The Rosebud County Sniper

In the outside world of April 1, 1949, the Cold War was heating up. Yet all of that might have seemed rather remote to Russ Bean in his small farm home, located about fourteen miles west of Forsyth, Montana. The time was approaching 8 o’clock in the evening, and he sat with his family at the supper table. An outside window was behind him, but the only natural light came from a sliver of crescent moon. Thus, the room lights were shining brightly – making him, as it happened, a perfect target.

Then that peaceful scene exploded.

A bullet punched through the window and chair-back, pierced Russell’s chest from behind, grazed the head of a child sitting across from him, and clanged against an iron stove at the end. No words can adequately express the shock and devastation the family must have felt as Russ slumped forward, almost instantly dead.

They surely took some time to recover. Still, the county coroner was at the crime scene within about an hour and an undersheriff not long after. Sheriff Floyd “Whitey” Dowlin was there by 10 o’clock. The undersheriff had already talked with the two nearest neighbors. One of those was Mrs. Helen (Bean) Storm, Russell’s sister. The Bean family later spent the night at her place. Although they had to contend with some “sightseers,” officials did an adequate job of securing the Bean premises.

After matters were mostly settled at the crime scene, Sheriff Dowlin interviewed the other nearby neighbor, John Loy Storm. John was the ex-husband of Helen, and therefore ex-brother-in-law of Russell Bean. He and his thirty-year old son lived in a trailer home to the west of Helen’s house. In fact, Storm, his ex-wife, and the Bean family all lived within a half mile of each other. When the sheriff talked to Storm, he would have surely known about the family relationships.

Russell Owens Bean was born on a ranch near Forsyth in 1887. He graduated from the Billings Polytechnic Institute (a precursor to today’s Rocky Mountain College) in 1914. The following year he was a witness in Billings for his sister’s marriage to John Loy Storm. Born in Illinois, Storm had homesteaded west of Forsyth a year or two before the marriage, when he was about twenty years old. He would stay with the farm near Forsyth until 1949.

Russell O. "Russ" Bean, ca 1918.
Posted at FindAGrave by “Sharon.”

Russell Bean served in France with an artillery unit during World War I. He married his first wife in 1920 and worked for many years as an electrician. However, around 1934, Bean became a sewing machine salesman. He continued in that line of work for over a decade, even owning a store in Miles City for a time. During this period, he also divorced and remarried.

Then, right after World War II, he moved to the place west of Forsyth. Several of Bean’s relatives had homesteaded in the area when they moved to Montana from Texas in the early 1880s. Available records do not say if he owned or inherited family land, or simply purchased some at this time. Not long after his return to the area, he and John Storm (then still his brother-in-law) partnered in a joint venture to raise wheat. In 1948, Bean purchased a laundry business in Forsyth.

When Sheriff Dowlin went to quiz Storm, he probably knew that Bean’s sister had divorced John a bit over six months earlier. That could possibly have caused some tension in the partnership. The sheriff might have also heard that Russell and John were involved in some sort of business dispute. So perhaps Dowlin was not totally surprised at Storm’s reply when he was told about the shooting: “Good, I’m glad, the son of a bitch was no good anyhow.”

After the interview, Dowlin went home. He returned to the Bean place shortly after sunup and began recording key observations about the crime scene. That included the position of the bullet hole in the window. Then he and two other men searched the yard where the shot had originated. About fifty feet from the window, they found what was judged to be the impression of someone’s knee.

From that point, they sorted through footprints (some of the sightseers had wandered in the yard) to establish a trail of widely-separated tracks. This ultimately led them to within fifty yards or so of Storm’s trailer home. Some marks were distinct enough so that plaster casts could be made. However, others – including the knee “print” – would have required specialized photographic equipment, and skills, that this remote rural county did not have. All they could do was write down a general description of each.

Around 9 o’clock in the morning, the sheriff asked “an experienced civil engineer” to come out and help. They first used stout fishing line to backtrack the bullet path from where it hit the stove, through the hole in the window, and then out into the yard. Tellingly, the path ran directly over the knee impression, at a height consistent with someone kneeling to aim a weapon. The engineer also helped the sheriff map the location of every foot impression found earlier.

