Sudden Death Ends Long Friendship

Hunters in eastern Oregon had just a week to bag their one allowed bull elk for the season, starting on November 5, 1934. Long-time friends Fred Lampkin and Dan Bowman were among the eager nimrods. Along with several others, they had set up a base camp on a ranch in the Blue Mountains, 15 to 20 miles southwest of La Grande. Bowman carried his older .35-caliber Remington. He liked the potent stopping power of the rifle’s big slug, but could not know the tragedy that was about to unfold.

Elk Habitat Southwest of La Grange.

Daniel C. Bowman was born July 12, 1879 in a small town about 15 miles south of Eureka, California. The family moved to Umatilla County, Oregon, some time before 1886. Daniel served  with the Oregon National Guard in the Spanish-American War. In 1902, he married Effie Neil, who had also been born in California. She was about three years older than Daniel. Her family had moved to the area before 1880. In 1910, Dan had a job as a traveling salesman for the Pendleton Woolen Mills.

By then, Dan probably knew Frederick W. Lampkin, who had been a classmate of Effie’s. Fred had been born about eight months before Dan, in Kansas. The family was in Oregon by about 1895. In 1910, Fred was manager of the Eastern Oregonian newspaper in Pendleton. Dan and Fred became close friends who hunted, fished, and played golf together.

Both Dan and Fred registered for the World War I draft, but were not called up. At that time, Fred was still with the newspaper. Dan had opened an “agency store” about five miles east of Pendleton, on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. He still had that outlet ten years later.

In 1922, Fred Lampkin married Inez Hall, who had come to Pendleton a few years earlier. He continued to expand the general publishing company that had grown around the newspaper. By 1930, he and his firm were well known all over the region. Like Dan and Effie, Fred and his wife had no children. Then, some time in late 1930 or early 1931, Fred and Inez separated and were soon divorced.

When the two friends headed into the mountains to hunt elk in November 1934, the weather was both bad, and good. They were plagued by occasional rain showers, making for muddy and slippery footing. But fresh hoof prints would have shown up clearly and temperatures were quite nice for the season, rising into the 60-degree range during the day.

Still, up to the 9th, neither of the two had claimed an elk. As they returned from their morning search, they came to a fence that blocked their way back to the ranch yard. To save time, one member of the party vaulted the obstacle. Dan thought that was a great idea. But he was ten years older and a good deal heavier than his companion. Dan landed awkwardly and hurt a knee. At first, however, it didn’t seem like his injury was that bad, and Dan took some playful ribbing about it. In the same spirit of fun, another member of the hunting party snapped four photos while Bowman was being helped along to the ranch house.

After some rest, the party climbed into Bowman’s car to ride back to the campsite they shared with at least one other band of hunters. Lampkin got out on the passenger side, apparently still engaged in some banter with his old friend. Bowman replied in a raised voice because he knew Fred was hard of hearing. Meanwhile, Fred circled behind the car, perhaps to come around and help Dan out.

Bowman retrieved his rifle and then slid out to stand beside the car. But as soon as he put weight on his gimpy knee, it gave way. Dan desperately tried to catch himself, grasping the barrel of the rifle as a cane … and the weapon fired! He caught his breath on the ground and then rolled over to a horrifying sight: The heavy .35-caliber slug had hit his friend in the face and killed him instantly.

The day after the tragedy, newspapers reported that officials considered the death an accident and expected to quickly close their investigation. But then a member of the other hunting party – we’ll call him “Wayne” – offered damning testimony. He claimed that the loud voices he had heard were part of a verbal dispute. According to him, the two were arguing about the photographs taken of Bowman’s plight after his injury. This seems odd, since – this being 1934 – neither man could know what the images might show. Hurriedly snapped out in the field by an amateur, they might be unreadable.

Even so, Wayne claimed that not only had they argued with each other, but Bowman had told him “roughly” to keep out of it. Dan did not want Wayne driving his car, so there might have been some personal distrust or animosity between the two. Still, members of the other party agreed about the loud voices. They also thought they’d heard argumentative remarks, although they couldn’t quite agree on exactly what was said.

To make a long story short, Dan Bowman was charged with first degree murder. He went on trial in January 1935 at the Union County seat in La Grande. Besides testimony about the alleged “argument,” the prosecution entered into evidence the now-developed photos taken right after Bowman hurt his knee. Reports of the trial do not suggest that the images were in any way embarrassing or compromising.

County Courthouse in La Grande.
Union County Sheriff’s Department.

Bowman’s defense countered with numerous witnesses who testified to the long-standing friendship between the two. In that context, the “argument” could be seen as a jocular, and perhaps rueful, exchange between two aging buddies about the evils of growing old. As it happened, Bowman had suffered a compression fracture in his knee and spent several weeks in a cast. He was still on crutches at the trial, when X-ray images were entered into evidence to prove that he had been seriously injured.

The firearms assessment offered by criminologist Luke S. May supported the defense’s contention that the tragedy was an accident. The bullet had struck Lampkin’s face at a sharp upward angle and exited through the top of his skull. That finding was reinforced by the bullet hole punched in the victim’s hat. A deliberate shot would have surely had a more horizontal trajectory.

Moreover, May averred, the action of Bowman’s older Remington rifle had a crucial design defect. It could go off without anyone pulling the trigger, even with the safety engaged. By this time, May was famous throughout the Pacific Northwest for his scientific investigations. Nevertheless, to bolster the point, the defense brought in a local witness: a professional gunsmith from La Grande. He agreed that early versions of the firearm had a faulty design, which the company had soon modified.

They did not, however, recall guns that had already been sold. Nor, apparently, did they warn owners about the potential problem. On the witness stand, a distraught Bowman said, “I did not know my gun would go off without pulling the trigger. I did not know the gun was dangerous.”

In the end, the jury sided with the defense and acquitted Bowman on the murder charge.

Dan and Effie continued to operate the agency general store until about 1946-1948. Some time after that, they moved to Smith River, California, a small town near the coast about five miles south of the Oregon border. Daniel C. Bowman died July 10, 1953, at the veterans’ hospital in San Francisco. He was buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. Effie died about nine years later and was buried beside her husband.
                                                                                

References: “[Bowman-Lampkin Background],” Oregon Journal, Portland, East Oregonian, Pendleton, Oregon (July 1902 – July 1906).

“[Bowman Trial],” Statesman-Journal, Salem, The Oregonian, Portland, La Grande Observer, Eugene Guard, Klamath News, Corvallis Gazette-Times, Oregon (January 9, 1935) (January 15, 1935).

“[Bowman Afterwards],” Coos Bay Times, Marshfield, La Grande Observer, Oregon; San Francisco Examiner, California (August 1940 – July 1953).

“[Lampkin Hunting Death],” The Oregonian, Portland, Bend Bulletin, Eugene Guard, La Grande Observer, Oregon (July 10 – December 29, 1934).

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

Elmer Smith, Big Game Rifles and Cartridges, Small-Arms Technical Publishing Company, Onslow County, North Carolina (1936).

William F. Willingham, “Pendleton Woolen Mills,” The Oregon Encyclopedia, https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/pendleton_woolen_mills/#.XfUIS-t7kt9. Accessed December 14, 2019.

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Death In The Line Of Duty

September 14, 1928 brought typical early fall weather to Seattle, with showers moving through during the day. Police patrolman Emery Ray Sherard had the University District as his evening beat. The many neon business signs and more subdued street lamps brightened the main areas, but otherwise it was quite dark.

