The Chicken Coop Deaths

The evening of November 5, 1929, a Tuesday, was a miserable time to be outdoors near Puget Sound. Occasional showers and gathering fog made for a clammy night, with temperatures in the low forties. But Royal Wentworth was determined to confront anyone who tried to steal chickens from his coop. The previous Saturday, a thief had made off with about a hundred of them. 

Royal J. Wentworth.
Family Archives.

 That cost him perhaps $80-90, depending upon the wholesale market. Not a huge loss. Still, Seattle newspapers were then advertising new, high-quality multi-piece bedroom suites for about that price. Thus, not a trivial amount either. For context, one must recall that this was long before the advent of giant “factory” farms. Some chickens might be produced on ranches with perhaps several thousand birds, but most were raised in small flocks. Result: Advertised prices for chicken meat were sometimes as much or more than “fancy sirloin steak.” Families reserved chicken for Sunday dinner or special occasions.

News reports didn’t give the size of Wentworth’s ranch. It was located in Richmond Highlands, 10-12 miles north of downtown Seattle. Now a forested residential enclave, the area was much more rural back then. At the time, many people raised chickens there. Although Royal had another source of income, he probably needed the return from his chickens to make the ranch a paying operation.

Royal Joshua Wentworth was born May 13, 1873 near Minneapolis, Minnesota. He married Susette Wheeler in 1894, the ceremony being performed in Wisconsin. The couple had three sons and two daughters by 1910. Royal farmed for many years near Minneapolis, and their three oldest children (a daughter and two sons) had married and gone out on their own by 1922.

About a year later, Royal, Susette and their two youngest children moved to Seattle, where a number of Wentworth relatives lived. There, Royal worked primarily as a carpenter and building contractor. Some time in the late twenties, he acquired the ranch property in the Highlands. That might have been after the youngest son and daughter married (in 1926 and 1928, respectively). Royal probably continued to work as a contractor for some time, in case the ranch did not pan out. Sadly, Royal’s wife died in July 1929, leaving him alone.

One unconfirmed report said that Royal began sleeping outdoors after the Saturday raid. That seems a bit unlikely, given the weather conditions and the fact that he could not know when the thief or thieves might return. He may have simply picked a place inside where he could hear better. Whatever the case, he was outside, carrying “a large caliber shotgun,” on Tuesday evening. He was found the next morning, with a bullet in his brain from a close range shot. Royal was alive but unresponsive, so we can not know when he was gunned down. The gloomy night would have surely helped the shooter ambush him. Nearby, officials discovered a sack filled with about fifty “squawking” chickens. The thief must have fled right away, fearing that someone might come to investigate the gunshot. Royal Wentworth never regained consciousness and died five days after he was shot.

Law officers took chicken theft very seriously back then because so many people (rural and urban voters) had flocks and suffered from such depredations. With murder now involved, the pressure rose even higher. Thus, the King County sheriff told reporters that he had “two crews working night and day on the case.” He also said they had “many clues,” which included an unknown fingerprint on a window of the coop. All of that was to no avail.

A month after the shooting, they contracted with private criminologist Luke S. May to examine the fatal bullet. From that, and probably an empty shell casing, May determined that the death weapon was a .32-caliber automatic pistol. He would have also known the make and model, but that’s not given in available accounts. At least officials knew what to look for. Over the following months, they quizzed every suspected chicken thief about the murder.

About a week after May was hired, Seattle officers rushed to Olympia to interview members of a small chicken theft gang (aged 28, 22, and 19). The trio had already confessed to “wholesale” chicken robberies all over a wide area, including around Seattle. Questioning, however, revealed that they had solid alibis for the time of the murder. Another possibility appeared in mid-October 1930. Two men got into an argument over a woman on a Seattle street. During the cursing and yelling, they revealed that they were actually partners in a long-time chicken stealing campaign in and around the city. They too were questioned about the murder, but also had verifiable alibis.

The hunt ended in a bizarre fashion about a month later … at a chicken ranch south of Seattle owned by Henry Pillkahn.

Otto Ernst Heinrich Pillkahn was born July 11, 1868 in Hanover, Germany. He came to this country in 1885, crowded into steerage aboard a steamship that docked in Baltimore, Maryland. He eventually made his way to the gold mines of Esmeralda County, Nevada. Now going by the name “Henry” or sometimes “Henry Otto,” he found work as a hard-rock miner. In 1905, he married Clara (Mourning) Burns there. Five years later, he and Clara had moved to a farm near Sunnydale, a hamlet about ten miles due south of downtown Seattle.

We don’t know how or when the Pillkahns got into the poultry business. Back then, farmers usually started with egg layers. Broilers, specifically raised for meat, didn’t become important until the 1920s. Henry and Clara most likely went through that transition. By 1930, they had a considerable operation. So much so that Henry had an electrical security system installed for his chicken shed. 

Old Style Chicken Shed. Library of Congress.

 
That alarm roused Henry at about 4:30 a.m. on the morning of November 19, 1930. The weather was gloomy and damp, just as it had been over a year earlier for Royal Wentworth. The rancher grabbed a shotgun and hurried to the coop. Hearing someone moving around inside, he flung open the door and ordered the intruder to show himself. The thief answered with a shot which, fortunately for Henry, went wide. Almost instinctively, Henry fired back at the flash in the darkness. When a second pistol shot followed, Henry squeezed off another round. Fearful that another bullet might hit him, he quickly retreated into the yard.

Within minutes, Pillkahn’s neighbors – all armed – joined him. They surrounded the shed as best they could and called for the intruder to give himself up. There was no answer, so the group waited until a deputy sheriff arrived. After a cautious approach, the deputy found the shooter inside … quite dead from a shotgun blast in the chest. Beside his body, they recovered five large sacks, one with several chickens in it. They also found a .32-caliber automatic pistol.

The coroner first judged the man to be about 50 years old, but that estimate was soon revised to about 57. The corpse was bald and all his upper teeth were gone. He was roughly dressed and carried no identification. No one recognized him or knew where he lived. The area had suffered a rash of chicken thefts, and many wondered if he might have been the culprit. Then, late in the day, a check of his fingerprints turned up a name: C. R Blair. He had been jailed in 1925 for petty larceny.

Blair was known to have used at least two aliases, one being Richard McBride. Records suggest that he was living in Seattle in early 1898, when he would have been about 21 years old. At that time, he apparently worked in the timber industry. Later, “C. R.” stayed in low-rent hotels not far from the Seattle docks and worked as a laborer. In 1916, a Richard McBride of about the right age was arrested on suspicion of attempted bank robbery, but later released. Overall, despite the aliases, Blair did not seem to have an extensive criminal record.

The day after the thief was identified, Luke May reported his assessment of the weapon found. The same automatic pistol had been used to murder Royal Wentworth. May was careful to avoid any conclusion that Blair had been the shooter in the earlier case.

With a name, and probably a photo, officers now sought further information about the dead thief. A few days later, the Seattle Times printed the headline, “Killing Of Thief To Provide Feasts.” At a ranch that Blair was “known to have occupied,” deputies had discovered three dozen abandoned chickens. Since there was no way to determine the original owners, the sheriff directed that they be distributed to needy families who could have an unexpected banquet for Thanksgiving.

The very next day, a required coroner’s jury convened to assess Blair’s death. A reporter for the Seattle Times painted a poignant picture of the hearing. Henry Pillkahn, gray-hair and surely stooped with age – he was 62 – and regret, was called to the witness stand. He began, but then, overcome by the reality of having killed another human being, broke down. His wife “like a woman pioneer out of American history books,” rushed to stand by his side. “He nearly went plumb crazy when he found out he’d killed that man,” she said. “But the man was a thief. He was stealing our chickens – our bread and butter.”

