Vayle (often spelled “Vale” in news reports) Taylor was born around 1901 in Missoula, Montana. His father tried his hand at farming near there, but moved to Tacoma, Washington before 1909 and began selling real estate. After ten years or so, Vayle’s father went back to farming, this time in the Alfalfa District, 15 miles east of Bend. Sadly, in the fall of 1920, Vayle’s mother died of spinal meningitis.
Vayle’s father returned to the real estate business in Tacoma, although it’s unclear when. But the young man enjoyed the high country and stayed on there. Very good with his hands, he apparently had no trouble finding work. By 1926, “common knowledge” also linked Vayle with the moonshine liquor trade, although he’d never been charged with anything major. In fact, his still operation would prove to be “one of the best equipped ever located by Central Oregon officials.”
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| Moonshine Distillation Setup. Personal Collection. |
Fern Lowell was another key player in this tragedy. Fern Edward Lowell was born in 1901, in Warren, Idaho. The family lived in Walla Walla, Washington in 1920, and Fern had a job as a grocery delivery boy. Later in that year, he joined the U.S. Marines and saw duty in the Far East. Honorably discharged, he moved to Bend around 1924, along with a brother.
He and his brother may have been partners in a grocery business, with Fern driving a delivery truck. (They would later have such an operation in Klamath Falls.) In any case, Fern somehow learned the location of Vayle’s moonshine rig. Rather vague reports placed the spot roughly 45 miles southeast of Bend. His setup was in the rugged terrain to the north of the villages along the highway from Bend.
Whether voluntarily or through “persuasion,” Lowell led two Prohibition Agents to the site. (One can imagine a number of plausible scenarios leading to this point, but they would all be guesswork.) The agents were C. C. McBride and A. F. Mariott. (McBride’s first name was Clarendon, Mariott’s was Alvie.) McBride, born in Oregon in 1897, served with the U.S. Army in France during World War I. After that, he worked on his father’s farm until joining the Prohibition unit around 1924.
Mariott was older, being born in Missouri in 1888. He also served in World War I, with the U.S. Marines at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After that, he moved to Baker, Oregon, and he got married there in 1922. He claimed a nearby homestead less than a year later. He too landed a job with the Prohibition unit around 1924. Neither he nor McBride received any law enforcement training.
Several points were clear enough about the incident. Vayle Taylor was killed by one fatal bullet, and McBride fired the shot. The victim was not armed, nor were any weapons found at the moonshine “plant.” Still, the young man was indeed producing, or about to produce, illegal liquor. Beyond that, the “official” account of what happened left many questions unanswered.
The simplest unofficial story, favored by the locals, was that Taylor saw the agents coming and tried to flee. Then McBride fired a warning or wounding shot that proved to be fatal. In that version, Vayle was already at the moonshine setup, preparing mash for a run of the still. Early accounts supported that scenario.
Later, however, the agents claimed that they had arrived at the site the afternoon before the shooting. Finding the place empty, they decided to wait for the moonshiner to return. But where did they hide? In assorted versions, the moonshine facility was said to be a dugout, a two-room shack, or a shack plus a nearby shed. The actual stills (two, or maybe three) might have been in one or more of these shelters. In one variant, the “dugout” was said to be large enough to hold two stills, ten barrels of mash, and a supply of firewood.
The agents’ favored story was that they waited in the dugout. In yet another variation, they supposedly removed a pane of glass from the door to get in. That seems odd, since accounts don’t mention any locks. The agents had no provisions for a long stay, and never explained when they expected Taylor to show up. They would have spent a brutal night, with temperatures dropping well below freezing on the high plains.
Vayle supposedly appeared on horseback around 9:30 on the morning of February 18, leading a pack horse. According to the agents, he immediately spotted their tracks and braced a two-by-four against the door to pin them in. Hearing that story, locals conceded that Vayle would have considered that a good joke on whoever was inside. Of course, he would not have known who he had caught, since the officers admitted that they had not yet identified themselves.
In one other version, Vayle then circled the “dugout and the adjoining shed” before returning to look inside the dugout. How the agents knew this was a puzzle, since they could only see out the front door of the dugout. Next, they said, Vayle reached in through the opening where the agents had removed a pane. (Why?!) McBride then purportedly grabbed him and told him he was under arrest.
The agents did not seem to have pushed that unlikely scenario very hard. Their crucial action, supposedly, was an attempt to batter their way out. According to McBride, he had his automatic pistol out, with the safety off, as he slammed his shoulder against the door. “Somehow” it went off and the bullet just happened to hit Taylor in the throat, killing him instantly. McBride and Lowell stayed at the scene, while Mariott rushed to the nearest village to call county officers.
By the time those officials arrived, a group of locals had also gathered. They were clearly skeptical of the stories they heard, and made no attempt to hide their growing anger. Because of that, an inquest was held the very next day in Prineville. (Prineville, about 30 miles northeast of Bend, is the county seat of Crook County, where the shooting occurred).
One piece of testimony cast doubt on most of the preferred claims made by the agents. The medical officer stated that he had “found the dead man lying across the doorway of a two-room shack.” No mention at all of a dugout. And how could the body end up “across the doorway” where the agents had supposedly battered their way out? No matter. The coroner’s jury took just three minutes to declare the death an accident and close the case.
As could be expected, Vayle’s friends and neighbors were outraged. A week after the young man’s death, they raised money to pay for an independent investigation, managed by a law firm in Bend. A day or so later, criminologist Luke S. May logged the “Vale [sic] Taylor death inquiry.”
Sadly, there was not much for May to investigate. He had virtually no hope of finding the fatal bullet, which might have allowed him to trace the trajectory. Worse yet, after Vayle’s body was carried off on horseback, the agents had broken up the moonshine plant, piled everything together, and set fire to it. That obliterated any possible bullet holes, bloodstains, or other physical evidence. May’s report would have been short, to the point, and negative. His Papers contain almost no information on this case.
Early on the morning of March 8, an explosion blew out the back of the Congress Apartments in Bend. Only poor placement of the dynamite saved Alvie Mariott and his wife from severe injury, or worse. At the time, McBride was taking his meals at his partner’s home and outsiders must have assumed he was also living there. Local sources left little doubt that the bomb was in retaliation for the death of Vayle Taylor. That case was never solved.
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| Bombed Damage, Congress Apartments. Deschutes County Historical Society. |
Three months later, C. C. McBride again appeared in the regional news. On a raid at a bootleggers’ base about 15 miles north of Salem, he had shot and killed another unarmed man. This time, at least, the victim had two partners who apparently were armed and did fire at the Prohibition officers. In 1929, McBride’s father died, so he resigned from the Prohibition service to operate the family ranch. He remained active in livestock raising until his death in the Portland veterans’ hospital in 1963.
Mariott stayed with the service until Prohibition was repealed in 1933. He then served as an investigator for the Treasury Department. He retired in 1954 and passed away in 1979.
| References: “Congress Apartments,” Registration Form, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, Washington D.C. (September 1, 2000). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| “[Vayle Taylor Death News],” Albany Democrat, Bend Bulletin, Klamath News, Oregonian, Portland; Capital Journal, Salem, News-Review, Roseburg, Herald & News, Klamath Falls, Statesman-Journal, Salem, Oregon (October 18, 1920) – (May 27, 1979). |