On University Way, the Egyptian Theater featured The Mysterious Lady, a silent film starring Greta Garbo. A few doors down, the popular Manning’s Coffee offered their “luxury blend” in a hot cup of fresh brew, or as a bag of ground roast to take home. Further north, on the corner of The Way and 50th Street, the Jamieson Drug Company store was busy with late customers.

Officer Sherard. Family Archives.

Sherard had seen combat in the Great War, but he cannot have expected the firefight that was about to erupt. As 9 o’clock approached, a lady rushed up to him. She and her husband thought that two men were robbing Jamieson’s. With no time to call for backup, the officer hurried by the store front. To enter there would put the victims, held in the back, in his possible line of fire. He continued around the corner, hoping to catch the robbers by surprise from a side entrance.

Sherard started inside, but the two bandits fled out the front. He dashed outside and around the corner. The crooks claimed the officer shot at them first, and Sherard may well have fired a warning round into the air. He also surely ordered them to “Halt.” They don’t mention that at all. In any case, the two, along with the driver of their getaway car, met Sherard with a hail of bullets. It’s unclear how many times, or even if, the patrolman fired at them before he went down from a bullet in the head.

Despite police efforts all around the city, the crooks actually managed to pull off several more robberies before they vanished. Meanwhile, the downed patrolman lay in a hospital, dying and unable to talk. Officer Sherard succumbed shortly after midnight, his wife at his side. Once again, Mary Frances – she usually went by just “Frances” – had lost a husband in the line of duty.

Mary Frances Vanderdasson was born in 1895 in Emmett, Idaho, about 23 miles northwest of Boise. She married 26-year-old William Henry Kuckku of Emmett on July 27, 1917. However, her new husband enlisted shortly after their marriage, and his infantry regiment departed for France on December 12 of that year. With him in “A” Company was his good buddy, Emery Sherard.

Sherard was born in Wyoming in 1887 and the family moved to Idaho while he was in his teens. When he registered for the draft in 1917, Emery had a farm about 25 miles north of Boise. (It’s unclear if he owned or leased the acreage.) He met Frances shortly before he and William shipped out. In late May 1918, they took part in the first major offensive operation for American forces in Europe, the Battle of Cantigny. Sadly, Will Kuckku was killed in action, making the ultimate sacrifice for his country. Sherard survived, as he did the later storied battles of the American army on the Western Front.

Mustered out and back in Idaho, Emery’s acquaintance with the widow blossomed into friendship and then love. They were married November 4, 1919, and moved to Seattle within a month or so. Emery worked as a mechanic for several years and spent a short period as a salesman. He joined the Seattle Police Department in November of 1926. Now he too had been killed in the line of duty. Frances was left alone to raise their three children: Dorothy, age 8, James, 5, and Theodore, 4.

The two bandits inside the drug store had both shown signs of being drunk, or at least tipsy. One had waved his gun around and boasted about shooting someone just to show they were serious. The victims provided police with reasonable descriptions of the two, and officers soon rounded up over sixty suspects.

Around noon on Monday, witnesses picked Knute Lindberg, a 22-year-old immigrant, out of a lineup based on his appearance and distinct accent. The Swede had entered the U.S. five years earlier. He listed his destination as Aberdeen, Washington, and claimed to be an orphan.

Under intense interrogation, Lindberg named his accomplices: 20-year-old Leo Burns and 21-year-old James McCourt. Born in Pierce County, Washington, Burns was known to the police and described as a “hard-boiled egg” in news reports. McCourt had been born in Kitsap County and worked briefly as a plumber. His police record was said to match that “of a hardened criminal of fifty years.”

Lindberg and Burns had indeed “fortified” themselves with a bottle of moonshine before going on their robbery spree. McCourt, the getaway driver, was apparently sober. Told that a .38-caliber slug had killed Sherard, Lindberg admitted that he might have fired it – he or McCourt. Burns had carried a .32-caliber automatic pistol. Police arrested Leo Burns within a day or so. His claim to have not fired at the officer was disproven by .32-caliber slugs collected at the crime scene. Meanwhile, McCourt had fled the area and would remain on the run for about four months.

Oddly enough, criminologist Luke S. May logged this case in mid-January 1929, just two days before the trials of Lindberg and Burns. The prosecuting attorney sent him a .38-caliber Colt double-action revolver and a .32-caliber Colt automatic pistol, plus several bullets. May’s files contain no information on when police had collected this evidence, but it’s highly likely that Luke had already inspected the exhibits. A full firearms and bullet assessment can be quite time-consuming, so this late interaction seems almost pro forma.

In court, May testified that, although many slugs from the two Colts had been collected at the crime scene, neither had been the murder weapon. Even so, for their participation in a felony where a death occurred, Lindberg and Burns were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Three weeks after they were sentenced, James McCourt was arrested for a robbery in Butte, Montana. Shown a “wanted” poster, he admitted that he had indeed participated in the drug store robbery. He seemed to recall firing his gun twice, but implied he’d only meant to make the patrolman duck while they made their escape. He had sold the weapon to a known bootlegger after his escape to Montana. McCourt waived extradition and was quickly returned to Seattle.

Police were unable to retrieve the suspected murder weapon. Yet authorities somehow learned a great deal about it. In his opening statement to the jury, the prosecutor said they knew enough “to convince you it was his gun that fired the fatal bullet.”

James McCourt.
Montana Standard.

Given that confident assertion, we must engage in a bit of conjecture. We first assume that Montana police grilled the gun buyer, who had perhaps re-sold it (or ditched it, but he’d probably not admit to that). He would have echoed McCourt’s description of the “.38 caliber long-barreled Colt revolver.” May had surely identified the make and model of the weapon that fired the fatal bullet. Thus, the buyer’s statement sealed that link, since McCourt had already admitted that he had fired that gun at Sherard.

We can, in fact, stretch our hypothesis a bit further. McCourt or the buyer would have almost certainly test fired the gun, just to prove that it was in good working order. Officers might have been able to recover a slug from whatever target they used, and that could have been compared to the death bullet. Unfortunately, May’s file for this old case only had the inventory of the first evidence received, not the reports. Whatever the exact sequence, newspapers noted that expert testimony stated “that the bullet which killed the officer came from McCourt’s gun.”

The jury issued a guilty verdict, and McCourt was sentenced to life in prison, joining his partners in crime. As it happened, Leo Burns died less than six months after he arrived at the state penitentiary. Cause of death was listed as tuberculosis, although he had shown no apparent symptoms through the period of his trial. McCourt and Lindberg were enumerated at the penitentiary for the 1940 census, but it is unknown what became of Lindberg after that.

McCourt was paroled in early 1943, apparently as part of a program to ease the strain on the under-funded and under-manned prison. He eventually moved to California, where records show he spent time in prison (San Quentin and then Folsom) for burglary. He died in San Francisco at the age of sixty.

Mary Frances Sherard never remarried. After her husband’s murder, groups in Seattle sponsored at least two benefit events to provide a “nest egg” for the family. She received small pensions from the U. S. government and from the city of Seattle, and added to that with occasional work cleaning homes.

For the 1940 Census, daughter Dorothy listed her occupation as Comptometer operator, a highly skilled position. (The Comptometer was a brand of mechanical calculator.) She perhaps married during the war because it is not possible to trace her after that.

James and Theodore went to work for Boeing Aircraft when they were old enough. Then, in the summer of 1943, Theodore enlisted in the army. One can imagine the mother’s fears, but he survived the war. Theodore married in 1947 and became a commercial artist. James stayed in the aircraft industry and eventually learned to fly himself. He moved to California and married there in 1950.

Mary Frances Sherard died in January 1954.
                                                                                

References: H. W. Crocker III, The Yanks Are Coming!: A Military History of the United States in World War I, Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C. (2014).