Henry gathered himself and then did his duty. Luke May added his findings about the pistol, again being careful to say only that the same gun had killed Royal Wentworth. The jury took little time to absolve Pillkahn of any blame. Officials presumably did their due diligence to make sure some other chicken thief hadn’t used the .32-caliber to murder Wentworth. The case, a sad affair all around, was then closed.
                                                                               

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

Brian Peterka, A History of Locally Produced Food in Shoreline, digginshoreline.org, Shoreline, Washington (2013).

“Poultry,” Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, Illinois (2012).

“[Wentworth Related News],” Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Washington (April 1916 – November 1930).

E. P. Winter, Marketing Margins and Costs for Poultry and Eggs, Technical Bulletin No. 969, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. (November 1948).

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Love Triangle: Real or Imagined?

The first week of December in 1928 was unusually cold in Walla Walla, Washington, with temperatures barely rising above freezing during the day. Luckily, the cold snap broke on Sunday, December 9th. Attorney John W. Brooks, a widower, was playing cards and chatting with a new housekeeper he had selected the day before, Mrs. Gertrude Bershaw. About 5:30 p.m., they heard a knock at the front door.

Brooks rose and called out for the knocker to “Come in.” They were shocked when a man marched in with a revolver and pointed it at Brooks. A red bandana with eye holes completely masked his head. The housekeeper, understandably shaken, later gave confused accounts to the police. She did consistently state that Brooks said, “You can have anything I have,” assuming it was a robbery. The intruder may or may not have said something, but then shot Brooks twice in the chest, before leaving without a word. 

Walla Walla, ca 1928. City of Walla Walla.

 The murder completely baffled officials, for they could find no credible motive. Brooks had defended a number of clients against charges of violating Prohibition. Thus, police briefly entertained the notion that a convicted offender might have had a grudge against the attorney for not getting him off. But that went absolutely nowhere. Brooks didn’t seem to have any enemies who might resort to murder.

John Watson Brooks was born September 9, 1870 in Asheville, North Carolina. He earned a law degree from the University of North Carolina in 1892 and reportedly moved to Walla Walla the following year. He married Esther Belle Singleton, daughter of Walla Walla Valley pioneers, five years later. The couple had a daughter in 1899, but she died at the age of six.

By 1903, Brooks’ practice had grown enough for him to take on a partner. He was active in Republican party politics and served two terms as city attorney for Walla Walla. Besides all that, John invested in real estate, both lots in the city and ranch properties in the region. Sadly, Esther Belle died in October of 1922. Brooks did not remarry, but paid a succession of ladies to tend house for him. As noted above, he had decided to hire Gertrude Bershaw just before he was killed.

Gertrude Konen was born March 21, 1885 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It’s not clear when she moved west, but she married Frank Bershaw in November 1910 in Nez Perce County, Idaho. In 1920, they were living in Clarkston, Washington, just across the river from Lewiston, Idaho. At that time, they had a son and and a pair of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Sadly, her husband suffered a severe fall in September 1924 and died from his injuries. To make ends meet, Gertrude sought work as a housekeeper. After Brooks was murdered, she returned to Lewiston, where her teenaged children were still living.

About a month after the murder, authorities offered a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter. (That’s equivalent to nearly $16 thousand in consumer spending power in today’s economy.) The award paid off just under a month later when an informant told police that one Robert Lee Wilkins had made vehement threats against the attorney.

When police investigated, Wilkins was evasive, but his sixteen-year-old son, Alfred, eventually blurted out that, yes, his father had shot and killed Brooks. Officers also found a revolver of the right caliber in the father’s belongings. They sent it to private criminologist Luke S. May for examination. A few days later, they received May’s preliminary report that the revolver was, “in all likelihood,” the death weapon. Thus, police felt they could proceed with confidence against Wilkins and his son.

Robert Lee Wilkins was born February 8, 1886, probably on a farm south of Fort Worth, Texas. Soon after, the family moved to Idaho … the father died in Grangeville in May 1887. When Robert went out on his own, he took up farming in northern Oregon. In October 1910, he married Emma Robinson in Portland. Two years later, they were living in Walla Walla, where Alfred was born. Before the spring of 1918, they moved back to Idaho. There, Wilkins operated a farm until about 1924. They then returned to Walla Walla, where Robert worked as a laborer and general handyman.

Under added pressure, Alfred told police that he had driven his father to the Brooks place. All the boy knew was that his father wanted him to see the man who had “broken up my home.” Only after he heard shots did he realize what had happened. Robert expected to be arrested right away (it’s unclear why, since he was well masked). Thus, he had written an account that exonerated the boy of any part in the crime. When nothing happened after several days, Robert decided he was free and clear, and burned that account.

After he was arrested, he was uncooperative at first. Then he more or less acknowledged that he had shot Brooks. But his guarded remarks led officials to suspect he’d plead some variant of an “unwritten law.” That is, he felt obligated to punish Brooks for breaking up his happily married life.

That changed after Robert retained a defense attorney. To start, he now admitted that he had shot Brooks. As an aside, that saved the county the cost to bring in Luke May to testify about the death weapon. The defense agreed to stipulate that fact. (May probably didn’t mind since he had seven or eight case files open, including three other murders.) Wilkins did not, however, plead guilty to murder. It seemed clear that he would claim mental irresponsibility, even insanity, brought on by the breakup.

Alfred recalled an interesting item from the burned notes. Wilkins had stated that while he was in the hospital with a broken leg, Emma had visited Brooks several times. It’s unclear when this was supposed to have happened. We do know that Emma later supported herself by working as a domestic cook and housekeeper. We might speculate that, with her husband laid up and unable to work, Emma had sought a temporary job with Brooks. We don’t know one way or the other. Still, a jealous husband, upset by his inability to be the bread-winner, might read anything into these circumstances.

Robert and Emma separated in the spring of 1928. It’s not known where Alfred lived after that, but it was evidently not with either of his parents. Robert claimed that Brooks had corrupted his wife with booze and parties. He insisted that the town was laced with scandalous talk about it. If only some people would come forward “and tell all they know about Brooks,” officials would understand. Investigators, however, found not even a hint to support these claims.

When the trial began in mid-March, Alfred proved to be an uncooperative witness against his father. He limited his answers to a mumbled “yes” or “no” as the prosecutor basically read his earlier statements into the trial record. Thus, if he knew any more about the trouble between his parents, he mentioned none of it during the trial.

Wilkins’ defense team failed to put even one witness on the stand to support his allegations against Brooks. All they could find were people who knew the Wilkins as a happy couple before the breakup. And Robert maintained throughout that he wanted to resume his life with Emma. Even so, the defense did not have her testify. Nor would they agree – required under Washington law – to let the State put her on the stand. Thus, we never do hear her side of the story. 

Robert L. Wilkins.
Spokane Chronicle (August 15, 1930).

In any case, prosecutors countered with devastating effect. They found a number of witnesses who testified that Robert was the one fooling around. He and another man even went off on a jaunt to Oregon with two women … neither of whom were Emma. One witness was a thirty-year-old hotel cook and former “confidant” of Wilkins. She asserted that Robert had said, “She [Emma] was getting old and wasn’t even pretty any more.” Less than 38 years old when they separated, Emma was, in fact, more than four years younger than her husband.

