George Vanderveer was one of Washington's most controversial trial lawyers, whose unofficial title "counsel for the damned" resulted from his fierce legal representation of Seattle's criminal underworld. He was a hot-tempered ex-boxer known for his brash and combative personality, and never one to back away from a fight – in the courtroom or on the streets. Vanderveer had public clashes with some of Seattle's most powerful figures and frequently turned down lucrative offers from corporate law firms in favor of defending clients ranging from Prohibition-era bootleggers to labor radicals. His legal representation of society's malcontents placed him in the center of several high-profile court cases that would help shape the history of the Pacific Northwest during the early twentieth century.
Early Life and Career
George Francis Vanderveer was born in Grinnell, Iowa, on August 2, 1875, to David and Mary Vanderveer. In 1892, after graduating from high school, Vanderveer enrolled at the newly-opened Stanford University and was a member of the school's boxing and wrestling teams. Upon completing his undergraduate studies, he attended law school at Columbia University, then began working as a law clerk for a large firm in New York City. He soon decided to relocate to Seattle, which had become a boom town following the Klondike Gold Rush and seemed like a good place to establish his legal career.
Following his move to Seattle, in 1901 Vanderveer began working for the King County prosecuting attorney's office. It was there that he began honing the combative courtroom skills that he would become known for. He was assigned misdemeanor cases as a junior attorney, but began handling felony cases after being promoted to deputy prosecutor in 1904. During these early years he continued to pursue his passion for boxing and fought in a few local exhibition matches as a middleweight.
Many of the cases that Vanderveer worked on during this time involved crimes that took place in the pool halls, saloons, and brothels of the Skid Road district. In an effort to better understand the inner workings of Seattle's bustling vice trade, and hoping to give himself a competitive edge in the courtroom, Vanderveer began paying visits to the notorious neighborhood and was able to learn more about the city's well-established system of graft, payoffs, and protection policies. He sometimes found himself in dangerous situations that required the use of his boxing skills, but the insider knowledge he gleaned from these urban visits would prove beneficial to his career.
In 1906 Vanderveer met Ellinor Hausman (1887-1976) and they were married on May 22, 1907, at Seattle's St. Mark's Church. The following year he decided to run for the office of King County prosecuting attorney. His growing reputation as an ambitious attorney earned him the ringing endorsement of most local newspapers, with The Seattle Star declaring that "His record as a deputy prosecuting attorney has caused him to be admired by the good citizens and feared by the bad ones" ("Vanderveer Has Cinch").
The only newspaper to withhold an endorsement was The Seattle Times. This was due to a falling out that had developed between Vanderveer and the newspaper's owner and editor-in-chief, Alden J. Blethen (1845-1915), often referred to as "Colonel." At the center of their feud was Seattle's police chief at the time, Charles W. "Wappy" Wappenstein (1853-1931). During Wappy's time on the police force, he had won Blethen's support by providing the newspaperman with reliable and useful information, and the two men had become close friends. Vanderveer, meanwhile, had become quite outspoken about the citywide graft and had made several unfavorable comments about Wappenstein's ties to corruption. The Times was quick to defend the police chief against any such accusations and began publishing unflattering articles about Vanderveer's candidacy, including an editorial that proclaimed, "No honest man - whether he be editor, preacher or layman, can possibly endorse the conduct of Vanderveer" ("Brainerd Whitewashes Vanderveer Again").
Despite such strong opposition from the Times, Vanderveer handily won the 1908 election and took office as the new King County prosecuting attorney. He immediately began a campaign to rid the city of corruption, and publicly protested against the appointment of Wappenstein as the head of the special police force for the city's upcoming Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. This added further fuel to Vanderveer's already volatile relationship with Blethen, with Vanderveer once famously shouting at the newspaper owner, "You frizzle-headed old bastard! I'll still be here when you're dead and gone, and I'll go out and puke on your grave" (Counsel for the Damned)
Counsel for the Damned
Vanderveer decided not to run for re-election in the 1910 race. Instead, he and his longtime associate Bud Cummings opened their own law firm, Vanderveer and Cummings, in the Hoge Building in downtown Seattle. His new private practice specialized in criminal defense, and he began representing the same types of people that he had previously prosecuted. For many, this seemed irreconcilable with his former work, but Vanderveer explained that the true criminals are often in prestigious positions of power, and the people he now defended represented the oppressed underclass. True to his scrappy reputation, he approached his new caseload with the same pugnacious intensity seen in his previous court battles.
In one of his first milestone cases, Vanderveer represented "King of the Seattle Underworld" Felix Crane (1874-1945), a Black saloon owner who had been acting as a financial intermediary between prostitution rings and prominent city officials. Women working in Seattle's disreputable houses who were looking for immunity from arrest would give protection money to Crane, who would then deliver the payoffs to the upper echelons of city government. Essentially, he was a middleman within the city's established system of graft during the Hiram Gill (1866-1919) administration. Crane was arrested in 1915, and when he refused to provide names to prosecutors, he was indicted on corruption charges.
