On July 15, 1935, Puyallup Police Chief Franklin Harold Chadwick (1895-1935) and Patrolman Harry William Storem (1892-1935) attempt to stop a blue 1927 Buick sedan, believed to have been involved in the robbery of the Orting State Bank. Near Alderton the suspect vehicle, with the Puyallup Police cruiser in close pursuit, abruptly stops. The gunman leaps from the Buick and shoots both officers sitting in the patrol car before they can exit or draw their weapons, then speeds away. Five days after the robbery and murders, Roy Willard Jacobs (1901-1943) is arrested in Kelso as a possible suspect, but his girlfriend gives him an alibi and he is soon released. After an intensive, but fruitless, investigation, the killer's trail grows cold and the murders remain unsolved for seven years. In June 1942, a team of investigators revisit the case and accumulate enough evidence to charge Jacobs with the crimes. In October 1942, Jacobs will be convicted of the first-degree murder of Chief Frank Chadwick in Pierce County Superior Court and sentenced to death. After the appeal process has run its course, Jacobs will be hanged at the Washington State Penitentiary on April 6, 1943.
Robbing and Running
Shortly before noon on Monday, July 15, 1935, a lone, unmasked, robber entered the Orting State Bank, 120 E Washington Avenue, in Orting, pointed a semiautomatic pistol at cashier Leslie A. Stone, who was alone in the teller’s cage, and demanded all the currency in his cash drawer. Stone complied, giving him three bundles of bills, one real, containing $500, and the others fake, with $5 bills on the top and bottom. Grabbing the money, the bandit backed out of the door, climbed into a blue, older-model Buick sedan with black fenders parked beside the bank and headed northbound on the Orting-Sumner Highway.
Stone, who had been robbed in the past, grabbed a rifle he had stashed in the vault and fired a shot at the bandit’s car out an open window, then telephoned for help. In Puyallup, Mrs. Pearl Bigelow, who worked in the treasurer’s office at city hall, 311 S Meridian Street, received a phone call from Orting reporting the bank had been held up and relayed the information to the police department. Chief of Police Frank Chadwick, age 40, and Patrolman Harry Storem, age 42, jumped into a police cruiser and headed east toward the Orting-Sumner Highway, hoping to cutoff the fleeing bank robber.
Meanwhile, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department broadcast an alert to all cars in all surrounding communities to be on the lookout for a blue Buick sedan, bearing King County license No. A-26308, and gave the direction of travel. The driver, described as a white adult male wearing a gray cap, a blue work shirt, and blue denim overalls, was considered armed and dangerous.
Killing at Point Blank Range
Near Alderton, Chadwick and Storem passed a speeding northbound Buick and, believing it to be the getaway car, turned around and gave chase. As the police car drew near, the Buick suddenly turned east on Elhi Hill Road. The driver ignored the police cruiser and a high-speed chase ensued. He began to zigzag in an effort to keep the police cruiser from passing and forcing him to stop. Rounding a bend, the Buick stopped abruptly on the shoulder of the road in front of Charles W. Orton’s bulb farm. The driver immediately bailed out the passenger-side door and ducked behind the vehicle.
As Chadwick rolled to a stop on the left side of the road, approximately half a car length in front of the Buick, the suspect rushed the right side of the patrol car and opened fire, fatally wounding both officers. Chadwick was shot once as he was exiting the driver-side door. The bullet entered the right side of his neck, just above the collar bone, passed through his body at a downward angle and emerged two inches below the left armpit. Storem was struck by three bullets; one hitting his right wrist, one entering his right breast, passing laterally through his body, and one hitting him above the left eye. Neither officer had an opportunity to fire their weapons. Two spent .32 caliber shells, found inside the vehicle, and powder burns indicated the gunman reached through the open window and fired point-blank at the officers.
The Witnesses
John Urdea, an employee on the Orton Farm, was standing at the mailbox 150 feet away, and saw the two cars speeding toward him. The blue Buick stopped abruptly and the driver leaped out as the police car pulled alongside. He saw the man run between the two vehicles and then heard four or five gunshots. The man returned to his car and sped away, leaving the bodies of the two police officers behind. Urdea, the only close eyewitness to the murders, got a good look at the driver as he drove down the road past him.
