Rhyolite’s most famous murder: Mona Bell

A popular spot in Rhyolite that draws visitors is the “grave” of Mona Bell. Visitors leave flowers, booze bottles, trinkets, and high-heeled shoes. As the story goes, Mona was a beloved prostitute murdered by her pimp, Fred Davis. The proper townswomen didn’t want her in the cemetery, so they buried her by the red-light district. Parts of the story are true, but Mona Bell’s grave is in Washington, and the truth is stranger than fiction.

The real story of Mona Bell’s murder has more twists and turns than the story of her fictional grave. It involves multiple aliases, Mona Bell’s husband (not Davis), Davis’ wife (not Mona Bell), an additional murder, jailbreaks, a prison break from Nevada State Prison and bootlegging! I took to period newspapers to unwind from the sad and sordid tale.

(Author’s note: There are many stories about Mona Bell’s murder, often with slightly different information. I used period newspaper articles as references, but even they vary somewhat in the accounting.)

Mona Bell

Mona Bell was born Sarah ‘Sadie’ Isabelle Peterman in Battle Creek, Nebraska, in 1887. At age 18, she eloped to Colorado with Clinton Columbus Heskett (Hesket). Within a year, Heskett feared a jail sentence for forgery and entrusted her care to his friend Fred Davis.

Newspapers describe Mona as pretty, slight, and with a good shape. Nightlife and alcohol hardened her face. She could be sweet occasionally, but “the devil’s light shone in her eye and was in her soul.”

The man of many names

“Fred Davis” has a colorful history. His birth name was Llewellyn L. Felker. Over the years, Felker went by various aliases, including Fred Skinner, Fred Davis, Roy Russell, and “Doc” Russell. (For clarity, I will use his legal name, Felker.)

Felker was born in Barton, Vermont, in 1877. He moved to Seattle with his brother and sister-in-law before entering the Navy and training as an electrician. After discharge, he moved to Butte, Montana, with his sister, Sadie, brother-in-law, and two nephews. On December 14, 1900, police arrested Felker for killing his brother-in-law, Cunningham, who had recently been released from jail after assaulting his wife. As his sister lay sick in bed, Felker claims he witnessed Cuningham pull a knife, and to protect his sister, Felker fired 5 shots. Felker was arrested for first-degree murder and found guilty on March 15, 1901.

Nine months later, on December 9, 1901, Felker somehow gained access to a steel saw and a loaded revolver and broke out from his prison cell. He lowered himself from the window right into the deputy’s arms. Awaiting a re-trial on the murder conviction, Felker again escaped on August 9, 1902. He turned himself in a month later, saying he wanted to go fishing and get some fresh air. Felker’s original charge was reduced to manslaughter in 1903, and the following year, he was acquitted.

In 1905, Felker moved to Colorado and married Anna Goodman. Moving around Colorado, he met Mona’s husband, Heskett.

Rhyolite bound

Abandoning her husband, Mona and Felker left Colorado, moved to New Mexico, and then Fallon, where it is said she was the first working girl in town. The couple left a trail of crimes, including arrests for disorderly conduct and robbing one of Mona’s johns. Fred was acquitted but re-arrested after punching the judge.

To raise $30 for Fred’s bail, Mona moved to Rhyolite. Following Fred’s release, they settled in a shabby adobe cabin on the main street. In 1907, Felker was again arrested for assaulting a judge. Speculation says the bail money came from Davis’s wife, who he abandoned in Colorado.

Adobe Dance Hall

One of the early buildings in Rhyolite was the Adobe Dance Hall. Bob Bynum built the hall in 1905 with stacked stone and adobe. The large hall sat on two lots on the corner of Amargosa Street and Colorado Avenue.

Adobe Dance Hall was in the red-light district. The term “red light” has several possible origins. Some say it was named after the “Red Light House Saloon” (brothel) in Dodge, Kansas. Another theory is that railroad workers left their lit lanterns with a red light outside of the brothel so that they could be found during an emergency.

One side of Adobe Dance Hall was a bar and hall where men could pay for a spin around the floor with a dance hall girl. The other side was four cribs, a step down from the brothels. Prostitutes rented cribs where they lived and worked, often overseen by a pimp. The rooms were sparsely furnished, having only a bed and a few necessities. A busy “working girl” could see up to eighty men an evening. The ladies of the evening used Adobe Dance Hall to socialize with each other.

Was Mona a prostitute? Not all women in the red-light district were working girls; some were dance hall girls, and men paid a fee to take a spin around the dancefloor. Period newspapers called Mona a “Dead courtesan” and said Davis was “the class who live off the earnings of fallen women,” so one can assume she worked as a prostitute.

New Year’s Day

Mona’s first job in Rhyolite was at the Adobe Dance Hall. She and another girl saved money and bought the Mission Bar next door to Adobe, opening the doors on New Year’s Day, 1908.

On January 2, Felker was at the bar drunk and belligerent. He smashed up the bar and beat Mona until she acquiesced to his demands.

In the early hours of January 3, Felker ran out of their shared cabin, crying that he wanted to confess to murdering Mona. Witnesses saw him throw an object into a mine shaft, later determined to be his revolver with 5 spent rounds.

The police were notified and found Mona deceased, wearing a white nightgown, in the cabin. She was kneeling beside the bed, reaching toward a .38 revolver.

Felker was arrested and changed his story several times. One explanation was that Mona killed herself when he threatened to return to his wife. Another variation is that Mona was jealous and shot him twice so he had to defend himself. As Mona had been shot in the back, most assumed Felker shot himself to cover the murder. Upon investigation, the undertaker reported multiple bruises and lacerations at different stages, indicating continued abuse.

