Justice Delayed

July 15, 1935 dawned warm and muggy in Orting, Washington, about 16 miles southeast of Tacoma. The temperature would later soar into the nineties and thunder would rumble in the mountains to the east. Shortly before noon, Leslie Stone, teller for the Orting State Bank, found himself staring down the barrel of a compact automatic pistol. A curt command demanded everything from his cash drawer and Stone quickly complied. Then the bandit, who wore no mask, jumped into a distinctively-painted Buick sedan and fled north.

Stone had been robbed before and now kept a rifle in the vault. Before the car disappeared, the teller let off a wild shot at it. Then he called Puyallup and reported the robbery, giving a description of the crook and his car. Police Chief Frank Chadwick and Officer Harry Storem piled into a police cruiser and hurried east along the main east-west highway. With luck, they could cut the bandit off before he reached more populated areas. 

Chief Chadwick.
Puyallup Police Department.

Franklin Harold Chadwick was born March 2, 1895 in Puyallup. Raised on a farm, Frank drove a truck for a few years before joining the Puyallup police force in 1921. Within a couple years, he was assigned to the motorcycle division. In the summer of 1933, a new mayor appointed Frank as the Chief of Police.

Harry William Storem was born August 22, 1892 near Shelton, Washington, and the family moved to Puyallup before 1900. He married Mary Caroline “Mollie” McFarland in the spring of 1910. Aside from a two-year attempt at vegetable farming near Medford, Oregon, Harry worked at various times as an electrical lineman, timber worker, and truck driver. He was driving truck in 1930, by which time the couple had two daughters and three sons. Harry joined the Puyallup police department in April 1932, and his name began to appear in news reports that summer. 

Officer Storem.
Puyallup Police Department.

The officers turned south onto the main north-south road and passed the Buick less than two miles from the intersection. They quickly reversed course and a high-speed chase ensued. Then the Buick stopped abruptly along the shoulder. The officers pulled off just ahead of the car to cut off further escape. But as they tried to leap out and confront the fugitive, the criminal raced up and opened fire. Chief Chadwick was killed instantly by a single shot. Storem was hit three times and died before reaching the Puyallup General Hospital. Despite an extensive manhunt, the shooter vanished. His car, with a badly damaged tire, was found 2-3 miles northeast of Puyallup. Authorities concluded he had escaped aboard a freight train headed towards Seattle.

Besides bank teller Stone, five witnesses got fairly close views of the killer. Two observed him sitting in the Buick near the bank just before the robbery. One saw the shooting from beside his rural mailbox and had a good look as the killer drove by him. Another was coming home for lunch and saw the speeding Buick. His young daughter happened to be along the road, so he stopped to make sure she was safe. He too marked the driver as he hurtled by. Finally, a real estate agent encountered the man standing next to the disabled Buick, trying to flag a ride. Not liking the hitch-hiker’s looks, the agent drove on.

Three other witnesses also saw the perpetrator. One was a police officer who saw the shooter from a distance. Two others were railroad employees interviewed later. About twenty minutes after the shooting, a conductor saw a man hop a northbound freight. When the train reached Renton, about twenty-five miles further north, he and a brakeman ordered several riders off the train. One of them “fit the description” of the fugitive, but the trainmen had no reason to suspect anything more at that time.

Officers interviewed many potential witnesses and pressed underworld contacts for more information. Soon after the shootings, authorities contracted with private criminologist Luke S. May. His advanced techniques could extract better fingerprint evidence from the Buick. The car had been stolen in Tacoma on the morning of the robbery.

May’s tests also identified the murder weapon as a .32-caliber automatic pistol of Belgian or Spanish make. As it happened, weapons maker Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, and several Spanish gun producers sold variants of a hammerless automatic designed by the legendary American firearms guru John Moses Browning. They all had the same class characteristics, so even May could not tell the brands apart just from the bullets and shell casings.

Available records do not say how many suspects the police brought in for further questioning. One set of three names did appear in the newspapers less than a week after the murders. Police didn’t know it, but they had the killer in custody.

All three were ex-convicts, with lengthy criminal records. The youngest had multiple convictions for car theft, but also engaged in forgery and probably armed robbery. He was out on parole at the time Chadwick and Storem were murdered. The next oldest first went to jail for an assault during an attempted robbery when he was 19 years old. But his big claim to fame was liquor: moonshine production, rum-running, and highjacking other rum-runners. Prohibition Officers seemed to know a lot about his activities, but apparently no one was willing to testify. The oldest suspect was a decorated veteran of World War I. After the war, he became part of an armed robbery gang. He was in and out of prison after that. In fact, he had been paroled from prison on a robbery conviction about ten weeks before the shootings.

Opinions from the eye-witnesses were the usual mix of surety and equivocation. Moreover, seemingly reliable sources provided alibis for all three men. After checking everything they could, police finally removed them from the suspect list. They would not correct their error for almost seven years.

Still, police did not release the actual shooter – for now, we’ll call him “Perp” – when they turned the other two loose. Not because they had possible evidence in the murder case, but because Yakima County had issued an arrest warrant for him on a fraud charge. He had persuaded a sucker to furnish him a car to hunt for buried treasure in Oregon. Instead, Perp sold the car in Seattle. With his record, Perp knew that another felony conviction could “earn” him a life sentence under Washington’s Habitual Criminal Act.

An “out” appeared in an odd way. Perp’s main alibi had been furnished by Peggy, the 18-year-old girl he was living with at an auto-court in Kelso, Washington … even though he was already a married man. On at least three occasions, they had made jaunts to Portland. Federal officials ruled that a violation of the “Mann Act,” which prohibited the transportation of a female across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Charged with that crime, Perp quickly pled guilty. Somehow, the fraud charge went away. Perhaps Yakima authorities allowed him to make restitution, knowing he was going to prison anyway … and saving the county the cost of a trial. Perp received a three-year sentence in federal prison.

Puyallup police did not entirely give up on the murder case, but made no progress. Still, in early 1937, they thought they might have a strong lead. A man who fit the general description of the Orting bandit had been convicted of bank robbery in California. He had in his possession a .32-caliber automatic pistol of Belgian make. Finally, after five weeks of discussion, the weapon was passed to Luke May for his assessment. He quickly determined that it was not the murder weapon. All of this was widely reported in the newspapers. If Perp still had the actual murder weapon hidden away somewhere while he was in prison, he would have surely ditched it at the first opportunity.

Perp was free for a time in 1938, but violated his parole and was soon back in. He was finally out on the streets by the summer of 1939. The next record we have of him is the announcement that he and his wife had divorced, in June 1941. By then, Peggy was married to a police patrolman in Toppenish, Washington.

In the summer of 1942, Puyallup police got a tip that seemed to apply to the Chadwick-Storem murder. They re-opened the cold case, but the new information led nowhere. Still, a fresh review of the case file convinced detectives that the Mann Act violator, one Roy Willard Jacobs, had killed the two officers. Roy (“Perp”) was arrested on July 6, 1942. New interviews of the eye witnesses fueled their confidence that they had the right man.

Then, under close examination, Roy’s alibi fell apart. Peggy had originally told police that Roy was with her at the Kelso auto-court on July 15, 1935. Later, she stated that she didn’t actually know where he was on that day. That was further supported by the manager of the auto-court, who had found him gone when she came by to collect rent on July 14, 15, and 16. Another supposed corroborator admitted that her recollection of his presence in Kelso might have for a week after the shootings. Roy’s other attempts to bolster the alibi also failed.

With the alibi blown up, the parade of eye witnesses allowed prosecutors to trace his movements from before the robbery, to the murder scene, and even to his final escape route. The defense could only counter with claims that some witnesses had been coached and perjured themselves, or were simply mistaken. On October 29, 1942, the jury took less than three hours to reach a verdict of guilty and recommend the death penalty.

The usual appeals followed, all the way to the state Supreme Court, as well as an appeal to the governor. All failed, and Roy Willard Jacobs was hanged in the early minutes of April 7, 1943. He proclaimed his innocence to the very end.

Mrs. Harry Storem, “Mollie,” evidently had enough to live on after Jacobs murdered her husband. (She probably had a widow’s pension, but available records do not say.) One of the couple’s three sons was already married when Harry was killed, and the other children would marry in the following three years.

