An Immigrant Tragedy

A Luke May death case in the spring of 1923 came during a key period in the history of firearms evidence use. By then, private criminologist May had handled over thirty death cases that involved firearms. He had started his vast gun collection and could identify the make and model of most commonly-used firearms from the bullets they fired. In over a dozen cases, he was able to tie a specific gun to a death. About a year and a half before our current case, May described his approach to a newspaper reporter. The key, he said, were the microscopic marks in the bullets and the shells that were unique to a particular weapon … what we now call the “individual characteristics.”

A few months later, Professor Victor Balthazard at the Sorbonne, in France, published a technical paper on the subject. When suspect weapons are of the same make and model, he wrote, “One must resort to the study of the fine scratches” inscribed by a particular gun. In fact, the year 1922 was pivotal in the history of the technique. Among other milestones, Arizona courts ruled that such evidence was admissible, even in a capital case. Still, it was not until three years later that the general public in this country heard about it. That summer, The Saturday Evening Post published a long two-part article about the advance: “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Expert Witness.”

May’s case in 1923 illustrates both the strengths and the limitations of the technique. The dispute revolved around the family of Karl Kirsch. Born about 1880 in Hanover, Germany, Kirsch immigrated to the United States in 1903. He made his way to Seattle, where, in 1908, he married local girl Minnie Williams. Over the next seven years the couple had four children: Alice, Irene, Arthur, and Caroline. Karl started out as a common laborer. However, by 1918 he was operating a dairy farm about two miles from Hoquiam, Washington. Hoquiam is a logging and mill town on Grays Harbor Bay, about 45 miles west of Olympia. 

Kirsch Family, ca 1922. Family Archives.

Karl’s oldest daughter, Alice, was fourteen years old in the spring of 1923. She was tasked with minding the dairy cows in a nearby meadow. There, however, she attracted the attention of a middle-aged neighbor, Pedro Panichini.

Panichini was born around 1873, somewhere in Chile. He seems to have moved to the United States around 1901, or perhaps before. (The records are somewhat muddled.) From at least 1910 until after 1920, he worked as an unskilled sawmill laborer on Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound from Seattle. But in the spring of 1923, Panichini was living alone in a cabin near Kirsch’s place. (There is no record that he ever married.) He probably worked as a firewood cutter and bay fisherman.

The third player is this drama was Maximo Valverde Perez, who also lived nearby and may have worked part-time for Kirsch. Born in Mexico in 1885, he entered the U.S. as a farm worker in 1912. Six years later, he was living in Seattle and doing seasonal work at a fish cannery in Alaska. It’s unknown when he moved to the Grays Harbor area. In any case, he and Panichini did not get along, although Perez never said why.

Newspaper accounts were vague about Panichini’s behavior toward Alice, but it made her uncomfortable and she had complained to her parents. In the late afternoon of May 25, 1923, she, as usual, went out into the meadow to shoo the cows into the barn. Panichini appeared and began to follow her. Her mother was apparently watching and alerted Karl. Kirsch called to Perez for help and hurried out to confront the Chilean.

Matters quickly escalated to the point where Karl received a blow to the head, probably from the revolver Panichini had drawn. Kirsch and Perez tried to wrestle the gun away, and during the struggle, Panichini was shot fatally in the chest. Karl later said Perez had control of the weapon when shots were fired, but he had been dazed at that point … and Perez denied it.

Luke May received evidence for the case on May 31, the day authorities charged Perez with murder. He recorded: “One Imperial Arms Company 38 Calibre Revolver #A-1486 and one fired 38 calibre deformed lead bullet and two empty brass cartridge cases.” The package also included three unfired cartridges for the gun, “one cartridge having the primer slightly dented, apparently a miss fire.” 

Imperial Arms .38 Caliber Hammerless.
Classic Firearms Sales Site. 

 The brand name on the weapon was used by a large gunmaker in Connecticut for their line of cheap, low-quality hammerless revolvers. And, indeed, May found that the death weapon misfired twice before each successful test shot. Still, its individual traits were clear enough that he “was able to pick out the bullets from this revolver each time.” The same assertion could not be made for the actual death bullet, although he was satisfied that it had come from the submitted weapon. However, because of the deformation, he was only willing to testify that the bullet had been fired from the same make and model of revolver.

Luckily, that distinction mattered little when the case went to trial in July. The context – an older, nonwhite foreigner pestering an attractive white teenage girl – would have surely set a lenient tone, even though the accused was also a nonwhite foreigner. Perez was acquitted with virtually no notice in the larger regional newspapers. Some time after the acquittal, he left the state and disappeared from public records for seventeen years. Perez told the 1940 census taker that he’d been in western Nebraska in 1935. In 1940, he was staying with a married niece in El Paso, Texas.

Sadly, Panichini indirectly caused yet more trouble for the Kirsch family. Karl paid his estate for title to the Chilean’s rowboat. However, a neighbor who thought he had bought the entire estate felt it should include the boat. When Karl tried to retrieve the craft from the neighbor’s property, he was wounded by a shotgun blast. Charges were filed against the neighbor, but nothing further seems to have come of that. Karl died a bit over a year after the shooting.

With the main bread-winner gone, the family splintered. Alice married in late 1925, presumably with Minnie’s consent. The youngest daughter, Caroline, died the following year. Irene married in early 1927, with her mother attesting that she was 18 years old. She was, in fact, only a couple months over 17.

Both girls would marry three times. In fact, Alice was listed as already divorced in the 1930 census. She married a second husband in 1936, divorced him (date unknown), and then outlived her third. She died in 2006. Irene’s first marriage lasted less than two years; she divorced in March 1929. She married again in 1937, that husband passing away in the summer of 1967. She married again in early 1969, but died six years later.

Arthur would have been 19 at the time of the 1930 census. He was not at his mother’s home in Hoquiam at that time, and cannot otherwise be located. He wed in 1935, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1980. Mother Minnie (Williams) Kirsch remarried in 1934, but that husband died in 1956. She married again a little over a year later. He passed away in 1966, leaving her a widow again until her own passing in 1983.
                                                                               

References: Evan E. Filby, American Sherlock: Remembering a Pioneer in Scientific Crime Investigation, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland (2019).

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

“[Panichini Death News],” The Oregonian, Portland; (May 26, 1923 – August 17, 1923).

Ned Schwing, Standard Catalog of Firearms, Krause Publications, Iola, Wisconsin (2002).

Wesley W. Stout, “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Expert Witness,” The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 13 & 20, 1925).

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A Fatal Blunder

To this day, the shooting death of Seattle police officer Fred Ivey on May 10, 1928 is described as an unsolved murder. Yet, eight months after his death, the probable killer was identified by a competent witness. The likely reasons for still calling it “unsolved” are instructive.