The jury took only a few hours to return a “guilty” verdict, and to recommend the death penalty. After the usual appeals, Robert Lee Wilkins was hanged in the early hours of August 15, 1930.

Alfred does not appear in available public records until a decade after his father’s execution. He does show up in the spring of 1935, when newspapers reported that he had been sentenced to the Washington state reform school for stealing some tires. He was out by 1940, when he and a wife were recorded in the census for Yakima. At that time, he was working at an auto wrecking yard. Alfred died of a sudden heart attack on a visit to Walla Walla in the summer of 1946.

As noted above, Emma became a domestic servant after her separation from Robert. In 1930, she had found a spot in Umatilla, Oregon. She gave her status as “widow” to the census taker, although her husband was still alive at that point. (Robert gave his marital status as divorced.) A month after Robert was executed, Emma married sawmill worker George Darlin. They lived in central Oregon for many years before returning to the Umatilla area around 1941, then retired to a place near La Grande around 1955. Her husband died there in 1963 and she passed away in 1988.

                                                                               

References: ““[Brooks Murder News],” Evening Statesman, Walla Walla, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Bellingham Herald, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (October 1902 – July 1946).

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

Michael J. Paulus Jr., “Walla Walla – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (February 26, 2008).

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Justice Delayed

July 15, 1935 dawned warm and muggy in Orting, Washington, about 16 miles southeast of Tacoma. The temperature would later soar into the nineties and thunder would rumble in the mountains to the east. Shortly before noon, Leslie Stone, teller for the Orting State Bank, found himself staring down the barrel of a compact automatic pistol. A curt command demanded everything from his cash drawer and Stone quickly complied. Then the bandit, who wore no mask, jumped into a distinctively-painted Buick sedan and fled north.

Stone had been robbed before and now kept a rifle in the vault. Before the car disappeared, the teller let off a wild shot at it. Then he called Puyallup and reported the robbery, giving a description of the crook and his car. Police Chief Frank Chadwick and Officer Harry Storem piled into a police cruiser and hurried east along the main east-west highway. With luck, they could cut the bandit off before he reached more populated areas. 

Chief Chadwick.
Puyallup Police Department.

Franklin Harold Chadwick was born March 2, 1895 in Puyallup. Raised on a farm, Frank drove a truck for a few years before joining the Puyallup police force in 1921. Within a couple years, he was assigned to the motorcycle division. In the summer of 1933, a new mayor appointed Frank as the Chief of Police.

Harry William Storem was born August 22, 1892 near Shelton, Washington, and the family moved to Puyallup before 1900. He married Mary Caroline “Mollie” McFarland in the spring of 1910. Aside from a two-year attempt at vegetable farming near Medford, Oregon, Harry worked at various times as an electrical lineman, timber worker, and truck driver. He was driving truck in 1930, by which time the couple had two daughters and three sons. Harry joined the Puyallup police department in April 1932, and his name began to appear in news reports that summer. 

Officer Storem.
Puyallup Police Department.

The officers turned south onto the main north-south road and passed the Buick less than two miles from the intersection. They quickly reversed course and a high-speed chase ensued. Then the Buick stopped abruptly along the shoulder. The officers pulled off just ahead of the car to cut off further escape. But as they tried to leap out and confront the fugitive, the criminal raced up and opened fire. Chief Chadwick was killed instantly by a single shot. Storem was hit three times and died before reaching the Puyallup General Hospital. Despite an extensive manhunt, the shooter vanished. His car, with a badly damaged tire, was found 2-3 miles northeast of Puyallup. Authorities concluded he had escaped aboard a freight train headed towards Seattle.

Besides bank teller Stone, five witnesses got fairly close views of the killer. Two observed him sitting in the Buick near the bank just before the robbery. One saw the shooting from beside his rural mailbox and had a good look as the killer drove by him. Another was coming home for lunch and saw the speeding Buick. His young daughter happened to be along the road, so he stopped to make sure she was safe. He too marked the driver as he hurtled by. Finally, a real estate agent encountered the man standing next to the disabled Buick, trying to flag a ride. Not liking the hitch-hiker’s looks, the agent drove on.

Three other witnesses also saw the perpetrator. One was a police officer who saw the shooter from a distance. Two others were railroad employees interviewed later. About twenty minutes after the shooting, a conductor saw a man hop a northbound freight. When the train reached Renton, about twenty-five miles further north, he and a brakeman ordered several riders off the train. One of them “fit the description” of the fugitive, but the trainmen had no reason to suspect anything more at that time.

Officers interviewed many potential witnesses and pressed underworld contacts for more information. Soon after the shootings, authorities contracted with private criminologist Luke S. May. His advanced techniques could extract better fingerprint evidence from the Buick. The car had been stolen in Tacoma on the morning of the robbery.

May’s tests also identified the murder weapon as a .32-caliber automatic pistol of Belgian or Spanish make. As it happened, weapons maker Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, and several Spanish gun producers sold variants of a hammerless automatic designed by the legendary American firearms guru John Moses Browning. They all had the same class characteristics, so even May could not tell the brands apart just from the bullets and shell casings.

Available records do not say how many suspects the police brought in for further questioning. One set of three names did appear in the newspapers less than a week after the murders. Police didn’t know it, but they had the killer in custody.

All three were ex-convicts, with lengthy criminal records. The youngest had multiple convictions for car theft, but also engaged in forgery and probably armed robbery. He was out on parole at the time Chadwick and Storem were murdered. The next oldest first went to jail for an assault during an attempted robbery when he was 19 years old. But his big claim to fame was liquor: moonshine production, rum-running, and highjacking other rum-runners. Prohibition Officers seemed to know a lot about his activities, but apparently no one was willing to testify. The oldest suspect was a decorated veteran of World War I. After the war, he became part of an armed robbery gang. He was in and out of prison after that. In fact, he had been paroled from prison on a robbery conviction about ten weeks before the shootings.

Opinions from the eye-witnesses were the usual mix of surety and equivocation. Moreover, seemingly reliable sources provided alibis for all three men. After checking everything they could, police finally removed them from the suspect list. They would not correct their error for almost seven years.

Still, police did not release the actual shooter – for now, we’ll call him “Perp” – when they turned the other two loose. Not because they had possible evidence in the murder case, but because Yakima County had issued an arrest warrant for him on a fraud charge. He had persuaded a sucker to furnish him a car to hunt for buried treasure in Oregon. Instead, Perp sold the car in Seattle. With his record, Perp knew that another felony conviction could “earn” him a life sentence under Washington’s Habitual Criminal Act.

An “out” appeared in an odd way. Perp’s main alibi had been furnished by Peggy, the 18-year-old girl he was living with at an auto-court in Kelso, Washington … even though he was already a married man. On at least three occasions, they had made jaunts to Portland. Federal officials ruled that a violation of the “Mann Act,” which prohibited the transportation of a female across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Charged with that crime, Perp quickly pled guilty. Somehow, the fraud charge went away. Perhaps Yakima authorities allowed him to make restitution, knowing he was going to prison anyway … and saving the county the cost of a trial. Perp received a three-year sentence in federal prison.

Puyallup police did not entirely give up on the murder case, but made no progress. Still, in early 1937, they thought they might have a strong lead. A man who fit the general description of the Orting bandit had been convicted of bank robbery in California. He had in his possession a .32-caliber automatic pistol of Belgian make. Finally, after five weeks of discussion, the weapon was passed to Luke May for his assessment. He quickly determined that it was not the murder weapon. All of this was widely reported in the newspapers. If Perp still had the actual murder weapon hidden away somewhere while he was in prison, he would have surely ditched it at the first opportunity.