Despite Vanderveer's efforts, Crane was found guilty of extortion and "accepting the earnings of unfortunate women," for which he received a sentence of three years at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary. After the sentencing, a visibly-disappointed Vandeveer told reporters, "The evidence to which he was convicted would never have convicted a white man" ("Political Pot Pie").
With the start of statewide liquor prohibition on January 1, 1916, Vanderveer began representing those who were suddenly in need of a good defense attorney. This included a gang of bootlegging siblings known as the Billinglsey brothers who operated the Stewart Street Pharmacy in downtown Seattle. One of the provisions of Washington's new dry law was that medicinal whiskey could be purchased with a valid prescription written by an authorized physician. For the right price, though, many pharmacies were willing to overlook any of the required medical paperwork, including the pharmacy owned by Logan (1882-1963), Sherman (1896-1966), and Fred (1892-1959) Billingsley. On February 8, 1916, after barely a month under the new state law, the Billingsleys were arrested for selling illegal booze out of their pharmacy, prompting them to seek out Vanderveer's services.
Soon other legal problems began mounting for the infamous brothers, including further arrests due to dry-law violations. Vanderveer was able to use his legal savvy to keep the Billingsleys out of jail and help grow their business. He remained their attorney even during their subsequent skirmishes with a rival bootlegging gang led by Jack "Pirate" Margett (1890-1954). When things became openly hostile between the two groups, Vanderveer armed himself with a revolver, telling his colleagues, "If any of the Margett gang comes gunning for me they're going to collect an awful lot of lead" (Counsel for the Damned).
On July 25, 1916, a shoot-out at a liquor warehouse owned by the Billingsleys left two men dead, including a Seattle police officer. The public outcry over the incident brought an aggressive police crackdown on bootlegging, spelling the end of the Billingsleys' time in Seattle.
The Wobblies
Around the same time that Washington's prohibition began, things began heating up with various labor groups, particularly the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. Starting in 1910, the Pacific Northwest had become a hotbed of activism for the IWW, which advocated the formation of one big union to include loggers, millworkers, shingle weavers, and teamsters. In Seattle, the Skid Road district had become the unofficial headquarters for the IWW, complete with its own union hall.
Colonel Blethen of The Seattle Times was staunchly anti-union and regularly crusaded in his newspaper against the Wobblies, portraying the group as wild-eyed anarchists bent on upending the entire social order of America. Other national newspapers printed similar articles, and the onslaught of negative press made most Americans believe the Wobblies to be a radical group that was intent on overthrowing the government. As a result, the Seattle IWW chapter frequently found itself under attack, including a fight that broke out between the Wobblies and U.S. Navy sailors during the city's Potlatch Days Celebration on July 18, 1913. The melee escalated into a full-blown riot, resulting in the destruction of the IWW hall and some nearby businesses.
Meanwhile, up in Everett – where workers faced long hours and dangerous working conditions in the town's lumber and shingle mills – tensions had been steadily mounting between organized labor and business leaders. The IWW had been actively campaigning there, leading to hostilities between the Wobblies and local authorities who were firmly on the side of business. In one of the more violent skirmishes, a group of Wobblies holding a rally in Everett to show support for striking shingle workers was brutally beaten and run out of town by anti-IWW vigilantes. Several days later the Wobblies decided to hold a protest rally in response, and more than 300 IWW members boarded two steamships to take them from Seattle to Everett. Soon after their departure, false reports began spreading in Everett that a group of armed anarchists was on its way to cause mayhem and burn everything down.
When the two steamers arrived at the Everett City Dock on November 5, 1916, over 200 armed deputies, under the authority of the Snohomish County sheriff, were waiting for them. The exact details of what happened next remain murky. Heated words were exchanged between the Wobblies on the ships and the deputies on land, and at some point a single shot was fired by an unknown person, which triggered a fierce gun battle. When the shooting finally stopped, two deputies and twelve Wobblies lay dead, with several injuries sustained on both sides.
The two ships, having not yet landed when the gun battle broke out, immediately turned around and headed back to Seattle. Upon their arrival, all the Wobblies onboard were placed under arrest, transported to the Snohomish County jail in Everett, and charged with the murder of the two deputies. By this time, the reputation of the IWW had become so tarnished that they had a difficult time finding a lawyer willing to take their case. Vanderveer had always been somewhat sympathetic to the plight of the Wobblies and so agreed to represent them, bringing even more media attention to an already high-profile news story.