The Storems’ oldest daughter had opened a beauty shop near Puyallup several years before her marriage in the spring of 1936. Accounts suggest that Mollie helped out there for a number of years. The other daughter also worked as a beautician before her marriage in late 1937. Two of Mollie’s sons worked as mechanics, first in the aircraft industry and then on automobiles. The youngest son was a professional photographer. Mollie never remarried and lived in the family home until the late Fifties, when she moved to a Tacoma nursing home. When she died there on August 2, 1964, all her children were still living and she had sixteen grandchildren.

                                                                               

References: “[Chadwick-Storem Background],” News Tribune, Tacoma, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Tacoma Times, Washington (September 1912 – September 1993).

“[Chadwick-Storem Murders],” News Tribune, Tacoma, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Seattle Times, Washington; Bend Bulletin, Oregon (July 1935 – October 1942).

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

Daryl C. McClary, “Police Chief Frank Chadwick and Patrolman Harry Storem Shot and Killed,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (December 2009).

Garry James, “The Spanish-Built Ruby Pistol,” Guns & Ammo, Outdoor Sportsman Group, Peoria, Illinois (July 28, 2016).

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One Binge Too Many

On the morning of December 21, 1927, Nettie Benoy finally told Sheriff Hervin Rothwell that she had shot her husband to death. The killing had taken place the evening before in Stites, Idaho, a hamlet located about fourteen miles northeast of Grangeville. She claimed self-defense, but the evidence belied her story.

The victim was Thomas C. Benoy, a well-off blacksmith. Born in March 1863 in a small town about sixty-five miles west of Madison, Wisconsin, he married for the first time in early 1885. He and his wife moved to Spokane, Washington, about four years later. He started as an employee there, but soon had his own shop, along with a small ranch property. By 1894 he had prospered enough to own at least one racing horse, a pacer. However, Benoy proved to be a quarrelsome fellow, especially during his all-too-frequent drinking bouts. Several times, he had been fined for disorderly conduct, and warned about other lapses.

Some time before the spring of 1899, Benoy and his wife separated. She was soon granted a divorce, and on November 22, 1899, Benoy married nurse Rosa Stuck, a native of Spokane. Their son, Charles Felix Benoy, was born in August 1900. In the fall of 1907, Rosa obtained a divorce from Tom because of his drunkenness and abuse. The court accepted her claim that she feared for her life, and awarded her custody of the son. However, a year after the separation, Rosa (Stuck) Benoy died and the boy was returned to his father.

Spokane, ca 1902.
Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

Benoy moved from Spokane to Stites shortly after that, to operate a blacksmith shop he had reportedly established about fifteen years earlier. Tom also hooked up with a new wife, “Elsie” (available records do not include a marriage certificate). The 1910 census taker recorded that “Felix” was an adopted son, so the situation in the household appeared to be somewhat odd.

Accounts from the time indicate that they had a contentious home life. Then, in October 1911, Elsie was adjudged insane and committed to a state mental hospital. Available records do not say when Thomas secured a divorce, but he married again in early 1913. The new wife, a divorcee, had a son of her own. That boy was mentioned as part of the family in later newspaper items, but not “Felix.”

It seems likely that Charles Felix Benoy had been made a ward of the court some time during the earlier turmoil. When he entered the U.S. Army in 1918, he listed a deputy U.S. Marshal as his point of contact. Charles served in France and arrived back in the states in July 1919. He settled in central California and, after a few years, began a long career in banking.

In early 1923, Benoy split with his fourth wife in a rather curious manner. She discovered that her previous husband had probably lied to her when he claimed they were divorced. Unable to confirm that action, she was granted an annulment of her marriage to Benoy. When her divorced status was certain, she asserted, they would remarry. That did not happen. Perhaps she changed her mind as she considered Benoy’s behavior when he was drunk.

In any case, Benoy married yet again in September. His new bride was divorcee Jeanetta “Nettie” (Scott) Alden. That marriage came with its own bit of oddity. Nettie Scott was born in April 1863 in Sandusky, Ohio. On January 22, 1882, she married Franklyn K. Alden there. They soon had two sons, but one of them died as a child. Then, in 1887, she obtained a divorce on the grounds of adultery and nonsupport.

Nettie lived in Sandusky for the next quarter century. She was postmistress for a time after 1891, but mostly worked as a nurse. Her mother lived with her for a time, but when she died in 1913, Nettie moved to Chicago. Her surviving son, Harry Scott Alden, seems to have worked from a home base in that city after military service in the Philippines. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1916, then re-enlisted after the war. Around 1922, Harry settled in the Los Angeles area and pursued various engineering ventures.

Nettie remained in Chicago until 1923. An Idaho news account stated that she “came here from Chicago, where she was a nurse, to marry Benoy.” The item provided no explanation of how the two met and agreed to get married. Perhaps there was a family link: The City Directory for Spokane listed well over a column of people named “Scott,” and Benoy was often in that city on business. Or they may have been connected through a “matrimonial advertisement,” a surprisingly common practice at the time. In any case, Nettie married Tom on September 18, 1923 in Stites.

Except when he drank, Benoy was apparently a decent husband. However, accounts suggest that he began to drink  even more as the years passed. He was also fined and/or jailed several times for selling liquor on the Nez Percé Indian Reservation. By the fall of 1927, Tom’s abuse of Nettie was common knowledge among their neighbors.

Matters came to a head on the evening of December 20, 1927. Earlier in the day, Tom had been released from jail, pending a trial on a drunk and disorderly complaint filed by Nettie. He then apparently “drowned his sorrows” in booze for some time. Nettie told the sheriff that he arrived home about 8:30 in the evening. She implied that he was reasonably sober until somewhat later, when he went out to the garage where he kept more liquor.

Nettie claimed she was preparing for bed when Tom came back inside, mad with booze and wildly brandishing a shotgun barrel as a club. She had just enough time to retrieve a .32-caliber Colt automatic pistol from her sewing drawer. He charged at her but ducked when he saw the weapon. One of her shots hit him in the top of the head, the other about three inches further back.

Matters became a bit muddled after that. Nettie said she didn’t remember anything too clearly about the incident. Nor did she have a good explanation for why she waited all night to inform the sheriff. Tom’s body was found beside his bed, but not sprawled like he had been trying to dodge. Some of the bedroom furniture was in “disarray” as though there had been a struggle. However, the sheriff also found other objects arranged normally, including a stack of neatly-folded quilts in a corner near the bed. Luckily, searchers inspected further, and found a considerable blood stain on one, right where Tom’s head would have been if he was sleeping.

Authorities rejected Nettie’s self-defense claim, and a coroner’s jury that very afternoon brought in a verdict of first degree murder. The sheriff and his deputies then went about collecting all the evidence they could find. However, some gaps must have worried the prosecutor. About a month after the killing, the sheriff contacted criminologist Luke S. May, asking him to analyze some ashes from a stove in the Benoy home. He specifically wanted to know “just what the article was that was burned.”

The county chose not to pay Luke to travel to Idaho. The sheriff did describe the death room layout and where the bullets hit (perhaps using a copy of the coroner’s diagram). The bullet trajectories and wounds, plus the blood-stained quilt, clearly supported the prosecution’s contention that Nettie had shot Tom while he was asleep on the bed. The ashes, however, contained nothing of interest: normal firewood residues, a few chicken bones, and some thin book-binding wire.

May then asked the sheriff what they expected to find … perhaps he could offer at least a “yes” or “no.” The sheriff then informed him that the ashes had contained “some” of Benoy’s upper teeth, knocked out by the slug that had gone all the way through. That at least helped verify the bullet trajectory. They really wanted to know if Nettie had used the stove to dispose of her nightgown and slippers. She claimed she had burned them because they had been stained with blood when she examined the body. Luke found no evidence of either.

Neither the sheriff’s letters, nor later news reports offered a detailed account of the overall sequence of events. Still, a hypothetical reconstruction is possible. To begin with, Tom had probably come home too drunk to do more that perhaps curse at his wife and then go to bed. (He was found wearing only his night shirt.) Nettie surely feared what he might do when he sobered up. Thus, she shot him with the pistol she had acquired after another violent argument in the past. For officials, that all added up to a case of premeditated, cold-blooded murder.