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

“[Sherard Murder: Background and Investigation],” Seattle Star, Seattle Times, Post-Intelligencer, Seattle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; Emmett Index, Idaho (January 1919 – October 1928).

“[Sherard Murder: Trials and Afterwards],” Post-Intelligencer, Seattle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Olympian, Olympia, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Washington; Montana Standard, Butte, Montana; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (January 14, 1929 – January 1943).

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The Christmas Presents Murder

Aged sixty-two, all Allen Presley wanted was to live out his life in peace at a small place about twenty miles east of Wenatchee, Washington. Selfish and cruel greed stole that from him shortly before Christmas of 1927. Some news reports would describe Presley, a lifetime bachelor, as a “recluse.” However, while he did avoid crowds and had only a small circle of close friends, he was widely known in the region. After he was murdered, an acquaintance in Clarkston, Washington took steps to insure that Presley was buried in Tennessee near where he grew up.

Presley was born in Loudon County, Tennessee, about thirty miles southwest of Knoxville. He moved to Douglas County, Washington in the early 1890s, about the time the Great Northern Railway laid tracks through the region. In 1899, he claimed a homestead on the high wheat-growing plains northeast of Wenatchee. Twelve years later, he claimed more land next to his first plot.

Coincidentally, just a few months earlier, Arthur “Art” Woodin, a man who would figure in Presley’s future, claimed wheat acreage only fourteen miles to the north. The Woodin family had moved to Douglas County in 1909, when the Great Northern ran a branch line through the heart of the wheat country. In September of that year, Arthur’s older brother Thomas, age 29, married Viola Thompson. A couple weeks later, Arthur, age 22, married Viola’s sister Lillian.

By 1920, Thomas and Viola had a brood of six children, including James Earl. Thomas had a farm, but that apparently did not work out. He drove a delivery truck for a time, but scrambled to find steady work. Arthur and Lillian had three children, and he was working for a wholesale grain company. He would eventually be promoted to a manager’s position with the firm.

Meanwhile, some time in the early Twenties, Allen Presley decided to take it easy. Reports do not say whether he sold his land or leased it. Either way, he had enough for his simple needs so he moved down off the high plains. His cabin was a few hundred yards from McCue station on the Great Northern branch rail line. From there, he could easily travel to nearby Palisades or into Wenatchee.

Steam Train at Palisades. Washington Heritage Register.

In December of 1927, Art Woodin was apparently at McCue station regularly. (News reports don’t say why, but he was probably traveling by rail from Waterville to Wenatchee and back.) During the week before Christmas, he realized he hadn’t seen Presley around for several days. Even with the freezing temperatures, normal for this time of year, it was unlike the old man to stay cooped up that long.

Thus, on Wednesday morning, Art stopped by Presley’s cabin. Inside under a cot, he found the Tennessean’s body. The corpse was stiff, not just from rigor mortis, but from the frigid cold. Robbery seemed to have been the motive, since the victim’s pockets were turned out and the cabin had been ransacked.

A medical examiner concluded that a small-caliber gunshot to the eye had killed him. However, he also observed severe trauma from a heavy blow to the same wound area. At the crime scene, investigators had found a stick of firewood with a splotch of blood and perhaps hair on its surface. Thus, the sheriff surmised that Presley might have been clubbed, and then shot to make sure he was dead.

McCue was only a tiny hamlet (it’s totally gone now). Interviews quickly established that the last person seen anywhere near the Presley place was Art’s seventeen-year-old nephew James. The previous Friday, he had been hunting rabbits in the hills during the day. He left after a while, but came back on a late-afternoon train. After walking toward the Presley place, he returned to the train shortly after 6:30.

When questioned, “Jim” made a token denial, but then admitted that he had, indeed, killed the old man. Earlier in the day, he had given Presley a couple of rabbits he had shot. He went back, he said, to leave his .22-caliber rifle at the cabin. Why was unclear, but he perhaps said he did not want to carry it back and forth. Jim claimed the rifle “went off” as he handed it over. In a panic after this “accident,” he had shoved the body under the cot and hurried back to the train.

Authorities then confronted him with the other damning evidence they had collected: The forceful blow to Presley’s head, obvious signs of robbery, and the fact that James had afterwards gone on a shopping spree in Wenatchee. The boy finally confessed that he had murdered the old man and used the money he stole to buy Christmas presents for his girlfriend.

James later repudiated the confession, but the evidence remained. About ten days before the boy’s trial was to begin, the Douglas County sheriff and prosecuting attorney traveled to Seattle to consult with criminologist Luke S. May. (It’s unclear if they had sent the physical evidence ahead or carried the items with them.) Some of May’s results were fairly routine. He verified that the death bullet and a shell casing found at the crime scene had come from the youth’s rifle. Embedded in the surface of the firewood, May detected human blood and distinctive eyebrow hairs that closely matched those of the victim.

However, one finding changed the crime reconstruction a bit. May also detected unburned grains of powder, similar to those found on the body, intermixed with the blood and hair on the wood surface. That is, Woodin had first shot the old man, at close range, and then fractured his skull to make sure. Knowledgeable observers suggested that such a brutal action might help Woodin’s court-appointed defense attorney with an insanity plea.

But about the best hope for the defense was the fact that “Jimmy” had never been in trouble before and was “generally regarded as a good boy in the community.” They did manage to avoid a death penalty, but James Earl Woodin received a life prison sentence. He was, however, released after a little over twelve years in prison, which seems odd, given the brutal and senseless nature of the crime. Woodin registered for the draft in Portland, Oregon, on December 26, 1940, but never entered any branch of the service.
                                                                                

References: Paula Becker, “Douglas County – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (October 15, 2006).

Luke S. May, Crime’s Nemesis, The Macmillan Company, New York (1936).

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

Gary Neumann, ed., Washington Heritage Register: Palisades Store, Department of Archæology and Historic Preservation, Olympia, Washington (2017).

“[Presley Murder News],” Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Olympian, Olympia, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland; Sweetwater News, Tennessee  (December 22, 1927).

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Murder of Grocer Edmund Hines

October 2, 1931 was a routine Friday for Salt Lake City grocer Edmund Hines and his wife Lottie. As usual, Edmund had begun the morning by withdrawing $500 to cash paychecks for the women who worked at a big laundry around the corner. After the lunchtime rush, his daughter-in-law drove him downtown to deposit the checks while Lottie minded the store. Tomorrow would be Edmund’s seventy-third birthday; the family would need to do something nice for him.

Edmund returned not long after 2 o’clock. Since he’d skipped lunch, Lottie said she’d get something from their home next door and they could have a late snack together. As she headed home, she saw two young men, both dressed in “light corduroy trousers,” coming up the street. She hadn’t been inside very long when she heard a bang. Thinking it was just an engine backfire, she continued putting their snack together.

Within a minute or two, Edmund stumbled through the front door, his chest and neck covered with blood. He gasped out, “Mama, I’m done for,” and then “Mama, I’m dying.” He was unable to say anything else before he collapsed at her feet and died. After some frantic moments, the police were called and she calmed down enough to tell what little she knew.

News reports do not mention any blood evidence inside the store, but police did find a glass soda bottle with blood and/or hair on it. They took that back to headquarters to be examined for fingerprints. A neighbor lady had seen two men jump her fence and run west from the store right after the shot. They fit the description Lottie gave, but the neighbor didn’t really get a good look at them.

An autopsy revealed that Edmund had suffered a severe head injury, which police assumed was inflicted by the soda bottle. But he had died from a bullet that hit him near the right shoulder blade and exited the left side of his neck. Police learned that Hines kept a gun in a drawer near the back of the store. They figured he had turned to get the weapon when he was shot. They supposedly searched for the fatal bullet but found nothing.

