It didn’t take medical science very long to give its explanation. Perhaps Crescent Lake never gave up the dead it claimed, but Crescent Lake had never claimed this woman. Somewhere she had been beaten and strangled and her killer knew of Nature’s own tomb to bury her in. Nature wasn’t enough, though, he reasoned. He’d insure his kill and bury it deep, his insurance a stout rope and a weight to lock the tomb’s door.
It was his own tomb that he locked. If he had left nature alone, he would have been safe. Had he merely dropped the body in the water it would have remained at a level where natural decay and the attacks of fish would have disposed of it.
His improvement on Nature brought his kill back to life because the icy waters of the lower levels completely preserved the body, and during that time permitted a slow transformation known as saponification... chemicals in the water united with the fat molecules in the tissue to form soap... the floating kind!
Time had betrayed the killer, because the rope finally rotted, but the body had been a long time in rising. Pathologists established that the woman had been dead from one to three years.
Sheriff Charles Kemp, Criminologist Hollis Fultz and Prosecutor Ralph Smythe had a corpse, and some questions. They wanted answers... badly. The natural embalming process had left the woman’s face deformed so that photos were of no help, but there were other, more useful clues.
They knew she was young, pretty and unusually small waisted. Her right foot had a huge bunion. Scraps of the blanket she was wrapped in, shreds of the rope that tied her, clung to her body. She still wore fragments of a dress... but wore something more important — a six-tooth partial dental plate the killer forgot to remove.
Acting on this last piece of evidence, the authorities had 15,000 circulars printed and distributed to dentists around the country.
Photos and descriptions of the denture were published in newspapers and dental magazines. If the killer saw them and knew any sudden panic at all it must have gradually left him, because there was no report on the denture throughout 1940 or during early 1941.
Meanwhile, three dead ends had to be run down. Three women reported missing in the Crescent Lake area were identified as the victim and in each instance the missing person had identical measurements and the same colored hair.
The criminologists solved those cases but as yet could not identify their own murder victim.
The trio of sleuths worked another angle. Medical crime experts had determined that prior to her death the victim had had her hair set. In their opinion the bunion on her foot indicated that she had been employed in a laundry or as a waitress.
Here greater ingenuity than the killer’s came into the picture. Edgar Thompson, secretary and treasurer of the Culinary Alliance, came up with names of several women who had dropped out of the organization during the time in question. One had done a peculiar thing. .she had left without taking a union transfer or withdrawal card,
Her name was Hallie Illingworth.
With this information the lawmen located Hallie’s married sister, Lois Bailie, in Walla Walla, Washington, to confirm their identification. Mrs. Bailie reported that her sister had been missing since a few days before Christmas 1937; she did have a partial denture in her upper jaw and an agonizing bunion on her right foot.
What was more important, she said Hallie Illingworth had a husband, Monty, who claimed Hallie had walked out on him for a naval officer, then later she was some place in Alaska... and Monty wasn’t around to say differently. At that time his address was unknown.
When the trail is hot the hounds run faster. The police moved into Vancouver, Washington, for a short talk with another sister of the missing Hallie, Mrs. James Johnson. Two more pieces dropped into place, Mrs. Johnson established the date when Hallie was last heard from with a postcard dated December 21, 1937, from Port Angeles, Washington, and also led them to the dentist, Dr. A. J. McDowell of Faulkton, South Dakota, who identified his handiwork in Hallie’s partial plate.
Some place a killer must have been getting mighty nervous.
There was still another path in this rat race with a murderer. A path that took the officers to a cook house in a lumber camp at Lake Pleasant near Port Angeles. At its end was Jessie Hudson, a friend of Hallie, and she had a story to tell, one of intense jealousy between Monty and Hallie that brought on constant fights. A story that linked Monty with a girl named Elinore Pearson and set the stage for the final act.
The evil that murder is rooted in can’t slay hidden long. Now the officers knew what tack to take. They began to find out things about Monty and Hallie Illingworth. More than once Hallie had said that if they didn’t separate one would kill the other. And once a hotel owner had entered their room at the sound of fighting and found Monty standing over Hallie, who lay moaning on the bed.
So the finger swung to Monty. He had, it developed, been granted an uncontested divorce from Hallie in 1938 at the very time her body lay weighted in Crescent Lake!
Monty, a 32-year-old truck driver, was located living with Elinore Pearson in Long Beach, California. He gave some confusing statements and then, when he realized he was trapped, began to tell a story with some logic. He said that on the night of December 21 he went to a party with a friend, Tony Enos. They were out all night. When he came home the next day, drunk and boisterous, Hallie was angry. She left the house, he said, swearing she would never return.
Police located Tony Enos. He confirmed the party and the date. He said he had brought Monty home at 3:30 a.m., and had seen him again at 9 a.m. near a Port Angeles bank. Monty, Enos said, told him he was taking Hallie to the Port Ludlow ferry.
That made three different stories Monty had told about the night of December 21 — one to Lois Hailie, one to the police and yet another to his friend Tony Enos.
While awaiting his divorce from Hallie he had spread the word that he and Elinore Pearson were married. There was only one person who knew differently... his lawyer, Max Church. And Max Church had succeeded Mr. Smythe as prosecuting attorney in Port Angeles.
Murder was coming home. Perhaps Prosecutor Church knew where it lived when he read the reports. Perhaps he already had the answers when the officers checked on Elinore Pearson. If he did, he took no chances. It took a lot of digging, but Max Church located Mrs. Harry Brooks, owner of a general store near Monty’s home.
She told him that just before Christmas, 1937, Monty had borrowed a part of a piece of rope from her.
She still had the other piece of the rope and under microscopic examination it matched the one found tied to Hallie’s body!
It was on October 24, 1941, that Monty was arrested, and on February 24 of the following year brought to trial. There were lies then, lies that Monty tried to live up to, a vain attempt to prove that his wife was still alive. Even science almost came to his rescue, but the work the police put into establishing the identity of the murder victim was too air tight, too positive to be smashed. The prosecution fought for the death penalty, but the evidence of the constant fights and Hallie’s own prophetic statement that unless she left Monty, one or the other would die, threw doubt on it having been a premeditated murder.
The jury’s verdict was guilty of second-degree murder and on March 20, 1942, Monty Illingworth was sentenced to life imprisonment in Washington State Penitentiary.
Nature had foiled a murderer’s cunning by allowing Crescent Lake to give up the missing dead. The irony came at the beginning and was still there at the end... Monty had the rare opportunity of hearing the man who had once been his own lawyer present the case against him to a jury that saw fit to put him away for life.