Stalking Seattle

The Order

2015-01-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

Robert Jay Mathews was born in Marfa, Texas and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He was the son of a retired U.S. Air Force officer. He developed an interest in conservative politics at a young age. After dropping out of high school in his senior year, he formed the Sons of Liberty, an anti-communist militia dominated by survivalists and Mormons. At their peak, Sons of Liberty had only 25 members.

In 1973, he was arrested by IRS agents for submitting false information on his W-4 Form by claiming 10 dependents. He was sentenced to six months probation and told to pay his taxes. When his probation ended in July 1974, he moved to Metaline Falls, Washington, a town of 238 people in the northeast corner of the state. He purchased 60 acres of property and called it, Mathews Acres. He worked as an electrician for two different local companies. During this time period, he became more interested in extreme right-wing politics.

Robert Jay Mathews

In 1980, Mathews joined the National Alliance, a white-supremacist group founded by William Luther Pierce, a former Oregon State University professor and officer in the American Nazi Party. The National Alliance published two books. Which Way Western Man? was about a plot by the Jews to destroy the white race and, The Turner Diaries was about a violent takeover of America by white supremacists who then form an elite underground called, The Order. The Order then takes control of the whole world, eradicating all Jews and non-whites. Two years later, Mathews began attending services at the Church of Jesus Christ Christian at the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. While at a National Alliance convention in Arlington, Virginia, he became reaquainted with Robert Allan Martinez, a former Ku Klux Klansman from Philadelphia. Their friendship would eventually prove to be Mathews's undoing.

In late September 1983, Mathews invited eight men whom he felt held beliefs similar to his own, to his property in Metaline Falls. The group Mathews founded that night became known as The Order. The Turner Diaries became their bible. Their fundamental aim was violent overthrow of the United States government, which they believed was controlled by a Jewish cabal. On October 28, 1983, The Order pulled their first armed robbery at a Spokane video store. The job netted only $369. Mathews decided small robberies weren't worth the time and effort, and in November organized a trip to Seattle with the intention of robbing banks and armored cars.

18840 8th Ave NW, Shoreline

On December 18, 1983, Mathews robbed a Citybank (now Whidbey Bank) north of the city in Shoreline. He escaped with $25,952, but a large portion of the loot was ruined by an exploding dye pack. Around this time, The Order member Bruce Pierce was released on bond after sitting in jail for two weeks after passing couterfeit bills.

In mid-March 1984, Mathews, along with three other members, returned to Shoreline to case the Fred Meyer store at 18325 Aurora Avenue North. On Friday, March 16, a Continental Armored Transport truck pulled up to the store's main entrance. They robbed the guard just as he was leaving with six large money bags and six coin boxes on a handcart. This time, the take was $43,345.

On April 3rd, Bruce Pierce appeared in U.S. District Court in Spokane where he plead guilty to passing counterfeit currency. Because he showed no remorse for his actions by refusing to reveal the source of the counterfeit bills and his ties to the Aryan Nations, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison. The judge gave Pierce three weeks to settle his affairs, ordering him to report to the U.S. Marshal Service before noon on April 24th. Pierce told the court he would be staying with Robert Mathews in Metaline Falls. When he failed to show up at the U.S. Marshal's office in Spokane, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest on April 26th. Pierce, now a federal fugitive, had been busy elsewhere and had no intention of serving the prison sentence.

Bruce Pierce

On April 19th, The Order, including a new recruit, returned to Seattle to carry out another armored car robbery. Their plan was to hijack another truck as it was leaving Northgate Mall. In order to create a diversion for the robbery, Mathews told member Gary Yarborough to make a small time bomb. On Sunday afternoon, April 22nd, Yarborough entered the Embassy, a porn theater at 216 Union Street in downtown Seattle. (It's now the Triple Door Theater) He slipped the bomb under some vacant seats and left. Damage was minimal and nobody was seriously injured. Mathews planned to phone the Embassy Theater with another bomb threat just before the armed robbery at the mall, hoping to divert the attention of the police.

The heist took place on Monday afternoon, April 23rd. The gang hit another Continental truck parked outside of the Bon Marche. As the guard exited the store, Bruce Pierce held a gun to his head. They made off with $536,000. However, more than half of it was in checks. Mathews blew some of the money on a shopping spree in Missoula, Montana, where he bought several firearms, ammunition, miscellaneous weapons, and a state-of-the-art computer system to give The Order access to the Internet.

The Bon Marche at Northgate Mall is now Macy's

Over the next several months, The Order would bomb a Synagogue in Boise, murder a member of the Aryan Nations, and execute a Jewish talk-radio host in Denver. On Thursday, July 19th, Mathews and six members of The Order stopped a Brink's armored truck on Highway 101 in Eureka, California, robbing the guards of more than $3.6 million. The gang escaped and drove to Reno where they split up into several cars and then drove north to Boise to divide the money. During the robbery, Mathews lost a 9mm pistol. Using information obtained from the serial numbers on it, the FBI began zeroing in on the members of The Order. By August, they had compiled a list of many of its members and had identified Robert Mathews as the leader.

When word got to The Order that the FBI was poking around, most of the gang left northern Idaho. They split into two groups: Mathews and his posse preferred cheap motels and safe houses, while Pierce's tribe chose a mobile lifestyle, moving from town to town in campers and travel trailers. Gary Yarborough moved his belongings from Sandpoint to a remote mountain cabin near Samuels, Idaho, as an FBI airplane watched.

On Monday, October 1st, the first day of his scheduled trial in Philadelphia, Mathew's old friend, Thomas Martinez decided to become an FBI informant. His attorney told him that the FBI had him linked to The Order and he would most likely be named as a co-conspirator in any future indictments. To protect himself and his family, Martinez gave the authorities detailed information about The Order and his knowledge of their crimes.

On Monday, December 3rd, the FBI's Seattle office received an anonymous call from a pay phone, in which the person said that Mathews and other members of The Order were hiding on Whidbey Island, Washington and were heavily armed. When the tip proved to be true, the FBI dispatched 150 agents to the island to make sure that none of the fugitives escaped.

By Friday morning, December 7th, the FBI had all three hideouts surrounded. Agents arrested four members of the gang without incident, but Mathews refused to surrender. A 35-hour standoff ensued at 3306 South Smuggler's Cove Road in the town of Greenbank. Mathews fired at the agents numerous times with a sub-machine gun. On Saturday, negotiations stalled and at 6:30pm, the FBI fired three M-79 Starburst illumination flares into the house, knowing it would likely catch on fire and end the standoff. Mathews still didn't surrender. On Sunday morning, agents found his charred remains inside the burned-out building. I find it a very strange coincidence that the bank Mathews robbed in Shoreline is now called Whidbey Bank, and he died on Whidbey Island.

The death of Robert Jay Mathews signaled the end of The Order as a viable group. Authorities figured that Bruce Pierce would assume leadership, but most of the gang remained in hiding, scattered across the country. The FBI immediately forged ahead, hunting down and arresting every member and affiliate of The Order they could find. In late December 1984, federal prosecutors from six states met secretly in Seattle and formulated a plan to put an end to The Order's terror campaign. They decided to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), created in 1970 to combat organized crime.

Over the next four months, the Department of Justice built a massive conspiracy case against The Order, which they decided to prosecute in the Western District of Washington under assistant U.S. Attorney Gene Wilson. On Friday, April 15, 1985, the federal grand jury in Seattle returned a sweeping 20-count indictment, charging 23 members of The Order with racketeering, conspiracy, and 67 separate offenses. The FBI had 17 of the defendants already in custody, including Alan Berg's killers, Bruce Pierce and David Lane. Before the trial began, 11 defendants decided to plead guilty and several agreed to testify as government witnesses. The trial commenced on Monday, September 9th and lasted three months. 338 prosecution and defense witnesses testified and approximately 1,500 exhibits were introduced. The case went to the jury on Tuesday, December 17th. After deliberating for almost two weeks, the jury announced that all 10 defendants were guilty of racketeering and conspiracy. Six defendants were also convicted of additional federal crimes. In early February 1986, all 10 defendants were sentenced to terms ranging from 40 to 100 years in federal prison.

I also have a story about the Goldmark family mentioned in the headline of this newspaper.

"Little Willie" John

2015-01-12T22:19:00.001-08:00

William Edgar "Little Willie" John was a rhythm and blues vocalist and songwriter who wrote the original version of “Fever” at age eighteen.

He was born on November 15, 1937 in Cullendale, Arkansas. He was one of ten children. His father was a logger and his mother played guitar and sang gospel songs. His sister Mable recorded as a Raelette for Ray Charles. In 1942, the Johns moved to Detroit. The eldest children, including Willie, formed a gospel quintet in the late 1940's. Willie gained notice singing at solo amateur shows.

He was signed to King Records in June, 1955 and during the late 1950's and early 1960's, he recorded several hits. But increasing alcoholism and weakening sales caused King Records to drop him in the fall of 1963. He moved to Florida and hit the club circuit without a recording contract, although King continued to issue his material from its vaults.

Willie was popular in the Pacific Northwest due to his years of touring through Portland, Olympia, and Seattle. When he came back to Seattle in October, 1964- he’d recently skipped bail in Miami after assaulting a man with a broken bottle. His Friday night performance at The Magic Inn on 6th and Union was a drunken mess.

6th and Union Today

Local musician, Little Bill Engelhart recalled that Willie was already “way drunk” when he took the stage the next night as well. He was so inebriated that Engelhart wisely passed on an offer to go out and party with him after the gig. Willie carried on though, heading out with his chauffer to have a few drinks at the famous Birdland Dance Hall at 2203 East Madison Street.

2203 East Madison Today

Once there, he jumped on stage to sing a few tunes with the house band and eventually left to party with a couple local women. In the early hours of Sunday, October 18th, their festivities moved to an after-hours party at a house a few blocks away at 918 23rd Avenue.

At some point a brawl erupted and Willie was punched in the mouth by a six-foot, two-hundred pound ex-con named Kenneth Roundtree. Willie, who was only five-foot-four, stabbed and killed him with a knife. The twenty-six year old was arrested and charged with manslaughter (based on how physically out matched he had been). He posted a $10,000 bond and continued touring, returning for trial in January, 1965. He was found guilty and appealed the verdict for 18 months. On July 6, 1966 he was sentenced to making license plates for 8-to-20 years at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary.

During his incarceration Willie reportedly got into a few more fights, was abused by guards, made some new buddies, wrote songs, and even performed a number of times for his fellow inmates. Among the notables who made the pilgrimage to Eastern Washington to see their old friend and try to cheer him up, were James Brown and Aretha Franklin. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

After reporting to the infirmary with pneumonia and then being locked into a Maximum Security isolation room, Willie died on May 26, 1968. (That happens to be the day I was born) He was 30. His official cause of death was heart attack. Others suspected he’d been beaten, and some have stated he died from neglect.

James Brown, who in 1968 recorded an entire tribute album titled- Thinking About Little Willie John and a Few Nice Things, was among those who believed his old friend had simply died of a broken heart.

He's buried in Detroit. RIP

The Goldmark Murders

2014-03-30T08:34:00.001-07:00

Excerpts From Ann Rule's Book, You Belong To Me

It was December 26, 1985 at 1:07 p.m. when the suspect began to talk, fully aware that a tape recorder was rolling and catching all his words. The investigators believed they had the killer in custody, but this twenty-seven-year-old man with the empty eyes was not what they had expected. What had they expected? How could anyone know what kind of a killer could plot the monstrous crime against the Goldmark family?

David Lewis Rice, Scum of The Earth

“Do you know the Goldmarks?” “Only by history,” “History from where?” “Newspaper clippings and so forth. In today’s paper it mentioned that Charles Goldmark was a prominent figure in the Democratic Party. What it doesn’t mention is that he was also a prominent figure in the Communist Party. I found out that he had been brought before the Senate subcommittee on Un-Americanism.” “This Mr. Goldmark?” “Right.” “Charles Goldmark?” David Rice nodded, as if the detectives were woefully uninformed. “Charles Goldmark.… nothing has been done. He was at one time the regional director of the American Communist Party.” “How did you know where the Goldmarks lived?” “A newspaper clipping. It showed that he had just moved into a house on 36th.”

Goldmark Home on 36th Ave. in Madrona

Rice said he thought he had read that in an issue of the Seattle Times in March 1983. “You’re talking a couple of years ago, then. Has the Goldmark family been on your mind for some period of time?” “Yeah, I’d say in the last six months.” David Rice said he had to get himself mentally set to do what he planned to do. “What were you going to do?” “I was going to kill the Goldmarks.”

The Goldmark Family Hiking In The Cascade Mountains

By mid 1985 Rice decided he had to kill Charles Goldmark. He believed that Goldmark was both a Jew and a Communist. In actual fact, Charles Goldmark was neither. But to David Rice, Goldmark represented the enemy. Rice’s first reason for destroying Goldmark had been political, but he had some financial reasons too. “I assumed that he would have an amount of cash on him. I didn’t know how much, but it would be enough to get me by. I took a toy pistol.“ "When was it, when you bought the toy pistol?” “That was Christmas Eve.” He had also bought two pairs of handcuffs at a Big 5 Sporting Goods store, four months prior. He stuffed the gun, the handcuffs, a pair of gloves, two rags, and two bottles of chloroform in the pockets of his green parka. He then took a bus to the Goldmark’s neighborhood. He had only taken two bottles of chloroform and two rags, he explained, because he expected to confront only two people: Mr. and Mrs. Goldmark. “How did you know you had to take a certain bus to get to the area where the Goldmarks lived?” “I had been there twice before. The first time was, I believe, about the first of November. I went there just to see what kind of house it was and just check out the neighborhood.”

Sally and John Goldmark

Detectives soon realized that Rice had meant to kill Sally and John Goldmark, Charles' parents, who were both dead. His plans had been wrong from the start. Sally and John Goldmark were not communists; their son was even further removed. David Rice had set out to kill the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Rice said he had no idea what Charles Goldmark or his wife looked like. He had returned during the first week of December, again by bus, hoping to peek in the windows to see what Goldmark looked like, but the house was dark. He did go around to the back of the residence to see that there was an alley and a garage there. He saw there was no handle on the garage door and realized he had no easy entry.

The Garage Today. Still No Handle.

Rice then continued filling in the gaps of what had happened on the 24th. He recalled that he had walked up to the Goldmarks’ home a few minutes after seven. He knocked on the door, and a young boy answered it.

Crime Scene Photo of Front Door

“I was surprised, because I assumed that there were only two— Charles Goldmark and his wife— but I went ahead and I said, I’m from Farwest Cab, and I have a package to deliver for Charles Goldmark, and so he called him. Charles came downstairs.” Rice pulled out the toy pistol he had hidden behind the box. “I flashed it in front of him and I grabbed him by the shirt and turned him around and told him to get down on the floor. The boy ran out. He ran into the kitchen.” Rice kicked the front door shut behind him. He held Charles Goldmark down on the floor just inside the doorway.

Estately.com

“I told Mr. Goldmark to call his son and he did and so he came in, and I took them upstairs.” “Why did you decide to go upstairs?” “I asked him, Where is your wife? and he said, Upstairs in the shower, and so I said, Let’s go upstairs.” Then he marched the man and the boy up the stairs, the realistic-looking gun pointed at their backs.

Estately.com

“He asked, Do you want money? and I said, Yes, I can use all you got, and he said, I don’t have much. He showed me there was fourteen dollars and some change. And we got upstairs and he said, Honey, could you come out here? and she said, What? and he knocked on the door. He poked his head in the bathroom door and said, Put something on and come out here, and so she put on a robe and came out. That's also when I noticed the second boy” Rice then ushered everyone in front of the bay window in the master bedroom.

Estately.com

“I told everybody to get on the floor face-down and had them face away from me so that they couldn’t see that it was just a toy pistol. Then I handcuffed Charles and his wife. I had to stop for a minute. I was getting a little rattled because there were two kids, and so I stopped and thought and then I just figured, I’m in it now. I can’t stop.” Charles told him they were expecting company at 7:30. It only made Rice work faster. He poured Chloroform on a rag and pressed it to each Goldmark's nose until they became unconscious. Both vials were empty, and the family lay still. Only about ten minutes had passed since Rice had entered the home. He glanced at his watch and figured he had five or ten minutes before the company arrived. “First I went downstairs into the kitchen, and I was looking for a knife. I found a filleting knife. It was in the drawer right next to the island."

