Cottage Grove sentinel., April 18, 2018, Page 4A, Image 4

4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL APRIL 18, 2018
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Picked the wrong landlady
By Finn JD John
For The Sentinel
It was after 10 p.m. on a Thursday night, and
Multnomah County District Attorney George
Chamberlain was dressing for bed when the tele-
phone rang.
He seized the receiver. “Who’s there?” he said
into it, in none too friendly a tone.
“Never mind,” replied a fi rm matronly voice
on the other end of the line. “I want you to come
to 181 First Street at once. Something important
has happened.”
“Can’t you come to my offi ce, during business
hours?”
“If you knew what I wanted you for, you’d
step over here quickly. You are working on that
murder, across the river, are you not? Well, it’s
about that. Now you understand. Ask for Mrs.
Whitlock.”
Mrs. Whitlock was right — now that Cham-
berlain knew what she wanted him for, he most
certainly would step over there quickly. But she
had no real idea how right she actually was.
Mostly, Mrs. Whitlock was just frustrated. She
had rented a room in her boardinghouse to a trio of
rough characters, who had gone through her stuff
and stolen $60 worth of goods. She’d been trying
to get a policeman to come see her about the theft
since early that afternoon, without success. She’d
tried to reach Chamberlain several times earlier
in the day, but his line had been busy. The police,
after the usual assurances of prompt action, had
never shown up. Now it was late at night, and she
no doubt suspected the thieves would be gone by
morning. So she’d called up the district attorney
— former attorney-general of the state of Oregon,
and a future governor and U.S. Senator — at his
home, at 10:15 p.m., to demand instant action.
And she got it
It goes without saying that Mrs. Whitlock was
the wrong sort of person to steal stuff from.
Now, although Mrs. Whitlock suspected her
lodgers of having had something to do with the
murder that had happened a few days previously,
she had no proof and, really, no evidence at all
beyond an intuitive feeling. Mostly she was just
using the reference to the murder to get the district
attorney out of bed and over to her house before
the thieves escaped. It worked.
But, as an added bonus, it turned out she was
right. One of her boarders really was the murderer.
This murder was essentially a mugging gone
horribly wrong. One of Mrs. Whitlock’s boarders,
William Strickland (who went by the alias William
Dalton), had been leaving a saloon with a friend,
Joseph Ewing (who went by the alias Jack Wade or
the nickname “Kid McFadden”) when they’d come
upon James Barkley Morrow, a young bartender on
his way home from a visit to his fi ancée.
“I know him,” Dalton said. “He’s a gambler.”
And he pulled his big-bore single-action Colt and
stuck it in Morrow’s face.
Now, it is possible (although very unlikely) that
Morrow in fact had fl eeced Dalton in a rigged card
game in one of Portland’s low doggeries; that sort
of thing was common in 1901. Perhaps he had in
mind to get his money back; if that was the case,
Morrow likely would have handed over his wal-
let and there would have been an end to the mat-
ter; crooks don’t usually call the cops on crooks.
However, Wade and Dalton appeared to have been
making a regular practice of these discreet stick-up
jobs, and it’s more likely that this was just another
play for drinking money.
But it turned out not to matter. Because of the
several bad decisions Dalton made that night, one
in particular stands out as a life-changing “bon-
er,” the one that would send both himself and Jack
Wade to the gallows: As he drew, he cocked his
revolver.
And as Wade reached out to take Morrow’s wal-
let from him, the big six-gun in Dalton’s hand went
off in the bartender’s face, sending a .44-caliber
slug crashing through his head and killing him in-
stantly.
Possibly the second worst decision of Dalton’s
life came when he arrived back at the boarding-
house the night after stealing Mrs. Whitlock’s
stuff (which, if not the third-worst decision of his
life, was surely at least in the top fi ve) and found
District Attorney Chamberlain, reinforced with
a couple of police detectives, waiting to question
him about the murder (which, remember, was only
a topic of conversation because the landlady had
used it to get the D.A. out of bed). Mindful of the
$500 reward that was being offered for information
leading to the arrest, he promptly told them Jack
Wade had done the shooting — basically confess-
ing the whole thing, without so much as asking to
see a lawyer.
The police soon found Jack Wade in his room
at a different boardinghouse, and arrested him as
well. Both Dalton and Wade admitted the murder
had happened, but each claimed the other was
holding the pistol when it went off. No doubt the
police played on their ignorance of the law in let-
ting them do this, since clearly they did not at fi rst
know that legally it didn’t matter who did the ac-
tual shooting. Under Oregon law, if a crime goes
wrong and an innocent person dies, every mem-
ber of the conspiracy is held just as culpable as if
each had been the trigger man.
This is surely why the trial was so very short.