Feelings ran high about the murder, for the Hines Cash Store had been a fixture in the neighborhood for a decade. Born in Vermont, Edmund moved to Salt Lake around 1888, when he was thirty years old. He opened a wholesale grocery business and, in 1896, married a local girl, Charlotte “Lottie” Lewis. Around 1917, he sold the firm and the family spent perhaps a year in California.

But then they returned and Edmund worked for a meat packing company for several years. Around 1921 or 1922, he opened his grocery store a mile or so east of downtown. He was well-liked for his genial nature and public-spirited actions. Pupils from the elementary school across the street often came in to buy candy or fruit, or to have lunch at the small counter Mama Hines  served in the back. Thus, news reports noted that 700 children paraded over to pay their last respects before the grocer’s body went to the Roman Catholic church for his funeral.

Spurred by local outrage, police assigned extra officers to the case and “fifty suspects were apprehended and questioned.” Authorities held several for further investigation, but most were soon released.

Oddly enough, Edmund’s oldest son, Gerald, made what turned out to be a crucial break in the case. He was in the store on Sunday, probably cleaning up. Aged about 32, he then had a job with the state of Utah and was perhaps assessing how to sell the store. In any case, he found an empty shell casing. (How police investigators missed this vital piece of evidence is a mystery.)

The standard markings on the shell provided some information, but police turned to criminologist Luke S. May for more. A spokesman told reporters what they had learned in time for their Monday editions. The murder weapon was a .32-caliber Remington automatic pistol, a somewhat unusual model of pocket weapon. He also parroted what May always said and taught: A firearms expert could examine the shell and testify that it had been fired by a specific weapon.

In a city the size of Salt Lake, police regularly made arrests of young men for various suspected crimes. Over the next two months, those who even vaguely fit the description of the Hines attackers were also grilled about that. Unfortunately, no new leads appeared.

Officials thought they had something in mid-November when they arrested a small gang of burglars, aged 19 and 20. Among their loot, police found two .32-caliber automatic pistols. Test shells were collected from each and referred to May, but neither were the right gun. In mid-December, officials extradited a youthful burglary suspect from California. They had some hope that he might have been involved in the Hines case, but that too failed to pan out.

Finally, the Salt Lake Tribune for December 28 ran the headline, “Youth Tells of Hines Murder.” The suspect was 20-year-old Conrad Hansen. Police asserted that he had been arrested for “a series of street car holdups.” During interrogation, officials said, Hansen admitted that he was one of two men involved in the attempted robbery and subsequent murder.

Conrad Hansen.
Salt Lake Tribune photo.

Officials were more forthcoming for the next day’s editions. Actually, “another youth” had fingered the two men. The ring-leader had been 19-year-old Grant Tice, and Hansen claimed that Tice had fired the fatal shot.

Reporters learned who the informant was some time in the following week or two. His name was David F. Silver and he was about 18 years old. The tragedy actually began in late September. Tice tried to get Silver to join him and Hansen to rob the Hines grocery. Tice even went so far as to case the store and preferred escape route from a stolen car … so his own wouldn’t be seen in the area. Even so, Silver refused because Hines knew him personally. He did, however, loan Tice his .32-caliber Remington automatic pistol for Hansen to use. When Tice returned the weapon, he told Silver how the robbery had gone wrong.

Rather than being intimidated by their guns, Edmund had cracked Hansen on the head with the soda bottle. Hansen had then slugged the grocer with his gun. Edmund turned to run and Hansen shot him. Tice also tried to get off a shot, but Hansen was in the line of fire.

At first, Silver simply cleaned the Remington and stored it away. He and Tice began to worry when police named the model and said they would be able to identify the specific pistol. The continuing arrests and interrogations finally led them to toss the weapon and extra ammunition into the Jordan River, on the west side of the city. (Authorities would search the stretch where Silver said they had thrown it, but never found the gun.)

Then the on-going pressure led Hansen and Tice to leave Salt Lake at the end of October. They traveled south together, but split up in Texas. Hansen claimed they rejoined briefly in Pueblo, Colorado, around Thanksgiving. From there, Tice supposedly went “East” in search of his family, while Hansen returned to Salt Lake.

Very little is known about Grant Tice, alias Grant Hamilton, alias Grant Clark. He claimed to have been born in Michigan around 1914, but neither assertion can be verified. News reports said his mother lived for some time in Salt Lake, but do not say when. We have no idea where he was for about seven weeks after Hansen saw him in Pueblo.

Grant Tice.
Salt Lake Tribune photo.

Conrad Hansen was born around 1912 in Salt Lake City, where his father was a tailor. His name does not appear in the news prior to the Hines shooting. In any case, Conrad was most likely back in Salt Lake in early December.

At that time, David Silver was in jail, serving a six-month term for petty larceny (reduced from an armed robbery charge). At some point, the grapevine surely told him that Hansen was back in town. When officials extradited the possible Hines murder suspect back to Utah, he also knew that they still hadn’t given up on the case. Facing another five months behind bars, Silver apparently “cut a deal” for an early release. Police investigated the story he told and then arrested Hansen.

Authorities soon indicted Hansen for first degree murder, and issued a warrant for the arrest of Grant Tice on the same charge. His mother, previously known in Salt Lake as Nellie Hamilton, was traced to Long Beach, California. (Probably by Luke May’s agents or affiliates, but we can’t tell from news reports.) Tice was arrested at her home on January 18, 1932 and he was back in Salt Lake within a week.

Trials for the two young men were scheduled for late April. By this time, officials had confirmed that Hansen fired the fatal shot. Defense attorneys surely explained to him that a conviction for first degree murder could end in a death sentence. Thus, on Monday April 25, Hansen pled guilty to second degree murder, knowing that he would most likely receive a life sentence. Tice had refused a plea deal similar to Hansen’s, so opening statements for his trial began two days later.

Tice perhaps figured there was no danger of a death penalty, since he had not even fired a shot. News reports did not provide details of the prosecutor’s opening arguments. Still, we can easily imagine the tone: Hansen had fired the fatal bullet, but Tice was clearly the instigator of their foul plot. He planned the deed and even provided the weapon Hansen used for the “callous” murder of a beloved old man. Faced with this portrait of himself as the “evil mastermind” behind the killing, Tice abruptly “sought and obtained permission to plead guilty to a charge of second degree murder.”

Hansen and Tice both received life sentences. However, despite protests from members of the Hines family, those were later commuted to 25-year terms. The parole board freed Tice as of May 2, 1941 and Hansen about a year later. Hansen signed up for the draft after his release, but Tice (under whatever name he chose to use) disappeared from available public records.
                                                                                

References: “[Edmund G. Hines Murder Investigations],” Salt Lake Telegram, Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah; Riverside Daily Press, California (October 3 – December 30, 1931).

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

“[Trial and Afterwards for Hines Murder],” Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Salt Lake Telegram, Salt Lake Tribune, Utah; Evening Tribune, San Diego, California (January 1932 – May 1941).

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Mysteries at Lake Thomas

Stevens County, Washington contains a number of picturesque mountain lakes east of the county seat in Colville. They have been popular vacation spots since the early Twentieth Century. (Most were on private homesteads until the late Thirties, when they were purchased under a New Deal federal program and absorbed into the Colville National Forest.)

Early Lake Thomas. U.S. Forest Service.

