Obsession Leads to Murder

The “eternal (love) triangle” goes back in myth and legend at least to Helen of Troy and the Trojan War, and probably even before that. Whether in literature or real life, the story almost invariably ends badly for one or more members of the triad. Such was the case for Bernard, Lena, and Betty in the summer of 1938.

Bernard R. Leuch was born in 1898 near Council Bluffs, Iowa. The family moved into that city around 1905 and, for over a decade after 1910, Bernard’s father was a deputy sheriff and then constable there. During World War I, Bernard served overseas in the aviation corps as a private (meaning he was not taught how to fly).

After the war, he took a job as a farm hand in central South Dakota. Oddly enough, his parents moved nearby and would later be buried in a small town there, about 45 miles southwest of Pierre. (His mother died in 1922, his father in 1932.)

Around 1921, Bernard married Lena Esther Tobey. About a year younger than Bernard, Lena was born in Custer County, Nebraska, east and north of North Platte. However, by 1920, the Tobey family had moved to a farm located about 65 miles northwest of St. Cloud, Minnesota. We don’t know how Bernard and Lena met, and it’s uncertain where they were married. However, the 1930 census shows the couple in St. Cloud with four daughters and a son. Over the next five years, they had two more children, including an infant Bernard, Jr.

Despite the privations of the Depression, the year 1935 was a bright one for Bernard. In May, he finally landed a job with the St. Cloud police force. Bernard had been a guard at the state reformatory near the city for a while, and he had always wanted to be a part of regular law enforcement. Bernard performed well as a police officer at first, and “was known as the best pistol shot in the organization.”

His home situation, however, appears to have grown a bit rocky. He and Lena still lived together, but evidence strongly suggests that they no longer slept together. Having had seven children in fourteen years of marriage, they perhaps wanted to avoid having any more.

Then, Bernard attracted the attention of a pretty young woman. She worked as a ticket clerk and usher at a local theater. Both would later claim that she was “a friend of the family.” She even boarded with the Leuchs for about four months, in 1935 or 1936.

We actually know almost nothing about “Miss Betty Irwin” (as she was almost invariably identified in news report). She lived in St. Cloud in 1935 or 1936, and Olympia (Washington) in 1938. Beyond that, she was supposedly 26 years old in 1938, and claimed to have a brother living in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. An exhaustive search of genealogical records was performed using that information. Since “Betty” is often a nickname for someone named “Elizabeth,” the search included that also. The system turned up zero credible hits anywhere in the upper Midwest.

But suppose Betty lied about her age, and was only 17 or 18 years old when she first met Bernard? With that assumption, a search suddenly produced five hits just in Minnesota, with more in the adjoining states. Of course, there’s still no reliable way to identify which “Betty Irwin” might have been involved in this case. But the results provide strong circumstantial evidence that Bernard’s new girlfriend did not want to admit how young she really was.

Sadly, Bernard’s infatuation with Betty grew and grew. The affair reached the point where it severely impacted his job performance. Thus, after a civil service review, Leuch was dismissed from the police force in March 1937. Their stories about the next few months conflict and the differences cannot be easily reconciled. However, the final result was clear: By the fall, Bernard was working at a pulp mill near Shelton, Washington. Betty Irwin had also settled in a boarding house there and they resumed their liaison. (Shelton, the county seat of Mason County, is located about 15 miles northwest of Olympia.)

Betty later maintained that, through all this, she did not know Bernard was married. But then Lena and the children joined him in Shelton, “shortly before Christmas” of 1937. Finally, the real situation could not be ignored. Betty moved to Olympia and took a job as a theater usher. At some point, she also told Bernard that she’d have nothing more to do with him unless he divorced his wife. Nevertheless, it’s clear that their romance continued. He eventually agreed to get a divorce and, on May 20, Betty gave him money to help with the down payment on a home for them in Shelton.

Late on the afternoon of June 1, 1938, Bernard rushed to ask a neighbor to call the police. He had been on a trip downtime and returned to find Lena sprawled on a bed, dead. She had, he said, committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest. The death weapon was Bernard’s .38-caliber Colt automatic pistol. He had retrieved it from a pawn shop to strengthen his application for the job of Shelton police chief.

Mason County Courthouse. Mason County Historical Society.

The very next day, the Mason County prosecutor asked criminologist Luke S. May to investigate. The lack of powder burns or tattooing suggested right away that the pistol had not been fired close to the woman’s chest. The bullet had entered above the heart, followed a downward trajectory through her torso, and ended up lodged in the wall. May would need to make more tests, but suicide seemed unlikely. Bernard was immediately arrested on a murder charge.

Police interviews with the children and neighbors soon highlighted “a number of inconsistencies” in Bernard’s account. At some point, authorities learned of the love affair between Bernard and Betty Irwin. Thus, at the end of June, prosecutors stated that “a young Olympia woman” would “be an important witness at the trial.” They were not then willing to reveal her identity to the public.

The trial began on Monday, July 11, 1938, but five days passed before prosecutors put Betty on the stand. Naturally, her testimony about the long-standing affair caused a sensation, especially when she revealed that Bernard was “the father of her unborn child.” Bernard admitted that his wife had learned about the affair (it’s not entirely clear when, however). Moreover, they had quarreled about it earlier on the day of the shooting. But it was all Betty’s fault, he asserted. He had tried to break off the affair. She, however, had insisted and he could not resist her charms.

