A Tragedy Waiting To Happen

A true story that peaks with violent death focuses, of necessity, on events that seem most relevant to the main theme. This often lends an aura of inevitability to those incidents. For career criminals, it seems like each transgression spirals the individual further into “the dark side.” Phillip Basselli was a criminal only in that he kept getting into personal trouble; he made his living as a coal miner. Yet the end of his short life displayed a slide into tragedy that seemingly nothing could stop.

Phillip was born June 2, 1915 in Pierce County, Washington, into a solid immigrant family. His parents were Frank and Concetta Basselli, both natives of Italy. Frank (Francesco) came to this country around 1906, when he was about 19 years old. He found work in the coal mines located 20-30 miles southeast of  Tacoma. At that time, demand for coal had fueled a minor boom in the area. Concetta Yozzolino (records show several variations of her name) arrived in February of 1911, when she was about 15 years old. Perhaps by pre-arrangement, she and Frank were soon married. They had a son, Anthony, in August 1912. Daughter Mary came two years later, then Phillip.

With a growing family, Frank moved into a house in Carbonado, located in the middle of the coal region. This was a typical “company town,” in the sense that the coal company owned most of it. Still, state law prohibited the worst “wage slave” practices and the employer did provide schools, a hospital, and (slowly) upgraded housing. Of course, the company much preferred a work force of “contented” family men since they were considered less likely to go on strike.

Phillip’s father was an exceptional man. By the time he registered for the draft in 1918, he had advanced to a position as motorman. That is, he operated a small train that carried supplies into the mines and hauled coal out. His typical earnings were better than those of an ordinary miner, plus the job was safer (relatively speaking) and less physically demanding. Some time in the Twenties, Frank actually purchased the family home, a step that was almost unheard of in such company towns. 

Motorman and Train.
Pacific Coast Bulletin (October 28, 1927).

Phillip reached his teen years with no foretaste of later trouble. In fact, he seems to have done well in school. Thus, in 1932, the family enrolled him at Bellarmine, a Roman Catholic prep school in Tacoma. He perhaps stayed some of the time there with his sister Mary, who had married a Tacoma barber the year before. (Brother Tony also married in January of 1932.) Phillip proved to be a talented athlete: he was a starter at halfback in football and a solid scorer on the basketball team.

Unfortunately, he was no longer on the roster for either team the following year. We don’t know if he dropped out on his own, or if the family could no longer afford to send him there. Either way, Phillip joined throngs of low-skilled workers scrambling for jobs during some of the worst years of the Great Depression. Perhaps because of that, he began to exhibit a surly, belligerent disposition. He also drank to excess, which only fueled his angry, aggressive behavior. One incident occurred at a lunch counter located about nine miles north of Carbonado. The young man entered late one night and demanded a beer, although he was already a bit tipsy. Because it was after hours, the operator refused, so Phillip punched the man in the mouth and knocked him out.

The summer of 1935 brought another foretaste of events to come. He barged into “Don’s Tavern” in Wilkeson, a hamlet a couple miles north of Carbonado. Then he got into a heated argument with Don Pettit, the owner. By this time, people knew that Basselli’s hot temper could get out of hand. Thus, Pettit retrieved a pistol from behind the counter and ordered him to get out. Only when Pettit threatened to actually shoot did the angry young man leave.

Donald Lyman Pettit was the other actor in this tragedy. Don was born near Walla Walla, Washington on February 10, 1895. For a time between about 1915 and 1918 he covered the west as a traveling salesman. Then he settled in Seattle, where, in January 1919, he married for the first time. That didn’t last long, with Pettit being granted a divorce in the summer of 1921. Some time after that, he made Spokane a base for selling mining company stock. In April 1922, he married again – in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

In 1923, he and his new wife returned to Seattle, where Don worked as a salesman for a golf equipment company. The following year, the couple had a daughter, Katherine. He was still working as a salesman in 1933, but he and his wife had separated by then. A year or so later, Pettit opened the tavern in Wilkeson. (National Prohibition had been repealed at the end of 1933.) The clash there in the summer of 1935 sowed the seeds for what was to come.