Vanderveer successfully petitioned to have the trial moved to Seattle on the grounds that it would be impossible to get a fair jury in Everett. Meanwhile, Blethen used his paper to stir up anti-IWW sentiment and shape public opinion on the trial, convincing many that the Wobblies were guilty as charged. Undeterred by public perception that he was facing an unwinnable case, Vanderveer had come prepared with a strategy that played to the basic facts. Chief among these was the lack of specific evidence about which guns fired fatal bullets and whose hands they were in at the time.
The trial began on March 5, 1917, and Thomas H. Tracy, as leader of the IWW, was the main defendant. The ensuing two-month proceeding showcased Vanderveer's strength as a trial lawyer as he exposed errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the prosecution's case through a series of grueling cross-examinations. He convincingly illustrated how Everett mill owners had unlawfully used their wealth and political influence to crush the efforts of organized labor. During his closing arguments, Vanderveer reminded the jury:
"This is a case of the mill owners of Everett against labor. This is an attempt to drive and keep labor out of Everett … This struggle is going on because it is founded upon a principle so big, so wholesome, and so righteous that it must live until this country will have reached industrial democracy" ("Not Guilty Is Verdict").
Against all odds, Vanderveer's legal strategies worked and Tracy was acquitted on May 5, 1917. Shortly after, all charges were dropped against the remaining defendants. The case has since been celebrated as one of the most notable victories of Vanderveer's career and a high-water mark for IWW activity in the Pacific Northwest.
During and after World War I, Vanderveer would emerge as a champion of the Wobblies and would be directly involved in several of their court cases. This included a famous trial in Chicago in which more than 150 IWW members were charged with violation of the Espionage Act for their vocal opposition to World War I. When their trial began on April 1, 1918, the prosecution team called numerous witnesses to testify about various acts of sabotage and property destruction reportedly committed by members of the IWW. Vanderveer was usually able to tear such testimony apart by forcing the witnesses to concede that they had not actually seen such crimes being committed. Despite his trademark tenacity, he was unable to get the judge to allow him to introduce certain key pieces of evidence, which proved to be fatal to his case. After closing arguments were presented, the jury deliberated for less than a day before finding all the defendants guilty.
The case represented the first major defeat in Vanderveer's career as a criminal-defense lawyer, and he found himself ostracized by Seattle's legal community. By this time anti-IWW sentiment had become so strong that Vanderveer had his membership revoked in several local clubs, and he also lost his office space in the Hoge Building. When no other downtown building would offer him business space, he was forced to set up a dingy office in the Collins Building in the Skid Road neighborhood, in close proximity to many of his former clients.
Despite the fact that his work with the Wobblies had greatly damaged his reputation and diminished his standing in the legal community, Vanderveer continued to represent the IWW in court. In 1919 he defended 27 Wobblies who had been charged with "criminal anarchy" after participating in the Seattle General Strike of 1919. He argued that the charges were "inherently un-American and inherently un-constitutional" ("Criminal Anarchy Charges"), and all the men were acquitted. That same year, he paid a visit to Butte, Montana, on behalf of striking mine workers. However, he was forced to flee when a warrant was issued for his arrest following a scuffle in which he pulled out a revolver and threatened to beat up an employment agent in the lobby of a hotel.
On November 11, 1919, several members of the IWW reportedly opened fire on members of the American Legion who were marching in a parade in Centralia to observe the first anniversary of the signing of the armistice that had ended World War I. Warren O. Grimm, the Commander of the Centralia Post of the American Legion, was shot dead along with two other Legionnaires, and several other people were critically wounded. An enraged mob immediately formed and managed to capture and lynch one of the Wobblies. Twelve other Wobblies were captured, arrested, and charged with first-degree murder.
Once again, as their lead defense attorney, Vanderveer found himself in the middle of another nationally covered IWW news story. The driving narrative seemed to be that the Wobblies had simply fired upon an Armistice Day parade, without warning or provocation, maliciously mowing down young American men who had returned from the battlefields of the Great War.
The accused Wobblies maintained that they were merely defending themselves from an unruly mob. According to their version of events, the Wobblies had endured months of harassment from Centralia locals, including several violent assaults. On Armistice Day, a group of armed Legionnaires had stormed the IWW Hall, resulting in a tense confrontation in which several frightened IWW members, fearing for their lives, opened fire as a means of self-protection. The outcome of the trial hinged on whether or not the Wobblies were guilty of an unprovoked attack or had justifiably been defending themselves.
Vanderveer successfully petitioned for a change of venue due to the public prejudice that existed in Centralia, resulting in the trial being moved to nearby Montesano in Grays Harbor County. Despite Vanderveer's best efforts, seven of the defendants were ultimately found guilty of second-degree murder, an outcome that effectively spelled the end of the IWW in the Pacific Northwest. The group had suffered years of declining membership thanks to negative media attention, and the events in Centralia merely served as a nail in its coffin. Vanderveer's career suffered a similar fate due to his close connection with the group, and he became the target of frequent ridicule in the local press. It would be many years before he was able to rebuild his tarnished reputation to a level of respectability.
