The notorious ‘Tiny’ Wainwright

Part four – his sad final years

Former midget auto racer Branch Milton ‘Tiny’ Wainwright lost 85 pounds he was while incarcerated in the Missouri State Penitentiary.  When he was released from prison on the morning of December 5, 1951, ‘Tiny’ had served just over thirteen months, with time credited for good behavior which included blood donations earmarked for the military. 

Wainwright left the Jefferson City prison angry because he had recently learned that his former girlfriend had gotten married.  ‘Tiny’ headed west for Kansas City and stopped along the way to purchase a knife with a 5-inch long blade. Once in Kansas City, ‘Tiny’ went directly to his former girlfriend’s residence with her new husband, a man named Harold McCroskey and pushed his way into their apartment.

As fate would have it three police officers were already in the apartment, questioning Mr. and Mrs. McCroskey about five stolen ladies’ coats, including Mrs. McCroskey’s fur coat. Once inside the apartment, the enraged ‘Tiny’ blindly charged at McCroskey, kicked him and swung his knife.  Police Lieutenant Lester Haupt lunged to grab the knife and was stabbed.

According to a report published in the Daily Capitol News, Wainwright then exclaimed “Hell, Lester I didn’t know you were in here. I’m sorry.” While Haupt went to the hospital to get eight stitches in his wounded hand, the other police officers arrested McCroskey on an outstanding robbery arrest warrant from Beverly Hills California and also took ‘Tiny’ to headquarters for further investigation.      

One would assume that with an assault on a police officer, ‘Tiny’ Wainwright had assured himself a quick return trip to the penitentiary, but somehow, he was not charged in the bizarre incident. 

Weeks later in early 1952, Wainwright was hired as the assistant business agent of the Greene County Teamsters Local 245 union with offices at Springfield, Missouri. By 1954, Wainwright had risen through the ranks to become the union local 245 president and  in that role, was questioned by Joplin Missouri police officers about violence that occurred during the Teamsters union’s attempt to unionize workers at a local Coca Cola bottling plant.

On Thursday June 25, 1958 Wainwright made a disastrous appearance in Washington DC before the United Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (known to generally to the public as the “McClellan Rackets Committee”). 

The purpose of the hearing that day according to Committee chairman Arkansas Senator John McClellan was that “we shall inquire into the effect that the type of leadership in this international union now being provided by Mr. Hoffa and a number of disreputable and questionable characters who are his associates is having on the membership of the union.”

After he was sworn in, ‘Tiny’ who was accompanied by the Teamster union's Washington attorney H. Clifford Allder, was asked several basic innocuous questions by Senator McClellan. The questions included what he did for a living, and the name of his employer, but for each of McClellan’s questions, Wainwright invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as he stated, “I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.”

McClellan was incredulous at ‘Tiny’s’ responses to such basic questions, then he turned the questioning over to Robert Kennedy, the Committee Chief Counsel. Kennedy asked ‘Tiny’ to confirm his criminal conviction history which included a previous publicly unknown one-year probation for a 1934 burglary and payment of a fine for a burglary conviction in 1948. Wainwright again cited his Fifth Amendment rights.

Kennedy then read verbatim testimony given in 1956, to a United States House of Representatives committee, wherein Mr. Ray L. Smith, owner of Ray L. Smith & Son, stated that “he had to pay $650.80 for the period from September 7 to September 28, 1952, as an extortion payment to Mr. Branch Wainwright.”

‘Tiny’ was asked by Committee Chairman Senator McClellan “Do you want to deny the testimony that Mr. Ray L. Smith gave against you as to your extorting money from him?” 

Once again, Wainwright invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, a common tactic used by Allder’s clients. Kennedy then asked if the Missouri-Kansas Conference of Teamsters, headed by Harold Gibbons had hired him in 1952 just a few days after being released from prison. After ‘Tiny’ again refused to answer Kennedy’s last question, the Committee members dismissed him.   

With the bad local publicity generated by his Senate testimony, ‘Tiny’s’ days with the union were numbered and on July 30, 1959 Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa announced that “Branch Wainwright is no longer with the local union," he said, “I immediately notified the local union officials to remove him from the payroll and from any authority in the local."

