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.
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| 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.
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| 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). . |