From start to finish, Bernard maintained that his wife had shot herself, either on purpose or accidentally. But by the time of the trial, Luke May and the police had been able to complete a full array of tests. The lack of powder residue on Lena clothes meant that the pistol had been discharged well away from her body. That and the bullet trajectory made suicide highly unlikely and an accident virtually impossible.

The jury convicted Bernard Leuch of first degree murder, with no recommendation for mercy. That made the subsequent death sentence mandatory. Leuch escaped from the Mason County jail to delay matters, but was recaptured in just a few days. After a failed appeal, Bernard was hanged at the Walla Walla penitentiary on August 4, 1939.
                                                                                

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

“[Leuch Murder News],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland; St. Cloud Times, Minnesota (June 2, 1938 – August 4, 1939)..

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

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Ambush in Algona

February 19, 1924 had been cloudy and cold, but not bad for the season. Harvey Smart had been late getting away from the store because a leaky refrigerator needed to be fixed. Still, the eight-block walk from his Algona Meat Market would have kept him nice and warm. And the lights as he approached home were surely a welcome glow in the gathering gloom.

Smart’s only warning was the crack of a pistol, then a bullet drilled into his body from behind. Then another. He tried to bring his revolver out and around before a third slug ripped into him and he collapsed to the ground.

Harvey C. Smart was 62 years old when someone ambushed and killed him. Born in Missouri, Smart moved to the area 10-15 miles east of Tacoma around 1896. He became a prosperous farmer, and then opened a meat market in Algona.

The gunshots quickly brought Smart’s wife, Mary, and two others to the scene. King County Sheriff Matt Starwich soon arrived to take charge. No one had seen anyone close by at the time, but deputies did find a set of fresh footprints pacing across a nearby field. Starwich put bloodhounds on the trail, but that led nowhere useful.

A key finding was that the meat shop receipts – a bundle of checks and over $200 cash – were still on Smart’s body. At the time, $200 would buy a well-equipped, recent-model used car, so that was no small sum to leave behind. The sheriff concluded that the incident was a “revenge” killing, rather than an attempted robbery. Based on that theory, Starwich and his deputies sought suspects who might want Smart dead for personal reasons.

One was a husband who supposedly thought Smart had been a bit too friendly with his wife when she called at the shop. That turned out to be an exaggeration, and the man apparently had an alibi anyway. Next up was a petty thief Smart had caught stealing potatoes from his warehouse some four or five years back. Smart had fired a warning shot that hit the intruder in the foot. Although the man was still in the area, that too turned out to be a dead end. Most ominously, they learned that Smart had recently bought beef from an unusual source. When Harvey began to suspect that the cattle had been rustled, one of the sellers warned him to keep his mouth shut.

Some time during this furor, the county hired criminologist Luke May to examine the death bullets. Authorities did not have a suspected weapon, but May could tell them what make and model they should look for. (The file for this old case is thin and incomplete, so we do not have the full report of his results.) Meanwhile, investigators canvassed the neighborhood for leads, but found nothing. A week or so after the murder, Mary Smart posted a $1,000 reward for information about the killing. All to no avail, and the case went cold.

Sheriff Starwich was competent and well-respected, but term limits prohibited him from running for office again at the end of 1926. Claude G. Bannick succeeded him. News reports did not explain why Sheriff Bannick decided to reopen the Smart murder case. But within days of taking office in January 1927, he assigned a special agent to it. He and the agent still mostly accepted the personal enemy theory. However, the agent seemed willing to broaden the notion of an “enemy.”

Over the next six weeks or so, the agent interviewed, and re-interviewed, an ever-widening circle of potential informants. Finally, in mid-March – over three years after the shooting – the sheriff jailed one Harry H. Longfield as a “material witness.” Longfield lived not too far from the Smarts and had been seen in the area on the night when Harvey had been shot. He had no apparent motive … but it was a lead. Longfield perhaps had some connection with rustlers in the area.

The King County grand jury met toward the end of March and testimony began to fill in the blanks. Investigators had interviewed Longfield’s wife Anna at the time of the murder. She said that she’d heard the shots, but had no idea of their significance. Others who heard them were also mostly unconcerned. Maybe someone was trying to scare off a wild animal.

The Longfields were a bit of an odd couple. Anna had been married to well-to-do dairy rancher Charles Paxson. He was from Ohio, she from Wisconsin. They had moved to the Algona area before 1910. The property became Anna’s when her husband died in late 1922. She was supposedly about 54 years old, but might have been older.

Harry Longfield, a former truck driver, was handsome and personable, and known to have “an eye for the ladies.” He worked at the Paxson ranch for a year or two before Anna’s husband passed away. Like Anna, he was originally from Wisconsin and had moved to Washington before 1910. Although he was at least 14 years younger that Anna, he persuaded her to marry him, “promising to give up other women.”

After several days of grand jury hearings, headlines noted that as many as four people might be implicated in the murder. But then the inquiry began to unravel. On April 7, after ten days of testimony from more than sixty witnesses, prosecutors admitted that they had nothing, and “the expected indictments might not be forthcoming.”

Anna Longfield. Harry Longfield after his release from jail.
(Seattle Times news images.)