Sumner Police Chief Morris C. Nelson was just approaching the scene in his police car when the shooting started. From a distance, he saw Chadwick and Storem gunned down and the killer jump back into the getaway car and speed away. Rather than chase the gunman, Nelson decided to stay at the scene and aid the downed officers. But he was able to radio the suspect vehicle was headed north toward the Pierce County Poor Farm and Infirmary (now the Riverside Infirmary, 78th Street E and Riverside Road E) and give a description of the killer.
Soren “Sam” Rasmussen, a berry farmer, was going home for lunch when he saw a blue Buick sedan, its radiator steaming, come speeding down Sumner-Stuck Valley Road. The car stopped abruptly, turned around and went back up the road, then a few minutes reappeared. Rasmussen noticed that his little daughter, Evelyn, was pushing her doll buggy along the road and pulled her out of harm’s way. He got a close look at the driver, however, as the Buick went by
Puyallup attorney Elmer Ellsworth Healey and his wife, Matilda, happened upon the scene, drove to the Orton farm and telephoned the Puyallup Clinic for a doctor and an ambulance. Stoner Ambulance Service arrived within minutes and transported the wounded officers to the Puyallup General Hospital, 114 Fourth Avenue NW. Both officers, however, were pronounced dead on arrival at the emergency room by Dr. George A. Barry. The bodies were taken to the Wrigley & Clements Funeral Home, 320 W Pioneer Avenue, where Pierce County Coroner Dr. Thomas H. Long performed postmortems.
Although law enforcement officers throughout Pierce County and Washington state were on the lookout for the getaway car, it was inadvertently discovered by Sumner real-estate agent Fred Carnahan, sitting with a flat tire along the Puyallup-Sumner Highway (now Fryar Avenue), near the railroad bridge across the Stuck River. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., he was driving toward Sumner when a man stepped from an overheating Buick sedan with a flat tire and flagged him down. Carnahan stopped his car to give him a ride, then seeing the man, changed his mind and drove away. He was last seen running through the Zehnder farm pea-fields toward the Fleischmann’s Yeast Plant and the railroad bridge. When Carnahan arrived home and learned about the murders, he immediately telephoned Pierce County Sheriff John C. “Jack” Bjorklund with the information.
Sheriff Bjorklund and Chief Nelson immediately began organizing a posse to search the area where the killer was thought to be hiding. However, a Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad (The Milwaukee Road) freight train, a local between Seattle and Tacoma, had been standing on tracks west of the Stuck River between 12:20 p.m. and 1:10 p.m. and left Sumner before the Sheriff’s posse started the manhunt. Moreover, the valley highway between Seattle and Tacoma was nearby, where the suspect could easily hitch a ride.
The abandoned Buick sedan was towed to the Sunset Garage in Sumner where Sergeant Fred Scheutze, Tacoma Police Department, examined it for fingerprints. The automobile had been stolen from Tacoma at approximately 10:00 a.m., only two hours before the bank heist and murders. Sergeant Scheutze found three sets of license plates: the official set issued by Pierce County and two sets stolen in King County some months before. A pair of brown, cotton work gloves were found in the car, but nothing else of evidentiary value. None of the recovered fingerprints were on file locally, but sets were airmailed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington, D.C. for examination.
The Manhunt and the Funerals
Acting on the assumption the killer was still hiding in the Puyallup Valley, Sheriff Bjorklund assembled more than 100 peace officers and special deputies to search the countryside and block every road and highway. King County Sheriff William B. Severyns (1886-1944) sent a large contingent of deputies to assist with the manhunt and organized posses to block escape routes north into King County. An intensive all-night search, however, failed to reveal any trace of the fugitive.
In Puyallup, meanwhile, Mayor Floyd K. Chase appointed Patrolman William H. O’Connor acting police chief and swore in special officers to bolster its police force (later Pierce County Deputy Sheriff Glen A. Barton was permanently selected to fill the vacancy). The city council appropriated $500 from the treasury to pay for a funeral for the two officers who had lost their lives in the line of duty. Chadwick joined the Puyallup Police Department in 1921 and was appointed Chief in 1933. Storem joined the department in April 1932. Also, a $500 reward was posted for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.
