4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL September 30, 2015
O PINION
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Giving thanks
restored.
I give thanks because my grandson was
not there. He is always with me, but my
daughter was on vacation, so he was with
his mom and dad. It would have been
devastating for a 5-1/2 year old child to
see his grandparents go through this hor-
rible shocking nightmare.
I have one older inside cat who found
a good spot to hide. It was protected in
this area, low to the fl oor and partially
secluded with a blanket. It was the next
morning that I got him out. He was trau-
matized as I knew he would be. Cot-
tage Grove Veterinary Clinic examined
his lungs and they were OK. They also
kept him for several days, as I couldn't.
Thanks for Janetta — she took him into
her home for a few weeks until I was
settled to have him back. What would we
do if we did not have all of these kind
people of Cottage Grove?
It's taken a lot of "guts" on my part to
share with you the situation we got into.
I'm hoping my sharing will help others to
be very alert to help protect themselves
from any catastrophe that could happen.
Always check and make sure your fi re
alarms are in working order, and do not
just assume they are. Make sure your
homeowners or your rental policies are
intact and enough to cover your losses, if
that time of need comes.
Progress is coming along on our home,
but we don't know when it will be ready
for us to return. We do know that we
will be ready to go home when that time
comes. And we are forever thankful.
On July 13, we had a major grease fi re
which led to an unreal catastrophe.
Everyone knows not to leave your
stove unattended, but accidents do hap-
pen. My husband and I went to tend the
garden and chickens in our backyard.
Several minutes later we heard smoke
alarms and looked at each other with fear
in our eyes.
It was our home, and the black smoke
was pouring out the partially open kitch-
en window. We ran to the house and
opened the door and the black smoke
was so thick it was blinding.
The only thing we could see was the
fl ame on the stove and going up the wall
behind. We tried to extinguish it to no
avail. My husband called 911 and their
arrival was prompt. The fi re went up the
stove vent and into the attic and electri-
cal.
You don't smell anything worse than
electrical smoke and the damage it does
to everything. We give great thanks to the
Cottage Grove Fire Department for their
promptness and for saving our home.
We give thanks to PayneWest Insurance
for giving us enough money up front to
get the items we needed to live for the
time being, such as replacing our meds,
something to eat, housing, etc. We give
thanks to our good dear neighbors, Cin-
dee and Mark, for helping us and being
there daily to continue to help us. We
give thanks to our daughter, Micki, for
sharing her home until we found another.
We camped in our driveway, in a trailer
furnished by our insurance, for a month.
We now live in a rental until our home is
Cookie Howe
Cottage Grove
Offbeat Oregon
History
Clean-cut murder case turned out
to be sordid and complex
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
The Unwritten
For the Sentinel
Law Files
T
his column is one of
a series of case stud-
ies of the early-20th-century
mania for honor killings in
Oregon. It was popularly
known as “The Unwritten
Law,” and it was a social
convention that permitted
and/or obligated a man to
murder anyone whom he
knew to be working to se-
duce his wife or sister. Un-
written Law cases arose
around the country in the
1890s and were alarmingly
common until around the
time of the First World War.
Today’s column discusses
one such case, which took
place in Portland in 1907,
and which may actually be
the case that ended what
had been widespread public
approval of Unwritten Law
killings.
F
or the average Oregon
newspaper reader, the fi rst
inkling that something about
Offi cer John Gittings’ murder
was not as it appeared came
a few days before Christmas,
when it became apparent that he
had been having an affair with
his murderer’s wife’s sister.
By itself, that wouldn’t seem
to change much. The facts, as
Portlanders knew them, were
still pretty black-and-white:
Melville Bradley beat his wife,
Kate; Kate’s brother, Joseph
Sivener, went looking for him to
thrash him and brought Gittings
along; Bradley came up shoot-
ing and Gittings caught a bullet.
The fact that Gittings was Sive-
ner’s sister’s boyfriend, rather
than just some random innocent
beat cop helping out a citizen,
didn’t really change much.
But it had a signifi cant effect
on Offi cer Gittings’ posthumous
reputation. It soon became clear
that not only was Gittings mar-
ried with three small children
(and one more on the way),
but that he neglected his family
shockingly.
The Oregonian’s reporter
called the Gittings family manse
“a deplorable little shack, cold,
forbidding, leaky, un-paid-for.”
“The wind whistles uncom-
fortably through the cracks
where the boards fail to meet,”
he continued. “The shack stands
three feet from the ground and
by way of a front stoop two
earthen jars do service. … Git-
tings got $100 a month from the
city, but his family did not get so
much from Gittings. There is no
evidence that they ever got any-
thing. The widow is miserably
clothed, the three little children
actually look cold.”
Gittings’ brother offi cers now
rose gallantly to the occasion
and started taking up a collec-
tion to take care of the widow
and orphans.
“The sentiment seemed to be
that whatever discreditable there
might have been in the affair …
the widow and the children were
innocent of it and eminently de-
serving of assistance,” the Or-
egonian reported.
Under the cops’ leadership,
with the full moral support of
the newspaper, and in the spirit
of the Christmas season, the
community rallied around poor
Mrs. Gittings. Soon she and the
kids were living in a fully paid-
for, upgraded home, with a cow
and chickens in the back to sup-
ply milk and eggs.
Time passed. There was no
word on the murderer – a man
for whom public animosity was
already starting to die down.
Meanwhile, his wife, whose
beating had started the whole
spectacle, had moved on with
her life, as had her brother, Jo-
seph Sivener. Both were back in
the headlines just a few months
later, both under rather unfortu-
nate circumstances.