Fred Ivey was born March 13, 1879 in Missouri. When he was about twenty years old, the family moved to Granite Falls, Washington, a small town thirteen miles northeast of Everett. In 1909, he married Katherine Sybella Brown there. Four years later, they moved into Everett, where Fred worked as a power system operator and then served as town marshal for a couple years. Between 1911 and 1917, the couple had two sons and a daughter. In July 1917, Fred became an officer for the Seattle police department. He proved to be an effective and highly-respected patrolman.

Shortly after 10:00 p.m. on May 10th, a quick-witted citizen alerted Officer Ivey to the flight of an armed robber. The informant was Curtis E. “Jack” Howell, a (former?) private detective and deputy sheriff. Although the heads-up was justified, it would lead to tragedy.

Howell was born September 28, 1888 in New York City. He ran a detective agency for several years before catching the “flying bug.” He became proficient enough to open a flight training school in Richmond, California, backed by the [Glenn] Curtiss Aeroplane Company. Then a flying accident kept him out of the air for several months, so he moved to Fargo, North Dakota and started a new detective agency. When World War I began, Howell enlisted in the aero corp and was assigned to an aviation training base in Texas. However, he received a disability discharge in the spring of 1918. Records do not say whether or not he suffered another accident, or simply became ill. 

Curtiss Biplance ca 1911. Library of Congress.

Howell evidently spent the next several years in North Dakota and eastern Montana before moving to Seattle. He continued to promote aviation, but did not try to compete with freelance barnstormers, who now performed ever more dangerous stunts. Accounts show him in a wide variety of unrelated short-term jobs, a pattern that suggests he might have been working as an undercover private investigator. (For obvious reasons, he never said anything to confirm or deny this possibility.)

On the evening of May 10, Howell was in a drug store near downtown Seattle when a man we’ll call “Slippery Slim” entered. He barked, “Stick’um up!” and waved a pistol around. Howell had time to carefully note the robber’s appearance before he made off with about $50 from the cash register. After a momentary wait, Jack began to trail the crook. He persisted long enough for the fugitive to spot him and threaten him from a distance. Jack dropped back, then persuaded the driver of a passing car to help. Next, the thief boarded a streetcar headed north.

Luckily, Patrolman Ivey happened by just as Howell ran into a store to call for help. Flagged down by the driver, Ivey quickly joined the pursuit, which continued for several blocks. Frustrated, the officer had the driver pull alongside the streetcar so he could signal the conductor to pull up. For reasons that were never explained, the conductor ignored him and went on to his next scheduled stop. By then, the fugitive had noted the police uniform and hurried to the rear platform of the trolley. Ivey was fatally wounded in the ensuing exchange of gunfire. The shooter ran off into the darkness.

Despite a huge manhunt then and for days afterwards, the fugitive eluded capture. Between Howell and the other witnesses, “Slim” was described as: In his late twenties, about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, an estimated weight of 140 pounds, and a dark complexion. Police hired criminologist Luke S. May a few days after the shooting. He identified the murder weapon as a .38-caliber Colt automatic pistol. The trick, of course, would be to find it and its owner.

Sadly, armed robberies were all too common in Seattle at the time, although only those with special features made the newspapers. Thus, on July 15, a bandit shot it out with a pharmacist at a drug store about two miles west of the University of Washington. The crook hit the victim in the foot, but got away with just $30. The description of the shooter was said to be “identical” to that of the Ivey killer, Slippery Slim. His weapon was identified as a .38-caliber Colt automatic pistol, but the slug was apparently too distorted to try a specific match with the Ivey death missile. Still, the news article also noted that the same bandit had been implicated in a number of holdups around the city. In every case, Slippery Slim proved to have an uncanny ability to evade pursuit.

Over the next several months, police followed many possible leads, but none of them panned out. The shocking denouement came around noon on January 9, 1929. Two masked men tried to hold up the Barto Company, an insurance and small loans firm located near the southern edge of downtown Seattle. This proved to be a fatal miscalculation. The owner-operator, Thomas C. Barto, had lettered in baseball at the University of Washington (he graduated in 1914) and was an outstanding all-around athlete. He was also a highly skilled hunter, and known as a fine marksman with rifle, pistol, and shotgun.

Available records contain no systematic reconstruction of events in the office. We cannot even be sure when the shooting started. But most accounts agree that Barto and a male clerk retrieved weapons from desk drawers and scored multiple hits on the two crooks. There is also agreement that two female customers fled the scene and summoned police. An officer passing by on the street responded quickly enough to exchange shots with one bandit and block his escape. He was later commended for his swift action.

In any case, Barto ended up badly wounded and the clerk had been stunned by a blow to the head. The two would-be thieves, however, were both fatally wounded. There names were Robert Byrne and James M. Fare. Unlike Byrne, Fare had no known criminal record. More importantly, Jack Howell saw Byrne’s picture in the news, went to the funeral parlor, and positively identified him as the killer of Patrolman Ivey. The next day, officials conceded that Howell was probably right. They (and possibly Luke May) had perhaps traced some of Byrne’s underworld contacts and associates.

Robert Byrne was born in Chicago in 1899. His father died less than six months later. Around 1914, the mother moved the family to Seattle. Two years later, Robert was sent to reform school for robbing a grocery store. He displayed his slipperiness early, jumping from a moving train to escape. Authorities apparently didn’t bother to pursue him further.

At some point, Byrne returned to Chicago and lied about his age to enlist in the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station. However, in the spring of 1918, postal inspectors tracked down Byrne and another youth as the robbers of a Chicago post office. Byrne was dishonorably discharged and turned over to civilian authorities. A judge sentenced him to six to ten years in Joliet Prison. He was back in Seattle by 1927 or 1928.

Byrne never regained consciousness after the Barto fiasco (neither did Fare). Thus, there was no way to verify, or disprove, that he really was Slippery Slim. Police did not ask Luke May to make any further bullet comparisons, so that too was a dead end. In fact, authorities chose not to incur the expense of further testing to see who was shot with what. (Some reports speculated that Barto might have been hit by a bullet from the clerk’s weapon.) 

Robert Byrne. Seattle Times.

In the months after Ivey’s murder, various organizations around Seattle had sponsored benefit events for the family: a play, dance, “smoker,” and even a boxing card. Katherine (Brown) Ivey also received what amounted to a lifetime job as a cleaning lady at the Seattle public library. She never remarried, retired around 1952, and passed away in 1968.

Her oldest son, Quentin, had a job as a typist at the King County jail while he attended the University of Washington. Later, he worked as a food company salesman, at least some of that time for the H.J. Heinz Company. The other son, Eugene, drove a truck for the Coca Cola Company, then enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Afterwards, Eugene joined the Seattle police department, retiring around 1976. Daughter Dolores worked as a beautician until her marriage to a shipyard craftsman in 1941.

Evidence suggests that Curtis “Jack” Howell continued to work as an undercover investigator. Although he appeared in various city directories, he listed no occupation for the 1940 U.S. Census, and called himself a “retired aviator” on his 1942 draft registration. He died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident in May 1944. His obituary mentioned only that he had once worked as a circus clown.