Before that happened, Phillip added to his disrepute. He landed a job in Mullan, Idaho, a major silver mining site. However, in September, Basselli tried to beat up a company cook and ended up in jail on a drunk and disorderly charge. It’s unknown how much time he served, if any. In any case, Phillip was back in the Carbonado area by the following March. He tangled with Pettit again at a lodge meeting in Wilkeson, after gleefully noting that the tavern owner carried neither a gun nor a sap: “I’ve got you man to man.”  

Historic Carbonado. City of Carbonado.

Pettit, over 40 years old, stood no chance against the young, athletic miner. He suffered two or three broken, or at least cracked ribs and a kick to the groin. Fights were hardly rare in this working-class environment, so Basselli was not charged with assault. Perhaps it would have been better if he had.

About the same time, Basselli blew up in the bar and grill across the street from Pettit’s tavern. He then smashed some windows by throwing beer bottles at them. He paid $27 in damages for that incident. In May, Phillip was fined $10 on another drunk and disorderly charge. His sentence included six months in jail, but that was suspended when Phillip promised that he would “refrain from getting intoxicated.” Again, matters might have been better if he had actually served that term.

Given Phillip’s recent past, it’s unlikely that his promise lasted very long. Events came to a head on the evening of Saturday June 13, 1936. When the drinking began is unclear, but it went on until closing time (1:00 o’clock) on Sunday morning at the Wilkeson bar and grill. Basselli was “in a quarrelsome mood,” and still resentful about the $27 his previous tantrum had cost him. He muttered about whacking the owner with a poker and threatened to punch out a waitress. Unable to obtain more booze, a half dozen customers, including Phillip, decided to try their luck across the street at Don’s Tavern.

Basselli and one companion entered the bar, where Don had just served a last call to two final customers and was in the process of closing up. Phillip demanded a beer, which Pettit naturally refused. The young man plopped into a booth for a moment, then rose to argue with Don. Then there was a distraction. Two members of the group outside got into a fistfight. (All would later claim, under oath, that no one was drunk … but the evidence is against them).

Still, despite the confusion, witnesses inside agreed that Basselli aggressively accosted the bar man and threatened him. Pettit thought the youth was going to jump the bar, and was in no mood to get beat up again by the young, muscular miner. He grabbed his pistol and fired two warning shots into the ceiling. Observers now had their attention divided by the fight outside. Thus, none could say exactly what happened next. They all remembered that three shots were fired, but could not verify (or deny either) Pettit’s claim that he aimed the third shot at the advancing miner’s shoulder. But Phillip apparently realized that Pettit really was going to shoot and twisted aside at the last second. That, however, only made matters worse. Instead of hitting the shoulder straight on, the third bullet entered the back side at an angle that traversed the lungs and tore the top of his heart. Basselli staggered away a bit, then slumped to the floor and died.

Charged with murder, Pettit claimed self-defense, and seemed to have a good case. During the subsequent trial, the defense featured a parade of witnesses who attested to Phillip’s belligerence and propensity for physical violence (outlined above). The prosecution made no attempt to counter with witnesses who might have spoken of Basselli’s better qualities. They based their case on the assertion that Pettit had been waiting for his chance at revenge, and this was it.

Criminologist Luke S. May verified the death weapon, of course, and probably gave an assessment of the bullet trajectory. Investigators did not, or could not, retrieve the two bullets fired into the ceiling. May also noted that the death pistol, a .32-caliber automatic, would not show powder burns beyond about 15 inches. No such burns were observed, but the defense then asserted that officials had tampered with the evidence. That was unlikely, and the claim was necessary only if the defense wanted to prove that Phillip was almost on top of the shooter when he was hit. However, as suggested above, even if Basselli had been at or near the bar, his turn at the last moment would have probably moved him out of close range.

Given the overwhelming testimony about Phillip’s violent nature, Pettit’s self-defense plea might have worked. Three factors counted against him, starting with the victim’s youth and the fact that he was a “local boy.” Also, Pettit showed no particular remorse, conveying the notion that the young ruffian had brought it upon himself.

Worse yet, he backed that attitude with action. The exact sequence of events is unclear, but it included Pettit dragging Basselli’s body outside onto the sidewalk. He also mopped up any blood – there were almost surely some stains – and finished his closing procedures. He had Phillip’s companions inform the sheriff in Carbonado, and told a local undertaker about the body. Then he went home to bed.

