An Abundance of Evidence

Despite much testimony, newspapers never did report what occasion prompted the beer party on the afternoon of Thursday, September 20, 1934. Clarence Arnold, a seed company employee, hosted the get-together at a cabin near Bozeman, Montana. We also don’t know how many men were there, although probably at least six to eight. Most likely they had gathered to chew the fat about hunting. Seasons were open for a wide variety of game, although some were restricted to specific days.

With so much beer flowing, an altercation seems almost inevitable: James Deskin, a farm hand and part-time auto mechanic, called visitor William Kelly a “vile name.” When the epithet was repeated, Kelly slapped Deskin in the face, twice. Kelly, although somewhat disabled and over 47 years old, was a big man, easily dominating Deskin, who was about 36. Then Clarence stepped in as a peace-maker and the two seemed to put aside the dispute. They even shook hands.

Shortly before 4:30 p.m., Deskin suggested that he, Clarence, and Kelly hunt grouse at a place he knew just south of town. The day was chilly – in the high forties – but fair and sunny. The light snow that had fallen the previous evening had melted and the soft ground should show any fresh tracks.

Ruffed Grouse.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

About a mile and a half south of downtown Bozeman, Deskin pulled to a stop on a secluded track – known locally as a “lovers’ lane.” Clarence stayed in the back seat while Kelly got out to take a look. Deskin circled behind the car, stepped up behind the big man, and fired his shotgun into his victim’s head and neck. Kelly was killed instantly, and Deskin growled, “No [blankety-blank] can slap me and get away with it.”

William J. Kelly was born in 1887 in Lakeville, Minnesota, about 22 miles south of Minneapolis. He was working at a flour mill when he enlisted in the Army in 1918. His unit, the 330th Machine Gun Battalion, fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive that helped capture the vital railway hub at Sedan just before the Armistice. He was shot in the face, but recovered enough to stay in the Army for some time after his return. Kelly also had a disabled foot, but it’s not clear whether that was battle-related or happened in his later service.

His whereabouts for over a decade are difficult to reliably trace. He next appears in September 1931, when he was cited for a liquor law violation in Butte, Montana. He later had a couple of liquor violations in Helena. Then, on April 18, 1934, the Fort Harrison veterans’ hospital in Helena, Montana admitted him as a patient. There, he met Clarence Arnold.

Clarence Sylvester Arnold was born in 1891 in southwestern Missouri. He moved to Montana some time after 1910 and got married in Bozeman in late 1916. Clarence served briefly in the U.S. Navy during the World War but apparently did not see action. After that, he had various jobs in and around Bozeman. He suffered from Raynaud’s Syndrome, a rare circulatory disease that may have adversely impacted his heart. Clarence and his family were in Bozeman for the 1930 census, but he apparently traveled to the veterans’ hospital for periodic checkups and treatment.

James Deskin also lived in or near Bozeman, although we don’t know how he and Clarence were connected. He too was born in Missouri, in 1898, but not anywhere near where Clarence grew up. Born James Lloyd Dennis, he adopted his stepfather’s last name after his mother remarried some time before 1910. The family moved to Bozeman between 1910 and 1914. He enlisted in the Army but, like Clarence, served only briefly during the war and did not see action (or even leave the U.S.). Deskin married in 1926 and the couple had a daughter the following year. In 1929, he was arrested for car theft in Livingston, but spent only four months in jail. He and his family were back in Bozeman for the 1930 census.

As noted above, Clarence invited Deskin and Kelly, along with several others, to his beer party. Medical personnel stated that Kelly was “on furlough” from the hospital at the time. After his body was found, officials at first thought he had been a robbery victim. For reasons that never made the news, Clarence did not immediately report the shooting. He told his story only after he, Deskin, and two or three other men from the beer party were arrested.

By this time, criminologist Luke S. May had processed over two hundred death cases, including nearly twenty in Montana. Five years earlier, he had presided over the “most successful” annual meeting of the Northwest Association of Sheriffs and Police … which was held in Missoula. Somehow his teachings found their way to the officer in charge, Sheriff Lovitt I. Westlake.

Westlake was a typical sheriff for his time and place. Born in Iowa in 1896, he was farming near Bozeman when he signed up for the draft in 1917. He served with a veterinary unit in France during the War, then returned in April 1919. He continued in farming until voters elected him Gallatin County sheriff, his term starting in 1933. (He held that job for fourteen years, then served two terms in the state legislature.)

Early on, Sheriff Westlake had the presence of mind to call for May’s help. He and his deputies ended up with valuable physical evidence to support what Clarence said happened. Prosecutors charged James Deskin with first degree murder just four days after the shooting.

The trial began in Bozeman on November 21. As usual, the prosecution began with a review of the events on the day of the murder, suggesting means, motive, and opportunity. The shotgun wound was the obvious means, and the slapping incident provided the motive. Opportunity came with the notion, proposed by Deskin, to do a little hunting. Testimony from the coroner and from party guests – significantly, not including Clarence Arnold – confirmed these facts about the incident.

Next, in an interesting “tactical” move, the prosecution began presenting their “circumstantial” – that is, physical – evidence. Splatters were detected on Deskin’s car and on his shoes, and analysis proved them to be human blood. A footprint cast was very similar to one of Deskin’s shoes, and tire prints at the death scene matched his car. Last but not least, Luke May took the stand to testify that an empty shell found at the scene had been fired by Deskin’s shotgun.

Finally, Clarence gave his eye-witness testimony about the shooting. Oddly enough, news reports say nothing about the cross-examination by the defense. Presumably they did cross-examine him, but that apparently produced no fireworks. When their turn came, the defense countered with a witness who claimed to have seen the victim in downtown Bozeman an hour after the time of the shooting. That sighting could not be corroborated, however.

They next called Mrs. Grace Deskin as a witness. Under oath, she testified that after the party her husband had been with her either at home or “uptown,” all evening. The defense didn’t seem to bother with the matching footprints at the death scene. Nor did they address the spots of human blood on Deskin’s shoes. They perhaps hoped that the jury would consider all this new-fangled stuff too strange, and just ignore it.

James Deskin.
Montana Prison Records.

Oddly enough, the wife did attempt an explanation for the blood spots and tire prints that placed their car at the scene: Arnold and another party guest had borrowed the vehicle after they had all driven to the Deskins’ home. The empty shotgun shell? Well, any number of people could have borrowed the weapon from their home, or the “real” perpetrator could have planted the shell at the scene.