We may speculate that Nettie first decided to conceal the killing altogether. She could blame his disappearance on his erratic behavior when he was drunk. Thus, she rolled the body off the bed and tidied up everything so it looked normal. Tom’s broken teeth, which would have been scattered in the bedding, went into the stove. She tossed the spent shells from her automatic into the firewood crib. Any blood on the bed frame or floor would have been scrubbed away. Then she carefully folded the bloody quilt to conceal the stain and added it to a neat pile. She said she burned her nightgown and slippers, and perhaps she did … just not in the stove. Or she could have buried them where a patch of disturbed soil wouldn’t be noticed.

Having gone that far, Nettie must have then realized that it would be impossible for her to move the body and make it vanish. Desperate, she then cooked up the self-defense story and tried to disturb enough furniture to make that look plausible. Exhausted by all this, she went to her own bed and fell asleep.

In the end, what saved Nettie was her husband’s long history of abusive behavior. The jury took just four hours to return a verdict: Guilty of manslaughter. She received a sentence of two-and-a-half to ten years in the state penitentiary. 

Jeanette (Scott) Benoy.
Idaho Penitentiary Records.

There’s no indication that Tom’s son Charles, or Nettie’s son Harry Alden, came to Idaho during this period. Charles Benoy married in 1928 in Alameda, California, and they had a daughter in 1934. He died in 1963 and was buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Harry Alden married at least three times, in 1910, 1926, and 1936. With these wives, he fathered a daughter, Patricia, and two sons, John Jarvis and George Mitchell. Like their father, the children are all direct descendants of famous Mayflower Pilgrim John Alden. Harry died in Pasadena, California, in late 1943, and is buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

Effective September 30, 1930, Jeanette “Nettie” Benoy was granted “a full, free and unconditional pardon” by the Idaho governor. She settled in Spokane using her first married name, Jeanette Alden. Nettie outlived Harry Alden by just under three years, passing away in November 1946. The Find a Grave memorial states that her ashes were unclaimed and are in storage at Fairmont Memorial Park in Spokane.
                                                                               

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

“[Benoy-Scott News],” News-Journal, Mansfield, Mansfield Weekly News, Ohio; Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Spokane Chronicle, Washington; Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho County Free Press, Grangeville, Grangeville Globe, Idaho; Chicago Tribune, Illinois; Oakland Tribune, California (June 1887 – August 1930).

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

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Trail’s End in Montana

Early in the Twentieth Century – we do not know exactly when or where – James Christianson embarked on a path that led to his premature death by violence. His life was largely a mystery, to be sketched in from scattered records, comments made to fellow criminals, and a few newspaper accounts. Authorities generally accepted that he was born in Denmark, probably around 1895. Some evidence suggests that Christianson served some time in the Royal Danish Navy, which spent World War I maintaining minefields in their national waters. (Both sides “mostly” respected Denmark’s neutrality.)

At some point, Christianson became a sailor in the merchant marine. (The Danish shipping industry had boomed during the war, and remained strong afterwards.) Then his ship docked at the port of New York. A best guess is that this was in 1920 or 1921, when the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age were taking flight. Attracted by the glamor and excitement, Christianson chose to emigrate to the U.S. … without benefit of formal paperwork. 

New York Docks, ca 1920. Library of Congress.

At first, he probably got by as a common laborer. However, there is good reason to suspect that he soon became a “yegg” or “yeggman” (the source of the term is disputed); that is, a safecracker. Safes of the day might be penetrated by a drill and other tools, or blown open with “soup” – nitroglycerine or gelignite. Because of the skills required, the yegg was considered a cut above an ordinary burglar. They typically travelled a lot to hit small town targets where expensive top-level safes and vaults were less common. There was also the expectation – too often true – that villages and towns would have few law officers, and even fewer that had any training in law enforcement techniques.

In their travels, yeggmen generally tried to blend in with the amorphous crowd of seasonal workers, hoboes, and other wanderers who rode the rails during that era. Christianson was in Minnesota in 1925. By then, he had been in and out of jail a number of times for minor offenses. These were not specifically reported in the newspapers, but got his identity and fingerprints into law enforcement records. Christianson first came to the notice of reporters on the evening of December 17, 1925, when he was arrested for stealing a car in St. Cloud. Further inquiry then uncovered his times behind bars. He pled guilty in mid-January and was sentenced to two years in the Minnesota State Penitentiary at Stillwater.

Christianson was presumably out by 1928. Most likely, he was “back in business” and slowly working his way westward. His tragic journey continued into Montana, where it would end in the spring of 1930. The lawman responsible was only a few years older than the Dane.

Walter Prochnow was born April 26, 1892 in a densely populated area of New Jersey just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Initially a carpenter, he moved to Montana some time after 1910. He married there in the summer of 1916 and claimed a homestead about twenty-five miles northwest of Miles City the following spring. However, in January 1920, he, his wife Matilda, and five-month-old daughter were living in Miles City itself. Prochnow gave his occupation as “general farmer,” but he had apparently decided farm life was not for him.

Thus, in 1922, he joined the Miles City police department. Prochnow took a deep interest in law enforcement. During that summer, he even visited the state prison in Deer Lodge to observe that operation. Reports said he might be interested in eventually becoming the warden there. He also extensively studied fingerprint techniques, in terms of both recording them from suspects or victims, and collecting latent prints at crime scenes. Prochnow became the “go to” expert in the region, often being sent to help other jurisdictions. He was promoted to sergeant after a few years on the force.

Montana law enforcement became particularly busy from 1928 on, when safecrackers apparently decided that the state was fertile ground for their operations. Every week brought reports of attacks all around Montana, sometimes hitting two or three businesses in the same town. Thus, three safes were cracked in Miles City on the night of February 6, 1929. Some yeggs were careless and left fingerprints, but their constant movement made it difficult to track down suspects.

Another hit in Miles City on March 3, 1930, spurred Prochnow to a special effort. The year before, someone had raided the Custer County High School and cracked the principal’s safe. All the revenue from the school’s annual fund-raising carnival had been stolen. The event for 1930 was only a few weeks away, on Friday, March 21. An experienced cop like Prochnow would surely know that transient camps were hotbeds of gossip and gab. Might some yegg again make a try at such a tempting target? 

Officer Walter Prochnow.
Miles City Police Department

 When the last carnival event closed down for the night, organizers gathered their take and placed it in the principal’s safe. After that, the sergeant settled in for his stakeout. Three safecrackers arrived about 3 o’clock Saturday morning. Prochnow pinned them with the beam of his flashlight and ordered them to get their hands up. One intruder immediately shot toward the officer but the slug went wide. Prochnow fired back while diving for cover. The would-be thieves sprayed several wild shots as they fled the office.

Three yeggmen entered the building; only two left it alive. Officers found the body of the third on the floor; he seemed to have been killed instantly. Thirty to thirty-five years old, he was not a local, and carried no identification. The high school Vice Principal did recall him milling about in the carnival crowd. She thought he had been accompanied by two other men, both strangers. Quick raids on trains and transient camps in the region resulted in the arrest of fifteen men. However, only one was armed and none could be identified as companions of the dead man.

Saturday afternoon, authorities convened a coroner’s jury, which found no fault with Prochnow’s actions, and praised his initiative and courage. They also sent images of the dead man’s fingerprints to the Bureau of Investigation (the future FBI) in Washington, D.C. The Bureau identified him as James Christianson and directed them to Minnesota officials for more information.

Along with his minimal history (outlined above), they said he had no known relatives in St. Cloud. However, Minnesota was then home to hundreds, if not thousands, of people named Christianson, or one of its variants. It seems likely that James might have had a distant relative there. In any case, locals were fairly sure his parents still lived in Copenhagen. Four days after his death, James “Christenson” was buried without ceremony in the paupers’ field of the county cemetery.

Most likely in early April, Miles City police hired criminologist Luke S. May to assess the firearms evidence for the case. We don’t have May’s report, but he was probably first asked to verify that Prochnow’s weapon had felled the intruder. (That would eliminate the possibility that he had been shot by one of his companions.) By then, officers should have also recovered slugs scattered about by the bandits’ wild shots. May could at least tell them the make and model of weapon(s) they needed to look for. However, the case went nowhere after that.

So far as can be determined from newspaper reports, this incident was the only time Walter Prochnow ever fired his weapon in a police incident, much less shot anybody. He retired from the force around 1942 and took a job building homes for defense workers in Seattle, Washington. Toward the end of World War II, Prochnow moved to a place about twelve miles north of Bremerton and continued working as a carpenter. In early June 1945, less than a month after VE-Day, Matilda joined him there.