His attitude and actions evidently did not play well with the jury of five man and seven women. They convicted Pettit of first degree murder. At least they did not recommend a death penalty. The judge then imposed a “mandatory” life sentence.

Sadly, death visited the Basselli family again in early 1940, when Frank died at the relatively young age of 53. Within a year, Concetta moved into Tacoma to be near married daughter Mary and two grandsons. She was blessed with a third grandson around 1945. She passed away there in 1986.

Around 1937, not long after Don Pettit went off to prison, his wife moved to Portland, Oregon, There, she found work as a department store saleslady. Their daughter Katherine went to live with relatives in Spokane, where she attended high school. After graduation, she also moved to Portland. Don’s sentence was commuted in early 1943 and he was soon a free man. He too ended up in Portland, although it’s unclear exactly when.

In the spring of 1946, daughter Katherine married in Portland. Several years later, the couple moved to California. Pettit’s wife obtained a divorce in August 1947 and remarried a bit over a year later. Donald also married again. In 1950, he and his third wife were operating a trailer court in Portland. He died there two years later from an aggressive brain tumor.
                                                                                

References:  “[Basselli-Pettit News],” Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Daily Ledger, Tacoma, News-Tribune, Tacoma, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Union-Record, Seattle, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (June 1921 – August 1952).

Edward Echtle, “Carbonado — Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (January 24, 2018).

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

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A Jury Of His Peers

By the end of 1930, pioneer criminologist Luke S. May had logged over 140 death cases. For the decade, he had averaged about one death case every month. Of course, the Pacific Northwest suffered far more mysterious deaths than that. However, we must keep in mind that Luke was a private investigator. He was hired only when regular law enforcement couldn’t handle the job, for whatever reason. The cases were not “routine” because of the stakes involved – eight out of ten included murder charges. Anyway, over one hundred of those events involved guns. By this time, Luke had honed his firearms techniques to where they needed little further adjustment. However, a death case he logged in early 1931 proved a bit different, because of two unusual circumstances.

The death took place in the small hours of November 12, 1930, during the night after Armistice Day. May logged the case and received key evidence in January 1931. The victim was LeRoy “Roy” Blank, who was born around 1903 in rural Minnesota. In 1916-1917, the family moved to a farm in central North Dakota. Sadly, Roy became the “man of the family,” when his father died in the summer of 1918. Unable to hang on, they were all back in Minnesota in 1925. During the next two or three years, Roy went off on his own while his mother and four siblings made their way to Minneapolis.

Accounts do not say how Roy ended up as a farm laborer near Connell, Washington, a small town located about thirty miles north of Pasco. Nor do we know how long he had been seeing Helen (Beck) Fishan, a live-in housekeeper and nanny in Kahlotus, an even smaller hamlet about fifteen miles east of Connell. 

Connell, Washington, ca 1928. Washington Rural Heritage.

Helen M. Beck was born August 10, 1900 in a farming area of Missouri about 45 miles northwest of St. Louis. Around 1909, the family moved to the Idaho Panhandle, being in Post Falls in 1910. By 1918, Helen was teaching school in and around Spokane, Washington. In February of 1922, she married Howard J. “Jack” Fishan in Spokane. They had a daughter in November. However, for unknown reasons, the couple separated around 1926. Not long after that, Helen took the job in Kahlotus.

Her employer was Samuel J. “Sam” Watson, a long-time resident of Kahlotus. Watson was born around 1885 in New York City. Before 1900, the family moved to eastern New Jersey. It’s uncertain when Sam went out on his own, but in 1909-1910, he settled in Kahlotus. There, he operated the steam engine for a processing plant, probably a flour mill. In January 1912, he married Bertha Cook, a local girl who clerked at the general store. They had a son after about a year. Before 1918, Sam also began delivering milk around the area, perhaps from a small herd of his own. At some point, he also opened a pool hall in the town.

