Hell Hath No Fury: The Strange Fate of Anna Schrader

Theresa Griffith Kennedy (the main author of this piece) and I have been working on this Anna Schrader/Torso Murder case for some time.  If you've been following the podcast Murder By Experts you already know some of the story.  Here is a little more and there is more coming. Hope you like it.

The apartment house (3rd from right) where Anna Schrader lived in 1930.  When someone fired a shot through the window she called the police, but they decided a "potted cactus" had fallen from the balcony above and came through the window.

            In 1946 Portland, the population had swollen to ten times its pre-war size, and was on the move.  The shipyards along the Columbia River laid off workers and River City entered the long, slow economic decline of the post-war period. Portland industries, which had always depended on transient workers, were contracting. Many of the transients were moving on, but a large portion of them were staying in place and looking for other work.  The city was bigger and more crowded than it had ever been. Violent incidents, murders and disappearances were all rising, and in such a volatile population it was easy to get lost in the shuffle.

            One of the women lost in the shuffle was Anna Schrader, an aging beauty who had been well-known to readers of the Oregonian in the pre-war period but had faded from public view over the last decade.  By 1946, now a widow in her early sixties, she had lost the refined Irish beauty that had long been one of her claims to fame.  Her reputation damaged by scandal and a long, bitter battle with the Portland Police Bureau and its former chief, Leon Jenkins, Schrader had become socially invisible.  In the spring of 1946, with Jenkins coming out of retirement to replace ailing chief Harry Niles, Schrader sensed she was on the verge of a comeback, but fate stepped in and altered her narrative. 

On April 5, 1946, her sixty-third birthday, a small ad appeared in the classified section of the Oregonian providing the only documentation of Anna Schrader’s odd disappearance.  The ten-word ad reading “Anyone knowing whereabouts of Ann Schrader please write Y502, Oregonian” would run three times over three weeks. The terse request would become the final epitaph for one of Portland’s most controversial, troublesome and flamboyant characters.  There is no record of who placed the ad, nor any record of any responses it may have received and no record that the police ever investigated the disappearance.  It is likely that a missing persons report was filed with the Police Bureau, as Anna Schrader had many wealthy and influential friends. She had even been close to several police officers, some of whom were still on the force, but corruption and rivalries diffused the proper focus of the Police Bureau and the new chief, Leon Jenkins, had far more reason to celebrate the disappearance of his least favorite Portlander than to get to the bottom of it.  As a result, Schrader, who hadn’t received significant public attention in more than a decade, simply faded away; her disappearance unnoticed, uninvestigated and forgotten.

Leon Jenkins was Police Chief from 1919-1933. When Harry Niles, his successor, fell ill in 1946, Jenkins came out of retirement to become chief again for more than a year. In this picture he is celebrating his birthday with a blackberry pie.

             Anna Schrader was born Anna Tierney on April 5, 1883 in the tiny town of Madelia, Minnesota.  The rural community had approximately 500 residents when she was born, didn’t even have a school until 1935 and still has fewer than 3,000 residents today.  Schrader’s father, Timothy Tierney, was an immigrant from Ireland who lost his wife to an early death, leaving behind seven grown children in the old country.  Her mother, Mary Rickart, more than twenty years younger than her immigrant husband, was from a pioneer family, and born and raised in Minnesota.  Schrader grew up with two older sisters, none of whom had formal education, but all of whom could read and write and were known for their sparkling Irish beauty.

Little is known of Schrader’s early life.  She was married at age eighteen to a man named Farney and came to Portland before 1910, nine years later.  Schrader arrived in the Rose City during a wave of female immigration that brought more than 7,000 young women per year to town, looking for careers or for husbands.  Some of them, like Louise Bryant, Portland’s most famous woman journalist, and Lola Baldwin, Portland’s first female police officer, found career opportunities and settled in, establishing roots.  Others, like Madge Wilson, found only tragedy.

Anna Schrader, whose allure and physical beauty drew the attention of many men, eventually found a husband.  In May of 1915 she married Edward Schrader, a railroad employee who rose to the position of Yard Master before his death in 1941.  It appears a hardworking husband was not enough for Anna Schrader; she wanted fame and social prominence.  And like many women before and after her, she found Portland’s society, with its unspoken class system and firmly closed ranks, difficult to enter.  That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try though.

            Naturally competitive, Schrader threw herself into political and social work, organizing her neighborhood for the Republican Party during the Presidential election of 1916.  Her candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, lost the election and Anna Schrader marked the occasion in her typical flamboyant fashion.  On December 25, 1916 the Oregonian reported, “Mrs. Anna Schrader will don her swimming suit and swim in the Willamette River as part of an election bet.”  She would be remembered for decades as a popular swimmer and for her activities with both the Republican Party and the YWCA.

