Erland’s Point Massacre pt. 2
This post has been backdated.
Okay! We’re back! I’m finally ready to present erlands point massacre, part 2! Just like I warned you in episode one, there’s some inconsistency here so I highly encourage you to do some of your own research. If you find anything I missed, report back to me!
Also, I discovered another podcast covering this topic during my research. It’s a show called “Scene of the crime” and they specialize in covering murders local to the pacific northwest so that might be of interest to you too! Erlands point is s2 e8. I haven’t listened to it yet because I didn’t want it to influence this episode but I will be doubling back to it after I’m finished! I will drop a link to them in the show notes.
So, we left off in the summer of 1934 when leads for the case dried up and it went cold. There was about a year of downtime here where leadership changed on the Bremerton side of the water, and different people were added to the case over on the seattle side. Investigative work picks back up in the summer of 1935, with the seattle PD looking into similar murders, hoping to find a connection they can tie back into the erland’s point case. They look into a complaint filed by Dr. Spann, a plastic surgeon working in downtown seattle, who states he was attacked by a man wielding a hammer. The attacker fled and there were no active suspects associated. Seattle police put out a call to other police stations for any crimes that could be related.
Oregon PD responded that a man named Frank Aikin had been murdered. He was found shot to death the day before he was supposed to testify in court. he had discovered evidence of fraud in local government and it seemed like someone wanted him dead for it. This murder had it’s own sort of scandal going on- A local pawnshop owner, claiming that he was a friend and confidant of Mr. Akin, told tabloids that Mr. Akin was having a long running affair with a mysterious and violent woman who had threatened to kill him before. Two of the victims of Erland’s point had been shot. So it was a tenuous connection at best. I poked around and tried to find out if any bullets had been found at the scene of Mr. Akin’s murder that matched the 38 caliber shells found at erland’s point- no joy.
The police start looking into motives. They learn that Anna flieder had been trying to open a tavern in seattle but refused to pay any extortion to the local crime syndicate running the scene. Was it a gang related crime? Was it revenge motivated? There was a history of reports linking the flieders home to suspicious boat activity, possibly rum running or drugs. Prohibition had only been repealed in 1933 so booze had been a black market item for the last decade, usually controlled and distributed by small town gangs. Did they knock her off for refusing to do “business” with them?
Frank was known to be a gambler and evidence of gambling was found at the crime scene- playing cards and poker chips everywhere. Was it just a casual night of cards with the neighbors or were the stakes higher? He had been known to gamble with some dangerous people. The names I found listed sound like they came straight out of a gangster movie- “Turkey neck” and “little dutch”. Was Frank unable to pay his gambling debts when someone came to call them in?
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A detective named “OK bodia” has been working the case and- this is wild sounding but I found it in a newspaper article from the time. He states he went to a beer parlor in downtown seattle and overheard some folks talking about the erlands massacre, along with who they thought had done it AND the man’s address!
Now, that’s an awfully huge coincidence. It makes me wonder if something else happened there. Even if some people were talking about it in a bar, why would they be dropping the man’s address?! This story could be a cover up for having gotten the information some other way, or maybe it’s a partial truth. Perhaps the detective did overhear some conversation and then got involved in order to find out the man’s name and address, ya know?
So he takes this name and address- Leo Hall, 710 columbia street- and goes looking for him. But leo hall is nowhere to be found. He has some known associates though, and one of them happens to be locked up on burglary charges at the moment. The detective goes and pays a visit to this associate- Larry Paulos.
Larry Paulos had a history of offenses and was keen to make a deal when they hauled him in. He wanted less time in prison, and in return he could tell them who had killed Frank Aikin in Oregon. He told the police that he had originally been hired to rough up Mr. Akin by a man named Jack Justice. Mr. Justice had asked him to carry out the hit but Paulos recommended his friend Leo Hall for the job.
They did some investigative work to confirm the story- checking the timeline, the men’s whereabouts, the details of the crime. It was all plausible. Detective Bodia alerted the Oregon PD and everyone started looking for Leo Hall.
Larry paulos also said, quote ““A swell pal he turned out to be .First he promises me smokes that never come and then while I’m tight in stir, he runs out with my wife. But he better watch his step—I’ve got enough on him to burn him, plenty. I’m talking of those six killings. If you want to learn more you’ll have to ask my wife. I heard her talk of it in her sleep and she mentioned Hall’s name.”
The police go in search of Peggy Paulos, Larry’s wife. Word gets to her that her husband talked, the police are looking for her and she becomes afraid. so she walks into an attorney’s office and makes her confession. The attorney alerts the police and Peggy Paulos turns out be none other than the “Letha Peterson” that Bremerton police had interviewed immediately after the crime. It seems like Mrs. Paulos had a handful of names she went by. I’ve also seen her referred to as Betty Burns.
So the police bring her in for more questioning and this time she spills the beans. She admits that she was there that night at the Flieder’s home but that she didn’t kill anyone. Leo was the one with the gun, a pearl handled revolver she had seen him retrieve from a safety deposit box.
She lays out the details of the crime for them.