Estately.com

"What I was looking for was one of those meat hammers.” “Why?” “I didn’t like the idea of using a knife.” “You wanted to beat as opposed to cut?” “Right.” But Rice had no luck looking for a hammer and went down the basement steps. “I found an iron…a regular clothing iron.” Rice ran upstairs. When he reached the master bedroom he found all four victims still in the same positions, still unconscious. "And so I took the iron, and I hit Mr. Goldmark on the back of the head. I think I hit him about four or five times. Then I hit Mrs. Goldmark. I hit her on the side of the head, and she started moving. I figured the chloroform was starting to wear off, so I hit her a couple more times, and then she stopped moving. He repeated his brutality on the children and after detecting a pulse on both Charles and Annie, he stabbed all four victims repeatedly. Annie Goldmark died there. The other three were hanging by a thread. It was time to leave—to get out of there before the partygoers arrived. It was almost twenty minutes past seven. “I was looking for the back door, which I didn't find for quite a while. It took me about three minutes to find the back door, down in the basement. As I was leaving I turned out all the lights.” He went through the steel-covered door in the basement, through another small room, and out a set of glass doors. David Rice was outside. He was out and down the walkway, turning the knob to open the back gate to the alley.

The Gate

He didn’t dare take a bus; he walked. It was a long way, over two miles, but he knew his clothes were too stained with fresh blood to risk taking a bus. “But about halfway there I realized that I’d forgotten my handcuffs—so I went home and changed clothes and put the stuff down in the basement and went back over there.” “To the house?” "Yes." Incredibly, he returned to the scene of his crime. Rice said he had taken a cab to 26th and Union and then walked back to the Goldmark house, arriving between 8:30 and 9:00. He had thought the victims might not have been discovered yet. He walked along an ivy-clotted bank across the street from the Goldmark house, watching. “I heard police radios and so forth, and so I just kept walking."

Police Tape at The Crime Scene

"I didn’t see a police car. There were a few lights on in the house, though, and I assumed that, you know, that it had been discovered. I thought well, I’m caught now. They’ve got my fingerprints on those handcuffs.” The second time David Rice left the Goldmark home he stopped at a market and bought a tablet, (the same tablet he would write a confession on) soda, and a candy bar. After wandering around downtown on Christmas day, he went to the home of Max Stingley, an acquaintance who lived in an apartment on Capitol Hill.

The Undre Arms Apartments Have Been Demolished

When Stingley heard a knock on his door he was a little surprised to find a man he knew only as David . He knew David as a member of a group he belonged to called the Fox Club. David had always been pale with dark circles under his eyes, but on Christmas night he had really looked wasted. Stingley was tired himself and told his impromptu guest that he was going to bed. It was what Stingley found on the coffee table before dawn the next morning that made him nervous enough to call the police. He had seen the kid scribbling on a tablet the night before, but he couldn’t figure out if the scrawled words were supposed to be true or some kind of creative writing. Whatever it was, it made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, I AM THE PERSON YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IN THE GOLDMARK CASE. I KNOW WHAT I DID WAS A VERY TERRIBLE THING. THAT IS WHY I AM AS YOU SEE ME NOW. I WANT IT PERFECTLY UNDERSTOOD THAT NO ONE ELSE HAD ANYTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH WHAT I DID. I WENT TO GREAT LENGTHS TO MAKE SURE OF THAT. THE PERSON THAT I LIVE WITH DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THAT I AM WANTED ON A DIFFERENT CHARGE. SHE RECIEVED A COUPLE OF MESSAGES ON HER MACHINE, BUT I ERASED THEM BEFORE SHE GOT TO THEM. I DID NOT USE THE RIFLE THAT I PURCHASED A FEW WEEKS AGO. INSTEAD, I FOOLED THEM WITH A TOY PISTOL WHICH YOU WILL FIND IN THE STORAGE LOCKER. I THREW THE RIFLE AWAY A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO. AGAIN, I WANT IT UNDERSTOOD THAT NO ONE KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS, SO PLEASE DO NOT CAUSE ANY UNNESESSARY SUFFERING TO INNOCENT PEOPLE. I THINK THAT I’VE ALREADY DONE ENOUGH. I GUESS I SHOULD TELL YOU WHY I DID WHAT I DID. THAT WAY, YOU WON’T HAVE TO ASK OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT IT. MY LIFE IS A MESS. IT HAS BEEN SINCE MY WIFE LEFT. SUE HAD BEEN TRYING TO HELP ME STRAIGHTEN IT OUT BUT…

Max Stingley had never heard the name Goldmark. What with the holiday and all, he hadn’t read a paper for a couple of days or had the TV news on. He read the note again, glanced at David, who was still asleep, and puttered about making coffee while he decided what he should do. His guest woke up and was sitting on the couch watching television when Stingley said he was going out to get a pack of cigarettes. Stingley crossed the darkened street to a club he belonged to at 11th and Union. Still troubled, he asked a few early birds there if they had heard about some shooting or something having to do with a Goldmark. They looked at him, astounded. Everybody in Seattle must surely know about the Goldmark attack by now. Where the heck had Stingley been, they asked. Somebody held up the front page of the morning paper for December 26th. The name Goldmark was spread all over it. Stingley felt sick. The note he had found on the table in his apartment wasn’t fiction at all. He had just slept through the night with a probable killer in his apartment.

Rudy Sutlovich had arrived to work the day shift in Homicide shortly after 7 a.m. on December 26th. There was no one there except the two secretaries. The phone rang, and Sutlovich reached for it; it was Elizabeth Eddy, the chief radio dispatcher. “I’ve got a citizen on the 911 line who says his name is Max Stingley— he’s at 11th and Union. Says he’s got a guy watching TV in his apartment who says he killed the Goldmarks. What should I do?” “Get a uniform up there, I’m leaving right now.” Sutlovich and Detective Sonny Davis headed up the hill toward Broadway. By the time they reached Boren and Madison they could hear sirens, and the radio picked up sounds of a foot chase nearby. Stingley had been talking to the uniformed officers in front of his club when his guest happened to glance out the window and see the conference. David deduced correctly that they were talking about him. He realized that Max must have found the note. He ran out of the apartment building and headed north on 11th Avenue. Stingley saw him and pointed him out to the officers. After a brief chase around the block, Rice was arrested and read his rights.

It was almost three in the afternoon on the day after Christmas. Sonny Davis stared at David Rice. “Okay— we’re getting close to wrapping up this session. For the purposes of this interview, do you have any remorse or sorrow or feeling about what you did to the Goldmark family?” “The children. I didn’t expect them there, and I wouldn’t have been there if they had been.” “You’re sorry about the children?” “Yeah.” “Did it ever occur to you to just say, Okay—they’re down and out; let me turn on my heel and walk out of this house and forget it?” Davis asked. “They had already seen me. It was too late.”

Colin and Derek Goldmark

Colin Goldmark died on December 28, 1985. Charles Goldmark died on January 9, 1986. Derek Goldmark died on January 30, 1986. They were all gone.

David Lewis Rice’s trial began in May 1986. On June 5, 1986, the jury of six men and six women took less than five hours to reject Rice’s insanity plea and find him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. On June 10th the jury announced that they had agreed that Rice should be put to death. Then, on August 6, 1993, U.S. District Court Judge Jack Tanner threw out the death penalty after finding Rice's defense by attorney Bill Lanning to be ineffective. Lanning had allowed the police unlimited access to his client and did not introduce evidence of Rice's psychotic state. In May 1998, Rice agreed to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. Rice was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

"THIS OVERLOOK IS NAMED IN MEMORY OF CHARLES, ANNIE, DEREK AND COLIN GOLDMARK WHO LOVED SEATTLE AND ITS OPEN SPACES."

In April of 1992, the Goldmark family was remembered by a plaque showing a mother and father and two young sons walking along Lake Washington with Mount Rainier in the background. It's on a decorative wall at Madrona Drive and Lake Washington Boulevard.

RIP

The Slap Heard 'Round The World

2013-07-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

In 1998, MTV shot the seventh season of The Real World here in Seattle. The cast lived at the end of Pier 70 down on the waterfront. The address is 2815 Alaskan Way.

Their old residence is now an upscale restaurant called Aqua by El Gaucho.

Photo Courtesy of El Gaucho

One unique thing about the Seattle cast is that two roommates knew each other before filming. It's the only time that's happened. Roommates David and Nathan were both cadets at the Virginia Military Institute, which is why they say "This is the true story of seven people" instead of "seven strangers" in the opening sequence. The cast worked as "modulators" at KNDD FM, our alternative rock station. The station is at 1100 Olive Way, right next to I-5.

KNDD Modulators walk and ride bikes around the city handing out stickers and promoting concerts and things. The city wasn't thrilled about the cast being here. Filming was quite the spectacle. No less than six people followed the cast wherever they went. Two, sometimes three cameras with huge bright lights. Along with a boom and various producers and assistants. The Roanoke Tavern at 2409 10th Ave. East on Capitol Hill sold shirts that said "Seattle Says: The Real World Sucks."

Photo Courtesy of SeattleCitySearch.com

The rest of the cast was:

Janet: Korean-American who was a junior at Northwestern University with a double major in Broadcast Journalism and International Studies before filming began.

Rebecca: Aspiring singer who got to record a song with Sir Mix-a-Lot during her time in Seattle.

Lindsay: Aspen, Colorado radio show personality. During the season, she learned that a friend committed suicide. The cast later made a video for a national anti-suicide campaign.

Stephen: Business major with a minor in African-American studies at UC Berkeley. During the show, he made a number of homophobic comments.

Irene: Student at Georgetown University who also had Lyme disease. She eventually leaves the show due to her illness. Her departure scene is one of the most infamous moments in Real World history.

Stephen and Irene were at odds from the day they moved in. Stephen was moody, judgmental, and was constantly degrading homosexuals. He seemed to hate being in gay friendly Seattle. They fought about everything and had opposite opinions on almost any subject. The day Irene told the roommates she was going home, Stephen took it upon himself to send her out with a bang. After Irene packed her bags and said her goodbyes, she walked out the front door with Stephen tailing her. What happened next is still hard to believe.

“A marriage between you and I would never work,” Irene awkwardly giggled. “You know that, because you’re a homosexual, Stephen.”

He replied, “You think I’m a homo? HAHAHA. Well, you’re a bitch.” After making masturbatory hand motions in front of his crotch, he went inside to get Irene's stuffed teddy-bear, which he’d stolen and hidden from her while she was packing.

Then, with no provocation, (unless you count the homosexual comment) Stephen threw the teddy-bear into Puget Sound. Irene got in her friend's car.

So, Stephen ran up to the car as it pulled away, tapping the back fender to get the driver to stop. He then opened the passenger door, and slapped Irene in the face.

The scene today

The best way to prove your heterosexuality is to slap a woman, amiright? The cast was shown the video of the slap, and were of course appalled. They were given the option to evict Stephen from the house, but after some deliberation, they agreed to allow him to stay, provided he attended an anger management class.

After filming, Stephen was arrested in 2001 for soliciting a male undercover cop, and again in 2002 for stealing a car. At the 2008 Real World Awards Bash, he announced that he was gay, and engaged to his male partner, Sheldon. He also stated that he apologized to Irene, and had rekindled his friendship with her, but Nathan adamantly refuted this, saying Stephen, "has never apologized."

Irene earned a masters degree in Broadcast and Communications from San Francisco State University. In 2006 she won the "Pubbie" Award for Best Bay Area Podcast by the San Francisco Publicity Club. She tours colleges to speak about media manipulation and reality television. She's appeared on VH1 and E! and was involved with a documentary about Lyme Disease, Under Our Skin: The Untold Story of Lyme Disease.

The Gorilla Gardens Riot

2013-02-23T11:52:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, long ago (1984) there was a club called Gorilla Gardens. It was in Chinatown, (and later near Fremont) it was a dump, and from everything I've heard and read, it was, for a short time, the greatest place on Earth. Or at least in Seattle. I was way too young to ever experience it for myself and like I say all the time, I should have been born ten years earlier than I was. This is a place where many of Seattle's finest played their first shows...6 or 7 years before anyone outside the Northwest gave a damn. Contrary to popular belief, Kurt Cobain did not carry grunge up here from Aberdeen in a Converse shoe box.

I decided to let people who were there tell this story. I've compiled quotes taken from books and blogs and I'm sure you’ll recognize a few names. This is the story of the rise, fall, location change, and grand finale of Gorilla Gardens. Enjoy!

KERRI HARROP (SUB POP Employee) Gorilla Gardens was this shitty old all-ages place down in Chinatown, so it always seemed really sketchy to go there. And you would just see these insane bills of bands—I saw Hüsker Dü there, I saw the Melvins there. Gorilla Gardens is also the first place I ever saw people having sex in public. It was that kind of place. (ELOT)

410 5th Ave. S in Chinatown Today

CHRIS HANZSEK (Producer, Reciprocal Recording Studio founder) It was all red velvet chairs — red velvet carpet. (GID)

CHARLES PETERSON (Music fan and photographer) That was one rank club if there ever was one. (GID)


Green River at Gorilla Gardens. Buzz from The Melvins is on the left.

ART CHANTRY (The Rocket newspaper art director; SUB POP Records freelancer; Album/poster designer) There was one famous show at Gorilla Gardens—I think it was a Red Rockers show, some people say it was a Butthole Surfers show. The fire department came in and tried to close it down because they didn’t have enough fire exits. Everybody was getting really pissed off, so somebody took a chain saw and literally cut a hole in the wall to the alley outside, and the shit went back on. They had a fire exit now, didn’t they? (ELOT)

The alley. I have no idea where the hole they made was.

KIM THAYIL (Soundgaarden Guitarist) There were two venues — Rock Theater and the Gorilla Gardens. The whole thing was called Gorilla Gardens/Rock Theater.” Sometimes you’d have one set of acts in one hall — two different admission fees. Sometimes you’d have one admission fee and have seven bands alternating stages. That did well for a few years. They got a lot of national, international, and local bands. It was an opportunity for local bands to open up for touring acts.(GID)

Inside Gorilla Gardens today. It's now a carpet company.

TOMIE O’NEIL (Soundman and RKCNDY Club co-owner) There were a bunch of legendary shows there. Guns N’ Roses played in the small room. That night, we’re also havin’ a great Violent Femmes show—maybe 400 or 500 people in there. And my friends were like, “Dude, you gotta go in the other room, there’s this metal band that’s just fuckin’ outta hand—and Duff’s in it.” Duff had lived in Seattle and went, “Fuck you guys, I’m movin’ to L.A. and I’m gonna be the hugest fuckin’ rock star!” And I remember walking in the other room and goin’, “Man, these guys are fuckin’ great!” (ELOT)

TOM NIEMEYER (The Accüsed/Gruntruck guitarist) When the Gorilla Gardens building was no more, Tony Chu opened another Gorilla Gardens, but it wasn’t the same—it was just one room, over in another spot across town. There were some famous clashes with police that happened there that were of note. The big snowy, midwinter Circle Jerks riot with the cops. The Accüsed were supposed to play that show. The cops showed up before anyone played because there was no permit to have a show there. There were a good amount of people who had literally walked through the snow for miles to get to this thing, so people were pissed off. Some skater-punk kids got the idea to hurl some nearby loose bricks at the cop cars. I left, and it got ugly—as I was walkin’ up the hill, I remember seein’ cop cars startin’ to catch fire and shit like that. (Laughs.) It was pretty epic. Then parents started sayin’, “We don’t want our kids at these things.” I think that led to the Teen Dance Ordinance. It made all-ages shows impossible to get—you had to have like a million-dollar insurance bond to allow kids to see live music, period. Unbelievably fucked, you know? So we had to play bars and stuff just to fuckin’ survive here in town. It sucked. (ELOT)

Outside The New Location in 1985. 307 Nickerson

DAN HALLIGAN (Author/Blogger) Eventually, the club shut down and relocated for a short time to the Fremont neighborhood (I think in late 1985). While Gorilla Gardens flew under the radar as an underground club for most of it's existence, it was thrust into the spotlight in January of 1986 when the Circle Jerks played. A couple songs into the set, the Fire Marshall busted into the venue and shut down the show. Needless to say, the crowd wasn't so happy, bottles started flying and cops stormed in and started beating people with clubs. As people ran outside the club chaos ensued--cops chased punks, punks threw snowballs at cops (it was during a snowstorm), more kids were beat, dumpsters were lit on fire, a car or two were tipped over. I remember watching it on the TV news with my folks at home thinking, "Damn, I should be there!" and my parents being outraged that it was a club I'd gone to and all the kids run amok. (10thingszine)

307 Nickerson Today

DEWEY DECIMAL (Commenting on Dan Halligan's Post) I was one of those who got arrested at the Circle Jerks riot. They played like half a song and the cops and firemen busted in and started whacking people. People were pissed because the show was overpriced and G.G. wouldn't refund a penny even though it was shut down because it didn't have the right permit. All the punks were lined up on one side of the street throwing snow balls, and the cop cars were lined up on the other side of the street in front of the club. There was a pickup truck that had a bunch of bricks weighting it down for driving in the snow, and plenty 'o bricks were thrown at the cop cars. Kids were going nuts, siphoning gas and starting fires in dumpsters. I remember the cop smashing my face into the snow and asking for my name and age, to which I replied, "I'm Dewey f#ck1ng Decimal and I'm 99 years old." Straight to the paddy wagon then to the station where we were totally harassed and put in the pink padded cell. There was some killer video of the riot on the news, my friend Dick Cheese running across the street and nailing cops with snowballs. There was a big concert organized for the four or five of us who got arrested to help pay our legal fees. My memory is fuzzy and I can't remember if the show actually happened--we eventually all got off with a light slap on the wrist. Thank you for sharing, Dewey!!!! (10thingszine)

Here is a link to a hilarious news story about the riots. The quality is poor but if you watch the whole thing, you can see what the club looked like on the inside. I wonder where these people are now.