Sam and Bertha added two daughters to the family, in 1916 and 1922. Sadly, Bertha passed away in the fall of 1924. Although we don’t know for sure, Sam may have had other housekeepers before he hired Helen Fishan in 1926-1927. Early on, Sam thought they had an “arrangement” that he considered an engagement. However, at some point he discovered that Fishan had not yet obtained a divorce from her husband. Even so, Sam and Helen soon began “living together as husband and wife,” raising his three kids as well as Helen’s daughter Maxine.

Although she was willing to sleep with Sam, Helen never saw the situation as an engagement. Thus, she was receptive when Roy Blank began paying attention to her. After all, Blank was close to her age, whereas Sam was practically old enough to be her father (17 years her senior). Naturally, Sam objected, and insisted that she stay away from Roy.

Matters reached a crisis point on Armistice Day. Although it was not yet a federal holiday, towns large and small celebrated the Day with parades, speeches, and other activities. Later testimony confirmed that all three principals in this love triangle had been drinking off and on, all day and late into the evening. (Prohibition was still in force, but hardly anyone paid any attention to that.) Were they together, paired off some way, or what? We don’t know.

Some time after midnight, Sam began driving around looking for Fishan. He found her with Blank in his car on the outskirts of Kahlotus. The subsequent shouting match caught the attention of neighbors, who then heard three quick gunshots. Witnesses who rushed over found two victims on the ground near Blank’s car. Blank was already dead, while Fishan was badly wounded. Watson had left the scene; he was on his way to Pasco to turn himself in. He would later claim that he didn’t know he’d hit the woman until the sheriff told him.

Helen Fishan was rushed to another nearby small town, where the attending physician decided she needed specialist help and transferred her to a hospital in Spokane. The surgeon who operated said he was doubtful she would survive. The bullet had passed through her abdomen, piercing her bladder and bowels. Amazingly, she was considered out of danger about ten days later. At that point, the county attorney lodged a felony assault charge against Sam, to go with the murder charge for the death of Roy Blank. By this time, Blank’s body had been transported to Minneapolis for burial.

Sam Watson asserted that Roy had advanced in a threatening manner, with something in his hand. He therefore claimed self-defense. Oddly enough, he had suffered a wound himself … a finger on his left hand had been badly injured and eventually had to be amputated. His defense attorney would later imply that other shots had been fired and one of those had hit Watson. However, listeners heard no other shots and examination of the death scene found no weapons of any kind, not even something that might be mistaken for a club.

Luke May received evidence for the case just under two weeks before Watson’s trial was to begin in February. That included the death weapon (a Colt double-action revolver chambered for 44 WCF ammunition), three 38 WCF shell casings, and two unfired 38 WCF cartridges. Luke soon confirmed that the powder explosion had expanded the brass shells to closely fit the larger chamber. It’s worth noting that the difference between the 38 and 44 WCF ammunition is not as great as the stated numbers suggest. Those are for “marketing” purposes (more or less). The actual bullet diameter is less than 0.03 inch different, and some other dimensions are even closer. Luke also found that the revolver was old and poorly maintained, with noticeable rust and erosion in the barrel. These factors complicated the death bullet comparison, but not seriously. 

Colt double-action revolver, 44-40. Antique guns site.

Luke strongly urged county authorities to search for the bullet that had wounded Fishan, which “should be found in the immediate vicinity of where she was shot.” Since the slug had passed through soft tissue, a comparison should easily verify that it came from Watson’s weapon. Luke doesn’t mention another point: He could have assessed the bullet trajectory to further affirm that Watson had fired the wounding shot. Officials did not, however, heed his recommendation.

Luke also received Watson’s amputated finger, preserved in alcohol. The prosecutor assumed that Sam had shot himself and wondered what powder burns might appear. (The two doctors who treated Watson’s finger disagreed on whether or not they saw visible powder burns.) Thus, May spent considerable effort to test the weapon and ammunition for that feature.

Several key points stood out. The revolver’s mechanism was rather loose, allowing gas and unburned powder to blow back. Luke also noted that the cartridges were “loaded with the fastest burning powder that there is on the market.” Coupled with the long barrel of the revolver, relatively little unburned powder would be expelled. Finally, the slightly smaller bullet size allowed some gas to escape and reduced the pressure to throw unburned grains very far. May’s testimony therefore noted that a major powder burn could not be expected, even at fairly close range. Nonetheless, his careful microscopic scrutiny detected several particles of unburned powder embedded in the damaged finger.

