The Life and Legacy of May Walker Burleson: Suffragist and Murderer (1888–1957)

“Jennie” May Walker Burleson, suffragist, amateur archeologist, socialite, and murderer, was born on October 22, 1888, in Galveston, Texas, to John Caffery Walker, Sr., and Clara Waters (Wilson) Walker, members of a prominent coastal Texas family. When Walker was eleven years old, she lived through the Galveston hurricane of 1900, and she later wrote an account of her family’s experiences during the storm. She wrote that her father aided in the work of removing the corpses in the streets to be burned and that she was haunted by the “awful stench of burning bodies and decaying flesh.” Walker attended the Chase Normal School in New York, where she earned a teacher’s certificate in 1908.

She married Richard Coke Burleson, a captain in the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department, on December 9, 1908. A West Point graduate and member of a prominent San Saba family, Richard was the grandson of state geologist Richard Byrd Burleson and grandnephew of Baylor University president Rufus C. Burleson. His marriage to Walker had to be moved up from a later date because he was suddenly called to help oversee the evacuation of U.S. forces from Cuba. Rather than the planned, elaborate ceremony befitting a high society couple, the two wed in a small ceremony at the Walker home in Galveston and soon departed for Havana. After Cuba Richard was posted to Manila in the Philippines from 1909 to 1911. There May Burleson worked as the supervisor of art for Manila public schools. Richard was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio in 1911 and then at Fort Myer outside Washington, D.C., the following year.

Arriving in Washington in late 1912, Burleson soon became active in the woman suffrage movement. Around this same time, the National American Woman Suffrage Association began planning a woman suffrage parade in Washington for March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration. The Woman Suffrage Procession, organized by suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, was to proceed from the Peace Monument outside the U.S. Capitol Building, down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Treasury Building and the White House, and then on to the Continental Hall. Burleson was appointed grand marshal of the procession. She rode a black horse ahead of the procession’s herald, Inez Milholland, riding a white horse. The police failed to provide adequate protection and crowd control. Soon after the procession began, rowdy crowds rushed into the street and mobbed the procession. Burleson had to remain calm and keep control of her horse under steady harassment until cavalry from Fort Myers arrived to push back the crowd and clear the way for the parade to finish its march. Due to the failure of security for the procession, Congress launched an inquiry, for which Burleson provided testimony, into the conduct of the police.

Burleson remained active in woman suffrage efforts on the East Coast. In 1914 she spent three months in New York to assist in the campaign for passage of a woman suffrage amendment in that state. She notably travelled, on horseback with the Second Battalion of the Third United States Field Artillery, the 300 miles from Fort Myers to New York. Earlier that year Burleson enrolled as a student at George Washington University, where she was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, to study sociology and economics.

Richard’s assignment to Fort Myers ended in 1916. Later that year, following Pancho Villa’s raid into New Mexico, he was deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border to defend against future incursions. During World War I Richard was stationed in France. In September 1918 he was promoted to colonel and assumed command of the 107th Field Artillery Regiment, which he led in two major Allied offensives. In summer 1919 Burleson travelled to Europe to rejoin her husband. When his assignment to France ended the following January, however, she remained in Europe for a seven-month personal tour and returned home in September 1920.

In the mid-1920s Richard was posted to the Army War College in Washington, D.C. Burleson resumed her place in Washington society life. She became actively involved with the Democratic party and was elected to the board of governors of the Women’s National Democratic Club. Burleson also undertook the study of archeology, and from 1926 to 1934 she participated in several expeditions, particularly to Monte Albán in Oaxaca, Mexico, under the leadership of Mexican archeologist Alfonso Caso. In addition to these months-long expeditions, she also gave lectures on archeology in the United States. Throughout their marriage, May and Richard Burleson often spent long periods of time away from each other. Burleson often delayed joining her husband when he moved to new postings. She also frequently left for months at a time to attend to her own social, civic, political, and intellectual pursuits or to visit her mother, with whom she was close. The couple had no children, and Richard later attested that physical intimacy was rare in their relationship.