Walter retired around 1957, about the time one of the couple’s three married daughters moved to Seattle. Four years later they moved to Mesa, Arizona. Matilda died there in 1973 and Walter moved back to Miles City. Two years after that, he passed away at the Custer County Rest Home.
                                                                              

References:  Jonathon Green, Crooked Talk: Five Hundred Years of the Language of Crime, Random House UK, London (2011).

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

“[Prochnow-Christianson News],” Montana Standard, Butte, Independent-Record, Helena, The Missoulian, Missoula, Ravali Republic, Hamilton, Billings Gazette, Great Falls Tribune, Anaconda Standard, Montana; Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona; St. Cloud Times, Minnesota (June 1922 – September 1975).

Nils Arne Sørensen, “Denmark,” International Encyclopedia of the First World War (online), Freie Universität Berlin (October 8, 2014).

Thomas Streissguth, The Roaring Twenties, Updated Edition, Facts On File, Inc. New York, New York (2007).

 

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A Car Was The Key

The small Manito Pharmacy, located about two miles south of downtown Spokane, was a typical neighborhood drug store. The owner, Mrs. Alice Sherrard, had depended upon part-time registered pharmacists since her husband died in the spring of 1933. On this day, July 30, 1935, a Tuesday, Harry Phillips arrived shortly after noon to cover the afternoon and evening hours. They could not know that death lay in wait just across the street. 

Harry Phillips.
Spokane Chronicle
(September 16, 1935).

Harry J. Phillips was born around 1887 in Whitman County, Washington, in a village about forty miles south of Spokane. After high school, he attended Washington State College, conveniently located about thirty miles from his home. He graduated with a degree in pharmacy in June of 1910 and quickly set up a drug business in Walla Walla. Less than a year after graduation, Harry married Lillian Mae “Mamie” McFadden. Eight months later, they sold the Walla Walla venture and had a small store built in a tiny town near where he was born.

For many years afterwards, Harry split time between pharmacy and wheat farming at various locations around Whitman County. By 1920, the couple had two sons. Around 1927, Harry moved the family to Spokane to find work as a contract pharmacist. He also seemed to have dabbled in real estate. Thus, in 1929, he purchased and modernized a “fixer-upper” that would remain the family home for over a quarter century. On July 30th, Harry had been working at the Manito Pharmacy for quite some time.

After he arrived at the store, Mrs. Sherrard backed her car out of an adjacent garage at about 12:30. That maneuver proved somewhat awkward because of a vehicle parked directly across from the store door. She noticed a man sitting in the car, but thought nothing more about it as she drove off. However, other observers had also noted the rather unusual car, a 1933 Willys sedan. Later, they would recall that the same vehicle had been in the area the day before, a Monday.

On Tuesday, the Willys first appeared about 8:30 in the morning. Some saw the driver inside, others not. Spokane was suffering from a sweltering wave of moist heat, so he probably got out now and then to cool off. Shortly after Sherrard left, the man strolled across the street into the store. Only the perpetrator knew the details of what happened next. But several witnesses reported three shots fired during a struggle between Harry and the intruder. Then the shooter calmly returned to his car and drove off (in no particular hurry).

When police officers responded to calls, they found Harry dead on the sidewalk from a single gunshot wound that passed side to side through the chest. Three bullets were found at the crime scene. All were probably somewhat distorted … two had embedded into wood while the fatal bullet had fractured ribs on both sides of Harry’s body.

Officers recorded descriptions of the killer from several witnesses. A farmer delivering produce to a grocery story near the pharmacy had the best look. He drove up just in time to stop while the shooter returned to his car. He sensed that something was wrong and made a point of getting a good look at the man. Still, those accounts provided no outstanding traits to focus on: slender, somewhat tall, clean shaven, and wearing muted gray clothes … including a gray tweed cap that obscured his hair color.

They struck potential gold with the getaway car, however. First of all, an alert filling station attendant had recorded the license plate number and gave the specific model as a “Willys 77.” More to the point, it didn’t require a pro or a car buff to see that the vehicle was quite different from the ordinary. Designed as an inexpensive Depression-era auto, the Willys was over a foot shorter and five or six inches narrower than anything else on the road. Witnesses particularly noted its unusually narrow windshield, along with other distinctive features.  

Willys 77. Willys-Overland Sales Brochure.

Also, despite its low price – lowest on the market for a new car – fewer than 22 thousand had been sold. Thus, the very next day, Spokane police learned that the car had been stolen in Everett, Washington on July 21st. Also, someone burglarized a garage that night, taking an old typewriter and the license plates used on the Willys. Everett officials had a prime suspect, whose photo was shown to the witnesses in Spokane. The results were inconclusive, with some saying yes, maybe; others being not so sure. Significantly, the farmer who had obtained the best view was among the doubters.

Nevertheless, with nothing else to go on, officials issued a murder warrant for the suspect on August 3rd. However, nine days later, they learned that he had been on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico when the killing occurred. That same day, Spokane police located the Willys, which had been wiped clean of fingerprints and abandoned in a rented private garage. The owner had rented it on July 23rd to a man who gave his name as “G. Jacobsen.” She thought he was “about 30” years old. Thus, officials had another description, but still no actual suspect.

Ultimately, the vigilance and intuition of Leslie M. Carroll, Deputy Prosecutor for Spokane County, broke the case. A few days before the Everett suspect was eliminated, Carroll had handled a routine burglary case. One Tom Eskridge (alias George Gregory, alias George Edwards, alias John Lowry) had been arrested in Boise, Idaho, while trying to pawn a typewriter stolen from a school about fifteen miles south of Spokane. Eskridge did not resist extradition and readily chose to plead guilty rather than undergo a trial. In fact, when there was some delay in his processing, Tom basically told the prosecutor to “get with it.” The judge imposed a stiff fifteen-year sentence after learning that the burglar already had a prison record.

Carroll surely knew about the frustrating, unsolved Phillips murder, although he does not seemed to have been directly involved. After the case fell apart on August 12th, Carroll explored a new possibility. We may infer his thoughts: “That guy Eskridge generally fits the description, and he left town shortly after the murder. Then he was sure anxious to get out of our jail and on to prison. I wonder why?” Officers showed Tom’s mug shot to the rental garage owner. She declared, “That’s the man.” The investigation had new life.

Nine days later, an article appeared in the Spokane Chronicle. Anyone who had bought or found a .38-caliber pistol, “possibly a Smith & Wesson or Colts,” between July 30 and August 4 should notify authorities right away. It might be the weapon that murdered Harry Phillips. They had clearly not yet sent the three slugs found at the crime scene to criminologist Luke S. May. He would have had little trouble identifying the make and model. The very next day, newspapers reported that police had received a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. They were sending it to criminologist May in Seattle. But the revolver was not the murder weapon.

Three weeks passed with no further mention of the Phillips case in the newspapers. Behind the scenes, however, police were busy adding to their case. They now knew that Tom had rented an apartment less than a block away from the garage. He had been accompanied by a woman, and they registered as Tom Jacobs and wife. Despite much effort, she was never tracked down, or even identified. They also found a pawnbroker who had bought the old typewriter stolen in Everett. Tom had used yet another assumed name for that. However, despite all the effort, they never did recover the murder weapon. (We don’t know how many weapons May examined for the case.)

Tom Eskridge.
Spokane Chronicle
(September 14, 1935).

 Finally, on September 14th, officials felt they had enough and issued a warrant charging Tom Eskridge with the murder of Harry Phillips. Thomas T. Eskridge was born around 1905 in eastern Virginia. His parents separated not long after that, and the mother moved the family to eastern Oregon. His mother remarried in the fall of 1919 and they were living in Yakima, Washington in 1920. After that, Eskridge disappeared from available sources for almost a decade, until we find him listed as a glazier in the 1929 City Directory for Santa Barbara, California. During that gap, he may well have compiled a criminal record. However, given his propensity for fake names, we’ll never know for sure.

In any case, sources show that, in 1930, he spent three months in the Salt Lake City jail for robbery. Not long after he got out, he and an accomplice held up a grocery store there. Soon caught, Tom received a prison sentence of five to twenty years. The judge then paroled them with the proviso that they identify out-of-state “custodians.” He chose a brother-in-law living in Ojai, California.