Watson’s defense never disputed that there had been a shouting match. Nor did they deny that he had tried to break up the relationship between his “housekeeper” and Blank. Sam had simply felt threatened by the younger man and sprayed him and Mrs. Fishan with bullets. And, in the end, that defense was enough. The jury – eleven men and one woman – took just one ballot to acquit him on both counts. There was no indication that they even considered some lesser charge for his “accidental” near-death wounding of Helen Fishan.

Helen and her husband reconciled after the trial, although it’s unclear exactly when. They had two more daughters, one in the spring of 1934 and another in 1935. They settled near Spokane as a base. Helen found work – probably as a domestic servant or part-time teacher – in and around that city. However, in the depths of the Great Depression, Jack had to make do with short-lived jobs around the region, including in Idaho. Sam Watson’s younger daughter was about the same age as Maxine Fishan. Thus, after Jack and Helen settled around Spokane, she chose to live in that area too.

Records kept by the U.S. Veterans Bureau (now Administration) show that Howard Jack Fishan died March 12, 1945 in Spokane. During World War I, he served in France with a machine gun company of the 361st Infantry Regiment, originally formed at Camp Lewis, Washington. Helen (Beck) Fishan passed away May 10, 1976 in Spokane. The obituary listed as survivors her two brothers and three married daughters as well as the younger Watson daughter (married, and living in Spokane at that time). Helen also had eleven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Sam Watson stayed in Kahlotus at least until 1940, when he and his older daughter, Lucille, were enumerated in the census. As noted above, the younger daughter lived near Spokane at that time. Sam’s son scrambled to find work in the region around Kahlotus, until he joined the Army in 1941-1942. He married in 1943 and lived in Seattle after the war.

Lucille married about the time her brother entered the Army. However, she gave her status as “Widow” in the 1950 Census for Compton, California. At that time, Samuel J. Watson was living with her and her twin sons. Sam moved back to Seattle, Washington at some point, perhaps when his grandson (Lucille’s son) married in 1963. He passed away there in September 1964.
                                                                                

References:  Linda Holden Givens, “Connell – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (June 24, 2021).

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

“[Participant Backgrounds],” Spokane Chronicle, Washington, Bellingham Herald, Washington, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; Minneapolis Star, Minnesota (January 1918 – May 1976).

“[Killing and Trial],” Bellingham Herald, Washington, Spokane Press, Washington, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (November 1930 – February 1931)..

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The Farmhand Murder Mystery

February 1933. Daniel L. Blankenship had a problem. As sheriff of Kitsap County, Washington, he received tips regularly – from known sources, or anonymous. Many were baseless, but all had to be investigated. And, like many sheriffs of that era, he had virtually no training in law enforcement. He had to rely on common sense and local knowledge.

Daniel was born in West Virginia in the spring of 1887. In 1906, the family moved to Williston, North Dakota, a small town in the northwest part of the state. In September of the following year, Daniel married Marilla Young there. Later, the couple moved to a tiny town in northeastern Montana about forty miles from the Canadian border. At that time, he dealt in real estate. However, some time in 1921-1925, they separated, with Marilla awarded custody of their three children. Soon after that, Daniel moved to near Bremerton, Washington. In December 1925 he married again. Then, before 1929, he opened a car dealership in Bremerton. 

Downtown Bremerton, bef 1929.
Kitsap History Museum.

In January of 1931, Daniel was sworn in as sheriff of Kitsap County. Aside from Bremerton, with its U.S. Navy shipyard, the county was quite rural. Thus, Blankenship’s duties were comparatively light: Serving legal notices, an occasional missing persons report, escorting prisoners to and from various locations, and so on.

This anonymous tip was far more serious. It claimed that one John E. Martin had shot and killed two itinerant workers, known only as “Milo” and “Pete,” and buried them on his farm. Martin was a newcomer to the area, having recently acquired land on the coast of Puget Sound about twenty miles north of Bremerton. He had twice come to the attention of authorities. The regional Prohibition Officer had searched his property for a rumored moonshine operation, but had found nothing. (Prohibition was on its way out, but the laws were still being enforced.)