However, behind the scenes, officials had been badgering one particular witness. They apparently still believed that Harry Longfield had something to do with Smart’s death and that Anna was trying to shield him. Readers all over the region were surely surprised by headlines on April 8th: Anna Longfield finally admitted that she had shot Smart, mistaking him for her husband.

Harry had proved to be an abusive spouse, especially when he’d been drinking. In fact, just weeks before the murder, Anna had told a neighbor that she had a gun and might just go out and shoot whoever was supplying his booze. But, worse than that, she had strong suspicions that he was still romancing at least one of his “former” lady friends.

Finally fed up, on the night of February 19, she had dressed in a man’s clothing and stationed herself where she expected Harry to come by. (It was never reported how she picked the spot.) Sadly, in the dim light of the evening, she had mistaken Harvey Smart for her husband. Only after he fell did she realize what she had done.

In the years since, the memory that she’d shot the wrong man tormented her, although not enough to give herself up. On a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota, she had pitched the death weapon into the Mississippi River. Initially charged with first degree murder, she eventually pled guilty to manslaughter and was given a five to ten year prison sentence. An appeal to the governor for clemency was denied. However, she was among a large block of prisoners granted executive paroles in October 1929.
                                                                                

References: Phil Dougherty, “Starwich, Matthew (1879-1941),” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (November 23, 2016).

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

“[Smart-Longfield News],” News-Tribune, Tacoma, Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Washington (October 1922 – October 1929).

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Lawless Men, Violent Deeds

What makes one person “go bad” when another, under reasonably comparable circumstances, does not? More than a century of research has yet to find any definitive answers. Nor do the lives of the two players in a fatal 1930 drama offer any special insights.

George Seldon Spencer was born in 1894, in Puyallup, Washington, about ten miles southeast of Tacoma. His father, a carpenter, died when George was around fifteen years old. By around 1915, he and his two brothers, William and Albert, had found work as longshoremen on the Tacoma docks. But in March of that year, George pled guilty to grand theft, auto. He received a stiff 15-year sentence to the state reformatory, but was out within a year or so. At first, George seemed to have learned his lesson, and became a star on a semi-pro baseball team made up of longshoremen.

But he had not cut his ties with the underworld. In early 1918, Tacoma police arrested him for aiding in an escape from the Pierce County jail. When the case came to trial, the jury took less than a half hour to find him guilty of “harboring a criminal.” The judge imposed a 2 to 10 year sentence, and the 1920 census found him languishing in prison at Walla Walla. He apparently served around four years of his term.

Elliott Lyons was born about a decade after George Spencer, in Kentucky. His mother died a year or so later and the family fragmented some. Elliott was living with an uncle at the time of the 1910 census. His father remarried in 1912. Soon, the family reassembled and moved together to Tacoma, where the father opened a cigar store. However, for whatever reasons, the store did not enjoy long-term success.

By the 1920 census, Elliott’s father was working in a shipyard as well as driving a dairy truck. An older son had also found a shipyard job. A year later, when Elliott was about 17 years old, his father died.

Elliott first made the news on Christmas of 1924, after he was arrested for a public disturbance brought on by liquor. In the “spirit of the season,” a police detective had released the young man after a few hours in jail. Elliott promptly tracked down the arresting officer and challenged him to take off his badge and fight. Forbearance ended right there, and Elliott went back to the clink.

By 1928, Elliott no longer had much contact with his stepmother and siblings. He also seems to have become quite familiar with the seamy side of life. He even had a nickname: “Bones.” Although often associated with dice and floating craps games, the moniker can also have far more sinister connotations. Thus, young as he was, he had the reputation of being a dangerous man. He was certainly known as a “bad drunk,” becoming testy and argumentative when he was liquored up. Whether or not the “dangerous” label went beyond that is not clear.

Tacoma Boardinghouse, ca. 1926. Tacoma Public Library.

In any case, word on the street was that he’d been involved in a number of shady deals under phony names. Elliott did spend time in jail for various minor offenses, but he’d never been caught in anything big. Thus, his name was not particularly familiar to police.

That disclaimer did not, however, apply to George Spencer. Over the years since his release from prison, he had been in and out of jail quite a few times. Most were for liquor law violations, or disorderly conduct when he over-indulged in his product. Thus, newspaper reports would refer to him as a “well known police character.” Some time before the spring of 1930 George and Elliott became friendly enough to be drinking buddies.

It’s worth mentioning that George’s brothers were still gainfully employed as longshoremen. Albert had even been promoted to foreman. Meanwhile, Elliot’s older brother had followed their dad’s path into the dairy business and was doing quite well.

On April 2, 1930, the drinking started in the afternoon at a roadhouse near Tacoma. The cook there later testified that “Bones” started the ball rolling with his own bottle of moonshine. He shared most of that with Spencer and three others, including the cook. George and Elliott went on from there to other hot spots where they could get more booze. By that evening, Elliott was too drunk to drive. He might have also slipped into his bad drunk phase. The details of what happened next can never be known with any certainty.

At around 11 o’clock that night, Elliot stumbled into a gas station on the southern edge of Tacoma. Before passing out, he gasped to the attendant that he’d been shot. An urgent call brought a police ambulance. By the time they arrived at the hospital, authorities knew that the shooting had actually taken place outside the city limits, so a deputy sheriff had been dispatched.