Six months later, Tom was arrested for burglaries in nearby Ventura, California. He received a five to fifteen year prison sentence. He served several months in Folsom prison, but was then transferred to San Quentin. He was released in June 1935 and headed north to Everett, Washington. (We don’t know why.) There, he was believed to have committed several burglaries, along with stealing the Willys. Tom then continued on to Spokane.

Tom’s defense in court was feeble, to say the least. His attempt at an alibi was easily refuted. His lawyers then tried to raise “reasonable doubt” based on the witnesses who had erroneously fingered the suspect from Everett. None of that worked and he received a life sentence. After a failed escape attempt in 1936, Tom fell to studying ways to use loopholes in the legal system to get out of prison. The last of several appeals was denied on June 14, 1965. There’s no record that he died in prison, so he might have finally been released (or escaped). He then perhaps chose to live under an assumed name.

After Harry was shot and killed, Mamie (McFadden) Phillips became a clerk at a JC Penneys department store in Spokane. She never remarried and stayed with the company until her retirement around 1956. Her sons both married and gave her a total of five grandchildren before her death in the spring of 1966.
                                                                               

References:  Patrick R. Foster, Bill Tilden, Willys: The Complete Illustrated History 1903-1963, Enthusiast Books, Pepin, Wisconsin (2016).

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

“[Phillips Murder, Background and News],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Pullman Herald, Colfax Gazette, Washington; Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho; Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Salt Lake Tribune, Utah (June 1910 – November 1963).

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Murder At The Haven

Every life tells a story. That tale gains extra poignancy when it’s cut short by an untimely death. Such was the case for E. D. “Spike” Hennessey, shot to death in the summer of 1930. There was also a sad kind of irony in his story.

Edward D. Hennessey was born around 1873 about fifteen miles west of New York City, in New Jersey. His father, born in Ireland, was originally a blacksmith but had switched to carpentry by 1900. At that time, the family lived in lower Manhattan, near the entrance/exit to the Holland Tunnel. Around two years later, Spike was in Aberdeen, Washington. Records suggest that his oldest brother had a job in the area with the Northern Pacific Railway. 

Aberdeen Shipyard, 1901. Wikipedia.

Aberdeen, platted in 1884, had enjoyed steady success with an economy based on salmon fisheries and timber. Schooners – many of them locally built – hauled lumber and canned fish up and down the coast. Then, in 1895, a railroad spur was completed into town, igniting a boom. Soon, Aberdeen had a half dozen sawmills, three canneries, and two shipyards. Also, besides the usual array of saloons, the town had two theaters. Spike found work as a longshoreman.

In the summer of 1903, Hennessey married Cora Lee Ray. Born in Virginia, Cora gave her occupation as “singer,” but did not list her employer. Some time in the following two years, the couple moved to Tacoma, where Spike continued to work as a longshoreman. Starting around 1915, he served two years as a deputy sheriff assigned to the local Water Department. After that, he went back to work on the Tacoma docks.

Around 1929 or 1930, Spike and Cora began operating a tourist camp about twelve miles south of Tacoma on what was called the “Mountain Highway.” The road was a primary route between the cities on Puget Sound and Mount Rainier National Park. After decades of physically demanding labor, Spike had entered the small business class, a fine instance of upward mobility for a first-generation American.

The Roaring Twenties had seen explosive growth in “auto tourism,” as more and more families acquired cars and took to the road. Cities and towns soon began offering public spaces to attract travelers to local businesses. Features ranged from bare-bones camping spots to elaborate facilities with showers, cooking grills, recreational equipment, and more. Some even offered cabins for those who didn’t want to bother with a tent. (Motorhomes as we know them were then almost all custom built and far too expensive for the average family.)

The Hennesseys’ venture benefitted from another trend that developed around the middle of the decade: A drastic switch from public to private ownership. (The reasons were complex, and beyond the scope of this blog.) Thus, Spike and Cora were able to rent and operate what they called “Fir Haven.” It’s unclear if they had cabins on the property, or only offered camping spots. They did have a gas station, and Cora prepared food at an attached diner.

Prospects seemed bright because Rainier Park was, even then, a very popular tourist destination. And no one really knew that the country was entering the Great Depression. In 1930, most people thought they were in just another recession … which would soon pass. In fact, with money tight, even more tourists might choose an inexpensive auto vacation over a train and hotel getaway. But sadly, selfish and violent greed robbed Spike and Cora of their dream.

Mount Rainier, 1930. National Park Service.

One of the two thieves was Caulie Avera. Born March 21, 1903 in southwestern Georgia, the young man was working on his father’s farm near Moultrie, Georgia at the time of the 1920 census. Some records suggest that he joined the Army around 1925. However, perhaps because of his later status as a deserter, we know very little about his military career. We do know that at some point he began serving in the U.S. Army Tank Corps.

Avera’s partner in crime was George A. Weyrauch. George was born December 25, 1898 in eastern New Jersey. At the time of the 1900 census, the family lived in Hoboken, along the Hudson River. George was a mere infant, of course. But in a sad irony, Spike Hennessy – his future victim – was then living and working about three miles away, across the river in lower Manhattan. Surely neither knew the other existed, but they would meet, tragically, thirty years later on the other side of the continent.

When Weyrauch signed up for the draft in 1918, he was working as a cook at a psychiatric hospital in eastern Long Island, New York. Like Avera, we know very little about Weyrauch’s military service. Still, transport records indicate that he was in the U.S. Army in 1926. Also, at some point, he too began serving in the Tank Corp. He and Avera were both stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington in the summer of 1930.

News reports never said why the two men decided to desert. Part of Fort Lewis extends all the way to the Mountain Highway, so the two probably already knew about the Hennessey place. They drove up late on the evening of June 30, 1930, entered the diner, and ordered sandwiches. After the two finished, they walked to the cash register. As soon as Cora opened the register, the men drew weapons and waved her away so one could scoop up all the money. When she protested, the other bandit hit her with his gun, severely cutting the side of her head. Cora staggered and screamed.

Spike must have been suspicious of these late-evening customers, because he had already armed himself with a revolver. He now burst in through the back door and fired two shots at the robbers. The crooks answered with a hail of bullets. Hit twice, Spike died almost instantly. A third slug struck Cora, shattering her hip. The bandits leaped into their car and sped away, taking about $25 in loose change with them. Cora couldn’t get up, so it’s not clear who called the sheriff’s office. She gave officers a detailed description of the attackers while they waited for an ambulance. That information was quickly transmitted to area law enforcement.

The next morning, George Weyrauch and Caulie Avera failed to report for roll call at Fort Lewis. A search of their footlockers highlighted the ominous fact that their service weapons, .45-caliber automatic pistols, were also missing. At this point, someone put the pieces together and showed Mrs. Hennessey photos of the two soldiers. She immediately and vehemently identified Weyrauch as the man who had shot her and Spike. She was less certain about Avera … but even that showed “a close resemblance.”

An intense manhunt began for the two men, who were now wanted as murder suspects as well as deserters. Oddly enough, the killers seem to have borrowed and then returned the car they drove. Nothing like it was reported stolen or found abandoned around the area. The active search extended as far as Boise, Idaho, but then went dormant for eight months.

Later testimony revealed that George Weyrauch made his way to Florida, then backtracked to Texas. There, he and another man stole a car. Texas authorities lost their trail when they fled west. Finally, in March 1931, an alert traffic cop in San Jose, California spotted the license plate and arrested the two. Weyrauch gave authorities a fake name at first, but soon pled guilty to auto theft and was sentenced to a year and a day at McNeil Island federal prison.

At some point, officials also discovered that he was a prime suspect in the Hennessey murder. Thus, in early April, Weyrauch was transferred from the penitentiary to stand trial in Tacoma. As soon as she saw him face-to-face, Cora exclaimed, “That’s the man!” She then declared that she had “seen his face every day for more than a year.”

Criminologist Luke S. May logged his “State vs Weyrauch” firearms case about this time. We may thus infer that authorities had recovered the suspect’s weapon, but available newspaper reports do not explicitly say so. At the very least, he would have been able to testify that the death bullets came from an Army standard-issue Colt .45-caliber automatic.

Colt .45-Caliber Automatic. U.S. Army Photo.