Near mid-May, 1932, sisters Blanche Richardson and Leona Stevens drove the 25 miles or so out from Colville to ready the family-run resort on Lake Thomas for the summer season. The property most likely still belonged to their father, who was now spending more time back in upstate New York. The resort included a number of rental cabins, and a structure that housed a store, post office, and living quarters with bedrooms on the second floor. Only one cabin was occupied, the renter being Arthur E. Carssow, a Colville druggist on a fishing excursion.

On the evening of May 16, a car parked in front of the store and Harry Chitwood, Blanche’s former husband, got out. The year before, she had filed for divorce, which was granted … with a provision that allowed her to re-assume her previous married name. The tragedy that followed left many unanswered questions, which started with the murder itself.

In early news reports, sister Leona said that Chitwood “entered the store and started shooting without warning.” And Stevens County Sheriff Dick Bone opined that “the slaying probably was the result of jealousy.” Of course, the sheriff arrived at the scene after Blanche died and while Chitwood was on the run. He did not identify a subject of Chitwood’s jealousy.

Within hours, that story changed. Leona now claimed that Chitwood came into the store and demanded that Blanche give their marriage another chance. He then dragged her to the car so they could return to town. She, of course, said that it was all over between them.

In this new version, Leona said the two were inside the car when Harry pulled out “a heavy revolver” and shot Blanche three times. However, reports do not mention blood, bullets, or bullet holes in the car. In any case, Leona screamed when he shot Blanche, so Chitwood supposedly fired a warning shot in her general direction. Then he ran into the forest. We have no notion of why he didn’t just drive off in the car.

Leona helped her sister upstairs so she could rest on a bed, then called the sheriff. Blanche soon died, and Leona apparently fainted. Still, she was downstairs when a wounded Arthur Carssow stumbled into the store. He claimed that he had rushed from his cabin to investigate the gunfire and encountered Chitwood on the trail. Harry had supposedly yelled something about his wife committing suicide, and then shot Arthur twice. Leona again helped the victim to a bed. Later, he was transported to a hospital in Colville, where he was “not expected to live.”

Mount Carmel Hospital, Colville. Hospital history

Chitwood turned himself in to authorities the next morning, and freely admitted that he had killed his wife. If he said why he shot Carssow, that explanation never made it into the newspapers. Authorities filed first degree murder charges against Chitwood three days after the shooting. Meanwhile, Carssow’s resilience had surprised the physicians who removed the bullets from his stomach. News reports said, “They were hopeful of his recovery.” Also, arrangements were being made to send Blanche’s body back to New York.

Blanche Mildred Hills was born in March 1893, in Chautauqua County, New York, where her family had been early pioneers. She first married when she was just fifteen years old. The couple had had no children when her husband died by drowning, the victim of an accident or possibly a robbery and murder.

A year later, Blanche married Neil Richardson. He was 23 years old, she now 21. They had a daughter, Jennie, in late 1915. Sadly, Blanche’s marriage to Richardson fell apart some time around World War I. We don’t know why they split, but records show that Neil entered the Army in early 1918 and spent over a year in France.

Where Blanche and her daughter spent the next three or four years is unknown. However, her father had relatives in Washington state, and possibly Oregon. For years, he and Blanche’s mother had made trips to the West in search of possible investments. By late 1918, they had moved to Stevens County. A newspaper item shows they owned the property on Lake Thomas in the spring of 1920. Blanche certainly followed them west because, in Portland around 1922, she married Harry M. Chitwood.

Born in Oregon, Chitwood married there first in 1906, when he was about twenty-four years old. That marriage ended within two or three years, but we don’t know how or why. In 1915, he married again, in Vancouver, Washington (just across the Columbia River from Portland). That ended by divorce, in early 1919, on the grounds of infidelity.

Blanche and Harry spent five or six years in Portland after their marriage, with Harry working as a chauffeur and bus driver. They then moved to Stevens County. In 1930, Harry gave his occupation as “resort proprietor,” but – as noted above – Blanche divorced him a year later. The grounds were “non-support and cruelty.” She continued with the family business while Harry drove for an outfit that transported freight and passengers between Colville and Spokane.

A few days after the shooting, Sheriff Bone sent evidence for the case to criminologist Luke S. May in Seattle. May was not hired to come view the crime scene directly. Exhibits included a Smith & Wesson .32-20 revolver surrendered by Chitwood, and a Colt .38 Special revolver. May also received four bullets. One had been removed from Blanche’s head and was the only one of the four where tests detected traces of blood. (The other two fatal slugs were apparently lost.)

The second bullet May received had been found on the ground near the resort headquarters. However, it was too badly “mashed up,” as May put, to have any use as evidence. The final two bullets came with no provenance. (We’ll return to those in a moment.)

S&W .32-20 Revolver

May dated his report on Friday, May 27. The Smith & Wesson left rather faint marks on test bullets. As could be expected, the fatal slug was slightly distorted. Worse yet, the medical examiner had done a crude job of extracting it with forceps. Still, with his trained eye, May managed to verify that the Smith & Wesson had fired the fatal bullet.

However, he also warned county officials that, in his expert opinion, enlarged photographs of the comparison would be essentially useless as court exhibits. Jurors would only “see” the conspicuous scratches left on the death bullet by the forceps. Prosecutors would be hard pressed to get them to ignore that and correctly judge the faint, slightly-distorted barrel marks. He advised them to send him a bullet “from the man who was wounded.”

May found that the Colt 38 Special had “one very distinctive mark on one of the lands,” allowing him to prove that the other two bullets were from that gun. However, he also discovered a splotch inside the barrel that had become corroded since those slugs were fired from the weapon. He wondered how that had happened.

In his reply letter, the sheriff informed May that the .38-caliber revolver belonged to Arthur Carssow. The slight corrosion was easily explained: Leona Stevens had spilled booze on the gun when she handed the wounded man a drink. This was the first mention anywhere that the druggist had a weapon, and that it had been fired. That information never appeared in the newspapers, ever.

The rest of the sheriff’s reply is rather puzzling, given the sequence of events. He said that it would be “some time” before they could “supply you with any more bullets.” As noted above, Carssow had proven amazingly resilient after his operation. By the end of the month, his physicians were sure he would recover, barring a sudden setback.

Yet here, on June 1, the sheriff was saying Carssow had “two bullets in his stomach,” and was in no condition to have them removed. Also, he said “let this case rest until you hear from our office again.” May replied two days later. He would “await further orders” and reiterated that a bullet from Carssow “will undoubtedly be of much more value to us than the bullet taken from the head.” A couple days after that, local newspapers reported that Carssow would be back at work the next day.

Another month passed. Then, on July 7, Sheriff Bone wrote to say, “Please be advised that we do not choose to go any further in the Chitwood shooting case as we have gathered evidence now that will put him away for some time.”

However, no jury ever heard any facts about the case. That fall, Chitwood pled guilty to second degree murder and received a ten to fifteen year prison sentence. He would spend less than seven years in prison for murdering Blanche and almost killing Arthur Carssow. In fact, he wasn’t even charged for the attack on the druggist. Why not? We don’t know.

A brief item in a Spokane newspaper on February 23, 1933 raised more questions. Carssow was suing Sheriff Dick Bone for the loss of his car in a garage fire “several months” earlier: “The car had been struck by bullets and was being held by Sheriff Bone in a local garage as evidence.”

That was the only hint to the public that another gun and more shooting had been involved in the Chitwood-Carssow case. The number of gaps in the open records, even with May’s papers, invites several interpretations of what actually happened. A few could be quite sinister. However, we might blame some of the problems on the fact that Sheriff Bone was “in over his head.”

