During the three-day trial in Meridian, Wagner himself was the only person the defense put on the stand. The prosecution put the widow of the slain deputy, a justice of the peace and Former Greene County Sherriff C.T. McLeod who was sheriff when Wagner shot Deputy McIntosh on the stand. Contrary to Wagner’s testimony, Sheriff McLeod testified that no shots were fired before Wagner shot and killed Deputy McIntosh. The jurors split on how some wanted a verdict. Some wanted to acquit, some wanted to convict him of a lesser charged than murder, but the judge did not give them the option of a verdict less that murder. He instructed them to either convict him of murder or to acquit. They convicted him of murder. On October 30, 1926 the judge sentenced Kinnie to life in prison for the murder of Deputy Murdock McIntosh.
While in the Lauderdale County jail awaiting his transportation to Parchman, Kinnie wrote a letter to the Amelia Hoke who was staying Vicksburg after the trial. He asked her to bring him a white shirt and a plug of Spark Plug chewing tobacco. When she arrived the next day, he told her that he had planned to ask her to marry him. The white shirt was for the wedding if she accepted, but he changed his mind, because he didn’t want to marry her inside a jail. Amelia vowed to wait for Kinnie and returned to Vicksburg.
Cotton picking was in full swing when Kinnie arrived at Parchman. Prisoners were awakened at three o’clock in the morning. After an early breakfast they were transported to the field to wait for daylight when they began to pick cotton. Quitting time was sundown. When Kinnie Wagner entered Parchman, he was a near physically perfect specimen of a man. He stood six foot two and weighed about two hundred and forty pounds. Not an ounce of fat was on his frame. Prison life robbed him of his health, and he eventually developed heart disease.
With Kinnie’s family living in Virginia, he had few visitors at Parchman. Only relatives were allowed to visit and their visits were rare. The one person he wanted to see so badly was not allowed to visit. Amelia Hoke traveled from Vicksburg every visiting Sunday from December 1926 until April 1927 to visit Kinnie, only to be turned back at the gate. She returned to her home in Missouri determined to try again to visit Kinnie. That visit never happened.
Kinnie was a model prisoner at Parchman. He played by the rules and won the respect of prison officials. Regardless of how hard a prisoner tried to obey the rules at Parchman on those days, sooner or later they are introduced to Black Annie. Kinnie was no exception. He found himself of the receiving end of the six-foot bull whip more than one time.
After a year in Parchman, Kinnie planned his first escape. He contacted friends in the free-world to place guns where he could find them near the farm. Kinnie and his escape partner were riding on a wagon hauling corn from a field. When they reached the place where the guns were hidden, they jumped off, found the guns and ran toward a barn where the mules were usually housed. But there were no mules in the barn. They were either at work or in the pasture. They had no choice but to run. It had been raining, and the heavy Delta gumbo mud attached itself to their shoes like glue. It became thicker with each step. His buddy soon gave up from exhaustion. Kinnie engaged the guards in a gunfight and took a bullet in his shoulder and arm. With blood streaming from his wounds, Kinnie surrendered to an unarmed guard named Mr. White. Kinnie was returned to Parchman and punished for his escape. But Kinnie Wagner’s wit and charmed eventually earned him trusty status.
Kinnie was serving as a trusty guard and dog handler. When a break occurred on October 7, 1936, he was on the chase. While searching for the prisoner Kinnie made his second escape and was not captured until April 16, 1943. He did whatever his had to elude the FBI for the seven years he was on the lam after his second escape. At time he lived off the land. He stayed with friends and used different aliases. He eventually made his way back to Virginia where the he love of his life visited a few times. Finally the FBI learned that they were rendezvous at a certain place and nabbed him before Amelia arrived at their meeting place. Mississippi authorities came and transported him back to Parchman.
Incredibly, Kinnie again earned trusty status. On the night of May 7, 1948 Kinnie Wagner walked off Parchman for his third and final escape. He lived as he had always lived as a man on the run until he settled on Kemper County, near the small town of Wahalak. Early in the morning of January 29,1956, twenty two uniformed Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) officers, handpicked by the MHP Chief Gwin Cole, along with Cole himself and Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner, Col. T.B. Birdsong gathered at Briggs Five Points General Store in Scooba, Mississippi. The officers traveled to a shack in Wahalak where Wagner had been living for several months. The twenty four top police officers took no chances. With their weapons drawn, two of which were snipers, Col. Birdsong called for Wagner to surrender. Kinnie was now fifty three years old and in failing health after suffering two heart attacks. He had spent most of life in jail or on the run, and he was tired.
At five o’clock in the morning, in the pouring rain, Kinnie Wagner walked out and called to Col. Birdsong. “Okay T.B. Ya’ll don’t get excited,” and gave himself up to the commissioner. It was his last hurrah.
MHP officers immediately transported him back to Parchman where he died of a heart attack two years later. Kinnie Wagner spent a total of thirty one years Parchman. His last request was that he not be buried at there. He is buried next to his mother in the mountains of Virginia.
During the 1920s, my mother lived in Lucedale, Mississippi for a short time as her father worked for the GM&O Railroad there. When she learned of Wagner’s capture in Kemper County, not far very far from where we live in northern Newton County, she told me the story that when she was a child, she was terrified of Kinnie Wagner. She was upset when she learned that he had been living in a neighboring county at the time of his capture. Evidently my grandfather was one of those who believed Kinnie Wagner needed a rope around his neck. But then, so did many others who had small children in south Mississippi.
Kinnie Wagner was probably harmless except to anyone who had him cornered, or to anyone who he believed proposed a threat to him, but he killed five men in his life. One would be hard pressed to convince the families of the five men that he killed, that Wagner was anything less than a murderer. And if one had lived in an area where Wagner might have been hiding out, it would have been only natural to assume the worse, and caution their children about a man with his record of killing.
Murderer or victim? There was probably only one person on this earth who could have truthfully answered that question, and that was Kinnie Wagner. Or could he?