Anna schrader was born in a small Midwestern town. She came to Portland in 1910 (at the age of 27) to escape a bad marriage.

            The attractive Mrs. Schrader, now in her thirties but already shaving seven full years off her age, was attracted to and had a fascination for tall men in uniform.  Soon after coming to Portland she was the Fire Department’s candidate for Rose Queen.  In those days, before the High Schools took over selection of the Rose Princesses, every community group had its own candidate.  Groups would raise funds by charging a penny a vote and Rose Princesses got a great deal of publicity.  It was during her campaign for Rose Queen that Anna Schrader met a strapping young policeman named Bill Breuning.  It would take a few years for their relationship to develop, but Portland would never be the same afterwards.

            William “Bill” Breuning was a powerfully built man, standing six feet one and weighing 235 pounds, who worked as an ironworker before joining the Police Bureau in 1914.  Breuning was recognized as a professional and competent officer, popular with his fellow officers and sought after for his ability to speak Yiddish; a necessary skill in the immigrant neighborhood of South Portland.  After returning from Army duty during the Great War, Breuning was promoted to sergeant in 1920 and lieutenant in 1926.  The married officer with the promising career began an affair with the attractive Mrs. Schrader in 1921.

            The two lovers met regularly at several downtown hotels, including the historic Cornelius hotel on SW Alder Street. Breuning then arranged for Anna to be hired as a “private detective” as a clever cover for their affair.  Sometimes Breuning and Schrader would meet at her northeast Portland home for dinner and sex, and on more than one occasion these trysts resulted in a “near miss” when Edward Schrader returned home early from work and Breuning was forced to make a hasty escape through the back door.  Despite the danger, the relationship seemed to fill the needs of both partners.  Breuning, with two children and a devoted wife in southeast Portland, had a passionate and beautiful lover, who was always eager to please him.  And Anna Schrader had a strong fantasy life in which she hoped she might upgrade her husband from a hardworking railroad man to the prominent police lieutenant decked out in his spiffy uniform, cap and gun belt.  Her dreams of upward social mobility were fueled by the affair and in time, she started planning to marry her lover, Bill.

            At the start the affair may have seemed like the perfect arrangement for Bill Breuning.  With his lover conveniently married he may have felt that his own home and family were safe.  As the affair progressed, though, Schrader began to pressure him to leave the wife he said he didn’t love and marry her.  This pressure soon began to tell on the relationship and after 1925 emotional and even violent scenes became commonplace between the two.  The prevailing social constructs of the time would have prevented Breuning from ever considering abandoning his wife and young children for a childless woman who had been married twice already.

            The human issues involved in the Schrader/Breuning affair appear as timeless and predictable as the melodramatic plots of the silent films that were so popular at the time; issues regarding what constitutes decent conduct and who is ultimately punished for attempting to break up a home with small children involved.  As many women before her, Anna Schrader must have realized she would never get what she wanted. Lt. Breuning would never leave his wife and children to give her the social station or romantic and sexual excitement she seemed to crave.  Schrader had to have realized, too, that she had been fooled and used into the bargain.  That bitterness must have been all consuming for her, as her later behavior seems to suggest.  Her intense love for Bill Breuning soon turned to hatred, as she brazenly informed the Oregonian reporters.

One of the very few pictures known to exist of Anna Schrader appeared in the Oregonian in 1929 during the sex scandal that accompanied her breakup with lover, Bill Breuning.

             By 1929 the relationship had deteriorated completely.  After several emotional and violent scenes Breuning withdrew and cut off all contact with his lover.  Schrader’s work as a “private detective” working for the police bureau had given her access to information that could be explosive if it became public and had also kept her in contact with other officers who became her friends and allies.  Breuning, in an effort to protect himself and discredit Schrader, began a rumor campaign blaming her for the affair and implying that she was emotionally unstable and a seductress.  Anna Schrader had been rejected and physically abused, but the rumors and the attack on her reputation were the last straw.  In August she borrowed a pistol for protection, from another police officer, and waited in her car in front of Breuning’s southeast Portland home.  She wanted to spur a confrontation with her ex-lover in order to “square” with him and get him to “take back” rumors that had “ruined her reputation” as she claimed.

            The following day (August 24, 1929) headlines in the Oregonian trumpeted, “Woman’s Bullets Miss Policeman. W.H. Breuning Victor in Sidewalk Scuffle.”  The confrontation had not gone well for Anna Schrader.  Confronting Breuning in front of his house she had drawn the pistol and threatened him with it.  Breuning grabbed the gun and during the struggle it discharged twice, not striking anyone.  Breuning threw Schrader to the ground, dropping on her with both knees and breaking her ribs in an effort to restrain her.  Breuning then called for the paddy wagon and Anna Schrader was carted off to jail, charged with “intent to kill with a dangerous weapon” and one of Portland’s earliest and biggest sex scandals had begun.

