The evening of November 5, 1929, a Tuesday, was a miserable time to be outdoors near Puget Sound. Occasional showers and gathering fog made for a clammy night, with temperatures in the low forties. But Royal Wentworth was determined to confront anyone who tried to steal chickens from his coop. The previous Saturday, a thief had made off with about a hundred of them.
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| Royal J. Wentworth. Family Archives. |
That cost him perhaps $80-90, depending upon the wholesale market. Not a huge loss. Still, Seattle newspapers were then advertising new, high-quality multi-piece bedroom suites for about that price. Thus, not a trivial amount either. For context, one must recall that this was long before the advent of giant “factory” farms. Some chickens might be produced on ranches with perhaps several thousand birds, but most were raised in small flocks. Result: Advertised prices for chicken meat were sometimes as much or more than “fancy sirloin steak.” Families reserved chicken for Sunday dinner or special occasions.
News reports didn’t give the size of Wentworth’s ranch. It was located in Richmond Highlands, 10-12 miles north of downtown Seattle. Now a forested residential enclave, the area was much more rural back then. At the time, many people raised chickens there. Although Royal had another source of income, he probably needed the return from his chickens to make the ranch a paying operation.
Royal Joshua Wentworth was born May 13, 1873 near Minneapolis, Minnesota. He married Susette Wheeler in 1894, the ceremony being performed in Wisconsin. The couple had three sons and two daughters by 1910. Royal farmed for many years near Minneapolis, and their three oldest children (a daughter and two sons) had married and gone out on their own by 1922.
About a year later, Royal, Susette and their two youngest children moved to Seattle, where a number of Wentworth relatives lived. There, Royal worked primarily as a carpenter and building contractor. Some time in the late twenties, he acquired the ranch property in the Highlands. That might have been after the youngest son and daughter married (in 1926 and 1928, respectively). Royal probably continued to work as a contractor for some time, in case the ranch did not pan out. Sadly, Royal’s wife died in July 1929, leaving him alone.
One unconfirmed report said that Royal began sleeping outdoors after the Saturday raid. That seems a bit unlikely, given the weather conditions and the fact that he could not know when the thief or thieves might return. He may have simply picked a place inside where he could hear better. Whatever the case, he was outside, carrying “a large caliber shotgun,” on Tuesday evening. He was found the next morning, with a bullet in his brain from a close range shot. Royal was alive but unresponsive, so we can not know when he was gunned down. The gloomy night would have surely helped the shooter ambush him. Nearby, officials discovered a sack filled with about fifty “squawking” chickens. The thief must have fled right away, fearing that someone might come to investigate the gunshot. Royal Wentworth never regained consciousness and died five days after he was shot.
Law officers took chicken theft very seriously back then because so many people (rural and urban voters) had flocks and suffered from such depredations. With murder now involved, the pressure rose even higher. Thus, the King County sheriff told reporters that he had “two crews working night and day on the case.” He also said they had “many clues,” which included an unknown fingerprint on a window of the coop. All of that was to no avail.
A month after the shooting, they contracted with private criminologist Luke S. May to examine the fatal bullet. From that, and probably an empty shell casing, May determined that the death weapon was a .32-caliber automatic pistol. He would have also known the make and model, but that’s not given in available accounts. At least officials knew what to look for. Over the following months, they quizzed every suspected chicken thief about the murder.
About a week after May was hired, Seattle officers rushed to Olympia to interview members of a small chicken theft gang (aged 28, 22, and 19). The trio had already confessed to “wholesale” chicken robberies all over a wide area, including around Seattle. Questioning, however, revealed that they had solid alibis for the time of the murder. Another possibility appeared in mid-October 1930. Two men got into an argument over a woman on a Seattle street. During the cursing and yelling, they revealed that they were actually partners in a long-time chicken stealing campaign in and around the city. They too were questioned about the murder, but also had verifiable alibis.
The hunt ended in a bizarre fashion about a month later … at a chicken ranch south of Seattle owned by Henry Pillkahn.
Otto Ernst Heinrich Pillkahn was born July 11, 1868 in Hanover, Germany. He came to this country in 1885, crowded into steerage aboard a steamship that docked in Baltimore, Maryland. He eventually made his way to the gold mines of Esmeralda County, Nevada. Now going by the name “Henry” or sometimes “Henry Otto,” he found work as a hard-rock miner. In 1905, he married Clara (Mourning) Burns there. Five years later, he and Clara had moved to a farm near Sunnydale, a hamlet about ten miles due south of downtown Seattle.