11/18/13- I received this e-mail from someone who was there:

I was just reading your blog about the riot. I was there. I'm in the video and I drove there with Zoli who had the little pickup truck weighed down with bricks because it was snowing and he was helping his girlfriends dad build something and we both saw the rioters discover the bricks and we both saw the air fill with bricks Crazy scene. Zoli played guitar in the Dehumanizers.

Anyhow gotta crash I'm up too late ;)
Carlene

Thank you, Carlene!

Officer Down

2013-02-13T06:47:00.001-08:00

Around 10:00 pm on October 31, 2009, Seattle police training officer Timothy Brenton 39, was sitting in a squad car with student officer Brit Sweeney 33, reviewing a traffic stop. Sweeney had just been sworn on to the force on August 19th. They were at 29th and Yesler in the Leschi neighborhood. Suddenly, a light-colored compact car pulled up next to them and opened fire.

Officer Timothy Brenton

Neighbors said they heard eight to 10 shots, possibly from an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. Then, they heard about six shots fire back. When it was all over, Brenton was dead, killed instantly. Sweeney, who was able to return fire, had ducked when fired upon and a bullet grazed the top of her head. She was taken to the hospital. Oddly, an American flag was found near the scene.

29th and Yesler Way in the Leschi Neighborhood

Police called it an assassination, though it's doubtful Brenton was a specific target. The 10-year veteran taught young officers the trade, and wasn't known to have any enemies or recent threats. Most likely, the shooter decided he wanted to kill a cop that Saturday night, and Brenton was the unlucky officer. He was married with two kids, ages 8 and 11. His father and uncle are retired Seattle officers.

Brenton and His Father The Day He Was Sworn In

A massive manhunt went underway and tips poured in as detectives looked for a compact or sub-compact car that was either white, silver, or light blue. On November 6th, detectives received a call that a man living in Tukwila, (a suburb near Sea-Tac Airport) owned a 1980 to 1982 Datsun B210 coupe seen in the area where Brenton was murdered. When they arrived at the Terrace Apartments at 13705 56th Avenue South, they also discovered a sedan that looked like a police cruiser. The Datsun was covered by a tarp.

The Suspect's Ride

Detectives waited until Christopher Monfort, a criminal justice student at Highline Community College in Burien, (another suburb near the airport) approached the car. But when they asked to speak with him, he first ran up a staircase, then pointed a gun at the cops and pulled the trigger.

The Scene at The Terrace Apartments Halloween 2009

But the weapon didn't go off. Detectives resumed the foot chase until he once again pointed his gun at them. This time police opened fire, shooting him twice, once in the head. Neither shot was fatal but he is now paralyzed. This all happened at the same time as Officer Brenton's funeral up in Seattle.

The Procession

After police shot and arrested Monfort, a search of his apartment revealed a well-stocked arsenal. Detectives found a rifle, handguns, an assault rifle, and homemade explosives. That led them to believe he may have also been involved in the September 22, 2009 firebombing of four Seattle Police cars in the city's maintenance yard. An American flag had been found at that scene too. DNA would later prove their suspicions correct.

What remains unexplained is why Monfort had a beef with police. He seemed certainly interested in entering the field. He'd already received a degree in criminal justice from the University of Washington, and was working on another criminal justice degree at Highline while mentoring at-risk teens. But he'd recently been laid off from his job as a security guard. At age 41, it's fair to assume he was professionally frustrated. Did he feel he was rejected or passed over by real cops, and was now pissed that he couldn't even keep a rent-a-cop job?

King County prosecutors charged Monfort with aggravated first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in connection with the shooting. He is also charged with arson and attempted first-degree murder in connection with the firebombing, and another attempted first-degree murder charge for attempting to shoot a detective who was pursuing him. His trial date is tentatively set for Sept. 13, 2013. He is expected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

A Paralyzed Monfort in Court

On October 31, 2010 a memorial was dedicated to Officer Brenton at the site of the shooting.

Brenton's Wife and Children at Dedication

Britt Sweeney was named Officer of The Month in November 2009 and took an extended leave from the force, but returned once her wounds healed. She has proven to be an excellent officer in a city full of corrupt ones. In September of 2011, Sweeney was named Washington State Officer of The Year.

RIP Officer Brenton.

Monorail Mishaps

2012-09-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

Construction on Seattle's twin monorail trains began in May 1961, to transport World's Fair visitors between downtown and the fairgrounds at the Seattle Center. The initial construction cost was $3.5 million, and the trains made their inaugural 25 foot high, 1.2 mile runs on April 19, 1962, just two days before the fair opened.

Construction of monorail and Space Needle in 1961

The trains were heavily featured in the Elvis movie, It Happened at The World’s Fair.

Elvis shooting scene on monorail.

After the fair, the Monorail was taken over by the City of Seattle and its operation was contracted to Metro Transit and then to a private firm managed by Seattle Center. The line appeared doomed in the late 1980’s by plans for development of Westlake Center Mall, but City Council won inclusion of a train terminal as part of the new mall, which opened in October 1988.

Monorail at Westlake Mall.

The trains have motors and gears and like any other machine, they’re going to break down or malfunction from time to time. Passengers have been stuck on the trains numerous times over the years but, the first major mishap was on July 25, 1971, when a brake failure on the red train lead to a crash at the Seattle Center. Around 50 people were on the train as it made its last run of the day from downtown. At 9:54 pm, the train approached the station without slowing down. Some of the passengers realized or sensed something was wrong. “What the Hell’s going on?” yelled the driver. Then he shouted, “HANG ON!” The train slammed into a steel girder at the end of the track, built for the purpose of keeping an out-of-control train from running off the tracks and ramming into the terminal.

Steel girder at Seattle Center station.

It was estimated that the train was traveling between 15 and 20 mph upon impact. The girder cut into the front of the car like an ax, caving in the roof. The glass and metal front of the car caved in to the first row of seats. The sides of the front car buckled from the force of the impact. One woman in a passenger seat directly opposite the driver was thrown through the front window. Another witness reported people “sticking out of the front” of the train after the crash. Twenty-six people were injured, two seriously, but there were no fatalities. The blue train was unaffected by the accident and was in operation the next day.

Aftermath of crash.

But, on May 31, 2004, the blue train had a mishap of its own. The south-bound monorail was carrying passengers away from the last day of the Northwest Folklife Festival during Memorial Day weekend at the Seattle Center. As the fire started, passengers reported hearing a loud pop, the lights went out, and smoke began filling the train. The driver told the passengers to move towards the front of the car, and shortly thereafter, the train’s doors opened. As the fire department arrived at 5:27 pm, black smoke billowed out of the train down 5th Avenue.

A woman stands on the rail to get a baby fresh air.

Passengers gathered by the open doors, trying to get some fresh air before being rescued. Fire fighters hoisted a ladder to an open door at the front of the train, and began evacuating passengers. A driver from Seattle Monorail Services parked the red train alongside the blue train and began evacuating passengers onto it via metal planks. The monorail was designed to be able to evacuate passengers from one train to another in emergencies. Forty people were treated at the scene and released, and eight passengers plus one firefighter were taken to Harborview Medical Center to be treated for smoke inhalation. The fire was caused by friction from a broken low-speed drive shaft igniting grease and oil on the train’s undercarriage. The train was shut down for six months.

Fire damage.

On November 26, 2005, the red and blue trains collided. It happened at about 7:10 pm and sent glass falling to the street. The two trains scraped against each another, ripping a door off in the process. This happened near Fifth Avenue and Olive Way. In that area, the tracks start to converge as they approach the station at Westlake Center, not leaving enough space for the trains to pass.

Oops.

One train was apparently just pulling into the Westlake station and the other was departing toward Seattle Center when they hit. At least one of the drivers waved at the other and a horn was honked just as the accident occurred, witnesses said. It took nearly an hour to evacuate the 84 passengers on board the two trains. There were no serious injuries, but two people were taken to the hospital to be checked out. The monorail was halted for nine months.

Climbing down.

Over two million people ride the monorail every year. With the numerous breakdowns and these three major mishaps, it seems like a big chance to take for only a 1.2 mile walk. The 2012 movie Grassroots, tells the story of Grant Cogswell's 2001 run for city council and his idea to expand the monorail city-wide.

The Samurai Swordsman

2012-08-02T21:06:00.001-07:00

Just after 11am on April 3, 1997 the city of Seattle experienced the strangest and most bizarre 11 hours I can remember. The day started off like any other but before lunch, one man with a sword shut this place down and pissed off everybody.

Tony "Apollo" Allison

The story goes that an off-duty cop spotted a man in a leather jacket and camouflaged pants carrying a sword and “disturbing” passers-by. The copper followed the man through Pike Place Market where he took a left on Pike, and headed up to 2nd.


South on Pike Place

East on Pike Street after turning left off Pike Place

There, the man took what the police report described as a "defensive stand" and refused to drop his sword. The cop called for back-up and the great Seattle Street Samurai Standoff began.

2nd and Pike. Scene of standoff.

I vividly remember thinking that the entire thing was blown way way out of control and even the news was reporting that the man, Tony “Apollo” Allison hadn’t acted aggressively toward anyone, including the cops. He was just packing a sword. Is that not his prerogative? I’m not saying the guy wasn’t weird but, aside from some overly dramatic poses and some unintelligible phrases, he seemed no more harmful or crazy than any of the other folks who lived with him in City Hall Park.

City Hall Park 450 3rd Avenue

I honestly thought I could handle the situation better than the cops were. (We all did) But it took a while to figure out what the situation was. Were the cops trying to get the sword from him? Was he not letting people walk by on the sidewalk? It was all confusing and the news reports were vague. The police cordoned off the streets and decided the best way to communicate with him would be via bullhorn. Thank goodness for that because the news cameras were able to pick up the sound and we all learned that yes, the cops just wanted him to put down the sword.

Cops communicate with Apollo

They asked him nicely to put down the weapon and surrender; he refused. They offered him $50 for his sword; he ignored their bribe. They tempted him with a Big Mac; he held fast. They spoke fondly of his dead brother in hopes of changing his mind; he was unmoved. They tried reverse psychology on him, telling him Satan was preventing him from surrendering; he wasn't fooled by their lies. They shined bright lights at him; he wore shades. Rubber bullets were tried; he repelled them through sheer willpower. It seemed nothing could stop Apollo from standing his ground on the sidewalk.

Standing his ground

Seattleites were not happy. Traffic was brought to a stand-still and businesses were evacuated. Hundreds called 911 demanding action and offering advice on how to deal with this unexpected menace to civilization. Some suggested throwing a net over him (Couldn’t he just cut it with his sword?) and others said to shoot him with tranquilizer darts. After nearly half a day unbudged from his sidewalk post, Apollo was finally brought down using a tactic of tear gas, cold water sprayed by fire hoses, and exposure to a giant fan – advice from medical experts, to weaken his muscle control through hypothermia. They decided they’d follow that by pinning his body against the building with a 12-foot ladder. Even with these extreme measures, he showed high levels of resilience. The high-pressure hoses were only able to knock him down temporarily and it took nearly three minutes to finally get the sword out of his hand.

Apollo finally met his match with the tear gas and fire hoses

Assistant Police Chief Ferguson had this to say after the standoff: "I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years. I don't want to make an icon out the guy, but I simply had to marvel at his ability to withstand all of that." We learned that Tony had been released from Western State Hospital the year before the standoff after being there ten years. Not because anyone thought he was ready, but because he'd served his time. He was sent there after he pled not guilty by reason of insanity to a charge of second-degree assault with intent to rape. Once out, he became a homeless alcoholic. He was also a loner who strutted along the streets in his fatigues and military beret. He usually carried a sword in a scabbard behind his back. But even on the streets, he was considered somewhat strange. He would sometimes talk crazy, sometimes he insisted he wanted to be left alone, sometimes he became belligerent and was kicked out of bars. After the standoff, he spent a few nights in the mental ward of Harborview Medical Center and from there, he was sent back to Western State. I have no idea where he is now.

You must watch this, it's hilarious.

Queen Axe Hill

2012-07-21T00:01:00.002-07:00

Most of 1990 was a scary year on Queen Anne. An intruder was breaking into houses and eating people's fruit. The residents of the hill, who normally slept with their windows open and at least one door unlocked, started battening down the hatches. Their quiet little life in a neighborhood of sprawling Colonial's and huge Craftsman's was being infiltrated by a banana bandit. On March 3rd, someone broke through the basement window of a house with a pickax and fled when the owner turned on the lights. He left the axe, which the owner still has. There had been no fruit in the home.

Actual Pickax used in break-in

Then, on March 9th, a resident at 361 Newton Street, awoke around 7 am to find his back door open and an axe that had been stored in his carport, lying in his living room. The cops were called, the axe was dusted for prints, and it was placed on the back porch by the owner.

361 Newton Street

Then, just four days later, things took a terrible turn. 63 year-old Geneva MacDonald failed to show up for work that day. After repeated calls to her home went to the machine, a concerned co-worker paid a visit to her home at 1611 Bigelow Avenue, just around the corner from the Newton Street house.

McDonald home at 1611 Bigelow Ave.

Geneva's car was there but knocks on her back door went unanswered. It was unlocked and the co-worker went inside. Upstairs, in her bedroom, was Geneva's mutilated body. She had been repeatedly struck with an axe and stabbed with her own sewing scissors. Her throat had also been slit with a knife. The co-worker ran to a neighbor's and called 911. The axe, which the killer left, still had fingerprint dust on it and was immediately recognized by investigators.

The killer entered through this back gate in the alley.

While the investigation was taking place and residents of the hill were installing security systems and motion detectors, the fruit fiend managed to strike again. A guest of a house just down the hill from Geneva's, was awakened by an intruder at the foot of his bed, holding a kitchen knife. He fought with the intruder and his hands and lower arms were shredded in the scuffle. The assailant fled the house and the man called 911. Now here's the messed up part. The operator tells him to walk a few blocks down the hill to the 7-11 at 5th and Valley where he would find two paramedics on their lunch break. His friend ended up driving him to the hospital. (You can't make this stuff up)

7-11 at 5th and Valley on Queen Anne

Dozens of homes were broken into on the hill over the next few months but there was no suspect. On July 15th, an intruder entered a home on Queen Anne while the residents were sleeping and scrawled a series of obscene threats on the dining room wall. Then, in September, someone broke into a house at 3029 49th Avenue SW all the way in West Seattle. There, they ate fruit and wrote "The Killer is Back" and other messages on the walls and left an axe at the foot of the stairs.

3029 49th Ave West

That same day, a West Seattle apartment was broken into and milk was poured all over the electronics. Messages were also left on a few walls. The intruder had changed neighborhoods, but only for a minute. A week after the West Seattle break-in's, a suspect was chased down the street after breaking into a home back on Queen Anne. Somehow, the homeowner managed to snap a shot of the intruder with an Instamatic camera. The man in the picture was 36 year-old James Cushing. Cops knew him well. Just a month prior, he was taken to Harborview Medical Center for psychiatric evaluation after he was seen screaming, yelling, and waving a knife near Kinnear Park on Queen Anne. He was evaluated and released to the streets. (I'm currently working on a story about a murder in that park)

Kinnear Park at 899 West Olympic Place

The police began searching downtown streets and local mission's for James. They found and arrested him on the corner of 4th and Stewart on Thursday, September 13th.

Intersection of 4th and Stewart near Westlake Plaza

We learned he had become a recent regular at The Mecca Tavern at 526 Queen Anne Ave. and was dubbed "crazy" by staff and patrons.

Mecca Cafe and Tavern

He also frequented Tower Records & Video (RIP) at the bottom of the hill, where he spent hours in the horror movie section. (Red flag)

Seattle Music Mural that was at Tower Records

A Quality Food Center now sits at 500 Mercer St.

Apparently, James' mother had contracted German measles before his birth, a disease known to cause brain damage in an unborn child. Right after his birth, he became severely ill with spinal meningitis, enduring temperatures of up to 107 degrees that further damaged his brain. His mother said he never cried as a baby. He later became obsessed with slasher films after finding his sister dead in 1989. He was also obsessed with the story of Lizzie Borden, who killed her parents with an axe in 1892. He had been in and out of numerous mental institutions over the years but doctor’s disagreed about how to treat him. Some even doubted his insanity. He once smeared the walls of his apartment with fecal matter and his mom had him picked up and sent to Western State Hospital in Lakewood for evaluation. There, two doctor’s petitioned the courts to have him held for 14 days. They said he required intensive supervised 24-hour restrictive care. One doctor's notes said, "Patient says he may kill someone one of these days.'' For reasons that remain unknown, the court denied the petition. "They let him out that day,'' his mother told the Seattle Times, "Just sent him out on his own. And not only that, to find his own way home from Western State. I picked him up in Tacoma. They just let him out the door.''