Thomas Barto recovered well enough from his wound to continue in the loan and insurance business for at least another thirty years. He died in May 1983 … at over ninety years old.
                                                                               

References:  “[Criminal Case Activity],” Seattle Times, Washington (May 11, 1928 – January 13, 1929).

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

Officer Fred Ivey, Behind the Badge Foundation – https://behindthebadgefoundation.org/rollcall/ivey-officer-fred/ [Downloaded January 9, 2021.]

“[Participant Background],” Oakland Tribune, Santa Maria Times, California; Chicago Tribune, Illinois; Eugene Guard, Capital Journal, Salem, Oregon; Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, Williston Graphic, Ward County Independent, Minot, North Dakota; Seattle Times, Seattle Star, Washington (March1914 – February 1988).

C. R. Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, Pioneer of Flight, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1991).

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Victim of the Great Depression

The United States, indeed the entire world, faced a dire future in the summer of 1930. The stock market crash was now rippling through the economy, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The number of workers without jobs would almost triple before the year was out, and get worse from there. Those losses hit logging and sawmill work particularly hard. The response to that pain would prove fatal for storekeeper and Postmaster Carl Krummel.

Carl Heinrich Krummel was born in late 1868, in western Germany. It is estimated that he married around 1892, and known that the couple had a son, Carl, Jr., in the spring of 1895. We cannot date anything specific during the next seven years. They spent some time in Chile, but we don’t know when or how long. It most likely began in 1895-1897, when German “colonies” in southern Chile were being strongly promoted. At some point, Krummel’s first wife died, but available records don’t say when.

Thus, in the summer of 1902, Carl and his son took ship from Chile to the U.S., landing in Seattle. Carl then found work as a bookkeeper at a Tacoma brewery. He completed their naturalization process in 1908. The following year, Krummel married Adele Utz, a Tacoma schoolteacher. She too was a German immigrant, having arrived in 1904. They had two children: Bernhard in 1911 and Elisabeth in 1919.

About a year before their daughter’s birth, Carl built or purchased a small general store in Adna, Washington.  A logging town located about six miles southwest of Chehalis, Adna was then a branch station on the Northern Pacific Railway. The store included a postal cubicle and, in November 1920, Krummel was appointed Adna Postmaster. 

Early Logging Site. Lewis County Historical.

Carl, Jr. clerked at the store some, but apparently disliked or proved unsuitable for that work. Before 1926, he began twenty years of work as a laborer for the Northern Pacific Railway. At the time of the 1930 Census, Carl, Sr. seems to have been grooming Bernhard to handle the business. They were together in the store when three young men tried to rob it.

One of the three was Matt Simila – actually, Toivo Matthew Simila (his parents were immigrants from Finland). Matt was born in late 1905 in a small coal mining town located a bit over twenty miles southeast of Tacoma. The family seems to have moved around some, but they had a farm about three miles south of Adna in 1920. The hamlet was the nearest source of supplies, so Matt came to know the Krummels fairly well.

Within a few years, Matt became a logger. He soon earned a name as a skilled “high climber” or “topper,” one the most dangerous specialities in an already hazardous line of work. The topper prepared the “spar tree,” the tall anchor pole for the overhead cables used to move raw logs around the cutting area. He had to go up with just climbing spikes and a rope around the trunk. He cleared all the lower limbs on the way up and then cut off the top. The sudden release of weight causes the pole to oscillate wildly and the topper must – literally – hang on for dear life. The job is not for the faint of heart, but it paid well.

By about 1927, he and fellow loggers Stanley Filipiak and Blaine McCoy had become pals. Filipiak was born in 1908 in another tiny town about 12 miles southwest of Adna. His father, a Polish immigrant, worked in a sawmill there. (The family often gave their name as “Phillips.”) His mother died in 1914, when Stanley was not yet six years old. Then, in 1927, his father died. That was probably about a year after Stanley became a logger.

John Blaine McCoy (he went by “Blaine” in the camps) was born in 1906 in West Virginia. About a year later, the family moved to a place about nine miles west of Adna. Sadness soon visited them, as Blaine’s infant brother died in September 1910. The mother died less than four years later. Blaine was essentially orphaned at that point. He was not with his father for the 1920 Census, and cannot otherwise be found.

McCoy had no known criminal record by 1930. Nevertheless, two or three years before, he had begun to badger Matt Simila to go into the robbery “business” with him. He probably reasoned that holding people up was far less dangerous than working timber, and would probably pay better. Also, it was he who bought two revolvers from a pawn shop on a visit to Portland in the summer of 1929.

After the spring of 1930, the three might have had part-time work, but news reports imply that they had no steady employment. That would make sense if they were caught in the early layoffs in the industry. Simila later told authorities that they had held up a service station a week before the confrontation in Adna.

Saturday July 5, 1930 was a fine summer day, clear and sunny. That evening, they went looking for some entertainment. They knew of two dances, one in Adna and one further south. As they cruised through Adna, they didn’t see much. In fact, Filipiak commented (more or less), “This place is dead. Be a good time to hit the store.”

McCoy quickly agreed, and even pushed the idea. Simila objected, mostly because he was sure Krummel would recognize him. Conceding the possibility, McCoy and Filipiak grabbed the two revolvers and headed for the store. McCoy wore a rudimentary mask. Matt positioned the car with the motor running for a quick getaway, then doused the lights.

The would-be robbers assumed their guns would cow Carl and Bernhard into submission. But “Hands up!” was hardly out of their mouths when Carl grabbed a .32-caliber pistol from under the counter and shouted something. Startled, the crooks opened fire. Two of their seven bullets hit Carl; either would have been fatal. Totally flummoxed, the two fled to the car, which raced away.

When they saw no pursuit, the three went on to the dance south of town. They were there when word came that Carl Krummel had been killed. The two shooters had already changed clothes, now they ditched the revolvers in a slough. Between running around half the night, and considerable moonshine, the three were sound asleep in their Centralia apartment when police came for them.

A witness had seen their car drive slowly back and forth through Adna shortly before the shooting. And, as noted above, it was the only vehicle moving in town at the time. Officials broadcast the description all around the area and a patrolman found it parked near the apartment building. The manager explained who normally used the car and their appearance generally matched what Bernhard had been able to tell police. (The son had dived for cover after the shooting started.)

Simila cracked first, after two days of steady interrogation. He outlined their activities that night and even led police to where they had tossed the weapons. The other two finally gave in too, and generally agreed with Simila’s account. McCoy, however, claimed he had fired because a bullet from Krummel’s gun had “whizzed past his ear.”

Officials brought criminologist Luke S. May into the case within a day or so of the attack. He quickly identified which of the revolvers had been the death weapon. He also found that Krummel’s pistol had not been fired. It even had a bit of undisturbed rust in the barrel. Later, McCoy and Filipiak would not, or perhaps could not, say which of the guns each had used.

