COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • NOVEMBER 28, 2018 • 9A
Off beat Oregon: Dynamite killing turned out to be sordid love triangle
By Finn J.D. John
For The Sentinel
L
ate on the evening of
April 21, 1955, 35-year-
old Portland attorney
Oliver Kermit Smith left the
Columbia Edgewater Country
Club and walked to his car.
He was probably a little tipsy;
there had been a stag party that
night, and he was one of the last
to leave.
He slipped behind the wheel
of his 1952 Buick, turned the
ignition switch to “on,” and
stepped on the fl oor-mounted
starter button.
Two or three seconds later
his mangled, lifeless body fell
to the ground three feet behind
the Buick’s rear bumper, amid a
shower of broken glass and bits
of torn metal.
Someone had stuff ed 10 sticks
of stumping powder under the
driver’s seat of Smith’s Buick,
wired it with an electrical deto-
nator to the starter solenoid on
the car, and left the circuit open
so he could drive to the country
club without setting it off .
And while Smith had been
inside playing gin rummy with
his friends, that someone had
slipped up to the car, connect-
ed the last two wires together
under the fl oormat, closed the
door, and sped off into the night.
Portlanders learned about
the murder, of course, when
they read the front page of the
next morning’s paper. And if
any of them wondered how
long it would take police to
fi nd the killer, they weren’t
kept wondering for long.
Th e crime was more or less
solved within 18 hours of Ker-
mit Smith stepping on that
starter switch.
Th e thing was, it wasn’t the
fi rst time someone had tried
to kill Smith. About six weeks
before, the attorney had been
waylaid outside his home by
a shadowy fi gure wielding a
heavy bottle, with which it
tried to bash his head in. In
the struggle, Smith’s nose was
broken, but the attacker got
away.
When police asked him, in
his hospital bed, if he had any
idea who might have done this,
he said, “Wolf.”
Victor Wolf, he told the cops,
was a 45-year-old electrician
who rented a room in a house
owned by Smith’s wife, Marjo-
rie. “He kinda likes my wife,”
Smith added.
Th ere was no evidence, so
there wasn’t much they could
do; and Smith, as an attorney,
knew that — so he told the cops
to “forget about him.” But, of
course, they hadn’t, and now
The wreckage of Oliver Kermit Smith's car after it was blown to pieces by a dynamite bomb
in the parking lot of the Columbia Edgewater Country Club. Picture is from the fi les of Det.
Walter Graven. (Image: portlandcrime.blogspot.com)
they had a far more compelling
reason to want to talk to him.
Victor Wolf was literally
rousted out of bed and taken
into custody within two hours
of Smith’s death. Of course, he
denied any knowledge of either
crime. But holes started appear-
ing in his story fairly quickly. He
told police he’d used dynamite
before, but didn’t know how to
rig up an electrical detonator …
which would be an odd skill for
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an electrician to be lacking. And
when the cops found the extra
red-and-yellow wire clipped off
the detonators stuff ed in the
heater vent of Wolf ’s brown
Mercury, he realized the jig was
up — and started talking.
Some of what Victor Wolf
confessed to sure sounded like
bunk. Specifi cally, any time a
gray-haired 45-year-old man
claims an attractive 34-year-old
brunette has been “using me for
a sex slave,” the chances that
he’s spilling gospel truth are
about equal to the chances that
Santa Claus framed him for a
burglary.
But maybe, the cops thought,
maybe he was dumb enough
to think it was true. Because
a lot of the other things Wolf
confessed to turned out to be
backed by fairly solid evidence.
Kermit and Marjorie Smith
had been married to each oth-
er twice. Th e fi rst marriage had
ended in divorce aft er Marjorie
accused Kermit of striking her
and being verbally cruel.
It was shortly aft er that di-
vorce that Victor Wolf had
started renting from Marjorie
Smith. Th e two of them had
started dating, and Wolf said
they soon learned they shared a
dream in common — a dream
of homesteading in the Alas-
ka Territory. Th is took money,
though — more than either of
them had.