In 1926 Richard was posted to Paris. During this assignment, he engaged in an affair with another woman. Burleson discovered the affair, which Richard ended, and the two entered a period of separation. Returning to Fort Sam Houston in 1928, Richard began an affair with a woman named Ella Pendergast Roberts. Nevertheless, he and Burleson were reconciled in 1930. In San Antonio May Burleson was inducted into the Army Civilian Club in 1930 and helped found the Alamo City Woman’s Democratic Club alongside Mary King Robbie in 1932. She was an alternate delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where John Nance Garner, for whom she had enthusiastically campaigned, was nominated for vice president. In 1933 Richard was posted to Boston, where he began an affair with Isabelle Riese Knowlton. Intent on marrying her, he demanded a divorce from his wife, which Burleson refused to grant, and he began making threats against her life unless she relented. These threats prompted Burleson to call the police on her husband in February 1935, after which the couple permanently separated.

In September Richard Burleson brought a divorce suit against May Burleson in San Saba—she vigorously contested. The bitter trial lasted for a year and a half and, in the words of former Kean University Dean T. Felder Dorn, ranked “among the most bizarre proceedings in the annals of marital litigation in the United States.” Proceedings began in November, but Judge Lamar Thaxton soon granted a continuance to April 1936. During the trial, Richard accused her of cruelty and neglect during their nearly three decades of marriage and blamed her for preventing his promotion in the U.S. Army. To this later point, while May Burleson had written to his superiors about their marital strife and his abusive behavior, she had also aided her husband’s career on many occasions through her social connections. She maintained that, except during periods of her husband’s infidelity, which she blamed on the influence of his mistress, their marriage had been a happy one and that she desired reconciliation. Jury misconduct led Judge Thaxton to call a retrial for fall 1936. Frustrated by these delays, Burleson fired her lawyers, who included State Representative J. Franklin Spears. Her finances were strained not only by the drawn-out proceedings, but by Richard’s failure to give her the monthly payments of $200 that he had promised to help support her following their separation.

Burleson’s mental health also deteriorated during the trial, and she was treated at various mental hospitals from 1935 to 1939. One such period of institutionalization resulted in the new trial being delayed until April 1937. During this final hiatus, Burleson was assaulted by Richard when she attempted to visit him at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. During the April 1937 trial, Burleson, now represented by Sam D. W. Low, filed a cross action requesting that her husband’s suit for divorce be denied and that a divorce be granted to her instead. Although she was granted this divorce, she later petitioned that this decision be set aside. Her petition was dismissed by the San Saba court on October 19, 1937. The following day her mother died, an event which Burleson blamed on the lengthy divorce proceedings. From fall 1937 to spring 1939 she entered a period marked by bouts of depression, financial difficulties, and conflict with her brother Richard C. Walker over the settling of her debts and their mother’s estate.

In 1938 Richard married Knowlton, on whom Burleson seemed to blame her misfortunes. In March 1940 Burleson traveled to Columbia, South Carolina, where Richard was then posted. On March 7, after learning that Richard and his new wife were staying at the Jefferson Hotel, Burleson booked a room at the hotel under a false name. The following day she waited, with a loaded handgun concealed in her bag, in the hotel’s lobby. Knowlton returned alone to have lunch in the hotel’s cafeteria, where Burleson shot her twice, killing her.

Burleson went to trial for murder in May 1940. She sought acquittal on grounds of temporary insanity and was found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter, with the jury recommending mercy in the sentencing. She was sentenced to twelve years in prison and incarcerated at the South Carolina State Penitentiary’s women prison. Burleson was outraged with the length of her sentence and refused to pay her lawyers, who sued her to force the payment of their fees. She was released in 1948 after serving eight years of her sentence. During her incarceration, she was visited by Gertrude Thurmond, sister of Governor Strom Thurmond, and upon her release from prison, Burleson became a vocal supporter of Governor Thurmond, who was then running for president. After the murder of his second wife, Richard married Ella Roberts, another former mistress, and retired from the military early in World War II. He and his third wife left Texas following Burleson’s release from prison.

Burleson returned to Galveston, but she was unable to resume her former life as a socialite. Her crime had left her socially alienated, and her relations with her family remained strained. She died in Galveston on August 30, 1957. In her will Burleson left the Walker house to the city of Galveston for use as a cultural center, with the caveat that it could be used by White cultural groups only. The gift was not accepted, as an earlier property agreement between Burleson and her brother Richard ensured that the home reverted to him upon her death. Burleson was buried in the Walker family plot in Glenwood Cemetery in Houston.