            Anna Schrader defended herself from her jail cell, “sobbing uncontrollably” and exposing her long-term love affair with Lieutenant Breuning.  She claimed that she had not intended to kill him, but only took the gun for protection because of his brutality in the past.  She said that the gun went off accidentally when he attacked her.  Breuning counter-attacked by publically repeating rumors he had been spreading, portraying Schrader as the aggressor, an alluring chippy, who had forced him into an illicit sexual affair, against his better judgement. He and his friends on the police force also appear to have tampered with evidence in an attempt to cover up the affair; visiting several downtown hotels where the couple had met, bullying desk clerks and unceremoniously ripping pages from the hotel registers.  The Oregonian and its readers loved the scandal; lurid story after lurid story, all with screaming colorful headlines, appeared in the paper for nearly two years.

            Edward Schrader, despite his humiliation, resolutely stood by his wife, urging her to bring assault charges against Breuning and suing the lieutenant himself for “alienation of affections” as a result of the affair. Schrader, realizing that her reputation had already been damaged beyond repair, decided to raise the stakes a notch.  In a momentous phone call to the Oregonian newspaper, she threatened to “rock Portland” by exposing a system of bureau-wide corruption within the police force.  She had worked as an informant and “private detective” for the bureau for nearly eight years.  During that time she had made many contacts and gathered a great deal of specific evidence on corruption and police involvement in the illegal liquor trade, all conducted of course, during the years of prohibition.

            The Breuning/Schrader scandal created harsh consequences for both parties.  Bill Breuning, who had enjoyed a promising career, was eventually dismissed from the force for “conduct unbecoming a police officer” in 1930. The loss was a devastating blow. It was the first in a series of scandals that shook Mayor George Baker’s administration, leading to his decision not to run for re-election in 1932.  Police Chief Jenkins tried to protect his boss and the bureau by sweeping the mess under the proverbial rug, but the public, hungry for salacious details wouldn’t let it rest and the vindictive Anna Schrader was happy to feed their hunger for scandalous misbehavior.  Jenkins tried to claim that it was Breuning’s conduct of being involved in an adulterous affair that led to his discharge, but it was clear Breuing’s most serious crime was in simply getting caught.

Anna Schrader never made good on her promise to deliver the evidence and her public charges were received skeptically by most Portlanders, who considered her nothing more than a fallen woman.  Mayor Baker was still very popular at that time, having served as mayor for over a decade, and Leon Jenkins’ reputation was considered spotless.  Schrader brought her charges to the public, with a series of rousing speeches, public appearances and radio talks, but Breuning’s charges of Schrader’s emotional instability were believed by many and Schrader’s emotional style of communication with others seemed to confirm them.  Schrader also received several threats, some she would claim were attempts on her life as well as documented violent attacks.

            On one memorable occasion during the Recall Election of 1930, three women, at least one of whom was employed in a downtown brothel/speakeasy, heckled Schrader during a speech in St Johns and then the woman and her two girlfriends viciously kicked Schrader in the shins repeatedly before all three women were hauled away by the police and later arrested.  When a gun was fired through the window of Schrader’s northeast Portland apartment on Ross Street, the police investigated and determined that a “cactus plant” had fallen from the upstairs balcony and come through the downstairs window – an unlikely occurrence, if it was possible, given the layout of the building and the law of gravity.

            Schrader participated actively in Recall Elections against George Baker and members of his administration in 1930 and 1932.  She testified about police corruption to a Multnomah County Grand Jury, pursued lawsuits against Breuning and the Police Bureau for false arrest, and acted as her own attorney on her false arrest case against Breuning.  During Breuning’s appeal of his firing to the civil service board, at which Schrader was present, John Logan, president of the board told her to “sit down and shut up,” and had her ejected by a matron when she refused to comply.

Schrader eventually won the suit against Breuning, receiving only a paltry token-award of $250.  Breuning, unemployed and bankrupt probably couldn’t pay.  George Baker declined to run for re-election, after barely surviving the recall in spring, 1932 and Schrader briefly became a candidate for mayor. She spoke among a group of candidates in a crowded election meeting at the United Artists movie theater on SW Broadway.  Then mysteriously, in 1930 Schrader began having a series of unusual car accidents and alleged burglaries at her home that may have been warnings.  Combined with the heckling and violent attacks Schrader had endured, she and her husband probably feared for their lives.

