A Car Was The Key

The small Manito Pharmacy, located about two miles south of downtown Spokane, was a typical neighborhood drug store. The owner, Mrs. Alice Sherrard, had depended upon part-time registered pharmacists since her husband died in the spring of 1933. On this day, July 30, 1935, a Tuesday, Harry Phillips arrived shortly after noon to cover the afternoon and evening hours. They could not know that death lay in wait just across the street. 

Harry Phillips.
Spokane Chronicle
(September 16, 1935).

Harry J. Phillips was born around 1887 in Whitman County, Washington, in a village about forty miles south of Spokane. After high school, he attended Washington State College, conveniently located about thirty miles from his home. He graduated with a degree in pharmacy in June of 1910 and quickly set up a drug business in Walla Walla. Less than a year after graduation, Harry married Lillian Mae “Mamie” McFadden. Eight months later, they sold the Walla Walla venture and had a small store built in a tiny town near where he was born.

For many years afterwards, Harry split time between pharmacy and wheat farming at various locations around Whitman County. By 1920, the couple had two sons. Around 1927, Harry moved the family to Spokane to find work as a contract pharmacist. He also seemed to have dabbled in real estate. Thus, in 1929, he purchased and modernized a “fixer-upper” that would remain the family home for over a quarter century. On July 30th, Harry had been working at the Manito Pharmacy for quite some time.

After he arrived at the store, Mrs. Sherrard backed her car out of an adjacent garage at about 12:30. That maneuver proved somewhat awkward because of a vehicle parked directly across from the store door. She noticed a man sitting in the car, but thought nothing more about it as she drove off. However, other observers had also noted the rather unusual car, a 1933 Willys sedan. Later, they would recall that the same vehicle had been in the area the day before, a Monday.

On Tuesday, the Willys first appeared about 8:30 in the morning. Some saw the driver inside, others not. Spokane was suffering from a sweltering wave of moist heat, so he probably got out now and then to cool off. Shortly after Sherrard left, the man strolled across the street into the store. Only the perpetrator knew the details of what happened next. But several witnesses reported three shots fired during a struggle between Harry and the intruder. Then the shooter calmly returned to his car and drove off (in no particular hurry).

When police officers responded to calls, they found Harry dead on the sidewalk from a single gunshot wound that passed side to side through the chest. Three bullets were found at the crime scene. All were probably somewhat distorted … two had embedded into wood while the fatal bullet had fractured ribs on both sides of Harry’s body.

Officers recorded descriptions of the killer from several witnesses. A farmer delivering produce to a grocery story near the pharmacy had the best look. He drove up just in time to stop while the shooter returned to his car. He sensed that something was wrong and made a point of getting a good look at the man. Still, those accounts provided no outstanding traits to focus on: slender, somewhat tall, clean shaven, and wearing muted gray clothes … including a gray tweed cap that obscured his hair color.

They struck potential gold with the getaway car, however. First of all, an alert filling station attendant had recorded the license plate number and gave the specific model as a “Willys 77.” More to the point, it didn’t require a pro or a car buff to see that the vehicle was quite different from the ordinary. Designed as an inexpensive Depression-era auto, the Willys was over a foot shorter and five or six inches narrower than anything else on the road. Witnesses particularly noted its unusually narrow windshield, along with other distinctive features.  

Willys 77. Willys-Overland Sales Brochure.

Also, despite its low price – lowest on the market for a new car – fewer than 22 thousand had been sold. Thus, the very next day, Spokane police learned that the car had been stolen in Everett, Washington on July 21st. Also, someone burglarized a garage that night, taking an old typewriter and the license plates used on the Willys. Everett officials had a prime suspect, whose photo was shown to the witnesses in Spokane. The results were inconclusive, with some saying yes, maybe; others being not so sure. Significantly, the farmer who had obtained the best view was among the doubters.

Nevertheless, with nothing else to go on, officials issued a murder warrant for the suspect on August 3rd. However, nine days later, they learned that he had been on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico when the killing occurred. That same day, Spokane police located the Willys, which had been wiped clean of fingerprints and abandoned in a rented private garage. The owner had rented it on July 23rd to a man who gave his name as “G. Jacobsen.” She thought he was “about 30” years old. Thus, officials had another description, but still no actual suspect.