The trial was rather straightforward. But then one juror refused to budge from a first-degree murder conviction, and possible death sentence. The others were swayed by the fact that the shooters had become motherless at a “tender age.” (The fact that Elisabeth was made fatherless at the age of ten somehow didn’t count.) After a long consultation among the legal teams and the judge, the three were “allowed” to plead guilty to a second degree murder charge. They all received life sentences.

Despite that, Simila was out before 1940, had a job in Walla Walla, and was learning to fly. He later became a flight instructor and airport manager. In 1948, he married a divorcee with two children. He died in 1972 in Pacific County, Washington (near the mouth of the Columbia River).

Filipiak was free and living back in Lewis County when he registered for the draft in October 1942. He married about five months later. After that, he operated a barber shop, first near the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, then in Longview, Washington. He died there in February 1985.

McCoy was also free, living in Centralia, when he registered for the draft in October 1942. He got married two years later, while still employed as a logger. John Blaine McCoy died young, when he was just 47 years old.

For several months after the murder, Mrs. Adele Krummel served as Acting Postmistress at Adna. She soon – perhaps within a matter of months – sold the store. Carl, Jr. got married about seven months after the murder and the couple moved into Tacoma. He continued to work for the Northern Pacific for over a decade. They had a daughter in 1932, but she died after just a few months. They do not appear to have had any more children.

Bernhard got married in 1936. More ambitious and talented, he went to Harvard Business School and then worked for a large national accounting firm for at least twenty years. They had a daughter in 1939. Available records do not say whether or not they had any more children.

Daughter Elisabeth earned degrees in social work and served as a program manager for the YWCA in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Seattle. In 1953, she married civil engineer and surveyor James Carey. They had two children (in 1955 and 1957), both born in Washington state. Thus, widow Adele (Utz) Krummel could at least cherish three grandchildren before she died in February 1959.
                                                                               

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

“[Krummel-Related News],” Daily Chronicle, Centralia, Seattle Times, Chehalis Bee-Nugget, Bellingham Herald, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Longview Daily News, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland (February 1927 – February 1985).

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

David Tock, German Immigration and Adaptation to Latin American, Senior Thesis, Honors Program, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia (1994).

Elmus Wicker, The Banking Panics of the Great Depression, Cambridge University Press, New York, New York (1996).

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Murder in Obscurity

Until he was murdered on November 5, 1925, Victor Nelson had made little impression upon the news or records of his day. This at a time when newspapers commonly devoted many columns to brief notes that said, “Mr. Jones was promoted to vice principal at Westside Elementary” and “Miss Jane Doe just returned from a visit with her grandparents in Mudville.”

During the relevant time period, the Tacoma City Directory contained about 350 “Nelson” listings. And the southern Puget Sound region had over a dozen men named “Victor Nelson.” Few could be specifically identified by a distinctive title, occupation, or family affiliation. Still, by eliminating “candidates” who were clearly not him, we can assemble a composite from the remaining records. He was most likely from Sweden, born about 1875. He entered the U.S. between 1894 and 1904, and completed the naturalization process before about 1915. He apparently never married.

“Our” Victor had more skills than a simple laborer, or was perhaps especially frugal. By around 1922, he had the wherewithal to acquire a rooming house grandly called the “Home Hotel.” Located a mile or so south of Tacoma’s top-level business and hotel district, the property had only 15-20 rooms and did not furnish meals. It drew its clientele mostly from low-income laborers, service workers, or pensioners.

Downtown Tacoma, 1925. Tacoma Public Library.

Reports failed to say whether or not Thomas “Tom” Evans was a lodger there, or simply walked in off the street. But on the early morning of November 5, Evans entered Nelson’s room, robbed him, and then – for no apparent reason – fatally shot him in the back of the head. Frank Shehan, another tenant and friend of the proprietor, rushed to see what had happened. Evans fired at him too, inflicting two wounds in the jaw. Luckily, from his hospital bed, Shehan was able to provide a description of the shooter.

Officers captured the assailant within a couple hours after the attack. Evans was still carrying Nelson’s watch and other possessions. He also had a revolver that had been fired several times. Authorities quickly hired criminologist Luke S. May to examine the gun as the possible murder weapon. The suspect gave his name as Walsh, but he was soon identified as ex-convict Tom Evans. In a sad irony, we know a good deal more about the killer than we do about the victims. (It proved impossible to trace Shehan and his name never appeared again in news reports.)

Thomas B. Evans was born November 11, 1889 in a rural Iowa township about 125 miles northwest of Des Moines. Growing up, he attained no notable education or skills. The 1910 Census said he got by with odd jobs and spent long periods unemployed. He did play for a nearby small-town baseball team and perhaps picked up a few bucks for that.

He hit the news in late 1912 when he received a life sentence for a home invasion/burglary during which he tried to rape the middle-aged lady who lived there. Prison authorities made note of his surliness and volatile temper. He was paroled in the summer of 1917, but a parole violation had him back in prison six months later. He was let out again after two more years.

By 1920, Tom had moved to the San Joaquin Valley of California, where his older brother had opened a print shop in Stockton. Tom got by as an itinerant farm laborer. There were suspicions that he “supplemented” his income by petty theft, but no evidence. Finally, in early 1925, he beat up and sodomized an eleven-year-old boy in Fresno before being frightened off by a neighbor. Police believed he tried to persuade a taxi owner to take him to Stockton, which led to a fight that damaged the inside of the vehicle. Finally, Evans apparently pulled a gun and shot the driver dead.

Police found the battered and bloodstained taxi in Stockton the next day. County officials issued two warrants for the arrest of Evans, one for an “unnatural crime,” the other for “assault with the intent to commit murder.” When the driver’s body was found two months later – it had been dumped in a river – authorities upgraded the charge to murder.

So far as we know, Evans had no criminal record in California prior to these events. However, as a matter of routine, police would have interviewed his brother about Tom’s likely whereabouts. He would have surely told them that Tom had served time in the Iowa penitentiary. Thus, the bulletin distributed about Evans probably included a mug shot and the classification points for his fingerprints, if not the actual images.

Ten months later, he was jailed in Tacoma for the shootings at the Home Hotel. It’s worth mentioning here that the use of fingerprint evidence was a relatively “new thing” in 1925. Even two or three years later, Luke May still logged cases that required him to collect and categorize latent prints for law enforcement clients. Fortunately, Tacoma officials already had May under contract. Within hours after police had jailed “Walsh,” they knew his real identity and that he was wanted in California.

Caught with the goods, Evans made a fantastic claim. He was about to leave the building, he said, when a stranger approached him in the dimly-lit (or was it dark?) hallway. After stuffing the evidence into Tom’s pockets, the intruder handed him the revolver and told him to “Beat it.” Why would anyone accept a mysterious weapon after three shots had been fired nearby? He could not explain. Such an unlikely story almost makes one wonder if Tom was of sub-standard intelligence, but there’s no way of knowing.

