Victim of the Great Depression

The United States, indeed the entire world, faced a dire future in the summer of 1930. The stock market crash was now rippling through the economy, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The number of workers without jobs would almost triple before the year was out, and get worse from there. Those losses hit logging and sawmill work particularly hard. The response to that pain would prove fatal for storekeeper and Postmaster Carl Krummel.

Carl Heinrich Krummel was born in late 1868, in western Germany. It is estimated that he married around 1892, and known that the couple had a son, Carl, Jr., in the spring of 1895. We cannot date anything specific during the next seven years. They spent some time in Chile, but we don’t know when or how long. It most likely began in 1895-1897, when German “colonies” in southern Chile were being strongly promoted. At some point, Krummel’s first wife died, but available records don’t say when.

Thus, in the summer of 1902, Carl and his son took ship from Chile to the U.S., landing in Seattle. Carl then found work as a bookkeeper at a Tacoma brewery. He completed their naturalization process in 1908. The following year, Krummel married Adele Utz, a Tacoma schoolteacher. She too was a German immigrant, having arrived in 1904. They had two children: Bernhard in 1911 and Elisabeth in 1919.

About a year before their daughter’s birth, Carl built or purchased a small general store in Adna, Washington.  A logging town located about six miles southwest of Chehalis, Adna was then a branch station on the Northern Pacific Railway. The store included a postal cubicle and, in November 1920, Krummel was appointed Adna Postmaster. 

Early Logging Site. Lewis County Historical.

Carl, Jr. clerked at the store some, but apparently disliked or proved unsuitable for that work. Before 1926, he began twenty years of work as a laborer for the Northern Pacific Railway. At the time of the 1930 Census, Carl, Sr. seems to have been grooming Bernhard to handle the business. They were together in the store when three young men tried to rob it.

One of the three was Matt Simila – actually, Toivo Matthew Simila (his parents were immigrants from Finland). Matt was born in late 1905 in a small coal mining town located a bit over twenty miles southeast of Tacoma. The family seems to have moved around some, but they had a farm about three miles south of Adna in 1920. The hamlet was the nearest source of supplies, so Matt came to know the Krummels fairly well.

Within a few years, Matt became a logger. He soon earned a name as a skilled “high climber” or “topper,” one the most dangerous specialities in an already hazardous line of work. The topper prepared the “spar tree,” the tall anchor pole for the overhead cables used to move raw logs around the cutting area. He had to go up with just climbing spikes and a rope around the trunk. He cleared all the lower limbs on the way up and then cut off the top. The sudden release of weight causes the pole to oscillate wildly and the topper must – literally – hang on for dear life. The job is not for the faint of heart, but it paid well.

By about 1927, he and fellow loggers Stanley Filipiak and Blaine McCoy had become pals. Filipiak was born in 1908 in another tiny town about 12 miles southwest of Adna. His father, a Polish immigrant, worked in a sawmill there. (The family often gave their name as “Phillips.”) His mother died in 1914, when Stanley was not yet six years old. Then, in 1927, his father died. That was probably about a year after Stanley became a logger.

John Blaine McCoy (he went by “Blaine” in the camps) was born in 1906 in West Virginia. About a year later, the family moved to a place about nine miles west of Adna. Sadness soon visited them, as Blaine’s infant brother died in September 1910. The mother died less than four years later. Blaine was essentially orphaned at that point. He was not with his father for the 1920 Census, and cannot otherwise be found.

McCoy had no known criminal record by 1930. Nevertheless, two or three years before, he had begun to badger Matt Simila to go into the robbery “business” with him. He probably reasoned that holding people up was far less dangerous than working timber, and would probably pay better. Also, it was he who bought two revolvers from a pawn shop on a visit to Portland in the summer of 1929.

After the spring of 1930, the three might have had part-time work, but news reports imply that they had no steady employment. That would make sense if they were caught in the early layoffs in the industry. Simila later told authorities that they had held up a service station a week before the confrontation in Adna.

Saturday July 5, 1930 was a fine summer day, clear and sunny. That evening, they went looking for some entertainment. They knew of two dances, one in Adna and one further south. As they cruised through Adna, they didn’t see much. In fact, Filipiak commented (more or less), “This place is dead. Be a good time to hit the store.”

McCoy quickly agreed, and even pushed the idea. Simila objected, mostly because he was sure Krummel would recognize him. Conceding the possibility, McCoy and Filipiak grabbed the two revolvers and headed for the store. McCoy wore a rudimentary mask. Matt positioned the car with the motor running for a quick getaway, then doused the lights.

The would-be robbers assumed their guns would cow Carl and Bernhard into submission. But “Hands up!” was hardly out of their mouths when Carl grabbed a .32-caliber pistol from under the counter and shouted something. Startled, the crooks opened fire. Two of their seven bullets hit Carl; either would have been fatal. Totally flummoxed, the two fled to the car, which raced away.

When they saw no pursuit, the three went on to the dance south of town. They were there when word came that Carl Krummel had been killed. The two shooters had already changed clothes, now they ditched the revolvers in a slough. Between running around half the night, and considerable moonshine, the three were sound asleep in their Centralia apartment when police came for them.

A witness had seen their car drive slowly back and forth through Adna shortly before the shooting. And, as noted above, it was the only vehicle moving in town at the time. Officials broadcast the description all around the area and a patrolman found it parked near the apartment building. The manager explained who normally used the car and their appearance generally matched what Bernhard had been able to tell police. (The son had dived for cover after the shooting started.)

Simila cracked first, after two days of steady interrogation. He outlined their activities that night and even led police to where they had tossed the weapons. The other two finally gave in too, and generally agreed with Simila’s account. McCoy, however, claimed he had fired because a bullet from Krummel’s gun had “whizzed past his ear.”

Officials brought criminologist Luke S. May into the case within a day or so of the attack. He quickly identified which of the revolvers had been the death weapon. He also found that Krummel’s pistol had not been fired. It even had a bit of undisturbed rust in the barrel. Later, McCoy and Filipiak would not, or perhaps could not, say which of the guns each had used.

The trial was rather straightforward. But then one juror refused to budge from a first-degree murder conviction, and possible death sentence. The others were swayed by the fact that the shooters had become motherless at a “tender age.” (The fact that Elisabeth was made fatherless at the age of ten somehow didn’t count.) After a long consultation among the legal teams and the judge, the three were “allowed” to plead guilty to a second degree murder charge. They all received life sentences.

Despite that, Simila was out before 1940, had a job in Walla Walla, and was learning to fly. He later became a flight instructor and airport manager. In 1948, he married a divorcee with two children. He died in 1972 in Pacific County, Washington (near the mouth of the Columbia River).

Filipiak was free and living back in Lewis County when he registered for the draft in October 1942. He married about five months later. After that, he operated a barber shop, first near the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, then in Longview, Washington. He died there in February 1985.

McCoy was also free, living in Centralia, when he registered for the draft in October 1942. He got married two years later, while still employed as a logger. John Blaine McCoy died young, when he was just 47 years old.

For several months after the murder, Mrs. Adele Krummel served as Acting Postmistress at Adna. She soon – perhaps within a matter of months – sold the store. Carl, Jr. got married about seven months after the murder and the couple moved into Tacoma. He continued to work for the Northern Pacific for over a decade. They had a daughter in 1932, but she died after just a few months. They do not appear to have had any more children.

Bernhard got married in 1936. More ambitious and talented, he went to Harvard Business School and then worked for a large national accounting firm for at least twenty years. They had a daughter in 1939. Available records do not say whether or not they had any more children.

Daughter Elisabeth earned degrees in social work and served as a program manager for the YWCA in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Seattle. In 1953, she married civil engineer and surveyor James Carey. They had two children (in 1955 and 1957), both born in Washington state. Thus, widow Adele (Utz) Krummel could at least cherish three grandchildren before she died in February 1959.
                                                                               

References:  Edward Echtle, “Carbonado — Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (January 24, 2018)..

