Yakima Love (?) Triangle

No one could, or would, say when the liaison that led to trouble started. After the incident, the person who might have explained … couldn’t, and her husband was dead. Their killer, quite naturally, told a story meant to save him from the gallows. But the ferment apparently came to a head at a community dance in the hamlet of Harrah, about fourteen mile south of Yakima, Washington.

Early Yakima Valley. Library of Congress.

Born and raised in Illinois, Claude Labbee married and fathered a daughter there. The family moved to the Yakima Valley around 1902, when Claude was about twenty-three. Soon after, the couple had a son. In the fall of 1919, Claude was involved in an altercation with a Yakima County deputy sheriff. The officer had come to retrieve Claude’s three-year-old nephew, who had been spirited out of Idaho in a divorce dispute. Claude, who apparently went armed on a regular basis, threatened the deputy with what newspapers called “a large revolver.” Then he simply drove off after allowing the officer to read the custody writ to him aloud. Reports said charges would be filed, but there was nothing in the news about any follow-up.

Claude did well enough to have his own farm operation by the time of the 1920 census, although the property was rented. His situation probably improved when his daughter married in the summer of that year.

Arthur and Odessa Wright, both born and raised in Iowa, married there in 1904. He was about twenty-four, she a year younger. Arthur ran a farm operation on leased land, with some success. The couple – they had no children – moved to the valley between 1910 and 1920. Whatever the initial arrangement, their spread near Harrah was mortgage-free by 1920.

On June 17, 1922, Arthur, Odessa, and Claude all attended a Saturday evening dance in Harrah. At some point, Claude asked Odessa for a dance. (His wife was apparently not there. She died in the Yakima hospital less than a year later.) Odessa refused, and Arthur saw something that led him to later declare that the real trouble started right then. The following Tuesday was warm and muggy, with temperatures in the high eighties under cloudy skies. That evening, apparently by pre-arrangement, Odessa met Claude near the Wright horse corral. The story of what happened next depends upon who did the telling.

Arthur Wright, in his dying statement, declared that Claude had shot him “as soon as he stepped out of the house.” Naturally, Claude said that Arthur opened fire first. Each man was hit three times, Arthur going down from his wounds. Then Claude turned and shot Odessa.

Local investigators never displayed a diagram of the crime scene, so the exact position of the victims is unclear. However, later testimony confirmed that Odessa fled the immediate scene when the shooting started. She was returning when Claude shot her. The consensus view was that he wanted to eliminate the only actual eye witness, but there might have been more to the story. The other potential witness was a hired hand working for Claude. He was not, however, close enough to have a good view in the gathering dusk. Nor do we have an adequate explanation of why he had accompanied his boss to the rendezvous.

Arthur suffered almost a week before he died from wounds in the leg, abdomen, and head. Most of that time he was too weak to say much. Odessa, hit in the forehead, remained coherent long enough to say that Claude had shot her and Arthur. She then lapsed into a coma from which she never recovered. (Doctors would not risk trying to remove the bullet in her brain.) A week after the affray, Claude was well enough to be released from the Yakima hospital to the county jail. The sheriff might have pushed that a bit because rumors suggested that neighbors might “come after” the shooter.

Records show that Luke May and another agent were in the valley at the end of August. (The file is rather skimpy for this old case, so it’s not clear exactly when he was hired.) In Yakima itself, no one seemed to know much. The agent “visited two cigar stands and card rooms” looking for information, but found only “passing and very general knowledge of the crime or its principals.” Of course, it’s quite possible that locals would not share more than that with an outsider.

Claude went on trial in mid-November for the murder of Arthur Wright. Testimony soon established that Claude and Odessa had been having an affair “for a number of years” prior to the shooting incident. Did Arthur suspect … and see something at the dance to confirm his suspicions? Or was Odessa trying to break it off? With Arthur dead and Odessa incapacitated, only Claude could have his say. He claimed that Odessa had asked him to come over to be a “peacemaker” between she and her husband. But he apparently could not quite recall what he was supposed to help make peace about.

