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| Olympic Peninsula, Forest Structures. National Park Service |
Suddenly, the door swung open, and two armed men entered. This was a stickup, one announced, and they should stand against the wall with their hands up. Some reports suggested that one robber almost immediately swung his weapon around and shot and killed Ray Light. During the trial, however, that proved to be erroneous. Instead, for some time, one gunman threatened the victims while his partner moved around the hall, emptying pockets and grabbing whatever else looked valuable.
Then someone outside the hall saw what was going on, grabbed a shotgun, and took a shot at the man on guard. He returned fire, and one bullet fatally wounded Ray Light. The bandits then fled into the dark forest.
The sheriff was notified, while Light's fellow workers were left to ponder his death. A native of Missouri, Light had become a sawmill worker while he was still in his teens. He moved to the northwest after 1910 and had enlisted in the Army from Ellensburg. After the war, he was stationed in Mayen, Germany as part of the Allied occupation forces. His regiment was inactivated at the end of 1921 and Light returned to find a job in Washington. He was about 32 years old when he was murdered.
The murder-robbery set off a tremendous manhunt, with posses scouring the area for clues and suspicious characters. As it happened, lawmen were already out on the prowl in the area. Coincidentally (as it turned out), the day before the murder, two men had robbed the bank in Sequim, a town about eight miles from the logging camp.
Deputies now believed they were tracking, not “just” a pair of bank robbers, but also at least one killer. About a week later, deputies confronted two suspicious strangers near a bridge about fourteen miles south of the camp. When one man made a break under the bridge, a deputy shot and wounded him so badly he died two days later.
But these fugitives carried loot only from the bank. They had nothing from the logging camp and denied any part in that incident. Now faced with two separate incidents, a question of jurisdiction arose. Was the logging camp in Clallam or Jefferson County? A surveyor was rushed into the dense forest, and he found that the camp was west of the county line.
Authorities then hired private criminologist Luke S. May to sort out the evidence. May’s initial typed log entry said “Sequim bank robbery, fingerprints.” Next to that was the hand-written addendum: “Ray Light murder, Clallam Co.”
He did not have a lot to go on. One bandit had worn a mask most, if not all of the time, he was in sight of the victims. The other was masked at least part of the time. Thus, eye-witnesses were a bit vague in describing the men’s features. They were, however, able to provide good accounts of the intruders’ clothing, build, and movements. May did have the death bullet but, a fortnight after the incident, definite fingerprint evidence at the crime scene was hard to come by.
Finally, nearly three weeks after the murder, deputies captured two men who answered the descriptions. They had made their way to a run-down forest cabin about 65 miles to the west. They had with them several items stolen from the loggers … along with four revolvers. Soon after, many victims positively identified the men as the bandits.
The two initially gave fake names to authorities, but went on trial under the names Thomas H. Riley and Charles Butt. Both listed their occupations as loggers and belonged to the radical International Workers of the World union (IWW). Two years earlier, Butt was incarcerated in Spokane, having been jailed in 1919.
Butt was then secretary of the IWW local in Spokane. The overall issues involving the IWW are far beyond our scope here. However, there was no doubt that some IWW locals openly advocated illegal acts to support their cause. That included arson and bombing, key thefts to hamper a business, and harassment and physical violence against those who hindered their activities. Butt was sent to jail for such advocacy.
Riley’s location in 1920 was unclear because he had been charged with similar activities in Aberdeen, Washington, and had fled the area. Accounts of the trial do not say why the two chose to rob a bunch of poorly-paid loggers at a remote forest location. They gleaned only a few hundred dollars from the roughly fifty men in the hall.
Sadly, my research did not include a copy of Luke May’s full report for this case. But by the spring of 1922, May had handled at least forty death cases. Three-quarters of those involved firearms in some way. For several cases, he had used “individual characteristics” – microscopic scratches and impressions – to identify a particular death weapon.
He surely used those techniques to determine which of the four guns carried by Riley and Butt had killed Light. Fingerprints would have then verified that Riley had been using that weapon. The two were convicted and sentenced to life.
But the story does not quite end there. In late 1922, someone slipped hacksaw blades to the two in the Port Angeles jail. They cut through one bar and Butt – aided by soap on his body – slithered through and escaped. Riley was apparently too big to get between the bars. Despite a snowstorm that hampered the pursuit, Butt was eventually recaptured. In early 1943, the Washington governor commuted their life sentences, but it’s not entirely clear when, or if, they were actually released.
| References: “Langlie Pardons Astound Some,” Seattle Times, Washington (January 25, 1943). |
| “[Logging Camp Robbery-Murder],” Seattle Times, Tacoma Ledger, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (April 15 - December 6, 1922). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| “[Sequiam Bank Robbery],” Bellingham Herald, Olympian, Seattle Times, Washington (April 1-3, 1922). |
| State v. Riley, 126 Wash. 256, 218 Pac. 238 (1923). |
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