By 1936 Schrader had faded from view and entered a prolonged period of social invisibility.  Researchers can only speculate why she never gave her evidence, which she allegedly kept in a diary or a journal.  A pay-off seems likely, but many feel that Schrader was “unbribable” and not willing to be “shut up” for any amount of money. Yet shut up she did, most likely in fear of continued attacks against her life and that of her husband.  Edward finally passed away, from unknown causes in 1941 and still Anna Schrader kept her silence.  Bootlegging continued, Oregon’s restrictive liquor regulations still provided an incentive to avoid taxes and regulations and the powerful gangs that ran drinking, gambling, drugs and the sex trade remained unwilling to be regulated.  Those establishments still had full compliance from the city government, now under the control of Baker’s protégé, corrupt mayor Earl Riley, and in 1949 and 1950 Mayor Dorothy McCoullough Lee would receive some of the “Anna Schrader” treatment herself.

On April 12, 1946, right in the middle of Earl Riley’s reign, the first Torso Murder package was found floating in the foul waters of the Willamette River.  That same day saw the second appearance of the “whereabouts” add in the Oregonian requesting information on Schrader.  Some of the open and enduring questions of the Torso investigation are: how long had the victim been dead when the body parts started turning up; and what true age was the Torso suspected of being.  It seems significant that the first package appeared at least two weeks after Anna Schrader was last seen alive and well in Portland.

The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department and Oregon State Police, who investigated the Torso Case, were diligent, professional and thorough in tracking down and ruling out dozens of missing women, but they have never considered the possibility that Anna Schrader may have been the Torso victim.  Even today, nearly seventy years later, authorities are skeptical of the idea.  No one knows who the real Anna Schrader was. No one considers that if she was the Torso victim that fact alone would lead directly to some very specific suspects.  She has become part of a forgotten past. No one cares about Anna Schrader. 

If you haven't heard the podcast Murder By Experts check it out. We are experimenting with new ways to tell history and remember History Isn't Free. Support your local historian. 

Dark River

The Torso Murder Case became one of the oldest and deepest of Portland's unsolved mysteries.

           In the spring and summer of 1946 several packages containing the dismembered parts of a woman’s body were found in the Willamette River. The Torso Murder Case, as the Oregonian called it, became one of Portland’s longest and deepest mysteries. Not only was no suspect ever identified, the victim was never identified either. For nearly seventy years police, reporters and murder buffs have only been able to speculate about the identity of the woman who was tortured, beaten over the head and cut into pieces before being thrown into the river.

            While working on my latest book – Portland on the Take written with JB Fisher – I came across someone who coincidentally disappeared sometime early in 1946.  Her name was Anna Schrader and she was one of Portland’s most interesting characters. A competitive swimmer and socially prominent Portlander, Schrader worked as an undercover agent for the Portland Police Bureau and a private detective. Married to a local railroad executive, Schrader carried on a long term affair with police Lieutenant William Breuning.  Schrader’s affair with Breuning ended in a violent confrontation in 1929, creating a scandal that ended Breuning’s career and Schrader’s work for the Police Bureau. Schrader, who was a highly emotional woman, swore revenge against the Police Bureau and Chief Leon Jenkins and devoted the next few years to exposing corruption in the police force and in Mayor George Baker’s administration. She was involved in at least two recall elections and ran an aborted campaign for mayor in 1932. Along the way she made a lot of enemies, some of whom might have wanted her dead.

The affair of Anna Schrader and William Breuning ended in scandal in 1929. Schrader devoted several years to exposing the corruption of the Portland Police Bureau and the George Baker administration.

            I asked Theresa Kennedy Dupay, a talented historical researcher, to look into the life and activities of Anna Schrader to help me evaluate whether or not she could have been the victim in the Torso Murder Case. Dupay has done a great job of finding information on Schrader and has even managed to get access to some of the investigative files kept by the Clackamas County Sheriff, who reopened the unsolved case in 2004. Dupay and her husband, ex-homicide detective Don Dupay – author of Behind the Badge in River City – have become intrigued with the possibilities that our new investigation offers.

            I am intrigued by the possibilities too, so I have been preparing a ten episode podcast – Murder ByExperts -- to present our theories and investigation. One of the problems with trying to solve such an old case is that none of the people who are investigating it are aware of the situation in Portland in 1946, so this series will concentrate on the historical setting as much as the crime. Here is the first, introductory episode. Please give it a listen and then let me know what you think. 

http://murderbyexperts.podomatic.com/
If you like the work I do I hope you will support my Patreon.com campaign.  https://www.patreon.com/jdchandler

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland Preview

      My new book with Theresa Griffin Kennedy, Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland, is all about the enforcement of Prohibition in Portland between 1916 and 1933.  We also look very closely at the anti-radical politics and the financial and sex scandals that riddled the administration of long-time Mayor George L. Baker. I tell you all about it in the preview posted on Weird Portland. The book is also about murder and that is what I am going to tell you about tonight.

            Claremont Roadhouse Robbery

            Walter Banaster, aka Little Dutch Herman, who ran The Wigwam resort in Olympia, Washington in the 1930s was one of the most violent and powerful northwest organized crime figures of his time.  Running a murder-for-hire ring out of his gambling and bootlegging joint, Banaster was behind several gang-land style killings in both Portland and Seattle.  He got his start in Portland. The first big splash of his career was the robbery of the Claremont Roadhouse in 1919.