“[Krummel-Related News],” Daily Chronicle, Centralia, Seattle Times, Chehalis Bee-Nugget, Bellingham Herald, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Longview Daily News, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (February 1927 – February 1985).

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

David Tock, German Immigration and Adaptation to Latin American, Senior Thesis, Honors Program, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia (1994).

Elmus Wicker, The Banking Panics of the Great Depression, Cambridge University Press, New York, New York (1996).

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Murder in Obscurity

Until he was murdered on November 5, 1925, Victor Nelson had made little impression upon the news or records of his day. This at a time when newspapers commonly devoted many columns to brief notes that said, “Mr. Jones was promoted to vice principal at Westside Elementary” and “Miss Jane Doe just returned from a visit with her grandparents in Mudville.”

During the relevant time period, the Tacoma City Directory contained about 350 “Nelson” listings. And the southern Puget Sound region had over a dozen men named “Victor Nelson.” Few could be specifically identified by a distinctive title, occupation, or family affiliation. Still, by eliminating “candidates” who were clearly not him, we can assemble a composite from the remaining records. He was most likely from Sweden, born about 1875. He entered the U.S. between 1894 and 1904, and completed the naturalization process before about 1915. He apparently never married.

“Our” Victor had more skills than a simple laborer, or was perhaps especially frugal. By around 1922, he had the wherewithal to acquire a rooming house grandly called the “Home Hotel.” Located a mile or so south of Tacoma’s top-level business and hotel district, the property had only 15-20 rooms and did not furnish meals. It drew its clientele mostly from low-income laborers, service workers, or pensioners.

Downtown Tacoma, 1925. Tacoma Public Library.

Reports failed to say whether or not Thomas “Tom” Evans was a lodger there, or simply walked in off the street. But on the early morning of November 5, Evans entered Nelson’s room, robbed him, and then – for no apparent reason – fatally shot him in the back of the head. Frank Shehan, another tenant and friend of the proprietor, rushed to see what had happened. Evans fired at him too, inflicting two wounds in the jaw. Luckily, from his hospital bed, Shehan was able to provide a description of the shooter.

Officers captured the assailant within a couple hours after the attack. Evans was still carrying Nelson’s watch and other possessions. He also had a revolver that had been fired several times. Authorities quickly hired criminologist Luke S. May to examine the gun as the possible murder weapon. The suspect gave his name as Walsh, but he was soon identified as ex-convict Tom Evans. In a sad irony, we know a good deal more about the killer than we do about the victims. (It proved impossible to trace Shehan and his name never appeared again in news reports.)

Thomas B. Evans was born November 11, 1889 in a rural Iowa township about 125 miles northwest of Des Moines. Growing up, he attained no notable education or skills. The 1910 Census said he got by with odd jobs and spent long periods unemployed. He did play for a nearby small-town baseball team and perhaps picked up a few bucks for that.

He hit the news in late 1912 when he received a life sentence for a home invasion/burglary during which he tried to rape the middle-aged lady who lived there. Prison authorities made note of his surliness and volatile temper. He was paroled in the summer of 1917, but a parole violation had him back in prison six months later. He was let out again after two more years.

By 1920, Tom had moved to the San Joaquin Valley of California, where his older brother had opened a print shop in Stockton. Tom got by as an itinerant farm laborer. There were suspicions that he “supplemented” his income by petty theft, but no evidence. Finally, in early 1925, he beat up and sodomized an eleven-year-old boy in Fresno before being frightened off by a neighbor. Police believed he tried to persuade a taxi owner to take him to Stockton, which led to a fight that damaged the inside of the vehicle. Finally, Evans apparently pulled a gun and shot the driver dead.

Police found the battered and bloodstained taxi in Stockton the next day. County officials issued two warrants for the arrest of Evans, one for an “unnatural crime,” the other for “assault with the intent to commit murder.” When the driver’s body was found two months later – it had been dumped in a river – authorities upgraded the charge to murder.

So far as we know, Evans had no criminal record in California prior to these events. However, as a matter of routine, police would have interviewed his brother about Tom’s likely whereabouts. He would have surely told them that Tom had served time in the Iowa penitentiary. Thus, the bulletin distributed about Evans probably included a mug shot and the classification points for his fingerprints, if not the actual images.

Ten months later, he was jailed in Tacoma for the shootings at the Home Hotel. It’s worth mentioning here that the use of fingerprint evidence was a relatively “new thing” in 1925. Even two or three years later, Luke May still logged cases that required him to collect and categorize latent prints for law enforcement clients. Fortunately, Tacoma officials already had May under contract. Within hours after police had jailed “Walsh,” they knew his real identity and that he was wanted in California.

Caught with the goods, Evans made a fantastic claim. He was about to leave the building, he said, when a stranger approached him in the dimly-lit (or was it dark?) hallway. After stuffing the evidence into Tom’s pockets, the intruder handed him the revolver and told him to “Beat it.” Why would anyone accept a mysterious weapon after three shots had been fired nearby? He could not explain. Such an unlikely story almost makes one wonder if Tom was of sub-standard intelligence, but there’s no way of knowing.

The “wheels of justice” moved faster in those days, and the Evans’ murder trial was scheduled for around the third week of December. Accounts never explained where Tom had spent the ten months between his flight from Stockton and arrest in Tacoma. But he evidently connected, or perhaps re-connected, with allies in the Washington underworld. A few days before the trial was to start, someone tried to spring him from his jail cell. A deputy on patrol found where an accomplice had cut away the heavy outside screen and started sawing on the bars.

As might be expected, the trial lacked any real drama. The defense stuck to the story about the mysterious stranger in the hall, which surely impressed no one. May’s identification of the revolver as the murder weapon would have sealed the deal. The jury did spend extra time deliberating, apparently trying to decided whether or not to recommend the death penalty. They finally voted for life imprisonment, which the judge imposed. Satisfied that justice had been served, Fresno officials chose not to request his return to California. 

Thomas "Tom" Evans.
Washington State Penitentiary.

Records show that Victor Nelson’s body was interred at Mountain View Memorial Park in the southwest outskirts of Tacoma. His overall anonymity was maintained, however. Available newspapers say nothing about a funeral service or even when he was buried. Nor was he identified in April 1950 when Tom Evans had a heart attack and died at the penitentiary. The brief item said Evans had been “convicted of first-degree murder,” but did not give the name of his victim.

By the time Tom died, the Evans family had fragmented. The brother in Stockton passed away in 1933. The oldest sister was the only member to stay in Iowa, but she was nearly 70 years old in 1950. Her husband was even older, and their sons were scattered across the country. The surviving younger brother was a contract painter, moving between jobs in Missouri and Kansas. The youngest sister was married and divorced before 1919. After that, she bounced all over: Denver, Duluth, San Diego, and Kansas City, Missouri … that we know of. Thomas “Tom” Evans was buried in the prison cemetery.
                                                                               

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

Jeffrey G. Barnes, “History,” The Fingerprint Sourcebook, Alan McRoberts (Editor), National Institute of Justice, Washington, D. C. (2012).

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

“[Nelson – Evans News],” Ottumwa Courier, Sioux City Journal, Iowa; Fresno Morning Republican, California; Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Washington (November 1912 – April 1950).

David Wilma and Walt Crowley, “Tacoma – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (September 09, 2003)..

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The Mobility Murder

By the summer of 1925, the “Roaring Twenties” were in full swing. Despite Prohibition, people craved novelty, excitement, and freedom. The automobile craze made one kind of freedom possible, with Ford Motor Company selling Model T’s almost as fast as they could build them. The number of cars on the road had doubled since 1920, to over 16 million registered. Yet with all that, many millions more did not own a car and didn’t even know how to drive.

That was good news for Earl Anable, a taxi and “rent-car” driver. Party-goers or shoppers would hire a rent-car, with driver, when they had a big day or evening planned. That way, they wouldn’t have to flag down cabs to get around. Earl could not know that death lurked behind him on one cool July evening.