So, Wolf said, Marjorie
hatched a plan to get that mon-
ey by having her reconcile with
Kermit and remarry him; aft er
that, Wolf would murder him,
and Marjorie would collect on
his life insurance policy, and
then the two of them would be
off to Alaska.
According to a front-page ar-
ticle in the Oregonian, this plan
was implemented forthwith,
and the Smiths were remarried
on Feb. 4, 1955.
“Wolf said that as soon as she
was married again to Smith she
denied Wolf her favors until he
should kill Smith according to
the plan,” the article continues.
Wolf told the cops Marjo-
rie gave him a .38 Special to
kill Kermit with, and he lurked
in the bushes waiting for him
with it on March 10; but at the
last minute he “lost his nerve”
and tried to murder Kermit
with a heavy bottle wield-
ed like a blackjack instead.
Th at, of course, hadn’t worked;
so the two of them had hatched
the dynamite plan. He said he’d
wired the bomb up in Kermit
Smith’s own garage one day
while Smith was out.
He’d bought the dynamite in
two diff erent stores near Mo-
lalla, and he and Marjorie had
traveled to Ridgefi eld, Wash.,
to buy the detonators, he said.
Th ey’d stopped along the way
for a picnic lunch, and he’d cut
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a bouquet of pussy willows for
her.
It was probably the pussy
willows that made the detec-
tives sit up and take note. Th ey
had, of course, searched the
house by this time; and there
was a vase with pussy willows
in it in the house.
Police found more evidence,
too. Police, examining the .38
Special that Wolf said Marjorie
gave him to kill Kermit with,
discovered it was the service
revolver that had belonged to
Kermit’s father when he was
working as a police offi cer.
Th ey also found a set of keys to
the Smith home on Wolf.
And when he guided detec-
tives to the spot where the pic-
nic happened on the way back
from Ridgefi eld, detectives
found cut-off pussy willow
stems that matched the ones in
the vase, and discarded dyna-
mite caps lying around.
Marjorie Smith continued to
indignantly deny everything.
Th ere was rather a lot of evi-
dence against her — but all of
it was circumstantial, and could
be explained in other ways. In
the end, the jury at her trial
didn’t fi nd it convincing enough
to convict, and she was acquit-
ted.
As for Victor Wolf, he had
confessed, and some of the ev-
idence against him — fi nger-
prints, things left in his car, etc.
— was far more than circum-
stantial.
In the end, he drew a life sen-
tence, and was probably very
happy to get it; in 1954, the gas
chamber was a real possibility in
a case like this.
Kermit Smith, by the way,
was an interesting man, and one
we probably would have heard
more about had he not been
killed. He was a World War II
vet, fought in the Battle of the
Bulge, made First Lieutenant,
transferred to the Army Air
Corps and fi nished the war as a
captain, with a Purple Heart and
a Bronze Star on his record.
He ran for the Republican
nomination for a State Senate
seat in 1950.
So, what was the real story?
Did Marjorie Smith vamp
Victor Wolf to get her husband
murdered, like a real-life ver-
sion of Nicole Kidman’s charac-
ter in the 1996 Gus Van Sant
movie “To Die For”? It sure
looks that way.
But the jury in Marjorie’s
case didn’t agree, and there
are aspects of the case that
don’t make much sense; it
seems likely we’ll never know
the full story.
(Sources:
Fisher,
J.B.
“Pussy Willows: Th e Murder
of Kermit Smith,” Slabtown
Chronicle, 11 Apr 2014,
portlandcrime.blogspot.com;
Portland Oregonian archives,
22-23 Apr 1955)
Finn J.D. John teaches at
Oregon State University and
writes about odd tidbits of
Oregon history. For details, see
http://fi nnjohn.com. To contact
him or suggest a topic: fi nn2@
offb eatoregon.com or 541-357-
2222.
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