Ambush in Algona

February 19, 1924 had been cloudy and cold, but not bad for the season. Harvey Smart had been late getting away from the store because a leaky refrigerator needed to be fixed. Still, the eight-block walk from his Algona Meat Market would have kept him nice and warm. And the lights as he approached home were surely a welcome glow in the gathering gloom.

Smart’s only warning was the crack of a pistol, then a bullet drilled into his body from behind. Then another. He tried to bring his revolver out and around before a third slug ripped into him and he collapsed to the ground.

Harvey C. Smart was 62 years old when someone ambushed and killed him. Born in Missouri, Smart moved to the area 10-15 miles east of Tacoma around 1896. He became a prosperous farmer, and then opened a meat market in Algona.

The gunshots quickly brought Smart’s wife, Mary, and two others to the scene. King County Sheriff Matt Starwich soon arrived to take charge. No one had seen anyone close by at the time, but deputies did find a set of fresh footprints pacing across a nearby field. Starwich put bloodhounds on the trail, but that led nowhere useful.

A key finding was that the meat shop receipts – a bundle of checks and over $200 cash – were still on Smart’s body. At the time, $200 would buy a well-equipped, recent-model used car, so that was no small sum to leave behind. The sheriff concluded that the incident was a “revenge” killing, rather than an attempted robbery. Based on that theory, Starwich and his deputies sought suspects who might want Smart dead for personal reasons.

One was a husband who supposedly thought Smart had been a bit too friendly with his wife when she called at the shop. That turned out to be an exaggeration, and the man apparently had an alibi anyway. Next up was a petty thief Smart had caught stealing potatoes from his warehouse some four or five years back. Smart had fired a warning shot that hit the intruder in the foot. Although the man was still in the area, that too turned out to be a dead end. Most ominously, they learned that Smart had recently bought beef from an unusual source. When Harvey began to suspect that the cattle had been rustled, one of the sellers warned him to keep his mouth shut.

Some time during this furor, the county hired criminologist Luke May to examine the death bullets. Authorities did not have a suspected weapon, but May could tell them what make and model they should look for. (The file for this old case is thin and incomplete, so we do not have the full report of his results.) Meanwhile, investigators canvassed the neighborhood for leads, but found nothing. A week or so after the murder, Mary Smart posted a $1,000 reward for information about the killing. All to no avail, and the case went cold.

Sheriff Starwich was competent and well-respected, but term limits prohibited him from running for office again at the end of 1926. Claude G. Bannick succeeded him. News reports did not explain why Sheriff Bannick decided to reopen the Smart murder case. But within days of taking office in January 1927, he assigned a special agent to it. He and the agent still mostly accepted the personal enemy theory. However, the agent seemed willing to broaden the notion of an “enemy.”

Over the next six weeks or so, the agent interviewed, and re-interviewed, an ever-widening circle of potential informants. Finally, in mid-March – over three years after the shooting – the sheriff jailed one Harry H. Longfield as a “material witness.” Longfield lived not too far from the Smarts and had been seen in the area on the night when Harvey had been shot. He had no apparent motive … but it was a lead. Longfield perhaps had some connection with rustlers in the area.

The King County grand jury met toward the end of March and testimony began to fill in the blanks. Investigators had interviewed Longfield’s wife Anna at the time of the murder. She said that she’d heard the shots, but had no idea of their significance. Others who heard them were also mostly unconcerned. Maybe someone was trying to scare off a wild animal.

The Longfields were a bit of an odd couple. Anna had been married to well-to-do dairy rancher Charles Paxson. He was from Ohio, she from Wisconsin. They had moved to the Algona area before 1910. The property became Anna’s when her husband died in late 1922. She was supposedly about 54 years old, but might have been older.

Harry Longfield, a former truck driver, was handsome and personable, and known to have “an eye for the ladies.” He worked at the Paxson ranch for a year or two before Anna’s husband passed away. Like Anna, he was originally from Wisconsin and had moved to Washington before 1910. Although he was at least 14 years younger that Anna, he persuaded her to marry him, “promising to give up other women.”