Perp was free for a time in 1938, but violated his parole and was soon back in. He was finally out on the streets by the summer of 1939. The next record we have of him is the announcement that he and his wife had divorced, in June 1941. By then, Peggy was married to a police patrolman in Toppenish, Washington.

In the summer of 1942, Puyallup police got a tip that seemed to apply to the Chadwick-Storem murder. They re-opened the cold case, but the new information led nowhere. Still, a fresh review of the case file convinced detectives that the Mann Act violator, one Roy Willard Jacobs, had killed the two officers. Roy (“Perp”) was arrested on July 6, 1942. New interviews of the eye witnesses fueled their confidence that they had the right man.

Then, under close examination, Roy’s alibi fell apart. Peggy had originally told police that Roy was with her at the Kelso auto-court on July 15, 1935. Later, she stated that she didn’t actually know where he was on that day. That was further supported by the manager of the auto-court, who had found him gone when she came by to collect rent on July 14, 15, and 16. Another supposed corroborator admitted that her recollection of his presence in Kelso might have for a week after the shootings. Roy’s other attempts to bolster the alibi also failed.

With the alibi blown up, the parade of eye witnesses allowed prosecutors to trace his movements from before the robbery, to the murder scene, and even to his final escape route. The defense could only counter with claims that some witnesses had been coached and perjured themselves, or were simply mistaken. On October 29, 1942, the jury took less than three hours to reach a verdict of guilty and recommend the death penalty.

The usual appeals followed, all the way to the state Supreme Court, as well as an appeal to the governor. All failed, and Roy Willard Jacobs was hanged in the early minutes of April 7, 1943. He proclaimed his innocence to the very end.

Mrs. Harry Storem, “Mollie,” evidently had enough to live on after Jacobs murdered her husband. (She probably had a widow’s pension, but available records do not say.) One of the couple’s three sons was already married when Harry was killed, and the other children would marry in the following three years.

The Storems’ oldest daughter had opened a beauty shop near Puyallup several years before her marriage in the spring of 1936. Accounts suggest that Mollie helped out there for a number of years. The other daughter also worked as a beautician before her marriage in late 1937. Two of Mollie’s sons worked as mechanics, first in the aircraft industry and then on automobiles. The youngest son was a professional photographer. Mollie never remarried and lived in the family home until the late Fifties, when she moved to a Tacoma nursing home. When she died there on August 2, 1964, all her children were still living and she had sixteen grandchildren.

                                                                               

References: “[Chadwick-Storem Background],” News Tribune, Tacoma, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Tacoma Times, Washington (September 1912 – September 1993).

“[Chadwick-Storem Murders],” News Tribune, Tacoma, Tacoma Daily Ledger, Seattle Times, Washington; Bend Bulletin, Oregon (July 1935 – October 1942).

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

Daryl C. McClary, “Police Chief Frank Chadwick and Patrolman Harry Storem Shot and Killed,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (December 2009).

Garry James, “The Spanish-Built Ruby Pistol,” Guns & Ammo, Outdoor Sportsman Group, Peoria, Illinois (July 28, 2016).

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One Binge Too Many

On the morning of December 21, 1927, Nettie Benoy finally told Sheriff Hervin Rothwell that she had shot her husband to death. The killing had taken place the evening before in Stites, Idaho, a hamlet located about fourteen miles northeast of Grangeville. She claimed self-defense, but the evidence belied her story.

The victim was Thomas C. Benoy, a well-off blacksmith. Born in March 1863 in a small town about sixty-five miles west of Madison, Wisconsin, he married for the first time in early 1885. He and his wife moved to Spokane, Washington, about four years later. He started as an employee there, but soon had his own shop, along with a small ranch property. By 1894 he had prospered enough to own at least one racing horse, a pacer. However, Benoy proved to be a quarrelsome fellow, especially during his all-too-frequent drinking bouts. Several times, he had been fined for disorderly conduct, and warned about other lapses.

Some time before the spring of 1899, Benoy and his wife separated. She was soon granted a divorce, and on November 22, 1899, Benoy married nurse Rosa Stuck, a native of Spokane. Their son, Charles Felix Benoy, was born in August 1900. In the fall of 1907, Rosa obtained a divorce from Tom because of his drunkenness and abuse. The court accepted her claim that she feared for her life, and awarded her custody of the son. However, a year after the separation, Rosa (Stuck) Benoy died and the boy was returned to his father.

Spokane, ca 1902.
Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

Benoy moved from Spokane to Stites shortly after that, to operate a blacksmith shop he had reportedly established about fifteen years earlier. Tom also hooked up with a new wife, “Elsie” (available records do not include a marriage certificate). The 1910 census taker recorded that “Felix” was an adopted son, so the situation in the household appeared to be somewhat odd.

Accounts from the time indicate that they had a contentious home life. Then, in October 1911, Elsie was adjudged insane and committed to a state mental hospital. Available records do not say when Thomas secured a divorce, but he married again in early 1913. The new wife, a divorcee, had a son of her own. That boy was mentioned as part of the family in later newspaper items, but not “Felix.”

It seems likely that Charles Felix Benoy had been made a ward of the court some time during the earlier turmoil. When he entered the U.S. Army in 1918, he listed a deputy U.S. Marshal as his point of contact. Charles served in France and arrived back in the states in July 1919. He settled in central California and, after a few years, began a long career in banking.

In early 1923, Benoy split with his fourth wife in a rather curious manner. She discovered that her previous husband had probably lied to her when he claimed they were divorced. Unable to confirm that action, she was granted an annulment of her marriage to Benoy. When her divorced status was certain, she asserted, they would remarry. That did not happen. Perhaps she changed her mind as she considered Benoy’s behavior when he was drunk.

In any case, Benoy married yet again in September. His new bride was divorcee Jeanetta “Nettie” (Scott) Alden. That marriage came with its own bit of oddity. Nettie Scott was born in April 1863 in Sandusky, Ohio. On January 22, 1882, she married Franklyn K. Alden there. They soon had two sons, but one of them died as a child. Then, in 1887, she obtained a divorce on the grounds of adultery and nonsupport.

Nettie lived in Sandusky for the next quarter century. She was postmistress for a time after 1891, but mostly worked as a nurse. Her mother lived with her for a time, but when she died in 1913, Nettie moved to Chicago. Her surviving son, Harry Scott Alden, seems to have worked from a home base in that city after military service in the Philippines. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1916, then re-enlisted after the war. Around 1922, Harry settled in the Los Angeles area and pursued various engineering ventures.

Nettie remained in Chicago until 1923. An Idaho news account stated that she “came here from Chicago, where she was a nurse, to marry Benoy.” The item provided no explanation of how the two met and agreed to get married. Perhaps there was a family link: The City Directory for Spokane listed well over a column of people named “Scott,” and Benoy was often in that city on business. Or they may have been connected through a “matrimonial advertisement,” a surprisingly common practice at the time. In any case, Nettie married Tom on September 18, 1923 in Stites.

Except when he drank, Benoy was apparently a decent husband. However, accounts suggest that he began to drink  even more as the years passed. He was also fined and/or jailed several times for selling liquor on the Nez Percé Indian Reservation. By the fall of 1927, Tom’s abuse of Nettie was common knowledge among their neighbors.