The hired hand testified that Claude had been the aggressor in the shootout, and had promised him “a job for life” if he would say that Arthur fired first. But the jury must have judged him to be an unreliable witness. They decided that, with bullets flying both ways, Claude’s self-defense claim was justified. They issued a not guilty verdict the same day that Odessa Wright finally died from her head wound.

The acquittal aroused tremendous anger in the community. The sheriff received many anonymous phone calls expressing that rage. He had already received a note that said Claude would be lynched if he didn’t “get the limit” as a penalty. None of the callers made such threats, but rumors persisted after the acquittal.

A few weeks later, that anger was somewhat deflected when Claude was charged with murder in Odessa’s death. Claude had initially claimed that she had been hit by a stray bullet from her husband’s gun. But Arthur used a .32-caliber weapon, while Claude’s was a .25-caliber. After her death, examination quickly established that she had been hit by a .25-caliber slug. There’s no evidence that Luke was asked to specifically link the bullet to Claude’s weapon, probably because that wasn’t really needed.

The defense tried to claim that Odessa was wounded accidentally, “in the heat of the moment.” However, the trajectories of the various shots made that unlikely in the extreme. As suggested above, Claude probably wanted to eliminate the only eye witness to the shooting. In the process, he could also snuff out the one person who might reveal first-hand knowledge of their illicit affair.

The jury found Claude Labbee guilty of second-degree murder and he received a 10 to 25 year prison sentence.
                                                                                

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

State v. Labbee, 134 Wash. 55, 234 Pac. 1049 (1925).

“[Wright-Labbee News Items],” Daily Ledger, Tacoma, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (October 1919 – April 1925).

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Murder on the Olympic Peninsula

Olympic Peninsula, Forest Structures.
National Park Service

Evening, March 25, 1922, a Saturday. The Discovery Bay Logging Camp, located 12-15 miles southwest of Port Townsend, Washington, had been shrouded in darkness for an hour. The workers had no way to run into town and were amusing themselves in the dining/recreation hall as best they could. Logger Ray Light sat playing cards with some other men.

Suddenly, the door swung open, and two armed men entered. This was a stickup, one announced, and they should stand against the wall with their hands up. Some reports suggested that one robber almost immediately swung his weapon around and shot and killed Ray Light. During the trial, however, that proved to be erroneous. Instead, for some time, one gunman threatened the victims while his partner moved around the hall, emptying pockets and grabbing whatever else looked valuable.

Then someone outside the hall saw what was going on, grabbed a shotgun, and took a shot at the man on guard. He returned fire, and one bullet fatally wounded Ray Light. The bandits then fled into the dark forest.

The sheriff was notified, while Light's fellow workers were left to ponder his death. A native of Missouri, Light had become a sawmill worker while he was still in his teens. He moved to the northwest after 1910 and had enlisted in the Army from Ellensburg. After the war, he was stationed in Mayen, Germany as part of the Allied occupation forces. His regiment was inactivated at the end of 1921 and Light returned to find a job in Washington. He was about 32 years old when he was murdered.

The murder-robbery set off a tremendous manhunt, with posses scouring the area for clues and suspicious characters. As it happened, lawmen were already out on the prowl in the area. Coincidentally (as it turned out),  the day before the murder, two men had robbed the bank in Sequim, a town about eight miles from the logging camp.

Deputies now believed they were tracking, not “just” a pair of bank robbers, but also at least one killer. About a week later, deputies confronted two suspicious strangers near a bridge about fourteen miles south of the camp. When one man made a break under the bridge, a deputy shot and wounded him so badly he died two days later.

But these fugitives carried loot only from the bank. They had nothing from the logging camp and denied any part in that incident. Now faced with two separate incidents, a question of jurisdiction arose. Was the logging camp in Clallam or Jefferson County? A surveyor was rushed into the dense forest, and he found that the camp was west of the county line.

