember doing a report on him in elementary school, but since then, I've only remembered those three main details.

Ever since I moved out to Tennessee, I've been compelled to look up my family's history. My grandpa always mentioned that some of my ancestors had lived in Tennessee. So every now and then I go searching online to find details about my family's history and this elusive Clifford Rhea person, and to find out why he had been shot, by who and if any action was ever taken.

Well, last night I found something. I found a lot of somethings.

I managed to uncover his death certificate, which in the "cause of death" section had been written, "homicide". So yes, he had unfortunately died by the hands of someone else.
His death certificate had also mentioned that yes, he did indeed die in Missouri, in Jackson County at St. Marys Hospital on September 3, 1921.
He had lived in Jackson County for a good 20 years with his wife, Delia (Donovan) Rhea.
Clifford Rhea had been born somewhere in Tennessee.

That's all that I really got from his death certificate .. But it was a very, very good start!

I did a little more searching around and finally came upon some newspaper articles:

Some of the articles mentioned that a Clifford Rhea had been shot to death near the Missouri/Kansas border by William Buckner and Peter Larkin, who were former railroad detectives. One article mentioned that William Buckner and Peter Larkin had shot Clifford Rhea in self defense. Nothing else about why the shooting happened was mentioned in any other article, unfortunately.

The big selling point for this news story was whether or not the homicide had taken place in Missouri or Kansas, since the incident had been so close to the border between the two states. Eventually, a judge ruled that the homicide had taken place in Missouri and William Buckner and Peter Larkin were charged with first degree murder.

So that's that. The mystery has (kind of) been solved. I have copies of newspaper articles and of his death certificate printed out for safe keeping and future use.
Although I don't know why Clifford Rhea had really been shot in the first place, I'm still happy to have found evidence of his homicide.

I've always been interested in history, especially local and family history. I had a fun time searching about and will continue to look up my ancestors as the weeks, months and years go by.