After several days of grand jury hearings, headlines noted that as many as four people might be implicated in the murder. But then the inquiry began to unravel. On April 7, after ten days of testimony from more than sixty witnesses, prosecutors admitted that they had nothing, and “the expected indictments might not be forthcoming.”

Anna Longfield. Harry Longfield after his release from jail.
(Seattle Times news images.)

However, behind the scenes, officials had been badgering one particular witness. They apparently still believed that Harry Longfield had something to do with Smart’s death and that Anna was trying to shield him. Readers all over the region were surely surprised by headlines on April 8th: Anna Longfield finally admitted that she had shot Smart, mistaking him for her husband.

Harry had proved to be an abusive spouse, especially when he’d been drinking. In fact, just weeks before the murder, Anna had told a neighbor that she had a gun and might just go out and shoot whoever was supplying his booze. But, worse than that, she had strong suspicions that he was still romancing at least one of his “former” lady friends.

Finally fed up, on the night of February 19, she had dressed in a man’s clothing and stationed herself where she expected Harry to come by. (It was never reported how she picked the spot.) Sadly, in the dim light of the evening, she had mistaken Harvey Smart for her husband. Only after he fell did she realize what she had done.

In the years since, the memory that she’d shot the wrong man tormented her, although not enough to give herself up. On a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota, she had pitched the death weapon into the Mississippi River. Initially charged with first degree murder, she eventually pled guilty to manslaughter and was given a five to ten year prison sentence. An appeal to the governor for clemency was denied. However, she was among a large block of prisoners granted executive paroles in October 1929.
                                                                                

References: Phil Dougherty, “Starwich, Matthew (1879-1941),” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (November 23, 2016).

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

“[Smart-Longfield News],” News-Tribune, Tacoma, Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Washington (October 1922 – October 1929).

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Lawless Men, Violent Deeds

What makes one person “go bad” when another, under reasonably comparable circumstances, does not? More than a century of research has yet to find any definitive answers. Nor do the lives of the two players in a fatal 1930 drama offer any special insights.

George Seldon Spencer was born in 1894, in Puyallup, Washington, about ten miles southeast of Tacoma. His father, a carpenter, died when George was around fifteen years old. By around 1915, he and his two brothers, William and Albert, had found work as longshoremen on the Tacoma docks. But in March of that year, George pled guilty to grand theft, auto. He received a stiff 15-year sentence to the state reformatory, but was out within a year or so. At first, George seemed to have learned his lesson, and became a star on a semi-pro baseball team made up of longshoremen.

But he had not cut his ties with the underworld. In early 1918, Tacoma police arrested him for aiding in an escape from the Pierce County jail. When the case came to trial, the jury took less than a half hour to find him guilty of “harboring a criminal.” The judge imposed a 2 to 10 year sentence, and the 1920 census found him languishing in prison at Walla Walla. He apparently served around four years of his term.

Elliott Lyons was born about a decade after George Spencer, in Kentucky. His mother died a year or so later and the family fragmented some. Elliott was living with an uncle at the time of the 1910 census. His father remarried in 1912. Soon, the family reassembled and moved together to Tacoma, where the father opened a cigar store. However, for whatever reasons, the store did not enjoy long-term success.

By the 1920 census, Elliott’s father was working in a shipyard as well as driving a dairy truck. An older son had also found a shipyard job. A year later, when Elliott was about 17 years old, his father died.

Elliott first made the news on Christmas of 1924, after he was arrested for a public disturbance brought on by liquor. In the “spirit of the season,” a police detective had released the young man after a few hours in jail. Elliott promptly tracked down the arresting officer and challenged him to take off his badge and fight. Forbearance ended right there, and Elliott went back to the clink.

