The Arkansas Teen Who Shot Her Father’s Killer in Open Court

In 1931, 18-year-old Arkansas native Helen Spence stood up in the front row of a courtroom and shot 30-year-old Jack Worls, moments before the jury was to deliver their verdict in his murder trial. She immediately surrendered, and the only statement she would give was, "He killed my daddy."

Though it’s not confirmed, Helen's story is thought by many to have inspired the 1968 novel True Grit, which was adapted into the 1969 and 2010 movies of the same name. The 2010 film was written and directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen and starred a 13-year-old Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross. She's a young teen from Arkansas who goes to great lengths to chase down the man who killed her father, and she certainly shares a spirit with Spence. The real story, however, is darker, more nuanced and intrinsically tied to a little-known group from the Arkansas Delta called the River People.

Helen was born in 1912 in a houseboat on the White River near St. Charles, Ark., into a community that lived on the water and operated under their own unwritten laws. They fished, hunted and harvested mussels, and they solved their own problems with what was known locally as "river justice." If someone hurt your family, you hurt them. An eye for an eye. 

Her father, Cicero Spence, was on a fishing trip with his wife, Ada (Helen's stepmother, since her own mother had died), when he was shot with his own gun by Worls. He was then dumped in the river, and Ada was allegedly assaulted by Worls and two other men. Worls claimed the shot was in self-defense, but before she died in a nearby hospital, Ada said the shot was unexpected and that Cicero was still alive when he was thrown overboard. 

In 1931, Worls stood trial for the murder, and Helen reportedly watched in a red velvet suit she had sewn herself, with a gun hidden inside. When the judge was addressing the jury and Worls was standing up, she pulled out a pearl-handled pistol and shot him. Worls killed her father, so Helen killed Worls, and it was as simple as that as far as she was concerned. "She showed no remorse," the New York Times wrote. 

Of course, “land” authorities did not see things Helen's way. In October 1932, Helen was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in prison, though she was later paroled. Some reports credit public support with helping to free her, but she wasn't really free at all. Author Denise White Parkinson, who also grew up among the River People and wrote a 2013 book on Helen called Daughter of the White River, noted that parolees in Helen's time were often forced into servitude for wealthy landowners, and Helen's parole had been paid for by a man named W. B. Graham. 

Helen had also been suspected in the murder of Jim Bohots, a restaurant manager she worked for before her conviction. He was found dead in his car and may have been harassing Helen, but she initially denied killing him. However, four days after she was released from prison for Worls’ death and into Graham's servitude, she walked into a Little Rock police station and confessed to Bohots’ murder.

Parkinson suspects her confession was an attempt at escaping forced labor, but regardless, Helen was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10 years at the Arkansas State Farm for Women. The place was nicknamed the “Pea Farm” (short for “penal farm”) and was supposed to be a place that would teach white female inmates how to sew, garden, cook, clean and perform other domestic skills. The theory was that women turned to crime because they lacked feminine qualities, so they could be rehabilitated if they acquired them. In reality, like many of Arkansas' 20th century prisons, it was also a place where inmates were routinely sexually abused by staff, with wardens shipping inmates off to Memphis for prostitution. 

Helen began her sentence in July 1933 and made three escape attempts that fall. In one reported instance, she collected checkered napkins and sewed them into the inside of her prison uniform. During one trip to Memphis, according to some accounts, she turned her clothes inside out and walked out of the bus station undetected, only to be quickly caught again. Each time she was caught, she was punished with lashings from a leather strap called the “blacksnake." 

Her fourth attempt in July 1934 would be her last. The prison utilized the controversial “trusty system,” which allowed inmates like Frank Martin, a convicted murderer, to be employed as prison guards. It was Martin and deputy prison superintendent V.O. Brockman who set off after Helen, and found her walking alone down a country road. Martin shot her through the head, and he and Brockman were both acquitted for the murder. Martin was even paroled later on. (The Arkansas State Farm for Women was shut down just two years later, in 1936.) 

The story made national news, and Helen became something of a folk hero for those living in the Arkansas delta. She's been called the “River Girl,” the “Swamp Princess” and the “Swamp Angel,” and her real story might be even more of a saga than those she possibly inspired. True Grit's Mattie Ross certainly earned her place in film history, but Helen's “true grit” has yet to be fully captured on screen.