On April 2, 1996, at 2:36 a.m., Patrolman Robert D. Counts of the Cape Girardeau Police Department responded to a 911 follow-up call at 620 South Pacific in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The house where Julius Oats was murdered.

The dispatcher had heard someone talking on the telephone, but could not understand what was being said. Many 911 "follow-up" calls end up being a child playing with the telephone. That was what Counts was expecting to find in the two-story wooden frame house as he went up its sidewalk.

He knocked on the door. A voice told him to come in.

Once inside, he saw a somewhat grizzled older male sitting in a recliner holding a telephone.

He saw another man, fully clothed, lying on the living room floor on his back. He had a large stab wound above his left eye. Both eyes were open and glazed. His mouth was partially open. Blood covered his forehead and the floor underneath him. The shirt covering his chest was soaked with blood.

Counts checked for a pulse and for signs of breathing, and found neither. The man was dead.

Counts radioed for assistance. While he was waiting, he noticed another man standing quietly in the kitchen area directly east of the living room. Counts told the man to come out and have a seat on the sofa.

As the second man sat on the sofa, a third man came out of a nearby bathroom. At Counts’ direction, he, too, took a seat on the sofa.

The elderly man in the recliner spoke up. He identified himself and said there were several more people upstairs.

At that time a fourth man came downstairs. Counts instructed him to sit on the sofa, which was getting a bit crowded.

The older man said there was still one more man upstairs.

Minutes later two other officers arrived and Counts and Sgt. Roger Fields went upstairs, where they found another man, James B. Bell, 36, lying upon a bed, covered up to his shoulders with a blanket. He was lying very rigid. Counts noticed his eyes squinting shut several times, as if he were pretending to be asleep.

James B. Bell

"Let me see your hands," Counts ordered. "I am a police officer. Let me see your hands."

At the second request, Bell came fully awake. He sat up in bed with his hands in the air. He was wearing a T-shirt and pants and socks.

Counts asked him his name, and Bell gave a name that ultimately proved to be a false one.

Counts then escorted him downstairs to join the others on the sofa, which by this time had become packed with suspects.

It soon turned out that the house was a flophouse, where a man could buy a bed for a week at $40 per week. The dead man proved to be Julius Oats, Jr., 38. His body bore a deep stab wound to the right chest, plus several slash wounds to the face and neck. He had also suffered a stab wound to his back, a cut on his left forearm, a laceration to his right calf, and two puncture wounds to his genitals.

The six suspects in the flophouse were initially somewhat reluctant to cooperate with the police.

The Major Case Squad was called out.

The murder weapon was located in a drawer in the kitchen. It proved to be a kitchen knife with a 7 3/4 inch blade. It still had blood on its handle.

The suspects on the sofa were split up and interviewed separately. Eventually, the truth came out.

Julius Oats had been a visitor to the flophouse. He was an acquaintance of Bell and owed Bell money.

Earlier in the evening, Bell had gotten a knife out of a kitchen drawer and had sharpened it with a knife sharpener before putting it into his pocket. He had then left the flophouse to go find Oats, but came back without having found him.

Shortly before the 911 call had been made, Oats had come to the house. Right after Oats arrived, Bell demanded of Oats, "Where’s my money at?"

Dissatisfied with the response, Bell grabbed Julius, picked him up and threw him to the floor, then got on top of him, straddling him, and started stabbing him. The stabbing was witnessed by at least two tenants of the flophouse, and others came running when they heard the noise.

When Bell was finished, he got up and asked the flophouse crowd, "Is the man dead, you all?"

He then went into the kitchen, rinsed the knife, returned it to the drawer, then went upstairs where he remained until the police got him out of the bed.

At 8:00 a.m. the same morning, Lt. David James and Sgt. John Volkerding interviewed James B. Bell at the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

Bell first denied involvement in the killing, but eventually admitted that he had killed Oats. Oats had borrowed money from him which he failed to return. Bell said that he had been drinking at the time and only meant to stab Oats in the leg to get him to repay the money. When Oats fought back, Bell just kept stabbing.

Tests of the blood and urine of Oats indicated that the victim’s blood alcohol level at the time of his death was .201 (twice the level of intoxication) and he had cocaine in his system.

On October 28, 1996, James B. Bell pled guilty to second degree murder. On December 9, 1996, Circuit Judge John W. Grimm sentenced him to 30 years in prison.