Western State Hospital 9601 Steilacoom Blvd. Lakewood, WA

His mental state was front and center at the trial. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity. In the end, prosecutors were able to convince the jury that James knew right from wrong. He was found guilty of aggravated murder, first-degree attempted murder, and numerous breaking and entering charges. He will spend the rest of his life at the the Washington Correctional Facility in Monroe. There is no possibility of parole. RIP Geneva.

May 30, 2012

2012-07-10T23:07:00.001-07:00

Murders and shootings in Seattle are way up this year. By May, the number of shootings had already reached that of the entire year of 2011. Most of the shootings have happened in the usual south-end neighborhoods, and I myself have been in the crossfire twice. I live in what’s considered to be the Central District (CD) but, because I live over Leschi Ridge on Lake Washington, I tend to lump myself in with the posh Madrona and Madison Park neighborhoods that are just a couple miles north of me. What a difference a couple miles can make. I frequently travel a few miles south into the Rainier Beach neighborhood because the Safeway there has a gas station. (With my club card points I sometimes save a dollar a gallon) My only other option is all the way across the city in Ballard. I’m fully aware that “Rainier” is one of the most dangerous, gang-ridden, gun-happy ‘hoods in the city but, I take a chance in order to save a dollar a gallon on gas. A few months back, I was checking out at Safeway when an alarm went off. I then noticed one of the two police officer’s assigned to the store, headed toward the front doors.

Safeway Gas Station at 9662 Rainier Ave. S.

He told the checkers to keep everyone inside. Turns out, there was a gunman outside shooting people at the bus stop in front of the store. A man in his 20’s was hit in the leg. Once the officer determined none of us inside were at risk, we left and went on with our business. I was definitely shaken up but I in no way thought about not going back. I thought “What are the chances of that happening again?” Well, a few weeks later, it did. This time I managed to shop, pay, and leave the store with no incident. I also filled my tank, threw away some garbage, bought an apple juice, and picked out a new CD for the short drive home. Just as I was pulling out of the station, shots were fired and a 29 year-old man and a 15 year-old kid were hit.

Cafe Racer July 2012

And I've still been back. Do you know how much gas costs right now? Enough that I’m risking my life to save a few bucks. (Do you hear that big oil companies, you crooks?) Well, on May 30th, I learned that no neighborhood is immune, even sleepy Ravenna, just north of the U District. Around 11am a handful of people were drinking coffee and reading books and magazines at Café Racer, a quirky little coffee shop favored by artist types at 5828 Roosevelt Way.

Surveillance camera footage

40 year-old Ian Stawicki had been a regular at the café but had recently been 86’d due to argumentative and erratic behavior. When he walked in that morning Len Meuse, a cook there, politely told him he’d have to leave. Ian then asked Len if he could get a coffee to go and Len told him it’d be on the house. As soon as Len turned around to get the coffee, Ian fired at him, hitting his left armpit. The bullet pierced his lung, grazed his liver and kidneys, and barely passed by his heart and spinal cord. Len was on the floor behind a bar and could hear the gunshots as Ian shot people one by one; Drew Keriakedes, Joseph “Vito” Albanese, Don Largen, and Kimberly Layfield.

Police and Aid at the scene

When he was done, he went around the room again, giving everyone another shot. Len was hit in the head this time. That bullet shattered his jaw, broke several teeth and ripped up his tongue, which had to be sewn back together. Two other men had been in the back of the café and called 911. A ton of cops arrived quickly and went door to door on nearby residential streets looking for the gunman. At 11:30am, a call came in about a possible car-jacking on First Hill, several miles south of Ravenna.

Gloria was parked under the windows

A woman had been shot in a parking lot behind Town Hall at 1119 8th Ave. According to witnesses, she was hit and kicked by a man she was arguing with. During the struggle, the man dropped a pistol, then picked it up and shot her point blank in the head. The man jumped into her black Mercedes SUV and fled the scene. Gloria Leonidas, a 52 year-old mother of two, died at Harborview Medical Center, two weeks shy of her birthday. Within a half hour, police found her car, abandoned in the 4100 block of Delridge Way in West Seattle with a handgun inside. A tip soon came in that the suspect was seen boarding a Metro bus.

The abandoned Benzo on Delridge

A woman at a West Seattle salon claimed she gave the suspect a haircut earlier in the afternoon. A swarm of officers went door to door in that neighborhood too. It wasn't until 4 that afternoon that a plain clothed officer spotted the suspect near SW 36th and Morgan Street, just a few blocks from where Gloria’s car was abandoned. As police closed in on him, he shot himself in the head. As suspected, it was Ian Stawicki.

SWAT closes in

No motive for the shooting is known but Ian’s brother, Andrew said he was mentally ill and was a very angry man. It's still unclear how Ian got from Ravenna to First Hill. After everything that Ian did to him, Len Meuse was quoted as saying he was glad Ian was “finally at peace.” Amazing. The killings brought the 2012 Seattle shooting deaths to 21. By May of 2011, there had only been 3. RIP, café patrons and Gloria. Take care, Len.

COPS

2012-06-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Police Department is no stranger to police brutality accusations. As are many cities, I’m sure. But, I don’t live in those cities, I live in this one-and it concerns the hell out of me. Citizens armed with cell phone cameras have caught a lot of the brutality. Here are just a few of the stories that have happened recently. 2010 was an especially bad year. I also realize there are hundreds of officers on the force who don’t participate in this type of behavior. This post isn’t about those officers and I thank them for their service.

November 29, 2008

15 year-old Malika Calhoun and a friend were pulled over by King County Sheriff Deputies at 3:30 AM in Tukwila. Calhoun was operating her parents car, which they had reported stolen. She was arrested and taken to a holding cell at Sea-Tac City Hall at 4800 S. 188th St. A security camera shows Deputies Paul Schene and Travis Brunner as they escorted the girl into a cell. Schene asked her to remove her sneakers and, as she slipped out of her left one, she appeared to kick it toward Schene, who was standing outside the open cell door. Schene then lunged through the door and kicked her, striking either her stomach or upper thigh area. He pushed her against a corner wall before flinging her to the floor by her hair.

He then squatted down on her and made "two overhead strikes" although it's unclear where the blows landed. A detective who reviewed the video said it appeared Schene and Brunner had the girl under control when Schene decided to strike her. Schene is 6 feet 2 and weighs 195 pounds. He and the girl then exchanged words. Brunner said she was "real lippy" after being informed she was under arrest and called them "fat pigs." The Sheriff's Office policy manual says deputies should use physical or deadly force only when "necessary to effect an arrest, to defend themselves or others from violence, or to otherwise accomplish police duties according to law." Schene was also involved in a shooting in 2007 where he killed a suspect after shooting him 11 times. Paul Schene was fired, charged, and acquitted by two hung juries. He’s now fallen off the face of the earth.

Sea-Tac City Hall

April 17, 2010

The Seattle Police Department’s Gang Unit responded to a 911 call made by a man who claimed that he was robbed by four Latino men with a machete outside China Harbor Restaurant on Lake Union. One of the officers, Shandy Cobane, detained a Latino male suspect, and said " I'm going to beat the fucking Mexican piss out of you. You feel me, Homey?" and kicked him in the head as the man shouted that he was innocent. Female officer Mary Woollum, stomped on his leg. No ambulance was ever called for Martin Monetti Jr., even though he was bleeding badly from the head. He was later released after police confirmed that he had nothing to do with the alleged robbery. City attorney Peter Holmes said the head-stomping was not unreasonable. Cobane, 45, received a 30-day suspension for the racial slur and Woollum, also 45, was only given a written reprimand.

China Harbor Restaurant at 2040 Westlake Ave. North

June 14, 2010

It all started when a cop stopped a man for jaywalking. Things escalated quickly from there as voices were raised and a crowd gathered. When two young women intervened, (For no reason) an onlooker pulled out his phone and started rolling. On the video, Officer Ian P. Walsh 39, is seen punching 17 year-old Angel Rosenthal in the face, after she expressed her outrage at the arrest of her friend, Marilyn Levias, 19, after Marilyn failed to comply with Walsh's orders to see her way out of the jaywalking situation. This all happened in front of Franklin High School. Both ladies already had criminal records. Officer Walsh was punished for punching Angel by being transferred to a police training section for a few days to review the tactics that he’d been taught. Then, he and Marilyn met at a North Seattle community center in a sit-down brokered by the Urban League. They apologized to one another. Marilyn was found guilty of obstructing a police officer and was sentenced to 24 hours of community service. To think all this could have been avoided, had that guy just used that perfectly good pedestrian overpass.


Pedestrian Overpass and Bus Stop at Rainier Ave. S. and MLK

August 17, 2010

A local man called the cops on Seattle officers when he felt a traffic stop was spinning out of control and the entire incident was captured on a police video that shows the man being yanked from his car and thrown to the ground. The video shows Seattle Police pulling a car over for speeding at Rainier Ave. South and South King St. Then, the officers approach the driver. Although the dashboard camera captured the incident, the officer wasn't wearing his microphone – a violation of department policy. Once stopped, the driver, Amanuel Gebreselassie, says the conversation went bad from the beginning. In their report, police said the driver was “extremely verbally aggressive.” But Amanuel denied that – and says the stop seemed so out of line, he called 911. An audiotape of the 911 call recorded the conversation between Amanuel and the dispatcher.

“911. What are you reporting?”

“Uh, an illegal stop by an officer- you know, I just want to make sure he’s a real officer. There’s an officer here, but he’s talking crazy to me, and I’m not really wanting to deal with this guy.”

The conversation was cut short when a group of officers returned to the car.

“Get out of the car,” one officer can be heard saying on the tape.

“For what?”

“Get out of the car, man.”

Police say Amanuel resisted, so they yanked him to the ground.

In the video, one officer appears to deliver a sharp kick but it’s unclear where it lands.

The officers then performed an illegal search of the car and found 53 grams of pot in the trunk. The department reprimanded three officers for the illegal search but did nothing about the violence inflicted on Amanuel.


Rainier Ave. South and South King Street

August 30, 2010

A partly Deaf Native American man, John T. Williams, was shot and killed by SPD Officer Ian Birk after Williams was seen crossing Boren Ave. at Howell St. with a folding 3-inch carving knife and wooden board. Williams was standing 9 to 10 feet away when Officer Birk, a rookie officer with just two years of experience, stopped his cruiser, got out, and shouted orders at him to drop the knife three times before he fatally shot Williams in the chest four times. The confrontation lasted less than 1 minute. Most of it was caught on Birk’s dash cam.


Williams is caught on Birk's dash cam just seconds before he was shot

After initial reports that Williams advanced on Birk, the Seattle Police Department said they could no longer be sure that occurred and decided that Williams had not moved threateningly towards Officer Birk. Birk later resigned.

Boren Ave. and Howell Street

The Aurora Bridge Bus Shooting

2012-06-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

On November 27, 1998, Metro bus driver Mark McLaughlin and 34 passengers were cruising south down Aurora Avenue on an express route to downtown Seattle. They were coming from the Aurora Village shopping complex at N. 200th Street.

Looking South on Aurora Bridge

As Mark approached the Aurora Bridge, (aka Suicide Bridge) which crosses the Lake Union Ship Canal between the Fremont neighborhood and the north slope of Queen Anne hill, his accordion bus was reaching 50 miles per hour. It was mid afternoon on the day after Thanksgiving. For reasons still unknown to this day, 43 year-old Silas Cool, (He wasn't) a New Jersey native, approached Mark and pulled out a .380 handgun.

Point of impact and damage

He shot him in the abdomen and then shot himself in the head. The bus crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic, hit a van, and plunged 50 feet off the east side of the bridge. It fell onto an apartment building on 36th Street, kitty corner from the world famous Fremont Troll.

905 36th Street

(I walked past that building every day when I worked in Fremont and had no idea it was the building hit) It’s believed that once 44 year-old Mark lost control, he intentionally swerved the bus hard left, to avoid falling 167 feet into Lake Union. Had the bus fallen off the bridge not even 100 more yards south, everyone would have died. Only one other passenger was killed, 69 year-old Herman Liebelt. All of the 32 other passengers were injured, some permanently disabled. One of them lost an arm and a leg. Another, who was only 43, now lives in a group home and requires a caregiver.

The Fremont Troll

It was later learned that Un-Cool had been a petty thief, a Peeping Tom, part-time vagrant who ate at local missions, and an unemployed emotional wreck who wore sunglasses at night. (Corey Hart would be appalled) He lived in a run-down apartment which his parents in Jersey paid for and he slept on an air mattress. Just weeks before the shooting, he showed a handgun to a passenger on another bus and said he was getting a second gun to deal with the "mean people" who ride and drive buses.

Memorial procession down 4th Ave.

On December 8th, bus service was halted for four hours. A memorial service began with a procession of 80 buses and other Metro vehicles through downtown Seattle to Key Arena. They came from all over western Washington. A Metro wrecker led the way with a black wreath on the front. It was a very emotional sight. Those processions make me bawl every time. Fellow Metro drivers had cleaned, repaired and decorated Mark’s bus and it was taken to Key Arena.

Memorial plaque on bridge

His picture and jacket were placed on the driver's seat and purple ribbons were placed on 32 of the passenger seats. A black ribbon was placed on a seat for Norman Liebelt. Nothing was done for Un-Cool. The ceremony ended with a dispatcher's unanswered radio call for driver 2106. There is a memorial plaque on the bridge for Mark and the other passengers.

Mark McLaughlin

In late 2010 Lifetime interviewed a few of the survivors for a documentary called The Day That Changed My Life. RIP Mark and Herman.

The Colman Dock Calamity

2012-06-11T01:34:00.001-07:00

On April 25, 1912, a 320-foot, steel-hulled Alaska Steamship liner called The Alameda, was attempting to pull into Colman Dock at Pier 2 (Now Pier 52 Ferry Terminal) on the Seattle waterfront.

Colman Dock 1910

It was about 10:30 pm when the Master signaled full speed astern. Second Assistant Engineer R. M. Brunton misheard him, and applied full speed ahead. A Seattle Police Officer was on the dock and saw the ship coming straight for him, and roughly 100 other people. He warned everyone in the waiting room to run for their lives. The Alameda smashed into the dock, right under the waiting room and into the base of the 72-foot clock tower, which stood at the end. 150 feet of the dock was destroyed, and the end of the waiting room collapsed, leaving it exposed.

The damaged pier

A steamboat called The Telegraph was also hit, and it sank to the bottom of Elliott Bay. Only one person on the dock fell into the water, Dorothy Lynch of Seattle. She was rescued by firemen and had only minor injuries. Four other women on the dock were seriously injured. The total damage was estimated at $100,000. ($2,229,984. today) The fact that the entire pier didn't collapse, was credited to excellent engineering and construction.

The ferry waiting room today

It still stands on the original pilings today. While the pier was being repaired, all operations were being conducted at commercial slips on the south side of the dock. Because 150 feet of the dock was missing, boats and ships had to pull in closer to land, in much shallower water. At 10:30 am on Sunday, May 19th, the SS Flyer, a 170-foot, wooden-hulled, passenger steamer, pulled into the dock on one of it's scheduled runs from Tacoma. After the passengers exited and before new one's could board, she was told to pull up to the front of the dock next to Railroad Ave. (Now Alaskan Way) so other boats could come in.

Clock tower in the water

Passengers normally entered from a second story waiting room, and down a 120-foot steel gangplank. But, because the waiting room was destroyed, passengers boarded and deboarded from a freight gangplank downstairs. That plank was 80-feet-long and eight-feet wide and permanently attached inside the dock with large iron hinges. The outer end was supported by chains and could be raised and lowered according to the tide. Due to a minus tide on Elliott Bay, the gangplank wouldn't reach the Flyer's deck, so a smaller gangplank was used to bridge the gap between the steamer and the larger gangplank.

Alaskan Way in front of Colman Dock

On this morning, the distance from the dock to the water was nearly 20 feet. (A normal distance is 4 to 6 feet) At 11:00 am, the Flyer began loading for Tacoma. More than half the passengers had crowded onto the gangplank and then onto the steamer when suddenly, the outer end collapsed, plunging more than 60 people into the freezing, polluted water of the bay. Captain Everett. B. Coffin immediately sounded the emergency steam whistle (Four blasts for passenger danger) and yelled "Mr. Mob!" to his crew. (Man overboard) Then he ordered all hands to throw over life preservers, wooden deck chairs, and anything that would float, giving the victims something to cling to until rescued. Several of the crew jumped into the water. Ambulances and police cars arrived in minutes and officers demanded taxicabs and passing automobiles to transport victims to nearby hospitals. The fire boat Snoqualmie, moored nearby, raced to the rescue, as did several other small boats. A shoe shiner at the dock jumped into the water and was credited with saving 10 lives.