In September 1961, Wainwright whose weight had ballooned back up to 250 pounds as he lived in Independence Missouri, was arrested again and charged with the theft of $972 worth of women’s clothing after a Shawnee Kansas couple, the Georges, were arrested with stolen clothing which they claimed that “Tiny” had sold them.  

Before the start of his clothing theft trial, ‘Tiny’ and another man Ernest “Ernie” Anderson were charged with the theft of $5,000 worth of furniture from a display home in Overland Park Kansas. Anderson, a former Teamsters official, was the salesman for the builder and allegedly gave ‘Tiny’ the key to the home. “Tiny’ was also charged with the bombing of a $37,500 home under construction in Leawood Kansas that was being built with non-union labor. 

Both his daughter and his former wife were among seven witnesses who testified against ‘Tiny’ in the trial on the charge of grand larceny that began on March 28, 1962 in the Johnson County District Court in Olathe Kansas, but the key witness for the state was Doyle Howard Mace, of Springfield Missouri.

Mace, described as “a former friend of Wainwright,” was brought to the court in Olathe from the jail in Springfield Missouri to testify. Mace testified that he and Wainwright, stole the clothing from an Oldsmobile station wagon owned by salesman J. Gordon Campbell while it was parked in front of Campbell’s home at 7634 Nall Avenue in Prairie Village Kansas. 

Mace testified that on May 4, 1961 he and the ‘Tiny’ each took two bags of the stolen clothing and went to Mace’s home and the clothing was stored in his basement. The net day Mace said that several people, including Mrs. George, whom ‘Tiny’ introduced to Mace as his ex-wife, came to his home to look at the clothing.  

Mrs. George bought $175 worth of the clothing, which she paid for by check, and after Tiny cashed the check, he split the money with Mace. Mrs. George and ‘Tiny’s’ daughter both testified that he told them that Mace was a salesman for the women’s clothing company.

With his cross-examination, ‘Tiny’s’ lawyer attacked Mace’s credibility and claimed that Mace was angry with the ‘Tiny’ and had agreed to testify against him just to get even. Mace admitted that he was upset that Tiny failed to pay him $1,000 that Mace claimed he was owed for his part in Wainwright’s fraudulent $4,500 fire insurance claim for which ‘Tiny’ had already been charged. 

Mace also testified that he had been short changed after other robberies that the pair had allegedly committed, which included the safe robbery at a candy store, theft of two adding machines and a typewriter from an office, and the theft of a $650 refrigerator-freezer from an Overland Park Kansas home.  

On Friday March 31, 1962 the jury convicted Wainwright of grand larceny for the theft of the $972 worth of women’s clothing samples and in accordance with the terms of the Kansas Habitual Criminal Act, ‘Tiny’ was sentenced to a term not to exceed 10 years of hard labor at the Kansas State Penitentiary located in Lansing Kansas. 

With Wainwright free on bond, less than a month later, Wainwright’s attorney filed an appeal of the conviction on several grounds, among them the fact that a juror in the trial was not a resident of the county. 

On December 8, 1962, the Kansas Supreme Court released a ruling that rejected all three points of ‘Tiny’s’ appeal. When it came time to surrender to begin his prison term, on February 8, 1963, 49-year old ‘Tiny’ failed to appear and he forfeited his $8,000 bond.

Six months later he was arrested by FBI agents in Kansas City, Kansas on August 9, 1963 after the agents were tipped that Wainwright would be walking on Minnesota Avenue at 7 AM. Four armed agents surrounded the rotund former race driver and he was whisked to Olathe Kansas where Judge Clayton Brenner imposed sentence and ‘Tiny’ was confined at the Kansas State Penitentiary the following day. 

After serving only 2-1/2 years of his ten-year term, ‘Tiny’ was paroled in March 1966 but he was soon arrested for petty larceny in April 1966 after a patrolman saw him stuff $7.79 worth of steaks in his pockets in a supermarket.  

