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| Kelso, 1925. Washington State Historical Society. |
Thus, a reform mayor took office at the beginning of 1925, and immediately got into a huge fight with the City Council. Several councilmen were suspected of accepting bribes from bootleggers and speakeasies. Heated arguments followed and the mayor finally initiated recall campaigns against five councilmen. They countered with a recall petition against him, as well as other charges that briefly put the mayor in jail. With city government at a standstill, a compromise was (reluctantly) worked out. The mayor would not fight the recall election if the five councilmen would resign.
On June 4, Kelso had a mostly-new City Council, which then selected a mayor. This “settled” the matter administratively, but only intensified the unrest that seethed just below the surface. Reform efforts continued through what we would now call a political action committee (PAC). Thomas Dovery, the editor/owner of the Kelso-based Cowlitz County News, strongly supported the deposed mayor and was a zealous advocate for reform. Two weeks after the town got a new mayor, he attended an evening meeting of the PAC. Minutes after he started home on foot, a pedestrian heard what he thought was a car backfire. He then found Dovery’s body on the sidewalk. The editor had been shot to death.
Thomas J. Dovery was born in May 1866, in Norway. The family immigrated to Canada when Thomas was about seven years old. A year later, they settled on a farm about 30 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wisconsin. With an early start, Dovery mastered English well enough to become a successful newspaper owner and editor. By 1905, he had operated several small-town papers in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The next year, Dovery bought farmland near Buhl, Idaho and moved his family there. Within a few years, he had a newspaper in that town and another in Twin Falls. He was known as “an aggressive political writer,” who “engaged in many political controversies.” After about ten years, he began to phase out his Idaho holdings and, in 1920, opened a general printing shop in Eugene, Oregon. Finally, near the end of 1923, Dovery traded that firm for the Cowlitz County News. He brought his aggressive and controversial style with him.
The unstable situation in Kelso absolutely exploded after the murder. Surely this had to be a political assassination! It didn’t help that the subsequent investigation discovered that the head of the water department had embezzled funds from his office. Another of Dovery’s crusades had been a demand that the water department’s books be audited. So, resources were diverted to trace that suspect’s movements on the day of the murder. For a time after the shooting, Kelso had an extra “government,” including one selected by the ex-mayor. In fact, the ex-mayor lodged a criminal conspiracy charge against the official city engineer. In retaliation, the ex-mayor was hit with a “malicious prosecution” indictment. At one point, the governor was asked to send troops to maintain order (he refused).
Meanwhile, a day or so after the shooting, the county sheriff hired criminologist Luke S. May to examine the only worthwhile clue they had. Not too far from the body, officers had found a .41-caliber Colt revolver. Newspapers described the weapon as an “old” or even “ancient” style, so it was most likely a Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer.” May first verified that the revolver was indeed the death weapon, and then began to laboriously trace its ownership. About a week after the shooting, further distractions came in the form of threatening letters to May and the sheriff.
With all the political tumult and acrimony, tracking genuine leads on the revolver went slowly. Finally, in late September, the state Attorney General appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the case. Ten days later, a headline read, “Luke May Finds Kelso Slayer.” The zigzag path began with the long-time owner of the revolver, a fireman at a Kelso mill. Several months before the murder, he had sold the old firearm to a twenty-year-old apprentice carpenter in Portland, Oregon.
Luke clearly established the links from there to the shooter, but answers to a couple questions did not make the news. Why did the youth, who was never in trouble (before or after), buy the gun? Perhaps he saw some historical value in the artifact. Next, why did he loan the gun to Bill Thompson, an ex-convict? He might not have known about the man’s criminal record, but what story did Thompson use to get the revolver? We don’t know.
The next stage was easy: News reports noted that Thompson was a “former jail acquaintance” of John W. Owens aka John W. Smith. Thompson loaned the gun to Owens, who said he had a big hit planned. Born in Ohio around 1872, Owens probably had a worse criminal record than Thompson, who had been in prison for burglary at least twice. However, we do not have many details because Owens had a fondness for phony names. His most recent known imprisonment was for complicity in the death of a Salt Lake City policemen during a robbery in 1907.