By 1928, Elliott no longer had much contact with his stepmother and siblings. He also seems to have become quite familiar with the seamy side of life. He even had a nickname: “Bones.” Although often associated with dice and floating craps games, the moniker can also have far more sinister connotations. Thus, young as he was, he had the reputation of being a dangerous man. He was certainly known as a “bad drunk,” becoming testy and argumentative when he was liquored up. Whether or not the “dangerous” label went beyond that is not clear.

Tacoma Boardinghouse, ca. 1926. Tacoma Public Library.

In any case, word on the street was that he’d been involved in a number of shady deals under phony names. Elliott did spend time in jail for various minor offenses, but he’d never been caught in anything big. Thus, his name was not particularly familiar to police.

That disclaimer did not, however, apply to George Spencer. Over the years since his release from prison, he had been in and out of jail quite a few times. Most were for liquor law violations, or disorderly conduct when he over-indulged in his product. Thus, newspaper reports would refer to him as a “well known police character.” Some time before the spring of 1930 George and Elliott became friendly enough to be drinking buddies.

It’s worth mentioning that George’s brothers were still gainfully employed as longshoremen. Albert had even been promoted to foreman. Meanwhile, Elliot’s older brother had followed their dad’s path into the dairy business and was doing quite well.

On April 2, 1930, the drinking started in the afternoon at a roadhouse near Tacoma. The cook there later testified that “Bones” started the ball rolling with his own bottle of moonshine. He shared most of that with Spencer and three others, including the cook. George and Elliott went on from there to other hot spots where they could get more booze. By that evening, Elliott was too drunk to drive. He might have also slipped into his bad drunk phase. The details of what happened next can never be known with any certainty.

At around 11 o’clock that night, Elliot stumbled into a gas station on the southern edge of Tacoma. Before passing out, he gasped to the attendant that he’d been shot. An urgent call brought a police ambulance. By the time they arrived at the hospital, authorities knew that the shooting had actually taken place outside the city limits, so a deputy sheriff had been dispatched.

At the hospital, Elliott refused to tell the deputy who shot him. He did say it happened during an argument over a bottle of booze. At the peak of the argument, the other fellow had pulled out a gun and shot him. Fearing another bullet, Elliott had opened the car door and fallen out. After the shooter drove off and left him there, he made it to his feet and stumbled to the gas station.

Finally, during pre-op for surgery, Elliott told the doctor and a nurse that George Sheldon was the shooter. The wounded man was reported to be “resting easily” in the morning after the bullet was removed. Sadly, complications developed during the afternoon and he died that evening. Now the charge was murder, and the hunt for George went into high gear.

The intense search caused no end of trouble for George’s “associates” in the moonshine and bootlegging business. About a week after the shooting, he finally gave himself up. George claimed that Elliott had gone crazy from the booze. He was sure a young woman they had visited had a record player stolen from his apartment. To retrieve it, he wanted to borrow George’s gun … and George refused. The revolver was in a side pocket of the car and in the ensuing struggle, the weapon went off and Elliott was wounded.

The case log for criminologist Luke May stated that he was initially contracted to examine the death bullet. Verification that the missile came from a specific weapon would have been routine by that time, but news accounts imply that officials never found George’s revolver.

Those reports also do not mention when the “death car” was recovered from where George had hidden it. That would have probably been at least a week after the shooting, complicating the assessment of whatever bloodstains were found in the vehicle. Still, the analysis of the bloodstains and Elliott’s wound apparently cast serious doubt on George’s story of an accidental discharge.

The case went to trial in June. Right at the opening, with the jury sent out of the courtroom, the defense scored a major – arguably, the winning – point. Technically, they declared, Elliott’s statement to hospital personnel that George Spencer had shot him was only hearsay, not admissible as a “dying statement.” He had made it to the hospital and a doctor was about to operate. Thus, it could not truly be said that he thought he was about to die. Moreover, he had survived for many hours after he was out of surgery. Under “the rules of the game,” the judge agreed and disallowed that bit of evidence. The jury produced one 7-5 vote for conviction, but then deadlocked at 6-6.