1924 Cadillac Limousine. Classic Car sales Site.

Charles Earl Anable was born April 19, 1893 in Mount Vernon, Washington, a small town about 55 miles north of Seattle. He enlisted for World War I and went to France as a “motor mechanic” in the spring of 1918. There, officers discovered that he was an excellent driver. Of course, he also had the skills to fix the vehicle when it broke down (a not uncommon event). After the war, Earl found work as a chauffeur.

Anable married in early 1920, and the couple had a daughter about seventeen months later. In 1923, Earl landed a job with a Seattle taxi company. Then a better opportunity came along, so he resigned as of the end of June, 1925. However, the new job would not start for several weeks. Thus, on July 22, Earl was serving as a relief driver for another rental outfit.

That evening, a slight young man in a sailor uniform stopped at the rental stand and hired a company limousine with Earl as the driver. Earl’s boss saw the car leave at about 8:30. Puzzling second-hand accounts tell us very little about what happened in the next hour or so. A few minutes after the limo left the stand, a soldier at Fort Lawton saw it pass back and forth several times near his barracks. Since Lawton was located 5 to 6 miles northwest of downtown Seattle, Earl must have driven straight there.

Lawton did not have any actual fortifications. Except for a core of buildings and some cleared drill space, most its 703 acres were covered with brush and trees. It’s unclear if any of its roads were even paved in 1925, and there were points where vehicles could come and go as they pleased. Around a half hour later, another soldier also saw the limo, this time with three passengers dressed in civilian clothes.

Finally, about 9:30 or so, the wife of a soldier who had a home just off the reservation saw headlights on the rough road inside the unmarked boundary. The vehicle stopped and then, after a short pause, she heard a shot and the lights went out. It happened that the Army maintained a rifle range less than thirty yards beyond where the lights had stopped. Perhaps they were trying some night practice. The next morning before 6 o’clock, a boy delivering newspapers to the base discovered Earl Anable’s body inside the car. He had been shot once in the back of the head.

Earl Anable. Family Archive

The base commander immediately mustered every man for cross-examination by Seattle police detectives.  That included over 100 sailors and marines living in tents near the rifle range. With men vouching for each other, the interrogation seemed to establish “unshakable alibis” for everyone. That afternoon, searchers scoured the woods near the rifle range, hoping to find a sailor’s uniform discarded by a civilian perpetrator.

When that didn’t pan out, officers at the base began to revisit the supposedly iron-clad alibis. They soon discovered gaps in the story for one sailor, 20-year-old Lloyd Hudson. That evening, police arrested Hudson at a café where he was dining with his new bride. He naturally denied any involvement. However, under questioning, he began to contradict himself about his actions on the day of the murder … and finally confessed. But that was hardly the end of the story.

Lloyd LaRaine Hudson was born October 12, 1905 in Ardmore, Oklahoma. When he was old enough, he joined the U.S. Navy. After basic training, he was assigned to the battleship USS Arizona, which was then based in San Pedro, California. Each summer, the vessel docked at the Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington, for refit and repairs. In 1925, her normal stay was extended to two months for some scheduled modernization.

Lloyd was among those sent to Fort Lawton for rifle practice. After less than a month ashore, Lloyd met 18-year-old Katherine Fries, quickly proposed, and they were married on July 11. Lloyd was busy at Fort Lawton, of course, but the couple rented an apartment on Lloyd’s meager Navy pay. The new wife’s life story was rather more complex than his.

She was born October 28, 1906 in a German-speaking enclave on the southern Volga River in Russia. The family emigrated to the U.S. when she was six years old, settling first in Nebraska. They spent some time in Montana before moving to the Yakima Valley of Washington around 1919. Katherine was apparently a troubled youth. Some time in early 1925, she fell under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court in Yakima. (We don’t know why since such records are hardly ever made public.) The court placed her in the custody of the Pacific Coast Rescue and Protective Society (PCR&P).

The initial focus of the PCR&P, first incorporated in 1909, was to provide medical services and counseling for unwed mothers. Over time, their role expanded to include shelter and social services for so-called “wayward” girls and young women. Fries was sent to a PCR&P facility located across Lake Washington from Seattle. We don’t know how long she was there, but she walked away to the big city in early July. How she met Seaman Hudson is unknown.

In any case, her new husband first claimed that Earl Anable had “insulted” his bride-to-be during their ride to the county clerk’s office to get married on July 11. He and the driver had met a couple times after that, he claimed, and Anable had continued to make vulgar and disparaging remarks about Katherine. Lloyd had finally “snapped,” lured him to a lonely spot, and shot him with his service pistol. He repudiated that confession the day after his arrest, but later returned to a version of the same story.

The initial confession had two major holes. First, Katherine said that she did not recall any insults from their driver. Living in a mostly German-speaking household, she perhaps didn’t understand some key slang and vulgarities in English. That, however, seems unlikely, given how long she had lived in this country. More importantly, Anable’s wife declared that Earl had not worked on July 11. Newspapers did not report how Hudson addressed these discrepancies (or if he even bothered to do so).

Police and prosecutors figured the motive might have simply been robbery. However, rent-car drivers did not generally collect fees along the way, so they carried very little cash. Beyond that, federal authorities probably figured that Hudson might dream up yet another story. Thus, about two weeks after the killing, they retained private criminologist Luke S. May.

Besides having agents interview more potential witnesses, May could assess the death scene and the murder weapon. Fine marks on an ejected shell casing, found on the floor of the back seat, and on the fatal bullet identified Hudson’s .45-caliber automatic as the death weapon. It’s worth mentioning here that the notion of “fingerprinting bullets” was just then being recognized nationally. May had been providing that service in his region for five years. To further make the point, May found a stain of human blood on the pistol, in a pattern consistent with blow-back from the victim’s death wound.

Aside from stumbling over some details, Hudson never wavered from his story about insults to his wife. Yet continued investigation strongly suggested that there was far more to the case than what appeared on the surface. For example, another shipmate claimed that Lloyd had told him that his dispute with Anable “was of two years standing.” Moreover, “persons unknown” had threatened two prospective witnesses, trying to squelch their testimony in the affair.

None of these aspects were thoroughly explored because the case never went to trial. Hudson’s defense team surely warned him that a conviction for first degree murder could lead to a death sentence. He chose instead to plead guilty to second degree murder and take his chances. He received a life sentence, but probably expected to be released much sooner.

Authorities moved Hudson to the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas after about eight months at McNeil Island. He was still there fifteen years later. Then, in early 1943, a special panel logged his draft registration at the prison. He enlisted, or was drafted, less than a year later. He served on naval landing craft (LCI and LCT) and probably participated in the invasion of the Philippines and Okinawa.

Hudson remarried some time after the war. His second wife passed away in 1983; he followed in 1995. They are buried in a rural cemetery located 10-11 miles south of St. James, Missouri. The small town provides a base for several award-winning wineries.

Katherine (Fries) Hudson returned to the Yakima Valley and spent the rest of her life there. We don’t know when she divorced Hudson, but she had remarried by 1927 or 1928. She and her second husband had four children together before she divorced him around 1937. She married again four years later. Katherine married for a fourth, and final, time in late 1949. She passed away in the spring of 1995.

Earl Anable’s widow, Esther, worked for over twenty years in various positions at a large department store in downtown Seattle. She remarried in 1933, and passed away in 1979. Daughter Nadine was out on her own in 1940 as a waitress at a drugstore food counter. She married two years later.
                                                                               

References: “[Anable–Hudson News],” Seattle Times, Seattle; Bellingham Herald, Washington (April 5, 1920) – (August 9, 1925).

Duane Colt Denfeld, “Fort Lawton to Discovery Park,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (September 23, 2008).

David E. Kyvig, et al, Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939, Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara, California (2002).

“Louise Home Hospital and Residence Hall,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, Washington, D. C. (1987).

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

Wesley W. Stout, “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Expert Witness,” The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 1925). .

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Death On A Sunday Afternoon

May 20, 1934. Sergeant John Donlan of the Seattle Police Department looked forward to a relaxed Sunday off. Plenty of time to peruse the newspaper, followed by a restful afternoon nap. He could not know that one of his major investigations would come full circle to end in tragedy.