In any case, the testimony of Spike’s widow, delivered from a stretcher brought into court, would have surely sealed the State’s case. Weyrauch tried to throw all the blame on his accomplice, and even claimed that he himself had not fired a shot. Unimpressed, the jury found him guilty of first degree murder. They apparently had a long discussion about the punishment. Finally, on May 17, 1931, they recommended a life sentence.

Another fifteen months passed. Later, authorities learned that Caulie Avera had spent about half that time in Buhl, Idaho. It’s not clear where he went after that. However, in August 1932, he was captured in Moultrie, Georgia, where he had gone to visit his parents.

Brought back to Tacoma for trial, he was able to arrange a plea deal for a reduced charge of second degree murder. Prosecutors wanted to avoid the expense of another trial. Moreover, Cora Hennessey’s condition had apparently deteriorated to the point that she might not be fit to appear in court. Without her testimony, authorities feared they would not be able to get a conviction.

Despite the lesser charge, Avera also received a life sentence. He and Weyrauch were in the Washington State Penitentiary at the time of the 1940 census. In 1947, Avera benefitted from a change in Washington law that allowed the parole board to reconsider his sentence. He was released, and back in Georgia by 1951. About four years after that, he married a widow with three grown children. The couple had no children of their own. Caulie Avera died in 1978. Weyrauch did not immediately benefit from the new law in 1947. He was, however, released in 1950 or shortly thereafter. In 1953, he married a widow with two children. They too had no children of their own. George Weyrauch died in 1987.

As indicated above, the widow’s health had steadily declined. Cora Lee (Ray) Hennessey died March 6, 1935. With her gone, and no children to carry on, no one was there to protest the cancellation of the killers’ supposed “life” sentences.

                                                                               
References: “[Hennessey Murder Related News],” Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon; San Francisco Chronicle, California (July 1, 1930 – July 9, 1947).
Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Encyclopædia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois (2012).
Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969.
Jennifer Ott, “Aberdeen – Thumbnail History,” Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (November 2, 2009).
Terence Young, Heading Out: A History of American Camping, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (2017).

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Tragedy on the 4th of July

Seattle began its 1924 Fourth of July celebration around 10 o’clock in the morning, with a flyover of four airplanes piloted by veterans of the World War. That launched a parade of an estimated 5,000 members, headed by an “advance guard” of motorcycle policemen. The afternoon and evening programs were the usual mix of band concerts, singing, demonstrations, and (of course) speeches. They were to climax with “a grand pyrotechic display.”

The city was blessed with splendid weather, if perhaps a bit on the warm side, for its celebration. Drink vendors of all kinds, legal or not, surely did a fine business. Patrolman Amos J. Comer was not part of the advance motorcycle guard; he was just a regular beat cop. Comer was born February 22, 1878 in northwest Missouri. He married Sarah Elizabeth Worden in 1897. (She generally went by Elizabeth or “Lizzie.”) By 1902, the couple had three children – son Louis, and daughters Alta and Etta. Around 1906, the family moved to Seattle, where Amos found work as a teamster for a freight company. Ten years later, the couple would have another daughter, Ruth. 

Officer Amos J. Comer.
Officer Down Memorial.

Comer was commissioned as a Seattle police officer on January 1, 1912. He proved to be a steady and reliable patrolman. Not noted for any high profile cases, Amos handled his job with conscientious efficiency. In fact, a week before the Fourth, the police chief had assigned the patrolman to a squad of officers tasked with examining several key beats and recommending how police coverage could be improved.

On the Fourth, however, Comer would have been busy with normal duties: Breaking up fights, hauling drunks off to jail, and just generally getting people to tone down their festivities. Prohibition was in force, but no one paid much attention to that, not even the police.

Newspapers failed to report the exact time when the owner/operator of a black gentlemen’s club in the minorities’ district called the police. The best estimate suggests that it was about 9 o’clock in the evening. A disgruntled customer was disturbing their other patrons, but refused to leave. Could an officer lend his authority to resolve the problem? For some reason, the message passed along to Comer included the man’s description, but not his name.

As it happened, Officer Comer knew the man, Lee E. Moseley. He had appeared on Comer’s beat within the past month and Amos had made it his business to learn more about him. Moseley was a hard-core criminal, and had just completed a stretch in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla on a murder conviction.

Born in east-central Mississippi around 1883, Moseley left home some time after the summer of 1900. Ten years later, we find him at the prison in Walla Walla, serving a two-year sentence for robbery. His release date is unknown, but he was out by December 1913, when he stabbed a tailor in Tacoma. The victim, a prominent member of the local Japanese community, died two days later.

In a small historic footnote, Moseley’s defense attorney was also “colored,” becoming the first black lawyer to handle a murder trial in the state. They tried to make a case for self-defense, and Moseley even acted out, in court, the claimed attack on him. However, Moseley also had to admit on the stand that he had served time at California’s Folsom Prison and in a “correctional facility” in British Columbia (no dates reported). Moseley was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. Thus, he was again in Walla Walla for the 1920 census, being released in June 1924.

On the evening of the Fourth, Moseley was playing craps at the gentlemen’s club … and losing steadily. Accounts varied somewhat, but all agreed that Moseley became surly and quarrelsome as his losses mounted. He ignored calls for him to calm down. Some said he then waved a revolver around and threatened to shoot anyone who touched him. Others said he did that only after the owner called police. Either way, many patrons left at that point.

The club was located in the northern part of the minorities’ district, only a few hundred yards southeast of the King County Courthouse. By the time Comer arrived and looked around inside, the troublemaker was nowhere to be seen. After a bit, the officer went back outside to check there.

News reports would say that Moseley “hid” while the officer looked around. That was probably true, but perhaps not in the normal sense of the word. Such a club would almost certainly have had a concealed bar where they served booze. Thus, Moseley was probably there having a drink. Once the coast was clear, he left the bar and started for the exit. The club cook followed, just to be sure he left. Moseley stepped out onto the sidewalk, where Comer immediately recognized him.

The last thing Comer needed was a touchy ex-con on his beat. But when the officer tried to get the black’s attention, Moseley drew the revolver and shot him twice. Comer collapsed, and Moseley began beating on him. Alarmed, the club cook rushed out to pull the attacker away. Before escaping down an alley, Moseley tried to shoot the cook, but the weapon misfired.

Hit in the chest below the heart, Comer survived emergency surgery but died the next day. His dying statement affirmed that the shooter was Lee Moseley. Other witnesses supported that identification. Two days after the shooting, officers were on the hunt in Tacoma, having traced Moseley’s movements that far. They arrested the fugitive at a rooming house around 2 o’clock on the morning of the 7th. He had a revolver under his pillow.

Because of Moseley’s previous murder conviction, prosecutors announced right away that they would ask for the death penalty. They relied upon Comer’s dying statement and the other supporting witnesses. The defense did not put the black man on the stand, nor did they call any other witnesses of their own. All they could do was highlight some inconsistencies in the stories told by the various prosecution witnesses. They hoped, at best, to avoid a death sentence. In this, they failed. The jury of seven women and five men recommended the death penalty.

The state Supreme Court rejected the usual appeal on December 8, 1925. Moseley’s defense began preparing an appeal to the governor. Then, on February 2, 1926, newspapers reported startling new evidence. A couple who had been staying in a second-floor room of the Bush Hotel, across the street from the club, claimed that they had witnessed the shooting. They said the shooter was a Filipino dressed in a sailor’s uniform. They were both white, so some kind of a “deal” seemed highly unlikely.

During this new furor, the state attorney general’s office contracted with criminologist Luke S. May for a firearms case that May logged as “State vs Mosely [sic].” Of course, the supposed eye-witness assertion had problems: Depending upon where their room was, they were at least 90 feet away from the action. Plus, they would have depended mostly upon dim street lights and business signs. How much could they actually see? Still, the story might cast “reasonable doubt” on the state’s case. 

Bush Hotel, ca 1925. Aiko Photographic Studio.

Thus, officials wanted more confirmatory evidence. And they apparently got it. Just under two weeks after the alternate story broke, the prosecutor told reporters that they too had new evidence that would leave “no doubt as to the justice of Moseley’s conviction.” He did not describe what they had, but May had surely confirmed that the black man’s revolver had been the death weapon. The governor denied a stay and Moseley was hanged on the morning of February 19, 1926.