On Thursday, July 18, 1935, while the manhunt continued, funeral services for Chadwick and Storem were held under the direction of Wrigley & Clements Funeral Home at the Puyallup Elks Temple, 314 27th Street NE. Mayor Chase ordered all business halted during the service, which began at 3:00 p.m. The ensuing funeral procession to the Woodbine Cemetery, 2323 Ninth Street SW, was the largest in Puyallup’s history. Mayor Chase also postponed the community’s popular Valley Days celebration, scheduled for the weekend.
Closing In
Late Thursday afternoon, Sheriff Bjorklund discontinued the manhunt when he learned from a Milwaukee Road detective that the suspect had likely escaped from Pierce County. On Monday afternoon, Conductor Charles N. Shiver, was sitting in the caboose cupola when he saw a man, answering the suspect’s description, run from the railroad bridge in Sumner and climb into an empty boxcar. The freight train left Sumner northbound at approximately 1:10 p.m., minutes after the suspect was seen by Fred Carnahan and other witnesses. When the train reached Renton, Shriver and Brakeman Roy Craig found several hobos in this boxcar and ordered them to leave. One man attempted to hide in a dark corner, but reluctantly left when Shriver threatened to lock him in. Shriver identified him as the person he had seen hopping the freight train in Sumner.
Detectives assigned to the team investigating the robbery and murders continued to pursue every lead and detain suspects, hoping for a witness identification. A few days after the crimes were committed, Seattle resident Thomas H. Jacobs told King County Deputy Sheriff Orin K. Bodia, that his mother had received an odd letter from her niece, Margaret Johnson, in Longview. Margaret said her brother, Roy Willard Jacobs, whom she had not seen in several years, had arrived at her house unannounced on Wednesday morning, July 17, dirty, disheveled, and extremely nervous. Roy, a 33-year-old ex-convict, had been arrested in 1926 for killing Marshal Cornelius R. Pake during a holdup in Yelm, but the trial resulted in a hung jury and the case was never retried. The date coincided with the bank robbery and murders and Tom Jacobs believed his nephew was worth investigating. Although married to another woman, Roy was living at the Cozy Cabin auto-court in Kelso with an 18-year-old girl from Toppenish named Margaret “Peggy” Schell.
Deputy Bodia and Pierce County Undersheriff James Milone arrested Roy Jacobs in Kelso on Saturday night, July 20, 1935, and brought him to Tacoma for questioning. Jacobs presented investigators an alibi. On the day of the murders, he had been in Kelso all day with his girlfriend, Peggy, and they visited his younger sister, Margaret Johnson, and her husband, Lester. Jacobs also had a handwritten sales slip from Parry’s Grocery, dated July 15, and claimed he'd had a conversation with the proprietor, John Parry about the crimes, which were headline news in the Kelso Tribune.
Witnesses were brought to the Pierce County jail to see if they could identify the gunman in a lineup. Several believed Jacobs could be the man, but only Urdea, an eyewitness to the shooting, was willing to state definitely he was the killer. Bodia and Milone drove Jacobs to the Orting State Bank and marched him up to Leslie Stone’s cage, unannounced. Stone, surprised, acknowledged that Jacobs could have been the robber, but was unwilling to make a positive identification at that time.
With a presumed solid alibi and seemingly inconclusive lineup identifications, Pierce County Prosecutor Harry H. Johnston and Chief Deputy Prosecutor Stuart H. Elliott didn’t think a jury would convict Jacobs and eliminated him as a suspect. On Thursday, July 25, Jacobs was released to the custody of the Yakima County Sheriff, where he had been charged with grand larceny (theft of property valued at more than $500), having inveigled a Toppenish man to buy him a new car so he could hunt a fictitious buried treasure. By Friday, over a dozen potential suspects had been eliminated and the trail had grown cold. But investigators continued their dogged pursuit of the gunman, hoping a $500 reward offered jointly by Puyallup and Pierce County would be productive.
Incarcerated for Other Causes
In a sworn statement, Peggy Schell stated she had accompanied Jacobs from Toppenish to Portland, Oregon, with his promise of marriage. In Portland, however, Jacobs disclosed he was already married and would need to obtain a divorce. The FBI charged him with violating the Mann Act of 1910, which made it a felony to transport a female in interstate commerce for immoral acts. Jacobs had already been convicted of two felonies in Washington and a third felony conviction for grand theft would have made him eligible for a life sentence under the state’s Habitual Criminal Act. To avoid that rap, he promptly pleaded guilty in federal court to the Mann Act violation and was sentenced to three years at the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. He was released in 1938 but brought back as a parole violator a short time later, gaining final release in June 1939.