The SS Flyer on a normal run

Bystanders threw lifelines into the water and dragged survivors to the end of the collapsed gangplank. Within just 10 minutes everyone had been fished out of the bay. Well, almost everyone. The mother of 3-year old George Bruder approached an officer and said she couldn't find her son. The officer told her he was fine and had been given to a teenage girl and placed in another squad car. When the mother reached the car she informed the officer that was not her son. The stunned officer then asked the boy his name and he said, "Jack." He ended up being 3-year old Jack Learnerd. His mother Florence was not at any of the hospitals or at the dock. Neither was George Bruder. Diver Otto C. Peterson searched the water and found the two, but it was too late. By the time George and 30 year-old Florence were pulled from the water, they couldn't be revived. They were the only two fatalities. The pier was repaired but the clock went missing until 1976, when it was discovered in a Seattle warehouse on the corner of 12th and Jackson lying next to some old chicken coops. (Seriously?) At first, nobody realized its significance. It was in pieces and covered with rust.

Colman Clock today

Experts from the Museum of History and Industry were called in and after much research it was determined that this was indeed, the long lost Colman Clock. It had been hidden from sight for 40 years. It was restored to its former glory and now sits at the east end of the ferry terminal up on the top landing. (It's a must-see if you visit the waterfront) On December 28, 2001, Washington State Ferries concluded the celebration of its first 50 years with the sealing and placement of a time capsule inside the clock. The three-foot-high stainless steel capsule contains about 30 pounds of ferry memorabilia including documents, items, and photographs. I really think there should be a plaque in honor of the two lives lost somewhere on the pier, but there isn't. RIP George and Florence.

The Real Lebowski

2012-06-03T16:38:00.001-07:00

You have no idea how proud I am that the man who was the basis for one of the best movie characters of all time, has lived in Seattle. “But yeah, well, you know...that's just my opinion, man”

If you somehow haven't seen The Big Lebowski, do yourself a favor. John Goodman should have won an Oscar. Jeff “The Dude” Dowd (A nickname given to him as a child) was a student at UW from 1968 to 1970. He transferred from Cornell where his dad was an economics professor and anti-Vietnam fundamentalist. He quickly joined The Seattle Liberation Front. (SLF) It was a collection of radicals organized in January of 1970 by U Dub philosophy professor, Michael Lerner. It was formed following the collapse of the Student's for a Democratic Society the previous summer.

Former Century Tavern

Their unofficial clubhouse was the Century Tavern at 5260 University Way NE (Now The Rat and Raven) where I’m going to assume The Dude drank a few Caucasian's. Their first assembly was held in the auditorium of the Husky Union Building at 4001 Stevens Way. (Coincidentally, there is a bowling alley in the basement) One of the SLF's first organized actions was to hold a demonstration in support of the Chicago Seven, who were charged with inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The HUB

The demonstration was held on February 17, 1970, the day after the Chicago Seven trial ended. (They were found not guilty of conspiracy but were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot) The demonstration is referred to as “The Day After.” The SLF issued a call to shut down the Federal Courthouse.

HUB Bowling Alley

Over 2,000 demonstrators attacked the courthouse and the Federal Building with rocks, bottles, and paint bombs. After someone sprayed tear gas into the courthouse lobby, the newspapers reported that a demonstrator threw a grenade at the building. There were 76 arrests and 20 injuries.

Demonstrators clashing with cops

On April 16, 1970, a federal grand jury issued conspiracy indictments against eight of the demonstrators; Professor Lerner, Susan Stern, Chip Marshall, Mike Abeles, Joe Kelly, Roger Lippman, Michael Justesen, and The Dude. Justesen went underground and the remaining defendants became known as, The Seattle Seven.

4 of the 7. The Dude is on the far left.

"Ever heard of the Seattle Seven? That was me. Well, me and 6 other guys." The trial was moved to Tacoma and began in December, 1970. On the 10th, Judge George Boldt (Whom we later learned had Alzheimers during the trial) declared a mistrial due to the defendants' “unruly behavior.” All seven were cited with contempt of court but the conspiracy charges were eventually dropped. The Dude and the others did six months in jail for the contempt. (He roomed with Seattle’s biggest heroin dealer and the leader of The Hell’s Angels) The SLF dissolved in 1971 due to internal strife. In 1976, SLF member Susan Stern died at age 33 of a drug overdose. After his release from jail, The Dude spent some time in South America before moving to Los Angeles to become an independent movie producer and promoter. In 1983, divine intervention led him to meet Joel and Ethan Coen while they were promoting their debut film, Blood Simple.

The Coen's on set. The iron lung scene

(It’s just as good as Fargo and also stars Frances McDormand) The Dude received a phone call later that year that the Coen’s were developing a character based loosely on him. If I were them, I would definitely consider The Big Lebowski my finest work. Jeff Bridges might have exaggerated the laziness of The Dude, but not his love of Creedence or bowling. Or that rug. In July of 2002, at a tattoo expo in Louisville, two guys named Scott and Will (aka The Founding Dudes) were trying to sell t-shirts for Scott’s shop. After baking in the sun all day, the delirium drove them to start trading lines from the movie. The other vendors around them began to join in, creating a sense of brotherhood between complete strangers. Then came a revelation: If they can have conventions for tattoos, then why not a convention for people who love The Big Lebowski?

Seattle's Lebowski Fest at Acme Bowl

A date was set, a bowling alley was rented and Lebowski Fest was born. People flocked from all over the country. The first fest went so well that Scott and Will decided to keep hosting them. Seattle’s Lebowski Fest is a two-day event held in the Fremont neighborhood. The movie is shown on an outdoor screen and different bowling alleys in the area have hosted the second day festivities.

The Dude gets his key

In July of 2009, Fremont presented The Dude with a giant key to "The Center of The Universe" (The neighborhood slogan) I could go on forever about how much I love the movie but "Fuck it, I'm outta here man."

The Rafay Family Murders

2012-05-28T23:42:00.001-07:00

So much about this story reminds me of the Menendez murders. We have to go across Lake Washington because most of it took place in Bellevue, but it's so close to Seattle, I'm including it. Here's a shot of the Bellevue skyline from where I live.

In the spring of 1994, Tariq Rafay, his wife, Sultana, and their daughter, Basma moved to Bellevue from Vancouver, B.C. The couple's son, Atif, was a sophomore at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. During the following summer, Atif was visiting his friend, Sebastian Burns up in West Vancouver. The first week of that July, they both took a bus to Bellevue to visit Atif's family. They were there less than a week when, on July 13th, Sebastian called 911 from the Rafays' kitchen phone at 2 am. In a panic, he told the dispatcher there had been "some kind of break-in" and that his friend's parents were dead. When police arrived at 4610 144th Place SE they found what appeared to be a staged break-in.

Rafay Home today

Sultana had been unpacking boxes in the basement and didn't even know what hit her. She was struck twice in the head with a heavy, blunt object and was found face down on the carpet with a bloody shawl over her head. Police figured she was attacked first. Tariq was in bed asleep when he was repeatedly struck in the head and face. He was beaten so badly he was almost unrecognizable. 20-year-old Basma was autistic and hadn't spoken a word since childhood. When police arrived, they could hear her moaning and found her lying against her bedroom door. Her arms were covered in bruises and the wall above her bed was crushed, apparently by blows that missed their mark. She died five hours later.

The Keg restaurant in Factoria

The state crime lab later determined the three were most likely killed with an aluminum baseball bat. A murder weapon has never been found. The two 18-year-old's told police they left the Rafay home at 8:30 pm July 12th. They ate dinner at The Keg in Bellevue's Factoria neighborhood at 3500 Factoria Blvd. SE. They then watched "The Lion King" across the street at The Factoria Cinemas. (They were supposedly avid film buffs)

Cinemas at 3505 Factoria Blvd. SE

From there, they headed to Seattle and stopped by the nightclub, The Weathered Wall at 1921 5th Avenue under the monorail. They were turned away because the club was closing. They said they then returned to Bellevue and found the bodies. Witnesses remembered seeing the two at all locations.

Former Weathered Wall Club (yellow)

At first, police considered their alibis to be airtight but they later said the two had more than enough time between the movie and the trip downtown, to commit the murders. Their theory was that Atif and Sebastian wanted to cash in on the half-million dollars the Rafay's were worth. Considering what the house must have looked like, the police put the two up in a dingy Bellevue motel. Although they weren't suspects, the cops were growing suspicious. Three days later, with nothing for cops to hold them on, they went back to Canada and started spending the Rafay's money. On July 20th, a notice appeared in the Seattle Times saying, "Bellevue police would like to talk to anyone who saw the late show of The Lion King at the Factoria Cinema on July 12, 1994. Purely routine." It was six months before Bellevue police officially named the two as suspects. Then, in early 1995, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave help and began investigating the two on suspicion to commit murder and fraud. They launched "Operation Estate," an elaborate, five-month sting in which undercover detectives posed as high-rolling mobsters in an effort to gain confessions and DNA samples. Detectives worked to entice the two into a world of organized crime with the promise of two-hundred-thousand-dollars for a film they wanted to produce. The RCMP bugged the house Atif and Sebastian shared and stole their car to plant a listening device in it. The police recorded four-thousand hours of audio and video taped conversations, including what seemed to be confessions from both men. Canadian police made their arrest on July 31, 1995. King County filed murder charges that same day. Canada agreed to extradite the two only if the US took the death penalty off the table. After almost six years of legalities, they were finally booked into the King County Jail in March of 2001. The trial was delayed numerous times for various reasons, including one small controversy. On August 10, 2002, two guards outside a King County Jail conference room saw 26-year-old Burns standing behind his 43-year-old attorney, Theresa Olson, with his pants down and his penis erect.

Theresa Olson with her attorney

Her long dress was pulled up around her waist, court papers said. She was removed as council and suspended from The Washington Bar Association for two years. The trial began on November 23, 2003. Prosecutors argued that while "defendant Rafay watched and disconnected the VCR, defendant Burns beat the victims to death with a baseball bat." They believed Burns did this in his underwear to avoid getting bloodstains on his clothes. He then took the bat into the shower with him. The defense argued undercover Canadian detectives coerced and threatened Rafay and Burns into making false admissions. They also said neighbors reported hearing sounds that could have been the thuds of a baseball bat from the Rafay home at a time the defendants were confirmed to be elsewhere. (I've been to the neighborhood and that seems very unlikely. These are large homes on big lots.) On May 26, 2004 (My birthday) Sebastian and Atif were each convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. At sentencing, Sebastian (who is incredibly pompous) rattled on for an hour and a half about how he was innocent. Atif said he couldn't believe "the shoddy lie" they told undercover Canadian police about how they were responsible for the murders - "has misled so many people and eclipsed the real evidence in this case." He also said, "I'm tormented by the fact. . . my parents' killers walk with impunity." They were each sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. Atif went to the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe where he teaches high school to inmates.

Sebastian and Atif after sentencing

Sebastian's had a hard time of it at the Pen in Walla Walla. He's jailed with violent, long-term offenders where he's had many a crisis, including assaults by inmates and the force-feeding of food and anti-psychotic medications because of mental-health problems. In 2007, Sebastian's film-maker sister, Tiffany, produced the documentary, Mr. Big about her brothers arrest, trial, and her belief in his innocence. The Rafay's are all buried in Snohomish, Washington. RIP

Starvation Heights

2012-05-18T00:10:00.001-07:00

This is one of the most disturbing stories I’ve ever heard. Linda Burfield Hazzard was an osteopathic nurse on the Kitsap Peninsula who referred to herself as a doctor.

Despite not having a medical degree, she was licensed to practice medicine due to a loophole in a law that grandfathered in practitioners of alternative medicine. She was also able to convince many patients that starvation could cure almost any ailment they might be suffering. She even wrote a book called Fasting for the Cure of Disease.

Not surprisingly, most of her patients died. At least the ones with money did. Her “sanitarium” in Olalla was nicknamed Starvation Heights by the locals, who sometimes came across skeletal escapees staggering down the road begging for food. Linda’s husband, Sam was a West Point graduate who ruined his career by stealing money from the Army. He was also a drunk and a swindler. Linda put him in charge of stealing money from her patients. This whole operation started back in Minnesota, where Linda was born and raised. After leaving her first husband and two children to pursue her dreams in Minneapolis, she opened her first clinic there in 1902 and started killing people. Linda said disease could be cured by fasting and allowing the digestive system to “rest” and be “cleansed,” “removing impurities from the body.” Fasting, she said, could cure anything from a toothache to tuberculosis. The real source of all disease was “impure blood” brought on by “impaired digestion.” She was obviously crazy, and more than likely an undiagnosed serial killer. Her regime included daily enemas that went on for hours and involved up to twelve quarts of water. Patients were heard crying out in pain during the procedure. The third part of her therapy was a massage that consisted of her beating her fists against the patients’ foreheads and backs. One witness reported her doing this while shouting “Eliminate! Eliminate!” Her first patient died around the time her divorce became final. After the coroner determined that death was caused by starvation, he tried to get her prosecuted, but since she wasn’t licensed to practice medicine, she wasn’t held accountable. When investigators asked what happened to the victim’s valuables, Linda was evasive. She met and married Sam later that year but he hadn't bothered to divorce his second wife.

Northern Bank and Trust Bldg

He did two years in jail for that and after he got out in 1906, Linda suggested they move out west to start over. She set up shop at the Northern Bank and Trust Building at 1500 4th Avenue and commuted across the Sound to their home at 12541 Orchard Avenue in Olalla. She purchased 40 acres and before the locals gave it it's moniker, she called it Wilderness Heights.

Hazzard Home in Olalla

She had grand plans to build a large sanitarium on the property. Her first known Seattle victim was Daisey Haglund, a Norwegian whose immigrant parents owned the land which is now Alki Point. After a 50-day fast under Linda’s direction, she died on February 26, 1908, at the age of 38. She left behind a 3 year-old son named Ivar.

Alki Point

Yep, Ivar Haglund, the “Flounder” of Ivar’s Restaurant’s. (I recommend the Scallop’s ‘n Chips and the Red Clam Chowder) His mother left him a house at 3045 64th Avenue SW. It’s the oldest house in Seattle. Other victims soon followed; Ida Wilcox in 1908, Blanche Tindall and Viola Heaton in 1909, and Mrs. Maude Whitney in 1910.

Haglund's Historic House

When civil engineer Earl Erdman died in 1911, The Seattle Daily Times headline read “Woman M.D Kills Another Patient.” But patients kept on coming. Frank Southard, a law partner, and C.A. Harrison, publisher of Alaska-Yukon magazine, died under Linda’s care later that year, along with Ivan Flux, an Englishman who had come to America to buy a ranch and who had fasted for 53 days. During his fast, Linda gained control of some of his cash and property, and his family was told he died with only 70 dollars left to his name. Authorities tried to step in when Lewis Rader, a former legislator and publisher of a magazine called Sound Views, began wasting away. Linda treated him at the Outlook Hotel at Pike Place. (Now the LaSalle Hotel)

LaSalle Hotel at Pike Place

Health inspectors tried to convince him to leave but he refused. Linda hid him away in a secret location where the 5-foot, 11-inch tall man died weighing less than a hundred pounds. The health director of Seattle said he couldn’t intervene, since “Dr.” Hazzard was licensed and the patients were willing participants in her deadly therapy. But he did keep an eye on her in case she treated any children, at which point he said he’d step in. When 26-year old Eugene Wakelin’s decomposing body was found on the Hazzard’s property with a bullet in his head, many speculated he'd been shot by the Hazzards, who were frustrated to learn that despite his aristocratic family, he wasn’t rich. Well, Dorothea and Claire Williamson, two British sisters in their early 30s, were rich. While visiting Victoria BC, they read an advertisement for Linda’s book in a Seattle newspaper. Although there was no indication that either of them was sick, they decided to go and take the fasting cure. In February of 1911, they visited Linda at her office and were told that the sanitarium wasn’t ready yet, but that she would treat them in Seattle. The sisters were put up at the Buena Vista Apartments at 1633 Boylston on Capitol Hill.