            The Claremont Roadhouse was located on the Highway between Portland and the then separate town of Linnton on the Columbia River.  Roadhouses, where people would drive outside city limits for dining, drinking and dancing, had been popular since 1906 when Fred T. Merrill, Bicycle King of the Northwest and long-time city council member, opened 12-mile House on the Baseline Rd. in southeast Portland.  They gained in popularity when Prohibition came in in 1916.  Larry Sullivan, ex-professional boxer, ex-crimp and one of Portland’s earliest organized crime bosses, controlled several roadhouses in the early days of prohibition, including the Friar’s Club in Milwaukie and the Claremont Roadhouse on the way to Linnton.  By 1919 the Claremont was rivaled only by Birdlegs’ Roadhouse on the eastside.

            On November 21, 1919, just days after Leon Jenkins became Police Chief, Jasper N, Burgess, a member of the state highway commission, and George Perringer, a prominent rancher, both from Pendleton, were staying at the Benson Hotel in downtown Portland on a business trip.  Portland, a wide open town, was always good for a junket, so Burgess and Perringer picked up two switchboard girls at the hotel and took them on an afternoon drive. Stopping at the Claremont Roadhouse for lunch, the party was already tipsy from drinking when three men, masked with handkerchiefs, forced their way into the roadhouse, herding the customers together in the large central room.  One of the robbers, most-likely Banaster although he blamed his companions, went into the private room where Burgess and Perringer were drinking with the women.  The robber killed Burgess and Perringer with two shots each before herding their companions into the central room with the rest of the guests.

            The three robbers, Banaster, James Ogle and Dave Smith, made off with over $3000 worth of cash and jewelry and used a safe-house, provided by a Japanese criminal gang to hideout.  Police Chief Jenkins was joined in the investigation of the crime by legendary central Oregon lawman Til Taylor, who had been friends with both of the victims.  Taylor and Jenkins made a point that the deaths of Burgess and Perringer had been the result of a robbery gone wrong, but rumors abounded that the real purpose of the “robbery” had been killing the two men.  Later developments gave credence to the rumors. The next year Til Taylor was killed in a Pendleton jailbreak and soon after Hyman Weinstein, a junk dealer from South Portland moved to Baker, OR and became the “vicelord” of Central Oregon.  Weinstein, whose brother Abe was involved in bootlegging, gambling and fencing in Portland, was an associate of Bobby Evans criminal organization.  The extension of power from Portland into the rest of the state is a strong possible motive for the killings at the Claremont Roadhouse.

The Murder of Frank Akin

            One of Portland’s oldest and most controversial “unsolved” murders is that of Frank Akin, a special investigator sent by Governor Julius Meier to investigate corruption in Portland’s Port Commission.  Akin was shot to death in his southwest Portland apartment in November, 1933, just days after releasing the findings of his Port investigation and before he had released a preliminary report on an investigation of the city’s Water Bureau, which he had just begun.  The Oregonian, which was heavily involved with the Republican establishment, scotched rumors that Akin’s investigative activity was the motive for his death, instead spreading false rumors of his womanizing and financial scams.  Although one man, Leo Hall -- believed to be the gunman, was executed in Washington state for another crime, and another man, Portlander Jack Justice, was convicted of murder for hiring him, the true motive for the crime was never discovered.

 

Leo Hall was executed for murdering six people at Erland's Point, WA. He was believed to be the trigger man in the Frank Akin murder.

            In the new book Theresa and I examine all the available evidence in the Akin case and present it in a clear manner.  While it is not likely that a solution to the case can be found after nearly eighty years, we are able to shed new light on the case and suggest a motive for the killing that has been long overlooked.  Historian E. Kimbark MacColl in his book Growth of a City, presents an abbreviated version of the case and speculates that the killing was prompted by Akin’s investigation of the Port of Portland.  In the new book we suggest that the Port Investigation was a red herring, designed to hide the real motive for the killing. We present evidence that suggests that his investigation of the Water Bureau, which had been run for more than a decade by corrupt city councilman John Mann, was the real motive for the killing.  In addition we connect both Jack Justice and Leo Hall to the murder-for-hire ring operated by Walter Banaster in Olympia, Washington.

The Torso Murder

            The gruesome Torso Murder case, which saw several packages of human body parts in the Willamette River over several months of 1946, has captured the imagination of murder mystery fans for nearly seventy years.  The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department and the Oregon State Police never got anywhere in trying to solve the case, mainly because they were never able to identify the victim.  Seventy years later new evidence has been unearthed that points at the possible identity of the victim and a possible solution of the case, along with an explanation of why the police never identified the victim.

