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.
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| 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.)
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| 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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