‘Sex-Crime Panic’ Examines the Panic Surrounding Sioux City Crimes of 1954
Sioux City
Journal, March 15, 2002
515 Pavonia Street, Sioux City, IA 51102
Fax: 712-279-5059
Email: edi@siouxcityjournal.com
http://www.siouxlandxl.com/Mar131902/books.html
By John Quinlan
Hindsight is 20/20.
A sermon last Sunday by a perceptive priest at my church accurately
dismissed this notion as a pile of dog doodoo, though his words were a bit
gentler.
People, for example, like to talk about the 1950s, the Eisenhower Era, as a
time of peace and prosperity, somehow forgetting the day-to-day horrors of the
Cold War and the Red Scare and the way people routinely treated
"Negroes" and "homosexuals"—those being the kinder terms
applied to those minorities back then. Nasty names starting with "N"
and "Q" were in everyday use along with other variations that would
cause even Archie Bunker to blush. Yet these were the "good old
days."
A fellow named Neil Miller, a freelance journalist who specializes in gay
and lesbian issues, takes a look at those good old days, the 1950s, in Sioux
City specifically, and the result is a disquieting little book garishly titled
"Sex-Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950s."
(Alyson Books, $14.95)
Following the brutal 1954 murders of two children in Sioux City—Jimmy
Bremmers, 8, and Donna Sue Davis, 22 months—the cry went up to rid Siouxland
of its sex maniacs and "sexual deviates."
The police, in an attempt to quell public hysteria, arrested 20 men whom
the authorities never claimed had anything to do with the crimes. Their crime
was simply ... being homosexuals. Labeled as sexual psychopaths under an Iowa
law that lumped homosexuals together with child molesters and murderers, the
men were sentenced to the state mental hospital at Mount Pleasant for an
indefinite time, until they were "cured"—electric shock being part
of the treatment prescribed in 1954.
The fellows in need of a cure included a management trainee at Kresge’s
downtown, a cosmetology student, the owner of a beauty salon in Kingsley, a
man who ran a hair salon in Sioux Falls, a dance teacher at Arthur Murray’s
in Sioux City and a salesman at the Younker-Davidson department store.
"For a moment it seemed as if all the hairdressers and window dressers
from northwest Iowa were there to welcome them," Miller wrote of the
introduction to Mount Pleasant of its two latest patients. It sounds funny but
for the fact that it’s basically true. What happened to these 20 men is a
tragic travesty.
Miller obviously put a lot of research into the book, interviewing the
formerly incarcerated men, the police officials, lawyers, Mount Pleasant
staffers and even relatives of the murder victims; and it’s safe to say that
many of them don’t come off in the best light here, particularly one of the
police officers who reveled in his entrapment of the day’s gay men. Woodbury
County Attorney Donald O’Brien, who later went on to become a prominent
judge, also comes off as a less than admirable character. On the plus side, a
couple of the people who worked at Mount Pleasant seemed remarkably
enlightened for that time.
It’s safe to say the narrow thinking (more from ignorance than anything)
that dominated Sioux City in those days was no different than the fear and
prejudice found elsewhere in the country.
Miller provides enough information on the infamous murders to clearly
demonstrate that the 20 men incarcerated at Mount Pleasant had absolutely
nothing to do with their deaths. The story of prime murder suspect Ernest
Triplett, whose apparent deviant behavior fired the fuels that targeted the
homosexual community, is clearly presented, owing much to Robert Bartels’
incisive book on that case, "Benefit of Law."
The attitudes found in Sioux City in 1954 won’t come as a shock to anyone
under 50 years of age, but it could prove a real eye-opener for everyone else.
What happened to these men, as thoughtfully detailed in "Sex-Crime
Panic," should never happen again.
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