At the hospital, Elliott refused to tell the deputy who shot him. He did say it happened during an argument over a bottle of booze. At the peak of the argument, the other fellow had pulled out a gun and shot him. Fearing another bullet, Elliott had opened the car door and fallen out. After the shooter drove off and left him there, he made it to his feet and stumbled to the gas station.

Finally, during pre-op for surgery, Elliott told the doctor and a nurse that George Sheldon was the shooter. The wounded man was reported to be “resting easily” in the morning after the bullet was removed. Sadly, complications developed during the afternoon and he died that evening. Now the charge was murder, and the hunt for George went into high gear.

The intense search caused no end of trouble for George’s “associates” in the moonshine and bootlegging business. About a week after the shooting, he finally gave himself up. George claimed that Elliott had gone crazy from the booze. He was sure a young woman they had visited had a record player stolen from his apartment. To retrieve it, he wanted to borrow George’s gun … and George refused. The revolver was in a side pocket of the car and in the ensuing struggle, the weapon went off and Elliott was wounded.

The case log for criminologist Luke May stated that he was initially contracted to examine the death bullet. Verification that the missile came from a specific weapon would have been routine by that time, but news accounts imply that officials never found George’s revolver.

Those reports also do not mention when the “death car” was recovered from where George had hidden it. That would have probably been at least a week after the shooting, complicating the assessment of whatever bloodstains were found in the vehicle. Still, the analysis of the bloodstains and Elliott’s wound apparently cast serious doubt on George’s story of an accidental discharge.

The case went to trial in June. Right at the opening, with the jury sent out of the courtroom, the defense scored a major – arguably, the winning – point. Technically, they declared, Elliott’s statement to hospital personnel that George Spencer had shot him was only hearsay, not admissible as a “dying statement.” He had made it to the hospital and a doctor was about to operate. Thus, it could not truly be said that he thought he was about to die. Moreover, he had survived for many hours after he was out of surgery. Under “the rules of the game,” the judge agreed and disallowed that bit of evidence. The jury produced one 7-5 vote for conviction, but then deadlocked at 6-6.

The second trial, in November, opened with a crucial difference. For the first trial, county prosecutors did not know exactly what Elliott had said during the ride to the hospital. Turned out, the driver and a Tacoma policeman (both city personnel) told the victim that his wound looked really bad. He was probably going to die anyway. Why not tell them who did it? Elliott then stated that George had shot him. He clammed up at the hospital when it looked like he might make it after all.

The second trial resulted in a guilty verdict, although the jury did reduce the charge from second degree murder to manslaughter. Prosecutors then insisted that George – with three felony conviction on his record – should be given a life sentence under Washington’s “habitual criminal” law. While the judge mulled that decision, George escaped from the Pierce County jail. He remained on the run for about a fortnight. Then the judge did indeed impose a life sentence.

As a matter of some interest, George’s brothers had long, humdrum careers as Tacoma longshoremen. Ironically, the older brother of Bones Lyons joined the Tacoma police department in 1933 and spent the next thirty-two years on the force, retiring as a detective.
                                                                                

References: “[Early Law Trouble for Spencer and Lyons],” Tacoma Daily Ledger, Tacoma Times, Tacoma News-Tribune, Washington (March 1915 – December 1924).

“[Elliott ‘Bones’ Lyons Shot, Spencer Pursued],” Seattle Times, Tacoma News-Tribune, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Washington (April 3-9, 1930).

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

“[Spencer Murder Trials and Aftermath],” Daily Olympian, Olympia; Tacoma News-Tribune, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Washington (June 10, 1930 – January 20, 1931).

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Snoqualmie Valley Shootout

Theodore “Ted” Lawshe had a thirst for new experiences, and was fascinated by the “glamor” of detective work. Had he survived to settle down, he might have accomplished something along those lines. But violence cut him down young.

The Lawshe family moved from Iowa to Jerome, Idaho, some time before 1909. Ted was about twenty years old in 1917, when he married a local girl. Nine months later, he entered the U.S. Navy for duty in World War I. Sadly, his wife died from the “Spanish influenza” in late 1918.

The following summer, he remarried in Pocatello. Over the next several years, he lived in Pocatello, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Tacoma, and back in Jerome. During some of that period, he worked part-time on undercover assignments for a detective agency. That led him into a wide variety of jobs, including garage mechanic, logger, machinist, and ranch hand. Probably upset by such an unstable life, his second wife returned to her family in Utah and divorced him in September 1922. About a year later, Ted married a woman in Tacoma. But she too grew impatient with his peripatetic ways and they separated after a few months.

In the summer of 1924, Ted had a job in Seattle. Then Jack Bench, a man he’d met in Tacoma, came to him with a proposal. A fellow he knew needed someone to help him rob the bank in the small town of Carnation, located about ten miles east of Redmond. Bench would drive the getaway car, which they could borrow from Bench’s brother-in-law. But they needed someone to hold a gun on the bank employees and customers while the other collected the loot.

No one ever explained why Bench thought Lawshe might be open to such a proposition, but Ted saw it as a golden opportunity. Yet a meeting with the scheme’s mastermind, who went by the name of Daniel Malone (aka A. J. Brown), made him doubtful. Malone boasted about an easy street robbery he’d pulled off. On the other hand, word was that his attempt at a restaurant holdup failed because he couldn’t get the cash register open.