Some time during the morning, Sheriff Dowlin contacted the Lost Persons Foundation, an outfit that specialized in finding hikers and hunters lost in Montana’s wild back-country. A handler arrived at the crime scene with two bloodhounds at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Put on the scent at the knee impression, the hounds followed the general path defined by the faint tracks found by the sheriff. They stopped, satisfied, outside the trailer home until John Storm came out. They then immediately jumped on him in a friendly manner and licked his hands, just as they were trained to do when they found a scent-trailed missing person. The handler said simply, “There’s your man.”

By this time, several people had told Dowlin about vehement death threats Storm had made against Bean, including some on the day of the shooting. At this point, the sheriff jailed John, stating that a murder charge would soon follow. He also secured as evidence a .270 Winchester rifle found in the trailer home.

The case went to trial the following December. Storm’s death threats arose over a tractor he and Bean owned as part of their joint venture. Storm had tried, unsuccessfully, to arrange a deal where one or the other had full ownership of the tractor. Storm’s ex-wife and son both testified that he was enraged by the failure to reach an agreement. That was reinforced by Storm’s remark upon hearing of Bean’s death. How could such a seemingly mundane disagreement escalate so much?

One cannot escape the notion that the Storm divorce played a role. After over thirty years of marriage, Ethel had been the one to file, on the grounds of “habitual intemperance.” A quaint way to say he drank to excess, such behavior might well have gone along with spousal abuse. In any case, Russell Bean would have almost certainly taken his sister’s side, putting a strain on the business relationship. Ethel being awarded the family home would have exacerbated the problem. No such theory was presented at the trial, however.

Still, the business dispute would have established motive. For the means, criminologist Luke S. May appeared on the stand to confirm that the bullet that killed Bean was fired from a .270 Winchester rifle. Because the slug had fragmented, he could not tie the bullet to Storm’s specific weapon … but there were no markings to eliminate it either.

To establish opportunity, the court spent a lot of time on the tracks found by the sheriff … and especially the actions of the bloodhounds. The prosecution took the handler through the dogs’ pedigree, training, and past performance in great depth. Naturally, the defense quizzed him relentlessly, but the handler’s testimony held up.

To “seal the deal,” the prosecution put Herbert Hay, a former jail-mate of Storm’s, on the stand. Hay himself had a small-time criminal record. But he was judged reasonably credible since his testimony in this case gained him little … four days off of a 30-day sentence for passing a bad check. Hay stated that, in an unguarded moment, Storm had said, “I did kill the son of a bitch.” In the end, the jury found John Loy Storm guilty of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Records show that he was admitted to prison on December 21, 1949.

However, in late 1951, the Montana Supreme Court, by a 3-2 margin, overturned that verdict, rejecting the use of what they chose to called “bloodhound testimony.” (Of course, it’s the handler who testifies, not the dogs.) The majority opinion seemed heavily prejudiced against the very idea. The text was loaded with phrases like “dogs and other dumb animals do not qualify as witnesses” and “evidence of the actions of the dogs themselves should find no place in a Court of law.” They ruled that the judge should not have allowed the jury to hear the evidence and decide on its credibility for themselves.

The dissenting opinion retorted, “The overwhelming weight of authority, however, holds that such evidence is admissible if there has been a proper foundation laid.” In the Storm case, that final proviso was satisfied by the intensive cross-examination about the training and capabilities of the dogs and their handler. At that time, 21 states had tested the issue legally and the vast majority allowed the use of dog tracking evidence. Today, 39 states and the District of Columbia approve and only 4 states disagree. (The issue has apparently not been tested in the other 7 states.)

Be that as it may, Storm was retried in 1952, without any of the bloodhound tracking testimony. A new jury again found him guilty, and he was again sentenced to twenty years in prison. Then, fifteen months later, the Supreme Court used legal hair-splitting to again over-rule the jury … and Storm was a free man. Despite being twice convicted for the death of Russell Bean, he served just four years in prison.
                                                                                

References: “[Bean Murder, Storm Legalities],” Independent-Record, Helena; Montana Standard, Butte; Great Falls Tribune, Billings Gazette, Montana (April 1949 – May 1954).

