Daniel was born in West Virginia in the spring of 1887. In 1906, the family moved to Williston, North Dakota, a small town in the northwest part of the state. In September of the following year, Daniel married Marilla Young there. Later, the couple moved to a tiny town in northeastern Montana about forty miles from the Canadian border. At that time, he dealt in real estate. However, some time in 1921-1925, they separated, with Marilla awarded custody of their three children. Soon after that, Daniel moved to near Bremerton, Washington. In December 1925 he married again. Then, before 1929, he opened a car dealership in Bremerton.
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| Downtown Bremerton, bef 1929. Kitsap History Museum. |
In January of 1931, Daniel was sworn in as sheriff of Kitsap County. Aside from Bremerton, with its U.S. Navy shipyard, the county was quite rural. Thus, Blankenship’s duties were comparatively light: Serving legal notices, an occasional missing persons report, escorting prisoners to and from various locations, and so on.
This anonymous tip was far more serious. It claimed that one John E. Martin had shot and killed two itinerant workers, known only as “Milo” and “Pete,” and buried them on his farm. Martin was a newcomer to the area, having recently acquired land on the coast of Puget Sound about twenty miles north of Bremerton. He had twice come to the attention of authorities. The regional Prohibition Officer had searched his property for a rumored moonshine operation, but had found nothing. (Prohibition was on its way out, but the laws were still being enforced.)
More relevant was a report from the previous October. Neighbors had found Martin almost incapacitated from severe cuts and bruises, and rushed him to medical help. He said that two temporary farm hands had beat him up and tried to rob him. They had been there about a week, clearing brush, when he fired them for drinking too much. Martin had no money to speak of on the property, and he said the two fled after venting their anger on him. Sheriff Blankenship and the Seattle police – it was assumed they would run to the big city – had mounted a search for them, with no results whatsoever. This tip cast a whole new light on that episode.
First of all, who was this fellow John E. Martin? To begin with, his full name was William John Elias Martin. He was born November 21, 1872 in Kent County, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. He married Lumina “Mina” Manassa in 1894 and they began raising a family on a farm west of Saginaw Bay (part of Lake Huron). Life was not easy, but they hung on until 1907. The last of their six children – three sons and three daughters – was born that year. Between then and 1910, the family moved to Walla Walla, Washington, where William found work as a carpenter.
The relationship between William and Mina was a rocky one. They divorced in 1916, remarried, and then divorced again in 1920. Thus, for the 1920 census, Martin was living in Seattle under the name “John E.” He was perhaps trying to avoid confusion with several other William Martins in the City Directory. By then, the two oldest sons and a daughter had married. One son and his wife were living with him. Meanwhile, Mina was still in Walla Walla with the three youngest children.
Those children had married and gone off on their own by 1927, the year that William and Mina married yet again. Thus, the couple was living together in Seattle for the 1930 census, with “John E.” identifying himself as a building contractor. But, again, the togetherness didn’t last and Mina was alone in Seattle by 1933. Meanwhile, William John had acquired the farm property north of Bremerton.
Available accounts do not say how specific the tip was about the burial location. Officers seemed to have had little trouble finding and exhuming the bodies. One news report asserted that Martin tried to commit suicide while they were digging, but that was never confirmed. Then the coroner provided an added shock. The men had not died from the gunshot wounds; they had suffocated after being buried alive. There was no evidence, however, that they had revived and tried to claw their way out.
Private criminologist Luke S. May logged this case as primarily a firearms study. He easily verified that Martin’s pistol was the death weapon. It happens that this was May’s two-hundredth death case (that we know of), the vast majority of which involved firearms. Thus, he might have also had an expert opinion on the less-than-fatal bullet wounds.
Martin was charged with murder and his trial began in mid-June. He freely admitted he had killed the two, but insisted that it was purely self-defense. He stuck to the main elements of his October story: After he had fired them for their drinking, they beat him up and and tried to rob him. News reports do not say, but it seems possible that he finally lied about where he had money hidden. Then, when they went to look for it, he retrieved his pistol and shot them as they returned from the wild goose chase.
The incident left Martin dazed and confused. All he could think of to do was bury the men and say nothing. He only told his partial story when neighbors asked what had happened to him. And that might well have been enough. Despite all the publicity of the trial, we never do learn who “Milo” and “Pete” actually were. William John E. Martin was convicted of second-degree murder.
Between then and the sentencing, a small controversy arose about the source of the tip that sparked the investigation. Some witnesses contended that Martin’s estranged wife, Mina, provided it. However, Sheriff Blankenship declared that he had no way of knowing who sent the letter he received. So far as we know, Mina disclaimed any knowledge of such a letter. The judged imposed a 15 to 20 year prison sentence for the conviction.
Then even more drama arose. Rumors persisted that at least two other part-time workers had been sent to the ranch by an employment agency … and had disappeared. One was eventually found working elsewhere, and Martin denied any knowledge of the other. Although Blankenship and his deputies searched the property further, nothing ever came of the rumors.