Two officers who had worked on the case, Washington State Patrol Special Investigator Grover T. “Jack” Crooks (1895-1973) and Enumclaw Town Marshal Thomas Smith, believed the trail led directly to Roy Jacobs and continued investigating. While Jacobs was serving time at McNeil Island, arrangements were made with Superintendent Paul J. Squier to have several eyewitnesses view the suspect in a series of lineups. Although Jacobs was positively identified by several witnesses as the gunman, others were not so certain and Prosecutor Johnston, believing the case was weak, allowed the matter to drop.
Reconstructing the Case
In June 1942, Sheriff Bjorklund received new information about the Chadwick/Storem murders and assigned Detectives Sigurd Kittleson and Luther Wright to investigate. Although the tip proved to be unfounded, after studying the huge case file in the Sheriff’s office, both detectives were convinced Roy Jacobs was the culprit. In a renewed effort to exact justice for the murdered officers, Kittelson and Wright, with the assistance of Special Investigator Jack Crooks and Marshal Tom Smith, revisited every witness who had seen the gunman and carefully reconstructed the events of July 15, 1935. Five witnesses selected Roy Jacobs from a photo montage and were willing to testify he was the man they had seen on that fateful day. Two more witnesses were willing to testify that Jacobs closely resembled the man sitting in the blue Buick sedan near the Orting State Bank shortly before the robbery.
Marshal Smith found another witness, Fredric H. “Fred” Frese, age 25, Jacobs’s former stepson, who said that in June 1935, Jacobs had asked him for help robbing the Orting State Bank. Jacobs had swindled a Toppenish man out of $500 and needed to repay the money to stay out of jail. Frese said the bank heist was a bad idea and declined to participate. Hearing news of the bank robbery in Orting, he knew immediately that Jacobs had pulled the job. Frese said Jacobs had been a bootlegger during Prohibition (in Washington, 1916-1933), was proficient with handguns, and frequently stole license plates to put on the cars he used to run moonshine.
Kittleson and Crooks presented the case to Pierce County Prosecutor Thor Carl Tollefson (1901-1982) and Deputy Prosecutor Marshall McCormick who were immediately convinced Jacobs had committed the bank robbery and murders. On July 3, 1942, Tollefson filed an information in Pierce County Superior Court charging Jacobs with the first-degree murder of Frank Chadwick. The Storem murder was held in abeyance in the event there were unforeseen problems with the Chadwick case.
Jacobs was arrested in Tukwila on July 6, 1942, and lodged in the Pierce County Jail. He was arraigned on August 25, 1942, before Judge Frederic G. Remann and pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. Bail was set $25,000 and the trial was scheduled to begin on October 19, 1942, before Superior Court Judge Ernest M. Card. The court appointed Seattle attorney Maurice Kadish as Jacobs's defense counsel.
While in the Pierce County Jail, Jacobs shared a cell with Roy Potts, alias Jack Morgan, a prisoner being transferred from McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During this period, Crooks and Smith periodically questioned Jacobs about other crimes he may have committed. In late July 1942, Jacobs was taken out for a short time and when he returned to the cell, he was extremely agitated. Jacobs said the cops were questioning him about stealing some chickens when he was being held for bank robbery and shooting Chadwick and Storem. He exclaimed: “I killed the dirty so-and-sos, and I’d like to get a lot more of them” (Tacoma News Tribune). Potts reported the statement to Sheriff Bjorklund and was immediately moved to another jail cell. On July 30, Prosecutor Tollefson filed a motion in superior court to have Potts held in Pierce County as a material witness. This outburst was as close as the prosecution would ever come to an admission from Jacobs.
The Trial
Trial began on Monday morning, October 19, 1942 with jury selection, which took almost three days to complete. The questioning of prospective jurors revolved around their recollections of the seven-year-old murders and their views on the death penalty. On Wednesday afternoon a jury of seven women and five men, plus one alternate, was impaneled and sworn in. At 3:45 p.m. Prosecutor Tollefson presented his opening statement in which he outlined the state’s case against the defendant.