More relevant was a report from the previous October. Neighbors had found Martin almost incapacitated from severe cuts and bruises, and rushed him to medical help. He said that two temporary farm hands had beat him up and tried to rob him. They had been there about a week, clearing brush, when he fired them for drinking too much. Martin had no money to speak of on the property, and he said the two fled after venting their anger on him. Sheriff Blankenship and the Seattle police – it was assumed they would run to the big city – had mounted a search for them, with no results whatsoever. This tip cast a whole new light on that episode.

First of all, who was this fellow John E. Martin? To begin with, his full name was William John Elias Martin. He was born November 21, 1872 in Kent County, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. He married Lumina “Mina” Manassa in 1894 and they began raising a family on a farm west of Saginaw Bay (part of Lake Huron). Life was not easy, but they hung on until 1907. The last of their six children – three sons and three daughters – was born that year. Between then and 1910, the family moved to Walla Walla, Washington, where William found work as a carpenter.

The relationship between William and Mina was a rocky one. They divorced in 1916, remarried, and then divorced again in 1920. Thus, for the 1920 census, Martin was living in Seattle under the name “John E.” He was perhaps trying to avoid confusion with several other William Martins in the City Directory. By then, the two oldest sons and a daughter had married. One son and his wife were living with him. Meanwhile, Mina was still in Walla Walla with the three youngest children.

Those children had married and gone off on their own by 1927, the year that William and Mina married yet again. Thus, the couple was living together in Seattle for the 1930 census, with “John E.” identifying himself as a building contractor. But, again, the togetherness didn’t last and Mina was alone in Seattle by 1933. Meanwhile, William John had acquired the farm property north of Bremerton.

Available accounts do not say how specific the tip was about the burial location. Officers seemed to have had little trouble finding and exhuming the bodies. One news report asserted that Martin tried to commit suicide while they were digging, but that was never confirmed. Then the coroner provided an added shock. The men had not died from the gunshot wounds; they had suffocated after being buried alive. There was no evidence, however, that they had revived and tried to claw their way out.

Private criminologist Luke S. May logged this case as primarily a firearms study. He easily verified that Martin’s pistol was the death weapon. It happens that this was May’s two-hundredth death case (that we know of), the vast majority of which involved firearms. Thus, he might have also had an expert opinion on the less-than-fatal bullet wounds.

Martin was charged with murder and his trial began in mid-June. He freely admitted he had killed the two, but insisted that it was purely self-defense. He stuck to the main elements of his October story: After he had fired them for their drinking, they beat him up and and tried to rob him. News reports do not say, but it seems possible that he finally lied about where he had money hidden. Then, when they went to look for it, he retrieved his pistol and shot them as they returned from the wild goose chase.

The incident left Martin dazed and confused. All he could think of to do was bury the men and say nothing. He only told his partial story when neighbors asked what had happened to him. And that might well have been enough. Despite all the publicity of the trial, we never do learn who “Milo” and “Pete” actually were. William John E. Martin was convicted of second-degree murder.

Between then and the sentencing, a small controversy arose about the source of the tip that sparked the investigation. Some witnesses contended that Martin’s estranged wife, Mina, provided it. However, Sheriff Blankenship declared that he had no way of knowing who sent the letter he received. So far as we know, Mina disclaimed any knowledge of such a letter. The judged imposed a 15 to 20 year prison sentence for the conviction.

Then even more drama arose. Rumors persisted that at least two other part-time workers had been sent to the ranch by an employment agency … and had disappeared. One was eventually found working elsewhere, and Martin denied any knowledge of the other. Although Blankenship and his deputies searched the property further, nothing ever came of the rumors.

In a small way, the Milo-Pete investigation became a kind of dress rehearsal for a horrific case the sheriff faced a few months after Martin was moved to prison from the county jail. (His appeals had failed.) On the evening of March 31, 1934, Blankenship made a call to Criminologist May in Seattle. After describing the crime scene and pleading for help, he cried, “It’s terrible, Luke, terrible!” May later said that, while he had often heard “terrible” applied to many of his death cases, Blankenship’s was the most emphatic and heart-felt. 

