Death In Little Italy

Tacoma, Washington, early 1929: Vincenzo “James” Cappa brutally murdered Francesco “Frank” Cusato. The details of Why? were never fully explained. But the aftermath included the later death of Cappa himself. Cappa was born January 14, 1866 in Calabria, an area that forms the “toe” of the Italian boot. Cusato was born nine months later, on October 29, 1866, also in that region. Little is known about their early lives, except that Cusato’s father died in 1879 or early 1880, and his mother soon remarried.

How the two came to be in Tacoma tells a fascinating story of how the broad sweep of history plays out in the lives of individuals. The occupation of Rome by the Italian army in September 1870 completed the unification of the peninsula and solidified the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. The unifiers, almost all from the north, then settled down to try to govern their new country. Integration was severely hampered by the lack of a true national language. At the time, few people (less that 3%, according to one scholar) could properly use “Standard Italian” – a “prestige” variant adapted from a Tuscan dialect.

In fact, different parts of Italy had, and still have, their own vernaculars that linguists consider “sister languages,” not dialects of any common form. Some variants were different enough that speakers might switch to Standard Italian to avoid misunderstandings. Ordinary conversation, especially among the poor and least educated, continued in their “native tongue.”

For reasons that are beyond the scope of this blog, the new government’s policies imposed disproportionate hardships in the already-impoverished south. (Even now, specialists in Italian history argue about the root causes.) But the resulting mass exodus is clear in the numbers: Records show that as many as 300,000 Italian immigrants came to this country during the decade after 1880. Seventeen-year-old Vincenzo Cappa was among them, arriving at New York City in the spring of 1883. Here, he most often went by “James,” which was probably his Roman Catholic confirmation name.

James was illiterate, with only a limited command of English. Still, a hard-working manual laborer could find jobs if he was willing to go anywhere and do anything. A decade later, we find him in Tacoma, probably as a railroad section hand. He gravitated to the local “Little Italy,” in the Hilltop neighborhood west of downtown where many immigrants from Calabria had settled. While small in comparison to most such districts – an estimated 400-600 members in 1893 – the community offered ties to a familiar language and culture. Before the decade was out, James married fellow Italian immigrant Rosina “Rose” Vercillo at Saint Leo Catholic church in Tacoma.  

St. Leo Catholic Church. Vintage Postcard.

Meanwhile, the exodus from their homeland continued … almost 600,000 coming to the U.S. in the decade after 1890. Francesco Cusato somehow endured those years. He had also acquired a half-brother, Michele “Mike” Sita, a few years after his mother remarried. Mike would play a key role in Frank’s future.

Matters in Italy came to a head near the end of the decade. A major failure in the wheat crop caused a spike in prices, followed by widespread “bread riots.” A savage over-reaction by the military resulted in many civilian deaths, and only fueled further strife. Frank’s stepfather moved to this country a few months before Italy’s king was assassinated in the summer of 1900. He too ended up in Tacoma’s Little Italy.

The murder of the king did spark changes, some good, some bad. On the plus side, officials created a Commission on Emigration to guide those who wanted to leave. Frank’s brother Nicola “Nick” Cusato and half-brother Mike also immigrated and settled in Tacoma. Frank finally joined them there in June 1906. He was forty years old, could not read or write, and had poor English. Like Cappa, he found manual labor jobs wherever he could: on the docks, in construction, mining, and more. He never married, but Nick and Mike did, and Frank would eventually have eight nieces and nephews.

James and Rose Cappa had six children by 1910: two daughters and four sons. Being still unable to read or write, James had to make do with odd jobs to support the family. Luckily, Rose could read, which helped open a few more doors. James finally found better-paying work at a lumber mill … still physically demanding, but it offered some hope of advancement.

As Frank Cusato grew older, he escaped the treadmill of hard physical labor through a family connection. Half-brother Mike Sita had started the same way Frank did, but then found a different route. Around 1911, he went to work at a shoeshine parlor. His flare for the job, and winning personality, made him an immediate success. In fact, Mike proved to have a knack for the business, with his own shop by around 1915. Within a couple years, he opened a larger shoeshine parlor at a better location.

That made room for Frank, who worked as a bootblack in Mike’s shop until at least 1923. (That same year, Frank’s stepfather, Mike’s father, was killed in a railroad yard accident.) Available records for Frank are rather spotty after that. However, there are indications that he worked at least part time at the parlor for several more years.

We also don’t know how long James Cappa stayed with the sawmill job. However, at some point he acquired a small partly-developed property about a half mile west of the family home. He kept a few cows on the land and sold the milk. Although one son had died – in 1918, probably from the so-called “Spanish” flu – his family had grown to nine living children (six daughters and three sons) by 1925.

