George Seldon Spencer was born in 1894, in Puyallup, Washington, about ten miles southeast of Tacoma. His father, a carpenter, died when George was around fifteen years old. By around 1915, he and his two brothers, William and Albert, had found work as longshoremen on the Tacoma docks. But in March of that year, George pled guilty to grand theft, auto. He received a stiff 15-year sentence to the state reformatory, but was out within a year or so. At first, George seemed to have learned his lesson, and became a star on a semi-pro baseball team made up of longshoremen.
But he had not cut his ties with the underworld. In early 1918, Tacoma police arrested him for aiding in an escape from the Pierce County jail. When the case came to trial, the jury took less than a half hour to find him guilty of “harboring a criminal.” The judge imposed a 2 to 10 year sentence, and the 1920 census found him languishing in prison at Walla Walla. He apparently served around four years of his term.
Elliott Lyons was born about a decade after George Spencer, in Kentucky. His mother died a year or so later and the family fragmented some. Elliott was living with an uncle at the time of the 1910 census. His father remarried in 1912. Soon, the family reassembled and moved together to Tacoma, where the father opened a cigar store. However, for whatever reasons, the store did not enjoy long-term success.
By the 1920 census, Elliott’s father was working in a shipyard as well as driving a dairy truck. An older son had also found a shipyard job. A year later, when Elliott was about 17 years old, his father died.
Elliott first made the news on Christmas of 1924, after he was arrested for a public disturbance brought on by liquor. In the “spirit of the season,” a police detective had released the young man after a few hours in jail. Elliott promptly tracked down the arresting officer and challenged him to take off his badge and fight. Forbearance ended right there, and Elliott went back to the clink.
By 1928, Elliott no longer had much contact with his stepmother and siblings. He also seems to have become quite familiar with the seamy side of life. He even had a nickname: “Bones.” Although often associated with dice and floating craps games, the moniker can also have far more sinister connotations. Thus, young as he was, he had the reputation of being a dangerous man. He was certainly known as a “bad drunk,” becoming testy and argumentative when he was liquored up. Whether or not the “dangerous” label went beyond that is not clear.
 |
| Tacoma Boardinghouse, ca. 1926. Tacoma Public Library. |
In any case, word on the street was that he’d been involved in a number of shady deals under phony names. Elliott did spend time in jail for various minor offenses, but he’d never been caught in anything big. Thus, his name was not particularly familiar to police.
That disclaimer did not, however, apply to George Spencer. Over the years since his release from prison, he had been in and out of jail quite a few times. Most were for liquor law violations, or disorderly conduct when he over-indulged in his product. Thus, newspaper reports would refer to him as a “well known police character.” Some time before the spring of 1930 George and Elliott became friendly enough to be drinking buddies.
It’s worth mentioning that George’s brothers were still gainfully employed as longshoremen. Albert had even been promoted to foreman. Meanwhile, Elliot’s older brother had followed their dad’s path into the dairy business and was doing quite well.
On April 2, 1930, the drinking started in the afternoon at a roadhouse near Tacoma. The cook there later testified that “Bones” started the ball rolling with his own bottle of moonshine. He shared most of that with Spencer and three others, including the cook. George and Elliott went on from there to other hot spots where they could get more booze. By that evening, Elliott was too drunk to drive. He might have also slipped into his bad drunk phase. The details of what happened next can never be known with any certainty.
At around 11 o’clock that night, Elliot stumbled into a gas station on the southern edge of Tacoma. Before passing out, he gasped to the attendant that he’d been shot. An urgent call brought a police ambulance. By the time they arrived at the hospital, authorities knew that the shooting had actually taken place outside the city limits, so a deputy sheriff had been dispatched.
At the hospital, Elliott refused to tell the deputy who shot him. He did say it happened during an argument over a bottle of booze. At the peak of the argument, the other fellow had pulled out a gun and shot him. Fearing another bullet, Elliott had opened the car door and fallen out. After the shooter drove off and left him there, he made it to his feet and stumbled to the gas station.
Finally, during pre-op for surgery, Elliott told the doctor and a nurse that George Sheldon was the shooter. The wounded man was reported to be “resting easily” in the morning after the bullet was removed. Sadly, complications developed during the afternoon and he died that evening. Now the charge was murder, and the hunt for George went into high gear.
The intense search caused no end of trouble for George’s “associates” in the moonshine and bootlegging business. About a week after the shooting, he finally gave himself up. George claimed that Elliott had gone crazy from the booze. He was sure a young woman they had visited had a record player stolen from his apartment. To retrieve it, he wanted to borrow George’s gun … and George refused. The revolver was in a side pocket of the car and in the ensuing struggle, the weapon went off and Elliott was wounded.
The case log for criminologist Luke May stated that he was initially contracted to examine the death bullet. Verification that the missile came from a specific weapon would have been routine by that time, but news accounts imply that officials never found George’s revolver.
Those reports also do not mention when the “death car” was recovered from where George had hidden it. That would have probably been at least a week after the shooting, complicating the assessment of whatever bloodstains were found in the vehicle. Still, the analysis of the bloodstains and Elliott’s wound apparently cast serious doubt on George’s story of an accidental discharge.
The case went to trial in June. Right at the opening, with the jury sent out of the courtroom, the defense scored a major – arguably, the winning – point. Technically, they declared, Elliott’s statement to hospital personnel that George Spencer had shot him was only hearsay, not admissible as a “dying statement.” He had made it to the hospital and a doctor was about to operate. Thus, it could not truly be said that he thought he was about to die. Moreover, he had survived for many hours after he was out of surgery. Under “the rules of the game,” the judge agreed and disallowed that bit of evidence. The jury produced one 7-5 vote for conviction, but then deadlocked at 6-6.
The second trial, in November, opened with a crucial difference. For the first trial, county prosecutors did not know exactly what Elliott had said during the ride to the hospital. Turned out, the driver and a Tacoma policeman (both city personnel) told the victim that his wound looked really bad. He was probably going to die anyway. Why not tell them who did it? Elliott then stated that George had shot him. He clammed up at the hospital when it looked like he might make it after all.
The second trial resulted in a guilty verdict, although the jury did reduce the charge from second degree murder to manslaughter. Prosecutors then insisted that George – with three felony conviction on his record – should be given a life sentence under Washington’s “habitual criminal” law. While the judge mulled that decision, George escaped from the Pierce County jail. He remained on the run for about a fortnight. Then the judge did indeed impose a life sentence.
As a matter of some interest, George’s brothers had long, humdrum careers as Tacoma longshoremen. Ironically, the older brother of Bones Lyons joined the Tacoma police department in 1933 and spent the next thirty-two years on the force, retiring as a detective.
| References: “[Early Law Trouble for Spencer and Lyons],” Tacoma Daily Ledger, Tacoma Times, Tacoma News-Tribune, Washington (March 1915 – December 1924). |
| “[Elliott ‘Bones’ Lyons Shot, Spencer Pursued],” Seattle Times, Tacoma News-Tribune, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Washington (April 3-9, 1930). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| “[Spencer Murder Trials and Aftermath],” Daily Olympian, Olympia; Tacoma News-Tribune, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Washington (June 10, 1930 – January 20, 1931). |
No comments:
Post a Comment