But life was good, and perhaps the case would provide a fitting close to his long career. Donlan could retire in a couple years, and he had a good nest egg to go with his police pension. His wife and daughter had gone off to visit friends in Olympia. His only “honey-do” was to turn on the oven at 5 o’clock to start cooking a nice leg-of-lamb for a late supper.

Comfortably dressed, including loose house slippers, Donlan took his time reading the newspaper. There had been a huge, costly fire at the Chicago stockyards. In and around Seattle, sheriff’s deputies had seized about fifty illegal slot machines. At some point, he dozed off, comfortably warmed by a rich purple lounging robe.

Sergeant John Donlan.
Seattle Times (May 21, 1934).

John Sylvester Donlan was born January 27, 1870 in New York City. The family moved to Washington around 1877. He married in early 1895 and the couple had a daughter, Lillian, about nineteen months later. For a time, he drove a laundry truck in Seattle, as well as playing in a band. Donlan joined the Seattle Police Department in 1904. Despite his minimal education and lack of formal police training, he became an effective member of the force. Known as a dogged investigator, he nevertheless showed compassion for the down-and-out people he encountered on his beat.

In 1908, Donlan passed the civil service exam to be eligible for promotion to sergeant. However, despite several commendations, he had to wait a long time. One wonders if that was because he was a clean cop on a force that was sometimes anything but. He was finally promoted to sergeant in January of 1919. Before and after he made sergeant, Donlan suffered from the political machinations in the department and the city government.

On one occasion, he submitted a report on what he suspected was the construction of a gambling den and speakeasy. Somehow, that report did not make its way to the police chief (or the mayor, apparently). Then the mayor learned about the problem from other sources. After a tour, which included the chief and two other city officials, the mayor ordered the chief to immediately reassigned Donlan to another district. They soon had to backtrack when the “phantom” report came to light.

An “old school” cop, Donlan relied on an encyclopedic memory for criminals and cases. Thus, he kept few written notes, making it difficult to tell when he began to dig into the “Muggles Mob.” Back then (and still today, in some quarters) the term “muggles” meant marijuana. The “Mob” appeared to be a loose band of youthful burglars, 17 to 20 years years old. All seemed to be solo operators who specialized in daytime or early evening hits. They also dropped butts from the reefers they smoked to bolster their courage while they cased a possible target.

When they got together, it was mostly to smoke muggles and brag. They would also gab about various entry methods,  how to insure that nobody was home, and (probably) where to fence their loot. The informal structure made it difficult to pin down who might be a “member.” Still, Donlan knew several likely names, and Eddie Griffis (sometimes rendered as Griffiths) was on his list.

Charles Edward Griffis was born in Vancouver, Washington on February 17, 1914. His parents divorced in 1917 or 1918, then his father remarried in May 1919. Eddie displayed a wild streak early on, starting with the theft of materials from an elementary school supply room. At the age of nine, he learned how to “earn” an “allowance” by shoplifting. Three years later, his stepmother died. All through the period before about 1932, he was in and out of a reform school or the state reformatory. By around 1933, he seems to have become a skilled daytime burglar.

Eddie Griffis.
Seattle Times (November 22, 1934).

Obviously, a daylight thief can thoroughly search a house without using a flashlight, which would arouse suspicion. But the intruder must do his (or her) “homework” … making sure the house is empty. Griffis took up a hiding place near the Donlan home shortly before 4 o’clock. With the family car gone, he figured the coast was clear, but still watched long enough to smoke at least one reefer. At that point, Donlan was surely settled into his nap, so Eddie would have seen no activity.

Griffis used his “good luck” jimmie to force open a basement window. After a cursory search there, he started up the stairs to the ground level. And that’s where matters came unstuck. For the sergeant had heard something and faced the intruder as soon as he stepped off the stairs. Griffis later claimed that Donlan immediately recognized him and said, “I’ve been looking for you, Eddie, for jobs just like this.” Then Donlan tried to reach a closet where his service revolver was. Griffis moved closer and shot him three times.

Griffis then bolted from the house and hurried back to his rooming house. He had told his landlady that he was a jeweler’s apprentice, in case she happened to see any of his loot around. Now he said he had to go out of town, and paid a month’s rent in advance. He fled Seattle, throwing his weapon in Lake Washington on the way out.

That evening, about 9:30, the sergeant’s wife and daughter got home, found the body, and immediately called the police. At the time, private criminologist Luke S. May was acting as Chief of Detectives for the Seattle Police Department. He had agreed to take the temporary position because he saw it as his public duty. May arrived at the crime scene just as two regular patrol cars pulled up.

Then and the next day, they found four important clues, besides the body: an empty shell casing, the jimmied window, a clear footprint near that window, and a muggles butt where the intruder had hidden. May had the entire window casing taken to his private lab so he could take microphotographs of the tool marks left by the jimmie.

The shell casing and two bullets from Donlan’s body allowed him to identify the murder weapon as a 7.65 mm Ortgies semi-automatic pistol loaded with .32-caliber ammunition. The Ortgies (named for the designer, Heinrich Ortgies) was made in Germany. Although production ran for only five years (1919-1924), a fair number had been exported to this country. Ironically, police later discovered that Griffis had stolen the weapon during an earlier burglary. The unusual weapon was a key element when investigators began to question suspects and underworld contacts.

Ortgies 7.65 Semi-Automatic.
Gun Collectors' WebSite.

As could be expected, the department went all out in pursuit of the cop-killer. After many false leads, tips put them on the trail of Edward Griffis. Learning that he had left town on the very evening Donlan had been shot, they surmised that they were on the right track. Police units all along the Pacific Coast received a photo of Griffis, a description of the murder weapon, and an image of the jimmie tool marks.

Griffis did head south, after a couple weeks in Everett. He spent some time in Portland and then in Oakland, before moving on to Los Angeles. It’s unknown how many burglaries he committed along the way. In late June, Griffis made a return trip to Oakland. There, he and an accomplice pulled off a series of armed robberies. The other man was soon caught. However, he identified his partner only as “Eddie,” so Griffis’ role in the crimes was not known until later.

Griffis managed to stay out of sight in July. Then, key events began to happen fast. First, Portland police called to say that the suspect tool marks had been found at a local burglary. (There may have been more, but reports are a bit confused.) Then police in Los Angeles arrested Griffis in connection with an armed robbery. He used an alias, but his resemblance to the man wanted in Seattle drew extra police attention. They quickly checked bullets from Griffis’ weapon against the Donlan murder slugs. That, of course, drew a blank. Then officials found several local burglaries that had tool marks from Griffis’ jimmie.

Faced with the evidence against him, Eddie confessed and was sent back to Seattle. A jury at the required murder trial recommended a life sentence rather than the death penalty. Griffis was unfazed, because underworld sources had him convinced he’d be out in seven to ten years.

The fact that he’d killed a policeman negated that, however. When the incarceration stretched out to over 14 years, Griffis decided “enough was enough.” He escaped while being allowed outside the walls as a trusty. Caught after a month on the run, he tried to tunnel out in the summer of 1949. Thwarted in that attempt, he walked away from an outside work detail in the fall of 1952. He was captured in less than three weeks.

In the spring of 1954, a juror from the original conviction began agitating for his parole, saying he had “paid his debt to society.” At that point, the widow Donlan was still alive and the plea was denied. However, Mrs. Donlan died that summer. It’s not clear if daughter Lillian, who had married during the war, even followed parole board activities. Thus, Griffis was a free man by about 1958. He married three years later, but that lasted less than ten years. Charles Edward Griffis died in 1992, in Seattle.
                                                                               

References: Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, Washington (2015).

“[Donlan – Griffis News],” Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon; Oakland Tribune, Los Angeles Times, California (June 1908 – April 1954).

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

Stuart Whitehouse, “Death of a Policeman,” Master Detective Magazine, New York, New York (October 1954).

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The Fog of War? No, Politics.