Matters came to a head on the evening of December 20, 1927. Earlier in the day, Tom had been released from jail, pending a trial on a drunk and disorderly complaint filed by Nettie. He then apparently “drowned his sorrows” in booze for some time. Nettie told the sheriff that he arrived home about 8:30 in the evening. She implied that he was reasonably sober until somewhat later, when he went out to the garage where he kept more liquor.

Nettie claimed she was preparing for bed when Tom came back inside, mad with booze and wildly brandishing a shotgun barrel as a club. She had just enough time to retrieve a .32-caliber Colt automatic pistol from her sewing drawer. He charged at her but ducked when he saw the weapon. One of her shots hit him in the top of the head, the other about three inches further back.

Matters became a bit muddled after that. Nettie said she didn’t remember anything too clearly about the incident. Nor did she have a good explanation for why she waited all night to inform the sheriff. Tom’s body was found beside his bed, but not sprawled like he had been trying to dodge. Some of the bedroom furniture was in “disarray” as though there had been a struggle. However, the sheriff also found other objects arranged normally, including a stack of neatly-folded quilts in a corner near the bed. Luckily, searchers inspected further, and found a considerable blood stain on one, right where Tom’s head would have been if he was sleeping.

Authorities rejected Nettie’s self-defense claim, and a coroner’s jury that very afternoon brought in a verdict of first degree murder. The sheriff and his deputies then went about collecting all the evidence they could find. However, some gaps must have worried the prosecutor. About a month after the killing, the sheriff contacted criminologist Luke S. May, asking him to analyze some ashes from a stove in the Benoy home. He specifically wanted to know “just what the article was that was burned.”

The county chose not to pay Luke to travel to Idaho. The sheriff did describe the death room layout and where the bullets hit (perhaps using a copy of the coroner’s diagram). The bullet trajectories and wounds, plus the blood-stained quilt, clearly supported the prosecution’s contention that Nettie had shot Tom while he was asleep on the bed. The ashes, however, contained nothing of interest: normal firewood residues, a few chicken bones, and some thin book-binding wire.

May then asked the sheriff what they expected to find … perhaps he could offer at least a “yes” or “no.” The sheriff then informed him that the ashes had contained “some” of Benoy’s upper teeth, knocked out by the slug that had gone all the way through. That at least helped verify the bullet trajectory. They really wanted to know if Nettie had used the stove to dispose of her nightgown and slippers. She claimed she had burned them because they had been stained with blood when she examined the body. Luke found no evidence of either.

Neither the sheriff’s letters, nor later news reports offered a detailed account of the overall sequence of events. Still, a hypothetical reconstruction is possible. To begin with, Tom had probably come home too drunk to do more that perhaps curse at his wife and then go to bed. (He was found wearing only his night shirt.) Nettie surely feared what he might do when he sobered up. Thus, she shot him with the pistol she had acquired after another violent argument in the past. For officials, that all added up to a case of premeditated, cold-blooded murder.

We may speculate that Nettie first decided to conceal the killing altogether. She could blame his disappearance on his erratic behavior when he was drunk. Thus, she rolled the body off the bed and tidied up everything so it looked normal. Tom’s broken teeth, which would have been scattered in the bedding, went into the stove. She tossed the spent shells from her automatic into the firewood crib. Any blood on the bed frame or floor would have been scrubbed away. Then she carefully folded the bloody quilt to conceal the stain and added it to a neat pile. She said she burned her nightgown and slippers, and perhaps she did … just not in the stove. Or she could have buried them where a patch of disturbed soil wouldn’t be noticed.

Having gone that far, Nettie must have then realized that it would be impossible for her to move the body and make it vanish. Desperate, she then cooked up the self-defense story and tried to disturb enough furniture to make that look plausible. Exhausted by all this, she went to her own bed and fell asleep.

In the end, what saved Nettie was her husband’s long history of abusive behavior. The jury took just four hours to return a verdict: Guilty of manslaughter. She received a sentence of two-and-a-half to ten years in the state penitentiary. 

Jeanette (Scott) Benoy.
Idaho Penitentiary Records.

There’s no indication that Tom’s son Charles, or Nettie’s son Harry Alden, came to Idaho during this period. Charles Benoy married in 1928 in Alameda, California, and they had a daughter in 1934. He died in 1963 and was buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Harry Alden married at least three times, in 1910, 1926, and 1936. With these wives, he fathered a daughter, Patricia, and two sons, John Jarvis and George Mitchell. Like their father, the children are all direct descendants of famous Mayflower Pilgrim John Alden. Harry died in Pasadena, California, in late 1943, and is buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

Effective September 30, 1930, Jeanette “Nettie” Benoy was granted “a full, free and unconditional pardon” by the Idaho governor. She settled in Spokane using her first married name, Jeanette Alden. Nettie outlived Harry Alden by just under three years, passing away in November 1946. The Find a Grave memorial states that her ashes were unclaimed and are in storage at Fairmont Memorial Park in Spokane.
                                                                               

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

“[Benoy-Scott News],” News-Journal, Mansfield, Mansfield Weekly News, Ohio; Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Spokane Chronicle, Washington; Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho County Free Press, Grangeville, Grangeville Globe, Idaho; Chicago Tribune, Illinois; Oakland Tribune, California (June 1887 – August 1930).

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

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Trail’s End in Montana

Early in the Twentieth Century – we do not know exactly when or where – James Christianson embarked on a path that led to his premature death by violence. His life was largely a mystery, to be sketched in from scattered records, comments made to fellow criminals, and a few newspaper accounts. Authorities generally accepted that he was born in Denmark, probably around 1895. Some evidence suggests that Christianson served some time in the Royal Danish Navy, which spent World War I maintaining minefields in their national waters. (Both sides “mostly” respected Denmark’s neutrality.)

At some point, Christianson became a sailor in the merchant marine. (The Danish shipping industry had boomed during the war, and remained strong afterwards.) Then his ship docked at the port of New York. A best guess is that this was in 1920 or 1921, when the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age were taking flight. Attracted by the glamor and excitement, Christianson chose to emigrate to the U.S. … without benefit of formal paperwork. 

New York Docks, ca 1920. Library of Congress.

At first, he probably got by as a common laborer. However, there is good reason to suspect that he soon became a “yegg” or “yeggman” (the source of the term is disputed); that is, a safecracker. Safes of the day might be penetrated by a drill and other tools, or blown open with “soup” – nitroglycerine or gelignite. Because of the skills required, the yegg was considered a cut above an ordinary burglar. They typically travelled a lot to hit small town targets where expensive top-level safes and vaults were less common. There was also the expectation – too often true – that villages and towns would have few law officers, and even fewer that had any training in law enforcement techniques.

In their travels, yeggmen generally tried to blend in with the amorphous crowd of seasonal workers, hoboes, and other wanderers who rode the rails during that era. Christianson was in Minnesota in 1925. By then, he had been in and out of jail a number of times for minor offenses. These were not specifically reported in the newspapers, but got his identity and fingerprints into law enforcement records. Christianson first came to the notice of reporters on the evening of December 17, 1925, when he was arrested for stealing a car in St. Cloud. Further inquiry then uncovered his times behind bars. He pled guilty in mid-January and was sentenced to two years in the Minnesota State Penitentiary at Stillwater.

Christianson was presumably out by 1928. Most likely, he was “back in business” and slowly working his way westward. His tragic journey continued into Montana, where it would end in the spring of 1930. The lawman responsible was only a few years older than the Dane.