Anna Schrader came to Portland in 1910 and became a thorn in the side of Mayor Baker and Chief Jenkins near the end of Baker's administration.  Her mysterious disappearance in 1946 coincided with the unidentified body parts found in the river.

            If you’ve been following the podcast Murder By Experts, then you already know about Anna Schrader, secret-police private detective, lover of Police Lt. William Breuning and outspoken opponent of Mayor George Baker’s administration and Police Chief Leon Jenkins.  Theresa and I have been researching Schrader’s life and career for more than a year and in the book we present all the evidence we have found.  The book makes a compelling case that Schrader is the victim in the Torso Murder and that the motive for her death lies in the secret bootlegging operations carried out by the Police Bureau in the 1920s.  The hatred and anger that fueled the brutal murder were most likely created during the so-called Schrader-Bruening scandal of 1929, which rocked the city and forced major changes in the Police Bureau.  If Schrader is the victim it is very likely that Bill Breuning was the killer.

            With all of the suspects long dead and all of the physical evidence missing, we can only speculate on a solution for the case, but we present compelling evidence not only for who the victim and killer could be, but of the machinations of Police Chief Leon Jenkins and Police Captain James Purcell that covered up Breuning’s involvement in the murder and derailed the murder investigation.

            All of that and more will be available when the new book Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland is released by the History Press in February, 2016.  See you there.

Welcome to George Baker's Portland.

The Wisdom Light Murder: Alternative Possibilities in the 1946 Torso Case

My co-author of Portland on the Take, JB Fisher, has been re-evaluating the 1946 Torso Case for a new project we are doing with KOIN TV. Slabtown Chronicle is proud to present his findings here.

 

Although the 1946 Torso Murder victim was never identified, the investigation turned up the disappearances of several women in the Portland area.

In their 2016 book, Murder and Scandal in Prohibition Portland, JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin  Kennedy make a compelling case for the idea that the unidentified torso victim that washed up on the banks of the Willamette River in April 1946 was Portland’s own AnnaSchrader. Schrader’s history with the Portland Police Bureau including her knowledge of the department’s inner workings as a private investigator and her tumultuous affair with PPB Lt. Bill Breuning would help explain both why she disappeared and why the torso case was left unsolved.

While the Anna Schrader hypothesis is intriguing and highly plausible, it is interesting to acknowledge other leads that the investigators were following in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Oregon State Police files shed light on a number of other missing persons who potentially matched the torso victim. While most of these were ruled out decisively (either because the missing persons were located or some identifying mark, feature, or condition determined them incompatible), several other subjects remained highly compelling potential matches to the torso victim. 

Although not officially involved in the Torso Murder investigation, Police Chief Leon V. Jenkins did handle some of the leads and may have had a motive to keep the case from being solved.

Bessie Carol Nevens

On April, 16, 1946, less than a week after the torso discovery, a hand-written letter was received by Acting Chief L. V. Jenkins at the Portland Police Bureau from Mrs. J. L. Wilson of Los Angeles. Numerous such letters were received in the days and weeks after the torso turned up, but most were quickly ruled out and the concerned parties notified. This one was different.

Mrs. Wilson explained that she was worried about her sister, Bessie Carol Nevens who had left Los Angeles July 10th, 1943 and had not been heard from since. At that time, a man had called at Nevens' home saying he was a cousin and that he was taking her up to Oregon to work on a ranch. Prior to this, a friend of Nevens' husband had contacted Mrs. Wilson requesting her sister's address. He explained that the husband was interested in sending an allotment to her. Nevens' husband was serving in the Navy as a pharmacist's mate and had never paid his wife a cent since breaking from her in 1937.

Upon learning that her sister had left with a stranger headed to Oregon, Mrs. Wilson contacted the party that had requested Nevens' address just days before she was taken to Oregon. In response, "all I got was that her husband is in the South Pacific and was not the one who called. I know that, but it could have been someone he knew."

Mrs. Wilson confirmed in the letter that her sister was in her early fifties, thus matching the age of the torso victim. She also described her sister's hair as gray, which would eventually prove a match when the head was discovered that October. She pointed out to investigators that the family had no cousins in Oregon and that she was uncertain as to the identity of her abductor.

Chief Jenkins' reply back to Mrs. Wilson was standard. He encouraged her to contact local authorities in Los Angeles to initiate a missing persons search. He reassured Mrs. Wilson that the letter would be passed along to the State Police since the crime happened outside the jurisdiction of Portland. While Captain Vayne Gurdayne of the OSP wrote back a few days later, no further follow up reports or letters exist in the file which suggests that Bessie Carol Nevens was never ruled out as the torso victim.