Still, he seemed deadly serious about the bank heist. He had tried it by himself, going so far as to cut the bank’s phone line. Then the bank suddenly got crowded, so he backed off. But the setup was perfect: No cops around, not even a town constable. Ted decided to play along and “get the dope” about their caper.

He discussed the notion with George Gannon, operator of a detective agency he had worked for. Gannon advised him to get out of it … tell them he had “got cold feet.” But Ted was determined to foil the plan, perhaps hoping it would land him a job as a full-time detective. Gannon had always found Lawshe to be “honest and trustworthy.” Thus, he agreed to act as a go-between for Ted with King County Sheriff Matt Starwich.

Four deputies met with Ted to learn the details, and no doubt to judge his veracity. Satisfied by the results, the sheriff devised a simple plan. He and six deputies would catch the bandits in the act. “Tough as nails” but flamboyant, Starwich could be counted on to provide colorful copy for the press. Nor was he averse to the publicity … sheriff was an elective office, after all. He tipped off contacts at the various Seattle newspapers and invited them along.

They all drove over to Carnation on the morning of August 13, 1924. To avoid attracting attention, they parked out of sight on the outskirts and filtered into town. Starwich himself took an out-of-the way path; he was too well known to escape recognition. Bank officials had been alerted and a female vice president replaced the regular teller. Three deputies hid in a back room while Starwich and the other deputies were in a shed across the street. The heist was scheduled for 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

After three hours of edgy, and then bored waiting, officers saw the robbers drive slowly by the bank. They were running a few minutes late, but everything looked okay. The car returned and stopped in front of the bank, and Malone and Ted got out. Bench stayed behind the wheel with the motor running. Just after the two entered the bank, officers rushed over. Starwich yanked the driver out and slugged him while the deputies deployed across the front. Inside, the other deputies sprang from hiding with guns drawn and told the would-be robber to give it up.

Ignoring the odds, Malone opened fire – and all Hell broke loose. Deputies inside and out began shooting, some of them quite wildly. Splinters sprayed from all the woodwork, one front window was blown out, and holes were punched in the others. The teller ran and hid in the vault. Meanwhile, Ted stood near the front with his gun up but pointed at nothing. That is, he stood there until he went down from two gunshots.

Malone kept firing even after he fell to the floor. Finally, a shotgun blast stopped him. Then he quickly died. It was estimated that the shooters fired off over fifty rounds, about a dozen of which hit Malone. Besides the two wounds to Ted, one deputy was hit in the thigh by a stray round. He recovered, but Ted died that evening.

The fracas drew mixed reviews, although most reactions were positive. Early reports claimed that Malone had somehow deduced Ted’s betrayal and shot him. But that scenario seemed a bit unlikely, given that the bandit was trying to defend himself against six different shooters.

At the subsequent inquest, testimony easily showed that Malone had died resisting arrest. He was buried as “Daniel Colonel Malone,” apparently the name on his union card for the International Workers of the World. That was all officials knew about him. Even today, despite the unusual middle name, one can find nothing in the public record except his death certificate. We might reasonably assume that “Malone” was just another alias.

Bank right after the shoot-out. Seattle Daily Times photo.

The death of Ted Lawshe led to days of argument. That intensified when George Gannon offered testimony about Ted’s role as an impromptu undercover agent. Still, all six deputies insisted that they had not fired at him. Malone had to have done it. On August 19, the inquest jurors demanded that authorities have the death bullet – only one had been recovered – examined to see what weapon it came form.

Three days later, criminologist Luke S. May appeared on the stand. In his expert opinion, he stated, the fatal bullet was fired from a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber Special revolver. As it happened, the only such weapon involved in the shoot-out was one that Sheriff Starwich had loaned to a deputy. That determined, the coroner’s jury ruled that Ted’s death was an unfortunate accident, sparked by the intense action at the bank. Ted’s father came during the inquest and afterwards returned the young man’s body to Jerome for burial.
                                                                                

References: “[Attempted Bank Robbery in Carnation],” Seattle Times, Washington (August 14-26, 1924).

Phil Dougherty, “King County Sheriff Matt Starwich and posse thwart a bank robbery … ,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (March 25, 2013).

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

Christine Savage Palmer, Historic Overview: Carnation, Washington, King County Cultural Resources Division, Seattle, Washington (September 1995).

“[Ted Lawshe News from Jerome],” Lincoln County Times, Jerome, Idaho (November 1917 – January 1919).

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Almost a Triple Murder

Pomeroy, Washington was (and still is) a small, quiet farm town, about 45 miles northeast of Walla Walla. It is, in fact, the only incorporated town in Garfield County, the least populated county in the state. As you could expect, it is also the county seat. But an evening in the spring of 1924 proved that violence could strike anywhere.

Garfield County Courthouse, Pomeroy, Washington.
Vintage postcard

Henry and Barbara Waldman came to the U.S. from Germany – Henry in 1880, his future wife ten years later. Unfortunately, available records do not show Barbara’s maiden name. They married in 1894 and had their one son about a year later. By 1910, they were farming in the Pomeroy area. Crops suitable for the region were wheat, barley, and potatoes, and stockmen also raised cattle and sheep. There is some evidence that the Waldmans mainly raised wheat. Over the years, they added more and more acreage to their holdings.