Originally from Tennessee, Kelly K. “Dick” Bone moved to Washington after 1900 and married there in 1910. He claimed a homestead, but in 1914 purchased a country restaurant on the main road about fourteen miles south of Colville. That venture apparently did not do well. When he registered for the draft in 1918, he was working as a night watchman. After some time as a village constable, he became a Stevens County deputy sheriff in 1923. He was appointed sheriff four years later.

Bone had zero training as an investigator or law enforcement officer. He served as deputy under two sheriffs who were equally untaught, being former farmers and stockmen. The county Prosecuting Attorney would have been no help either. A former merchant, he hadn’t been to college or law school. After “reading” law to qualify around 1916, he had handled mostly commercial cases before being elected Prosecutor in 1930.

They hired criminologist May, but provided no useful context beyond the fact that one bullet came from the victim’s head. The S&W .32-20 revolver is a powerful weapon. Where did the other Chitwood bullets go? Surely there were blood stains? Moreover, without testing, they had no physical evidence to prove he shot Carssow. For that matter, where did Bone find the two slugs fired from the Carssow weapon?

This list of unanswered question goes on and on. However, barring a revelation in a newly-discovered diary or memoir, we shall never know what really happened out by the lake on that deadly day.
                                                                                

References: “[Background: Chitwood-Richardson Murder],” Buffalo Evening News, Springville Journal, New York; Oregon Daily Journal, Portland, The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon; Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Colville Examiner, Spokane Chronicle, Washington (April 1899 – (July 1930).

“[Chitwood-Richardson Murder Sequence],” News-Tribune, Tacoma, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Washington (May 1932 – February 1933).

Craig E. Holstine, Forgotten Corner: A History of the Colville National Forest, Colville Statesman-Examiner, Incorporated, Washington (1987).

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

David Wilma, “Stevens County – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (November 5, 2006).

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Jealousy – Even Justified – Is A Deadly Sin

Weather in Port Townsend, Washington for the weekend before Christmas of 1930 was “normal.” That is, they had temperatures in the forties, with occasional blustery wind and rain showers from the somber overcast. Lulu Hilsinger decided to lighten the mood. Husband George was off at nearby Fort Worden, doing whatever an Army warrant officer did on a Sunday afternoon when he had to work. She most likely persuaded her two children, aged sixteen and eight, to go visit friends.

Fort Worden, Washington

Then she and her friend Shirley invited their boyfriends over. We have no photos of Lulu, but she was clearly an attractive woman. Despite her age (she was 42 years old) and the children, she had gained the fond attentions of Homer Cameron, a local carpenter who was just 24 years old. Shirley, ten years younger than Lulu, was also married, but separated from her husband. She too had attracted a youthful admirer, a soldier who was a year younger than Cameron.

The couples danced and, at times, Shirley played current romantic tunes on a piano while everyone sang along. It’s unclear how long this had been going on when George walked in unexpectedly. He became livid with anger and ordered Cameron out of the house.

Cameron may have hesitated too long, so the soldier went after him with his fists. But George, almost fifty years old and in shaky health, lost. In fact, he received a black eye for his troubles. With humiliation added to anger, George began shouting curses and threats at Lulu. The two young men tried to hold him back, but he broke free and started at her. She later claimed that she called out a warning, but the others could not recall one way or another. Then Lulu shot, hitting him in the forehead with a .32-caliber bullet. He died almost instantly.

Military officials opened a brief inquiry having to do with family benefits, but civil authorities  carried on after that. Lulu was charged with first degree murder, and prosecutors scheduled her trial to begin in mid-March, 1931.

Lulu Traylor was born in July 1888, in Louisiana. She married Chester H. Peters in McLennan County, Texas (near Waco), in October 1911. Peters was white, so that entailed some risk and/or subterfuge. At that time, most southern and some northern states strictly enforced laws against interracial marriages. And for both the 1900 and 1910 censuses, Lulu and her family were identified as persons of color – “mulatto” in the 1910 census. But Lulu could successfully “pass” for white (she would be listed as white in later censuses).

Chester and Lulu had their first child, a boy, in 1913. Chester worked for the railroad and moved around, so their daughter was born in San Antonio, in January 1921. But some time after that, the couple divorced, with Lulu retaining custody of the two kids.

We don’t know when or where she met George Hilsinger, a long-time veteran of the U.S. Army. Born around 1882 in New Hampshire, George enlisted in August 1905. Available records don’t say where he spent World War I, but he was at a base in Wisconsin in 1920. He was then married, but must have divorced not long after that.

Records show that Hilsinger did have duty stations in Texas, so that is presumably where he met and married Lulu. The family lived in the Philippines from late 1922 until the summer of 1924. On the return trip, Lulu told the boarding agent that she was 29 years old, trimming about six years off her age.

But all was not well in the Hilsinger household, and the couple divorced some time in the next year or so. Still, the two worked things out and they remarried in April 1928. At that time, George was stationed at Fort Worden, a coastal defense and training station. Lulu remained consistent for the 1930 census taker, giving her age as 35 (she was actually over 41).

Despite the apparent reconciliation, acquaintances reported that the couple quarreled a lot. There also seemed to be evidence of physical as well as verbal abuse. Later, Lulu would assert that she was again considering divorce.

The death weapon naturally became a matter of interest. “Some weeks” before the shooting, Cameron had tried to give Lulu an automatic pistol. One may presume he wanted her to have some protection against George’s abuse. But Lulu apparently refused to keep the gun around. On the day of the shooting, Cameron had the pistol in his coat pocket. He naturally set his coat aside at the start of the party. When the fistfight began, Lulu retrieved the weapon, fearing what might happen … rightly, as it turned out.

When the case came to trial, Lulu’s attorneys pled temporary insanity, and self-defense. Oddly enough, criminologist Luke May logged this case as a handwriting assessment, not a firearms investigation. (Prosecutors must have already had all they needed for the weapon.) May was hired to examine recent letters to Lulu that had supposedly been written by George when he was away on an extended trip. Luke verified that they were indeed from husband to wife.

Lulu basically claimed that she panicked because her husband had previously been cruel to her, inflicting physical as well as mental harm. And she had proof of that, including at least one broken leg or ankle. The prosecution countered with George’s letters, which were apparently warm and affectionate.

Beyond that, prosecutors pointed out the odd circumstances involving the death weapon. And Lulu certainly was “fooling around” on her husband, although it was unclear if she and Cameron had a sexual relationship. In the end, the jury found her guilty of second-degree murder.

Then the case went to the state Supreme Court on appeal. That court found several questionable factors in how the prosecution handled the case. But the critical problem came in the instructions from the judge to the jury. As required by law, the judge outlined the legal criteria necessary to find a defendant guilty of first-degree murder, versus second-degree murder. The key difference was “premeditation,” or lack thereof.

However, early in his instructions, the judge said, “The killing of a human being is murder in the second degree when committed … without premeditation.” In doing so, he left out some crucial wording from the statute: “unless it is excusable or justifiable.” The judge did mention the notion of “justifiable” in his later summing up. However, the Supreme Court decided his approach only served to confuse the jury. The court reversed the verdict and sent the case back for retrial.

Because of all the publicity for the first trial, a change of venue was granted. The new jury heard the same evidence, including the indications of Lulu’s unfaithfulness. From that, they could sympathize with George’s anger. But his past abuse, plus his seeming to “fly off the handle” also gave them reason to believe that his wife had good cause to fear bodily harm. Weighing all the factors, the jury found her “not guilty” of murder, acknowledging her right to “stand her ground” in the face of an imminent physical attack.