Rhyolite Jail

While Rhyolite wasn’t known as a rough and tough Wild West town, it had a fair share of crimes. December 15, 1904, was Rhyolite’s first shooting, where two men fired on each other at close distance. The local physician said the men were good, yet they both ended up dead.

The closest jail was in Bullfrog, which cost $15 per trip to transport prisoners from Rhyolite. Not wanting to pay for the move, In 1907, the county built a jail in the red-light district. The four cells were generally enough for Ryholite’s needs, but they couldn’t hold 49 striking Austrians in Bonnie Claire.

Following his arrest, Felker was held in the Rhyolite jail but moved due to the fear of a lynch mob. They were correct in their assumptions; a posse started the next night only to find Felker had moved out of harm’s way.

“Trial for murder of Mona Bell”

Attorneys Berry & Cole represented Felker and entered a plea of not guilty. The trial was delayed while the court searched for several witnesses. On March 27, jury selections were in progress.

March 30, 1908, after only six hours of deliberations, the jury returned with a guilty verdict on the charge of first-degree murder. Felker had lost his bravado and turned deathly pale upon hearing the judgment. The jury was thanked for their service, and District Attorney McCarren complimented him on his work. Following his term as DA in Nye County, McCarren moved to Reno, serving as a Supreme Court Justice and later State Senator from 1933 until 1954.

It seems Nye County is to regain its name for law and order and put down crime.

Tonopah Daily Bonanza, March 29, 1908

The judge sentenced Felker to 50 years. In 1910, his sentence was reduced to 5 years. On September 28, 1912, he escaped the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. He was arrested at his sister’s San Francisco home on October 12, 1912.

Felker was denied parole twice until he was released in November of 1924 on the condition that he live with his brother in Los Angeles. He remained there for a time, then married again and moved to Las Vegas, where he became a bootlegger. After his release, he moved around and spent most of his time in Reno until he moved to a VA hospital in Washington, where he died.

Mona Bell’s “Grave”

Mona’s husband, Heskett, arrived in Rhyolite within a few days of the murder. He gave a statement to the police, collected her remains and belongings and escorted her back to her family in Washington. The family interred her remains at the Crown Hill Cemetery. Heskett married Sophia Ochs Heskett in 1914 and was married for over 40 years.

Behind the whole ugly affair shines out the real and unselfish love of a real man, the husband of the misguided woman….He comes to her when all the world cast her aside.

Tonopah Daily Bonanza. January 5, 2908

By the time Rhyolite’s beautiful train station was completed, the town was in decline, and more people were departing Rhyolite than arriving. In 1935, Wes Moreland purchased the depot and converted it into the Rhyolite Ghost Casino. Gambling and drinks were on the main floor. Some say that the upstairs brought the red-light district back to life. Following Moreland’s death, his sister Frederica Heisler inherited the depot. In 1953, she moved to the depot with her husband, who was a retired minister and opened a museum and tourist store.

Frederica loved the stories she collected from old-timers, and tourists loved hearing the sordid tale of Mona Bell’s murder. In the 1950s, Fredrica erected a cenotaph, an empty grave, in honor of Mona Bell. Fredrica directed visitors to the grave, saying it was Mona Bell’s final resting place. Future caretakers of Rhyolite continued the memorial tradition. When asked, they questioned if people wanted the legend or the truth; it is almost always the legend people want to hear.

In later years, a group of Red Hats took the memorial under their wing. Swearing to secrecy, they adopted the monument and added a silver cross. “We had champagne and we toasted her and poured a glass on her grave. It was like she was right there with us.”

WANT MORE GHOST TOWNS?

For information on more than five hundred ghost towns in Nevada & California, visit the Nevada Ghost Towns Map or a list of Nevada ghost towns.

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References

• Carlson, Helen S. Nevada Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. University Nevada Press, 1974.
• Find-a-Grave: Columbus Clinton “C C” Hesket
• Find-a-Grave: Sarah Isabelle “Sadie” Peterman Heskett
• Find-a-Grave: Llewellyn L. Felker
• Gamett, James and Stanley W. Paher. Nevada Post Offices: An illustrated history. Nevada Publications, 1983.
• The Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune Jul 14, 1905
• The Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune Jul 14, 1905
• The Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune Jul 14, 1905
• The Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune Sep 29, 1905
• The Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune Dec 29, 1906
• The Goldfield News and Weekly Tribune Apr 3, 1909
• Hall, Shawn. A guide to the ghost towns and mining camps of Nye County, Nevada. Dodd, Mead and Company, 1981.
• National Park Service
• Paher, Stanley W. Nevada Ghost Towns & Mining Camps. Nevada Publications, 1970.
• Pahrump Valley Times: The legend of the Rhyolite grave of Mona Bell
• Pahrump Valley Times: Mona Bell’s grave a Rhyolite tale born of legend
• Patera, Alan H. Rhyolite: The Boom Years. Western Places, 2014.
• Reno Gazette-Journal Feb 20, 1908
• The Sacramento Bee Mar 26, 1908
• Tonopah Bonanza March 18, 1905
• Tonopah Bonanza July 28, 1906
• Tonopah Daily Bonanza Jan 5, 1908
• Tonopah Daily Bonanza Jan 5, 1908
• Tonopah Daily Bonanza Jan 7, 1908
• Tonopah Daily Bonanza January 09, 1908
• Tonopah Daily Bonanza Feb 25, 1908
• Tonopah Daily Bonanza March 27, 1908
• UNLV Special Collections
• The Union December 18, 1920
• Yerington Times Apr 11, 1908

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