But Henry died in December 1923, leaving Barbara and son Alfred to run the farm. She did have one source of contentment. Finally, at the age of 32, Alfred had gotten married, and to a nice German girl who had once lived just five doors away. Twenty-two years old, Ida Behlau was the second oldest daughter in a family that had come to Pomeroy straight from Germany in 1909. The father died three years later, but the mother had married a local man the following year. Ida left the area in late 1922 or early 1923.

Then, in March 1924, she returned to Pomeroy and quickly married Alfred, on the 19th. Available news reports don’t say that the two had courted before, but that seems highly likely. The marriage was performed in Lewiston, Idaho, about 28 miles east of Pomeroy. As we’ll see, that was most likely to complete the ceremony as soon as possible. After the wedding, they had rejoined Mother Waldman at the farm.

Thursday, April 3 was cool, in the mid- to high-forties, with a breeze from the southwest. That evening, Alfred walked to the door to answer a knock. The stranger standing outside said, “Here’s a letter for you.”

Curious, Ida had followed him. Looking over his shoulder, she screamed. The stranger instantly shot her husband, and then her. Knowing only that something was terribly wrong, Barbara Waldman hurried toward the telephone … and the man shot her too. The door closed, and she tried again to reach the phone. Moments later, the killer returned, shot her four more times, then left.

Despite her wounds, Barbara found the phone and gasped out the awful news. In short order, every man in Pomeroy, armed with rifles and shotguns, was out looking for the shooter. Luckily, the stranger had asked several people how to get to the Waldman place, so officials were soon able to put out his description. Ralph M. Waller was captured the very next day in Lewiston.

The day after that, the Garfield County sheriff hurriedly transferred his prisoner to the state prison at Walla Walla to avoid a possible lynching. Even before he was moved, Waller confessed freely to the shootings and told a bizarre story. The strange account would need verification for the jury trial required for a capital crime. Thus, on April 8, officials contracted with criminologist Luke S. May to investigate. The next day, May was in Walla Walla to hear Waller’s story first-hand.

He then set out to assess the account, along with other evidence officials had collected. That included Waller’s weapon as well as some torn-up letters. Authorities hoped he’d find fingerprints on the letters, but none could be retrieved. However, May’s analysis of the handwriting and content showed that the letters had been written by Ida (Behlau) Waldman and addressed to Waller. Her words supported, and added to, Ralph’s narrative.

Born around 1890 in German Bohemia, Waller probably came to this country as a child. When he grew up, he worked mostly in Butte, Montana, as a miner. But he also moved around a lot, including trips out to California. News reports did not say if he was seeking better-paying work, liked to visit scattered family members, or simply had a bit of wanderlust.

In February 1921, Ralph married Ida’s older (by a year) sister Lucille. The ceremony took place in Spokane and it’s not clear that anyone else in the family had actually met Ralph. In any case, Ida visited the couple in Butte about a year or so after the marriage. Ralph discovered he liked the sister better than his wife, and she was attracted to him. No one ever explained what the living arrangements became after that. However, by the end of 1923, Ida and Ralph had an “understanding” that she would marry him as soon as Lucille gave him a divorce.

The following spring, Ralph and Ida left Lucille in California and headed north. They separated at some point, and Ralph went on to Butte. Ida, of course, returned to Pomeroy and married Alfred. Ralph called that a “double-cross” of their “agreement.” However, her letters to him showed that, as May put it in his report, “Ida was evidently in a delicate condition through living with Waller.”

May’s notes do not suggest how far advanced she was in her pregnancy. Still, she surely must have decided she did not have time for Ralph to get a divorce. But Ralph was infuriated when he heard the news and raced back. Along the way, he bought a gun in a small town about 30 miles from Pomeroy (easily traced, later). May quickly verified the death weapon, including one particular feature. The action was cranky and the gun would sometimes misfire. He asked Waller about that, and the killer agreed that “it did not always fire the cartridge the first time he pulled the trigger.”

Since the evidence was so conclusive, May did not feel they would need him at the trial. (A considerable savings for the county, since May charged $100 per day, plus expenses, when he had to appear in court.) Authorities originally planned to expedite the trial. However, they held off a few weeks when doctors said that Barbara Waldman, a tough pioneer lady, would soon recover enough to testify in court.

The trial was the expected formality, and Waller refused to appeal. The killer went to the gallows on the morning of June 27, 1924, less than three months after the shooting.
                                                                                

References: Paula Becker, “Pomeroy – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (September 24, 2010).

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

“[Waldman Murder News],” Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (April 4, 1924 – June 27, 1924).

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Shooting Death in Pasco

Times were tough in the summer of 1935. Tough everywhere and even more so in Pasco, Washington. For Pasco was a railroad town and the Great Depression hit railroad companies especially hard, with many of them going under. Those hard times were probably at least partly to blame for a tragedy early on the morning of August 6th.

A couple hours before sunrise, two patients arrived at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. There was a connection between the men’s injuries, but no one knew quite what it was. Isaac I. “Ike” Turya had been shot in the abdomen and was near death. As quickly as possible, surgeons worked to repair the damage, hoping to preserve his life. The other patient, Earl B. Mooney, did not have life-threatening wounds. Still, he had been badly beaten, with severe contusions around the eyes.

Originally from Minnesota, Turya had briefly served in the Army during World War I. He, his wife, and a son arrived in Pasco around 1919. A Kentuckian, Mooney and his wife moved to Pasco some time before 1920. When the 1920 census was recorded, both men worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Turya, then aged 22, was a brakeman, while Mooney, age 38, was a rail yard switchman.