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

SC-6 – Summaries of Case Law, K9Sensus, Lucas, Iowa (2005).

State v. Storm 238 P.2d 1161 (December 15, 1951).

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Crooks Follow The Money Too

Thursday April 1, 1926. A fine morning in downtown Seattle, with bright sun and a slight nip in the air. Moderate foot traffic flowed along the stretch of 4th Avenue between the Cobb Building on one side and White-Henry-Stuart Building on the other. Who among those pedestrians could have expected the bizarre violence that was about to explode?

The Roaring Twenties were now in full swing. Even “respectable” society winked at violations of Prohibition, while the more daring pursued unrestrained novelty and excitement. But that also spurred lawlessness from the fringes of society.

And the crooks saw plenty of opportunity. Consumers spent freely on the wide array of goods that innovative production and a booming economy put on the market. That new lavishness included cigars and cigarettes. By now, machines had made better cigars available to the middle class. Thus, in 1926, a bundle of three “pretty good” cigars could be had for 20¢. Top quality cigars might cost 50¢ for a three-pack.

In Seattle, James R. Brewster became a rich man by opening over twenty cigar stores to feed the demand. (Of course, they sold all kinds of tobacco products, but cigars were still the prestige item.) But on the downside, those shops had to process a continuous stream of small retail transactions. To keep up, the company sent couriers out regularly to deliver change all over the city. Reports suggest that they kept two money teams busy much of the time.

White-Henry-Stuart Building, ca 1923.

One outlet occupied a prime spot right next to the central entrance of the White-Henry-Stuart Building. The Brewster money car, driven by Robert G. Brautigan, parked in front of the cigar store around 10:30. Brautigan alighted and went back to unlock the trunk. The courier met him from the other side and Brautigan handed him the money bag, which contained about $5,000. The store manager could fill his needs and then the car would move on to its next stop.

Seemingly out of nowhere, four armed men appeared. One waved a revolver in Brautigan’s face and shoved him against the car. This must have felt all too familiar for the driver; he’d been robbed at the same time and place a bit over a year earlier. Another bandit accosted the courier and grabbed the money sack.

Bystanders took notice at this point, and there was a lot of stir and shouting … thus, witness accounts varied. But apparently the other two robbers were stationed to discourage anyone from interfering with their plan. They may have even fired warning shots, but witnesses disagreed on that point too.

A bandit tossed the money satchel into a car that had stopped in front of the Brewster vehicle. Then matters got even crazier. As the thieves tried to pile into the getaway car, it began to move. One crook fired into the auto. Did he suspect a double-cross, with the driver trying to run off with the loot? Or was it meant to warn the driver – or the gathering crowd – and just went astray? Whatever the motive, the driver was killed almost instantly. The car glanced off another vehicle passing along the street and then slammed to a stop against a parked laundry truck.

With their escape plan aborted, the robbers scattered, leaving the money bag behind. The shooter was seen to drop a revolver, which a bystander quickly recovered. The fugitive ran around the corner and into an alley, now waving another revolver to discourage pursuit. However, a seventeen-year-old messenger boy – the hero of the moment – tackled him and grabbed his weapon. Then he and some men held the crook until police arrived.

Their captive, William McMahon (aka McMann), was well known to Seattle police. Just the previous January, he had completed a term for an assault conviction. Before that, his criminal record had made him “unwelcome” in his home state of California. He was about 29 years old.

Officers began rounding up McMahon’s known criminal associates, guided by eyewitness descriptions. Authorities ended up with three men in custody: McMahon, Edward J. Devlin, and Theodore H. Hopkins. Devlin was also from California, and even had an open robbery charge pending there. He was about a year older than McMahon, and may have already spent some time in the Washington State Penitentiary. All three were held on murder and robbery charges, but Hopkins was eventually released for lack of evidence.

The driver and murder victim was another small-time crook, Harry Raymond “Ray” Richards. Originally from Missouri, Ray and his widowed mother had moved to Seattle around 1909, when he was about 17 year old. Ray got in trouble early for burglarizing a store. We don’t know if he served reformatory time or received a suspended sentence due to his youth. After that he worked at various odd jobs.