It should also be pointed out that in the mid-twentieth century, a number of ranches in central and eastern Oregon were owned by vice racketeers and corrupt cops the likes of Jim Elkins, Al Winter, Portland chief "Diamond Jim" Purcell and Earl Bush. The association of these ranches with gambling, money laundering, prostitution, and other vice is widely established. If Bessie Carol Nevens was abducted to Oregon for criminal purposes, it would be likely that law enforcement would cover the tracks since there were strong ties between racketeers and local police agencies involved in pay offs and protection.

Nevertheless, there is nothing more to determine whether Bessie Carol Nevens was in fact the torso victim.

 

During WWII the Portland shipyards employed thousands of women. At least one of them was investigated as a potential victim in the Wisdom Light Murder.

Eva Linder Panko

During World War Two, Eva Linder worked in the Portland shipyards building the Liberty ships that would help ensure the Allies' victory in the war. There she met fellow ship worker Tony Panko and the two were married January 29, 1944. The couple then moved to a small farm near Oregon City that Tony had acquired before the war.

Very quickly, the marriage deteriorated. Genevieve Baldwin, a friend of Eva's, would later tell the Oregon State Police that she "heard Tony threaten to kill Eva, that he was very jealous and hot tempered."

Within ten months, the marriage was over and a divorce was filed October 17, 1944. Eva then purchased a house in Southeast Portland with another shipyard worker, Herbert Troy Dennis.

Then, on November 21, 1944 the house burned down and Eva Linder Panko disappeared. She was described as in her 50s, grey hair originally brown, 5' 3" and 140 pounds with false teeth and a glass eye.

Efforts to track down Eva proved futile but investigators did locate Herbert Troy Dennis living in Seneca, Illinois. They learned that he had a brother in St. Louis and that both Dennis brothers were ex-cons with a record of forgery and burglary. It was also determined that the house fire in southeast Portland had been intentionally started for insurance purposes although no claim was ever realized.

By April 1945, Herbert Troy Dennis disappeared after violating parole and Eva Linder Panko was never found, Dr. Richardson who had performed the autopsy on the torso victim and the head ruled out Panko as the victim simply because he was confident that the torso victim had had both of her eyes at the time of death (although the head was eyeless when it was discovered).

Whether or not Eva Linder Panko could be ruled out confidently as the torso victim, she most certainly met with foul play and her ice-cold case would be long forgotten if not for the files of the torso murder.

Marian Coffey

Marian Coffey was fond of hanging out at taverns and bars with various men, despite the fact that she was married to Alton Coffey, "an insanely jealous man" who had several times tried to kill her. One of the places that Marian had frequented was the Tillicum Tavern on the Beaverton-Bertha Highway (now known as the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway). On April 16, 1946 Alton Coffey came to the Tillicum Tavern and showed the tavern's owner Claude Clark a newspaper article about the torso discovery. "Have you seen the latest?" he asked Clark. "I think this is Marian."

In an Oregon State Police report dated April 26, 1946, Vayne Gurdayne had this to say about Alton Coffey:

“Mr. Coffey came to the Milwaukie office [of the Oregon State Police] to look at the clothing found with the torso…and stated from the description appearing in the papers he believed this subject likely to be his wife; that she disappeared on March 18, 1946; that he left for work and on his return that evening she was missing and no word had been received from her since that time. He stated they had been married at Newark, N. J. five years ago; that they came from Newark to Portland about two years ago…He stated since their marriage his wife has disappeared at least ten times; that she associated with other men and frequented beer parlors, and that he had reported her missing a number of times to the Portland Police, and at one time had located her at the Tillicum Tavern…

“Coffey described his wife as 50 years old, 5 feet 41/2 inches, 140 pounds, very dark brown hair almost black, brown eyes, dark complexion, wore glasses, false teeth. He states she had been suffering with a tumor of the womb and that part of her uterus had been removed and at one time she had had a Caesarian operation. That while employed at the Tillicum Tavern she had associated with a party by the name of Willis Baker who…lived near Oregon City; that he had checked near Oregon City trying to locate this subject without success…

“Coffey denied ever having abused his wife or having struck her but did state several times she had returned home badly bruised, etc.”

At the end of the report, Captain Gurdayne has this to say about Alton Coffey:

“Coffey was very nervous while talking to the writer and I was not too much impressed with his appearance and actions so assigned Sergeant Genn to check further as to whether or not Mrs. Coffey bore the surgical scars, etc.”

No follow-up reports survive in the OSP file regarding Marian Coffey. Much like Bessie Carol Nevens and Eva Linder Panko, there is no evidence to suggest that Marian Coffey was ever decisively ruled out as the torso victim, nor is it clear whether her whereabouts were ever determined.

 

The investigation of the Torso Murder case sheds a great deal of light on the lives of women in the 1940s and the prevelance of domestic violence at that time.