Buena Vista Apartments

They survived mostly on a thin vegetable broth. Linda would show up regularly to provide the enemas and massages. She also began to make inquiries about the sisters’ business affairs, and offered to store the women’s diamond rings and real estate deeds in her office safe. (How nice) By April, the sisters were near death and delirious. They were transferred to Olalla by twin ambulances and a private ferry launch. Just before the ambulance set out for the dock, Linda’s attorney obtained a shaky signature from Claire leaving a monthly stipend of 25 pounds sterling per year to the Hazzard’s “Institute.” On April 30, the sisters’ childhood nanny, Margaret Conway, received a telegram, summoning her to visit them in Olalla. She arrived from Sydney a week later. Sam Hazzard met and took Margaret to Linda’s office. There, she was told that Claire was dead and Dorothea was insane. Then, she was taken to Olalla for a reunion with Dorothea who was by now a human skeleton living alone in a cabin no better than a shack. Dorothea immediately begged to be taken away, but the next day she changed her mind and insisted that the cure was doing her a world of good. (Curing what?) Margaret stayed there hoping to convince her to leave. At a Fourth of July celebration, two patients approached Margaret and begged her to get them out the place, saying they were prisoners. When she announced that she would be leaving and taking Dorothea with her, Linda said Dorothea wasn’t free to leave. The Hazzards had obtained legal guardianship of her. They said she would be spending the rest of her life with them. Margaret sneaked off the property to contact the sisters’ uncle in Portland, and he came to the rescue. Dorothea now weighed 60 pounds. The Hazzards presented her with a bill for $2,000 and said they wouldn’t allow her to leave without some cash. Her uncle negotiated a smaller ransom. The British vice-consul in Tacoma put pressure on Kitsap County to prosecute Hazzard. When they said they couldn’t afford it, Dorothea Williamson offered to pay for everything. In August of 1911, Linda Hazzard was arrested. The Tacoma Daily News headline read: “Officials Expect to Expose Starvation Atrocities: Dr. Hazzard Depicted as Fiend.” Linda said she was being persecuted because she was a successful woman, and that traditional doctors resented her success and opposed natural cures. She told reporters “I intend to get on the stand and show up that bunch. They’ve been playing checkers but it’s my move. I’ll show them a thing or two when I get on the stand.” Her lawyer kept her off the stand, and the judge scolded her for signaling to witnesses. On top of damning medical testimony, a complete paper trail, including a forged diary entry saying Claire wanted Linda to have her diamonds, made it clear the Hazzards were crooks. The jury came back with a verdict of manslaughter. Linda managed to kill two more patients while awaiting sentencing. She got two years and did her time at Walla Walla. She and Sam then moved to New Zealand, where she operated under the titles of physician, dietitian, and osteopath. She also published another book, and made a lot of money.

Only Known Picture of the Sanitarium

By 1920, she had enough money to come back to Olalla and build her dream sanitarium at Starvation Heights. Since the state of Washington had pulled her medical license, she called it “a school of health.” The lavish building included a basement autopsy room and an incinerator. Although she didn't have the amount of patients she had anticipated, people still checked in to be starved. The sanitarium burned down in 1935, and three years later, Linda died. She hadn’t been feeling well and embarked on a fasting cure. (Poetic Justice) The total number of her victims is unknown, but she can safely be said to have starved at least a dozen people. RIP

U Dub Reacts to Kent State Killings

2012-05-10T20:13:00.001-07:00

In his bid for the Presidency in 1968, Nixon promised to bring troops home from Vietnam and end the feud with Southeast Asia. On April 30, 1970, he sent U.S. forces into Cambodia which only widened the battlefield. (Crook) Protests began all over the country and especially on college campuses.

Odegaard (With megaphone) addresses students

On May 4th, National Guardsmen fired on a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and wounding nine. The actions of those Guardsmen triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. U Dub was no exception. Student activists called for a strike on May 4th, and the next day's rally on campus turned into an impromptu march on the freeway to downtown Seattle. The inaugural strike demonstration began at 10:30 am in front of the Husky Union Building at 4001 Stevens Way.

In front of HUB

There, striking students and faculty overwhelmingly approved a list of demands to be presented to the administration, including a pledge by University President Charles Odegaard to never call National Guard troops onto the campus. (Seems reasonable) After a long march through campus, the strikers arrived at the Administration Building (Schmitz Hall at 1400 NE Campus Parkway) around noon. There, Odegaard expressed outrage over the Kent State killings, but refused the strikers’ demands.

Marching Down 45th

In response, the students voted to begin marching off campus and through the U District. 7,000 strikers hit “The Ave.” and when they reached NE 45th Street they began chanting “Freeway! Freeway!” They all headed for I-5. They reached the freeway around 1:50 pm, but somehow lost about 2,000 marchers. (In 8 blocks?) Still 5,000 strong, they flooded onto I-5 and began marching south towards downtown. Traffic was backed up for miles for about an hour.

Entering I-5 at 45th

People who were there say many motorists honked and flashed peace signs in approval. Barely a mile down the freeway, about 30 riot-clad Troopers were waiting for them at the Roanoke St. exit. The marchers voted to leave the freeway and continue south on Eastlake Avenue, which parallels the freeway.

View from Roanoke Overpass

They eventually reached the King County Courthouse at 1010 5th Ave. around 4 pm, where they were joined by striking students from several other local colleges and high schools for an hour-long rally. The next day another march took place down I-5 but University students walked south through the Montlake neighborhood and down through the Central District and entered the freeway at Cherry Street.

Old King County Courthouse

They headed north and were met with tear gas and billy clubs and were forced from the freeway. There were a few arrests and of course some of the cops used too much force, but what happened back on campus the next day was crazy. On the morning of the 7th, protesters had attempted to close the University by blocking the entrance gates with anything they could find.

May 6th March

Campus Police would clear the entrances only to have them blocked again. By that afternoon, thousands of protesters had taken to the campus and Campus PD was completely overwhelmed. Their jurisdiction includes many of the streets surrounding the campus and a few off-campus apartment buildings. Seattle Police Officers had been watching but didn’t encroach on Campus PD territory until protesters began pummeling Campus Officers with rocks at the 40th Street gate.

Gate at 40th and 15th Today

City cops on the campus triggered a riot on the streets of the U District. (SPD territory) Windows were smashed out of First Interstate Bank on the corner of 45th and University. (Now Wells Fargo) Trash cans were set on fire and flying rocks and bottles injured a lot of people.

45th and University Today

Reports began to come in to Campus PD about vigilantes beating people on "Hippie Hill" (Parrington Lawn) at 15th and NE 42nd. Campus Officers ran up to the hill with riot batons and saw a group of white males in civilian clothes all spread out in a line. The men were carrying sticks and moving south. People were on the ground injured.

Parrington Lawn Today

One woman tending to a man with a head injury pointed to the men saying that they were beating people. Officers approached the men and ordered them to drop the clubs. "We're police officers" one of the men said. He reached into his pocket and produced a Seattle Police badge. They had reportedly been sent onto the campus “to beat some hippies.”

Terry-Lander Hall Today

Other vigilante cops broke into Terry-Lander Hall at 1101 NE Campus Parkway claiming they were chasing rioters. According to witnesses, they beat “anyone they saw with long hair." Nobody had any idea they were cops. The actual strike really didn’t start until the 10th and it lasted until the 18th. It sort of became lost during the protests and rallies. Here’s a link to more info about it. On May 19, Acting Chief Moore admitted that a platoon of the Tactical Squad was present in the U District that night. They had been changing clothes at the police station when the call came in to go back on duty. (LOL) That was a blatant lie because the same thing had already happened during civil rights protests in the Central District. (Seattle Police Chiefs have a problem telling the truth)

Coming Home

On June 3, 1970, after the tactic became public, Seattle Police Major Ray Carroll became the “fall guy” and was demoted and transferred for his "overreaction" in commanding the officers. By the end of 1970, roughly 200,000 soldiers had returned home from Vietnam. Of the remaining 350,000, those who survived would all be home by the beginning of 1974. The United States lost roughly 58,000 soldiers during the war. RIP

The "Postal" John

2012-05-05T23:18:00.001-07:00

In 1993, a postal worker named Jim Fiori lived alone in an apartment on the South slope of Queen Anne. He worked the night shift sorting mail at Seattle's main post office at 301 Union Street. He was described by neighbors and co-workers as quiet, meek, and a bit of a loner. One of his neighbors, an elderly woman, couldn't seem to get over the fact that despite his exquisite view of the city, he never opened his curtains. "Does that make sense to you?" she asked reporters. (Yes lady, he worked the night shift.)

Post Office at 301 Union St.

The 47-year-old was never married, had no kids, few friends, and had no female companions that anyone could remember. Except for the prostitutes he frequented on Aurora Ave. The lucky lady he picked up on the night of July 17th was Alane Scott. She was a 28-year-old mother of four, who had lost them all to the state. She had no home, no car, no possessions. But she did have a raging heroin addiction. She’d also been in and out of the clink on numerous prostitution, theft, and drug charges. With that said, she in no way deserved what happened to her. Jim picked her up around 9:30 in front of the Thunderbird Motel at 4521 Aurora Ave. (It was demolished on February 29, 2012)

4521 Aurora Ave.

They drove back to his apartment at 518 Prospect and negotiated a romantic evening for a price of 70 dollars. At some point afterward, Jim decided to take a shower and Alane decided to go through his jacket.

She found an envelope full of cash and as she was rifling through it, Jim came out of the bathroom. When he saw what was happening he grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her in the chest. Then he strangled her. Surviving that, she made her way for the door. Jim grabbed a gun from a drawer, tackled Alane, put a pillow over her head and pulled the trigger. Then, he put her in his bath tub and left her there for almost a day. In whatever state of mind he was in, he figured the best idea was to dismember her with an axe. (This is my second post about an axe murder on Queen Anne hill. There’s a third one coming.)

518 Prospect today

After severing her head and right arm, he loaded the pieces into his Ford Fiesta and went looking for somewhere to get rid of them. Patrolman Lance Ramsay had been cruising North Seattle the night of the 18th when he noticed an erratic driver and pulled him over. His notes said the driver was "Nervous, fidgety, and would not look at me." "There was blood on the driver’s hands, steering wheel, and the outside of the hatch." The driver gave some excuse about cleaning fish and the cop let him go. He’s not a total idiot though, he jotted down the license number. The next morning Seattle woke up to the headline "Naked, Headless Woman's Body Found in Street". Jim had dumped Alane at the intersection of Roosevelt and Densmore on a quiet residential street in the Haller Lake neighborhood.

N. Roosevelt and Densmore

She was noticed around dawn on the 19th. When word of the body spread through the police department, Ramsay passed along the license plate number and detectives paid a visit to Jim Fiori. He calmly invited them in. He hadn’t even bothered to clean the blood on the carpet, or discard the weapons used to commit the murder. After giving the detective’s excuses about the blood nobody would ever believe, they hauled Jim in. The next question they wanted to know was where the rest of Alane was. Jim told them he put her head and arm into a dumpster by Green Lake. (I don’t know which one) By the time detectives got to the dumpster, the contents were on the way to a land-fill in Oregon. After an extensive search, the rest of the body was never recovered. Jim said the years of frustration, isolation and anxiety collided with his anger at Alane and he “finally erupted like Mount St. Helens." He plead guilty and received 27 years. RIP Alane.

The Murder of Edwin Pratt

2012-04-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

In 1969, Edwin T. Pratt was a civil rights leader and the Executive Director of the Seattle Urban League. Most considered him to be a very intelligent, fair, decent human being. Somebody disagreed. On the night of January 26th, Ed was shot to death in the doorway of the Shoreline home he shared with his wife, Bettye and their daughter, Miriam.

He was 38. Nobody has ever paid for the murder. At the end of the 60's, Pratt pushed hard for school and workplace desegregation, the de-ghettoizing (his words) of neighborhoods, and an end to police harassment. (still goes on) He had a lot of biracial support, but there were of course haters. They sent angry letters, left threatening messages, and got up at public meetings to tell him he'd be killed. Ironically, fellow African-Americans were the most resentful. Some of them thought he was caving to the white man. They had issues with him having white employees and they surely would have rioted had they known Ed was having an affair with his white secretary. His wife knew about the affair and she too threatened to kill him if he left her. Ed was supposed to meet his mistress the night of the 26th but heavy snow stranded him at home. As Ed was sitting in a chair watching TV, he heard snowballs hitting the side of the house at 17916 1st Ave. NE. Betty was putting five-year-old Miriam to bed.

Pratt home, morning after murder

Ed opened his front door and saw two men under his carport. He asked who was there. Bettye was peeking out Miriam's bedroom window when she saw one of the men had a shotgun. Before she could warn Ed, she heard the blast of the gun. The slug tore through Ed's mouth and lodged in his neck. He fell back into the house and died almost instantly. Miriam was still awake. Witnesses reported seeing two men, both about six feet tall and in their late teens or early twenties, flee the Pratt home and head west onto NE 179th Street, where they jumped into a car and sped away. One neighbor told police that he thought the car was a two-toned newer model Buick Skylark. Because of the darkness nobody was able to tell whether the assailants were white or black. Thursday, January 30, 1969, was declared a public day of mourning for Edwin Pratt. All flags were flown at half-staff and a $10,500 reward was set up by several local businesses. Richard Nixon even sent Bettye a hand-written letter. There was a public memorial service for him at Saint Mark's Cathedral at 1245 10th Ave. East on Capitol Hill.

St. Mark's

The FBI also joined the investigation. After three and a half months, they were at a standstill. Detective Sergeant Gordon Hartshorn of the King County Department of Public Safety said "There's nothing to go on. Nothing. It's the most frustrating homicide I've worked on in my 14 years on the force."

Pratt Park

In 1976 a park was built and named for Ed at 1800 S. Main St. From the park, you can see all the way across Puget Sound to the Olympics. It's in the neighborhood Ed wanted to de-ghettoize so badly. (hasn't happened) For the next 20 or so years, no new solid evidence or progress was made in the investigation. In 1994, journalist David Newman took an interest in the case and requested that the files be released under the Public Disclosure Act.

View from Pratt Park

Newman, along with former investigators, Pratt's daughter Miriam, and County Councilmen Larry Gosset, Larry Phillips, and Ron Sims were also petitioning the King County Police Department to release the files. After King County only granted a partial release of the files, excluding key documents and interviews with suspects, Newman filed a lawsuit against the county. A judge released the files to him. Newman's investigation into the murder led him to question how well the police handled the case. One officer reportedly told him, "I was unprepared for handling the homicide of a prominent person. In fact, this was my first homicide." This officer was the first to arrive at the scene. The crime scene was so poorly and improperly secured that it's used as a training scenario about potential mistakes in controlling a crime scene by the Sheriff's Department. On the night of the murder, a hundred or so police, firemen and neighbors wandered freely around the Pratt property, right through the middle of the crime scene. The closest police have come to solving the Pratt murder was a theory presented in a 1994 Seattle P-I article. They wrote that in 1970, Sergeant Hartshorn had a suspect in mind but that he had been killed. The suspect was Tommy Kirk, a 21-year-old drug user, dealer, and all around loser.

Tommy Kirk

Dan Raley, another reporter from the P-I met with Steve Butler, a former convict, recovering heroin addict, and acquaintance of Tommy Kirk. Butler said that Kirk, a guy named Texas Barton Gray and one other man had been hired by black construction contractor Henry Roney to kill Pratt. Supposedly, the contractor was angry at Pratt's efforts to integrate blacks into the workforce. Allegedly, Kirk fired the gun, Gray accompanied him, and the other man drove the getaway car. In May of 1969, Gray shot and killed Tommy in his car, at the corner of Boylston and Republican on Capitol Hill after an argument over a drug debt. Gray died in prison of a heart attack in 1991.

Boylston and Republican

Mike Jordan, the man Butler named as the driver said in an interview with the P-I that he had heard Kirk was Pratt's killer and understood how he could have been implicated in the crime. "I had a Buick GSX; it was yellow and black. That kind of car was seen in the neighborhood when this happened." He said that police had examined his car, but apparently found nothing. He died in 2006. Kirk's name had also surfaced in the investigation in 1974, when a man told detectives that on the night Pratt was murdered, Kirk showed up at his house with a shotgun and admitted to killing Pratt. The man, who passed a polygraph test, said that the gun was hidden in a Queen Anne storage locker. When cops searched the locker, no gun was found. Considering most of the players are all dead now, Edwin Pratt's murder will probably never be solved. Most people involved with the case feel Tommy Kirk was the killer. If so, karma got him that day up on Capitol Hill. RIP Ed.

Here is the house today

The Bus Tunnel Beating

2012-04-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

On January 28, 2010 a group of 10 teenagers began to argue with 15-year-old Aiesha Baker inside the downtown Nordstrom at 500 Pine Street in Westlake Plaza. They even threatened to kill her.

Nordstrom on Right, Mall on Left

They were asked to leave by security officers and they all left through the west entrance onto 5th Avenue. Aiesha went across the street to Westlake Mall and took the elevator down to the bus tunnel. The group followed her. Aiesha sensed trouble so she made a point to stand next to three security guards, thinking they would protect her. Well, they didn't. A 15-year-old girl pushed Aiesha to the ground and began kicking her in the head and body.