The “wheels of justice” moved faster in those days, and the Evans’ murder trial was scheduled for around the third week of December. Accounts never explained where Tom had spent the ten months between his flight from Stockton and arrest in Tacoma. But he evidently connected, or perhaps re-connected, with allies in the Washington underworld. A few days before the trial was to start, someone tried to spring him from his jail cell. A deputy on patrol found where an accomplice had cut away the heavy outside screen and started sawing on the bars.

As might be expected, the trial lacked any real drama. The defense stuck to the story about the mysterious stranger in the hall, which surely impressed no one. May’s identification of the revolver as the murder weapon would have sealed the deal. The jury did spend extra time deliberating, apparently trying to decided whether or not to recommend the death penalty. They finally voted for life imprisonment, which the judge imposed. Satisfied that justice had been served, Fresno officials chose not to request his return to California. 

Thomas "Tom" Evans.
Washington State Penitentiary.

Records show that Victor Nelson’s body was interred at Mountain View Memorial Park in the southwest outskirts of Tacoma. His overall anonymity was maintained, however. Available newspapers say nothing about a funeral service or even when he was buried. Nor was he identified in April 1950 when Tom Evans had a heart attack and died at the penitentiary. The brief item said Evans had been “convicted of first-degree murder,” but did not give the name of his victim.

By the time Tom died, the Evans family had fragmented. The brother in Stockton passed away in 1933. The oldest sister was the only member to stay in Iowa, but she was nearly 70 years old in 1950. Her husband was even older, and their sons were scattered across the country. The surviving younger brother was a contract painter, moving between jobs in Missouri and Kansas. The youngest sister was married and divorced before 1919. After that, she bounced all over: Denver, Duluth, San Diego, and Kansas City, Missouri … that we know of. Thomas “Tom” Evans was buried in the prison cemetery.
                                                                               

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

Jeffrey G. Barnes, “History,” The Fingerprint Sourcebook, Alan McRoberts (Editor), National Institute of Justice, Washington, D. C. (2012).

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

“[Nelson – Evans News],” Ottumwa Courier, Sioux City Journal, Iowa; Fresno Morning Republican, California; Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Washington (November 1912 – April 1950).

David Wilma and Walt Crowley, “Tacoma – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (September 09, 2003)..

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The Mobility Murder

By the summer of 1925, the “Roaring Twenties” were in full swing. Despite Prohibition, people craved novelty, excitement, and freedom. The automobile craze made one kind of freedom possible, with Ford Motor Company selling Model T’s almost as fast as they could build them. The number of cars on the road had doubled since 1920, to over 16 million registered. Yet with all that, many millions more did not own a car and didn’t even know how to drive.

That was good news for Earl Anable, a taxi and “rent-car” driver. Party-goers or shoppers would hire a rent-car, with driver, when they had a big day or evening planned. That way, they wouldn’t have to flag down cabs to get around. Earl could not know that death lurked behind him on one cool July evening.

1924 Cadillac Limousine. Classic Car sales Site.

Charles Earl Anable was born April 19, 1893 in Mount Vernon, Washington, a small town about 55 miles north of Seattle. He enlisted for World War I and went to France as a “motor mechanic” in the spring of 1918. There, officers discovered that he was an excellent driver. Of course, he also had the skills to fix the vehicle when it broke down (a not uncommon event). After the war, Earl found work as a chauffeur.

Anable married in early 1920, and the couple had a daughter about seventeen months later. In 1923, Earl landed a job with a Seattle taxi company. Then a better opportunity came along, so he resigned as of the end of June, 1925. However, the new job would not start for several weeks. Thus, on July 22, Earl was serving as a relief driver for another rental outfit.

That evening, a slight young man in a sailor uniform stopped at the rental stand and hired a company limousine with Earl as the driver. Earl’s boss saw the car leave at about 8:30. Puzzling second-hand accounts tell us very little about what happened in the next hour or so. A few minutes after the limo left the stand, a soldier at Fort Lawton saw it pass back and forth several times near his barracks. Since Lawton was located 5 to 6 miles northwest of downtown Seattle, Earl must have driven straight there.

Lawton did not have any actual fortifications. Except for a core of buildings and some cleared drill space, most its 703 acres were covered with brush and trees. It’s unclear if any of its roads were even paved in 1925, and there were points where vehicles could come and go as they pleased. Around a half hour later, another soldier also saw the limo, this time with three passengers dressed in civilian clothes.

Finally, about 9:30 or so, the wife of a soldier who had a home just off the reservation saw headlights on the rough road inside the unmarked boundary. The vehicle stopped and then, after a short pause, she heard a shot and the lights went out. It happened that the Army maintained a rifle range less than thirty yards beyond where the lights had stopped. Perhaps they were trying some night practice. The next morning before 6 o’clock, a boy delivering newspapers to the base discovered Earl Anable’s body inside the car. He had been shot once in the back of the head.

Earl Anable. Family Archive

The base commander immediately mustered every man for cross-examination by Seattle police detectives.  That included over 100 sailors and marines living in tents near the rifle range. With men vouching for each other, the interrogation seemed to establish “unshakable alibis” for everyone. That afternoon, searchers scoured the woods near the rifle range, hoping to find a sailor’s uniform discarded by a civilian perpetrator.

When that didn’t pan out, officers at the base began to revisit the supposedly iron-clad alibis. They soon discovered gaps in the story for one sailor, 20-year-old Lloyd Hudson. That evening, police arrested Hudson at a café where he was dining with his new bride. He naturally denied any involvement. However, under questioning, he began to contradict himself about his actions on the day of the murder … and finally confessed. But that was hardly the end of the story.

Lloyd LaRaine Hudson was born October 12, 1905 in Ardmore, Oklahoma. When he was old enough, he joined the U.S. Navy. After basic training, he was assigned to the battleship USS Arizona, which was then based in San Pedro, California. Each summer, the vessel docked at the Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington, for refit and repairs. In 1925, her normal stay was extended to two months for some scheduled modernization.

Lloyd was among those sent to Fort Lawton for rifle practice. After less than a month ashore, Lloyd met 18-year-old Katherine Fries, quickly proposed, and they were married on July 11. Lloyd was busy at Fort Lawton, of course, but the couple rented an apartment on Lloyd’s meager Navy pay. The new wife’s life story was rather more complex than his.

She was born October 28, 1906 in a German-speaking enclave on the southern Volga River in Russia. The family emigrated to the U.S. when she was six years old, settling first in Nebraska. They spent some time in Montana before moving to the Yakima Valley of Washington around 1919. Katherine was apparently a troubled youth. Some time in early 1925, she fell under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court in Yakima. (We don’t know why since such records are hardly ever made public.) The court placed her in the custody of the Pacific Coast Rescue and Protective Society (PCR&P).

The initial focus of the PCR&P, first incorporated in 1909, was to provide medical services and counseling for unwed mothers. Over time, their role expanded to include shelter and social services for so-called “wayward” girls and young women. Fries was sent to a PCR&P facility located across Lake Washington from Seattle. We don’t know how long she was there, but she walked away to the big city in early July. How she met Seaman Hudson is unknown.

