*This post was originally an episode of the short-lived podcast, 1000 Words, and has been adapted for reading rather than listening.*
These mug shots and hundreds more like it are from the “Vancouver Police Department – Photographs of Criminals 1896 to 1940”, held by the Washington State Digital Archives. The first one is of #2147, 18-year-old nurse, Eugenia McCool, AKA Myrtle Kidder. The second shot is number 2148, Alta Brooks, AKA Miral Kidder. Her age, which ends up being important in this story, is unknown. Both girls were arrested on November 10th, 1919.
Eugenia McCool was born to Sydney and Flora McCool of Walla Walla, WA, and had a history of criminal behavior before her final arrest. Sometime in 1918 she was involved in a crime spree with three men, Charles Green, Len Ayres and a man who we will only know by his last name, Britner. While she and her partners in crime were occupying a cabin near Walla Walla, police received several reports of hogs disappearing, autos being stolen and abandoned by roadsides, and the theft of groceries and other supplies. Eugenia was taken into custody while in a restaurant and the police decided to end the crime spree by surrounding the cabin where the men were hiding. The event quickly turned into a shootout, leaving Green dead. Ayres surrendered and Britner seemed to have escaped. Eugenia was sent to the Salvation Army Home in Spokane. Commodore True Earl of the Salvation Army home had this to say about her time at the facility, “She was a steady worker, and we paid her a salary while she was serving her sentence. She made her escape when she had only a little more than a month to serve.”
Her freedom was short-lived, however. She was again arrested and sent to the home of a Good Shepherd in Portland.
Alta Brooks was adopted at an early age by a couple near Gaston, Oregon. Her adopted father died, and her adopted mother found her to be a difficult girl to manage.
Brooks said of her upbringing, “I have never known the joy of having a mother who’d care for me enough to take me in her arms and love me. I’ve always wanted that.”
She was sent off to the Louise Home, presumably a home for girls with disciplinary issues, in Portland, Oregon. Due to good behavior, she was allowed back home soon after. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. After staying out all night after a dance, she was once again sent to the Louise Home, but this time she ran away to Astoria. It was there she met a 35-year-old married man. Burt Ryder. For reasons we can only speculate, he wanted to take her to Montana, and she agreed. Ryder got a job as a forest ranger. Alta found a job taking care of and living with an invalid woman.
At some point, Reverend McLaren, from the Pacific Coast Rescue and Protective Society, had heard about where she was. He had known Alta since she was a child and decided to retrieve her. Ryder panicked at the thought of persecution if he were caught with her and long story short, he escaped arrest with a gunshot wound, never to be seen again. Alta surrendered in Libby, Montana. She was given room and board in exchange for housework and childcare. She also worked in a laundry. She attempted to reunite with her adopted mother, but that was not meant to be.
Eventually, Reverend McLaren sent her back to Portland to live in the home of The Good Shepherd, where she assumed she would only be for two weeks. Four months later, Alta had had enough. She decided she had served her time. She, along with Eugenia McCool, walked away from the home. It’s not clear when the girls met, but they had plenty of time together to come up with aliases. Myrtle and Meryl Kidder. The girls had $13 between them and no plan.
They headed to Troutdale, then Hood River, and finally took a steamer on the Columbia River to Vancouver. By the third night, they’d made it to Battleground. Lonely, hungry and cold, walking the streets in the rain, they made the decision that would earn them the mug shots. They stole a car, and they had planned on taking it to a logging town where Eugenia’s father was living. But the highway was closed, so they had to head back to Portland. The girls decided to head South with the stream of tourists going to winter resorts. This was another terrible decision, as they were in a collision with another car and soon their joy ride was over. They were arrested at the corner of Killingsworth and Union Avenues in Vancouver, Washington. Sticking to their bad girl personas, they refused to answer questions exclaiming,
“We won’t tell you anything. We are hard boiled.”
The owner of the stolen car chose not to press charges, but the District Attorney did. Both girls were tried, found guilty and sentenced to 2 1/2 to 10 years of hard labor. Neither girl had legal representation in the courtroom. However, Alta still had a friend in Reverend McLaren, who intervened on her behalf, informing the courts that she was 15 years old and should have been retained by the juvenile system Around December 27th, 1919, a courtroom erupted in cheers when Judge W.N. Gatens announced that. Alta was to be set free, saying,
“No man could look in the face of that girl and say she is of age. I wonder what the court at Vancouver was thinking when it sends her to the penitentiary.”
That’s where all the story seems to end. I was unable to find out what happened to her afterward. No one came to the rescue of Eugenia. She was sent to the penitentiary, where she presumably served a couple of years. A quick search of ancestry.com and the Washington State Digital Archives shows that Eugenia was a prisoner in the 1920 census and that she married Ernest Brickner in 1922 at the age of 19. Wait, if she was 18 in 1919 at her arrest. How could she be 19 in 1922?
How indeed? In fact, that 1922 census lists her as 17 and ancestry.com says she was born around 1903. This made her 16 years-old at the time of the crime, a minor just like Alta. We’ll likely never know why Alta was released while Eugenia went on to do time. It seems like a huge miscarriage of justice. In any case, records show that Eugenia married three times and died in 1967 in Santa Clara, CA, and that’s where this story ends.
Sources:
Quotes and other details are from The Spokesman-Review and The Spokane Chronicle accessed via newspapers.com.
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