Today, October 3, 2017, The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office announced a resolution to an 80-year-old cold case in Albion. The case involved the murders of Boone County Sheriff Lawrence Smoyer and Boone County Constable William Wathen. They were shot on June 17, 1937 in a field northwest of Albion.
After 80 years to the day after Wathens death, the identity of the suspects are now officially confirmed.
At the time of the shooting, the officers were investigating a suspicious vehicle and trespassing complaint in a cattle pasture reported several days in a row by a local rancher. Both Smoyer and Wathen were shot by two men driving a stolen black 1937 Ford Coupe with Colorado license plates.
Smoyer died instantly while Wathen had survived 108 days before dying from his shot wound on Sunday, October 3, 1937.
The two suspects were Charles Orville Doody and Marion Armstrong Cooley, who are tied to the crime scene by countless articles of evidence.
Both Doody and Cooley were discovered by investigators within three days of the crime but it took over a year to combine enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant for Cooley for a first-degree murder. But, at the time, Cooley was serving his third term for armed robbery in Colorado. According to the laws at the time, Nebraska had to wait until he was on parole in 1948 before they could take him into custody. Once on parole, the original investigators who would have been witnesses were either retired to unknown places, died, or were still in unknown military stationed posts.
As for Doody, a warrant was not obtained because his whereabouts were unknown.
Due to interference with WWII and other circumstances, the investigation into the case and prosecution of the suspects came to a stop.
It was Wathens detailed, written account that provided enough clues leading to the eventual solving of the case.