During the protracted legal battle, Lulu had sent her children back to Texas to live with relatives. After the ordeal, she returned there and found a job as a waitress. She also reverted to her first married name of “Peters.”
                                                                                

References: “[Hilsinger Shooting],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon  (December 1930 – October 1932).

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

Charles Frank Robinson II, Dangerous Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated South, The University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville (2009).

State v. Hilsinger, 167 Wash. 427, 9 P.2d 357 (March 29, 1932).

Photo credit: Fort Worden Site & Facilities Plan, Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, Olympia, Washington (August 2008).

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Sad End of a Long March

November 26, 1921, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, was overcast and chilly in Wenatchee, Washington. Temperatures were in the high forties, but the showers of the previous few days had blown on through. Jacob Weber’s hearing wasn’t so good any more and he walked with a cane, but he was pretty spry for a man approaching 78 years of age. He decided to go for a late afternoon walk. Jacob had tramped successfully through years of what most consider the deadliest war in U.S. history. This march – walk – would not end so well.

Sadly, a tragically wrong rumor, perhaps no more than a casual remark, fueled what happened. For some time, a youth gang had been meeting at a local pool hall to plan thefts – burglaries and outright robberies. Money was the obvious motivation, but some seemed to be in it mostly for the thrills. On this afternoon, two of the group (there might have been a third) decided to check out the notion that the old guy visiting from Nebraska was carrying a lot of cash.

Picking an empty bit of street near where Jacob was staying, they confronted him and demanded his money. Jacob could tell from the voices and builds that the would-be robbers were mere boys (they wore only rudimentary masks). Not intimidated, he immediately whacked the nearest one with his cane. Stunned at the unexpected resistance, the bandits backed off and started to run away. Then, surely out of spite at the humiliation, one turned and fired three shots, hitting Jacob once in the midriff.

Jacob reached the local hospital alive, but there was little hope for his survival. He did manage to give passable descriptions – clothing, build, hair, etc. – of at least two of his assailants. In a sad, bitter scrap of irony, the juvenile criminals were about the same age as Jacob had been when he joined the crusade to save the Union and end slavery.

Jacob Weber was born on January 15, 1844 in Ripley County, Indiana, an area of scattered settlements in the southeast corner of the state. After his father died in 1856, the boy was apprenticed as a cigar maker, which would set the main course of his life.

Jacob Weber, ca 1862. Family Archives

Before that life could begin, however, Jacob enlisted in the Seventh Indiana Infantry for duty in the Civil War. Just seventeen years old, he marched off to war with youthful hope and optimism. The Seventh Indiana fought in all the great battles in the east, including Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Siege of Petersburg. By the end, even after consolidation with other remnants, only a company-sized contingent remained on active duty. Jacob was among the fortunate few who were still there to witness the surrender of General Lee’s Confederate army at Appomattox Courthouse.

It’s unknown what Jacob did for the early years after the war. However, on November 9, 1871 he married Eva Egelhoff. Two or three years later, they moved to Pawnee City, Nebraska, about 58 miles southeast of Lincoln. Jacob started a cigar-making business, and he and Eva would live there until early 1921.

Jacob and Eva had three children who survived to adulthood. Their son, William, married in 1893, but the couple had no children and the wife died in the fall of 1919. In 1920, he was back in Pawnee City. Daughters Lula and May Carrie married and between them gave Jacob and Eva a grandson and three granddaughters. In 1920, Lula’s family lived in Dodge City, Kansas, while May Carrie’s family was in Wenatchee, Washington.

In February of 1921, William married again. The ceremony was performed in Wenatchee, and it seems almost certain that Jacob and Eva attended the wedding. Eva’s health had deteriorated and they hoped “a more agreeable climate” might help. Apparently it did, because she was able to attend a “Nebraskans in Washington” reunion in April.

The family also began planning a Golden Anniversary celebration for Jacob and Eva in Wenatchee. Daughter Lula even came from Dodge City to help with the arrangements. Sadly, Eva’s health took a turn for the worse and the great day came and went. She was still bed-ridden when Jacob went for his fateful walk.

Right after the shooting, police rounded up seven members of the youth gang, which they had been keeping an eye on anyway. Shocked at the sudden change, several of those held began blurting out confessions to robberies around the area. Two names eventually emerged which, for reasons that will become clear, we will call Tom and Dick.

The older of the two, Dick, had been born in Chelan county. He was about 17 years old and his family had always lived in, or within a day’s travel of, Wenatchee. Tom, the slightly younger youth, had been born in Oregon, but the family had moved to Wenatchee by 1907. Those local connections would become an important factor in subsequent events.

Jacob Weber died three days after he was shot. Shortly after that, his wife awoke in her sickbed, and asked desperately to see him. Family members managed to calm her, but she surely sensed the worst … and soon passed away herself. A double funeral was held in Wenatchee on December 2. Then the bodies were transported to Pawnee City and buried side by side in the cemetery there.

Tom and Dick were charged with murder and went on trial in April, 1922. Prosecutors probably sensed they had an uphill battle. Newspapers repeatedly emphasized that the suspects were “just boys.” Few wanted to believe that two “kids” from well-known local families could do such a terrible thing.

Jacob’s dying words, and witnesses who had seen the two near the murder site, pointed to Tom as the shooter. Criminologist Luke S. May appeared on the stand to identify the kind of gun used. However, the death weapon was never found, and officials failed to find any witness willing to say that Tom owned a weapon.

One of May’s agents provided testimony that should have been the clincher. He had gone to jail posing as a safe cracker and mingled with the prisoners. Tom not only admitted shooting the old man, he showed off the mark where the veteran had smacked him with his cane.

The defense made little effort to counter any of that. They went straight to an alibi. Their witnesses claimed to have seen the two downtown, well away from the robbery site, at the time of the shooting. None could offer any hard evidence – a purchase receipt, perhaps – to support their contentions, but they were “sure” when they had seen the boys. Still, under cross-examination, one such witness admitted that Tom’s grandmother had pressured her into changing her time recollection to more closely fit the preferred story. That should have seriously shaken the defense, but was apparently shrugged off.

In fact, according to post-trial accounts, the jury never even considered the first degree murder indictment. They finally split on a lesser charge, so a new trial began in June. The opening defense statement set their confident tone. Despite the obvious instance of witness tampering, they would again rely on the time alibi. Also, the defense would show “that neither boy admitted any knowledge of the shooting to reputable citizens of the city.”

May’s agent had posed as a criminal to obtain key information. That entailed considerable risk to himself, since police informers sometimes end up dead. But … he was an outsider and even ordinary folks seemed to consider the practice somehow disreputable. The second jury brought in a “not guilty” verdict.

Tom, the admitted shooter, managed to stay out of the news for a time. However, later reports suggest he may have engaged in petty theft throughout the following years. He did get married in the spring of 1925, and fathered two daughters over the next few years. The girls did not see a lot of their father, however, because he spent the time in and out of jail. That included at least one grand larceny charge, to which he pled guilty. At the time of the 1930 census, he was confined at the state reformatory.

Tom made the news in a big way in 1931. Events included a jailbreak (he was soon captured), at least two forgery counts, and, finally, a trip to the state penitentiary. We don’t know how long he spent in prison, but his wife divorced him some time before 1937. The last reliable public record for him was in Missoula, Montana in 1943, when a second wife obtained an annulment.

In one small sense, Jacob’s sad death was perhaps not totally in vain. After the trial, Dick also stayed out of the news. But unlike Tom’s probable rap sheet, records show that Dick settled down to work on his father’s farm northwest of Wenatchee. In 1931, he married and began raising a family. After the repeal of Prohibition, he opened a tavern and game room in the area. He registered for the draft in 1942 and may have served some time in the Marines.
                                                                                

References: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 4, The Dyer Publishing Company, Des Moines, Iowa (1908).