Over the years, James Cappa and Frank Cusato had become friends. They obviously had a lot in common: near the same age, Roman Catholic, and from the same region of Italy. And both had spent most of their lives doing hard physical labor. After about 1928, when they had semi-retired, Frank lived in a shack less than two hundred yards from James Cappa’s little dairy. Most evenings, they got together at Cappa’s place to play cards.

As noted above, no one knows exactly what happened on Saturday morning, January 19, 1929. The weather was miserable, with temperatures below freezing, strong northerly winds, and occasional snow flurries. Cusato showed up about 7:30 a.m., while Cappa was washing milk bottles. James claimed that Frank immediately began saying “bad words” about “a woman of the neighborhood.” It appears – although never proven for sure – that the two had a long-standing difference of opinion about this woman. She was never identified, which suggests that there was some family connection. The community might have known, but would not have revealed that fact to outsiders.

Nor do we know the nature of the “bad words.” Newspapers used the word “taunt” in their articles. However, we don’t really know if that captured the proper nuances of the exchange in Calabrian vernacular. Given the violence of Cappa’s reaction, one may infer that the woman was related somehow, and that the purported transgression was of a sexual nature. But that’s only speculation.

Cappa demanded that Cusato leave and, when he didn’t, smacked him with a milk bottle. Cusato still wouldn’t go and the two struggled a bit. Now thoroughly enraged, Cappa broke free and rushed into his bedroom where he kept a revolver. In some versions, Cappa claimed that Cusato had picked up a club, or perhaps a hatchet, by the time he returned. In any case, Cappa shot two or three times and Cusato fell. Still in a blind rage, Cappa said, he picked up a rifle (where that came from was never explained either), and bashed his victim several times. The blows fractured Cusato’s skull before the weapon broke.

One report said he reloaded the revolver and dropped it in a pocket. In any case, he then went to a neighbor and had them call police. Officers found Cappa inside, “covered with blood” but not injured. Cusato’s body was on the porch, not in the kitchen. Cappa must have moved it, although he never mentioned doing so. In fact, Cappa probably never offered any one clear account of what happened. Police even enlisted a prominent member of the Italian community who had previously spent ten years as a city detective. He helped piece together a somewhat plausible sequence from multiple versions.

As it happened, Tacoma Captain of Detectives John Strickland was familiar with the scientific detection skills of private criminologist Luke S. May. Thus, Tacoma authorities quickly hired him to help with the case. May’s verification of the death weapon would have been a routine matter by 1929. However, he also logged the case as involving “bloodstains,” surely meaning blood spatter analysis. The pattern of stains would have told its own story. 

Tacoma, ca 1929. Tacoma Public Library.

However, we don’t know what May’s report said because the case never went to trial. Cappa was initially charged with second degree murder, to which he (his lawyer) pleaded “not guilty.” Family and friends raised his $10,000 bail, so he did not spend a long time in jail awaiting arraignment and trial. Even so, the strain soon ruined his health. Rather than go to trial in mid-March, James pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Rose and his attorney had to steady him so he could stand for the reading of the sentence: one to ten years in the state penitentiary.

James remained an invalid for the rest of his life, and does not appear to have spent any time in prison. He was at home with his family for the census in the spring of 1930. It’s a tribute to his basic toughness that he lasted until December of 1932.

James left a large family. Oddly enough (given the norm for that era), of the nine children who survived to adulthood, five never married. That included two of the three sons, and the one son didn’t marry until long after his mother died. Still, the children did well by “the American Dream.” The three sons all went into far better paying fields than their father could have ever hoped for: One owned a custom upholstery business and another was a pharmacist.

The three daughters who married had husbands with skill-based positions: professional gardener, bottler, and studio photographer. Daughter Eva trained in photography and assisted in her husband’s studio. Of the three unmarried daughters, one became a social worker for the state of Washington, another had a long career at Sears, and the third was a nurse.

The three married daughters, despite their Roman Catholic heritage, did not raise large families. One, in fact, had no children. Thus, when Rose (Vercillo) Cappa died April 9, 1952, she’d had time to enjoy just three grandchildren … all males.
                                                                                

References: “[Cappa-Cusato News],” News Tribune, Tacoma, Seattle Times, Tacoma Ledger, Washington (January 1929 – December 1932).

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

Rita Cipalla, “Little Italy Communities Helped Early Immigrants Adjust To New Lives,” L’Italo-Americano newspaper, New York, New York (November 1, 2020).

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

David Wilma, Walt Crowley, “Tacoma – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (January 17, 2003).