King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers
Following the trial in Centralia, Vanderveer's drinking increased, and friends became concerned after he started getting in frequent fistfights. He divorced his wife, Ellinor, in 1922, and moved in with his longtime mistress, Kitty Beck. They purchased a house together on Lake Burien and, with all the IWW work now behind him, he began working on personal-injury claims. By this time his philandering had become an ill-kept secret and was eventually discovered by Kitty herself. In 1924, he returned home after a day in court and found her dead body. She had hung herself and had written on the wall in lipstick, "Kitty Beck – sometimes known as Kitty Vanderveer." He soon sold the house and moved into the Butler Hotel.
On January 19, 1925, less than three months after Kitty's death, a federal grand jury in Seattle indicted Roy Olmstead and 90 other defendants for violations of the national Prohibition Act. Olmstead, a former Seattle police officer, had been operating the largest bootlegging operation in Washington and was now in desperate need of a good lawyer. By this time, Vanderveer's drinking problem was well known, but he was still recognized as an aggressive and able courtroom advocate, and a good number of defendants in the Olmstead case hired him to conduct their defense.
The trial began on January 19, 1926, and took place in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington before Judge Jeremiah Neterer (1862-1943). A big part of the prosecution's case against Olmstead was wiretap evidence that had been obtained without a court-issued warrant. Vanderveer's first objective was to get all the incriminating wiretapping records thrown out as inadmissible. He cited a 1909 Washington statute that made such evidence illegal, but was overruled by Judge Neterer, known for handing out stiff sentences to anyone convicted of violating Prohibition laws.
Vanderveer then switched legal strategies, employing his talents as a courtroom agitator who consistently straddled the line of contempt with his aggressive cross-examinations. William Whitney (1877-1940), the assistant director of the Seattle Prohibition Bureau who had been responsible for bringing down the Olmstead operation, was reportedly on the verge of a nervous breakdown as a result of Vanderveer's interrogation. The resulting legal battle between the two sides was the first trial to address the topic of wiretapping and became such a spectacle that law students from the University of Washington arrived daily to watch Vanderveer in action. Throughout the entire trial The Seattle Times, still harboring a grudge against Vanderveer, refused to print his name in any of its trial coverage.
Knowing that a guilty verdict was likely inevitable for Olmstead, Vanderveer spent the later part of the trial laying the groundwork for a reversal on appeal. During his closing arguments, he told the jury,
"The cause of public decency can never be advanced by raping the Constitution of the United States. I don't care any more about Roy Olmstead than you do. But his liberty has the same basis as yours. And if you steal his liberty on such evidence, then some day your liberty may be stolen the same way" ("Vanderveer Assails Attack").
The proceedings lasted 32 days, concluding on February 20, 1926, and would prove to be the biggest such liquor trial during the entire Prohibition era. Vanderveer was able to get charges dropped against most of the defendants, although not the ones against Olmstead, who was found guilty and sentenced to four years in McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. Vanderveer would later take the case through the appeals process, and the issue of whether warrantless wiretapping was a violation of the 4th Amendment would eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision in 1928, the court ruled that it was not a violation (a decision overturned in 1967). Despite Olmstead's conviction, many viewed it as a legal victory for Vanderveer, one that shaped future cases in which people's rights were in jeopardy before the courts.
Vanderveer's Last Chapter
Into the late 1920s, Vanderveer continued representing organized labor, including a group of Seattle high school teachers in a 1928 case, The American Federation of Teachers v. Sharples. He also began serving as the attorney for the Teamsters Union and was the personal lawyer for Dave Beck (1894-1993), who ran one of the local chapters for the Teamsters. Beck would gain notoriety in the late 1950s when he was prosecuted for embezzlement, labor racketeering, and income-tax evasion.
By the late 1930s, Vanderveer's investments in local real estate had made him quite wealthy. He co-owned the legendary music venue Trianon Ballroom and was the majority stockholder and vice president of minor-league baseball team, the Seattle Indians. In 1937 Vanderveer was directly involved in the sale of the team to Emil Sick (1894-1964), leading to the formation of the Seattle Rainiers.
In 1941, Vanderveer, a lifelong smoker, was admitted to Providence Hospital with a collapsed lung. He never fully recovered and died on October 22, 1942. Despite his illustrious legal career, he was often misunderstood in his efforts to help the helpless. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted in its obituary for him, "He never shrank from championing an unpopular cause" ("George F. Vanderveer"). His funeral was very well attended, and a justice of the Washington State Supreme Court delivered a eulogy that perhaps best summarized his life: "True to his oath, he never rejected, from any consideration personal to himself, the cause of the poor, the defenseless, and the oppressed" (Counsel for the Damned).