The town of Kelso, Washington simmered going into the summer of 1925. Not the weather – daily highs were a pleasant 65-70º – but politics. The infighting became so widespread and contentious that one would need a “program” to keep track of the names. All of that befogged the search for who really murdered newspaper editor Thomas Dovery

Kelso, 1925. Washington State Historical Society.

Logging and lumber were the economic lifeblood of Kelso, located just over 60 miles due south of Olympia. Beyond the products themselves, all those loggers and mill workers fueled a booming demand for booze and female “companionship.” Prohibition was in full force, yet the Roaring Twenties were also in full roar. As usual, payoffs to protect the illegal trade lurked just beneath the surface, revealed by periodic exposés.

Thus, a reform mayor took office at the beginning of 1925, and immediately got into a huge fight with the City Council. Several councilmen were suspected of accepting bribes from bootleggers and speakeasies. Heated arguments followed and the mayor finally initiated recall campaigns against five councilmen. They countered with a recall petition against him, as well as other charges that briefly put the mayor in jail. With city government at a standstill, a compromise was (reluctantly) worked out. The mayor would not fight the recall election if the five councilmen would resign.

On June 4, Kelso had a mostly-new City Council, which then selected a mayor. This “settled” the matter administratively, but only intensified the unrest that seethed just below the surface. Reform efforts continued through what we would now call a political action committee (PAC). Thomas Dovery, the editor/owner of the Kelso-based Cowlitz County News, strongly supported the deposed mayor and was a zealous advocate for reform. Two weeks after the town got a new mayor, he attended an evening meeting of the PAC. Minutes after he started home on foot, a pedestrian heard what he thought was a car backfire. He then found Dovery’s body on the sidewalk. The editor had been shot to death.

Thomas J. Dovery was born in May 1866, in Norway. The family immigrated to Canada when Thomas was about seven years old. A year later, they settled on a farm about 30 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wisconsin. With an early start, Dovery mastered English well enough to become a successful newspaper owner and editor. By 1905, he had operated several small-town papers in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The next year, Dovery bought farmland near Buhl, Idaho and moved his family there. Within a few years, he had a newspaper in that town and another in Twin Falls. He was known as “an aggressive political writer,” who “engaged in many political controversies.” After about ten years, he began to phase out his Idaho holdings and, in 1920, opened a general printing shop in Eugene, Oregon. Finally, near the end of 1923, Dovery traded that firm for the Cowlitz County News. He brought his aggressive and controversial style with him.

The unstable situation in Kelso absolutely exploded after the murder. Surely this had to be a political assassination! It didn’t help that the subsequent investigation discovered that the head of the water department had embezzled funds from his office. Another of Dovery’s crusades had been a demand that the water department’s books be audited. So, resources were diverted to trace that suspect’s movements on the day of the murder. For a time after the shooting, Kelso had an extra “government,” including one selected by the ex-mayor. In fact, the ex-mayor lodged a criminal conspiracy charge against the official city engineer. In retaliation, the ex-mayor was hit with a “malicious prosecution” indictment. At one point, the governor was asked to send troops to maintain order (he refused).

Meanwhile, a day or so after the shooting, the county sheriff hired criminologist Luke S. May to examine the only worthwhile clue they had. Not too far from the body, officers had found a .41-caliber Colt revolver. Newspapers described the weapon as an “old” or even “ancient” style, so it was most likely a Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer.” May first verified that the revolver was indeed the death weapon, and then began to laboriously trace its ownership. About a week after the shooting, further distractions came in the form of threatening letters to May and the sheriff.

With all the political tumult and acrimony, tracking genuine leads on the revolver went slowly. Finally, in late September, the state Attorney General appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the case. Ten days later, a headline read, “Luke May Finds Kelso Slayer.” The zigzag path began with the long-time owner of the revolver, a fireman at a Kelso mill. Several months before the murder, he had sold the old firearm to a twenty-year-old apprentice carpenter in Portland, Oregon.

Luke clearly established the links from there to the shooter, but answers to a couple questions did not make the news. Why did the youth, who was never in trouble (before or after), buy the gun? Perhaps he saw some historical value in the artifact. Next, why did he loan the gun to Bill Thompson, an ex-convict? He might not have known about the man’s criminal record, but what story did Thompson use to get the revolver? We don’t know.

The next stage was easy: News reports noted that Thompson was a “former jail acquaintance” of John W. Owens aka John W. Smith. Thompson loaned the gun to Owens, who said he had a big hit planned. Born in Ohio around 1872, Owens probably had a worse criminal record than Thompson, who had been in prison for burglary at least twice. However, we do not have many details because Owens had a fondness for phony names. His most recent known imprisonment was for complicity in the death of a Salt Lake City policemen during a robbery in 1907.

Owens was apparently released from the Utah State Penitentiary in late 1918. After that, he dropped out of sight. Later, officials learned that he’d been employed for over a year as a cook in Walla Walla, Washington. During that time, he was cited twice for disorderly conduct, but stayed out of trouble otherwise. He next appeared as a cook at a Kelso restaurant in 1925. There, he joined up with another ex-convict, Frank T. Hart.

Frank Thomas Hart was born March 11, 1894 in Portland, Oregon. Again we don’t know all the details of his criminal career. But between 1916 and late 1924, he spent: several months in the Nevada State Penitentiary, almost a year in San Quentin Prison, and six years in Folsom Prison. By 1925, he had a job in Kelso as a waiter or cook.

The two decided to hold up the payroll car of the largest lumber company in Longview, just west of Kelso. But that plan fell through for some reason. (Perhaps the managers heard rumors and beefed up their security.) Frustrated, they looked for someone else to rob. It was just bad luck that Dovery happened to come along. Neither ex-con ever consistently described how the robbery “went down,” but the editor ended up shot to death. It’s also unclear why the shooter left the revolver near the victim.

Afterwards, the two rented a car and drove to Portland. They then abandoned their ride, probably continuing their flight by train. Owens later said that he last saw Hart in Laramie, Wyoming. If so, he then doubled back, because his next known contact was in Moscow, Idaho. Owens stayed a week or so with a lady friend he had lived with before. Although he was long gone when investigators got there, they found an informant who could let them know if the lady heard anything from the fugitive. That finally provided a tip that Owens was headed for, or already in, St. Louis, Missouri. With the help of two members of May’s nationwide web of affiliate private detectives, police arrested him there on July 17, 1926.

Brought back to Kelso, Owens admitted that he’d been a part of the Dovery shooting as an accomplice of Frank Hart. But only one part of his story remained consistent: He insisted that he’d passed the revolver on to Hart and he had fired the fatal bullet. Hart wasn’t there to confirm or dispute that claim, but the jury convicted Owens of first degree murder anyway. He was sentenced to life (“99 years”) in the state penitentiary.

And so matters stood for almost eleven years. Then, in March 1937, one Fred Hall, described as a “race track follower,” was picked up in Columbia, South Carolina. He was routinely processed on a “drunk and disorderly” charge, paid his fine, and was released. As a matter of further routine, “Hall’s” fingerprints were transmitted to the FBI in Washington, DC. They quickly identified the man as Frank T. Hart, wanted on an open murder warrant in Washington state.

Frank T. Hart.
California Prison Records

Hart went on trial at Kelso in May. Owens was brought back from prison to repeat his claim that Hart had fired the fatal shot. The defense countered with two key points: First, Owens was the one who borrowed the death weapon. Second, a fellow prison inmate testified that Owens had admitted to him that he had shot Dovery. The jury deliberated only about ninety minutes before returning a “not guilty” verdict.

Owens was, of course, sent back to prison and seems to have died there some time before the spring of 1940. Hart went east, where he began dealing in race horses in Maryland, New York, and other states. However, around 1946-1948, he returned west to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and found a job as a cook. He died there in early 1956.

After the Owens trial in 1926, Dovery’s widow and two daughters moved to Tucson, Arizona. The daughters, both school teachers, never married. The widow died in 1956, the daughters in 1982 and 1985.
                                                                               

References: Rita Cipalla, “Kelso – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (October 21, 2019).