‘Tiny’ returned to prison on August 11, 1967 after another alleged parole violation in St Louis and he died in prison at 12:15 AM on September 12, 1967, at the age of 55, on the eve of his parole revocation hearing before the Kansas State Parole Board. 

Warden Sherman Crouse said that ‘Tiny,’ aged 55, suffered a fatal heart attack in the prison hospital where he had been confined for several days. The brief obituary in the Kansas City Times noted that “before his conviction for assault in 1949, Wainwright was a well-known midget racing car driver.” 

Branch Milton ‘Tiny’ Wainwright, a decent midget auto racer but a lousy criminal, is interred in Green Lawn Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.

The notorious ‘Tiny’ Wainwright

Part three – 1949 and 1950

Branch ‘Tiny’ Wainwright raced for most of the 1948 season with the Midwest Midget Auto Racing Association (MMARA) a group run by John Gerber as he drove the black #2 Ford V-8 60 powered Kurtis-Kraft midget owned by Lloyd Van Winkle of Lincoln Nebraska. After the racing season ended, ‘Tiny’ was implicated as a member of a 5-man criminal gang that committed nineteen robberies.   

Free on bond awaiting trial, Wainwright was without a ride for the second midget auto race of the 1949 season at the Ce-Mar Bowl in Cedar Rapids Iowa, although it was reported that he had contacted car owner Paul Van Zee and asked to drive the #63 midget. The defending MMARA series champion Danny Kladis driver of the #39 midget, was in Indianapolis in an unsuccessful attempt to qualify the ‘Speedway Cocktail Special’ for the 500-mile race, but his midget car owner Eric Lund stated that he would not put any other driver into his car in Kladis’ absence.  

The featured attraction at Ce-Mar on Sunday afternoon May 22 was the appearance of the “Marvel Man” Don Haynes who had had himself welded inside a 1949 Kaiser Deluxe 4-door sedan. Haynes from Ashland Oregon claimed that he intended to live inside the car for 14 months to win a $25,000 bet with a local farmer.  Haynes was a 39-year-old truck driver and an ex-Merchant Marine so his stunt was also known as the “Seaman of the Sealed Car.’  

Haynes was welded inside his car on February 19, 1949 with chrome bars installed over the windows along with an exercise machine, chemical toilet, folding bathtub, electric shaver, typewriter, radio and a record player. There was no need for a bed, as the Kaiser already featured a rear seat that folded down into a bed. Haynes sponsored by Richard Reinan, the owner of an Ashland lumber mill planned to visit the major cities in all 48 states with visits at Kaiser-Frazer dealerships. Haynes, stopped at Ce-Mar in support of Dan Hunter the local Kaiser-Frazer distributor while enroute to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indianapolis 500-mile race.  

Haynes eventually lost his bet (which after all that time appeared to be a fabrication) when he had the car doors cut open and he exited the car after being inside thirteen months and eighteen days. Haynes had drove a reportedly 110,000 miles, but ended his ordeal because public interest in his stunt waned and no more paid appearances were booked.  Haynes and his wife tried a similar stunt in 1958 as they were welded into a 1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser station wagon but it met with much less success then his earlier publicity stunt.

Tiny drove the John Spach #7 at the Ce-Mar Bowl on May 22, and at Playland Park on May 24 where he finished second in the trophy dash. At Indianola Iowa on June 14 ‘Tiny’ finished seventh in the 20-lap feature, and when the MMARA series visited Davenport on Friday June 17, 1949, Wainwright did not have a ride, but he was scheduled to drive the John Spach #7 midget at Ce-Mar on Sunday June 19. That did not occur because ‘Tiny’ was arrested on Saturday in Columbia Missouri and he was transported by Missouri State Highway Patrolmen to the Cole County jail in Jefferson City Missouri.    

Joe Heninger, an older bachelor farmer who lived in rural Russellville Missouri, alleged that on the evening of Thursday June 16, Wainwright and an unknown accomplice acted as though they had experienced car trouble in front of Heninger’s farmhouse. When Heninger came to investigate, the pair drew guns on him and forced him back inside his home. The pair then used adhesive tape to bind the farmer to a chair and proceeded to ransack his home, while they repeatedly shouted, “where do you keep your money?” When the robbers found no money after several hours, they left bound and Heninger worked himself free from his bonds early Friday morning and called police.

