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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