The jury didn’t buy any of the defense claims and took perhaps four hours to reach a “guilty” verdict. They did not, however, recommend the death penalty requested by the prosecution. Deskin was sentenced to life in prison. The wealth of evidence in this case led Luke May to do an “as told to” article for True Detective Mysteries magazine in its issue for February 1936.

Not quite three years after the trial ended, Clarence Arnold passed away at the Fort Harrison veterans’ hospital. Cause of death was listed as a heart attack, with Raynaud’s Disease as a contributory factor.

Some time before the summer of 1936, James and Grace Deskin divorced, although available records do not show exactly when. But in July 1942, Deskin’s life sentence was commuted to 20 years. He was almost immediately released from prison, having served less than eight years on the first-degree murder conviction. Grace and James remarried little over a month later, and soon moved to Wenatchee, Washington. Grace died in the summer of 1965 and James married again two years later. He passed away in 1979.

Although the veterans’ hospital had basic “next of kin” information for William Kelly, there’s no evidence that authorities in Bozeman made any attempt to contact the family. He was buried in the Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman.
                                                                                

References: Brief History of Divisions, U.S. Army, 1917-1918, Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (1921).

“[Kelly-Deskin News],” The Missoulian, Missoula, Montana Standard, Butte, Independent-Record, Helena, Great Falls Tribune, Billings Gazette, Montana (September 1931 – November 1949).

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

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A Death In The Family

A large extended family felt the pain when Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Blankenship was shot to death on September 9, 1933. His mother had died ten months earlier, but that left his father, a wife and daughter, and eight siblings. Beyond that, there were a host of Blankenship relatives living in southwest Washington, especially in Lewis County, where the shooting took place.

Family memories trace the roots of the Blankenship exodus to the state back to the Civil War. At that time, Blankenship relatives lived all over Virginia, including the part that would become West Virginia. Thus, Blankenships served on both sides. After the war, a family friend who had fought on the Confederate side fled Reconstruction and ended up in Washington. Over the years, he wrote back to extoll the wonders of his new home.

Although coal mining had brought prosperity to several counties in southern West Virginia, the financial “Panic of '93” brought job losses and reduced wages. Thus, that summer, sixty hopeful “pioneers” – including several Blankenship families and in-laws – boarded a train for Centralia.

Over a span of weeks, families scattered around the region, buying property or claiming homesteads. Several settled near the town of Riffe, about 40 miles southeast of Chehalis. (The town site is now covered by Lake Riffe.) They would have had some sense of home because the area was similar to mountainous Appalachia where they had started.

Near Welch, West Virginia.                                                                     Near Riffe, Washington.
Library of Congress.

The 1893 expedition did not include Frank Blankenship’s immediate family. He was born in West Virginia in 1903, a year or so before they moved to Washington. (His grandfather died in August 1908 and was buried near Mossyrock, a few miles west of Riffe.) Frank apparently alternated between work as a logger or farm laborer. But life was hard, and the family went back to West Virginia at least twice. Still, in March 1926, Frank was in Lewis County, where he married 19-year-old Garnet Lenore Perkins.

She was the older sister of Cad Byron Perkins. As it happens, the Perkins family also had West Virginia connections, even though Cad and Lenore had been born in northwest Virginia. In 1910, the family lived across the state line from McDowell County, West Virginia, where the Blankenship family had roots. They moved to Lewis County around 1912 and settled near Riffe. By the time of his sister’s wedding, Cad had found work as a logger and lumber mill worker.

However, the Crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression made it hard to find steady work. Perkins managed to hang on, but Frank, Lenore, and their young daughter were living with his family back east at the time of the 1930 U.S. Census. Frank finally managed to scrounge work on a public road crew, so he and Lenore were in Washington in the summer of 1933. (It appears that their daughter Wanda was still living with relatives in the East.)

However, times were still tough and, in desperation, Blankenship may have resorted to cattle rustling. In fact, Cad later claimed that Frank had tried to lure him into helping steal range stock. (That assertion could not be corroborated, however.) Testimony also showed that Frank envied the relative prosperity of his still unmarried brother-in-law. Cad did have an “understanding” with a local divorcee, but it’s not clear if the two were formally engaged.

Matters came to a head when a calf disappeared from a herd in the area. The rancher began to ask around, and Blankenship said (paraphrasing varied testimony), “That had to be my wife’s no-good brother, Cad.” He repeated that story around the area. To reinforce the general idea, he also accused Cad’s 18-year-old sister of “playing around with everyone.”

Naturally, Cad was outraged when rumors began to float around that he was a stock thief, and that his sister was a tramp. But Frank was believed to carry a ready knife, and had even boasted about his ability to take care of himself with it. Thus, before confronting his brother-in-law, Cad borrowed a pistol, a Luger automatic. Then he also borrowed a car and drove out to the road site where Frank was working.

He drew Frank off for a private talk, and demanded that he stop spreading lies about him and his sister. Frank’s response: He was sure Cad was a rustler; he “had too much money for a common man.” Then Frank took it to another level, asserting that the sister had even fooled around with him.

Frank Blankenship. Family Archives.

“You’re a *#!*#*! liar,” Cad retorted. At that point, Cad testified, Frank seemed about to pull out his knife or at least try to punch him, so he fired the Luger. He’d meant it more or less as a warning, but thought the bullet had hit Frank in the chest. Realizing how much trouble he was in, Cad drove into Chehalis to surrender to the sheriff. As it happened, a telephone call had already summoned Sheriff John A. Blankenship. They passed on the road, but Blankenship didn’t know the car Cad was driving. The Chehalis police chief took Perkins into custody.

Sheriff Blankenship was related – a third cousin – to the victim. He was born in 1881 in Webster County, West Virginia. He was twenty years old when his family moved to Lewis County. The Blankenships ran to large broods … John would eventually have eight brothers and sisters. In 1907, John returned to West Virginia long enough to marry a school teacher and bring her out to Washington. Their family was not quite as large, “only” six children after seventeen years of marriage. John ran a farm until about 1927, when he was appointed as a deputy sheriff. Then he was elected sheriff starting in 1931.