Walter Prochnow was born April 26, 1892 in a densely populated area of New Jersey just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Initially a carpenter, he moved to Montana some time after 1910. He married there in the summer of 1916 and claimed a homestead about twenty-five miles northwest of Miles City the following spring. However, in January 1920, he, his wife Matilda, and five-month-old daughter were living in Miles City itself. Prochnow gave his occupation as “general farmer,” but he had apparently decided farm life was not for him.

Thus, in 1922, he joined the Miles City police department. Prochnow took a deep interest in law enforcement. During that summer, he even visited the state prison in Deer Lodge to observe that operation. Reports said he might be interested in eventually becoming the warden there. He also extensively studied fingerprint techniques, in terms of both recording them from suspects or victims, and collecting latent prints at crime scenes. Prochnow became the “go to” expert in the region, often being sent to help other jurisdictions. He was promoted to sergeant after a few years on the force.

Montana law enforcement became particularly busy from 1928 on, when safecrackers apparently decided that the state was fertile ground for their operations. Every week brought reports of attacks all around Montana, sometimes hitting two or three businesses in the same town. Thus, three safes were cracked in Miles City on the night of February 6, 1929. Some yeggs were careless and left fingerprints, but their constant movement made it difficult to track down suspects.

Another hit in Miles City on March 3, 1930, spurred Prochnow to a special effort. The year before, someone had raided the Custer County High School and cracked the principal’s safe. All the revenue from the school’s annual fund-raising carnival had been stolen. The event for 1930 was only a few weeks away, on Friday, March 21. An experienced cop like Prochnow would surely know that transient camps were hotbeds of gossip and gab. Might some yegg again make a try at such a tempting target? 

Officer Walter Prochnow.
Miles City Police Department

 When the last carnival event closed down for the night, organizers gathered their take and placed it in the principal’s safe. After that, the sergeant settled in for his stakeout. Three safecrackers arrived about 3 o’clock Saturday morning. Prochnow pinned them with the beam of his flashlight and ordered them to get their hands up. One intruder immediately shot toward the officer but the slug went wide. Prochnow fired back while diving for cover. The would-be thieves sprayed several wild shots as they fled the office.

Three yeggmen entered the building; only two left it alive. Officers found the body of the third on the floor; he seemed to have been killed instantly. Thirty to thirty-five years old, he was not a local, and carried no identification. The high school Vice Principal did recall him milling about in the carnival crowd. She thought he had been accompanied by two other men, both strangers. Quick raids on trains and transient camps in the region resulted in the arrest of fifteen men. However, only one was armed and none could be identified as companions of the dead man.

Saturday afternoon, authorities convened a coroner’s jury, which found no fault with Prochnow’s actions, and praised his initiative and courage. They also sent images of the dead man’s fingerprints to the Bureau of Investigation (the future FBI) in Washington, D.C. The Bureau identified him as James Christianson and directed them to Minnesota officials for more information.

Along with his minimal history (outlined above), they said he had no known relatives in St. Cloud. However, Minnesota was then home to hundreds, if not thousands, of people named Christianson, or one of its variants. It seems likely that James might have had a distant relative there. In any case, locals were fairly sure his parents still lived in Copenhagen. Four days after his death, James “Christenson” was buried without ceremony in the paupers’ field of the county cemetery.

Most likely in early April, Miles City police hired criminologist Luke S. May to assess the firearms evidence for the case. We don’t have May’s report, but he was probably first asked to verify that Prochnow’s weapon had felled the intruder. (That would eliminate the possibility that he had been shot by one of his companions.) By then, officers should have also recovered slugs scattered about by the bandits’ wild shots. May could at least tell them the make and model of weapon(s) they needed to look for. However, the case went nowhere after that.

So far as can be determined from newspaper reports, this incident was the only time Walter Prochnow ever fired his weapon in a police incident, much less shot anybody. He retired from the force around 1942 and took a job building homes for defense workers in Seattle, Washington. Toward the end of World War II, Prochnow moved to a place about twelve miles north of Bremerton and continued working as a carpenter. In early June 1945, less than a month after VE-Day, Matilda joined him there.

Walter retired around 1957, about the time one of the couple’s three married daughters moved to Seattle. Four years later they moved to Mesa, Arizona. Matilda died there in 1973 and Walter moved back to Miles City. Two years after that, he passed away at the Custer County Rest Home.
                                                                              

References:  Jonathon Green, Crooked Talk: Five Hundred Years of the Language of Crime, Random House UK, London (2011).

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

“[Prochnow-Christianson News],” Montana Standard, Butte, Independent-Record, Helena, The Missoulian, Missoula, Ravali Republic, Hamilton, Billings Gazette, Great Falls Tribune, Anaconda Standard, Montana; Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona; St. Cloud Times, Minnesota (June 1922 – September 1975).

Nils Arne Sørensen, “Denmark,” International Encyclopedia of the First World War (online), Freie Universität Berlin (October 8, 2014).

Thomas Streissguth, The Roaring Twenties, Updated Edition, Facts On File, Inc. New York, New York (2007).

 

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A Car Was The Key

The small Manito Pharmacy, located about two miles south of downtown Spokane, was a typical neighborhood drug store. The owner, Mrs. Alice Sherrard, had depended upon part-time registered pharmacists since her husband died in the spring of 1933. On this day, July 30, 1935, a Tuesday, Harry Phillips arrived shortly after noon to cover the afternoon and evening hours. They could not know that death lay in wait just across the street. 

Harry Phillips.
Spokane Chronicle
(September 16, 1935).

Harry J. Phillips was born around 1887 in Whitman County, Washington, in a village about forty miles south of Spokane. After high school, he attended Washington State College, conveniently located about thirty miles from his home. He graduated with a degree in pharmacy in June of 1910 and quickly set up a drug business in Walla Walla. Less than a year after graduation, Harry married Lillian Mae “Mamie” McFadden. Eight months later, they sold the Walla Walla venture and had a small store built in a tiny town near where he was born.

For many years afterwards, Harry split time between pharmacy and wheat farming at various locations around Whitman County. By 1920, the couple had two sons. Around 1927, Harry moved the family to Spokane to find work as a contract pharmacist. He also seemed to have dabbled in real estate. Thus, in 1929, he purchased and modernized a “fixer-upper” that would remain the family home for over a quarter century. On July 30th, Harry had been working at the Manito Pharmacy for quite some time.

After he arrived at the store, Mrs. Sherrard backed her car out of an adjacent garage at about 12:30. That maneuver proved somewhat awkward because of a vehicle parked directly across from the store door. She noticed a man sitting in the car, but thought nothing more about it as she drove off. However, other observers had also noted the rather unusual car, a 1933 Willys sedan. Later, they would recall that the same vehicle had been in the area the day before, a Monday.

On Tuesday, the Willys first appeared about 8:30 in the morning. Some saw the driver inside, others not. Spokane was suffering from a sweltering wave of moist heat, so he probably got out now and then to cool off. Shortly after Sherrard left, the man strolled across the street into the store. Only the perpetrator knew the details of what happened next. But several witnesses reported three shots fired during a struggle between Harry and the intruder. Then the shooter calmly returned to his car and drove off (in no particular hurry).

When police officers responded to calls, they found Harry dead on the sidewalk from a single gunshot wound that passed side to side through the chest. Three bullets were found at the crime scene. All were probably somewhat distorted … two had embedded into wood while the fatal bullet had fractured ribs on both sides of Harry’s body.