A series of eyewitnesses would trace Jacob’s trail from the bank robbery in Orting, to the murders of Chadwick and Storem, to Sumner where he abandoned the stolen getaway car, and finally to his escape to Renton on a northbound freight train. These witnesses would testify that Jacobs was the man they saw on Monday, July 15, 1935. In addition, Jacobs’s stepson would testify that he had been asked to participate in the robbery, and a jailhouse informant would testify that Jacobs bragged he killed the two police officers. “We are going to ask this jury to find this man, Roy W. Jacobs, guilty of first-degree murder and will request you give serious consideration to the imposition of capital punishment,” Tollefson concluded (Tacoma News Tribune).
The state rested its case at 11:30 a.m. Friday, October 23, 1942. Defense Attorney Kadish then moved for dismissal of the case against Jacobs on the grounds of insufficient evidence and prosecutorial misconduct. After Judge Card denied the motion, Kadish made a brief opening statement for the defense. He said two former Pierce County prosecutors, two deputy sheriffs, and other witnesses would testify Jacobs had never been identified as a viable suspect in the investigation; that Jacobs was in Kelso with his girl friend, sister and brother-in-law on the day the crimes were committed; that some of the witnesses perjured themselves on the stand or were mistaken in identifying Jacobs; and that the stepson of a former prohibition agent was the likely killer.
The plan to blame the bank robbery and murders on someone else, however, was abandoned when Judge Card ruled that Kadish’s offer-of-proof failed to connect the prohibition agent’s stepson with the case. Kadish next moved to call former Pierce County Prosecutor Harry H. Johnston and his chief deputy, Stuart H. Elliott, who both claimed they had no recollection of the defendant ever being singled out as the chief suspect. Sheriff’s Deputies Bodia and Milone testified that they took Jacobs to the Orting State Bank and Leslie Stone declined to positively identify him as the bandit, but they hadn’t been involved with the subsequent witness identifications. Other officers Kadish called to the stand testified that their involvement in the case had been minimal and had no knowledge of Jacobs’s standing in the investigation.
During rebuttal, Tollefson countered by calling as witnesses investigators who had worked the case in 1935 and 1936 to testify that there had been numerous meetings with Johnston and Elliott during which Jacobs was identified as their prime suspect. They testified that Johnston was present at a lineup at McNeil Island in August 1936 when two witnesses positively identified the defendant. In addition, Johnston was given several identification affidavits, two bearing his signature as a witness.
Kadish turned to Jacobs's alibi, calling Mrs. Margaret Parrott (formerly Peggy Schell) to the stand. He asked her one question: Was Roy Jacobs with her in Kelso all day on Monday, July 15, 1935. She testified that he was. On cross-examination, Tollefson presented Parrott with three signed statements, which she acknowledged making. In the first two statements, she maintained Jacobs was absent from Kelso from Sunday, July 14, through Tuesday, July 16, 1935. In the third statement, made on October 3, 1942, Parrott said she couldn’t recall if Jacobs was with her in Kelso on July 15. Thus she impeached her own testimony, which rendered Jacobs’s alibi worthless.
Then Roy Jacobs testified in his own behalf in an effort to bolster his faltering alibi. He told the jury in graphic detail how he spent the entire day on July 15, 1935, which was generally the same story he told investigators when he was first questioned as a suspect. He couldn’t produce the sales receipt from Parry’s Market, proving his alibi, because he had given it to Deputies Milone and Bodia seven years ago. But he definitely recalled discussing the murders with John Parry as well as with his landlady, Mrs. Edna Smith, and her mother and grandmother. Interestingly, Jacobs never denied he robbed the Orting State Bank and/or killed Chadwick and Storem, and Kadish never asked the questions.
Kadish then called Jacob’s sister, Margaret Johnson, and her husband, Lester, to testify that Jacobs and his girlfriend were at their home in Longview on July 15, the day of the robbery and murders. But the witnesses told conflicting stories, further eroding his alibi. During cross-examination, Margaret Johnson admitted the day Jacobs was at her house could have been on the Wednesday following the murders, as she had written in the letter to her aunt.