Patrolman Comer’s widow, Lizzie, did her best to maintain the family after the tragedy. She worked at a succession of jobs before opening a Seattle restaurant in 1928 or 1929. Her three daughters were all working there in 1930. Son Louis had married about eight months after his father’s death, but was divorced at the time of the 1930 census. He was then living in northern Wyoming near where one of Lizzie’s brothers had a place. A truck driver, he never married again and seemed to move around between Wyoming, western Washington, and central California. Louis Comer died August 30, 1952 in Fresno, California.

Around 1937,  Lizzie had relocated her restaurant to Shelton, a small town about 16 miles northwest of Olympia. The daughters followed her there to work as waitresses and other help. However, in 1936, Etta married again … for the third time. She had had two sons by her second husband, but did not receive custody in the divorce. She and her new husband moved to Long Beach, California around 1938.

The other two daughters remained with their mother in Shelton. Alta had married in 1930, but was divorced by 1940. She remarried the following year, when she had taken on more responsibility for running the café. Lizzie apparently still did a lot of the cooking. Alta had no children with either husband. By this time, Ruth had been married twice. It’s not clear when she divorced her second husband, but she married yet again in 1941. She was granted a divorce in the spring of 1944 and apparently married a U.S. serviceman. Ruth married for a fifth time in 1959. Despite all those marriages, she never had any children of her own.

Sarah Elizabeth (Worden) Comer died April 26, 1963 in Shelton. Etta and her husband returned to Shelton about that time (perhaps because of that event). She and her sisters remained there until their passings: Alta May in 1977, Etta Alice in 1984, and Ruth Elizabeth in 1997.

In May 1998, Amos J. Comer was posthumously awarded the Washington Law Enforcement Medal of Honor.

                                                                               
References: Norma H. Clark, The Dry Years: Prohibition and Social Change in Washington, University of Washington Press, Seattle (1965, 1988).

“[Comer Murder Background and News],” The Olympian, Olympia; Tacoma Times, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Washington (December 1913) – May 1998).

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

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An Immigrant Tragedy

A Luke May death case in the spring of 1923 came during a key period in the history of firearms evidence use. By then, private criminologist May had handled over thirty death cases that involved firearms. He had started his vast gun collection and could identify the make and model of most commonly-used firearms from the bullets they fired. In over a dozen cases, he was able to tie a specific gun to a death. About a year and a half before our current case, May described his approach to a newspaper reporter. The key, he said, were the microscopic marks in the bullets and the shells that were unique to a particular weapon … what we now call the “individual characteristics.”

A few months later, Professor Victor Balthazard at the Sorbonne, in France, published a technical paper on the subject. When suspect weapons are of the same make and model, he wrote, “One must resort to the study of the fine scratches” inscribed by a particular gun. In fact, the year 1922 was pivotal in the history of the technique. Among other milestones, Arizona courts ruled that such evidence was admissible, even in a capital case. Still, it was not until three years later that the general public in this country heard about it. That summer, The Saturday Evening Post published a long two-part article about the advance: “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Expert Witness.”

May’s case in 1923 illustrates both the strengths and the limitations of the technique. The dispute revolved around the family of Karl Kirsch. Born about 1880 in Hanover, Germany, Kirsch immigrated to the United States in 1903. He made his way to Seattle, where, in 1908, he married local girl Minnie Williams. Over the next seven years the couple had four children: Alice, Irene, Arthur, and Caroline. Karl started out as a common laborer. However, by 1918 he was operating a dairy farm about two miles from Hoquiam, Washington. Hoquiam is a logging and mill town on Grays Harbor Bay, about 45 miles west of Olympia. 

Kirsch Family, ca 1922. Family Archives.

Karl’s oldest daughter, Alice, was fourteen years old in the spring of 1923. She was tasked with minding the dairy cows in a nearby meadow. There, however, she attracted the attention of a middle-aged neighbor, Pedro Panichini.

Panichini was born around 1873, somewhere in Chile. He seems to have moved to the United States around 1901, or perhaps before. (The records are somewhat muddled.) From at least 1910 until after 1920, he worked as an unskilled sawmill laborer on Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound from Seattle. But in the spring of 1923, Panichini was living alone in a cabin near Kirsch’s place. (There is no record that he ever married.) He probably worked as a firewood cutter and bay fisherman.

The third player is this drama was Maximo Valverde Perez, who also lived nearby and may have worked part-time for Kirsch. Born in Mexico in 1885, he entered the U.S. as a farm worker in 1912. Six years later, he was living in Seattle and doing seasonal work at a fish cannery in Alaska. It’s unknown when he moved to the Grays Harbor area. In any case, he and Panichini did not get along, although Perez never said why.

Newspaper accounts were vague about Panichini’s behavior toward Alice, but it made her uncomfortable and she had complained to her parents. In the late afternoon of May 25, 1923, she, as usual, went out into the meadow to shoo the cows into the barn. Panichini appeared and began to follow her. Her mother was apparently watching and alerted Karl. Kirsch called to Perez for help and hurried out to confront the Chilean.

Matters quickly escalated to the point where Karl received a blow to the head, probably from the revolver Panichini had drawn. Kirsch and Perez tried to wrestle the gun away, and during the struggle, Panichini was shot fatally in the chest. Karl later said Perez had control of the weapon when shots were fired, but he had been dazed at that point … and Perez denied it.

Luke May received evidence for the case on May 31, the day authorities charged Perez with murder. He recorded: “One Imperial Arms Company 38 Calibre Revolver #A-1486 and one fired 38 calibre deformed lead bullet and two empty brass cartridge cases.” The package also included three unfired cartridges for the gun, “one cartridge having the primer slightly dented, apparently a miss fire.” 

Imperial Arms .38 Caliber Hammerless.
Classic Firearms Sales Site. 

 The brand name on the weapon was used by a large gunmaker in Connecticut for their line of cheap, low-quality hammerless revolvers. And, indeed, May found that the death weapon misfired twice before each successful test shot. Still, its individual traits were clear enough that he “was able to pick out the bullets from this revolver each time.” The same assertion could not be made for the actual death bullet, although he was satisfied that it had come from the submitted weapon. However, because of the deformation, he was only willing to testify that the bullet had been fired from the same make and model of revolver.

Luckily, that distinction mattered little when the case went to trial in July. The context – an older, nonwhite foreigner pestering an attractive white teenage girl – would have surely set a lenient tone, even though the accused was also a nonwhite foreigner. Perez was acquitted with virtually no notice in the larger regional newspapers. Some time after the acquittal, he left the state and disappeared from public records for seventeen years. Perez told the 1940 census taker that he’d been in western Nebraska in 1935. In 1940, he was staying with a married niece in El Paso, Texas.

Sadly, Panichini indirectly caused yet more trouble for the Kirsch family. Karl paid his estate for title to the Chilean’s rowboat. However, a neighbor who thought he had bought the entire estate felt it should include the boat. When Karl tried to retrieve the craft from the neighbor’s property, he was wounded by a shotgun blast. Charges were filed against the neighbor, but nothing further seems to have come of that. Karl died a bit over a year after the shooting.

With the main bread-winner gone, the family splintered. Alice married in late 1925, presumably with Minnie’s consent. The youngest daughter, Caroline, died the following year. Irene married in early 1927, with her mother attesting that she was 18 years old. She was, in fact, only a couple months over 17.

Both girls would marry three times. In fact, Alice was listed as already divorced in the 1930 census. She married a second husband in 1936, divorced him (date unknown), and then outlived her third. She died in 2006. Irene’s first marriage lasted less than two years; she divorced in March 1929. She married again in 1937, that husband passing away in the summer of 1967. She married again in early 1969, but died six years later.

Arthur would have been 19 at the time of the 1930 census. He was not at his mother’s home in Hoquiam at that time, and cannot otherwise be located. He wed in 1935, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1980. Mother Minnie (Williams) Kirsch remarried in 1934, but that husband died in 1956. She married again a little over a year later. He passed away in 1966, leaving her a widow again until her own passing in 1983.
                                                                               

References: Evan E. Filby, American Sherlock: Remembering a Pioneer in Scientific Crime Investigation, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland (2019).

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

“[Panichini Death News],” The Oregonian, Portland; (May 26, 1923 – August 17, 1923).

