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| Early Yakima Valley. Library of Congress. |
Born and raised in Illinois, Claude Labbee married and fathered a daughter there. The family moved to the Yakima Valley around 1902, when Claude was about twenty-three. Soon after, the couple had a son. In the fall of 1919, Claude was involved in an altercation with a Yakima County deputy sheriff. The officer had come to retrieve Claude’s three-year-old nephew, who had been spirited out of Idaho in a divorce dispute. Claude, who apparently went armed on a regular basis, threatened the deputy with what newspapers called “a large revolver.” Then he simply drove off after allowing the officer to read the custody writ to him aloud. Reports said charges would be filed, but there was nothing in the news about any follow-up.
Claude did well enough to have his own farm operation by the time of the 1920 census, although the property was rented. His situation probably improved when his daughter married in the summer of that year.
Arthur and Odessa Wright, both born and raised in Iowa, married there in 1904. He was about twenty-four, she a year younger. Arthur ran a farm operation on leased land, with some success. The couple – they had no children – moved to the valley between 1910 and 1920. Whatever the initial arrangement, their spread near Harrah was mortgage-free by 1920.
On June 17, 1922, Arthur, Odessa, and Claude all attended a Saturday evening dance in Harrah. At some point, Claude asked Odessa for a dance. (His wife was apparently not there. She died in the Yakima hospital less than a year later.) Odessa refused, and Arthur saw something that led him to later declare that the real trouble started right then. The following Tuesday was warm and muggy, with temperatures in the high eighties under cloudy skies. That evening, apparently by pre-arrangement, Odessa met Claude near the Wright horse corral. The story of what happened next depends upon who did the telling.
Arthur Wright, in his dying statement, declared that Claude had shot him “as soon as he stepped out of the house.” Naturally, Claude said that Arthur opened fire first. Each man was hit three times, Arthur going down from his wounds. Then Claude turned and shot Odessa.
Local investigators never displayed a diagram of the crime scene, so the exact position of the victims is unclear. However, later testimony confirmed that Odessa fled the immediate scene when the shooting started. She was returning when Claude shot her. The consensus view was that he wanted to eliminate the only actual eye witness, but there might have been more to the story. The other potential witness was a hired hand working for Claude. He was not, however, close enough to have a good view in the gathering dusk. Nor do we have an adequate explanation of why he had accompanied his boss to the rendezvous.
Arthur suffered almost a week before he died from wounds in the leg, abdomen, and head. Most of that time he was too weak to say much. Odessa, hit in the forehead, remained coherent long enough to say that Claude had shot her and Arthur. She then lapsed into a coma from which she never recovered. (Doctors would not risk trying to remove the bullet in her brain.) A week after the affray, Claude was well enough to be released from the Yakima hospital to the county jail. The sheriff might have pushed that a bit because rumors suggested that neighbors might “come after” the shooter.
Records show that Luke May and another agent were in the valley at the end of August. (The file is rather skimpy for this old case, so it’s not clear exactly when he was hired.) In Yakima itself, no one seemed to know much. The agent “visited two cigar stands and card rooms” looking for information, but found only “passing and very general knowledge of the crime or its principals.” Of course, it’s quite possible that locals would not share more than that with an outsider.
Claude went on trial in mid-November for the murder of Arthur Wright. Testimony soon established that Claude and Odessa had been having an affair “for a number of years” prior to the shooting incident. Did Arthur suspect … and see something at the dance to confirm his suspicions? Or was Odessa trying to break it off? With Arthur dead and Odessa incapacitated, only Claude could have his say. He claimed that Odessa had asked him to come over to be a “peacemaker” between she and her husband. But he apparently could not quite recall what he was supposed to help make peace about.
The hired hand testified that Claude had been the aggressor in the shootout, and had promised him “a job for life” if he would say that Arthur fired first. But the jury must have judged him to be an unreliable witness. They decided that, with bullets flying both ways, Claude’s self-defense claim was justified. They issued a not guilty verdict the same day that Odessa Wright finally died from her head wound.
The acquittal aroused tremendous anger in the community. The sheriff received many anonymous phone calls expressing that rage. He had already received a note that said Claude would be lynched if he didn’t “get the limit” as a penalty. None of the callers made such threats, but rumors persisted after the acquittal.
A few weeks later, that anger was somewhat deflected when Claude was charged with murder in Odessa’s death. Claude had initially claimed that she had been hit by a stray bullet from her husband’s gun. But Arthur used a .32-caliber weapon, while Claude’s was a .25-caliber. After her death, examination quickly established that she had been hit by a .25-caliber slug. There’s no evidence that Luke was asked to specifically link the bullet to Claude’s weapon, probably because that wasn’t really needed.
The defense tried to claim that Odessa was wounded accidentally, “in the heat of the moment.” However, the trajectories of the various shots made that unlikely in the extreme. As suggested above, Claude probably wanted to eliminate the only eye witness to the shooting. In the process, he could also snuff out the one person who might reveal first-hand knowledge of their illicit affair.
The jury found Claude Labbee guilty of second-degree murder and he received a 10 to 25 year prison sentence.
| References: Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| State v. Labbee, 134 Wash. 55, 234 Pac. 1049 (1925). |
| “[Wright-Labbee News Items],” Daily Ledger, Tacoma, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (October 1919 – April 1925). |
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