Perhaps a week or so after the shooting, the Lewis County prosecutor hired criminologist Luke May to help with the case. May logged it as a “firearms” case, but that evidence was minimal. Frank had not been hit in the chest. Instead, the fatal bullet had hit him in the side of the neck and exited on the far side of this throat. The slug was never recovered. Still, in the prosecutor’s view, the wound pattern negated Cad’s self-defense claim. He tried Perkins on a charge of first degree murder and demanded the death penalty.

So far as we know, May did not appear on the stand at the trial. However, he and his agents found sixteen prosecution witnesses who testified about the bad blood between the brothers-in-laws. One heard Cad say, “My day is coming, and I’ll get Frank yet.” The self-defense plea was further undermined by the fact that the sheriff found no knife on or near Frank’s body.

The defense countered with twenty-six witnesses of their own. They agreed that Cad was angry with Frank. But he had good reason, since Blankenship had indeed been spreading nasty stories about Cad and his “little sister.” Testimony apparently also offered strong circumstantial evidence that Frank himself had stolen the calf that brought the issue to a head. But no butcher in the region admitted to buying the animal, so Frank had perhaps kept the meat for his own use.

After deliberating for an evening and part of the next morning, the jury found Perkins guilty of the much lesser charge of manslaughter. He received a sentence of 10 to 15 years in prison.

Lenora (Perkins) Blankenship remarried in May 1937. She and her new husband, but not daughter Wanda, were living in Centralia at the time of the 1940 census. Cad Perkins spent less than five years in prison. He married divorcee Mabel (Bradley) Crouse in December 1938. He was employed as a logger west of Olympia at the time of the census.
                                                                                

References: “[Blankenship – Perkins News],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Seattle Times, Chehalis Bee-Nugget, Bellingham Herald, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (May 1927 – December 1937).

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

Alma Nix, John Nix (Eds.), The History of Lewis County, Washington, Lewis County Historical Society, Chehalis, Washington (1985).

Buddy Rose, ‪Stories from Riffe, Wash., ‬Gorham Printing, Centralia, Washington (2013‬).

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Moonshine – A Death Penalty?

People in the High Plains country east of Bend, Oregon knew that Vayle Taylor loved to play practical jokes. They apparently accepted them in the intended spirit of fun. Still, some neighbors blamed his violent death on February 18, 1926 on that same mischievous sense of humor.

Vayle (often spelled “Vale” in news reports) Taylor was born around 1901 in Missoula, Montana. His father tried his hand at farming near there, but moved to Tacoma, Washington before 1909 and began selling real estate. After ten years or so, Vayle’s father went back to farming, this time in the Alfalfa District, 15 miles east of Bend. Sadly, in the fall of 1920, Vayle’s mother died of spinal meningitis.

Vayle’s father returned to the real estate business in Tacoma, although it’s unclear when. But the young man enjoyed the high country and stayed on there. Very good with his hands, he apparently had no trouble finding work. By 1926, “common knowledge” also linked Vayle with the moonshine liquor trade, although he’d never been charged with anything major. In fact, his still operation would prove to be “one of the best equipped ever located by Central Oregon officials.”

Moonshine Distillation Setup. Personal Collection.

Fern Lowell was another key player in this tragedy. Fern Edward Lowell was born in 1901, in Warren, Idaho. The family lived in Walla Walla, Washington in 1920, and Fern had a job as a grocery delivery boy. Later in that year, he joined the U.S. Marines and saw duty in the Far East. Honorably discharged, he moved to Bend around 1924, along with a brother.

He and his brother may have been partners in a grocery business, with Fern driving a delivery truck. (They would later have such an operation in Klamath Falls.) In any case, Fern somehow learned the location of Vayle’s moonshine rig. Rather vague reports placed the spot roughly 45 miles southeast of Bend. His setup was in the rugged terrain to the north of the villages along the highway from Bend.

Whether voluntarily or through “persuasion,” Lowell led two Prohibition Agents to the site. (One can imagine a number of plausible scenarios leading to this point, but they would all be guesswork.) The agents were C. C. McBride and A. F. Mariott. (McBride’s first name was Clarendon, Mariott’s was Alvie.) McBride, born in Oregon in 1897, served with the U.S. Army in France during World War I. After that, he worked on his father’s farm until joining the Prohibition unit around 1924.

Mariott was older, being born in Missouri in 1888. He also served in World War I, with the U.S. Marines at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After that, he moved to Baker, Oregon, and he got married there in 1922. He claimed a nearby homestead less than a year later. He too landed a job with the Prohibition unit around 1924. Neither he nor McBride received any law enforcement training.

Several points were clear enough about the incident. Vayle Taylor was killed by one fatal bullet, and McBride fired the shot. The victim was not armed, nor were any weapons found at the moonshine “plant.” Still, the young man was indeed producing, or about to produce, illegal liquor. Beyond that, the “official” account of what happened left many questions unanswered.

The simplest unofficial story, favored by the locals, was that Taylor saw the agents coming and tried to flee. Then McBride fired a warning or wounding shot that proved to be fatal. In that version, Vayle was already at the moonshine setup, preparing mash for a run of the still. Early accounts supported that scenario.

Later, however, the agents claimed that they had arrived at the site the afternoon before the shooting. Finding the place empty, they decided to wait for the moonshiner to return. But where did they hide? In assorted versions, the moonshine facility was said to be a dugout, a two-room shack, or a shack plus a nearby shed. The actual stills (two, or maybe three) might have been in one or more of these shelters. In one variant, the “dugout” was said to be large enough to hold two stills, ten barrels of mash, and a supply of firewood.

The agents’ favored story was that they waited in the dugout. In yet another variation, they supposedly removed a pane of glass from the door to get in. That seems odd, since accounts don’t mention any locks. The agents had no provisions for a long stay, and never explained when they expected Taylor to show up. They would have spent a brutal night, with temperatures dropping well below freezing on the high plains.

Vayle supposedly appeared on horseback around 9:30 on the morning of February 18, leading a pack horse. According to the agents, he immediately spotted their tracks and braced a two-by-four against the door to pin them in. Hearing that story, locals conceded that Vayle would have considered that a good joke on whoever was inside. Of course, he would not have known who he had caught, since the officers admitted that they had not yet identified themselves.

In one other version, Vayle then circled the “dugout and the adjoining shed” before returning to look inside the dugout. How the agents knew this was a puzzle, since they could only see out the front door of the dugout. Next, they said, Vayle reached in through the opening where the agents had removed a pane. (Why?!) McBride then purportedly grabbed him and told him he was under arrest.

