Lawrence, Kansas, is the destination of Lowell Lee Andrews’s carefully staged alibi journey after he murdered his family. In the account he gave authorities, he had driven there to retrieve a typewriter and see a movie; the trip also carried him past the Kansas River, where he disposed of parts of his weapons. The town thus becomes both a real stop on his route and a setting in the false explanation meant to disguise what he had done.

Setting and Route

Andrews drove his father’s car about forty miles from Wolcott to Lawrence over snow-slippery roads. He stopped on a bridge along the way, dismantled his weapons, and dropped their parts into the Kansas River. The journey combined concealment with the construction of an alibi: after disposing of the weapons, he continued to the town where the University of Kansas is located.

The Alibi in Lawrence

At the campus house where he roomed, Andrews told the landlady that he had come to collect his typewriter. He also gave her a weather-based explanation for the journey’s length, saying the bad roads had made the drive from Wolcott take two hours. The account supplied a plausible purpose and a detail that could make his presence in Lawrence seem ordinary.

He then went to a movie theater. There, uncharacteristically, he chatted with both an usher and a candy vendor. When the movie let out at eleven, he returned to Wolcott. The stops and conversations gave the trip the appearance of a routine errand rather than a journey designed to cover up his crime.

Role in the Investigation

After his arrest, Andrews maintained that he had gone to Lawrence for the typewriter and the movie, then returned home to discover the apparent robbery and his family’s deaths. Detectives doubted his story but listened to it; it remained his account until authorities arranged for Reverend Virto C. Dameron to speak with him in jail. Lawrence therefore anchors the fabricated sequence Andrews offered investigators, while the discarded weapon parts on the route expose the journey’s other purpose.