Aiesha getting kicked in the tunnel

She was then picked up and thrown into the bus lanes. The security officers called the police and watched the girl get pummeled. Aiesha's purse, ipod, and back pack were all stolen. According to a news release from the King County Executive Office, the transit tunnel security officers who witnessed the assault didn't help the girl because they're unarmed employees of Olympic Security Services who are trained to avoid confrontations or fights and instead call 911. (Seems to me like they're a waste of money then. Anybody down there with a cell phone can call 911) The main attacker was arrested February 5th and was charged with second-degree assault and first-degree robbery. Three more suspects were arrested on February 6th-Latroy D. Hayman 20, Domanique L. Whitaker 18, and Tyrone J. Watson, also 18. They were all charged with first-degree robbery. The city was of course in an uproar over a poor, innocent girl being attacked while grown men just stood by. Aiesha even gained national attention when she went crying to Good Morning America with her story.

Well.....there's more to the story than she told. A lot more. Some say it was karma intervening. On May 23, 2009 Tamie Cox, 50 was walking home from a pub on Highway 99 up in Edmonds when two "nicely dressed and polite girls" stopped and asked her for the time. When Tamie pulled out her cellphone to check, the girls jumped her. One put her in a head lock and yanked at her hair while the second girl punched her in the face and chest and grabbed her purse. After the attackers ran away, Tamie chased after them. Once they ran into a dark alley, she decided not to press her luck. She ran back out to the highway and flagged down a police officer. Somebody else had already called the cops and the two suspects were in the back of another squad car. You guessed it, one of those girls was Aiesha Baker. On top of that, Aiesha was already on probation for attempted second-degree robbery and assault for attacking a security guard at Saar's Market Place in Rainier Beach (Seattle's answer to South central) on Jan. 26, 2009. Aiesha punched the guard in the head after he stopped her friend for shoplifting an energy drink and a bag of chips.

Saar's Market in Rainier Beach

In exchange for her guilty plea in the Edmonds attack, Aiesha was ordered to serve four months of probation and a year of community service, attend counseling, have a nightly curfew and refrain from using drugs and alcohol or possessing weapons. (So really, she wasn't punished at all) Aiesha's adult attackers in the tunnel; Hayman, Watson, and Whitaker, were all sentenced to six months in jail. The 15-year-old girl was sentenced to 36 weeks in Juvenile Detention. I'd love to tell you this is the end of the story but on December 23, 2010 Aiesha was attacked again. According to court documents, around 9:30pm Aiesha and a friend were waiting at a bus stop near the Westlake Plaza Macy's at 3rd and Pine when they were approached by Alleicia Carson, 20 and two teen girls. One of those girls, then 16, was Aiesha's primary attacker in the bus tunnel. The other juvenile girl was identified as the sister of one of the men convicted of the tunnel beating.

Bus Stop with Macy's on Left

According to witnesses, Alleicia saw Aiesha and asked the 16-year-old, "Isn't that the bitch you beat up in the tunnel?" The three surrounded Aiesha and her friend, spit on them, pulled their hair and called them "snitches." The group was still fighting when officers arrived. Alleicia, who had previously been charged with attempted theft in 2006, plead guilty and was given only a suspended sentence and probation. My advice to Aiesha, on top of the obvious, is to stay away from the plaza. She lives closer to SouthCenter Mall anyway.

The Bus Tunnel Today

A Shootout in Magnolia

2012-04-16T18:52:00.002-07:00

Sadly, this won’t be my last post about a murdered Seattle cop. On the morning of January 14, 1921, Seattle Police Sergeant Edward Herald and Officer Volney Stevens were dispatched from the Ballard Station at 22nd and Ballard Way (The building was demolished in 1967 but the original bell tower is in a park on the site) to investigate a report of some suspicious men at a lookout on Magnolia Hill. (The hill sits on Puget Sound)

Officer Stevens

The officers rolled up to a car containing four men near 32nd and West Galer St. Herald got out of his car to speak to the men. Creighton Dodge 21, and C.A. Brown 20, jumped out of the car and grabbed him. Stevens exited his police car and engaged the suspects in a gun battle.

Park on old City Building site

Ward Daniels 19, and Louis Madsen 18, exited the suspect’s car and joined the fight. Stevens was hit twice and fell to the ground. The suspect’s car wouldn’t start, so they took Herald hostage and stole his police car. Herald pleaded with the men to take them back to assist Stevens. in 1921, their quickest way off the hill was Dravus Street, a mile and a half north of their location. (Magnolia is a peninsula)

Lookout at 32nd and Galer

They dropped down Dravus but when they got to Elliott Avenue, they were met with an open Ballard Bridge. (Oh, the irony. That bridge is a pain in the ass.) They turned around and went back to the lookout and shoved Herald out of the car next to Stevens. The suspects were definitely painted into a corner. They headed back down the hill toward Dravus but decided to stop at the home of Anna Hundertruaeck at 2340 West Newton. They tried to convince her that they were sick and needed a place to stay. (Oh, OK, no problem) She slammed the door and called the police.

2340 West Newton

The suspects fled that location and made their way south, down to the beach at Smith Cove at the bottom of Magnolia. They stole a rowboat and intended to go downtown. Just as they were shoving off, officers arrived and ordered them to stop and return to shore. Nobody, not even these idiots would be dumb enough to jump into the bay in January. They were hauled in and booked for murder. Officer Stevens died that same day at the hospital.

Smith Cove on Elliott Bay

The four men were implicated in armed robberies in Burlington, Enumclaw, Marysville, Bellingham, and Arlington. Creighton Dodge, wounded in the gunfight by Officer Stevens, died on January 19th. He confessed to having fired the shot which killed Officer Stevens. In February 1921, Daniels, Brown, and Madsen (just babies) were all convicted of Stevens' murder and were sentenced to life in prison at the Big House in Walla Walla. RIP Officer Stevens.

A Murder at Green Lake

2012-04-11T15:38:00.002-07:00

Most people who jog or walk Green Lake Trail have no idea what happened on June 17, 1926, between Meridian Avenue and Orin Court. In the early hours of the morning, a carpenter who was walking to work noticed a pair of women's shoes on the bank. As he walked toward the shoes he was shocked to find a woman's naked, dead body. She was 22-year-old Sylvia Gaines.

From the moment her body was found, the Gaines murder case became one of the most sensational in Seattle's history. Sylvia, a graduate of Smith College in Massachusetts, happened to be the niece of William Gaines, the chair of the King County Board of Commissioners. After graduating, Sylvia came to Seattle to visit the father she barely knew. Her parents divorced in 1909 after Bob Gaines, leaving his wife and child behind in Boston, moved to Washington. Bob reported Sylvia missing on the 17th. After her body was found, he identified her at the morgue. When cops questioned him, he was drunk and made statements suggesting he knew who the murderer was. Also, several of Bob's neighbors and friends who saw him on the 16th, said he was “acting strange” after his daughter's disappearance. The press went wild. Anyone who had ever even seen Bob or Sylvia was paid for a story. What they turned up was very disturbing. According to several acquaintances, "unnatural relations" had evidently been going on for most of Sylvia's visit. She and her father hadn't seen each other since 1909, when she was five years old. Sylvia moved in with her father and his second wife, Elizabeth into a tiny one-bedroom house at 108 N 51st Street in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood. When Sylvia first arrived, she slept on the couch in the living room.

108 N. 51st Street

Eventually, she moved into the bedroom and her step-mother was banished to the couch. (Huh?) Neighbors heard the three arguing all the time and in November of 1925, Elizabeth tried to kill herself with a rifle. There were reports of Elizabeth and Sylvia screaming at each other in public. A Seattle patrolman rolled up on Bob and Sylvia late at night parked in his car at Woodland Park on the SW side of Green Lake. "I was just a step or two from the car when I heard a scramble inside,” Officer R.L. Davis said.

Former Wallingford Cop Shop

"I stepped to the left side and I saw a young lady in the left seat. She had her hand on the door. Bob Gaines was in the other seat." The officer asked Bob how old the girl was, and took them to the Wallingford Precinct at 4422 Densmore Ave. N. (It's now a health clinic) They were released when Bob showed that Sylvia was his daughter and convinced them he was doing nothing wrong. An employee of the Arctic Club Hotel at 700 3rd Avenue reported that he had seen Bob and Sylvia together in bed. All of the info the press digging up prompted Prosecutor Ewing Colvin to press charges against Bob Gaines for the murder of his daughter.

Arctic Club Hotel

The trial began on August 2, 1926. Colvin asked for the death penalty. Media and public attention was so intense that the judge ordered the jury sequestered at a Seattle hotel. (I believe it was The Gladstone Hotel at 415 Terrace Avenue just south of the court house. It's a parking lot now) Witnesses were called to testify about the events of the evening of June 16th. They reported seeing Bob at the lake shore around 9pm that evening, near where Sylvia's body was found. “He was bending down over someone or something.” Other witnesses said they'd seen Bob drive around the lake several times about the time of the murder. Sylvia was strangled and her head bashed with a blunt instrument. Authorities found a bloody rock near the murder site. Testimony established that she had been murdered in one spot and that her body had been dragged to another, several yards away. Bob testified that he and Sylvia had argued on the evening of the 16th. Sylvia was angry and left their house shortly after 8pm for a walk around the lake. Bob said he left at about 8:40pm in his car to look for her. He arrived at 9:30pm at the home of his friend and drinking buddy, Louis Stern who lived in a guest house behind 4217 2nd Ave NW. Stern's testimony was damning.

Guest House at 4217 2nd Ave

He said Bob came to his house to drink and all but confessed that he'd murdered his daughter. "Bob said, You know what I have always told you, that if anyone in my house told me when I should come and go and when I should drink and how much, I would kill em? Well, that's what happened." Colvin had established where, when, and how Sylvia had been killed, but he had to provide a motive. His theory was that Gaines and his daughter were having a sexual relationship. Bob knew Sylvia wanted to leave the home. She had even made plans to go stay with her uncle. Colvin said Bob killed Sylvia to keep her from leaving him or revealing the incestuous affair. In his closing statement, Colvin argued that Bob had been sexually involved with his daughter for some months, and that she was fed up and about to leave. On the evening of June 16, they argued and Sylvia left the house to get away from him. Bob went after her, found her walking along Green Lake and killed her. Probably while he was severely intoxicated. Then, to make it look like she'd also been raped, he tore her clothes, dragged her body away from the path and arranged her limbs in a manner to suggest a sexual attack. Colvin reminded the jury that Bob pretty much confessed to the murder at Louis Stern's house. The jury deliberated a little over three hours and found Bob Gaines guilty. A Times reporter described Bob as “icy calm” when the sentence was read, though his brother crumpled onto the press table and sobbed. During sentencing, Elizabeth, seated next to Bob, stayed calm and squeezed her husband’s hand. He was sentenced to die. He appealed his case but was unsuccessful. He was the 25th person executed in Washington on August 31, 1928, in Walla Walla.

Bob Gaines on Death Row

He was buried with full military honors at Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park in North Seattle. (Veterans who commit heinous crimes are no longer given military burials thanks to Tim McVeigh) Sylvia was cremated and Butterworth Mortuary sent her ashes to her mother in South Lynnfield, Massachusetts. The area where Sylvia's body was found is now called Gaines Point. 30 Cottonwood trees were planted in her honor. By 1999 the trees had grown too big and branches kept falling off.

Gaines Point Green Lake

They were uprooted and replaced with Poplar's. I think there should be a plaque in the area but there isn't. People sitting on the bench or feeding the ducks have no idea that the area is even called Gaines Point. It's kind of a shame. RIP Sylvia.

The Silencing of The Tuba Man

2012-04-07T15:59:00.000-07:00

This story breaks my heart. “The Tuba Man” Ed McMichael used to come into the bank I worked at in Ballard. He was the nicest guy and was always in a good mood. At first glance, a lot of people thought he was homeless or even a little crazy. He was neither. He just wore goofy hats and had a scruffy beard.

He was definitely unique. He loved Seattle and he loved to entertain. He also had credentials. In 1973 he joined the band at North Seattle Community College. He went on to perform with the Seattle Youth Symphony, the Cascade Symphony of Edmonds, and for a decade, he was the principal tubist with the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra. A friend of his suggested he take his talents to the streets. His first performance was at the Kingdome on December 23, 1989. It was Steve Largent's farewell game. People waiting in line started putting money in his tuba case and a career was born. I can't remember a concert or a game where he wasn't there. He was like an honorary greeter. He'd sit outside the Key Arena and belt out the tunes of the concert that was happening that night. I swear he knew EVERY song ever written. (You haven't lived until you've heard Black Sabbath on the tuba.) He had a playlist for every event. A crowd favorite outside Mariner games was “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar. If the Seahawks lost, we’d all walk back to our cars listening to “Chariots of Fire.” Rain or shine, he subjected himself to the elements because he knew how much everyone enjoyed it. Unfortunately, on October 25, 2008, The Tuba Man was silenced. Five loser thug teenagers attacked Ed at a bus top at 5th and Mercer in front of Channel 9. They smashed his head against the pavement and robbed him of his wallet and ring. A cop happened to drive up to the scene as it was happening.

Bus Stop at 5th and Mercer

Two 15 year-old's were arrested on the spot and the stolen ring was recovered. Police began searching for the three who fled while Ed was transported to Harborview Medical Center. For one of the teens, Billy Chambers, it was his second crime of the night. He had already robbed a man at gunpoint. As for Ed, he was released a few hours after the attack and returned to his apartment at 2721 4th Avenue. He stayed in bed for a week.

Ed's Apartment Building

His brother arrived on the morning of November 3rd to take him to a doctor’s appointment. Sadly, he found Ed deceased in his bed, due to his head injury. On Wednesday, November 12, 2008, a memorial was held at the Qwest Event Center and 1,500 people attended. Many of them wore silly hats in Ed’s honor. It was a tough loss for Seattle. Walking into events now just isn’t the same. I’m bummed for the people who’ll never get to experience him.

Inside The Memorial

Only three of the five teens would be charged with manslaughter. There were several witnesses at the bus stop but they refused to testify at the trial. Billy, along with Kenneth Kelly and Ja'Mari Jones were all tried as juveniles. They each received only 36 to 72 weeks in juvenile detention and since they’ve been out, two of them have done nothing but continue to wreak havoc on the city. In July of 2010, Billy Chambers and two others were arrested near 6th and Seneca after robbing a pedestrian at gunpoint in front of Crowne Plaza.

Crowne Plaza 6th and Seneca

In February of 2011, Billy was arrested again for armed robbery. While he was being booked he bragged to the police officer that he was one of the teens who killed The Tuba Man. In June of 2011 at 23rd and Jackson, he rear-ended and side-swiped the car of a woman who'd reported him to police for allegedly stealing several items from her car earlier in the year. In October of 2011, Billy was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

23rd and Jackson

We can all expect to read about his latest crimes sometime around August of 2013. Kenneth Kelly was charged with robbery in 2010 and in February of 2012 he led SPD’s Gang Unit on a high speed chase and was found with a loaded weapon. As of April 7, 2012 he is still in jail on $100,000 bail. Not long after his death, someone noticed Ed had purchased a paver tile in front of The Children’s Museum as a contribution.

It read: THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ALL THE TIPS. THE MONEY ALWAYS PAID THE BILLS, REDUCED THE DEBTS AND FED THE TUBA MAN. EDWARD SCOTT McMICHAEL. Such a tragedy. RIP Tuba Man.

UPDATE: Jan. 2nd, 2013 Bellevue police say Ja’mari Jones was arrested Wednesday night by Lakewood police. The convicted “Tuba Man” killer who’s now accused of gunning a guy down at a nightclub, was taken into custody during a routine traffic stop at 8 p.m. in the 10800 block of Pacific Highway South in Lakewood. Police ran Jones’ license plate and discovered the car, a Toyota Corolla, had been reported stolen from Auburn. Police charged Jones with second-degree murder in connection with the shooting and killing of Deshawn Milliken on Christmas Eve morning. The incident left another man from Renton injured.Bellevue police were notified of the arrest and Jones was transported to the Bellevue Police Department jail. Jones was booked for Murder 2 and is being held on a $5 million bond. His girlfriend was also in the car during his arrest and she was booked for rendering criminal assistance.

The "Hollywood" Bank Robberies

2012-04-01T15:30:00.001-07:00

In 1977, 22 year-old Scott Scurlock was fired from a landscaping company in Hawaii for growing marijuana on their property. He decided to move to Olympia, and in 1978, enrolled at Evergreen State College. He studied organic chemistry and biochemistry and learned how to make drugs.

He eventually rented a farmhouse on 19 acres at 1506 Overhulse Road NW in Olympia, near the college. There was a large barn on the property, which was the perfect place for him to manufacture crystal meth. In the early 80's, he started building a fort between seven cedar trees on the back of the property, using materials he stole from nearby lumberyards. Within fifteen months, Scott and friends had constructed a 1,500 square-foot tree house. Although it never had a building permit, it was three stories high and stood 60 feet off the ground with an awesome view of Mount Rainier.

