Ambush in Algona

February 19, 1924 had been cloudy and cold, but not bad for the season. Harvey Smart had been late getting away from the store because a leaky refrigerator needed to be fixed. Still, the eight-block walk from his Algona Meat Market would have kept him nice and warm. And the lights as he approached home were surely a welcome glow in the gathering gloom.

Smart’s only warning was the crack of a pistol, then a bullet drilled into his body from behind. Then another. He tried to bring his revolver out and around before a third slug ripped into him and he collapsed to the ground.

Harvey C. Smart was 62 years old when someone ambushed and killed him. Born in Missouri, Smart moved to the area 10-15 miles east of Tacoma around 1896. He became a prosperous farmer, and then opened a meat market in Algona.

The gunshots quickly brought Smart’s wife, Mary, and two others to the scene. King County Sheriff Matt Starwich soon arrived to take charge. No one had seen anyone close by at the time, but deputies did find a set of fresh footprints pacing across a nearby field. Starwich put bloodhounds on the trail, but that led nowhere useful.

A key finding was that the meat shop receipts – a bundle of checks and over $200 cash – were still on Smart’s body. At the time, $200 would buy a well-equipped, recent-model used car, so that was no small sum to leave behind. The sheriff concluded that the incident was a “revenge” killing, rather than an attempted robbery. Based on that theory, Starwich and his deputies sought suspects who might want Smart dead for personal reasons.

One was a husband who supposedly thought Smart had been a bit too friendly with his wife when she called at the shop. That turned out to be an exaggeration, and the man apparently had an alibi anyway. Next up was a petty thief Smart had caught stealing potatoes from his warehouse some four or five years back. Smart had fired a warning shot that hit the intruder in the foot. Although the man was still in the area, that too turned out to be a dead end. Most ominously, they learned that Smart had recently bought beef from an unusual source. When Harvey began to suspect that the cattle had been rustled, one of the sellers warned him to keep his mouth shut.

Some time during this furor, the county hired criminologist Luke May to examine the death bullets. Authorities did not have a suspected weapon, but May could tell them what make and model they should look for. (The file for this old case is thin and incomplete, so we do not have the full report of his results.) Meanwhile, investigators canvassed the neighborhood for leads, but found nothing. A week or so after the murder, Mary Smart posted a $1,000 reward for information about the killing. All to no avail, and the case went cold.

Sheriff Starwich was competent and well-respected, but term limits prohibited him from running for office again at the end of 1926. Claude G. Bannick succeeded him. News reports did not explain why Sheriff Bannick decided to reopen the Smart murder case. But within days of taking office in January 1927, he assigned a special agent to it. He and the agent still mostly accepted the personal enemy theory. However, the agent seemed willing to broaden the notion of an “enemy.”

Over the next six weeks or so, the agent interviewed, and re-interviewed, an ever-widening circle of potential informants. Finally, in mid-March – over three years after the shooting – the sheriff jailed one Harry H. Longfield as a “material witness.” Longfield lived not too far from the Smarts and had been seen in the area on the night when Harvey had been shot. He had no apparent motive … but it was a lead. Longfield perhaps had some connection with rustlers in the area.

The King County grand jury met toward the end of March and testimony began to fill in the blanks. Investigators had interviewed Longfield’s wife Anna at the time of the murder. She said that she’d heard the shots, but had no idea of their significance. Others who heard them were also mostly unconcerned. Maybe someone was trying to scare off a wild animal.

The Longfields were a bit of an odd couple. Anna had been married to well-to-do dairy rancher Charles Paxson. He was from Ohio, she from Wisconsin. They had moved to the Algona area before 1910. The property became Anna’s when her husband died in late 1922. She was supposedly about 54 years old, but might have been older.

Harry Longfield, a former truck driver, was handsome and personable, and known to have “an eye for the ladies.” He worked at the Paxson ranch for a year or two before Anna’s husband passed away. Like Anna, he was originally from Wisconsin and had moved to Washington before 1910. Although he was at least 14 years younger that Anna, he persuaded her to marry him, “promising to give up other women.”

After several days of grand jury hearings, headlines noted that as many as four people might be implicated in the murder. But then the inquiry began to unravel. On April 7, after ten days of testimony from more than sixty witnesses, prosecutors admitted that they had nothing, and “the expected indictments might not be forthcoming.”

Anna Longfield. Harry Longfield after his release from jail.
(Seattle Times news images.)

However, behind the scenes, officials had been badgering one particular witness. They apparently still believed that Harry Longfield had something to do with Smart’s death and that Anna was trying to shield him. Readers all over the region were surely surprised by headlines on April 8th: Anna Longfield finally admitted that she had shot Smart, mistaking him for her husband.

Harry had proved to be an abusive spouse, especially when he’d been drinking. In fact, just weeks before the murder, Anna had told a neighbor that she had a gun and might just go out and shoot whoever was supplying his booze. But, worse than that, she had strong suspicions that he was still romancing at least one of his “former” lady friends.

Finally fed up, on the night of February 19, she had dressed in a man’s clothing and stationed herself where she expected Harry to come by. (It was never reported how she picked the spot.) Sadly, in the dim light of the evening, she had mistaken Harvey Smart for her husband. Only after he fell did she realize what she had done.

In the years since, the memory that she’d shot the wrong man tormented her, although not enough to give herself up. On a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota, she had pitched the death weapon into the Mississippi River. Initially charged with first degree murder, she eventually pled guilty to manslaughter and was given a five to ten year prison sentence. An appeal to the governor for clemency was denied. However, she was among a large block of prisoners granted executive paroles in October 1929.
                                                                                

References: Phil Dougherty, “Starwich, Matthew (1879-1941),” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (November 23, 2016).

Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969).

“[Smart-Longfield News],” News-Tribune, Tacoma, Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Washington (October 1922 – October 1929).

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