Officers recorded descriptions of the killer from several witnesses. A farmer delivering produce to a grocery story near the pharmacy had the best look. He drove up just in time to stop while the shooter returned to his car. He sensed that something was wrong and made a point of getting a good look at the man. Still, those accounts provided no outstanding traits to focus on: slender, somewhat tall, clean shaven, and wearing muted gray clothes … including a gray tweed cap that obscured his hair color.

They struck potential gold with the getaway car, however. First of all, an alert filling station attendant had recorded the license plate number and gave the specific model as a “Willys 77.” More to the point, it didn’t require a pro or a car buff to see that the vehicle was quite different from the ordinary. Designed as an inexpensive Depression-era auto, the Willys was over a foot shorter and five or six inches narrower than anything else on the road. Witnesses particularly noted its unusually narrow windshield, along with other distinctive features.  

Willys 77. Willys-Overland Sales Brochure.

Also, despite its low price – lowest on the market for a new car – fewer than 22 thousand had been sold. Thus, the very next day, Spokane police learned that the car had been stolen in Everett, Washington on July 21st. Also, someone burglarized a garage that night, taking an old typewriter and the license plates used on the Willys. Everett officials had a prime suspect, whose photo was shown to the witnesses in Spokane. The results were inconclusive, with some saying yes, maybe; others being not so sure. Significantly, the farmer who had obtained the best view was among the doubters.

Nevertheless, with nothing else to go on, officials issued a murder warrant for the suspect on August 3rd. However, nine days later, they learned that he had been on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico when the killing occurred. That same day, Spokane police located the Willys, which had been wiped clean of fingerprints and abandoned in a rented private garage. The owner had rented it on July 23rd to a man who gave his name as “G. Jacobsen.” She thought he was “about 30” years old. Thus, officials had another description, but still no actual suspect.

Ultimately, the vigilance and intuition of Leslie M. Carroll, Deputy Prosecutor for Spokane County, broke the case. A few days before the Everett suspect was eliminated, Carroll had handled a routine burglary case. One Tom Eskridge (alias George Gregory, alias George Edwards, alias John Lowry) had been arrested in Boise, Idaho, while trying to pawn a typewriter stolen from a school about fifteen miles south of Spokane. Eskridge did not resist extradition and readily chose to plead guilty rather than undergo a trial. In fact, when there was some delay in his processing, Tom basically told the prosecutor to “get with it.” The judge imposed a stiff fifteen-year sentence after learning that the burglar already had a prison record.

Carroll surely knew about the frustrating, unsolved Phillips murder, although he does not seemed to have been directly involved. After the case fell apart on August 12th, Carroll explored a new possibility. We may infer his thoughts: “That guy Eskridge generally fits the description, and he left town shortly after the murder. Then he was sure anxious to get out of our jail and on to prison. I wonder why?” Officers showed Tom’s mug shot to the rental garage owner. She declared, “That’s the man.” The investigation had new life.

Nine days later, an article appeared in the Spokane Chronicle. Anyone who had bought or found a .38-caliber pistol, “possibly a Smith & Wesson or Colts,” between July 30 and August 4 should notify authorities right away. It might be the weapon that murdered Harry Phillips. They had clearly not yet sent the three slugs found at the crime scene to criminologist Luke S. May. He would have had little trouble identifying the make and model. The very next day, newspapers reported that police had received a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. They were sending it to criminologist May in Seattle. But the revolver was not the murder weapon.

Three weeks passed with no further mention of the Phillips case in the newspapers. Behind the scenes, however, police were busy adding to their case. They now knew that Tom had rented an apartment less than a block away from the garage. He had been accompanied by a woman, and they registered as Tom Jacobs and wife. Despite much effort, she was never tracked down, or even identified. They also found a pawnbroker who had bought the old typewriter stolen in Everett. Tom had used yet another assumed name for that. However, despite all the effort, they never did recover the murder weapon. (We don’t know how many weapons May examined for the case.)

Tom Eskridge.
Spokane Chronicle
(September 14, 1935).

 Finally, on September 14th, officials felt they had enough and issued a warrant charging Tom Eskridge with the murder of Harry Phillips. Thomas T. Eskridge was born around 1905 in eastern Virginia. His parents separated not long after that, and the mother moved the family to eastern Oregon. His mother remarried in the fall of 1919 and they were living in Yakima, Washington in 1920. After that, Eskridge disappeared from available sources for almost a decade, until we find him listed as a glazier in the 1929 City Directory for Santa Barbara, California. During that gap, he may well have compiled a criminal record. However, given his propensity for fake names, we’ll never know for sure.

In any case, sources show that, in 1930, he spent three months in the Salt Lake City jail for robbery. Not long after he got out, he and an accomplice held up a grocery store there. Soon caught, Tom received a prison sentence of five to twenty years. The judge then paroled them with the proviso that they identify out-of-state “custodians.” He chose a brother-in-law living in Ojai, California.

Six months later, Tom was arrested for burglaries in nearby Ventura, California. He received a five to fifteen year prison sentence. He served several months in Folsom prison, but was then transferred to San Quentin. He was released in June 1935 and headed north to Everett, Washington. (We don’t know why.) There, he was believed to have committed several burglaries, along with stealing the Willys. Tom then continued on to Spokane.

Tom’s defense in court was feeble, to say the least. His attempt at an alibi was easily refuted. His lawyers then tried to raise “reasonable doubt” based on the witnesses who had erroneously fingered the suspect from Everett. None of that worked and he received a life sentence. After a failed escape attempt in 1936, Tom fell to studying ways to use loopholes in the legal system to get out of prison. The last of several appeals was denied on June 14, 1965. There’s no record that he died in prison, so he might have finally been released (or escaped). He then perhaps chose to live under an assumed name.

After Harry was shot and killed, Mamie (McFadden) Phillips became a clerk at a JC Penneys department store in Spokane. She never remarried and stayed with the company until her retirement around 1956. Her sons both married and gave her a total of five grandchildren before her death in the spring of 1966.
                                                                               

References:  Patrick R. Foster, Bill Tilden, Willys: The Complete Illustrated History 1903-1963, Enthusiast Books, Pepin, Wisconsin (2016).

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

“[Phillips Murder, Background and News],” Daily Olympian, Olympia, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Pullman Herald, Colfax Gazette, Washington; Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho; Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Salt Lake Tribune, Utah (June 1910 – November 1963).

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Murder At The Haven

Every life tells a story. That tale gains extra poignancy when it’s cut short by an untimely death. Such was the case for E. D. “Spike” Hennessey, shot to death in the summer of 1930. There was also a sad kind of irony in his story.

Edward D. Hennessey was born around 1873 about fifteen miles west of New York City, in New Jersey. His father, born in Ireland, was originally a blacksmith but had switched to carpentry by 1900. At that time, the family lived in lower Manhattan, near the entrance/exit to the Holland Tunnel. Around two years later, Spike was in Aberdeen, Washington. Records suggest that his oldest brother had a job in the area with the Northern Pacific Railway. 

Aberdeen Shipyard, 1901. Wikipedia.

Aberdeen, platted in 1884, had enjoyed steady success with an economy based on salmon fisheries and timber. Schooners – many of them locally built – hauled lumber and canned fish up and down the coast. Then, in 1895, a railroad spur was completed into town, igniting a boom. Soon, Aberdeen had a half dozen sawmills, three canneries, and two shipyards. Also, besides the usual array of saloons, the town had two theaters. Spike found work as a longshoreman.

In the summer of 1903, Hennessey married Cora Lee Ray. Born in Virginia, Cora gave her occupation as “singer,” but did not list her employer. Some time in the following two years, the couple moved to Tacoma, where Spike continued to work as a longshoreman. Starting around 1915, he served two years as a deputy sheriff assigned to the local Water Department. After that, he went back to work on the Tacoma docks.