The Tree House

The house had 30 windows, electricity, plumbing, a full kitchen, a working bathroom, and a fireplace. When the farm was put up for sale in 1990, Scott used his drug profits to purchase the property. That year, his main meth distributor was murdered, and he realized just how violent the drug business was. He stopped manufacturing meth, but needed another source of easy money to support his extravagant lifestyle. He wasn't about to get a 9 to 5 job. The drug money he had would only last him another year, so he decided robbing a bank would be the perfect answer. He chose a close friend, Mark Biggins to be his backup inside the bank. The getaway driver would be Mark's girlfriend, Traci Marsh. The gang pulled off the robbery on Thursday, June 25, 1992 in Seattle. It was the Seafirst Bank (All Seafirst Banks are now Bank of America) at 4112 E Madison Street in the Madison Park neighborhood. (The wealthiest but most boring neighborhood in Seattle)

Madison Park Seafirst

Scott disguised himself with a false nose and heavy makeup and Mark wore a plastic Ronald Reagan mask. The robbery was a success, no one got hurt, and the trio returned to Olympia with $19,971. Mark was paranoid about what they'd done so he fled to Montana with his girlfriend. Scott thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of the heist, and decided to make robbing banks his new profession. On Friday, August 14, 1992, he went by himself to the same Seafirst Bank in Madison Park and stole $8,124. Over the next three months, Scott robbed four more banks in Seattle, then stopped. His last heist of 1992 was on Thursday, November 19th at the Hawthorn Hills Seafirst at 4020 NE 55th Street, which netted $252,000. (it's now Hawthorn Hills Vet) By now, the police and FBI were familiar with Scott's disguises and style from watching surveillance camera footage.

Former Hawthorn Hills Seafirst

They dubbed him “Hollywood.” By the end of 1993, Scott had spent almost all of the $322,870 he had stolen in 1992. He decided to get back into the game and enlisted a childhood friend, Steve Meyers to help him. He chose the Hawthorn Hills Seafirst again. Scott and Steve watched the bank for several days, then on Wednesday, November 24, 1993, the day before Thanksgiving, they made their move. Scott went inside while Steve stayed in his vehicle with a portable two-way radio, monitoring police frequencies on a scanner. The robbery went off without a hitch, but this time they only got $98,571. Scott buried all the money on his property, except for $5,000 which he gave to Steve for his participation. (How generous) The duo robbed five banks in 1994, three in Seattle and two in Portland, stealing a total of $263,599. In January 1995, they hit two banks. Scott stole $11,924 on January 18th from the Wallingford branch of First Interstate Bank (all FI's are now Wells Fargo) at 1701 N. 45th St.

Wallingford First Interstate

A dye pack exploded, coloring the money red, and he had to abandon it. Unfazed, he went back to the Madison Park Seafirst on January 27th. (I guaranty this is the most excitement that neighborhood has ever seen) He got away with $252,466. The money only lasted a year. The Puget Sound Violent Crimes Task Force made catching Hollywood their top priority. Aside from the money, they were worried he would kill someone. They calculated that he was spending $20,000 a month, and determined approximately when he would need more cash. The task force camped outside Hollywood’s favorite banks in the neighborhood's where he'd made the biggest scores. For the next robbery, Scott enlisted the help of both Steve Meyers, who would be the outside lookout, and Mark Biggins, who had moved back to Puget Sound. Mark would assist inside the bank with crowd control. On January 25, 1996, they robbed the Wedgwood branch of First Interstate at 8517 35th Avenue NE and made off with $141,405.

Wedgwood First Interstate

At the end of May, they hit the Madison Park branch of First Interstate at 4009 E Madison Street for $114,978. You'd think that was enough to satisfy Scott's lust for adventure, but no. He decided to rob three banks in one day and go out with one last big score. (isn't that always the plan?) He targeted Seafirst branches in the Lake City, Green Lake, and University District neighborhoods.

Madison Park First Interstate

He changed his mind at the last minute and decided to rob only the Lake City branch. On Wednesday, November 27, 1996, Scott and Mark entered the Seafirst Bank at 2800 NE 125th Street, twenty minutes before closing time. Steve was in the getaway car. The minute they walked through the door, one of the tellers saw what was about to happen and hit the silent-alarm button.

Lake City Seafirst

The robbers forced everyone to lie down on the floor, and while Mark held them at gun point, Scott entered the vault with the head teller and stuffed bricks of money into a duffel bag. The two were out of the bank in four minutes and calmly walked down the street. A customer followed them to a blue Dodge Caravan and called 911. Although the task force had dozens of police officers on alert for a robbery, Lake City had never been hit, and all the cars were patrolling in the wrong neighborhoods. Due to severe weather and holiday traffic, the bank robbers were slow to leave the area. Even though they switched from the getaway car to a white Chevy Astro Van, it wasn’t long before three task-force members, acting primarily on instinct, began tailing them. While Scott drove south, Steve and Mark rummaged through the money, looking for tracking devices. Noticing the three unmarked cars behind him, Scott didn’t wait to be pulled over. He stopped the van on 24th Avenue NE in the Ravenna neighborhood. He jumped out with a 12-gauge shotgun and pointed it at the officers, but the gun jammed. The officers fired several shots at the van, but Scott managed to speed away. After a few more blocks, the van stopped and Steve exited the side door with a shotgun and opened fire. The officers returned fire but once again the van sped away. Two blocks later, someone inside the van broke out the right rear window and began firing an assault rifle. Scott shut off the headlights, bailed out of the van as it was still moving and fled on foot. The van rolled through a front yard and struck a house at NE 77th Street and NE 20th Ave.

House hit at NE 77th and 20th

Inside the van, the officers found Mark and Steve, who had both been seriously wounded. They also found two 12-gauge shotguns, a U.S. military .308 caliber M-14 semiautomatic rifle, two 9mm semiautomatic pistols, three Motorola two-way radios, a police scanner, and 1.8 million in cash. Medic One transported both suspects to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. During questioning, Steve and Mark sang like a canaries. Meanwhile, SPD established a six-block perimeter around the area where Hollywood escaped and was thought to be hiding. Police officers went door-to-door trying to determine if anyone was being held hostage or had seen anything unusual. K-9 units began searching for the fugitive, who was known to be armed with a 9-mm pistol. They searched all night in the pouring rain without success. At 2:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1996, Rob and Ron Walker were visiting their mother, Wilma for dinner. Her house at 7518 20th Avenue NE, wasn't even a block from where the van had crashed. Ron had a 10-foot camper stored in Wilma’s back yard, about 40 feet from the house.

7518 29th Ave NE

The two brothers heard about the hunt for the fugitive and the $50,000 reward and decided to scout around the property. The Police had visited Wilma and searched her back yard, but not the camper. She asked the boys to check it out. The camper door was still secured on the outside with a cable and padlock, but there was a small covered hatch at the front of the camper through which a lean person could gain access.

Back of house where camper was

The Walker brothers became suspicious when they noticed the camper door had been locked from the inside and the curtains drawn. Rob attempted to push open the hatch door but it wouldn’t budge. Ron fetched a stepladder, peered through a small window, and saw someone sleeping inside. Rob watched the camper while Ron called 911. Within minutes, several police cars arrived and officers surrounded the camper. They tried to get a response from the person inside, but were unsuccessful. Then, cops pried a louvered window open and emptied two cans of pepper spray inside. Nobody came out of the camper. When they attempted to unlock the door, they heard a single gunshot and dove for cover. Officers responded by firing over 30 rounds at the camper. After all this, cops cordoned off a five-block area, and began evacuating nearby homes. An armored vehicle was brought in and positioned near the camper in preparation for an assault. Hostage negotiators attempted repeatedly to contact the person inside. At 6pm, tear-gas was fired into the camper but still, there was no response. After 20 minutes, more tear-gas was fired. At 7:40, officers in gas masks approached the camper, and opened the door. They found a man lying dead on the floor in the kitchenette, with a 9-mm pistol and one empty shell casing next to his body. He had killed himself. He'd also suffered six more gunshot wounds from the officer's guns, but they were all postmortem. Based on information from Steve Meyers, the FBI served a search warrant on Scott's houses and property in Olympia. They discovered a cache of weapons, which included handguns, a silencer, several rifles, two sawed-off shotguns, and a large amount of ammunition. They also seized over $20,000 in cash, passports, airline tickets, police scanners, and portable two-way radios. Hidden under the floor in the barn, they found a secret room where Scott applied his makeup, stored his disguises, and counted the loot. On Thursday, February 27, 1997 Steve Meyers, 47 and Mark Biggins, 43, plead guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy, one count of armed bank robbery, two counts of assault on a federal officer, and one count of use of a firearm in commission of a felony. On Thursday, May 15th, both defendants were sentences to 21 years and three months in prison, plus an additional five years of supervised release. Steve Meyers is an inmate at the Forest City Federal Correctional Institution in Forest City, Arkansas. His release date is July 1, 2015. Mark Biggins is an inmate at the Englewood Federal Correctional Institution in Littleton, Colorado. His release date is June 3, 2015. The number of robberies and the amounts stolen, almost 2.3 million, make Scott Scurlock one of the most prolific bank robbers in the history of the United States.

The Mahoney Trunk Murder

2012-03-28T22:48:00.001-07:00

This is one crazy story. Jim Mahoney was a former railroad worker from Milwaukee. In May of 1918 he was convicted of drugging and robbing a man in Spokane and sentenced to five to eight years in prison. Lucky for him, his mother Nora had been neighbors with then Washington Governor, Louis Hart and was able to finagle an early release. On December 23, 1920, Jim walked out of the pen and moved to Seattle to live with family.

He was 36 years old. In 1920, Kate Mooers was 68. Her divorce from a doctor left her rich. She owned a small hotel in Belltown called the New Baker House at 1st and Bell. (It's now the Oregon Apartments.) She was also part-owner of The Sophia Apartments at 409 Denny Way, where she lived. (The building is gone and Fisher Plaza is there now. Several radio and TV stations broadcast from there.) She wore diamond jewelry and drove a big, expensive car. She was cranky, short, balding, and estimated to be worth at least $200,000. (2.3 million today) She was also known for being a serious tightwad. The New Baker House happened to be managed by Nora Mahoney and her daughter, Dolores Johnson. They maintained the rooms and collected the rents.

Former New Baker House today

During a visit to the hotel, Kate Mooers was introduced to Nora's son, Jim. It would prove to be an ill-fated day. Following a short courtship, they were married in a civil ceremony on February 10, 1921, using a wedding ring borrowed from Dolores. The couple moved into Kate's apartment. Two months later, the Mahoney's started making plans for a belated honeymoon. They decided to take a month-long trip east, to Saint Paul and other cities. On Friday, April 15,1921, Kate went to her safe deposit box and withdrew $1,600. She then went to the Dexter-Horton Bank on 3rd and Cherry and purchased $460 worth of American Express Travelers Checks.

Dexter Horton building today

She told neighbors and friends that she and her husband were leaving on their honeymoon late Saturday night. The next day, the Mahoneys left their apartment and headed for a train at King Street Station at 303 S. Jackson St. Eleven days later, Jim Mahoney returned to Seattle alone. He explained to Kate's neighbors and friends that she had stayed back East and was planning a trip to Cuba with friends.

Train Station

He said he'd returned to take care of the hotel and would meet Kate later in New York City. Jim then filed a forged power-of-attorney with the King County Auditor, which gave him access to Kate's property. He emptied her safe deposit box, collected rents, and made several attempts to convert her properties into cash. He began living the high life, purchasing new clothes and jewelry. He also became the life of the party at local night clubs. All on Kate's dime. Needless to say, Kate's friends and family became concerned when she failed to return to Seattle, and Jim declined to say where she was. They'd received strange letters from Saint Paul bearing Kate's name but not in her handwriting. Jim always had a variety of excuses as to why she was still gone. Kate's nieces, Kate Stewart and Carrie Hewitt, suspected foul play. On May 3, 1921, Kate Stewart met with Seattle Police detectives and showed them the forged letters against samples of Kate's handwriting. She told them Jim had presented a typed letter to Perkins & Company Bank giving him authority to use Kate's safe deposit box. The letter was written on stationery from the St. Francis Hotel in Saint Paul and was dated April 23, 1921. It was signed with the name Mrs. Kate E. Mahoney. Kate Stewart didn't know how much cash and jewelry Jim had stolen but figured it was well over $30,000. The detectives opened an investigation. They discovered that on the evening of April 16th, Seattle Transfer Company was dispatched to 409 Denny Way to move a heavy trunk. The driver arrived at The Sophia at 10pm and picked up a steamer trunk wrapped in hemp rope and drove it to a houseboat at 1415 East Northlake Ave. (Now NE Boat St.) on Portage Bay. Jim helped him load the trunk into a white skiff. He told the driver he was taking the trunk to his houseboat, and rowed away into the darkness. The detectives interviewed the owner of 1415 E Northlake Ave. and learned that Jim had inquires about renting the vacant half of her houseboat. He said he wanted to do some fishing and asked where the deepest part of the lake was.

Houseboat

She also saw him roaming around the area on Thursday, April 14th. She said she'd been gone on Friday and when she came home Saturday afternoon, she'd found a note from Jim pinned to her door which said, "Have missed you twice. Hope the boat will be where I left it." A white skiff that said A. E. Howard & Son's Boat Builders was tied to a corner of the houseboat. Howard & Son's was only a few yards east of the houseboat at 1435 East Northlake Ave. (Now Jensen Motor Boats on NE Boat St.) Jim had rented the skiff for $4 a week.

Former Howard and Son's site

He never returned it but Al Howard retrieved it a week later near the houseboat, sunk in shallow water. The detectives also learned that on Friday, April 15th, Jim Mahoney and a woman claiming to be Kate Mooers-Mahoney, visited a notary public and requested a power-of-attorney authorizing Jim to administer her estate. The notary knew Kate Mooers, said it wasn't her and refused to notarize the document.

Former Buchman Hardware Site

A clerk at Buchman Hardware and Paint located at 408 Cedar, just around the corner from the Sophia Apartments, told detectives that on Saturday, April 16th, Jim Mahoney purchased 30 feet of hemp rope and 5 pounds of quicklime, which he charged to Kate's account.

Buchman's was in bldg in foreground, The Sophia was across the street.

This was the same day Kate was telling everyone that she and Jim were leaving for Saint Paul that evening. Jim had been under surveillance for three weeks and it looked like he was preparing to leave town. On Sunday, May 22nd, Jim was picked up for questioning in front of his apartment. He had $25,000 worth of Kate's jewelry in his pockets. The next morning his attorney, Lee Johnston, filed a complaint that Mahoney was being held without charges and demanded his immediate release.

Diving diagram

Meanwhile, detectives were driving Mahoney around the city, asking witnesses to identify him. He was released when they returned to the jail but was arrested again for the forgery to Perkins Bank. Prosecutor's were convinced that Jim had murdered his wife, but needed to find her body. Divers began searching the bottom of the northeast end of Lake Union in Portage Bay. Detectives told them they were looking for a steamer trunk. On Monday, August 8th, the divers found an object floating near the bottom about 200 yards east of the University Bridge in Portage Bay.

Trunk was found in center of picture

It had been anchored to a large chunk of cement with a length of hemp rope. Although quicklime had eaten away the face of the corpse, it was positively identified as Kate Mooers-Mahoney. The coroner said she'd been poisoned with morphine, stuffed into the trunk while still alive, and had the left side of her skull crushed by blows from a heavy object. Jim Mahoney was charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday, August 10, 1921. He entered a plea of not guilty. His trial began on September 22nd. More than 60 witnesses took the stand.

Trunk is pulled up

Several of them identified Kate Mahoney's body and her personal effects found in the steamer trunk, while others documented Jim's movements in Seattle and Saint Paul. The main witnesses for the prosecution were Alvin Jorgenson, the Seattle Transfer Company driver who identified Jim Mahoney and the steamer trunk, and criminologist Luke May, the handwriting expert who declared Kate Mahoney's letters and signatures to be forgeries. The prosecution rested it's case on September 28, 1921. Defense attorney Lee Johnston claimed Jim had an alibi.

Mahoney outside court

He said the body found in the trunk wasn't Kate Mahoney and that she was alive after April 16th. He subpoenaed 27 witnesses, including Jim's mother, Nora and his sister, Dolores. As expected, they all testified they had seen Kate after April 16th. Jim wisely chose not to testify in his own defense. A jury of eight men and four women found him guilty of first-degree murder and they voted to impose the death penalty. He was sentenced to hang on January 6, 1922. After several rejected appeals over an eleven month period, Jim Mahoney was hanged in Walla Walla at the Washington State Penitentiary on December 1, 1922. After funeral services at Saint Patrick's on December 11h, he was buried in an unmarked grave at the Mountain View Cemetery in Walla Walla. Kate Mooers-Mahoney is buried in Seattle. RIP