Having depended on a defense that wasn’t a de-
fense, the two of them had, by the time they were
assigned lawyers, essentially confessed their
crime, utterly destroying all chances of acquittal.
Wade’s attorney advised him to go for the Hail-
Mary pass, pleading guilty and throwing himself
on the court’s mercy. It showed him none. Dalton,
who pleaded innocent, was convicted promptly as
well, and both men were sentenced to hang.
In the jailhouse waiting for their execution day,
the two erstwhile partners made a very interest-
ing pair. Dalton immediately “got religion” in the
most extreme way and, painfully aware that he
had to make up for an entire lifetime of wicked-
ness and sin in the few weeks that remained to
him, proceeded to make life miserable for all and
sundry with his prim preachiness; Wade seemed
to be playing the whole thing up for laughs. Real-
ly they were rather like before-and-after shots of
The Prodigal Son.
Also during their jailhouse stay, the mayor of
Portland, Henry S. Rowe, happened by and rec-
ognized Dalton as the man who had mugged him
a few weeks before. Nothing could be proven,
of course, and Dalton denied it — but he did so
with a shaky and nervous demeanor that didn’t do
much to convince anyone he wasn’t lying.
On the Sunday before the hanging, Dalton
announced plans to fast. “It is the last Sabbath I
shall ever spend on Earth,” he declared, “and I
think too much of my Blessed Saviour to take my
thoughts from him.”
“I’ll eat,” Wade shot back. “I have a long road
to travel.”
And so, under the disapproving (and probably
hungry) eye of his ex-partner, he tucked into his
chicken dinner. Then he looked up from his re-
past. “What did you have for breakfast, Billy?”
“Tea,” said Dalton primly.
“They must have put something in it!” Wade
crowed.
On the day of the hanging, the fence around
the scaffold was fi lled with a capacity crowd of
400, and thousands more clustered around, lining
the roofs of nearby buildings and the lower limbs
of trees, jockeying for a chance to watch two men
die. Wade indulged in some genuine, bona-fi de,
literal gallows humor; he pulled a cigar out of his
pocket and threw it into the crowd, then threw a
pocket handkerchief out like a rock star with a
T-shirt cannon. Then he grabbed the noose and
dramatically sniffed it.
“It’s tough!” he hollered, winking at the crowd.
But then, as the appointed hour grew near, he
quickly grew serious, for almost the fi rst time
since his arrest.
“Don’t any of you fellows follow in the tracks
of Jack,” he told them. “Now don’t you do it. You
may think I am happy here. I am not.”
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
In defense of Wolfclan
So, what's the rational behind
the protests in front of the Wolf-
clan Armory ? Please let me ex-
plain why I support this business
move to Cottage Grove. This is
a small, family run business try-
ing to live the American dream.
I personally know the co-owner,
Al Laskey, for many years as we
both worked for the same com-
pany back in the 1980's - 1990's.
It was EL-JAY manufacturing,
based in Eugene with about 350
employees. He was a supervisor
there while I worked as a senior
plant Electrician. So I knew Al
Laskey. If you ask any former
employee about him you would
hear words like honest, intel-
ligent, helping others, decent,
honorable and fair to others. So,
when a few protesters started
movement to ban his business
and trying to run him out of
town I was very upset. We all
know that his son, currently in
jail, had some issues and made
some bad choices. That alone
should not be reason to punish
his entire family. Painting the
rest of family with broad brush
is frightening and Un - Ameri-
can and must stop.Show me a
family in this country not hav-
ing at least one "bad" apple
among them.
According to Sentinel's re-
port, the city council weighted
in on the "controversy" during
the weekly meeting. Kudos to
councilor Jake Boone for be-
ing a voice of sanity. On the
other hand, councilor Garland
Burback comment advising the
good folks of Cottage Grove to
" Just don't shop there" is very
extreme and uncalled for. He
basically promotes a boycott
of this business. Councilor Bur-
back is a small business owner
himself owning the Cottage
Grove Garbage Service.
George Zajic
Cottage Grove
C ottage G rove
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IN BRIEF APRIL 18-MAY 2
An Earth Day celebration will be held in Coiner Park on Sat-
urday, April 21 beginning at 10 a.m. and ending at 4 p.m., the park
will feature food, vendors and music to celebrate the planet. Com-
munity organizations will have booths around the park, there will
be youth activities, a local birding opportunity, a Native American
blessing and a “Trashion” show.
The Family Relief Nursery will hold its annual fundraising
event on April 20 beginning at 6:30 p.m. This year's theme is
"Let's Make it Happen." Tickets are free. To reserve, call 541-
942-4835.
Have an event, class, lecture, party or gathering that people
should know about? Send details to cmay@cgsentinel.com