Love, loss, and legal battles: the intertwining tales of two family shootings

Two family disputes 50 years apart result in shootings. While one husband is wounded but hopes his wife will return home, the other is on trial for murder after his wife’s suspected lover is shot and killed.

Poplar Bluff also prepared in 1925 for a new way to license vehicles and the demolition and then new construction of Hillcrest Pool in 1975.

100 years ago

Feb. 4, 1925

• A new way of distributing state auto licenses is being touted as an improvement, as it will allow for the sale of tags to be established at many points across Missouri. The local distributor will be Justrite Oil Company, a filling station on Poplar Street, between Fourth and Fifth streets. Instead of writing to Jefferson City for tags and waiting many days, residents will have them in a few minutes. The first new 1925 green and white auto licenses were seen Monday.

75 years ago

Feb. 4, 1950

• Approximately 600 attended the trial today of a Doniphan street commissioner accused of fatally shooting a local barber. Ron Christian was freed on a $7,500 bond. Testimony was presented by Sheriff Jim Featherstone regarding information Christian shared following the shooting. Christian had said Sperry was breaking up his home and had been “hanging around” his home for 12 months. Mrs. Christian would go to Sperry’s when her children were at home and the Sperry would come to their home when they weren’t.

Christian said he was eating breakfast at the table on the morning of the shooting when he noticed his wife looking out the window of their home, and that Sperry was in the window of his home next door. “Christian then took his shotgun with the idea of committing suicide,” the sheriff reported. “He drove around town some time and decided against taking his own life because of the love for his children.” He decided to talk to Sperry again, and during the conversation shot Sperry at least twice.

• J. Minnie Smith school is overcrowded and far inadequate, educators say after 45 pupils have to be transferred by bus to Williamson-Kennedy. “The east part of the city is a fine community and one which real estate men say will grow with ‘leaps and bounds’ when the flood danger is removed,” officials say, speaking of a circle levee under construction in that part of the city to protect homes from the Black River. It is proposed that additions are needed at J. Minnie Smith and Eugene Field schools, as well as Mark Twain and the high school.

“If we can provide the additional room in these four installations immediately, it will take care of the ever-increasing number of new 6-year-olds which are expected to start to school during the next few years,” the report says.

• A 28-year-old worker from the veterans hospital was shot and slightly injured the night before by his father-in-law following a family argument. Leo Zarattani and his wife of three months, Norma, were arguing and had been separated for five days, police said.

The couple was inside a home. The wife communicated to her father that her husband was armed. It was reported that her father, Louis Berry, retrieved his own shotgun from a vehicle and shot through the door of the home. His son-in-law was struck in the arm. Berry then turned himself and his weapon in at the police station.

“It was all just a family affair. I’m not sure who shot me and I do not want to prosecute,” Zarattani said this morning, adding of his wife, “I’d like to see her again.”

50 years ago

Feb. 4, 1975

• John D. Henson was sworn in Feb. 3 in the Butler County Circuit Courtroom by his brother, circuit Judge Rex Henson. Henson was appointed by Gov. Christopher Bond to fill the unexpired term of magistrate Jack Jolly, who died in December. His term will run until the general election in November 1976.

• The Poplar Bluff City Council voted to renovate Hillcrest Pool, at an estimated cost of $195,320. The proposal by city manager David Pence includes demolition of the current pool and construction of a new pool and bathhouse.

• Following a steep decline in the nation’s economy in the fourth quarter of 1974, President Gerald Ford predicts more high unemployment and inflation in the first half of 1975.

“The American economy was built on the basis of low-cost energy... this era has now come to an end,” Ford said.