Authorities then hired private criminologist Luke S. May to sort out the evidence. May’s initial typed log entry said “Sequim bank robbery, fingerprints.” Next to that was the hand-written addendum: “Ray Light murder, Clallam Co.”

He did not have a lot to go on. One bandit had worn a mask most, if not all of the time, he was in sight of the victims. The other was masked at least part of the time. Thus, eye-witnesses were a bit vague in describing the men’s features. They were, however, able to provide good accounts of the intruders’ clothing, build, and movements. May did have the death bullet but, a fortnight after the incident, definite fingerprint evidence at the crime scene was hard to come by.

Finally, nearly three weeks after the murder, deputies captured two men who answered the descriptions. They had made their way to a run-down forest cabin about 65 miles to the west. They had with them several items stolen from the loggers … along with four revolvers. Soon after, many victims positively identified the men as the bandits.

The two initially gave fake names to authorities, but went on trial under the names Thomas H.  Riley and Charles Butt. Both listed their occupations as loggers and belonged to the radical International Workers of the World union (IWW). Two years earlier, Butt was incarcerated in Spokane, having been jailed in 1919.

Butt was then secretary of the IWW local in Spokane. The overall issues involving the IWW are far beyond our scope here. However, there was no doubt that some IWW locals openly advocated illegal acts to support their cause. That included arson and bombing, key thefts to hamper a business, and harassment and physical violence against those who hindered their activities. Butt was sent to jail for such advocacy.

Riley’s location in 1920 was unclear because he had been charged with similar activities in Aberdeen, Washington, and had fled the area. Accounts of the trial do not say why the two chose to rob a bunch of poorly-paid loggers at a remote forest location. They gleaned only a few hundred dollars from the roughly fifty men in the hall.

Sadly, my research did not include a copy of Luke May’s full report for this case. But by the spring of 1922, May had handled at least forty death cases. Three-quarters of those involved firearms in some way. For several cases, he had used “individual characteristics” – microscopic scratches and impressions – to identify a particular death weapon.

He surely used those techniques to determine which of the four guns carried by Riley and Butt had killed Light. Fingerprints would have then verified that Riley had been using that weapon. The two were convicted and sentenced to life.

But the story does not quite end there. In late 1922, someone slipped hacksaw blades to the two in the Port Angeles jail. They cut through one bar and Butt – aided by soap on his body – slithered through and escaped. Riley was apparently too big to get between the bars. Despite a snowstorm that hampered the pursuit, Butt was eventually recaptured. In early 1943, the Washington governor commuted their life sentences, but it’s not entirely clear when, or if, they were actually released.
                                                                                 

References: “Langlie Pardons Astound Some,” Seattle Times, Washington (January 25, 1943).

“[Logging Camp Robbery-Murder],” Seattle Times, Tacoma Ledger, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (April 15 - December 6, 1922).

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

“[Sequiam Bank Robbery],” Bellingham Herald, Olympian, Seattle Times, Washington (April 1-3, 1922).

State v. Riley, 126 Wash. 256, 218 Pac. 238 (1923).

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How We Got Here

Caroline Filby

After graduating from San Jose State University, my wife Caroline and I both went on for graduate degrees from New Mexico State University. I attained a Ph.D., she a Masters degree – both in chemistry. Then, for about thirty years, we had “day jobs,” I as a research scientist and project manager, while Caroline was a laboratory supervisor.

But, for various reasons, we chose to retire early and indulge our urge to travel. Much of that took us to historical places, mostly in the state of Idaho. As we visited sites and browsed museum book racks, it struck me that none offered anything about the cowboy (specifically, “buckaroo”) heritage of the state. I did eventually find three, all of which focused on just the “Owyhee Country” (the county in Idaho and across the state line into Oregon).

To make a long story short, I decided to write the book I could not find. By the time I had most of the book written, I had also collected a huge amount of research material. I therefore created a web page – the original South Fork Revue – and, in September 2009, the South Fork Companion blog. On those venues, I posted a lot of information that I had gleaned with all that research.