The agents did not seem to have pushed that unlikely scenario very hard. Their crucial action, supposedly, was an attempt to batter their way out. According to McBride, he had his automatic pistol out, with the safety off, as he slammed his shoulder against the door. “Somehow” it went off and the bullet just happened to hit Taylor in the throat, killing him instantly. McBride and Lowell stayed at the scene, while Mariott rushed to the nearest village to call county officers.

By the time those officials arrived, a group of locals had also gathered. They were clearly skeptical of the stories they heard, and made no attempt to hide their growing anger. Because of that, an inquest was held the very next day in Prineville. (Prineville, about 30 miles northeast of Bend, is the county seat of Crook County, where the shooting occurred).

One piece of testimony cast doubt on most of the preferred claims made by the agents. The medical officer stated that he had “found the dead man lying across the doorway of a two-room shack.” No mention at all of a dugout. And how could the body end up “across the doorway” where the agents had supposedly battered their way out? No matter. The coroner’s jury took just three minutes to declare the death an accident and close the case.

As could be expected, Vayle’s friends and neighbors were outraged. A week after the young man’s death, they raised money to pay for an independent investigation, managed by a law firm in Bend. A day or so later, criminologist Luke S. May logged the “Vale [sic] Taylor death inquiry.”

Sadly, there was not much for May to investigate. He had virtually no hope of finding the fatal bullet, which might have allowed him to trace the trajectory. Worse yet, after Vayle’s body was carried off on horseback, the agents had broken up the moonshine plant, piled everything together, and set fire to it. That obliterated any possible bullet holes, bloodstains, or other physical evidence. May’s report would have been short, to the point, and negative. His Papers contain almost no information on this case.

Early on the morning of March 8, an explosion blew out the back of the Congress Apartments in Bend. Only poor placement of the dynamite saved Alvie Mariott and his wife from severe injury, or worse. At the time, McBride was taking his meals at his partner’s home and outsiders must have assumed he was also living there. Local sources left little doubt that the bomb was in retaliation for the death of Vayle Taylor. That case was never solved.

Bombed Damage, Congress Apartments. Deschutes County Historical Society.

Three months later, C. C. McBride again appeared in the regional news. On a raid at a bootleggers’ base about 15 miles north of Salem, he had shot and killed another unarmed man. This time, at least, the victim had two partners who apparently were armed and did fire at the Prohibition officers. In 1929, McBride’s father died, so he resigned from the Prohibition service to operate the family ranch. He remained active in livestock raising until his death in the Portland veterans’ hospital in 1963.

Mariott stayed with the service until Prohibition was repealed in 1933. He then served as an investigator for the Treasury Department. He retired in 1954 and passed away in 1979.
                                                                                

References: “Congress Apartments,” Registration Form, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, Washington D.C. (September 1, 2000).

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

“[Vayle Taylor Death News],” Albany Democrat, Bend Bulletin, Klamath News, Oregonian, Portland; Capital Journal, Salem, News-Review, Roseburg, Herald & News, Klamath Falls, Statesman-Journal, Salem, Oregon (October 18, 1920) – (May 27, 1979).

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Fixation On Youth Brings Death

Lonely Acres, known as People’s Park until about 1933, was located west of Renton, about ten miles southeast of downtown Seattle, Washington. From as early as 1916, groups held many congenial gatherings and celebrations there. But the venue was also the site of a 1937 tragedy that became a notorious part of local history. By then, facilities included a tavern with attached living area, and a pavilion suitable for band concerts and dances. The surrounding park had enough room for a baseball field (or a Bocce layout).

The first use of the “People’s Park” designation appeared in the summer of 1920. Users of the park comprised an eclectic mix. One week might see a trade union gathering, the next a picnic for business owners. Various African-American groups had outings in the park, but so did the Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps the most frequent users were associations of different ethnic groups: Swedes, Irish, Swiss, a Slavic consortium, and more. One on the most common of these, especially after about 1928, were the Italians.

Fred Anrooney.

The Lonely Acres tavern was acquired by Italian-born Fred Anrooney in 1934 or 1935. Born around 1882, Anrooney came to the United States when he was about ten years old. That family name cannot be traced to any common Italian surname, so it could be some sort of Americanization. By 1905, he was married and had found work as a musician, playing the cornet.

In 1914, he relocated the family – the couple had two children – to Santa Barbara, California. Fred became known as a fine band leader, playing at a wide variety of events. Around 1919, they moved to Washington state. There, Anrooney opened a music store, first in Seattle and later in Renton. He continued to operate a store until about the time he bought the tavern. This was also most likely when he began to lose his hearing. In February of 1937, Fred hired a new waitress, Marlene Collier, née Wilda Rae Townsend.

Wilda Townsend was born in 1914 in Seattle. Her father owned and operated a grocery store. In 1930, when she was just 16 years old, she married a young man – he was 21 – who drove a grocery delivery truck. But the couple divorced in March 1932. Wilda went back to her maiden name and found work as an elevator operator. She also began favoring the name “Marlene,” quite likely in homage to superstar Marlene Dietrich, who exploded onto American movie screens in 1930-1932.

Wilda Marlene married again in April 1933. Her new husband, 23 years old, drove a delivery truck for a heating oil company. But the marriage only lasted a year or so, and Wilma went back to her job as an elevator operator. She married for a third time in January 1936, to seaman David J. Collier. However, the couple separated after a year. Then, as noted above, she went to work as a waitress at Anrooney’s place. Although not yet divorced, in March she also began dating Russell Ringer, a 23-year-old truck driver.

In July of 1937, Anrooney began to receive threatening phone calls from an unknown man. Thus, around the middle of the month, he purchased a sawed-off  36-gauge shotgun (a European size similar to the U.S. 410 gauge). However, he was not sure he would be able to hear someone breaking in. Thus, he had Marlene keep the weapon at night

On August 1, 1937, Marlene and Fred closed the tavern about 1:30 a.m. Because the business kept such late hours, Marlene had her own room in the back part of the building. She later testified that she locked her door that night, although she did not explain why. But earlier in her employment, Anrooney had made suggestive comments to her, forcing her to “put him in his place.” Marlene went to bed and fell asleep right away. Fred also went to bed, but at some point he got up and apparently had a few drinks.

After an hour or so of sleep, the noise of Anrooney forcing her door awoke Marlene. He flipped on the lights and started toward her, despite her demand that he get out of her room. So she grabbed the shotgun and fired past him into a piano. Muttering about “damn women,” Anrooney left, but she thought she heard him pouring another drink.