Marie Diffin

On March 2, 1950, nearly four years after the torso discovery, George Alvin Diffin reported to authorities in Hood River, OR that he had important information pertaining to the case. His wife Marie Diffin had been missing since September 1944 when she left him and their four children in Springfield, OR. According to Diffin, he had heard rumors that she was in Portland and emphasized that "she was a great man chaser and hung around bars in order to get free drinks."

The fact that her parents in Klamath Falls had not heard from her made Diffin convinced that she had met at some point with an unfortunate end.

Diffin explained that in the early 1940s the couple began to have marital problems and his wife left periodically with several different men including Carl Schultz and George Hart. Although Diffin offered few specifics, he suggested that both Schultz and Hart had been involved in robberies in various parts of Oregon and that both had spent time in the State Penitentiary.

When George Diffin was asked by investigators why he had waited so long to come to authorities concerning his wife’s disappearance, he simply explained that he had visited with his daughter recently and she stated that she was going to report it if he didn’t. Even then, he waited an additional two months before reporting the situation to police in Hood River.

In closing the report, Oregon State Police private Robert Wampler offers the following remarks on George Diffin:

“It is apparent that George Diffin is not telling the whole story concerning the disappearance of his wife. Therefore, it is respectfully requested that the relatives and friends listed in this report be contacted for any information they might have concerning the above Marie Diffin and other subjects reportedly involved. It is possible that Marie Diffin is alive and her parents know of her whereabouts…

“In the event it is learned that Marie is definitely missing, it could be easily possible that George Diffin himself could be implicated. However, it is merely a supposition.”

When investigators followed up with Marie Diffin’s family members, they learned that she was indeed missing. Daughter Coleen Mae Downend (19) said that she strongly suspected that her mother was dead, “stating that the mother thought an awful lot of the younger child who was at the time the mother left three years of age and if not dead or forcible [sic] detained would have gotten some word to them for the boy’s sake.”

The daughter also explained that in addition to an operation for “female trouble” back in 1942, her mother had “a large bump on the upper right shoulder in which [she] had been advised that it might be cancerous unless attended to.”

When they spoke to George Diffin’s sister Mrs. Robert Jenkins in Hood River, investigators learned that “she was positive Marie Diffin was dead but had no idea what had happened to her or how it had come about. That the last time she had seen her in the latter part of 1943 she had had a growth on her shoulder which looked cancerous and that there was a good chance that that killed her.”

Mrs. Jenkins went on to describe her brother as “a liar and very mean,” saying that “he had a terrible temper and at one time in years gone by had threatened her, his own sister.”

Marie Diffin’s parents similarly confided to investigators that George Diffin was mean and violent and that on several occasions he told Marie that if she left he would kill her.  They also confirmed that she had left with George Hart and Carl Schultz back in 1944.

While Carl Schulz was not located, the Oregon State Police spoke with George Hart who explained that he last saw Carl Schulz and Marie Diffin in late September 1944 when the two told him that they were “going so far that no one would find them…she suggested that they might go to Mexico.”

There is no follow-up report on the Marie Diffin case after March 30, 1950 when investigators spoke with George Hart. Unlike the other possible victims discussed above, there is no clear evidence that Marie Diffin fit the profile of the torso. She was (as of 1944) 35 years old, 5’2” and 140 pounds, dark brown hair, “very large rump…” However, once again, the case was never conclusively pursued and the victim is most likely missing to this day. 

One connection that was never investigated by the Torso Murder detectives was the possibility that the murder was connected to the nefarious actions of the Portland Police Bureau.

The Wisdom Light Killer

While most mentions of the 1946 discovery of a middle-age female body in the Willamette River refer to this as “the Torso murder,” Oregon State Police reports and other references in the late 1940s call the case “the Wisdom Light murder.” This is likely referring to the place where the torso was discovered—a small moorage on the Willamette River below Oregon City known at the time as Wisdom Island Moorage. Perhaps there was a light on the moorage so that the name would more closely specify the location of that grisly discovery.

None of the cases discussed above yielded any suspects in the torso murder. George Diffin, Herbert Troy Dennis, Alton Coffey, Willis Baker, Tony Panko—none of these were pursued far enough to become suspects. Other names did come up in the investigation as potential suspects: Donald A. Benson, Richard Purnell, Russell Frederick Purnell, Carl Christian Roth alias Carl James Parnell, James Louis Purcell.

Yet no one was ever apprehended as an actual suspect in the case and the Wisdom Light killer has faded into the darkness of the long forgotten and elusive past. But if the torso was indeed Anna Schrader, then we know who killed her and why those individuals were never pursued.  -- JB Fisher.

While it is not possible to say with certainty that Anna Schrader was the victim of the Torso Murder, there is compelling circumstantial evidence to support that conclusion.  The evidence is laid out in my 2016 book Murder and Scandal in Prohibition Portland. We will be exploring that evidence and the case in a special KOIN TV event on Facebook on March 1st at 7pm. Please join us.