That soon put me in touch with fellow history buff Skip Myers. Back then, Skip and his wife owned a grocery store and café in Idaho City, plus a small grocery outlet in Placerville. The sesquicentennial of the first settlements (gold mining camps) in the Boise Basin was coming up in 2012. But Skip discovered that he had nothing to sell that described the history of the gold camps and what came after.

To compress another long story: While I continued to peddle my buckaroo book to publishers, I – with Skip’s input – wrote and assembled Boise Basin Gold Country. Because of the tight timeline, I went straight into self-publishing through the CreateSpace print-on-demand service. At our first big book event, in Skip’s café, we signed over seventy copies.

Later, we did a book signing in New Centerville, about five miles from Idaho City and a couple miles southwest of the original Centerville. Centerville/New Centerville was once a thriving area with around 4,000 people. Now hardly anyone lives there and New Centerville is basically an old weathered railway station. The book has continued to sell steadily ever since.

Skip and I at the New Centerville Book signing.

The process went so well for Gold Country, I then chose to also publish Before the Spud through CreateSpace. But I still had all this material, and 2013 was the sesquicentennial of the creation of Idaho Territory. So, for that event, I created and self-published Idaho: Year One.

With three books out under my personal imprint, I started this second blog, then titled Sourdough Publishing. As noted earlier, I posted items from Year One on this blog, along with information about the books.

Through all this, I kept adding material to the South Fork Companion. One such item was: America’s Sherlock Holmes – Innovative Forensic Detective Luke May, posted on his birth date, December 2.

During my research for that article, I discovered the significant role May had played in the development of scientific methods of crime investigation. Scans of newspaper from back then also highlighted just how much of a celebrity he was in his day. So… Why was there no biography of this fellow?

An exchange of e-mails and phone calls with his granddaughter, Mindi Reid, revealed that a writer (in Seattle, as I recall) was working on such a project. That fell through, but another writer took up the task. All this time, I was working on my three books.

But finally, with Idaho: Year One out, I called Mindi and asked, “How’s that biography going?” Answer: “It isn’t.” The second writer had also abandoned the project. I won’t speculate on a reason. However, the fact that it took me about three years of research and writing to have a “product” may have something to do with that.

When Rowman & Littlefield agreed to publish the book, I began to gear up ways to reach readers. One thread was to revamp my original South Fork Revue, which I had “put on the back burner.” That’s when I discovered that my ISP had taken it down, as part of a policy of removing a free personal web page from the membership package.

Exploring that event further seems rather pointless, so I won’t go there. But that’s when I decided to re-purpose this blog rather than try to pick a new web host and start a site from scratch. On the main page (which I have made “sticky”), I'm trying to keep you updated on the status of the new book, and other projects I start.

Beyond that, I have (literally) dozens of Luke May cases that I could not fit into the book. Anyone interested in scientific crime investigation or just “true crime” stories, should find plenty to like among those accounts.

Ordering Information

As noted in the individual book descriptions, the three books can be ordered from Amazon.com and other online retailers. Click on the title below to go to the relevant Amazon.com page:
Boise River Gold Country.
Before the Spud: Indians, Buckaroos, and Sheepherders in Pioneer Idaho.
Idaho: Year One – The Territory's First Year.

American Sherlock can be ordered from several online booksellers as well as from the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield. We (my wife and I) can not make direct sales of American Sherlock due to the terms of my contract with the publisher. (Different arrangements may be possible for personal book signings.)

We do sell individual copies of the other three books, signed if so desired, at $18 per copy (a 10% discount from list), plus shipping. We offer a 40% discount to those who order six or more copies directly from us. We also absorb the shipping cost if twelve or more books are ordered at once (that can include mixed titles). Regrettably, we are unable to handle credit card orders and all sales are final (i. e., no returns allowed).

To place an order with us, send an e-mail to the spelled-out address in the “About Me” block. (The warnings about spammer bots scarfing an actual e-mail are valid, by the way.)