In any case, her new husband first claimed that Earl Anable had “insulted” his bride-to-be during their ride to the county clerk’s office to get married on July 11. He and the driver had met a couple times after that, he claimed, and Anable had continued to make vulgar and disparaging remarks about Katherine. Lloyd had finally “snapped,” lured him to a lonely spot, and shot him with his service pistol. He repudiated that confession the day after his arrest, but later returned to a version of the same story.

The initial confession had two major holes. First, Katherine said that she did not recall any insults from their driver. Living in a mostly German-speaking household, she perhaps didn’t understand some key slang and vulgarities in English. That, however, seems unlikely, given how long she had lived in this country. More importantly, Anable’s wife declared that Earl had not worked on July 11. Newspapers did not report how Hudson addressed these discrepancies (or if he even bothered to do so).

Police and prosecutors figured the motive might have simply been robbery. However, rent-car drivers did not generally collect fees along the way, so they carried very little cash. Beyond that, federal authorities probably figured that Hudson might dream up yet another story. Thus, about two weeks after the killing, they retained private criminologist Luke S. May.

Besides having agents interview more potential witnesses, May could assess the death scene and the murder weapon. Fine marks on an ejected shell casing, found on the floor of the back seat, and on the fatal bullet identified Hudson’s .45-caliber automatic as the death weapon. It’s worth mentioning here that the notion of “fingerprinting bullets” was just then being recognized nationally. May had been providing that service in his region for five years. To further make the point, May found a stain of human blood on the pistol, in a pattern consistent with blow-back from the victim’s death wound.

Aside from stumbling over some details, Hudson never wavered from his story about insults to his wife. Yet continued investigation strongly suggested that there was far more to the case than what appeared on the surface. For example, another shipmate claimed that Lloyd had told him that his dispute with Anable “was of two years standing.” Moreover, “persons unknown” had threatened two prospective witnesses, trying to squelch their testimony in the affair.

None of these aspects were thoroughly explored because the case never went to trial. Hudson’s defense team surely warned him that a conviction for first degree murder could lead to a death sentence. He chose instead to plead guilty to second degree murder and take his chances. He received a life sentence, but probably expected to be released much sooner.

Authorities moved Hudson to the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas after about eight months at McNeil Island. He was still there fifteen years later. Then, in early 1943, a special panel logged his draft registration at the prison. He enlisted, or was drafted, less than a year later. He served on naval landing craft (LCI and LCT) and probably participated in the invasion of the Philippines and Okinawa.

Hudson remarried some time after the war. His second wife passed away in 1983; he followed in 1995. They are buried in a rural cemetery located 10-11 miles south of St. James, Missouri. The small town provides a base for several award-winning wineries.

Katherine (Fries) Hudson returned to the Yakima Valley and spent the rest of her life there. We don’t know when she divorced Hudson, but she had remarried by 1927 or 1928. She and her second husband had four children together before she divorced him around 1937. She married again four years later. Katherine married for a fourth, and final, time in late 1949. She passed away in the spring of 1995.

Earl Anable’s widow, Esther, worked for over twenty years in various positions at a large department store in downtown Seattle. She remarried in 1933, and passed away in 1979. Daughter Nadine was out on her own in 1940 as a waitress at a drugstore food counter. She married two years later.
                                                                               

References: “[Anable–Hudson News],” Seattle Times, Seattle; Bellingham Herald, Washington (April 5, 1920) – (August 9, 1925).

Duane Colt Denfeld, “Fort Lawton to Discovery Park,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (September 23, 2008).

David E. Kyvig, et al, Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939, Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara, California (2002).

“Louise Home Hospital and Residence Hall,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Park Service, Washington, D. C. (1987).

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

Wesley W. Stout, “Fingerprinting Bullets: The Expert Witness,” The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 1925). .

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Death On A Sunday Afternoon

May 20, 1934. Sergeant John Donlan of the Seattle Police Department looked forward to a relaxed Sunday off. Plenty of time to peruse the newspaper, followed by a restful afternoon nap. He could not know that one of his major investigations would come full circle to end in tragedy.

But life was good, and perhaps the case would provide a fitting close to his long career. Donlan could retire in a couple years, and he had a good nest egg to go with his police pension. His wife and daughter had gone off to visit friends in Olympia. His only “honey-do” was to turn on the oven at 5 o’clock to start cooking a nice leg-of-lamb for a late supper.

Comfortably dressed, including loose house slippers, Donlan took his time reading the newspaper. There had been a huge, costly fire at the Chicago stockyards. In and around Seattle, sheriff’s deputies had seized about fifty illegal slot machines. At some point, he dozed off, comfortably warmed by a rich purple lounging robe.

Sergeant John Donlan.
Seattle Times (May 21, 1934).

John Sylvester Donlan was born January 27, 1870 in New York City. The family moved to Washington around 1877. He married in early 1895 and the couple had a daughter, Lillian, about nineteen months later. For a time, he drove a laundry truck in Seattle, as well as playing in a band. Donlan joined the Seattle Police Department in 1904. Despite his minimal education and lack of formal police training, he became an effective member of the force. Known as a dogged investigator, he nevertheless showed compassion for the down-and-out people he encountered on his beat.

In 1908, Donlan passed the civil service exam to be eligible for promotion to sergeant. However, despite several commendations, he had to wait a long time. One wonders if that was because he was a clean cop on a force that was sometimes anything but. He was finally promoted to sergeant in January of 1919. Before and after he made sergeant, Donlan suffered from the political machinations in the department and the city government.

On one occasion, he submitted a report on what he suspected was the construction of a gambling den and speakeasy. Somehow, that report did not make its way to the police chief (or the mayor, apparently). Then the mayor learned about the problem from other sources. After a tour, which included the chief and two other city officials, the mayor ordered the chief to immediately reassigned Donlan to another district. They soon had to backtrack when the “phantom” report came to light.

An “old school” cop, Donlan relied on an encyclopedic memory for criminals and cases. Thus, he kept few written notes, making it difficult to tell when he began to dig into the “Muggles Mob.” Back then (and still today, in some quarters) the term “muggles” meant marijuana. The “Mob” appeared to be a loose band of youthful burglars, 17 to 20 years years old. All seemed to be solo operators who specialized in daytime or early evening hits. They also dropped butts from the reefers they smoked to bolster their courage while they cased a possible target.

When they got together, it was mostly to smoke muggles and brag. They would also gab about various entry methods,  how to insure that nobody was home, and (probably) where to fence their loot. The informal structure made it difficult to pin down who might be a “member.” Still, Donlan knew several likely names, and Eddie Griffis (sometimes rendered as Griffiths) was on his list.

Charles Edward Griffis was born in Vancouver, Washington on February 17, 1914. His parents divorced in 1917 or 1918, then his father remarried in May 1919. Eddie displayed a wild streak early on, starting with the theft of materials from an elementary school supply room. At the age of nine, he learned how to “earn” an “allowance” by shoplifting. Three years later, his stepmother died. All through the period before about 1932, he was in and out of a reform school or the state reformatory. By around 1933, he seems to have become a skilled daytime burglar.

