Staren’s first five years in the U.S. are another mystery. In fact, nothing about his life before the summer of 1919 can be verified. We do know he was a fervent Anarchist with Bolshevik leanings. He also became a strong supporter of the International Workers of the World union, the “Wobblies,” an organization with deep Anarchist roots. And, at some point, he made his way to the Pacific Northwest. There, his only known employment was as a transient laborer. He blamed a skewed foot on an injury incurred preparing grade for a new stretch of railroad.
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| Paul Staren. Seattle Star News Photo. |
Staren also did farm work near places like Othello, Washington. In 1920, Othello existed mainly because the railroad needed a watering stop. The nearest town of any size was Yakima, about 66 miles to the west-southwest. The Harry Gregg ranch, east of Othello, was even more remote. Yet on the evening of September 29, a masked stranger appeared at their door. He brandished an automatic pistol, tied Harry to a chair, and ordered Mrs. Gregg about in what sounded like a Germanic accent.
When Harry squirmed to loosen his bonds, the intruder shot him three times, then stabbed him. Mrs. Gregg tried to protect her husband, so the assailant shot her too. Still, she managed to attack him with a chair. Then, when he turned to flee, she marked the back of the head with a chunk of concrete. Despite her wounds, Mrs. Gregg got the word out and, by the next morning, bands of armed men were combing the hills for the shooter. Despite all that, the fugitive vanished.
Born in Missouri, in 1880, Harry Gregg moved to Washington some time after 1900. He was appointed postmaster of the Othello post office in 1906, the same year he married Essie May Chavis. It’s not clear how long he remained postmaster, but in 1910 he was buyer for a grain company. By 1920, the couple owned the ranch outside of Othello and had two sons and two daughters. Sadly, the children lost their father on October 2, 1920. Luckily, Essie Gregg recovered from her wounds. A total of $3,000 in rewards was offered for leads, but nothing came of that.
A strange event in late October offered short-lived hope. Authorities discovered the body of a man who had shot himself floating in the Columbia River just 20 miles from Othello. His clothing, general appearance, and age matched the killer “in every detail.” However, he had shot himself with a cheap .38-caliber revolver. By now, criminologist Luke S. May had identified the Gregg death weapon as a .25-20 automatic pistol. A couple weeks after the body was found, the suicide victim was proved to not be the shooter. The case went cold at that point.
The breakthrough began two years later, at the Joseph Bongiorni ranch near Wilson Creek. About 40 miles due north of the Gregg tragedy, the Wilson Creek place was even further from any large town. Spokane, the closest, was about 80 miles away.
Originally from Italy, the Bongiorni family immigrated to the U.S. in 1900-1903, settling first in Connecticut. August Bongiorni, fourth child of Antonio and Teresa, was born there in April 1905. Five years later, the couple – with a brood that had grown to seven – were living on a farm about 14 miles northeast of Everett, Washington. The household included Antonio’s brothers, Joseph and John.
Joseph, Antonio, Teresa, and the children moved to Wilson Creek within a year or so. But Antonio died in early 1915. Joseph must have married his brother’s widow soon after that, because they had two children in the three years following. By 1920, they would have had quite a large family at home.
Paul Staren worked for Joe Bongiorni during the haying season of 1919, and may have done so again in 1921. For 1922, we know that he had a job in August and early September at a ranch about 25 miles southwest Spokane. The rancher’s teenage daughter told a reporter that she had talked to him a number of times. She found him rather scary: “The mere mention of government or religion would send him into a fury.”
In any case, on the evening of September 19, a man wearing a rudimentary mask strode into the yard of the Bongiorni ranch. He never explained why he shot and instantly killed seventeen-year-old August. Perhaps he was simply keyed up. When Joseph rushed out to see what was going on, the intruder shot him three times. He emptied his automatic into the ranch house door, then tried to drag a daughter outside. But, as in the Gregg instance, the mother drove him off with an impromptu club. The ranch had no phone, so one of the sons rode for help.
Again, armed men went out in force to track the shooter. Finally, a railroad conductor spotted him near a train stop about ten miles east of the ranch. Taken into custody, Paul Staren freely admitted that he had shot August Bongiorni. He said he actually meant to kill Joe, although he expressed no particular regret that he’d got the wrong victim. Under state law, a confessed murderer had to undergo a trial, allowing a jury to assess the evidence and decide between a prison sentence or death.
The only real surprise came when widow Essie Gregg appeared to finger Staren as the man who killed her husband two years before. She apparently saw press photos and recognized him from the exposed upper part of his face. One clincher was a scar on the back his head, which she had inflicted with the thrown chunk of concrete. Also, although authorities apparently did not have Luke May do a microscopic bullet comparison, the make and model of the .25-20 death weapon matched that of the Gregg shooting. Staren conceded nothing, but did not deny the shooting either.
The jury chose the death penalty, but Staren cheated the public hangman. A few weeks before his scheduled execution, he hanged himself with a strip from his bed sheet.
His death left two mysteries unsolved. He did seem to have a set modus operandi (MO). Both locations were far from large towns, where there might be professional law enforcement. The target ranches were isolated and neither had telephone service. Yet both were within two or three miles of a rail line. That was how Staren tried to get away after the Bongiorni hit, and almost certainly how he escaped after the Gregg murder.
In any case, the most obvious puzzle was his motive. Why did he kill? He said nothing about the Gregg murder, of course. He claimed Joe Bongiorni had shorted him on his pay back in 1919 … all of $5-6 out of a few hundred dollars. Who would commit murder over that? Besides that, Joe’s wife remembered Staren, but could not recall any dispute over wages.
Perhaps Staren saw Harry and Joe as personifications of hated religion and oppressive authority. Joe was the patriarch of a large family, and committed to the Roman Catholic church. The Gregg family was smaller, but still included a wife and four minor children. And the Greggs were apparently strong adherents of the Churches of Christ. In 1906, they had traveled over 60 miles to be married by an Elder in Ritzville … no small matter since Othello had no railroad service at that time.
Such a “psychological” motive is only speculation. But at least it offers a reason, however warped, for murders that otherwise make no sense.
The second mystery has to do with Staren’s financial situation. He carried bank books that showed at least two fairly recent deposits of over a thousand dollars each. After his death, authorities were able to locate and verify an estate of around $1,116. In terms of today’s pay scales, that’s equivalent to over $65,000 … roughly four times what a minimum-wage employee now earns annually. Even after Staren became known to authorities, he was never implicated in any major hold-ups or burglaries. How could a man typically earning just $2-4 a day at short-duration jobs accumulate so much money?
A year after the Bongiorni murder, an arsonist set fire to five huge stacks of alfalfa at the ranch. The entire season’s production went up in smoke, leaving the family practically destitute. The close timing – “almost to the hour” when August was shot the year before – made people wonder if the two events were somehow connected. Staren might have been part of some dark conspiracy, which paid him for sabotage or murder. Was this their revenge?
In the end, we have no answers to any of these questions.
| References: Census and immigration records, city directory listings, and other genealogical sources were consulted extensively. Online sources included Ancestry.com and others. |
| “[Bongiorni Murder News],” Seattle Star, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (September 1922 – September 1923). |
| “[Gregg Murder News],” Seattle Star, Tacoma Ledger, Spokane Chronicle, Washington (October 4 – November 8, 1920). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
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