Some minutes later, he re-entered her room, displaying “a wild look in his eyes.” When he started toward her again, Marlene fired another shot. She aimed closer this time, but still meant it only as a warning. It’s at least plausible that she didn’t realize how wide pellets from a sawed-off shotgun would spread. Hit in the upper chest near his right shoulder, Fred staggered out and down the hall, crying, “Help! Help!”

Marlene heard nothing for a few minutes, and finally went to see if her boss was okay. She found him seated behind the bar, but when she touched him, he toppled over, dead. She called the police and then her parents to tell them the terrible news.

News reports did not explain why officials thought that Marlene’s latest boyfriend might have had something to do with the shooting. Still, the prosecutor’s office contracted with private criminologist Luke S. May to investigate further. May’s log entry specifically mentioned that the case would require the use of the polygraph (lie detector). May tested Russ Ringer about a week after the shooting. The young man denied any involvement and passed easily.

Marlene (Townsend) Collier.

Marlene said she was also willing to take the test. However, the prosecutor said “no,” because he had already issued a second-degree murder indictment against her. She plead self-defense, based on her fear that Anrooney had been unhinged by passion and liquor. Her bail was set fairly low, which was fortunate since a series of delays pushed the trial out to May 1938.

Assessment of the pellet patterns showed that both shots had been fired from a low angle. That agreed with Marlene’s statement that she had been seated on her bed. But prosecutors made their case on the fact that Anrooney had not been hit directly in the chest. That, they asserted, should have been the case if the victim had been advancing on Marlene. The defense countered that he probably tried to dodge at the last second when Marlene lifted the shotgun to fire.

But the heart of the defense turned on Anrooney’s behavior. In 1925, at age 43, he had clung to youth by marrying a woman 22 years his junior (his first wife had died five years earlier). A decade later, hearing loss was a cruel reminder that he was no longer a young man. He responded by again seeking youth around him. The operator of a Seattle employment agency testified that he specifically sought “young, pretty, and inexperienced girls” to work at the tavern.

Then Anrooney tended to take, in the somewhat quaint words of the day, “unwarranted liberties” with them. One young woman got so uncomfortable during the interview, she refused to take the job. Several others quit after just two or three days. The agent’s account was bolstered by testimony from several former waitresses. Still, Anrooney managed to hide his behavior from family and friends, who testified on his behalf. In the end, the jury took less than an hour and a half to return a “not guilty” verdict.

A few month later, Marlene divorced her husband and again took back her maiden name, now expressed as Wilda Marlene Townsend. After that, she moved to Portland, Oregon, to work in a hotel there. Some time later, she married yet again, to U.S. Navy sailor Louis G. Sauer.  They were living in San Diego when she had a daughter in September 1948. She passed away in 1986 in Bremerton, Washington.
                                                                                

References: “[Anrooney-Collier/Townsend News],” Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Seattle Star, Washington; Santa Barbara Daily News, California (July 1916 – June 1942).

“Anyone Remember People’s Park?” Quarterly of the Renton Historical Society & Museum, Renton, Washington (June 2018).

Steven Bach, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (2011).

Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Encyclopædia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois (2012).

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

Photo credits: Fred Anrooney, Marlene Collier. Both from Seattle Times, Washington (August 2, 1937).

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Friendly Fire, Delayed Death

The three Prohibition agents walked carefully along the sidewalk in Cosmopolis, Washington, a village located a few miles east of Grays Harbor bay. Showers had drifted in all day from the coast, wetting the pavement and making for a dark evening. The date was September 20, 1923, and the Volstead Act had been in effect for well over three years. William “Bill” Whitney led the team. Whitney was Assistant Prohibition Director for the state of Washington. Very much a “hands-on” boss, Whitney often handled liquor raids himself. One of the other agents was Harold Mooring.

Agent Harold V. Mooring

They tried to act like casual customers as they entered a pool hall where bootleg liquor was reportedly for sale. Later, Whitney told reporters that “Mooring had been recognized” as soon they entered. Thus, “their chances of finding anything incriminating were slight.” Their mission frustrated, the agents left. Whitney crossed the street, then he and Mooring headed one direction while the third agent went the other way.

The third agent was apparently out of sight when a car stopped beside Mooring. Two men jumped out and and began beating him. Then a shot rang out and the agent went down. The attackers leaped back into the car, which sped away. Before he passed out, Mooring identified his attackers as Elmer Todd and H. H. “Gimpy” Smith, proprietors of a Cosmopolis cigar store. The sheriff immediately arrested the two. Neither carried a weapon and they vehemently denied firing any shots. They did admit to the beating attack, but their motive never made it into the news.

Mooring, who had been hit in the back, remained unconscious through the night. Still, the next day, doctors announced that he was “much improved” and should recover fully. They did not attempt to remove the bullet. Mooring never saw who shot him, but assumed it was Smith, presumably because Todd was in front of him. However, the story proved to be far more complicated than that.

Harold Vincent Mooring was born around 1880, in a southern district of London. He joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, but was discharged in less than two years. (The reason is unclear, being hand-written and unreadable on his digitized papers.) After that, he spent several years at sea with civilian vessels before arriving in San Francisco in August of 1910.

Within two years, he had found work in Seattle as a chauffeur. His listing in the City Directory included a wife, Maude, and by 1915 the couple had two children. Harold now made a living as an auto mechanic. The family spent a couple years near Centralia before returning to Seattle in 1922.

And some time during that year, Mooring became an agent for the U.S. Prohibition Unit. One of Harold’s first assignments was to go undercover in Spokane. Leads he generated resulted in the arrest and conviction of several members of a liquor ring in that city. He did not, however, appear as a witness. In fact, his name did not show up in newspaper reports until he was shot.

Here we must make a few “educated guesses.” At some point, Mooring was probably assigned to go undercover in the Grays Harbor area, already known as a destination for the boats of rum runners. Of course he would be recognized right away, as Whitney said. That was the whole point … to be known as “just one of the boys.” But the habitués of the pool hall must have been shocked to see him standing next to Whitney, the well-known “dry law” enforcer.

Agent William M. Whitney

Born in Ohio in 1878, William M. Whitney briefly taught school before volunteering for duty in the Spanish-American War. After earning a degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1903, he moved to Washington, D.C. as headmaster of a boys school. On the side, he obtained a law degree from George Washington University. He then opened a practice in Seattle, where he dealt in estate and business law.