The second trial, in November, opened with a crucial difference. For the first trial, county prosecutors did not know exactly what Elliott had said during the ride to the hospital. Turned out, the driver and a Tacoma policeman (both city personnel) told the victim that his wound looked really bad. He was probably going to die anyway. Why not tell them who did it? Elliott then stated that George had shot him. He clammed up at the hospital when it looked like he might make it after all.

The second trial resulted in a guilty verdict, although the jury did reduce the charge from second degree murder to manslaughter. Prosecutors then insisted that George – with three felony conviction on his record – should be given a life sentence under Washington’s “habitual criminal” law. While the judge mulled that decision, George escaped from the Pierce County jail. He remained on the run for about a fortnight. Then the judge did indeed impose a life sentence.

As a matter of some interest, George’s brothers had long, humdrum careers as Tacoma longshoremen. Ironically, the older brother of Bones Lyons joined the Tacoma police department in 1933 and spent the next thirty-two years on the force, retiring as a detective.
                                                                                

References: “[Early Law Trouble for Spencer and Lyons],” Tacoma Daily Ledger, Tacoma Times, Tacoma News-Tribune, Washington (March 1915 – December 1924).

“[Elliott ‘Bones’ Lyons Shot, Spencer Pursued],” Seattle Times, Tacoma News-Tribune, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Washington (April 3-9, 1930).

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

“[Spencer Murder Trials and Aftermath],” Daily Olympian, Olympia; Tacoma News-Tribune, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Washington (June 10, 1930 – January 20, 1931).

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Snoqualmie Valley Shootout

Theodore “Ted” Lawshe had a thirst for new experiences, and was fascinated by the “glamor” of detective work. Had he survived to settle down, he might have accomplished something along those lines. But violence cut him down young.

The Lawshe family moved from Iowa to Jerome, Idaho, some time before 1909. Ted was about twenty years old in 1917, when he married a local girl. Nine months later, he entered the U.S. Navy for duty in World War I. Sadly, his wife died from the “Spanish influenza” in late 1918.

The following summer, he remarried in Pocatello. Over the next several years, he lived in Pocatello, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Tacoma, and back in Jerome. During some of that period, he worked part-time on undercover assignments for a detective agency. That led him into a wide variety of jobs, including garage mechanic, logger, machinist, and ranch hand. Probably upset by such an unstable life, his second wife returned to her family in Utah and divorced him in September 1922. About a year later, Ted married a woman in Tacoma. But she too grew impatient with his peripatetic ways and they separated after a few months.

In the summer of 1924, Ted had a job in Seattle. Then Jack Bench, a man he’d met in Tacoma, came to him with a proposal. A fellow he knew needed someone to help him rob the bank in the small town of Carnation, located about ten miles east of Redmond. Bench would drive the getaway car, which they could borrow from Bench’s brother-in-law. But they needed someone to hold a gun on the bank employees and customers while the other collected the loot.

No one ever explained why Bench thought Lawshe might be open to such a proposition, but Ted saw it as a golden opportunity. Yet a meeting with the scheme’s mastermind, who went by the name of Daniel Malone (aka A. J. Brown), made him doubtful. Malone boasted about an easy street robbery he’d pulled off. On the other hand, word was that his attempt at a restaurant holdup failed because he couldn’t get the cash register open.

Still, he seemed deadly serious about the bank heist. He had tried it by himself, going so far as to cut the bank’s phone line. Then the bank suddenly got crowded, so he backed off. But the setup was perfect: No cops around, not even a town constable. Ted decided to play along and “get the dope” about their caper.

He discussed the notion with George Gannon, operator of a detective agency he had worked for. Gannon advised him to get out of it … tell them he had “got cold feet.” But Ted was determined to foil the plan, perhaps hoping it would land him a job as a full-time detective. Gannon had always found Lawshe to be “honest and trustworthy.” Thus, he agreed to act as a go-between for Ted with King County Sheriff Matt Starwich.