His name does not appear in news reports after that, but he was apparently fairly well known to police. Reports suggested that he might be a drug addict or dealer (or perhaps both). Ray’s wife, who was suing for divorce at the time of his death, stated that Ray, McMahon, and Devlin had been palling around for several months.

Prosecutors hired criminologist Luke S. May to verify the death weapon, help link it to the shooter, and assess the overall crime scenario. News reports of the trial only mention the eyewitness testimony that tied the gun to McMahon. May probably found fingerprints to bolster that evidence, although some would have surely been smudged.

He would have also tracked the bullet trajectory. The missile hit low enough to pass through the right arm (not the shoulder), pierce the victim’s heart, and end up just inside the skin on the left side. Witness testimony could not agree whether the shooter was inside the car, riding the running board, or out on the sidewalk. The consensus – not necessarily correct – put him on the running board. In any case, the trajectory largely eliminated the notion of a warning shot gone wild.

McMahon was convicted on the two counts. He received a twenty to fifty year sentence for robbery, and life on the murder charge. In a separate trial, Devlin was also convicted and received the same sentences. As usual, both convictions were appealed. McMahon’s try was denied. The court specifically noted that the defense suggestion that a bystander shot Richards, was “pure conjecture, with no circumstantial or factual support.”

However, the Supreme Court found a problem in the Devlin conviction. A witness had been shown a photo lineup to identify the bandit. Speaking from the stand in court, he referred to the set as a “rogue’s gallery.” The Supreme Court viewed that as an improper attack on the defendant’s character. They reversed the entire proceedings on that one point, and ruled that the case had to be retried. Prosecutors chose to release Devlin, rather than incur more expense. (They may have “encouraged” him to leave town as a condition, but we can never know about that.)
                                                                                

References: “[Cigar Store Robbery/Murder],” Seattle Times, Washington (April 1925 – November 1927).

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

“Missouri To Front In Criminal Court,” Seattle Times, Washington (January 23, 1910).

State v. McMahon 145 Wn. 672, 675 (November 30, 1927).

Photo source: Buildings and Building Management, Porter-Langtry Company, New York (January 1923).

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Obsession Leads to Murder

The “eternal (love) triangle” goes back in myth and legend at least to Helen of Troy and the Trojan War, and probably even before that. Whether in literature or real life, the story almost invariably ends badly for one or more members of the triad. Such was the case for Bernard, Lena, and Betty in the summer of 1938.

Bernard R. Leuch was born in 1898 near Council Bluffs, Iowa. The family moved into that city around 1905 and, for over a decade after 1910, Bernard’s father was a deputy sheriff and then constable there. During World War I, Bernard served overseas in the aviation corps as a private (meaning he was not taught how to fly).

After the war, he took a job as a farm hand in central South Dakota. Oddly enough, his parents moved nearby and would later be buried in a small town there, about 45 miles southwest of Pierre. (His mother died in 1922, his father in 1932.)

Around 1921, Bernard married Lena Esther Tobey. About a year younger than Bernard, Lena was born in Custer County, Nebraska, east and north of North Platte. However, by 1920, the Tobey family had moved to a farm located about 65 miles northwest of St. Cloud, Minnesota. We don’t know how Bernard and Lena met, and it’s uncertain where they were married. However, the 1930 census shows the couple in St. Cloud with four daughters and a son. Over the next five years, they had two more children, including an infant Bernard, Jr.

Despite the privations of the Depression, the year 1935 was a bright one for Bernard. In May, he finally landed a job with the St. Cloud police force. Bernard had been a guard at the state reformatory near the city for a while, and he had always wanted to be a part of regular law enforcement. Bernard performed well as a police officer at first, and “was known as the best pistol shot in the organization.”

His home situation, however, appears to have grown a bit rocky. He and Lena still lived together, but evidence strongly suggests that they no longer slept together. Having had seven children in fourteen years of marriage, they perhaps wanted to avoid having any more.

Then, Bernard attracted the attention of a pretty young woman. She worked as a ticket clerk and usher at a local theater. Both would later claim that she was “a friend of the family.” She even boarded with the Leuchs for about four months, in 1935 or 1936.

