Background
The Young brothers, Paul, Harry and Jennings, were well known to the law enforcement officers of southwest Missouri in the 1920s as small-time thieves. Each served terms in the Missouri state penitentiary at "Old Jeff" for burglary and theft, and Jennings and Paul also served terms at the federal penitentiary at Ft. Leavenworth KS. By the late 1920s, the three had become household names with local law officers and had even earned the nickname of the 'Young Triumvirate'" . The local authorities considered the brothers non-violent until June 2, 1929, when Harry Young and an accomplice murdered Mark Noe, City Marshal of Republic, Missouri, after Noe stopped Young for drunk driving. Harry Young then disappeared with his two brothers, allegedly living under a false name in Texas for two and a half years. The brothers established a grand-scale autotheft ring, later described by the FBI as one of the largest of its kind. However, the Youngs still valued family ties, and by the end of 1931, Harry and "Jinx" decided to visit their family farm in Missouri. On January 2, 1932, Sheriff Marcell Hendrix of Greene County, Missouri, received reliable information indicating that the two Young brothers were at their family’s farm near Brookline, a small village not far from Springfield. Hendrix quickly assembled a posse of lawmen and set out for the farm. The ten police officers and one civilian who went to arrest the Young brothers were by today’s standards woefully unprepared for the job; they carried no weapons other than handguns, and most had no spare ammunition on them.
Read more about this topic: Young Brothers Massacre
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