First, in March of 1908, Sive-
ner was picked up by police
and tossed in the city pokey. It
seems he had acquired the habit
of swindling small amounts
of money by forging checks
drawn on the accounts of East
Side saloonkeepers and cashing
them. In the grand scheme of
things, it was a minor offense,
but it didn’t play well with the
public’s image of him as the
righteous, avenging brother of
the poor wronged wife, charg-
ing forth to call her wife-beating
no-good husband to account.
Speaking of the poor wronged
wife – well, perhaps it’s best to
just quote from the newspaper
directly. This article hit the pa-
pers a little over a year later:
“Mrs. Kate Kakarous, the
wife of a Greek bartender and
formerly the wife of Melville
Bradley, the murderer of Police-
man Gittings, was arrested last
night as a streetwalker by Pa-
trolman Stillwell, at the corner
of Third and Everett streets.”
Third and Everett, by the way,
is right in the middle of the old
North End – the rough-and-tum-
ble waterfront district, down by
the wharves and sailors’ board-
inghouses, brothels and shang-
hai joints.
By this time, the avid news-
paper readers of Portland had
learned that the party whom
Bradley had suspected of be-
ing intimate with his wife (the
pretext for the beating) was Git-
tings himself. This suggested a
whole new theory of the crime
– one in which Bradley, called
out of the saloon by Sivener,
saw Gittings waiting for him in
uniform and wearing his service
revolver. Gittings, as he would
have known, was a crack shot
and owner of a large collection
of rifl es and pistols. Thinking
the whole thing a setup with
Gittings the trigger man, he
drew and emptied his revolver
at Gittings.
This theory, of course, doesn’t
quite square with the earlier im-
pression that Gittings and Kate
Bradley’s sister, Aggie Vanders,
who had made such a dramatic
commotion over his corpse,
were lovers. But by then, most
Portlanders had concluded that
everyone involved in the whole
affair was some sort of danger-
ous looney. And there was such a
dramatic fl air in Aggie Vanders’
grief; could it have been a put-
on?
So, if you’re keeping track
– at this point in the story, ev-
ery single character in our crime
drama had been revealed to be
some sort of unlovable freak.
The Good Guy – Sivener, who
went forth to avenge his sister’s
beating – turned out to be a pet-
ty swindler. The Damsel In Dis-
tress – Kate Bradley – turned
out to also be a prostitute and
bigamist. The Innocent By-
stander Policeman turned out to
be a serial philanderer, home-
wrecker and worst family man
in the city, and to also have pos-
sibly been intending to murder
Bradley.
And for anyone tempted to
conclude that Bradley had been
right to do as he did – beat his
wife and murder her
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 9A
Excellent nutrition to prevent and reverse heart disease
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
H
eart disease is our na-
tion’s number one kill-
er. Americans suffer 715,000
heart attacks a year, resulting in
125,000 deaths due to this large-
ly preventable disease. Making
signifi cant lifestyle modifi ca-
tions, including regular exer-
cise and dietary changes, allow
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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people who
suffer with
coronary
heart dis-
ease to re-
duce and
eliminate
their
de-
pendence
on medica-
tions and avoid major surgeries
such as bypass and angioplasty.
Research studies have docu-
mented that heart disease is
easily and almost completely
preventable (and reversible)
through a diet rich in plant pro-
duce and lower in processed
foods and animal products. Here
are some dietary guidelines for
a healthy heart:
Eat a high nutrient, vegetable-
based diet. Green vegetables ac-
tivate the body’s natural detoxi-
fi cation mechanisms and protect
blood vessels against infl amma-
tion that can lead to atheroscle-
rotic plaque buildup.
Eat berries and pomegran-
ates. The antioxidants in berries
and pomegranates, such as an-
thocyanin and punicalagin, are
especially effective in improv-
ing LDL cholesterol and blood
pressure.
Avoid refi ned carbohydrates.
Refi ned carbohydrates have
been found to be just as damag-
ing to the cardiovascular system
as saturated fats.
Eat at least one ounce of raw
nuts and seeds daily. Regular
consumption of nuts and seeds
is associated with a 35 percent
reduction in heart disease risk.
Limit your intake of animal
protein to at most six ounces per
week. Animal protein consump-
tion directly increases heart dis-
ease risk.
Eat beans daily. Beans help to
lower cholesterol; also a 19-year
study found that people who eat
beans at least four times a week
have a 21 percent lower risk of
heart disease than those who eat
them less than once a week.
Have 1 Tbsp. of ground fl ax
seeds or chia seeds each day.
These contain cardioprotective
omega-3 fats, lignans, fl avo-
noids, sterols and fi ber.
Exercise, of course is also es-
sential for a healthy heart:
Regular physical activity re-
duces the risk of coronary heart
disease and diabetes by 30-50
percent.
The heart becomes more effi -
cient through exercise, allowing
the resting heart rate to decrease.
This is benefi cial because a high
resting heart rate is a risk factor
for cardiac mortality.
The mood-elevating and
stress-reducing properties of
exercise also contribute to its
protective effects against heart
disease.
True heart disease protec-
tion comes from achieving and
maintaining normal parameters
WITHOUT the need for medi-
cations. There is no substitute
for earning superior health! You
can be free of heart disease risk
and free of dependency on med-
ication. The high-nutrient (Nu-
tritarian) diet-style that I recom-
mend lowers blood pressure,
lowers cholesterol and lowers
blood glucose to normal.
Dr. Fuhrman is the #1 New
York Times bestselling author of
Eat to Live and Super Immuni-
ty, and a board certifi ed family
physician specializing in life-
style and nutritional medicine.
Visit his informative website
at DrFuhrman.com. Submit
your questions and comments
about this column directly to
newsquestions@drfuhrman.
com.
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