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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