Around 1929 or 1930, Spike and Cora began operating a tourist camp about twelve miles south of Tacoma on what was called the “Mountain Highway.” The road was a primary route between the cities on Puget Sound and Mount Rainier National Park. After decades of physically demanding labor, Spike had entered the small business class, a fine instance of upward mobility for a first-generation American.

The Roaring Twenties had seen explosive growth in “auto tourism,” as more and more families acquired cars and took to the road. Cities and towns soon began offering public spaces to attract travelers to local businesses. Features ranged from bare-bones camping spots to elaborate facilities with showers, cooking grills, recreational equipment, and more. Some even offered cabins for those who didn’t want to bother with a tent. (Motorhomes as we know them were then almost all custom built and far too expensive for the average family.)

The Hennesseys’ venture benefitted from another trend that developed around the middle of the decade: A drastic switch from public to private ownership. (The reasons were complex, and beyond the scope of this blog.) Thus, Spike and Cora were able to rent and operate what they called “Fir Haven.” It’s unclear if they had cabins on the property, or only offered camping spots. They did have a gas station, and Cora prepared food at an attached diner.

Prospects seemed bright because Rainier Park was, even then, a very popular tourist destination. And no one really knew that the country was entering the Great Depression. In 1930, most people thought they were in just another recession … which would soon pass. In fact, with money tight, even more tourists might choose an inexpensive auto vacation over a train and hotel getaway. But sadly, selfish and violent greed robbed Spike and Cora of their dream.

Mount Rainier, 1930. National Park Service.

One of the two thieves was Caulie Avera. Born March 21, 1903 in southwestern Georgia, the young man was working on his father’s farm near Moultrie, Georgia at the time of the 1920 census. Some records suggest that he joined the Army around 1925. However, perhaps because of his later status as a deserter, we know very little about his military career. We do know that at some point he began serving in the U.S. Army Tank Corps.

Avera’s partner in crime was George A. Weyrauch. George was born December 25, 1898 in eastern New Jersey. At the time of the 1900 census, the family lived in Hoboken, along the Hudson River. George was a mere infant, of course. But in a sad irony, Spike Hennessy – his future victim – was then living and working about three miles away, across the river in lower Manhattan. Surely neither knew the other existed, but they would meet, tragically, thirty years later on the other side of the continent.

When Weyrauch signed up for the draft in 1918, he was working as a cook at a psychiatric hospital in eastern Long Island, New York. Like Avera, we know very little about Weyrauch’s military service. Still, transport records indicate that he was in the U.S. Army in 1926. Also, at some point, he too began serving in the Tank Corp. He and Avera were both stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington in the summer of 1930.

News reports never said why the two men decided to desert. Part of Fort Lewis extends all the way to the Mountain Highway, so the two probably already knew about the Hennessey place. They drove up late on the evening of June 30, 1930, entered the diner, and ordered sandwiches. After the two finished, they walked to the cash register. As soon as Cora opened the register, the men drew weapons and waved her away so one could scoop up all the money. When she protested, the other bandit hit her with his gun, severely cutting the side of her head. Cora staggered and screamed.

Spike must have been suspicious of these late-evening customers, because he had already armed himself with a revolver. He now burst in through the back door and fired two shots at the robbers. The crooks answered with a hail of bullets. Hit twice, Spike died almost instantly. A third slug struck Cora, shattering her hip. The bandits leaped into their car and sped away, taking about $25 in loose change with them. Cora couldn’t get up, so it’s not clear who called the sheriff’s office. She gave officers a detailed description of the attackers while they waited for an ambulance. That information was quickly transmitted to area law enforcement.

The next morning, George Weyrauch and Caulie Avera failed to report for roll call at Fort Lewis. A search of their footlockers highlighted the ominous fact that their service weapons, .45-caliber automatic pistols, were also missing. At this point, someone put the pieces together and showed Mrs. Hennessey photos of the two soldiers. She immediately and vehemently identified Weyrauch as the man who had shot her and Spike. She was less certain about Avera … but even that showed “a close resemblance.”

An intense manhunt began for the two men, who were now wanted as murder suspects as well as deserters. Oddly enough, the killers seem to have borrowed and then returned the car they drove. Nothing like it was reported stolen or found abandoned around the area. The active search extended as far as Boise, Idaho, but then went dormant for eight months.

Later testimony revealed that George Weyrauch made his way to Florida, then backtracked to Texas. There, he and another man stole a car. Texas authorities lost their trail when they fled west. Finally, in March 1931, an alert traffic cop in San Jose, California spotted the license plate and arrested the two. Weyrauch gave authorities a fake name at first, but soon pled guilty to auto theft and was sentenced to a year and a day at McNeil Island federal prison.

At some point, officials also discovered that he was a prime suspect in the Hennessey murder. Thus, in early April, Weyrauch was transferred from the penitentiary to stand trial in Tacoma. As soon as she saw him face-to-face, Cora exclaimed, “That’s the man!” She then declared that she had “seen his face every day for more than a year.”

Criminologist Luke S. May logged his “State vs Weyrauch” firearms case about this time. We may thus infer that authorities had recovered the suspect’s weapon, but available newspaper reports do not explicitly say so. At the very least, he would have been able to testify that the death bullets came from an Army standard-issue Colt .45-caliber automatic.

Colt .45-Caliber Automatic. U.S. Army Photo.

In any case, the testimony of Spike’s widow, delivered from a stretcher brought into court, would have surely sealed the State’s case. Weyrauch tried to throw all the blame on his accomplice, and even claimed that he himself had not fired a shot. Unimpressed, the jury found him guilty of first degree murder. They apparently had a long discussion about the punishment. Finally, on May 17, 1931, they recommended a life sentence.

Another fifteen months passed. Later, authorities learned that Caulie Avera had spent about half that time in Buhl, Idaho. It’s not clear where he went after that. However, in August 1932, he was captured in Moultrie, Georgia, where he had gone to visit his parents.

Brought back to Tacoma for trial, he was able to arrange a plea deal for a reduced charge of second degree murder. Prosecutors wanted to avoid the expense of another trial. Moreover, Cora Hennessey’s condition had apparently deteriorated to the point that she might not be fit to appear in court. Without her testimony, authorities feared they would not be able to get a conviction.

Despite the lesser charge, Avera also received a life sentence. He and Weyrauch were in the Washington State Penitentiary at the time of the 1940 census. In 1947, Avera benefitted from a change in Washington law that allowed the parole board to reconsider his sentence. He was released, and back in Georgia by 1951. About four years after that, he married a widow with three grown children. The couple had no children of their own. Caulie Avera died in 1978. Weyrauch did not immediately benefit from the new law in 1947. He was, however, released in 1950 or shortly thereafter. In 1953, he married a widow with two children. They too had no children of their own. George Weyrauch died in 1987.

As indicated above, the widow’s health had steadily declined. Cora Lee (Ray) Hennessey died March 6, 1935. With her gone, and no children to carry on, no one was there to protest the cancellation of the killers’ supposed “life” sentences.

                                                                               
References: “[Hennessey Murder Related News],” Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon; San Francisco Chronicle, California (July 1, 1930 – July 9, 1947).
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.
Jennifer Ott, “Aberdeen – Thumbnail History,” Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (November 2, 2009).
Terence Young, Heading Out: A History of American Camping, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (2017).

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