We actually know almost nothing about “Miss Betty Irwin” (as she was almost invariably identified in news report). She lived in St. Cloud in 1935 or 1936, and Olympia (Washington) in 1938. Beyond that, she was supposedly 26 years old in 1938, and claimed to have a brother living in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. An exhaustive search of genealogical records was performed using that information. Since “Betty” is often a nickname for someone named “Elizabeth,” the search included that also. The system turned up zero credible hits anywhere in the upper Midwest.

But suppose Betty lied about her age, and was only 17 or 18 years old when she first met Bernard? With that assumption, a search suddenly produced five hits just in Minnesota, with more in the adjoining states. Of course, there’s still no reliable way to identify which “Betty Irwin” might have been involved in this case. But the results provide strong circumstantial evidence that Bernard’s new girlfriend did not want to admit how young she really was.

Sadly, Bernard’s infatuation with Betty grew and grew. The affair reached the point where it severely impacted his job performance. Thus, after a civil service review, Leuch was dismissed from the police force in March 1937. Their stories about the next few months conflict and the differences cannot be easily reconciled. However, the final result was clear: By the fall, Bernard was working at a pulp mill near Shelton, Washington. Betty Irwin had also settled in a boarding house there and they resumed their liaison. (Shelton, the county seat of Mason County, is located about 15 miles northwest of Olympia.)

Betty later maintained that, through all this, she did not know Bernard was married. But then Lena and the children joined him in Shelton, “shortly before Christmas” of 1937. Finally, the real situation could not be ignored. Betty moved to Olympia and took a job as a theater usher. At some point, she also told Bernard that she’d have nothing more to do with him unless he divorced his wife. Nevertheless, it’s clear that their romance continued. He eventually agreed to get a divorce and, on May 20, Betty gave him money to help with the down payment on a home for them in Shelton.

Late on the afternoon of June 1, 1938, Bernard rushed to ask a neighbor to call the police. He had been on a trip downtime and returned to find Lena sprawled on a bed, dead. She had, he said, committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest. The death weapon was Bernard’s .38-caliber Colt automatic pistol. He had retrieved it from a pawn shop to strengthen his application for the job of Shelton police chief.

Mason County Courthouse. Mason County Historical Society.

The very next day, the Mason County prosecutor asked criminologist Luke S. May to investigate. The lack of powder burns or tattooing suggested right away that the pistol had not been fired close to the woman’s chest. The bullet had entered above the heart, followed a downward trajectory through her torso, and ended up lodged in the wall. May would need to make more tests, but suicide seemed unlikely. Bernard was immediately arrested on a murder charge.

Police interviews with the children and neighbors soon highlighted “a number of inconsistencies” in Bernard’s account. At some point, authorities learned of the love affair between Bernard and Betty Irwin. Thus, at the end of June, prosecutors stated that “a young Olympia woman” would “be an important witness at the trial.” They were not then willing to reveal her identity to the public.

The trial began on Monday, July 11, 1938, but five days passed before prosecutors put Betty on the stand. Naturally, her testimony about the long-standing affair caused a sensation, especially when she revealed that Bernard was “the father of her unborn child.” Bernard admitted that his wife had learned about the affair (it’s not entirely clear when, however). Moreover, they had quarreled about it earlier on the day of the shooting. But it was all Betty’s fault, he asserted. He had tried to break off the affair. She, however, had insisted and he could not resist her charms.

From start to finish, Bernard maintained that his wife had shot herself, either on purpose or accidentally. But by the time of the trial, Luke May and the police had been able to complete a full array of tests. The lack of powder residue on Lena clothes meant that the pistol had been discharged well away from her body. That and the bullet trajectory made suicide highly unlikely and an accident virtually impossible.

The jury convicted Bernard Leuch of first degree murder, with no recommendation for mercy. That made the subsequent death sentence mandatory. Leuch escaped from the Mason County jail to delay matters, but was recaptured in just a few days. After a failed appeal, Bernard was hanged at the Walla Walla penitentiary on August 4, 1939.
                                                                                

References: Census records, city directory listings, and other genealogical sources were consulted extensively. Online sources included Ancestry.com and others.

“[Leuch Murder News],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland; St. Cloud Times, Minnesota (June 2, 1938 – August 4, 1939)..

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

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