The Oklahoma Murder Mystery Behind Dead Woman’s Crossing

I've been down enough Oklahoma rabbit holes to know that sometimes the real story is stranger than anything somebody could make up.

Dead Woman's Crossing, near Weatherford, is a good example.

It's got a murder, a bloody baby, a suspect who died before she could stand trial, and a ghost story that's been hanging around western Oklahoma for generations.

The Unsolved Murder Behind Oklahoma’s Dead Woman’s Crossing

Katie DeWitt James was a 29-year-old former schoolteacher living in Custer City, Oklahoma. Her marriage had gotten bad enough that she filed for divorce and planned to take her daughter and move in with a cousin in Ripley, near Stillwater.

Katie's father saw the two off at the train station in Custer City. He expected to hear from his daughter when they settled, but they never made it to Ripley. When weeks passed without a word, he hired a detective to find her.

That detective followed a pretty disturbing trail.

A Bloody Buggy And A Missing Mother

The detective learned that Katie had met a woman named Fannie Norton while traveling. Norton had extended an invitation to Katie and her baby to spend the night at the home of her brother-in-law in Clinton.

The next morning, Norton and Katie left together in a horse-drawn buggy, with little Lulu Belle along for the ride. They were headed toward the area around Deer Creek, near Weatherford.

Now, before you hop into Google Maps and say, "Wait, Deer Creek is 150 miles north of Weatherford..." I know. That's Deer Creek, the town... This is Deer Creek, the creek.

Witnesses later reported that the buggy disappeared into a field for a while before Norton came back out alone.

Katie was gone.

Even worse, the story says Norton took the baby to the home of a local family, covered in blood.

It's a case of a missing mother, a baby left behind, and a woman who seemed to know a whole lot more than she was letting on.

The investigator tracked Norton down in Shawnee and questioned her about Katie's disappearance. She told them a random man in a covered wagon committed the crime.

For a while, nobody could find Katie's body. Then in August of 1905, a man fishing near Big Deer Creek stumbled across her remains.

She'd been shot in the head, and a revolver was found nearby.

Norton was the prime suspect, but by then she had committed suicide. To this day, nobody has been convicted of Katie's murder, and all we have left is the ghost story.

Does Katie DeWitt James Still Haunt Dead Woman's Crossing?

The murder gave the place its name, but the ghost stories gave it a life of their own.

Today, a bridge crosses over Deer Creek just northeast of Weatherford, and the spot is now known as Dead Woman's Crossing.

According to the legend, people have reported hearing the sound of a horse-drawn buggy rolling through the area. Others say they've heard a woman calling out for her little girl.

Having spent plenty of time in Weatherford - Go Bulldogs! - I wish I could tell you about my experience at Dead Woman's Crossing... But I haven't been there. In fact, I'm not going out there. While I don't believe in ghost stories, I'm also what my mom occasionally calls a "chicken liver."

Chalk it up to a childhood spent getting dragged to every haunted house in four states.

Dead Woman's Crossing has been tied to Katie's name for more than a hundred years, and the details of her murder are disturbing enough without adding anything to them. The ghost stories are part of the legend, but the tragedy that started it all really happened.

And, to me, that's what makes this the scariest ghost story in all of Oklahoma.