But Whitney was far more interested in politics, having been active in the Republican Club at Ohio Wesleyan. In Washington, he became heavily involved with state party politics, and even ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress in 1916. Four years later, Whitney earned some favors helping elect Wesley L. Jones to the U.S. Senate. But Bill also got caught in a messy scandal involving his attentions to a married woman. Thus, Jones gave the full Director position to another crony, who promptly made Whitney his chief assistant to do the real work.

Another educated guess suggests that a phone call from the pool hall brought down some physical punishment on the informer. Although Mooring ended up shot, there are no reports that the two suspects were ever prosecuted for anything. If they struck a plea deal, it was not weighty enough to make the news.

Eighteen months passed. Mooring’s name now appeared in newspaper reports, so he was probably not doing as much, if any, undercover work. Then, on April 2, 1925, a headline in the Seattle Times read, “Harold V. Mooring, U.S. Dry Agent, Dies.” He had become ill while on a moonshine raid in rough country about twenty miles southeast of Olympia. An autopsy gave the cause of death as pneumonia, and blamed the bullet from the earlier shooting as a “contributory” factor.

With that as a basis, authorities reopened the investigation into “who shot agent Mooring?” Recall that nothing serious had happened to the two attackers. The sheriff’s office reported that the only weapons that could be linked to the two were both .32-caliber revolvers. The sheriff also retained criminologist Luke S. May, handing over to him the .38-caliber revolver used by Bill Whitney on the day of the shooting. The slug from Mooring’s body would be available the next day.

I was unable to retrieve a full report on this case from the Luke May Papers, so we do not know much about what he discovered. The slug was indeed .38-caliber, but perhaps too distorted or altered by time to provide a definitive result, either positive or negative. Whitney never explicitly stated that he had not fired his gun, although he tried to leave that impression. Of course, he also never said he had fired.

However, Prohibition enforcers were notorious for their “when in doubt, shoot” approach, as in the Ernest Emley case. Thus, seeing his agent in trouble, Whitney quite possibly tried to help, and hit the wrong target. In the end, we can never know. But if Mooring was indeed hit by “friendly fire,” he was neither the first Prohibition agent, nor the last, to go out that way. The widow continued to press for further action, but a look back at the case in 1927 noted that nothing further was ever done.

Around 1931-1932, Maude began spending time in California. Thus, in the spring of 1932, daughter Vivian married a field craftsman employed by the Southern California Edison Company. Sidney Mooring would have been eighteen years old that same spring, so he probably joined the army shortly after that. In 1935, he was stationed at Schofield Barracks, in Hawaii, and returned stateside in December 1936.

Afterwards, Sidney became a professional photographer. Thus, in 1940, he owned a photography shop in Wenatchee, Washington. At that time, Maude also worked there as a photographer. However, she did not follow when he moved the business to Seattle around 1942, and was in California by 1948. She passed away May 2, 1957 in San Francisco.
                                                                                

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

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

“[Mooring Wounding, Death, and Afterwards],” Kennewick Courier, Seattle Times, Seattle Star, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington (March 1914 – August 1927)

Photo credits: Harold V. Mooring, Officer Down web site. William M. Whitney, Gazette-Journal, Reno, Nevada (May 28, 1930).

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Life Through A Jagged Pane

May 23, 1931, a pleasant spring evening in Seattle. Mike Kitoff left his soft drinks parlor and walked across Weller Street toward a car where he expected to meet his estranged wife, Florence. He’d brought his brother Paul along more or less as a witness to their conversation.

But as they neared the car, from inside a female voice cried, “Take that, you *#*#* !” A single shot rang out, then the car sped away. Mike was too stunned to do more than flinch. Paul crumpled to the pavement and died almost immediately. Police arrested Florence Kitoff just hours later. She had a once-fired revolver in her handbag.

Florence Kitoff. Seattle Times photo.

Mike told police that she’d probably meant to shoot him and simply missed. No, Florence declared, Paul had indeed been her target. He had prevented a reconciliation between her and Mike. How shooting the brother was supposed to help was unclear, although it’s possible she hadn’t meant to actually kill him. And it’s likely her muddled thoughts had deep roots.

Florence (Vadnais) Kitoff was born July 21, 1897 in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Both her parents, Richard and Eleanor, had violent tempers and quarreled a lot. Her father was also a particularly “bad drunk,” and had made enemies. Thus, in late January, 1909, an unknown assassin gunned him down, shooting through a kitchen window. Florence was off attending school at a convent in Lethbridge, so she did not have to witness the murder like her brother did.

Besides the home ranch about forty miles southwest of Lethbridge, the family had property near Butte, Montana. Thus, after the murder, Eleanor moved the family to Butte. Florence would later claim that she had been “married off” as a child bride against her will. In reality, early on the morning of August 17, 1916, she and a young miner, Earl Miller, drove to an adjacent county where the county clerk married them.

Florence could be very charming, and the newspaper society pages gave the impression that she had many local friends. Yet she had also “inherited” a volatile temper from her parents. Later, she averred that she had even more trouble controlling herself after she suffered a severe head injury in a motorcycle crash. Thus, at various times, she blew up and physically assaulted her mother’s Butte husband (Eleanor had remarried), her own husband, and even her brother.

That behavior and later events suggest that Florence had some form of “bipolar disorder” (BD). Modern scholarship thinks that BD has a strong hereditary component, and cases can be triggered by head trauma. Sadly, she never received any professional treatment. Thus, we cannot know if she exhibited the classic BD cycle, or possibly some other “dissociative” problem.

Finally, in December 1922, her husband filed for divorce. During her angry outbursts, Earl noted, she “picks up any article or weapon and throws it at him.” He had literally begun to fear for his life. The divorce was granted, although the exact date is unknown. After that, Florence’s whereabouts cannot be reliably traced until she appeared in the 1927 Seattle City Directory as “Mrs. Florence Kitoff.”

Little is known about Mike Kitoff, somewhat more about Paul. The family – whose actual surname was “Kaitukoff” – was originally from the Caucasus region of Russia, between the Caspian and Black seas. They must have immigrated to Canada before 1911. Paul moved to Seattle that year, when he was about 18 years old. Mike followed three years later, when he turned 18. Paul worked in San Francisco long enough to get married and have a son there, while Mike seems to have stayed in or around Seattle.