In a small way, the Milo-Pete investigation became a kind of dress rehearsal for a horrific case the sheriff faced a few months after Martin was moved to prison from the county jail. (His appeals had failed.) On the evening of March 31, 1934, Blankenship made a call to Criminologist May in Seattle. After describing the crime scene and pleading for help, he cried, “It’s terrible, Luke, terrible!” May later said that, while he had often heard “terrible” applied to many of his death cases, Blankenship’s was the most emphatic and heart-felt.
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| Bremerton Evidence: Sheriff Blankenship (left), Luke May, County Prosecutor. |
And well it should have been. A home invasion a few miles north of Bremerton had turned into the mass murder of six victims. Two had been shot, while the rest had been beaten to death with a hammer or stabbed. (The story of the “Bremerton Massacre” is told in my Luke May biography, American Sherlock.) Sadly, Blankenship did not live to see the case closed. That fall, he was rushing his brother to medical help when his car blew a tire. They hit a tree and Daniel L. Blankenship was killed, on November 4, 1934. Luckily, his brother and another passenger survived.
Mina Martin obtained a final divorce a year of so after her husband went off to the penitentiary. She apparently supported herself by taking in laundry. She had a heart attack and died at the end of 1943. At that time, all six of the couple’s children were still living, and accounted for 17 grandchildren.
The oldest son, William Bernard Martin, first married 1915, to a divorcee who lived in Oregon not far south of Walla Walla. They eventually had five children, but the marriage didn’t last. He married again in 1938. Bernard tried his hand at farming, automobile servicing, furniture sales, and finally general construction. He passed away in September 1970.
The oldest daughter, Agnes, married Jake McKinney in May 1916 in Walla Willa. They moved to Seattle around 1923, where Jake worked as a carpenter, and the couple raised four children. Agnes also pursued a career as a top-level cook for a chain of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. She even appeared in a TV documentary about the business. Her husband passed away in 1968. Agnes (Martin) McKinney died in October 1981.
Francis “Frank” Martin, the next oldest son, joined the U.S. Navy for World War I. He married before 1920 and lived for a time with his father in Seattle. He had some success as an electrician and then at a bakery. The Great Depression ended that … and his marriage. Around 1934-1935, he moved to Indiana, where he worked as a clerk at a military supply depot. He also married again, and they had two sons. He retired around 1964 and passed away in 1971.
Son Ernest was one of the children who lived with Mina in Walla Walla after his parents split in 1920. Then, around 1925 or 1926, he moved to Seattle and worked his way up from salesman to owning a furniture store. He married three times, in 1927, 1943, and 1957. He and his first wife had three children. He stayed active in the furniture business until around 1953. He then operated a small-loans firm until he retired around 1967. An enthusiast for senior golf after retirement, he passed away in 1981, two weeks after suffering a heart attack during a Labor Day tournament.
Daughter Anne Marie also lived with Mina in Walla Walla, but moved to Seattle some time after 1920. She married in 1925, 1928, and 1934. She and her first husband had a daughter in 1926. Her third husband became disabled around 1937, so she had to support the family as a drapery seamstress. Her last husband died in 1960, and she passed away in February 1982.
The youngest daughter, Fredrica “Rica,” moved from Walla Walla to Seattle in time to graduate from high school there in 1925. She married a year later, but divorced and remarried in 1940-1941. Between the two, she had four children. Oddly enough, she married again in 1975, two weeks after she divorced her second husband. However, she died less than ten months later, on January 2, 1976.
William John E. Martin was almost certainly still in prison when Mina died at the end of 1943. However, he seems to have been out by 1945. Family memories state that he married a woman known as Martha in 1945, or perhaps 1948. They may have lived in Louisiana for a time, and also moved around some. Thus, it proved impossible to find a credible reference to him (them) in the 1950 U.S. Census. They eventually returned to Seattle, and Martin was staying with daughter Rica when he died on May 5, 1957. He was entombed in the same cemetery and mausoleum as Mina.
| References: Census records, city directory listings, and other genealogical sources were consulted extensively. Online sources included Ancestry.com and others. |
| “[Blankenship-Martin Family Backgrounds],” News-Tribune, Tacoma, Union-Bulletin, Walla Walla, Post-Intelligencer, Seattle, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Star, Washington; Statesman-Journal, Salem, Oregon; Baltimore Sun, Maryland; Glasgow Courier, Montana; Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky (September 1906 – February 1982). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| “[Milo-Pete Murders and Trial],” The Olympian, Olympia, News-Tribune, Tacoma, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Star, Washington (October 28, 1932 – October 13, 1933). |
| David Wilma, “Kitsap County – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (July 29, 2006). |
| "Evidence" photo source: True Detective Mysteries magazine, September 1936. |
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