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

“[News Relevant to Weber Murder],” Lincoln Journal, Lincoln Star, Nebraska; The Olympian, Olympia, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Leavenworth Echo, Spokane Chronicle, Bellingham Herald, Chehalis Bee-Nugget, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (April 1921 – July 1931).

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Shades of the Old Wild West

The weather was chilly in remote Okanogan County, Washington on November 17, 1936, with nighttime temperatures below freezing in the high country. Trouble that had been brewing for quite some time came to a head in the afternoon. Stockman Bob Neil had discovered a number of his steers mingled with those of his son-in-law, Robert Minton. Bad blood had developed between Neil and the Mintons soon after Robert had married Bob’s daughter Margaret. Much of that seemed to have been fomented by Robert’s father, Charles Robert, often referred to as “C.R.”

No one could tell if Bob’s stock had been “encouraged” to wander, but now he asked a neighbor to help him “cut the critters out of the herd.” The neighbor did not have a horse right then, but said he’d come along on foot to drift animals back towards Bob’s range.

Not long after Bob rode on ahead, the neighbor heard a flurry of gunshots. Moments later, the cattleman came back. He stated that C.R. had apparently been waiting for him, and ordered Bob off “his” land. Bob complied, but either didn’t move fast enough or perhaps took the wrong route. Thus, C.R. cut him off along the trail and started at him, brandishing a large butcher knife. Bob produced a revolver and, when C.R. refused to back down, shot him four times. The wounded man died shortly after medical help arrived.

Robert H. Neil was born March 26, 1873, somewhere in Texas. He thus grew to manhood during the period when the so-called “Wild West” era flourished and then faded. (Historians consider 1895 as roughly the end of that era.) Thus, this affray on the range quite likely evoked a sense of tragic déjà vu. 

Tunk Creek Scenery. Real Estate photo.

Bob Neil first appeared in public records in 1909, when he filed on a homestead in Okanogan County, near Tunk Creek. Tiny Riverside was about five miles to the southwest, but the nearest city of any size, Spokane, was over 110 miles away. The holding included Bob Neal Lake as a water source and proved suitable for stock raising. (Over the years, different reports would alternative between the two spellings of the last name.)

Neil married and began raising a family in 1916, when he was over forty years old. Daughter Margaret married Robert Minton in April 1935; she was 18 years old, he was 21.

Robert (actually “Charles Robert,” like his father) was born near Los Angeles. His father had been born in Salem, Oregon, in 1894. He studied briefly at Willamette University, but married Ada Leggett in 1913. They moved to Los Angeles within a few years. There, C.R. tried his hand as a blacksmith, salesman, waiter, restaurant operator, and wholesale flower raiser. By 1930, C.R. and Ada had four sons, including Robert, Jr.

The Minton family moved to Washington after 1930, but it’s unclear exactly when. Nor do we know how Margaret and Robert met. Soon after Margaret and Robert got married, Bob Neil had turned over a small herd of cattle to the couple. Details of the accompanying contract are unknown, but they were to share costs and profits from the venture. The deal became a bone of contention almost immediately. Reports note that C.R. and Robert filed “numerous” lawsuits against Bob, and even started proceedings to have him declared insane.

All of that failed, but Margaret told her father that they still had plans “to drive him off his Tunk Creek homestead.” In fact, in January 1936, after less than nine months of marriage, Margaret filed for divorce. However, the couple somehow patched things up and she did not follow through at that time.

The harassment continued, C.R. taking the lead. In fact, the elder Minton proved himself to be a contentious fellow all around. That fall, a few weeks before the situation exploded, a neighbor gave C.R. a ride, headed into Riverside. Then, for reasons known only to himself, C.R. began to bad-mouth the driver’s son-in-law. The diatribe escalated to the point that the driver finally told C.R. to get out and walk.

Now, of course, his argumentative nature had gotten him shot and killed. A hearing quickly freed Bob on his plea of self-defense. However, a second hearing was called when C.R.’s widow made the claim that the cattleman had planted the knife at the scene. That assertion could not be verified, so authorities again dropped the murder charge. However, evidence did show that C.R. had been shot with a revolver, not a rifle, as Bob had initially stated. This information was surely provided by criminologist Luke S. May, who logged this case as a firearms investigation.

Bob admitted that he had indeed used a handgun. Oddly enough, although Bob served at times as a deputy sheriff, he did not have a weapons permit for the revolver. In fact, testimony would confirm that it was only a coincidence that Bob had the gun with him. Earlier on the day of the shooting, he had basically confiscated the revolver from his oldest son, who worked for a nearby cattleman. The son didn’t have a permit either, but liked to carry the gun out on the range, apparently just for the glamor of the thing. Bob spent five months in jail on the weapons charge. And that seemed to be the end of it.

However, a year after the shooting, newspapers reported that the Washington state attorney general had opened his own investigation. That action was quickly identified as a test of a statute recently passed by the state legislature. The new law allowed the state office to proceed when they thought local authorities had made an error. Reporters soon learned that officials in Olympia had received several anonymous letters, purporting to offer “new evidence” about the case.

Finally, in late March 1938, the AG demanded that local officials file a first degree murder charge against Robert H. Neil. The county prosecutor said, basically, “Sure … after you show us this new evidence.” Taking full advantage of the new law, the state filed the charge themselves. So far as one can tell now, state officials never did share the information that led to their preemptive action. In fact, there seems have been no effort made to identify the source(s) of the letters.

At the subsequent trial, witnesses split on whether or not Bob Neil had actually threatened to “get” C.R. Minton. One or two said he did. More said he expressed anger and frustration about Minton’s harassment, but made no threats of bodily harm. Of course, Bob had already admitted to shooting the victim. It does not appear that the defense raised the issue of how Neil could get a fair trial, given the huge publicity generated by the state’s actions.

In any case, the jury issued a guilty verdict – perhaps deciding that four gunshots were just too many for a case of simple self-defense. Neil was sentenced to life in prison. A week later, Bob said he would not have his lawyers contest the verdict, although he was sure they’d win an appeal. He told a reporter, “I am an old man, and I’m tired.” He was, of course, 65 years old at that point. Moreover, three years of almost nonstop litigation, first against the Mintons and then in criminal court, had left him flat broke. He died five years later.

The result devastated the Neil family. Less than two weeks after Bob’s no-appeal declaration, Margaret was granted a divorce from her husband. Where she went after that can not be determined. At the 1940 census, Bob’s wife was listed as an “inmate” at the Okanogan County Poor House. The oldest son, working as a poorly-paid cowboy and farm hand, could do nothing to help her. She died in 1947. The youngest son simple disappeared from available public records.

The Minton family gained nothing from the dispute either. All but the youngest son returned to Los Angeles to eke out meager livings during and after the war. The youngest apparently went to live with relatives in Oregon or southwestern Washington.
                                                                                

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

“[Neil-Minton Shooting News],” Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington (January 1936 – July 1938).

David Wilma, “Okanogan County — Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (January 21, 2006).

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Puzzling Countryside Murders

Double-killer Paul Staren was a deadly enigma. He was apparently born around 1885, in a part of Poland then controlled by Russia. If his later statements can be believed, he came to the U.S. in 1914. That was perhaps to avoid being mobilized to fight for Russia in World War I. However, immigration records for that general period do not list any matches to “Paul Staren,” “Paul Staroń,” or any reasonable variant. (“Staroń,” is a known Polish surname, while “Staren” is not.) Thus, one may infer that Staren might not have been his real name.

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.

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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