Commemorative Biographical Record of the Upper Lake Region, J. H. Beers & Company, Chicago, Illinois (1905).

“[Dovery - Hart - Owens Background], Dunn County News, Menomonie, Wisconsin; Minneapolis Journal, Worthington Advance, Minnesota; Twin Falls Weekly News, Twin Falls Times, Idaho Evening Times, Twin Falls, Idaho; Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake Telegram, Utah; Eugene Guard, Morning Register, Eugene, Oregon (February 1895 – December 1923).

“[Dovery Murder And Afterwards],” Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Daily Olympian, Olympia, Washington; Idaho Evening Times, Twin Falls, Idaho; Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (June 1925 – May 1937).

Jim Gentry, In the Middle and On the Edge: The Twin Falls Region of Idaho, College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls (2003).

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

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Murder For A Pittance

The senseless death of youthful Richard Cadle in Seattle on February 18, 1938 can legitimately be blamed on the ravages of the Great Depression. The full story of the Depression is obviously far beyond the scope of this blog. Still, by the spring of 1937, the economy itself – the GDP – had returned to pre-Crash levels. However, unemployment remained high, over 15% … and that was key. Nearly one in six Americans could not find work, and that didn’t include those who had given up trying.

Cadle was actually somewhat better off than most. Richard Dale Cadle was born July 21, 1915 in Sheridan, Wyoming. His family was originally from Iowa, where Richard’s grandfather was a postmaster and successful attorney. A considerable block of the family had moved west around 1906. They settled in Sheridan, where Richard’s father and an uncle were clerks for the railway company. Just before World War I, the two brothers, now both with large families, resettled in Washington state. By 1920, they were living in Seattle, and were still there for the 1930 census.

Richard Cadle.
Seattle Times (February 18, 1938).

In late 1934, Richard married Lucille May Munday, and they had a daughter, Barbara Marie, a year later. At the time, at least ten close Cadle relatives and in-laws were listed in the Seattle City Directory. That included Richard’s grandmother, who had moved to Seattle after her husband died in 1920. He thus had a large family support group, and he and an older brother found work at the Community Garage, located about a half mile north of the King County Courthouse. Richard’s brother was an auto mechanic, while he was a “floor man.” Thus, Richard had to be there to greet customers who needed to drop their cars off before they went to work. That, unfortunately, made him a target.

The two who targeted him were James R. Lewis and Floyd O. Grable. Despite extensive research, very little is known about Lewis. He said he was born around 1911, in Oklahoma. However, his name is common enough that neither statement can be reliably verified. He also said he was in Clifton, Arizona, in 1935. The town’s economy was based almost entirely on nearby copper ore beds, so Lewis probably had a job in the mines.

Oddly enough, Grable was also working at an Arizona copper mining town in 1935. Floyd Oren Grable was born November 1, 1907 in Vallejo, California. The family was originally from Missouri, but claimed a remote homestead in Oregon, about 50 miles southwest of Pendleton, in 1891. Floyd’s father married the year before he was born, but available records do not say where. Another boy was born in Vallejo in September 1910. Sadly, Floyd’s mother mysteriously disappeared from their home on the evening of June 2, 1911 … and was never heard from again. Then, two years later, his father was killed in a train wreck about a mile north of Vallejo.

Floyd and his brother returned to live with their grandparents at the family homestead in Oregon. He enrolled at Oregon State College (now University) in 1926. The college yearbook for 1929 listed him as the Treasurer for the class that was to graduate in 1930. However, the Great Crash of 1929 ended his dream of a college education. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to duty in the Philippines. He returned to the U.S. in early 1932 and was discharged. After that, like so many others, he sought work where he could find it.

Thus, Floyd was in Miami, Arizona, in 1935, probably working in the copper mines there. And copper was doing well, although output was still below pre-Crash levels. Production increased the following year and the early part of 1937. Then, for reasons that are disputed even now, the U.S. suffered a recession within the Depression. That pullback wiped out the gains of the previous two years, as over a million production jobs were lost. In Arizona, copper companies laid off over a thousand workers in October alone.

There is no way to be sure that Grable or Lewis were still in Arizona when the recession hit. Nor do we know how the two met. However, they were together – and unemployed – in Mullan, Idaho, in early 1938. In February, they drove west into Washington. (It was never clear who owned the car.) They were almost totally broke. In Spokane, Floyd went off on his own and robbed a service station. He netted just $15, and ended up exchanging gunshots with the attendant as he fled. The two arrived in Seattle on February 14, but were unable to find work.

Four days later, down to perhaps ten cents between them, they desperately went on a robbery spree. Some time after midnight they held up a hotel office and then, about 3:30 in the morning, a garage attendant. They drove up to the Community Garage shortly before 5 o’clock, and asked Richard Cadle if they could use the telephone. When they entered the garage office, Grable waved his .32-caliber pistol and demanded money from the cash register. Richard handed over everything, all of $2.25.

Here, the stories diverge. Richard told police that the bandits were angry about the small take and ordered him to the back. He complied, although he feared they were going to shoot him. When he hesitated after a few steps, Grable shot him. Grable later claimed that he was just nervous and “the gun went off” accidentally. The robbers hurriedly fled. Richard, hit in the arm and stomach, staggered to the phone and called a friend at another garage two blocks down the street. The friend rushed him to the hospital, where Richard told his story to an officer before becoming incoherent from loss of blood.

Police had good descriptions of both robbers and their vehicle, and the two were soon captured. They immediately confessed and expressed the hope that the wounded man was going to be all right. But that was not to be. Despite blood transfusions from two of his brothers, Richard died the following evening.

Grable and Lewis went on trial for first degree murder on May 16. Prosecutors said they would not frame their case in terms of any specific penalty. They would leave the choice between the death penalty or life imprisonment strictly up to the jury. Since their clients had confessed, the defense sought mainly to insure that neither was sentenced to die. Thus, they emphasized how hard up and desperate the two were, something that would surely resonate with most members of the jury. They also pointed out that neither man had any known criminal record.

Newspapers gave no details of the testimony offered by criminologist Luke S. May. Police had found the death weapon in the bandit’s car, so its identity was not really in question. May probably verified that in passing, and then assessed the shooting scenarios – accidental or deliberate – based on the bullet trajectory and blood spatter evidence. The jury took about four hours to deliver the guilty verdict, and recommend life imprisonment for both.

In the summer of 1950, the state Parole Board recommended a “conditional  pardon” for James Lewis. The warden noted that he had performed “outstanding service” as a trusty in the maintenance department of the prison. The governor agreed, and his decree even called it an “earned pardon.” The news report said that it was “one of the few ever granted by any governor” for someone “convicted of first degree murder.” James returned to Texas with his father, who said he planned to “establish the son in the service station business.”

Floyd Grable.
The Beaver, OSU Yearbook, 1929.

Significantly, Floyd Grable is listed in the 1951 City Directory for Pendleton, Oregon, as a grower for a flower nursery. It’s not mentioned in any available newspaper, but it appears that Lewis’s good behavior earned his partner in crime at least a parole. Floyd got married in 1956 and lived in Pendleton until his death in 1997.

Richard Cadle’s widow, Lucille, lived alone with their daughter until early 1942. She then married Malcolm Andresen, an inspector for the Washington state highway department. Malcolm tried to enter the Army, but was apparently turned down. Lucille and Malcom had two sons, Larry and Donald. In 1953, seventeen-year-old daughter Barbara Marie Cadle married a young man in Seattle. One wonders if the bride perhaps felt some element of sorrow that her natural father wasn’t there to give her away. Lucille died in August 1988, after a long struggle with cancer.
                                                                                

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

“[Cradle-Gable-Lewis Background],” San Francisco Call, California; Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona Star, Tucson, Arizona; Seattle Times, Washington (June 4, 1911) – (June 2, 1950).

[Cradle Murder and Trial]” Seattle Times, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington (February 18, 1938) – (May 21, 1938).