The next we hear of Mike was in December 1926, when his liquor “joint” was raided by federal Prohibition Agents. Of course, such operators considered the resulting fines simply part of the cost of doing business. Meanwhile, about this time, Mike and Florence must have met and gotten married. We don’t know how or where.

But the marriage was not a happy one. In 1929 and 1930, Florence filed petitions for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, but those actions went nowhere. She said that was because Mike had promised to mend his ways, but it’s also possible she could offer no proof of an abusive relationship. Another request filed in February 1931 was apparently still in limbo three months later.

On May 23, Florence told a police clerk she spent a lot of time home alone and needed a weapon to feel safe. With permit in hand, she then went to a pawn shop and bought a revolver. At various times afterwards, she would say she didn’t know why she’d taken the gun to her meeting with Mike, or simple didn’t remember anything at all about the incident.

Two “alienists” (psychiatrists) examined her in jail just before her scheduled trial on a first degree murder charge. They concluded that she suffered from “fear hysteria” that might not subside until her fate was decided, but was otherwise normal and lucid. About then, however, Florence changed her “not guilty” plea to “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Her trial date was pushed back into the fall.

In his opening statement, the main defense attorney made a surprise announcement. Florence Kitoff had an adopted daughter, 8 or 9 years old, whom she had spirited way to California to protect her from an abusive household. She refused to reveal, even to her lawyers, where the girl was. After that, the attorney painted a picture of a woman who had been mentally as well as physically damaged by a tumultuous, unhappy life.

Still, much of the trial was routine. Eye-witnesses to the shooting offered the usual mix of observations, some conflicting, about the incident. Criminologist Luke S. May identified Florence’s revolver as the death weapon. Several witnesses said Florence had told them that Mike beat her, but none could swear to having seen any signs of actual physical abuse. The defense next offered testimony that Mrs. Kitoff was “irrational” at times in her ordinary dealings with people. A former landlord said that she seemed charming and friendly most of the time, but could also be “a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – two entirely different persons.”

King County Courthouse. Library of Congress.

Florence finally took the stand in her own defense. She blamed everything on her husband, who had physically and mentally abused her. That only added to the trials she had undergone back in Montana. Her mind was blank about the shooting itself and she had no idea how killing Paul might have helped her situation.

She now described her (alleged) child as an adoptive niece who was still a baby, deprived of any joy for Christmas by an absent, hard-drinking father and no money for holiday food or presents. Later in her testimony, Florence said she had sent the girl away so she wouldn’t have to bear the stigma of a mother accused of murder. Significantly, no other witness – defense or prosecution – had seen a child living in the household. In fact, extensive research failed to uncover any hints that such a person existed.

Prosecutors never called Mike Kitoff to the stand. Letting the defense cross-examine a convicted “jointist” of uncertain temper, speaking in a thick foreign accent, probably seemed like a potential disaster. Certainly not worth the risk for what little he might add to the state’s case.

After a week of argument and rebuttal, the case went to the jury. They soundly rejected the first degree murder charge, but declared her guilty of manslaughter. Despite a plea for leniency by the defense, the judge imposed the maximum sentence for manslaughter: five to twenty years in prison. However, Florence initially spent only two years in prison before she was paroled.

She received a divorce from Mike at the end 1934. The following June, in Seattle, she married one A. B. Coleman (the name he signed on the marriage certificate). They moved to Lewiston, Idaho, where Florence operated a barber shop. That fall, Florence was jailed for stabbing and slashing her husband in a fit of anger. Those charges were dropped when the husband admitted he’d been drunk and had perhaps provoked the fight. However, while she was in jail, it came to light that her parole had been revoked. Thus, so far as we can tell, Florence spent the next two or three years back in the Washington penitentiary.

Finally, on January 30, 1939, she married for a fourth time. Her new husband was Arthur A. West, an auto mechanic. By the time of the 1940 U.S. Census, the couple had relocated to Juneau, Alaska, where Florence again operated a barber shop. She died there from cervical cancer in October 1947.

By an odd coincidence, Mike Kitoff also died in Alaska. He had moved to Fairbanks in 1937 to engage in mining exploration and investments. He passed away there from “a chronic ailment” in November 1955.
                                                                                

References: Charles J. Long and Leslie K. Ross (editors), Handbook of Head Trauma: Acute Care to Recovery, Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York (1992).

“[Kitoff Case Background],” Butte Miner, Montana; Seattle Times, Washington; Lethbridge Herald, Alberta, Canada (February 1909 – February 1931).

[Kitoff Murder and Afterwards],” Seattle Times, Washington; Anaconda Standard, Great Falls Tribune, Montana; Lewiston Tribune, Idaho; Fairbanks News-Miner, Alaska (May 1931 – November 1955).

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

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Death On A Weekend Outing

The summer of 1920 arrived early in northeastern Washington. During the third week of May, temperatures on the wheat-growing plains west of Spokane spiked into the high eighties, 15-20º F above normal. The Emley family decided on an outing to beat the heat. They could not foresee the fatal result for Ernest Elmer Emley.

The family had pioneered in the region after the railroad arrived in 1883, starting with George Emley, a great-uncle to Ernest. Ernest’s father and an uncle followed around 1890. Ernest was born December 14, 1892 in Reardan, a small town about 22 miles west of Spokane. He married in 1913, but that did not work out. He was again unmarried when he entered the army and served in France, returning to the U.S. in June 1919. In 1920, Ernest was helping with a brother’s wheat crop and improving his own homestead about 45 miles northwest of Spokane.

Car Camp, ca 1920. National Archives.

By the spring of that year, auto-camping was, if not “all the rage,” at least a trend that had mushroomed in popularity. Over the previous five years, the number of visitors to the national parks had almost tripled. Consumer magazines, such as Sunset and Woman’s Home Companion, published more and more “how-to” articles to help beginners who wanted to experience the latest thing.

The Emleys were farmers, so they could only plan for a few days off. Most of the eleven adults and five or six children in the group were relatives or in-laws, but they may have invited a few friends along. They gathered in four cars on a Friday afternoon and found a spot along the San Poil River near Keller, a mining town about 15 miles east and a bit north of today’s Grand Coulee Dam. Three autos were parked and strung with ropes and canvas to form a shelter.