Northern Pacific Steam Locomotive.
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association.

The two were friends for many years after that. However, the relationship had apparently cooled by the early thirties. At about that time, Turya’s wife divorced him and remarried. Meanwhile, Mooney and his wife had become estranged. At least Turya still had his job with the railroad. Mooney did not, but we don’t know whether he had been laid off (most likely) or terminated for other reasons.

Although badly wounded, Turya lived about five days and gave a strange account at first. Around 2 o’clock in the morning, Turya said, he had walked home after a night on the town. At his doorstep, a masked gunman robbed him and then forced him to walk toward the edge of town. Fearful for his life, he had turned suddenly and punched the follower. That dislodged the mask, revealing the thief to be Mooney. But, even as Turya struck, Mooney shot him. Despite his wound, the much younger Turya proceeded to beat Mooney senseless. He then stumbled toward his home, but did not quite make it. He came to in the hospital.

Mooney told a different story. He too had been out late and happened to run into Turya near the latter’s home. They began a conversation while walking along the street away from Turya’s place. Then, Mooney said, some remark of his caused Turya to turn and slug him. When Mooney began to get the worst of the ensuing fight, he pulled out a revolver and tried to beat Turya with it. They scuffled over the weapon, which went off and wounded Turya. Even so, Turya knocked Mooney down and out. When Mooney came to, he staggered back to Turya’s place, found him outside on the ground, and called an ambulance.

These conflicting accounts had everybody puzzled. One of the first newspaper articles said, “Trouble is said to have been over liquor.” But then the story changed to one where the two argued “over private matters, which both men refused to disclose.” Finally, during the trial, Mooney asserted that Turya had made an offensive remark about Mooney’s estranged wife. The ensuing fight ended with Turya shot “accidentally,” and Mooney unconscious on the ground.

None of the accounts mentioned how the revolver ended up in an alley near Turya’s home. Turya may have grabbed the weapon to keep Mooney from using it again, then tossed it as he neared home. Or Mooney still had it when he came to and followed Turya, but slung it into the alley at the last. In any case, the sheriff found it there during his investigation. At the trial, criminologist Luke S. May testified that a bullet from that weapon had killed Turya.

Authorities prosecuted Mooney for both robbery and first degree murder. The jury labored over the verdict for many hours, trying to sort out what happened. It appears they quickly discounted the supposed robbery, finding little to support that story. However, the inarguable fact remained that Mooney had shot and killed a man during what started as a fist fight. The jury finally said “not guilty” on the robbery charge and reduced the other to a second degree murder conviction.

Mooney was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and his appeal was denied. However, he served a much reduced time, being back in Pasco to register for the World War II draft in the summer of 1943.
                                                                                

References: Susan Davis Faulkner, Images of America: Early Pasco, © Susan Davis Faulkner, Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina (2009).

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

State v. Mooney, 185 Wash. 681, 56 P.2d 722 (1936).

“[Turya Shot by Mooney, Mooney Charged],” The Oregonian, Portland (August 12-17, 1935).

“[Trial and Conviction of Mooney for Turya Murder],” Olympian, Olympia; Seattle Times, Washington (November 13-18).

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Mercer Island Murder

King County Sheriff Matt Starwich first learned of trouble on Mercer Island via a phone call from former deputy Albert Bailey. Bailey said that Adolph Boos was headed for Seattle to surrender himself to the sheriff. Boos had been in a fight and the other man had been killed. The date was May 12, 1923.

Mercer Island – not quite five miles long and a bit over six square miles in area – sits in the middle of Lake Washington, east of Seattle. There was no bridge back then, and ferry service was minimal, forcing Boos to summon a launch that operated between Rainier Beach and points on Mercer.

Early Mercer Island, Seattle Public School Histories.

Boos was badly battered and bruised. He told a rather odd story. About 2 o’clock in the afternoon, he’d been working near the shoreline in front of his house when he heard a commotion out back. Boos rushed around the house where, he said, the door had been broken open. Inside, he found Joseph C. Smith, who threatened him with a shotgun. Boos desperately grabbed the barrel and they wrestled over the gun. He avoided a first blast, fired in the kitchen, and then they somehow ended up outside. After a good half hour of struggle, Boos said, “Smith managed to load the gun again; I don’t know how, and it was fired again and he was hit.”

But that story proved to be literally unbelievable. At the death scene, officers discovered a .38-caliber revolver on the ground, five or six feet from Smith’s body. It had been fired once. Where did that fit in?  They also found a single empty 12-gauge shotgun shell in the yard. But there was no sign that the gun had been fired anywhere inside the house. And even a cursory look showed that Smith had not been shot at close range. Boos tried several explanations of these discrepancies, none of which were very convincing. He probably blamed his lack of consistency on how badly he’d been beaten.

Authorities interviewed several people they thought might have relevant information, including Bailey and Smith’s ex-wife. The results showed that there was far more to the story than just “a fight.” Thus, six days after the shooting, King County prosecutors charged Boos with murder.

Boos held out for several weeks, but finally told an even more bizarre story. It was all Bailey’s doing. He had killed Smith and induced Boos to confess to the self-defense shooting. Boos first said that Bailey had hypnotized him into the confession. When that didn’t quite fly, he “admitted” that Bailey (not Smith) had beaten him up, and threatened to kill him.

