Curley Johnson

Curley Johnson was an outlaw who ran with Blackie Thompson and became an early link in the conspiracy to bomb Bill Smith and Rita Smith’s home. His place in the account is defined by two absences: he did not carry out the bombing, and he died before investigators could question him about it. His reported knowledge made that death a consequential obstacle in the search for evidence against William K. Hale.

Identity and Connections

Johnson was associated with the stickup man Blackie Thompson. He also knew Henry Grammer, according to the account of the witnesses White’s team pursued: a safecracker later identified Johnson as an associate of Grammer. These criminal connections brought Johnson into the orbit of the Smith house bombing plot, though the evidence does not establish that he personally designed or planted the bomb.

Role in the Smith House Bombing Plot

Ernest Burkhart said Hale first approached Johnson and Thompson to carry out the killing. In a later statement, Burkhart recalled that Hale told him to find out how tough Johnson was and whether he wanted to make money on a job targeting Bill Smith. Burkhart’s account then placed Johnson and Thompson among those who could not do the job; Hale turned instead to Al Spencer, and later to Grammer, who said Asa Kirby would do it. Johnson’s role, as Burkhart described it, was therefore an early recruitment attempt in a chain of failed approaches, not participation in the completed bombing.

Death and Lost Testimony

During an interrogation, Dick Gregg urged investigators to find Johnson, claiming that Johnson knew all about the Smith house bombing and would talk if forced to do so. But Johnson had died suddenly less than a year earlier; the reported explanation was poisoned alcohol. His widow believed he had been deliberately poisoned by Hale and his associates. That suspicion was not presented as established fact, but it sharpened the pattern troubling White: potential witnesses who might connect Hale to the crimes were dead, leaving investigators without Johnson’s testimony to test Gregg’s claim or clarify the plot’s early stages.