Eddie Griffis.
Seattle Times (November 22, 1934).

Obviously, a daylight thief can thoroughly search a house without using a flashlight, which would arouse suspicion. But the intruder must do his (or her) “homework” … making sure the house is empty. Griffis took up a hiding place near the Donlan home shortly before 4 o’clock. With the family car gone, he figured the coast was clear, but still watched long enough to smoke at least one reefer. At that point, Donlan was surely settled into his nap, so Eddie would have seen no activity.

Griffis used his “good luck” jimmie to force open a basement window. After a cursory search there, he started up the stairs to the ground level. And that’s where matters came unstuck. For the sergeant had heard something and faced the intruder as soon as he stepped off the stairs. Griffis later claimed that Donlan immediately recognized him and said, “I’ve been looking for you, Eddie, for jobs just like this.” Then Donlan tried to reach a closet where his service revolver was. Griffis moved closer and shot him three times.

Griffis then bolted from the house and hurried back to his rooming house. He had told his landlady that he was a jeweler’s apprentice, in case she happened to see any of his loot around. Now he said he had to go out of town, and paid a month’s rent in advance. He fled Seattle, throwing his weapon in Lake Washington on the way out.

That evening, about 9:30, the sergeant’s wife and daughter got home, found the body, and immediately called the police. At the time, private criminologist Luke S. May was acting as Chief of Detectives for the Seattle Police Department. He had agreed to take the temporary position because he saw it as his public duty. May arrived at the crime scene just as two regular patrol cars pulled up.

Then and the next day, they found four important clues, besides the body: an empty shell casing, the jimmied window, a clear footprint near that window, and a muggles butt where the intruder had hidden. May had the entire window casing taken to his private lab so he could take microphotographs of the tool marks left by the jimmie.

The shell casing and two bullets from Donlan’s body allowed him to identify the murder weapon as a 7.65 mm Ortgies semi-automatic pistol loaded with .32-caliber ammunition. The Ortgies (named for the designer, Heinrich Ortgies) was made in Germany. Although production ran for only five years (1919-1924), a fair number had been exported to this country. Ironically, police later discovered that Griffis had stolen the weapon during an earlier burglary. The unusual weapon was a key element when investigators began to question suspects and underworld contacts.

Ortgies 7.65 Semi-Automatic.
Gun Collectors' WebSite.

As could be expected, the department went all out in pursuit of the cop-killer. After many false leads, tips put them on the trail of Edward Griffis. Learning that he had left town on the very evening Donlan had been shot, they surmised that they were on the right track. Police units all along the Pacific Coast received a photo of Griffis, a description of the murder weapon, and an image of the jimmie tool marks.

Griffis did head south, after a couple weeks in Everett. He spent some time in Portland and then in Oakland, before moving on to Los Angeles. It’s unknown how many burglaries he committed along the way. In late June, Griffis made a return trip to Oakland. There, he and an accomplice pulled off a series of armed robberies. The other man was soon caught. However, he identified his partner only as “Eddie,” so Griffis’ role in the crimes was not known until later.

Griffis managed to stay out of sight in July. Then, key events began to happen fast. First, Portland police called to say that the suspect tool marks had been found at a local burglary. (There may have been more, but reports are a bit confused.) Then police in Los Angeles arrested Griffis in connection with an armed robbery. He used an alias, but his resemblance to the man wanted in Seattle drew extra police attention. They quickly checked bullets from Griffis’ weapon against the Donlan murder slugs. That, of course, drew a blank. Then officials found several local burglaries that had tool marks from Griffis’ jimmie.

Faced with the evidence against him, Eddie confessed and was sent back to Seattle. A jury at the required murder trial recommended a life sentence rather than the death penalty. Griffis was unfazed, because underworld sources had him convinced he’d be out in seven to ten years.

The fact that he’d killed a policeman negated that, however. When the incarceration stretched out to over 14 years, Griffis decided “enough was enough.” He escaped while being allowed outside the walls as a trusty. Caught after a month on the run, he tried to tunnel out in the summer of 1949. Thwarted in that attempt, he walked away from an outside work detail in the fall of 1952. He was captured in less than three weeks.

In the spring of 1954, a juror from the original conviction began agitating for his parole, saying he had “paid his debt to society.” At that point, the widow Donlan was still alive and the plea was denied. However, Mrs. Donlan died that summer. It’s not clear if daughter Lillian, who had married during the war, even followed parole board activities. Thus, Griffis was a free man by about 1958. He married three years later, but that lasted less than ten years. Charles Edward Griffis died in 1992, in Seattle.
                                                                               

References: Christopher T. Bayley, Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, Washington (2015).

“[Donlan – Griffis News],” Seattle Times, Bellingham Herald, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington; The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon; Oakland Tribune, Los Angeles Times, California (June 1908 – April 1954).

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

Stuart Whitehouse, “Death of a Policeman,” Master Detective Magazine, New York, New York (October 1954).

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The Fog of War? No, Politics.

The town of Kelso, Washington simmered going into the summer of 1925. Not the weather – daily highs were a pleasant 65-70º – but politics. The infighting became so widespread and contentious that one would need a “program” to keep track of the names. All of that befogged the search for who really murdered newspaper editor Thomas Dovery

Kelso, 1925. Washington State Historical Society.

Logging and lumber were the economic lifeblood of Kelso, located just over 60 miles due south of Olympia. Beyond the products themselves, all those loggers and mill workers fueled a booming demand for booze and female “companionship.” Prohibition was in full force, yet the Roaring Twenties were also in full roar. As usual, payoffs to protect the illegal trade lurked just beneath the surface, revealed by periodic exposés.

Thus, a reform mayor took office at the beginning of 1925, and immediately got into a huge fight with the City Council. Several councilmen were suspected of accepting bribes from bootleggers and speakeasies. Heated arguments followed and the mayor finally initiated recall campaigns against five councilmen. They countered with a recall petition against him, as well as other charges that briefly put the mayor in jail. With city government at a standstill, a compromise was (reluctantly) worked out. The mayor would not fight the recall election if the five councilmen would resign.

On June 4, Kelso had a mostly-new City Council, which then selected a mayor. This “settled” the matter administratively, but only intensified the unrest that seethed just below the surface. Reform efforts continued through what we would now call a political action committee (PAC). Thomas Dovery, the editor/owner of the Kelso-based Cowlitz County News, strongly supported the deposed mayor and was a zealous advocate for reform. Two weeks after the town got a new mayor, he attended an evening meeting of the PAC. Minutes after he started home on foot, a pedestrian heard what he thought was a car backfire. He then found Dovery’s body on the sidewalk. The editor had been shot to death.