Brian Duignan (ed.), The Great Depression, Britannica Educational Publishing, New York, New York (2013).

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

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The Locked Room Mystery – Seattle Style

The mysterious death of Patrolman Charles O. Legate in March 1922 almost certainly arose from the graft and corruption that was pervasive in the Seattle Police Department at the time.

Sadly, Seattle has a long history of government corruption, police and otherwise. (Recent headlines suggest that the “legacy” may still be with them, despite periodic reform efforts.) Founded in 1851, the city soon became known “for the quality, quantity, and variety of its vice.” For many years, the city was wide open and simply collected license fees from brothels and gambling joints. Thus, since it was all legal, we perhaps shouldn’t call that political “corruption.” One history states that in the 1880s, collections from vice and saloons provided as much as 87% of the city government’s revenue.

Seattle, ca 1922. Museum of History and Industry, Seattle.

Eventually, however, many citizens came to resent the city’s wide open reputation. They demanded “reforms” so they could at least appear clean. They got their way (at times), but those efforts in no way reduced prostitution or gambling … and the lawful fees became under-the-table payoffs. Often, the beat cops were the collectors, passing a portion of their take up the chain of command. Sometimes, all the way up. Thus, when voters elected a reform mayor in 1892, a group of senior police officers showed up in his office to ask him how much he expected to get. He “indignantly” rejected the offer, but resigned in less than a year.

For decades, the situation went back and forth between wide open and (ostensibly) closed. Charles Legate joined the department full-time in the spring of 1907. The son of a Civil War soldier, Legate was born in 1872, in Illinois about thirty miles north of St. Louis, Missouri. The family farmed in southern Nebraska before Charles moved to Seattle in 1904. He was then a widower, his wife having died five years earlier. Legate worked as a trolley car operator before joining the police force. He remarried in 1909.

Thus, he was there when one mayor tried to straddle the fence. Taking office in 1910, he created “vice districts” to regulate the business – with suitable fees – and hopefully keep it restricted to certain parts of the city. But even some of the tolerant citizens were shocked at the results, so that experiment did not last long. Payoffs went back under the table. In 1916, the state of Washington passed its “early” prohibition of alcohol. The operation hardly missed a beat, simply adding a cash stream from bootleggers and speakeasies to the mix … financing a new round of payoffs.

Legate became a member of the “Dry Squad,” a unit of the Seattle police specifically tasked with enforcing prohibition. Nationwide Prohibition went into effect in 1920, with generally tougher provisions than the state law. In a perverse irony, making liquor harder to get simply made it more desirable, and led to widespread corruption in the U.S. Prohibition Service, and among local Dry Squads. According to one Seattle chief’s “tell all” story, one man offered him $60,000 (about $900,000 in today’s money) to be appointed head of the Dry Squad.

Despite his long experience on the force, Legate was, at heart, a midwestern farm lad and does not seem to have been a part of that seamy side. But he knew about it, and that probably cost him his life. We can infer the events and motivations that led to his death from scraps that leaked out. Later, it would be stated that “Legate had talked too much to Chief of Police Searing regarding conditions in the district.” The first overt sign of trouble came in late 1921, when officials kicked Legate off the Dry Squad and sent him back to walking a beat.

The area they assigned him was near the north edge of a notorious (former) vice district. Then, in February 1922, Legate was placed on unpaid leave because he had failed to clear the district of prostitution. Yet it was a known fact that informers regularly tipped the “houses” off when a raid was on its way. One can’t help but suspect that someone, or several someones, wanted Legate off the force. Offering him a bleak future might do that.

But the officer persisted and, on March 17, 1922, a  Seattle Times headline read, “Slayer of Policeman Fails in Suicide Ruse.” Patrolman Charles O. Legate had died from two gunshots to the head. The body had been found slumped on the back seat and floor of a large car inside a locked garage. (Searchers had to force their way in.) One shot had hit him directly in the forehead, another entered through the right cheek. Investigators also found a deep gash in his head that looked like it had been inflicted by a gun butt. In an apparent attempt to make the death look like a suicide, his service revolver, with two empty shells in it, had been placed beside the body.

Searchers eventually recovered three bullets, including one from Legate’s head and another that had passed through the back window of the car and out the garage wall. The third was found inside the garage, but reports don’t say where, or how it was otherwise linked to the case. All were distorted to some extent, but seemed to be of the same caliber. Investigators found no empty shell casings. They did not, at this point, consult with criminologist Luke S. May to learn more about that evidence.

Despite much activity, the case stalled after a couple weeks. The official position leaned more and more toward the notion that Legate had committed suicide after all. Legate’s widow, and others, began to complain about a possible cover-up. Finally, over two months after Legate’s death, a grand jury was convened to consider the case. But organizers carefully controlled the evidence and witness list. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the coroner’s jury ruled that Legate had shot himself.

The attempt to sweep matters under the rug failed. In mid-June, a special grand jury re-opened the issue. This time, Luke May was among the witnesses called and, the Seattle Star noted, “recalled many times by the jury.” May had not yet had time for a full assessment, but he declared right away that only the bullet in the forehead had come from Legate’s weapon. The others, although they were of the same caliber, had not. This jury concluded that Legate had been murdered. But the powers-that-be still resisted, mainly by denying Legate’s widow, Anna, a police pension. (Charles also left behind a stepson and two daughters.)

Officer Legate.
Seattle Times (March 17, 1922).

That sent the case back to the courts, this time with criminologist May on board. His assessment, however, was hampered because the original crime scene investigation had been perfunctory and inept. The available data allowed for only a rough determination of the bullet trajectories. Over his career, Luke May used bullet trajectories and blood spatter patterns to recreate death scenes with uncanny accuracy. That was not possible in this case because all traces of blood had been cleaned up and there were apparently no blood spatter photos or diagrams.

As noted above, May found that the bullet in Legate’s head was from the officer’s own revolver, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson. The other bullet found inside the garage was from the same make and model, but not the same weapon. The third bullet that pierced the back window of the car was from a .38-caliber Colt. With two wounds from different firearms, the suicide alternative was simply not credible. Finally, nine months after her husband was murdered, the city pensions board granted Anna Legate a monthly allowance.

While all that was going on, a new mayor appointed a new police chief, William B. Severyns. Business as usual prevailed for a time. Then a reform mayoral candidate became the favorite to take office in the summer of 1926. To improve his job prospects, Severyns wrote, or commissioned, a series of newspaper articles touting all the things he had done to clean up the department. That included a new look at the Legate case. Underworld contacts declared that two men – a fellow police officer, and a notorious bootlegger and drug dealer – had killed Legate. Of course, no one would talk for the record and no evidence was offered. (The new lady mayor fired the chief anyway.) The case went cold and has never been re-opened.

Anna Legate remarried in early 1929, a few months before her daughters also got married. She lived out her life in Anacortes, a small town about 64 miles north of Seattle.
                                                                                

References: Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, Washington (2015).

Charles O. Legate, Behind the Badge Foundation, Issaquah, Washington (2012). behindthebadgefoundation.org

“[Legate News Items],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Star, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (January 1917 – November 1926).

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

David Wilma, “Officer Charles O. Legate is found murdered on March 17, 1922,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (May 17, 2002).

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A Wasted, Misspent Life … Ending In Tragedy

Sadly, we don’t know a lot about Arthur Erickson, a Good Samaritan who was murdered in Puyallup, Washington in 1935. And we know only the name of the service station operator he tried to help. But, for reasons that will become perfectly clear, we know all too much about the career criminal who shot them.

Erickson was born around 1878 in Minnesota. It’s unclear when the family moved, but they were in Tacoma, Washington by the spring of 1892. Arthur found work at a sawmill and then as a teamster. He got married in 1903, but the couple had no children and were divorced by about 1917. Besides working on his father’s farm near Puyallup, Arthur also operated a moving van. After his father died in 1923, he ran the family farm and took care of his mother, who was then about 64 years old. When the Great Depression struck, he apparently spent more time driving a delivery truck to make ends meet.