Ned Schwing, Standard Catalog of Firearms, Krause Publications, Iola, Wisconsin (2002).

Wesley W. Stout, “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Expert Witness,” The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 13 & 20, 1925).

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A Fatal Blunder

To this day, the shooting death of Seattle police officer Fred Ivey on May 10, 1928 is described as an unsolved murder. Yet, eight months after his death, the probable killer was identified by a competent witness. The likely reasons for still calling it “unsolved” are instructive.

Fred Ivey was born March 13, 1879 in Missouri. When he was about twenty years old, the family moved to Granite Falls, Washington, a small town thirteen miles northeast of Everett. In 1909, he married Katherine Sybella Brown there. Four years later, they moved into Everett, where Fred worked as a power system operator and then served as town marshal for a couple years. Between 1911 and 1917, the couple had two sons and a daughter. In July 1917, Fred became an officer for the Seattle police department. He proved to be an effective and highly-respected patrolman.

Shortly after 10:00 p.m. on May 10th, a quick-witted citizen alerted Officer Ivey to the flight of an armed robber. The informant was Curtis E. “Jack” Howell, a (former?) private detective and deputy sheriff. Although the heads-up was justified, it would lead to tragedy.

Howell was born September 28, 1888 in New York City. He ran a detective agency for several years before catching the “flying bug.” He became proficient enough to open a flight training school in Richmond, California, backed by the [Glenn] Curtiss Aeroplane Company. Then a flying accident kept him out of the air for several months, so he moved to Fargo, North Dakota and started a new detective agency. When World War I began, Howell enlisted in the aero corp and was assigned to an aviation training base in Texas. However, he received a disability discharge in the spring of 1918. Records do not say whether or not he suffered another accident, or simply became ill. 

Curtiss Biplance ca 1911. Library of Congress.

Howell evidently spent the next several years in North Dakota and eastern Montana before moving to Seattle. He continued to promote aviation, but did not try to compete with freelance barnstormers, who now performed ever more dangerous stunts. Accounts show him in a wide variety of unrelated short-term jobs, a pattern that suggests he might have been working as an undercover private investigator. (For obvious reasons, he never said anything to confirm or deny this possibility.)

On the evening of May 10, Howell was in a drug store near downtown Seattle when a man we’ll call “Slippery Slim” entered. He barked, “Stick’um up!” and waved a pistol around. Howell had time to carefully note the robber’s appearance before he made off with about $50 from the cash register. After a momentary wait, Jack began to trail the crook. He persisted long enough for the fugitive to spot him and threaten him from a distance. Jack dropped back, then persuaded the driver of a passing car to help. Next, the thief boarded a streetcar headed north.

Luckily, Patrolman Ivey happened by just as Howell ran into a store to call for help. Flagged down by the driver, Ivey quickly joined the pursuit, which continued for several blocks. Frustrated, the officer had the driver pull alongside the streetcar so he could signal the conductor to pull up. For reasons that were never explained, the conductor ignored him and went on to his next scheduled stop. By then, the fugitive had noted the police uniform and hurried to the rear platform of the trolley. Ivey was fatally wounded in the ensuing exchange of gunfire. The shooter ran off into the darkness.

Despite a huge manhunt then and for days afterwards, the fugitive eluded capture. Between Howell and the other witnesses, “Slim” was described as: In his late twenties, about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, an estimated weight of 140 pounds, and a dark complexion. Police hired criminologist Luke S. May a few days after the shooting. He identified the murder weapon as a .38-caliber Colt automatic pistol. The trick, of course, would be to find it and its owner.

Sadly, armed robberies were all too common in Seattle at the time, although only those with special features made the newspapers. Thus, on July 15, a bandit shot it out with a pharmacist at a drug store about two miles west of the University of Washington. The crook hit the victim in the foot, but got away with just $30. The description of the shooter was said to be “identical” to that of the Ivey killer, Slippery Slim. His weapon was identified as a .38-caliber Colt automatic pistol, but the slug was apparently too distorted to try a specific match with the Ivey death missile. Still, the news article also noted that the same bandit had been implicated in a number of holdups around the city. In every case, Slippery Slim proved to have an uncanny ability to evade pursuit.

Over the next several months, police followed many possible leads, but none of them panned out. The shocking denouement came around noon on January 9, 1929. Two masked men tried to hold up the Barto Company, an insurance and small loans firm located near the southern edge of downtown Seattle. This proved to be a fatal miscalculation. The owner-operator, Thomas C. Barto, had lettered in baseball at the University of Washington (he graduated in 1914) and was an outstanding all-around athlete. He was also a highly skilled hunter, and known as a fine marksman with rifle, pistol, and shotgun.

Available records contain no systematic reconstruction of events in the office. We cannot even be sure when the shooting started. But most accounts agree that Barto and a male clerk retrieved weapons from desk drawers and scored multiple hits on the two crooks. There is also agreement that two female customers fled the scene and summoned police. An officer passing by on the street responded quickly enough to exchange shots with one bandit and block his escape. He was later commended for his swift action.

In any case, Barto ended up badly wounded and the clerk had been stunned by a blow to the head. The two would-be thieves, however, were both fatally wounded. There names were Robert Byrne and James M. Fare. Unlike Byrne, Fare had no known criminal record. More importantly, Jack Howell saw Byrne’s picture in the news, went to the funeral parlor, and positively identified him as the killer of Patrolman Ivey. The next day, officials conceded that Howell was probably right. They (and possibly Luke May) had perhaps traced some of Byrne’s underworld contacts and associates.

Robert Byrne was born in Chicago in 1899. His father died less than six months later. Around 1914, the mother moved the family to Seattle. Two years later, Robert was sent to reform school for robbing a grocery store. He displayed his slipperiness early, jumping from a moving train to escape. Authorities apparently didn’t bother to pursue him further.

At some point, Byrne returned to Chicago and lied about his age to enlist in the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station. However, in the spring of 1918, postal inspectors tracked down Byrne and another youth as the robbers of a Chicago post office. Byrne was dishonorably discharged and turned over to civilian authorities. A judge sentenced him to six to ten years in Joliet Prison. He was back in Seattle by 1927 or 1928.

Byrne never regained consciousness after the Barto fiasco (neither did Fare). Thus, there was no way to verify, or disprove, that he really was Slippery Slim. Police did not ask Luke May to make any further bullet comparisons, so that too was a dead end. In fact, authorities chose not to incur the expense of further testing to see who was shot with what. (Some reports speculated that Barto might have been hit by a bullet from the clerk’s weapon.) 

Robert Byrne. Seattle Times.

In the months after Ivey’s murder, various organizations around Seattle had sponsored benefit events for the family: a play, dance, “smoker,” and even a boxing card. Katherine (Brown) Ivey also received what amounted to a lifetime job as a cleaning lady at the Seattle public library. She never remarried, retired around 1952, and passed away in 1968.

Her oldest son, Quentin, had a job as a typist at the King County jail while he attended the University of Washington. Later, he worked as a food company salesman, at least some of that time for the H.J. Heinz Company. The other son, Eugene, drove a truck for the Coca Cola Company, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Afterwards, Eugene joined the Seattle police department, retiring around 1976. Daughter Dolores worked as a beautician until her marriage to a shipyard craftsman in 1941.

Evidence suggests that Curtis “Jack” Howell continued to work as an undercover investigator. Although he appeared in various city directories, he listed no occupation for the 1940 U.S. Census, and called himself a “retired aviator” on his 1942 draft registration. He died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident in May 1944. His obituary mentioned only that he had once worked as a circus clown.

Thomas Barto recovered well enough from his wound to continue in the loan and insurance business for at least another thirty years. He died in May 1983 … at over ninety years old.
                                                                               

References:  “[Criminal Case Activity],” Seattle Times, Washington (May 11, 1928 – January 13, 1929).

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

Officer Fred Ivey, Behind the Badge Foundation – https://behindthebadgefoundation.org/rollcall/ivey-officer-fred/ [Downloaded January 9, 2021.]

“[Participant Background],” Oakland Tribune, Santa Maria Times, California; Chicago Tribune, Illinois; Eugene Guard, Capital Journal, Salem, Oregon; Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, Williston Graphic, Ward County Independent, Minot, North Dakota; Seattle Times, Seattle Star, Washington (March1914 – February 1988).

C. R. Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, Pioneer of Flight, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1991).

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