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Death On A Snowy Night

Heavy snow began piling up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington shortly after New Years Day of 1933. The winter was promising to be one of the snowiest on record. On the weekend of January 21, a storm added ten inches more at Snoqualmie Pass. All that was good news for Cle Elum, a small town located about thirty miles southeast of the pass. They had “one of the first organized ski areas west of Colorado,” which drew thousands of seasonal visitors. 

Early Cle Elum. Central Washington University

A strong season would also be good news for Abram Perry and his “second hand” store – something like a pawn shop, but generally without the loan service. At the time, ski shops as we know them were confined almost entirely to New England and eastern Canada. Customers would surely find their way to his place on First Street to try out this new thing, or to upgrade their skis, sleds, and toboggans.

Born around 1866 in New Brunswick, Canada, Abraham G. Perry moved to this country around 1885 and became a naturalized citizen three years later. Soon after, he took a job as a coal miner near Cle Elum. A first marriage in late 1890 lasted less than a year because Abram, as he began to call himself, proved to be an abusive husband. He married again in 1896, to Alena “Lena” LeCole. By then, coal had been discovered right in Cle Elum, and the town boomed. It incorporated in February 1902, and Abram opened his first store some time the following year.

Perry prospered along with the town, even more so after 1915, when Cle Elum became a popular stop on the new main highway across central Washington. However, some time during that period, the Perrys chose to separate (they had no children). Abram retained the store, while Lena owned a farm property near Cle Elum. There’s no record that they ever divorced, although Abram gave that status for the 1920 census. Lena simply told the census taker that they “lived apart.”

As time passed, locals came to believe that Perry was “one of the wealthiest men in Upper Kittitas County.” He did not, however, trust banks – which tended to “go bust” with alarming frequency during that era. (That really began to look like a smart move, as the Great Depression ruined even more financial institutions.) Still, rightly or wrongly, it became “common knowledge” that Perry had caches of money hidden all around the store and his attached living quarters. The consequences were tragic.

On the afternoon of January 25, 1933, the Cle Elum mail carrier found the door to Perry’s store locked. Peering inside, he saw the storekeeper sprawled on the floor, not moving. Concerned, he forced the door and found that Abram was dead from a gunshot in his back. A flashlight lay near the body, but no weapon. Abram was known to keep at least one revolver under his pillow, so the killer had most likely taken it away with him. News reports never said how he got into the store.

Also, there’s no way of knowing why the intruder gunned down the old man, rather than simply disarming him. Perhaps he feared that Perry would recognize him. He supposedly got away with $2,000 in cash. He did not take time to pry open the “old fashioned” combination-lock cash drawer, which contained another $800. A coat of fresh snow with drifting due to strong winds during the night covered any traces of how the killer had come and gone.

The coroner retrieved a .30-caliber slug from Perry’s back, and estimated that he had been killed on the evening of the 24th. Officials must have immediately consulted with private criminologist Luke S. May. News reports the day after the body was found identified the death weapon as a German Luger automatic pistol … in the lighter .30-caliber (technically, 7.65 mm) model.

With that information, police in Ellensburg arrested two armed suspects that same day. A deputy then delivered their weapons – one a 7.65 mm Luger – to May in Seattle. May could ignore one gun, since it was the wrong make and model. The Luger automatic was not, however, the death weapon. With so little to go on, the investigation soon stalled and then basically went cold.

Not just anyone can run a “second hand store” successfully. (It takes a particular mix of personality, knowledge, and bargaining skills.) Thus, we don’t know what happened to Abram’s business after he was murdered. Most likely, Lena operated it for some time while she sought a buyer. Meanwhile, a year passed with no results on finding her husband’s killer. We don’t know exactly when she wrote a letter to the governor pleading for action. But as a result, in May 1934, the governor had the State Patrol assign two detectives to the case. Of course, they had no more to go on than the original investigators, and made no progress either.

However, we may infer that they kept the case active with periodic bulletins and requests for information. That finally paid off in December. A rancher who raised fruit in an area just north of Yakima provided the breakthrough. News reports are vague on some key points about why he came forward. However, circumstances suggest that he spoke up after Yakima police arrested one Lee Harrison on an unrelated burglary charge.

Edgar Lee Harrison was born February 7, 1894 in a rural area about fifty miles east of Springfield, Missouri. In late 1917, he moved to the Yakima Valley in Washington. He married a Yakima waitress in January 1920, and soon began using “Lee” instead of Edgar for most business and personal matters. The marriage lasted only until about 1924. They had no children. During that period, Lee learned how to operate a steam locomotive.