Bremerton Evidence: Sheriff Blankenship (left),
Luke May, County Prosecutor.

And well it should have been. A home invasion a few miles north of Bremerton had turned into the mass murder of six victims. Two had been shot, while the rest had been beaten to death with a hammer or stabbed. (The story of the “Bremerton Massacre” is told in my Luke May biography, American Sherlock.) Sadly, Blankenship did not live to see the case closed. That fall, he was rushing his brother to medical help when his car blew a tire. They hit a tree and Daniel L. Blankenship was killed, on November 4, 1934. Luckily, his brother and another passenger survived.

Mina Martin obtained a final divorce a year of so after her husband went off to the penitentiary. She apparently supported herself by taking in laundry. She had a heart attack and died at the end of 1943. At that time, all six of the couple’s children were still living, and accounted for 17 grandchildren.

The oldest son, William Bernard Martin, first married 1915, to a divorcee who lived in Oregon not far south of Walla Walla. They eventually had five children, but the marriage didn’t last. He married again in 1938. Bernard tried his hand at farming, automobile servicing, furniture sales, and finally general construction. He passed away in September 1970.

The oldest daughter, Agnes, married Jake McKinney in May 1916 in Walla Willa. They moved to Seattle around 1923, where Jake worked as a carpenter, and the couple raised four children. Agnes also pursued a career as a top-level cook for a chain of restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. She even appeared in a TV documentary about the business. Her husband passed away in 1968. Agnes (Martin) McKinney died in October 1981.

Francis “Frank” Martin, the next oldest son, joined the U.S. Navy for World War I. He married before 1920 and lived for a time with his father in Seattle. He had some success as an electrician and then at a bakery. The Great Depression ended that … and his marriage. Around 1934-1935, he moved to Indiana, where he worked as a clerk at a military supply depot. He also married again, and they had two sons. He retired around 1964 and passed away in 1971.

Son Ernest was one of the children who lived with Mina in Walla Walla after his parents split in 1920. Then, around 1925 or 1926, he moved to Seattle and worked his way up from salesman to owning a furniture store. He married three times, in 1927, 1943, and 1957. He and his first wife had three children. He stayed active in the furniture business until around 1953. He then operated a small-loans firm until he retired around 1967. An enthusiast for senior golf after retirement, he passed away in 1981, two weeks after suffering a heart attack during a Labor Day tournament.

Daughter Anne Marie also lived with Mina in Walla Walla, but moved to Seattle some time after 1920. She married in 1925, 1928, and 1934. She and her first husband had a daughter in 1926. Her third husband became disabled around 1937, so she had to support the family as a drapery seamstress. Her last husband died in 1960, and she passed away in February 1982.

The youngest daughter, Fredrica “Rica,” moved from Walla Walla to Seattle in time to graduate from high school there in 1925. She married a year later, but divorced and remarried in 1940-1941. Between the two, she had four children. Oddly enough, she married again in 1975, two weeks after she divorced her second husband. However, she died less than ten months later, on January 2, 1976.

William John E. Martin was almost certainly still in prison when Mina died at the end of 1943. However, he seems to have been out by 1945. Family memories state that he married a woman known as Martha in 1945, or perhaps 1948. They may have lived in Louisiana for a time, and also moved around some. Thus, it proved impossible to find a credible reference to him (them) in the 1950 U.S. Census. They eventually returned to Seattle, and Martin was staying with daughter Rica when he died on May 5, 1957. He was entombed in the same cemetery and mausoleum as Mina.
                                                                                

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

“[Blankenship-Martin Family Backgrounds],” News-Tribune, Tacoma, Union-Bulletin, Walla Walla, Post-Intelligencer, Seattle, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Star, Washington; Statesman-Journal, Salem, Oregon; Baltimore Sun, Maryland; Glasgow Courier, Montana; Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky (September 1906 – February 1982).

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

“[Milo-Pete Murders and Trial],” The Olympian, Olympia, News-Tribune, Tacoma, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Star, Washington (October 28, 1932 – October 13, 1933).

David Wilma, “Kitsap County – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (July 29, 2006).

"Evidence" photo source: True Detective Mysteries magazine, September 1936.

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