In rebuttal, the prosecution called John Parry who denied seeing or talking with Jacobs on July 15, 1935, the day of the slayings. He introduced his accounts ledger which showed the last purchase Jacobs made at his grocery store was on July 6 and he absconded from Kelso owing him $23. Mrs. Edna Smith, manager of the Cozy Cabin auto-court, testified Jacobs could not have discussed the murders with her mother and grandmother because they were in Canada on July 15, 1935. Further, Jacobs was away from the auto-court on July 14, 15, and 16 because she attempted to collect rent for those three days and Peggy Schell said he had gone to Portland to borrow money from his aunt.
Final arguments began on Wednesday afternoon, October 28, 1942, after Judge Card’s instructions to the jury. Deputy Prosecutor Marshall McCormick gave a lengthy summation of the state’s case in chronological sequence. He said the case was not based on circumstantial evidence, but on positive eyewitness identifications. Jacobs had been traced from a period before the robbery in Orting to Renton where he was ordered to leave a freight train, approximately one-and-a-half hours later, without losing the trail. And his iron-clad alibi was worthless.
Defense Counsel Kadish argued the state’s case was based entirely on weak, circumstantial evidence and cited the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. He declared the prosecution had presented no hard evidence linking Jacobs to either the bank robbery or the murders. “The state's witnesses are mistaken, but they have been drilled and coached. An innocent man is being railroaded” declared Kadish (Tacoma News Tribune).
The trial concluded on Thursday morning, October 29, and the case went to the jury at 11:30 a.m. After deliberating for only three hours, including lunch, the bailiff notified Judge Card the jury had reached a verdict. Court was reconvened and jury foreman William A. Harris announced that Jacobs was found guilty of first-degree murder, and that the jury had voted to impose the death penalty. Judge Card scheduled sentencing and consideration of further motions for November 7, 1942.
On Saturday morning, November 7, Judge Card sentenced Roy W. Jacobs “to be hanged by the neck until dead” at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Kadish’s motion for a 30-day extension to obtain affidavits from other potential material witnesses was denied. He then moved for a new trial and an arrested judgment based on judicial error that forced Jacobs to testify against his will and that violated his constitutional rights. After Judge Card denied the motion, Kadish notified the court of his intention to appeal the verdict to the Washington State Supreme Court. The execution date was stayed until appeal process had run its course.
Appeals
After Kadish filed the appeal for a new trial, he filed a notice to withdraw as Jacobs’s defense counsel, which was approved by Judge Card on November 25, 1942. The Washington State Supreme Court accepted Jacobs's appeal on January 16, 1943, ultimately deciding it was without merit. On February 16, 1943, the appeal for a new trial was dismissed upon the motion of Prosecutor Tollefson. The following day, Judge Card signed the death warrant, designating Tuesday, April 6, 1943, as Jacobs’s execution day.
Jacobs’s last hope was for an act of executive clemency from Governor Arthur B. Langlie (1900-1966), who requested that investigators from the state Attorney General’s office review the case. They were convinced that the defendant had been given a fair trial and was guilty as charged. Governor Langlie declined to interfere with the decision made by the jury and courts, and no further appeals were filed on Jacobs’s behalf. Owing to the turmoil of World War II (1941-1945), the execution received little news coverage, except in Tacoma, the scene of the “sensational trial.”
Execution by Hanging
At midnight on Tuesday, April 6, 1943, Jacobs walked 40 feet from his death-row cell to the gallows accompanied by two prison guards. Warden Burt C. Webb read the death warrant to Jacobs and then asked if he had any last words. Proclaiming his innocence, the condemned man said: “I hope you will live to see the day that my name will be exonerated” (Tacoma News Tribune). Then he shook hands with Warden Webb and calmly mounted the steps to the scaffold. A black, cloth hood was pulled over Jacobs’s head, followed by the hangman’s noose. The trapdoor was sprung at 12:09 a.m., dropping him five feet to his death. Jacobs’s body was taken down at 12:20 a.m. and the prison physician pronounced him dead.
Jacobs was the 56th prisoner to be executed at the Washington State Penitentiary and only the second person in 38 years to be given the death penalty by a Pierce County jury. The inaugural honor went to Frank Pasquale, a 28-year-old transient who shot and killed Charles S. Gray, age 27, in the Northern Pacific Railroad freight yards in Tacoma on May 20, 1904. Pasquale, the fourth man to be executed at the state prison, was hanged on September 15, 1905.