Four deputies met with Ted to learn the details, and no doubt to judge his veracity. Satisfied by the results, the sheriff devised a simple plan. He and six deputies would catch the bandits in the act. “Tough as nails” but flamboyant, Starwich could be counted on to provide colorful copy for the press. Nor was he averse to the publicity … sheriff was an elective office, after all. He tipped off contacts at the various Seattle newspapers and invited them along.

They all drove over to Carnation on the morning of August 13, 1924. To avoid attracting attention, they parked out of sight on the outskirts and filtered into town. Starwich himself took an out-of-the way path; he was too well known to escape recognition. Bank officials had been alerted and a female vice president replaced the regular teller. Three deputies hid in a back room while Starwich and the other deputies were in a shed across the street. The heist was scheduled for 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

After three hours of edgy, and then bored waiting, officers saw the robbers drive slowly by the bank. They were running a few minutes late, but everything looked okay. The car returned and stopped in front of the bank, and Malone and Ted got out. Bench stayed behind the wheel with the motor running. Just after the two entered the bank, officers rushed over. Starwich yanked the driver out and slugged him while the deputies deployed across the front. Inside, the other deputies sprang from hiding with guns drawn and told the would-be robber to give it up.

Ignoring the odds, Malone opened fire – and all Hell broke loose. Deputies inside and out began shooting, some of them quite wildly. Splinters sprayed from all the woodwork, one front window was blown out, and holes were punched in the others. The teller ran and hid in the vault. Meanwhile, Ted stood near the front with his gun up but pointed at nothing. That is, he stood there until he went down from two gunshots.

Malone kept firing even after he fell to the floor. Finally, a shotgun blast stopped him. Then he quickly died. It was estimated that the shooters fired off over fifty rounds, about a dozen of which hit Malone. Besides the two wounds to Ted, one deputy was hit in the thigh by a stray round. He recovered, but Ted died that evening.

The fracas drew mixed reviews, although most reactions were positive. Early reports claimed that Malone had somehow deduced Ted’s betrayal and shot him. But that scenario seemed a bit unlikely, given that the bandit was trying to defend himself against six different shooters.

At the subsequent inquest, testimony easily showed that Malone had died resisting arrest. He was buried as “Daniel Colonel Malone,” apparently the name on his union card for the International Workers of the World. That was all officials knew about him. Even today, despite the unusual middle name, one can find nothing in the public record except his death certificate. We might reasonably assume that “Malone” was just another alias.

Bank right after the shoot-out. Seattle Daily Times photo.

The death of Ted Lawshe led to days of argument. That intensified when George Gannon offered testimony about Ted’s role as an impromptu undercover agent. Still, all six deputies insisted that they had not fired at him. Malone had to have done it. On August 19, the inquest jurors demanded that authorities have the death bullet – only one had been recovered – examined to see what weapon it came form.

Three days later, criminologist Luke S. May appeared on the stand. In his expert opinion, he stated, the fatal bullet was fired from a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber Special revolver. As it happened, the only such weapon involved in the shoot-out was one that Sheriff Starwich had loaned to a deputy. That determined, the coroner’s jury ruled that Ted’s death was an unfortunate accident, sparked by the intense action at the bank. Ted’s father came during the inquest and afterwards returned the young man’s body to Jerome for burial.
                                                                                

References: “[Attempted Bank Robbery in Carnation],” Seattle Times, Washington (August 14-26, 1924).

Phil Dougherty, “King County Sheriff Matt Starwich and posse thwart a bank robbery … ,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (March 25, 2013).

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

Christine Savage Palmer, Historic Overview: Carnation, Washington, King County Cultural Resources Division, Seattle, Washington (September 1995).

“[Ted Lawshe News from Jerome],” Lincoln County Times, Jerome, Idaho (November 1917 – January 1919).

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