By all accounts, the weekend was a success. They used the fourth car, Ernest Emley’s good-sized Essex, for excursions around the area. On Sunday evening, seven men piled into the car and went looking for some booze. They could not just visit a bar because the Volstead Act, which enforced national Prohibition, had gone into effect at the end of January.

As it happened, the state highway through Keller was one of the few that linked Canada with the main east-west roads and rail lines across central Washington. Thus, the men soon located a bootlegger (or perhaps he found them). Mellowed by whisky from the north, they headed back to camp. But a community center happened to be holding a dance, so they pulled in there to enjoy the music. Four got out so they could hear better. After a bit, Ernest drove on with the other two. He presumably expected to return later for the others.

Agent William C. Vest.
U.S. Government photo.

Authorities were well aware that liquor was moving south through Keller. They had reassigned two Prohibition Agents from Tacoma to try to stop it. That particular day, Ferry County Sheriff James L. Moore had been keeping an eye on an Oldsmobile that he suspected belonged to a bootlegger. He called the two agents – William C. Vest and John G. Montgomery – in the evening and told them they might have a chance to catch the suspect with “the goods.”

Here, it’s important to note that these men had no training, and little experience, in law enforcement. Sheriff Moore, about 40 years old, was an immigrant from Nova Scotia, Canada. He had been an unemployed mechanic when he was elected sheriff in late 1918. Vest, about 35, had worked on a survey crew and then as a civilian supply clerk for the U.S. government. Montgomery, about 38, had been a watchman, jailer, laborer, and city health inspector. Both were army veterans. Montgomery served stateside during the Spanish-American War, while Vest was in France with the quartermaster corps during World War I.

When Prohibition first went into effect, enforcement jobs were part of the old patronage or “spoils” system. Prospective agents “qualified” simply by knowing an elected official or political operative who had favors to dispense. They were not subject to Civil Service exams or rules, and there seemed to be no training to speak of. New agents got an identification card, a badge, and a gun. Vest and Montgomery were certified on March 3, 1920.

Agent John G. Montgomery.
U. S. Government photo.

The story of what happened next in Keller depends upon who was talking. The agents claimed they had identified themselves as federal officers as they and the sheriff approached the car in front of the community center. The Emley party vehemently denied that. Another man who witnessed the events from the porch of the center agreed. Beyond that, the officers had neither a warrant nor “probable cause” to search the vehicle. In fact, they had most likely mistaken Emley’s Essex for the Oldsmobile that Sheriff Moore had been watching. They were startled, and a bit annoyed, when the car simply drove off.
The agents hurried to the sheriff’s car and started in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Ernest had turned around and was coming back. The time was now 10:30 to 11:00 p.m., so he had probably decided to go right back for the other men. The sheriff supposedly tried to block the road, but Emley easily slid by and continued along the road. Hoping to gain the driver’s attention, the sheriff fired two warning shots into the air, using a .30-caliber Luger.

At this point, the Essex would have been an indistinct block in the darkness, outlined by the reflected glow of its own headlights. Yet, caught up in the moment, the two agents fired directly at the car. The sheriff joined them after a few seconds, firing three times from another pistol, a Remington .38-caliber automatic. Montgomery said he too fired three shots, using a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. Vest’s gun was a .45-caliber Colt automatic. He was later seen to insert three or four cartridges into its magazine.

Hit twice, once in the back of the head, Ernest Emley died almost instantly and the Essex slammed into a ditch. One passenger dove to the floor of the car, while the other jumped out and ran off. He was soon caught and arrested, along with the other man. The Emley party had no weapons whatsoever, and only a handful of whisky bottles. Both of the arrested men were soon released.

The Ferry County prosecutor lodged manslaughter charges against Vest and Montgomery. Sheriff Moore was not indicted, perhaps because he hadn’t fired at the car at first. Some legal maneuvering followed, starting with a change of venue to Spokane. That presented the oddity of having Ferry County attorneys as prosecutors in a federal court, while federal lawyers handled the defense.

The case was based largely on the statements from the three shooters. It would turn on whether or not the use of such deadly force was justified. No bullets had been collected from the shooting scene, and only a single empty shell casing from the Luger. As physical evidence, prosecutors did have the autopsy report and photos of the death car, the latter showing four holes in the back window of the car. Blazing away in the dark, the officers got off nine or ten shots at a level where some were almost bound to hit someone in the car. Only happenstance saved the other two riders from being shot.

To bolster their case, prosecutors called several witnesses who testified that Montgomery was at least tipsy, while Vest was drunk and abusive on the night of the shooting. Naturally, the two denied having imbibed any liquor. Besides, the defense asserted, all that was irrelevant. Here were two federal officers, engaged in what was already known to be a dangerous attempt to enforce the law. The jury cannot tie their hands because of this unfortunate accident. The federal judge followed with favorable (to the defense) interpretation of the Volstead Act. In the end, the jury declared Montgomery “not guilty” and split on Vest.

In the six months before a new trial for Vest, federal authorities (the defense) contacted criminologist Luke S. May. Since there were no bullets to assess, he really had only the autopsy report to go on. He concluded that the death wound had probably not been inflicted by a .45-caliber slug. That, of course, further weakened the case against Vest. One of May’s operatives did interview a local who said that the sheriff knew the agents were “intoxicated,” but called them anyway.

With again lenient instructions from the judge, the jury took a little over two hours to return a “not guilty” verdict for Vest. Sadly, Emley’s death was not the first attributed to over-zealous enforcement of the Volstead Act by federal, state, and local officials. Nor would it be the last.

James Moore did not run for reelection, so he was no longer sheriff of Ferry County by the time of the second trial. It’s not clear what he did between then and 1930, when he appeared in the census as a guard at Folsom Prison in California. Vest left the Prohibition Unit not long after the trial and was back in Tacoma in 1922, selling insurance. Montgomery stayed with the service essentially until Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
                                                                                

References: Laura Arkey, “Ferry County – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (June 1, 2006).

An Illustrated History of Stevens, Ferry, Okanogan and Chelan Counties, State of Washington, Western Historical Publishing Company, Spokane (1904).

“Killings Resulting from Prohibition Enforcement,” Congressional Record – Senate, January 18, 1930, Volume LXXII, Part 2, United States Printing Office, Washington, D.C. (1930). pp. 1859 - 1886.

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

“[News Related To Emley Case],” Oroville Weekly Gazette, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (November 1886 – October 1921).

Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Scribner, New York (2010).

Terence Young, Heading Out: A History of American Camping, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (2017).

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