We don’t know how or when the Pillkahns got into the poultry business. Back then, farmers usually started with egg layers. Broilers, specifically raised for meat, didn’t become important until the 1920s. Henry and Clara most likely went through that transition. By 1930, they had a considerable operation. So much so that Henry had an electrical security system installed for his chicken shed.
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| Old Style Chicken Shed. Library of Congress. |
That alarm roused Henry at about 4:30 a.m. on the morning of November 19, 1930. The weather was gloomy and damp, just as it had been over a year earlier for Royal Wentworth. The rancher grabbed a shotgun and hurried to the coop. Hearing someone moving around inside, he flung open the door and ordered the intruder to show himself. The thief answered with a shot which, fortunately for Henry, went wide. Almost instinctively, Henry fired back at the flash in the darkness. When a second pistol shot followed, Henry squeezed off another round. Fearful that another bullet might hit him, he quickly retreated into the yard.
Within minutes, Pillkahn’s neighbors – all armed – joined him. They surrounded the shed as best they could and called for the intruder to give himself up. There was no answer, so the group waited until a deputy sheriff arrived. After a cautious approach, the deputy found the shooter inside … quite dead from a shotgun blast in the chest. Beside his body, they recovered five large sacks, one with several chickens in it. They also found a .32-caliber automatic pistol.
The coroner first judged the man to be about 50 years old, but that estimate was soon revised to about 57. The corpse was bald and all his upper teeth were gone. He was roughly dressed and carried no identification. No one recognized him or knew where he lived. The area had suffered a rash of chicken thefts, and many wondered if he might have been the culprit. Then, late in the day, a check of his fingerprints turned up a name: C. R Blair. He had been jailed in 1925 for petty larceny.
Blair was known to have used at least two aliases, one being Richard McBride. Records suggest that he was living in Seattle in early 1898, when he would have been about 21 years old. At that time, he apparently worked in the timber industry. Later, “C. R.” stayed in low-rent hotels not far from the Seattle docks and worked as a laborer. In 1916, a Richard McBride of about the right age was arrested on suspicion of attempted bank robbery, but later released. Overall, despite the aliases, Blair did not seem to have an extensive criminal record.
The day after the thief was identified, Luke May reported his assessment of the weapon found. The same automatic pistol had been used to murder Royal Wentworth. May was careful to avoid any conclusion that Blair had been the shooter in the earlier case.
With a name, and probably a photo, officers now sought further information about the dead thief. A few days later, the Seattle Times printed the headline, “Killing Of Thief To Provide Feasts.” At a ranch that Blair was “known to have occupied,” deputies had discovered three dozen abandoned chickens. Since there was no way to determine the original owners, the sheriff directed that they be distributed to needy families who could have an unexpected banquet for Thanksgiving.
The very next day, a required coroner’s jury convened to assess Blair’s death. A reporter for the Seattle Times painted a poignant picture of the hearing. Henry Pillkahn, gray-hair and surely stooped with age – he was 62 – and regret, was called to the witness stand. He began, but then, overcome by the reality of having killed another human being, broke down. His wife “like a woman pioneer out of American history books,” rushed to stand by his side. “He nearly went plumb crazy when he found out he’d killed that man,” she said. “But the man was a thief. He was stealing our chickens – our bread and butter.”
Henry gathered himself and then did his duty. Luke May added his findings about the pistol, again being careful to say only that the same gun had killed Royal Wentworth. The jury took little time to absolve Pillkahn of any blame. Officials presumably did their due diligence to make sure some other chicken thief hadn’t used the .32-caliber to murder Wentworth. The case, a sad affair all around, was then closed.
| References: Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| Brian Peterka, A History of Locally Produced Food in Shoreline, digginshoreline.org, Shoreline, Washington (2013). |
| “Poultry,” Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois (2012). |
| “[Wentworth Related News],” Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Washington (April 1916 – November 1930). |
| E. P. Winter, Marketing Margins and Costs for Poultry and Eggs, Technical Bulletin No. 969, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. (November 1948). |
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