Owens was apparently released from the Utah State Penitentiary in late 1918. After that, he dropped out of sight. Later, officials learned that he’d been employed for over a year as a cook in Walla Walla, Washington. During that time, he was cited twice for disorderly conduct, but stayed out of trouble otherwise. He next appeared as a cook at a Kelso restaurant in 1925. There, he joined up with another ex-convict, Frank T. Hart.
Frank Thomas Hart was born March 11, 1894 in Portland, Oregon. Again we don’t know all the details of his criminal career. But between 1916 and late 1924, he spent: several months in the Nevada State Penitentiary, almost a year in San Quentin Prison, and six years in Folsom Prison. By 1925, he had a job in Kelso as a waiter or cook.
The two decided to hold up the payroll car of the largest lumber company in Longview, just west of Kelso. But that plan fell through for some reason. (Perhaps the managers heard rumors and beefed up their security.) Frustrated, they looked for someone else to rob. It was just bad luck that Dovery happened to come along. Neither ex-con ever consistently described how the robbery “went down,” but the editor ended up shot to death. It’s also unclear why the shooter left the revolver near the victim.
Afterwards, the two rented a car and drove to Portland. They then abandoned their ride, probably continuing their flight by train. Owens later said that he last saw Hart in Laramie, Wyoming. If so, he then doubled back, because his next known contact was in Moscow, Idaho. Owens stayed a week or so with a lady friend he had lived with before. Although he was long gone when investigators got there, they found an informant who could let them know if the lady heard anything from the fugitive. That finally provided a tip that Owens was headed for, or already in, St. Louis, Missouri. With the help of two members of May’s nationwide web of affiliate private detectives, police arrested him there on July 17, 1926.
Brought back to Kelso, Owens admitted that he’d been a part of the Dovery shooting as an accomplice of Frank Hart. But only one part of his story remained consistent: He insisted that he’d passed the revolver on to Hart and he had fired the fatal bullet. Hart wasn’t there to confirm or dispute that claim, but the jury convicted Owens of first degree murder anyway. He was sentenced to life (“99 years”) in the state penitentiary.
And so matters stood for almost eleven years. Then, in March 1937, one Fred Hall, described as a “race track follower,” was picked up in Columbia, South Carolina. He was routinely processed on a “drunk and disorderly” charge, paid his fine, and was released. As a matter of further routine, “Hall’s” fingerprints were transmitted to the FBI in Washington, DC. They quickly identified the man as Frank T. Hart, wanted on an open murder warrant in Washington state.
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| Frank T. Hart. California Prison Records |
Hart went on trial at Kelso in May. Owens was brought back from prison to repeat his claim that Hart had fired the fatal shot. The defense countered with two key points: First, Owens was the one who borrowed the death weapon. Second, a fellow prison inmate testified that Owens had admitted to him that he had shot Dovery. The jury deliberated only about ninety minutes before returning a “not guilty” verdict.
Owens was, of course, sent back to prison and seems to have died there some time before the spring of 1940. Hart went east, where he began dealing in race horses in Maryland, New York, and other states. However, around 1946-1948, he returned west to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and found a job as a cook. He died there in early 1956.
After the Owens trial in 1926, Dovery’s widow and two daughters moved to Tucson, Arizona. The daughters, both school teachers, never married. The widow died in 1956, the daughters in 1982 and 1985.
| References: Rita Cipalla, “Kelso – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (October 21, 2019). |
| Commemorative Biographical Record of the Upper Lake Region, J. H. Beers & Company, Chicago, Illinois (1905). |
| “[Dovery - Hart - Owens Background], Dunn County News, Menomonie, Wisconsin; Minneapolis Journal, Worthington Advance, Minnesota; Twin Falls Weekly News, Twin Falls Times, Idaho Evening Times, Twin Falls, Idaho; Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake Telegram, Utah; Eugene Guard, Morning Register, Eugene, Oregon (February 1895 – December 1923). |
| “[Dovery Murder And Afterwards],” Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Daily Olympian, Olympia, Washington; Idaho Evening Times, Twin Falls, Idaho; Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (June 1925 – May 1937). |
| Jim Gentry, In the Middle and On the Edge: The Twin Falls Region of Idaho, College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls (2003). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
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