Ultimately, the vigilance and intuition of Leslie M. Carroll, Deputy Prosecutor for Spokane County, broke the case. A few days before the Everett suspect was eliminated, Carroll had handled a routine burglary case. One Tom Eskridge (alias George Gregory, alias George Edwards, alias John Lowry) had been arrested in Boise, Idaho, while trying to pawn a typewriter stolen from a school about fifteen miles south of Spokane. Eskridge did not resist extradition and readily chose to plead guilty rather than undergo a trial. In fact, when there was some delay in his processing, Tom basically told the prosecutor to “get with it.” The judge imposed a stiff fifteen-year sentence after learning that the burglar already had a prison record.

Carroll surely knew about the frustrating, unsolved Phillips murder, although he does not seemed to have been directly involved. After the case fell apart on August 12th, Carroll explored a new possibility. We may infer his thoughts: “That guy Eskridge generally fits the description, and he left town shortly after the murder. Then he was sure anxious to get out of our jail and on to prison. I wonder why?” Officers showed Tom’s mug shot to the rental garage owner. She declared, “That’s the man.” The investigation had new life.

Nine days later, an article appeared in the Spokane Chronicle. Anyone who had bought or found a .38-caliber pistol, “possibly a Smith & Wesson or Colts,” between July 30 and August 4 should notify authorities right away. It might be the weapon that murdered Harry Phillips. They had clearly not yet sent the three slugs found at the crime scene to criminologist Luke S. May. He would have had little trouble identifying the make and model. The very next day, newspapers reported that police had received a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. They were sending it to criminologist May in Seattle. But the revolver was not the murder weapon.

Three weeks passed with no further mention of the Phillips case in the newspapers. Behind the scenes, however, police were busy adding to their case. They now knew that Tom had rented an apartment less than a block away from the garage. He had been accompanied by a woman, and they registered as Tom Jacobs and wife. Despite much effort, she was never tracked down, or even identified. They also found a pawnbroker who had bought the old typewriter stolen in Everett. Tom had used yet another assumed name for that. However, despite all the effort, they never did recover the murder weapon. (We don’t know how many weapons May examined for the case.)

Tom Eskridge.
Spokane Chronicle
(September 14, 1935).

 Finally, on September 14th, officials felt they had enough and issued a warrant charging Tom Eskridge with the murder of Harry Phillips. Thomas T. Eskridge was born around 1905 in eastern Virginia. His parents separated not long after that, and the mother moved the family to eastern Oregon. His mother remarried in the fall of 1919 and they were living in Yakima, Washington in 1920. After that, Eskridge disappeared from available sources for almost a decade, until we find him listed as a glazier in the 1929 City Directory for Santa Barbara, California. During that gap, he may well have compiled a criminal record. However, given his propensity for fake names, we’ll never know for sure.

In any case, sources show that, in 1930, he spent three months in the Salt Lake City jail for robbery. Not long after he got out, he and an accomplice held up a grocery store there. Soon caught, Tom received a prison sentence of five to twenty years. The judge then paroled them with the proviso that they identify out-of-state “custodians.” He chose a brother-in-law living in Ojai, California.

Six months later, Tom was arrested for burglaries in nearby Ventura, California. He received a five to fifteen year prison sentence. He served several months in Folsom prison, but was then transferred to San Quentin. He was released in June 1935 and headed north to Everett, Washington. (We don’t know why.) There, he was believed to have committed several burglaries, along with stealing the Willys. Tom then continued on to Spokane.

Tom’s defense in court was feeble, to say the least. His attempt at an alibi was easily refuted. His lawyers then tried to raise “reasonable doubt” based on the witnesses who had erroneously fingered the suspect from Everett. None of that worked and he received a life sentence. After a failed escape attempt in 1936, Tom fell to studying ways to use loopholes in the legal system to get out of prison. The last of several appeals was denied on June 14, 1965. There’s no record that he died in prison, so he might have finally been released (or escaped). He then perhaps chose to live under an assumed name.

After Harry was shot and killed, Mamie (McFadden) Phillips became a clerk at a JC Penneys department store in Spokane. She never remarried and stayed with the company until her retirement around 1956. Her sons both married and gave her a total of five grandchildren before her death in the spring of 1966.
                                                                               

References:  Patrick R. Foster, Bill Tilden, Willys: The Complete Illustrated History 1903-1963, Enthusiast Books, Pepin, Wisconsin (2016).

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

“[Phillips Murder, Background and News],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Pullman Herald, Colfax Gazette, Washington; Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho; Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Salt Lake Tribune, Utah (June 1910 – November 1963).

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