Saturday March 23, 1935 was not a pleasant day in Puyallup (about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma). They’d had misty rain for most of the week and the temperature was dropping into the low forties. That evening, Erickson pulled into the service station operated by Elmer Harris. As he did, he saw Harris struggling with a young man.

Service Station, ca 1935.
Library of Congress.

By the time Arthur got inside, the operator had wrested a gun away from the would-be robber. Arthur grabbed the prisoner while Harris picked up the phone to call the sheriff. Desperate, the youth yanked out another pistol and sprayed the two men with bullets. He then stole a car at gunpoint from two lady school teachers, and fled. The next day, searchers found the car in a railroad yard in Auburn, about 10 miles north of Puyallup. Erickson died at the scene, while Harris eventually recovered from two wounds in his back.

Officials showed various witnesses a photo lineup based on verbal descriptions of the shooter. They picked out John McGuire, a youth who seemed about the right age and general build. He also had a criminal record, having spent two years in the state reformatory.

John Thomas McGuire was born John Fox in Tacoma, Washington on August 31, 1908, but his parents divorced less than two years later. Then, in early 1915, his mother married John Patrick McGuire. John eventually chose to take his stepfather’s last name. The family lived in Calgary, Alberta for a time but were in Seattle by 1922.

The beginning of the Great Depression threw John’s father out of work. Like many, all he could find were odd jobs. Thus, in the fall of 1930, John Thomas robbed a taxi driver for some ready cash. Caught and convicted, he was sentenced to five to seven years in the Washington state reformatory. He was paroled in October 1932. After he got out, he made it a practice to travel to Alaska for the commercial fishing season. That difficult and dangerous job paid him the equivalent of over $28,000 in today’s money for a summer of work. The rest of the year, John mostly worked as a cook. He got married in the spring of 1934, but that didn’t last.

The accusation became a nightmare for McGuire. Criminologist Luke S. May logged this as a firearms case. That involved an examination of the shell casings found at the crime scene and the bullets taken from the victims. From that he could tell officials what kind of pistol they should look for. Apparently, there were no fingerprints on the weapon the perpetrator left behind and it could not be traced. As it happened, McGuire did not have a weapon when he was arrested. Nor had he ever been known to own one.

The trial began in mid-June. John’s family insisted that he’d been in Seattle on the day and evening of the murder. Friends testified that he’d celebrated the weekend enough to get more than a bit tipsy. He then headed for his apartment, an alcove on the front of the family home. But first, his younger siblings persuaded him to play cards before he finally got to bed.

Prosecutors discounted all of that, although the McGuires were known as devout Roman Catholics. His mother said she could understand that authorities might think that a mother would lie to protect her child. But she was appalled that “they believed that I would put my Theresa and Mary on the witness stand – my babies – and tell them to break the Eighth Commandment that I’d taught them to obey since they were old enough to understand.”

The prosecution countered with five witnesses who asserted, under oath, that McGuire was the man who fired the shots that killed Arthur Erickson. The case went to the jury on June 18. They finally called it quits after around 45 hours of wrestling with the issues. The official excuse was that a juror simply cracked and “his mind went blank.” In reality, one juror, a housewife from Tacoma, believed the family alibi. She stuck with her “not guilty” vote, despite angry bullying by the foreman and other members of the jury. Finally, an “elderly juror from Puyallup” couldn’t stand the strain and basically collapsed.

Officials scheduled a new trial for September. Perhaps a new jury would do “better.”

Then, on September 2nd, a dramatic report completely changed the course of events. Two men, father Joseph A. Reed and his son Wallace, told prosecutors they had the wrong man. Both originally from California, Wallace had worked in Oregon for a time before moving to the area south of Renton, Washington in 1934 or early 1935. At that time, he worked as an upholsterer for a furniture company. Joseph lost his wife in the late 1920s and began living with or near Wallace around 1934, when he was over 70 years old.

Their account began before the murder, when a man named Mike Mooney was a lodger at the Reed place in Auburn. Mooney had been out on the evening of the shooting in Puyallup, returning shortly after 10:00 o’clock. The Reeds had heard about the event on the radio. When they mentioned it to Mooney, he basically admitted his involvement but also said, “You keep this under your hat and don’t mention it to nobody!”

About a week of tension followed, during which, apparently, more than hints confirmed that Mooney had done the shooting. Moreover, Wallace Reed saw Mike toss an automatic pistol into a nearby lake. They finally got up the courage to tell Mooney to get out. But they were still too frightened to report him, judging that he really was a dangerous man.

And they were not wrong in that surmise. Born October 7, 1910 in Portland, Oregon, Michael Lawrence Mooney began a life of crime with the theft of a bicycle when he was sixteen years old. He was jailed for burglary in late 1928 and served his sentence, but was back in the county jail at the time of the 1930 census. After he was released, he stole a car, was caught, and received a fifteen-month prison sentence. He was free again by the fall of 1931, but then went to jail for four months on a vagrancy charge.

Mike then kept his name out of newspapers until March 1933, when he married a young lady in Portland. But, three months later, he held up a Safeway store. Caught and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary, he was out by early 1935. Unable or unwilling to find work, he supported himself and his wife by robbing streetcars. Then, on March 23, he tried to hold up the Harris service station … and botched the job. It’s telling that he carried two handguns on what should have been a “simple” armed robbery.

Two months later, Mooney robbed a bank in Woodland, Washington (located about twenty miles north of Vancouver), but was soon tracked down. He confessed to the crime so his accomplices (including his wife and a brother) would be set free. A judge imposed a 10 to 20 year prison sentence.

News reports never said why the Reeds finally decided to come forward. Perhaps they didn’t know until then that Mooney had been put out of circulation. Still, despite their gesture of good citizenship, police were highly skeptical. After all, they had all these people testifying against McGuire. Still, they did begin dragging the lake to find the weapon and digging into Mooney’s activities at the time of the murder. (The investigation probably brought Luke May’s agents back into the case, especially if they did find the pistol.)

All that effort clearly paid off, although we do not know exactly what they found. A week after the Reeds spoke up, Mike Mooney pled guilty to a charge of second degree murder. He surely wanted to avoid a trial for first degree murder, which might well send him to the gallows. A judge then imposed a life sentence.

Later, a court overturned that sentence as excessive for a second-degree murder conviction. (One rather doubts that a life sentence was a part of Mooney’s plea deal … but judges don’t always go along with prosecutors on those.) He was paroled in November of 1948, but was back in an Oregon prison three months later on an assault-and-robbery conviction. He was paroled in September of 1958. Six months later, he tried to hold up a liquor store near Seattle and was shot and killed in the resulting gun battle. By my reckoning,  Mooney spent over 27 years of his relatively short life – he was 48 when he died – behind bars.

John McGuire, Mike Mooney.
Seattle Times (September 10, 1935).

After the revelation about Mooney, the prosecutors and so-called eyewitnesses still asserted that he and John Thomas McGuire looked a lot alike. Some witnesses even said that the resemblance “was striking.” However, the Seattle Times published side-by-side photos of the two, which showed that those claims were merely sops to their guilty consciences.

John served  three years in the Army during World War II (probably as a cook) then returned to Anchorage, Alaska in 1946. He most likely worked in the fishing industry as long as he was able, spending the rest of his time in construction. He returned to Seattle in 1967, where he died two years later.

The elder Reed died in 1946 and was buried in Renton. Wallace Reed became a stockroom manager for Boeing Aircraft. He retired and moved to Reno, Nevada in 1969. He died there three years later, and his ashes were buried in Renton.
                                                                               

References: “Area Death: Wallace A. Reed,” Gazette-Journal, Reno, Nevada (October 14, 1972).

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

“[Mooney-McGuire Background],” Seattle Times, Washington; Oregonian, Portland, Albany Democrat-Herald, Oregon (August 1926 – August 1967).

“[Murder in Puyallup],” Spokane Chronicle, Seattle Times, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Daily Olympian, Olympia, Washington (March 1935 – March 1947).

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