He remarried in November 1928, to Minnie E. Cargo. However, he was laid off from the railroad in 1931 and had to make do with odd jobs. Also, police apparently began to view Harrison as a possible suspect in a number of local burglaries. They might even have picked him up for questioning on some cases. In any event, solid evidence was lacking until he was actually arrested in December 1934.

Harrison had worked for the fruit rancher during the summer of 1933. The rancher overheard him talking about the Perry murder and asked him about it. Harrison claimed that he and an accomplice had pulled off the job. He later gave at least a dozen slightly different versions of the story. Thus, the rancher apparently decided it was all just a big brag to make himself look like a “tough cookie,” and never reported it. But now, Harrison was revealed to be a bone fide burglary suspect. Perhaps there was something to the talk after all.

Confronted about the Perry story, Harrison admitted that he had burglarized the store and shot the old man. Besides identifying the murder weapon as a German Luger, he also provided details that could have been known only to the perpetrator. But he also claimed that he wasn’t entirely to blame. The intrusion had been provoked by a man named Jack Slagle, of Bellingham. In the fall of 1932, he had started talking up all the money Perry supposedly had hidden around his place. He had finally badgered Harrison into joining the venture. The police should go after him too.

John B. “Jack” Slagle was born September 27, 1887 at a place 80-90 miles east of Wichita, Kansas. He moved to Washington before 1910, settling a few miles from the Canadian border, midway across the state. He married there in November 1913. The bride’s maiden name was Vera Sophia Ethel, but after two or three years she began using the name “Veva.” The couple had three children by 1920 – two sons and a daughter. Starting about that time, Jack’s name began to appear in the news for violations of gambling and liquor laws. He perhaps wore out his welcome in that area, because the family moved to Bellingham in 1926.

There, Jack could not seem to find steady work, and spent time in jail in 1928 on liquor law violations. He was back in trouble for illegal gambling in the spring of 1931. The strain on his marriage became too great by 1932. After that, Veva and the three kids lived together and Jack was on his own. She filed for divorce a couple months after he was arrested on a burglary charge in Yakima in May 1933. Police had caught Jack and three “companions” with safe-cracking tools, dynamite, and some weapons. However, nothing linked them to any specific crime, so prosecutors had to release them.

Coincidentally, Slagle was already a suspect in a Yakima safe-cracking case when Harrison named him in his confession. However, Jack had left Bellingham four days before Yakima authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. Unaware of the warrant, he showed up in Yakima and was locked up immediately. He vehemently denied any involvement in the Perry burglary-murder. Even so, authorities transferred him to the Kittitas County jail in Ellensburg (the county seat) on January 5, 1935. However, except for the Harrison statement, officials had no actual evidence against Slagle. They released him a few days before Harrison’s trial, which began April 8, 1935. 

Kittitas County Courthouse.
Central Washington University.

On the stand, Harrison claimed that he played no part in the Perry murder. His stories about it were based on what Slagle had told him. He further asserted that police had used extreme “force and duress” to get him to confess to something he hadn’t done. He and wife Minnie even offered an alibi. After buying some moonshine the day before, they had then partied all through the day that Abram Perry was murdered. Thus, neither was in any shape to go out that night. They had evidence for the booze purchase, but had no one who could verify the binge party.  The jury took a little over two hours to reach a “guilty” verdict. He received a life sentence.

At this point, Harrison’s detailed accusations against Slagle appeared in the public trial record and were all over the news. Thus, prosecutors felt they had to proceed against him. He was re-arrested and went on trial in June. Besides the Harrison statement, prosecutors had a witness who heard Slagle mention the old man’s money, and others who placed him in Cle Elum some time before the murder.

The jury did spend eight or nine hours considering the relevance and credibility of the testimony, but finally issued a “not guilty” verdict. After the trial, Slagle settled in Yakima and married a widow in November 1939. She passed away a little over two years later. Jack lived in Yakima until at least 1950, but died in rural King County in the spring of 1953.

We don’t know how long Lee Harrison spent in prison, but he was still there when Minnie divorced him in September 1943. However, by 1951, he was living in Oregon. At some point, he married again … to “Mabel.” He passed away in southern Oregon in September 1964.

Lena (LeCole) Perry married again in January 1939, to a farmer with a place just south of Cle Elum. She died on December 31, 1943.
                                                                               

References: Jim Kershner, “Cle Elum – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (October 11, 2013).
John W. Lundin and Stephen J. Lundin, “Cle Elum Ski Club,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington  (August 27, 2012).
Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969).
“[Perry Case News & Background],” Post-Intelligencer, Seattle; Spokesman-Review, Spokane; Daily Olympian, Olympia; Oroville Gazette, Bellingham Herald, Seattle Times, Washington (June 1891 – June 1935).

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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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