As it happened, officers had also begun to suspect that there was something fishy about Bailey’s role in the incident. During different interviews, he had changed his account of key details on the day of the shooting. Beyond that, some of his statements conflicted with those of witnesses who had been in the general area. That included two who had seen him on the trail that led to the Boos place shortly after they saw Smith headed the same way. Bailey was arrested and charged with murder on the evening of June 22.

Boos had purchased the revolver from a Seattle pawn shop. The weapon had been delivered to his home around noon on the day of the shooting. Yes, I bought it, Boos said, but that was Bailey’s idea … to use it to kill Smith. Bailey admitted to being at the house when the gun was delivered, unwrapped, and loaded. But he denied everything else. From there, claims and counter-claims swirled into a maelstrom of contradictions.

A week after Bailey’s arrest, prosecutors hired Luke May to investigate further and try to reconstruct what actually happened. Together, May and the sheriff uncovered several oddities in the links among the three men. Born in Michigan, Boos had moved to Seattle around 1908 with his wife and daughter. He was about 53 years old at the time of the shooting.

Albert M. Bailey had been born in Kansas, moved to Seattle in 1914, and married two years after that. He was 43 years old in 1923. Smith being such a common name, it’s more difficult to learn a lot about Joseph C. He married during the summer of 1920 but was divorced within a couple years or so. Smith was 40 years old at the time of his death.

The common thread might have started with work at a shipyard. Bailey definitely had a shipyard job in 1920 and later, and Boos probably so. Smith was a skilled mold-maker and could have found work at a shipyard foundry. In any case, investigators uncovered evidence that the three were engaged in a joint bootlegging venture. There were other indications that Boos and Bailey, and perhaps even Smith, had been part of a conspiracy to burn down structures to collect the insurance money.

The revolver turned out to be something of a dead end. No one had been wounded by the weapon and it was not possible to locate the bullet that had been fired. Oddly enough, we have no information about where the other gun came from. Neither Smith nor Bailey carried a shotgun when they were seen on the path to Boos’s place. May identified it as a semi-automatic shotgun, which could hold four rounds in its magazine. Boos’s statement that Smith “somehow” reloaded after a claimed first shot would indicate that he knew nothing about how the weapon worked.

There was no mention of fingerprints on the shotgun. That would have been a key finding if they confirmed that Boos had grasped the barrel at an odd angle. Either officers had mishandled that piece of evidence (certainly possible in that era), or the weapon had been wiped clean.

May’s assessment showed that the shotgun had been fired from the door of the house, with light shot buried in the wall of a woodshed located against the back of the house. The coroner judged that Smith had been injured by the pellets that hit him, but those alone would not have been immediately fatal. He had, in the end, died by strangulation.

Both Boos and Bailey had cause to dislike or fear Smith. Before the shooting, Smith had told his lawyer that there had been at least two acts of arson on the island. He hoped soon to have more details. As it happened, some time earlier, fire had destroyed most of the Boos home and Smith had been helping rebuild it. But a few days before the shooting, Boos had the sheriff issue a writ to keep Smith off his property. Ironically, he claimed he wanted the order because Smith had a secret still on the island and kept bringing moonshine around.

Both men owed Smith money and had openly quarreled with him about it. Added to that, a few days before the shooting, Bailey argued with Smith about something, and Bailey’s wife had been knocked off a dock into the water.

The minutiae of what followed would not make interesting reading. Suffice to say, vague or conflicting evidence and muddled testimony from Boos were not enough for a jury to convict Bailey of anything.

When it was Boos’ turn, his lawyer arranged a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter, for which Boos received a sentence of 5 to 20 years in prison. Then, because of an earlier agreement in return for testifying against Bailey, he spent only three years in the penitentiary. Significantly, Boos was convicted of arson for burning down his Mercer Island home in 1931. He did not spend much time in prison for that, however. In late 1935, he was at home in Seattle and committed suicide.

We can never know exactly what happened on that fateful day in 1923. Still, the evidence suggests a few likely scenarios. We’ll go with the simplest, starting with Smith at the Boos place, alone with two men who had reason to want him out of the way.

Recall that Boos was basically clueless about the shotgun. Most likely then, Boos first tried to shoot Smith with the revolver. If he had no experience with a handgun, a miss was not unexpected, even from as close as five or six feet. (May would later discuss this kind of situation in his “true crime” column.) It is also at least plausible that the blast of noise and recoil caused him to lose his grip on the gun.

Bailey probably fired the shotgun as soon as he saw his partner’s attempt fail. The pellets incapacitated Smith enough so he could be choked to death. Boos was close by, while Bailey had shot from the door of the house. Thus, in this scenario, Boos pounced immediately on their victim. But Smith was fighting for his life … and severely battered his assailant before he died.

There’s no definitive way to explain the impossible account that Boos initially gave the sheriff. Before Boos turned himself in, he and Bailey surely concocted some sort of explanation that made sense. However, between his battered condition and the turmoil of the moment, Boos may have simply forgotten his lines. He then made up a story on the spot, “improving” it with dramatic details. That was his undoing … at least to the extent of three years in prison.
                                                                                

References: “[Boos - Bailey - Smith News],” Seattle Times, Washington (May 1923 – December 1935).

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

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