Her husband larry had been in jail or on the run. She had been working as a waitress and spending time with Leo Hall. She mentioned the Flieder’s to Leo after waiting on them in a restaurant. She had been to some of their parties before and she knew they had money. That’s when leo came up with the plan to rob them. He retrieved his gun and they got on the ferry to bremerton. The hitchiked out to erland’s point from there and arrived in the middle of the night.
Peggy and Leo put on masks and gloves so they wouldnt be identified. They forced their way into the home at gun point and found that the Flieder’s were having a small party. Four people were there, instead of the expected two. They had been playing cards in the sunroom. Leo held them at gun point while peggy bound their hands with shoe laces and tape they had brought. Some reports say that they taped the victim’s mouths shut, and maybe even their eyes. Two more party goers arrived from a beer run while this was in progress, bringing up the number of victims in the house to 6. They tied them up with strips of torn bedsheets, having to improvise at this point.
While Peggy was tying up Anna Flieder, her mask slipped and anna recognized her. She asked to go lay down in her bedroom. Leo took her to bedroom and when they were alone, Anna confessed she had recognized peggy, thinking she had been such a nice girl, how could she do something like this? Having been recognized, he decided that anna had to die. After that, he attacked Mr. Bolcom with a fireplace poker and peggy panicked. She realized that he was killing people and this had all gotten out of hand. Peggy ran out of the house and into the night. Leo tried to shoot her as she ran away but it was too dark. A heel broke off of her shoe and she kept running, alternately hiding in roadside ditches and trying to hitchhike a ride until she was picked up by the bremerton bartenders from part 1. She told them she had been roughed up by a sailor on a bad date and just needed a place to stay for the night until she could get back on a ferry to seattle. three days later, peggy ran into leo in seattle. He told her he had to kill those people because they recognized her, and that if she told anyone what happened, He would kill her too.
Leo hall gets picked up in oregon after trying to scam a man and steal his car. He’s brought to seattle. He stands trial for the erland’s point murders in seattle at the same time that Jack Justice stands trial for the murder of Frank Aikin in Portland.
The trial is a spectable. It’s held at the kitsap county courthouse in port orchard. Hundreds of spectators showed up to watch the trial but there were only 84 seats available and the judge instructed the bailiff to draw straws for the seats each morning. I looked at the census records for port orchard and in 1930 the population was 1,145 people.
The trail lasted 10 days and involved 61 witnesses. the trial cost kitsap county $2500. I plugged this into an inflation calculator to get a sense of what that would look like today and it’s damn near $50,000 !
“On Thursday, December 19, 1935, at 11:10 a.m. the jury of eight men and four women returned the verdicts Hall was found guilty of first-degree murder and the jury voted for the death penalty; Peggy Paulos was acquitted of murder and set free. Although the jury was out for 16 hours, they actually only deliberated for 4 hours and 45 minutes and cast only 4 ballots. Peggy Paulos was acquitted on the first ballot. Leo Hall was convicted of murder on the second ballot. The third and fourth ballots were to achieve a unanimous decision on the death penalty.”
Hall was sent to walla walla and his execution was scheduled for 9/11/1936. He received two short stays of execution to allow his mother and his lawyer to come see him before the execution was carried out. He was hung at 11pm and pronounced dead at 11:16.
Meanwhile, reporters had located Peggy Paulson in portland, where she was working as a waitress, trying to support a son while larry, still her husband, was in jail. It’s worth noting at this point that the media coverage of peggy throughout this whole process had been negative and insulting. She was often portrayed as manipulative and her physical appearance was described as drab and mousy. They insult her hair and her clothing. She’s accused of crying on cue at the trial. I don’t know how much of that is or isn’t true. But I did look at a picture of her, and I wouldn’t describe her in those ways.
So this story ends with reporters banging down her door in the middle of the night while leo hall hangs, shouting at her, asking her how she feels. Her answer was, “My god, how would anyone feel? I wish I were dead! Go away!”.
One thread that I couldn’t unravel was the theory that both Frank Akin and one of the victim’s of the massacre had been shot through the eye in a recognizable way. We did learn in the end that it was the same killer so this is possible.
The Flieder house remained on erland’s point until 1977 when it was sold, put on a barge and floated down to south colby where it was confirmed to still be standing as recently as 11/6/1999, though I am unsure of it’s status today.
Another thing I came across in my research often was someone named “Don moody”. Everything I read said he was a local author working on a book about the massacre but I couldn’t find any evidence that this book was ever published, and he never stated any of his sources. He’s quoted as a sort of “local expert” many times but there’s no evidence to support his claims. Rose lay, the last known owner of the home, doesnt buy his theories either. She’s quoted as saying there was “blood in the bedroom closet and under the living room carpet, but no ghosts.”
Speaking of ghosts, we’re coming up on autumn! I’m starting to feel the chill in the air! That means it’s time for campfires, warm blankets and spooky stories! I have some of my own spooky stories to tell from growing up in town and I would love to hear any ghost stories you have, too!
You can email me or leave me a voice message with your local spooky story with the links in the show notes! Also, I know I haven’t been the greatest about releasing episodes on a regular schedule so if anyone is interested in being my accountability partner, let me know!
https://activerain.com/blogsview/55594/was-there-a-murder-in-your-listing-
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/134027638/frank-flieder