Once ‘Tiny’ was in jail in Jefferson City, police found that he was already under indictment in Moberly Missouri for his participation in an earlier burglary with $315 taken from a food market in Columbia Missouri on March 25, 1948.  Wainwright made his first appearance before Magistrate Foster S Wheatley in Jefferson City at 3 PM on Monday June 20, 1949 and his bail was set at $10,000.  On July 6 a hearing was held in Moberly without ‘Tiny’ who was still in jail in Jefferson City, regarding the 1948 burglary and it was discovered that in addition to his $5000 bond for that case, Wainwright was also out on a $3000 bond on a charge of safe burglary in Dallas Texas.

On July 27, 1949 ‘Tiny’ was released from the Jefferson City jail on a $10,000 bond posted by two Kansas City women, Stella Parke Beatty and Glady Parke Kline. In his next court appearance before Judge Sam Blair on October 3, ‘Tiny’ entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of assault with intent to rob. Two weeks later, his accomplice, William DeWayne Brown, a parolee from Leavenworth who had served 11 years of a 25-year sentence for theft of US mail was identified, arrested and charged.

During his March 1950 assault trial, Wainwright testified that he had driven home to Kansas City from Davenport Iowa, and arrived home in the early hours of June 20, 1949. He said he slept until the afternoon, ate dinner at the Golden West Bar and Grill and then attended a Catholic church carnival until 10 PM. His local attorney, HP Lauf, called ten witnesses that supported ‘Tiny’s’ account, but on March 14, 1950 the jury returned a guilty verdict and recommended Wainwright receive a two-year prison sentence.  

Judge Sam Blair postponed sentencing to allow time for appeal and on April 12 another of ‘Tiny’s’ attorneys, Ed C Orr, requested a new trial on the basis that the entire testimony was not recorded while the trial was in progress and that the prosecution testimony was weak, ambiguous and incomplete. A month later Judge Blair held the appeal hearing and on May 17 ‘Tiny’ was granted new trial over the objections of Prosecutor James T Riley.

While out on bond and awaiting his new trial date, ‘Tiny’ raced Bruce Bromme’s Offenhauser powered ‘big car’ at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in De Moines in August 1950. ‘Tiny’ qualified 14^th fastest in a field of 27 cars with a time of 28.80 seconds.  During the “B” feature, due to rough track conditions the front suspension of the Bromme car collapsed and the car flipped end-over-end as it cartwheeled along and through the inner wooden guardrail. ‘Tiny’ reportedly was thrown free and suffered only facial cuts and bruises.      

On September 7 Wainwright drove the repaired Bromme #77 in the two-day IMCA ‘big car’ program at the half-mile track at the South Dakota State Fairgrounds in Huron, ‘Tiny’ timed in eleventh fastest in time trials with a lap of 29.20 seconds compared to Deb Snyder’s fast time of 24.85 seconds. Wainwiright finished third in his heat race and advanced to compete in the feature race where he finished eighth behind winner by Frank Luptow.

Wainwright’s second trial on the felonious assault charges against Joe Heninger was held October 4, 1950 again before Judge Blair. On October 5, after 2-1/2 hours of deliberation, the second jury found ‘Tiny’ guilty and recommended a two-year sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary. On October 31 ‘Tiny’s’ attorney Ed Orr filed paperwork that requested a new trial, but in open court on November 6, 1950 Orr asked that Judge Blair overrule his appeal of ‘Tiny’s’ second conviction, as his client was out of money and unable to continue the legal battle.

Judge Blair immediately sentenced Wainwright to two years in prison and he was assigned prisoner number 64186 in the Missouri State Penitentiary also located in Jefferson City.  His accomplice in the Heninger assault, William DeWayne Brown, was tried in Howard County on October 26 and the jury deadlocked but in his second trial held on January 18, 1951, Brown was convicted and given a two-year prison term.  

“Tiny’s’ racing career was on hold while he was incarcerated for assault – in the next and final installment we will share the direction Wainwright’s life took after 1951.