Thomas J. Dovery was born in May 1866, in Norway. The family immigrated to Canada when Thomas was about seven years old. A year later, they settled on a farm about 30 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wisconsin. With an early start, Dovery mastered English well enough to become a successful newspaper owner and editor. By 1905, he had operated several small-town papers in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The next year, Dovery bought farmland near Buhl, Idaho and moved his family there. Within a few years, he had a newspaper in that town and another in Twin Falls. He was known as “an aggressive political writer,” who “engaged in many political controversies.” After about ten years, he began to phase out his Idaho holdings and, in 1920, opened a general printing shop in Eugene, Oregon. Finally, near the end of 1923, Dovery traded that firm for the Cowlitz County News. He brought his aggressive and controversial style with him.

The unstable situation in Kelso absolutely exploded after the murder. Surely this had to be a political assassination! It didn’t help that the subsequent investigation discovered that the head of the water department had embezzled funds from his office. Another of Dovery’s crusades had been a demand that the water department’s books be audited. So, resources were diverted to trace that suspect’s movements on the day of the murder. For a time after the shooting, Kelso had an extra “government,” including one selected by the ex-mayor. In fact, the ex-mayor lodged a criminal conspiracy charge against the official city engineer. In retaliation, the ex-mayor was hit with a “malicious prosecution” indictment. At one point, the governor was asked to send troops to maintain order (he refused).

Meanwhile, a day or so after the shooting, the county sheriff hired criminologist Luke S. May to examine the only worthwhile clue they had. Not too far from the body, officers had found a .41-caliber Colt revolver. Newspapers described the weapon as an “old” or even “ancient” style, so it was most likely a Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer.” May first verified that the revolver was indeed the death weapon, and then began to laboriously trace its ownership. About a week after the shooting, further distractions came in the form of threatening letters to May and the sheriff.

With all the political tumult and acrimony, tracking genuine leads on the revolver went slowly. Finally, in late September, the state Attorney General appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the case. Ten days later, a headline read, “Luke May Finds Kelso Slayer.” The zigzag path began with the long-time owner of the revolver, a fireman at a Kelso mill. Several months before the murder, he had sold the old firearm to a twenty-year-old apprentice carpenter in Portland, Oregon.

Luke clearly established the links from there to the shooter, but answers to a couple questions did not make the news. Why did the youth, who was never in trouble (before or after), buy the gun? Perhaps he saw some historical value in the artifact. Next, why did he loan the gun to Bill Thompson, an ex-convict? He might not have known about the man’s criminal record, but what story did Thompson use to get the revolver? We don’t know.

The next stage was easy: News reports noted that Thompson was a “former jail acquaintance” of John W. Owens aka John W. Smith. Thompson loaned the gun to Owens, who said he had a big hit planned. Born in Ohio around 1872, Owens probably had a worse criminal record than Thompson, who had been in prison for burglary at least twice. However, we do not have many details because Owens had a fondness for phony names. His most recent known imprisonment was for complicity in the death of a Salt Lake City policemen during a robbery in 1907.

Owens was apparently released from the Utah State Penitentiary in late 1918. After that, he dropped out of sight. Later, officials learned that he’d been employed for over a year as a cook in Walla Walla, Washington. During that time, he was cited twice for disorderly conduct, but stayed out of trouble otherwise. He next appeared as a cook at a Kelso restaurant in 1925. There, he joined up with another ex-convict, Frank T. Hart.

Frank Thomas Hart was born March 11, 1894 in Portland, Oregon. Again we don’t know all the details of his criminal career. But between 1916 and late 1924, he spent: several months in the Nevada State Penitentiary, almost a year in San Quentin Prison, and six years in Folsom Prison. By 1925, he had a job in Kelso as a waiter or cook.

The two decided to hold up the payroll car of the largest lumber company in Longview, just west of Kelso. But that plan fell through for some reason. (Perhaps the managers heard rumors and beefed up their security.) Frustrated, they looked for someone else to rob. It was just bad luck that Dovery happened to come along. Neither ex-con ever consistently described how the robbery “went down,” but the editor ended up shot to death. It’s also unclear why the shooter left the revolver near the victim.

Afterwards, the two rented a car and drove to Portland. They then abandoned their ride, probably continuing their flight by train. Owens later said that he last saw Hart in Laramie, Wyoming. If so, he then doubled back, because his next known contact was in Moscow, Idaho. Owens stayed a week or so with a lady friend he had lived with before. Although he was long gone when investigators got there, they found an informant who could let them know if the lady heard anything from the fugitive. That finally provided a tip that Owens was headed for, or already in, St. Louis, Missouri. With the help of two members of May’s nationwide web of affiliate private detectives, police arrested him there on July 17, 1926.

Brought back to Kelso, Owens admitted that he’d been a part of the Dovery shooting as an accomplice of Frank Hart. But only one part of his story remained consistent: He insisted that he’d passed the revolver on to Hart and he had fired the fatal bullet. Hart wasn’t there to confirm or dispute that claim, but the jury convicted Owens of first degree murder anyway. He was sentenced to life (“99 years”) in the state penitentiary.

And so matters stood for almost eleven years. Then, in March 1937, one Fred Hall, described as a “race track follower,” was picked up in Columbia, South Carolina. He was routinely processed on a “drunk and disorderly” charge, paid his fine, and was released. As a matter of further routine, “Hall’s” fingerprints were transmitted to the FBI in Washington, DC. They quickly identified the man as Frank T. Hart, wanted on an open murder warrant in Washington state.

Frank T. Hart.
California Prison Records

Hart went on trial at Kelso in May. Owens was brought back from prison to repeat his claim that Hart had fired the fatal shot. The defense countered with two key points: First, Owens was the one who borrowed the death weapon. Second, a fellow prison inmate testified that Owens had admitted to him that he had shot Dovery. The jury deliberated only about ninety minutes before returning a “not guilty” verdict.

Owens was, of course, sent back to prison and seems to have died there some time before the spring of 1940. Hart went east, where he began dealing in race horses in Maryland, New York, and other states. However, around 1946-1948, he returned west to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and found a job as a cook. He died there in early 1956.

After the Owens trial in 1926, Dovery’s widow and two daughters moved to Tucson, Arizona. The daughters, both school teachers, never married. The widow died in 1956, the daughters in 1982 and 1985.
                                                                               

References: Rita Cipalla, “Kelso – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (October 21, 2019).

Commemorative Biographical Record of the Upper Lake Region, J. H. Beers & Company, Chicago, Illinois (1905).

“[Dovery - Hart - Owens Background], Dunn County News, Menomonie, Wisconsin; Minneapolis Journal, Worthington Advance, Minnesota; Twin Falls Weekly News, Twin Falls Times, Idaho Evening Times, Twin Falls, Idaho; Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake Telegram, Utah; Eugene Guard, Morning Register, Eugene, Oregon (February 1895 – December 1923).

“[Dovery Murder And Afterwards],” Seattle Times, Spokane Chronicle, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Daily Olympian, Olympia, Washington; Idaho Evening Times, Twin Falls, Idaho; Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (June 1925 – May 1937).

Jim Gentry, In the Middle and On the Edge: The Twin Falls Region of Idaho, College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls (2003).

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

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