…early in the evening on December 30, 1905, Frank Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, returned to his home in Caldwell after a busy day downtown. (Among other tasks, Steunenberg renewed his life insurance policy.) He opened the side gate to his home…
…and set off a massive explosion that gravely wounded him. He was carried into his home by family and neighbors, and lingered for a short period of time before succumbing to his injuries around 7:10 PM.
For days thereafter, passerby were picking “little bits” of the governor out of the debris.
It seems to have been decided fairly quickly that whoever blew up the governor wasn’t a local. It also seems to have been decided that the bombing was almost certainly related to the mining industry, specifically the unions. As governor, Steunenberg had sided with mine owners against striking workers in the Coeur d’Alene, declared martial law, and asked that President McKinley send federal troops to break up the strike and imprison the strikers. It seems kind of odd to me that folks immediately settled on the mining unions as being behind the bombing, given that Steunenberg had been out of office for five years and didn’t have any (official) political power. That’s a long time to hold a grudge. But I guess it was a different time then…
(And on the flip side of that coin: who was likely to have access to explosives and the knowledge to use them? “Miners” is a good answer.)
The investigation quickly centered on a man called “Harry Orchard“. That wasn’t his real name – he apparently had multitudes – but that’s the name he was best known under, and the one I’ll use here. By January 1st, he’d been arrested for the murder. The Pinkertons had been brought in to assist in the investigation, and Orchard ended up confessing to the famous James McParland. (Doyle’s “Valley of Fear” is largely based on McParland’s work breaking up the “Molly Maguires”.)
Not only did Orchard confess, he claimed he had been paid to blow up Steunenberg by the Western Federation of Miners, and specifically by three officers of the union: William “Big Bill” Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone.
Of course, law enforcement was outraged. Steunenberg seems to have been well liked and regarded by the folks that mattered. Plus, blowing up an ex-governor was kind of an assault against the dignity of the state. But the WFM and the officers were headquartered in Colorado. What to do? Go through the extradition process?
Nope. The state of Idaho, working closely with the Pinkertons (this was a different time) basically kidnapped Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone from Denver, hustled them onto a special train, and whisked them to Idaho. Where, of course, all three were charged with the Steunenberg murder.
This turned into another one of those great capital/labor confrontations. William Borah (who went on to some fame, and who I’ll talk about later) was one of the prosecutors. The Pinkertons were also extensively involved in the prosecution as well. On the other side, the unions in general, and Samuel Gompers’ AFL specifically, were so appalled by the actions of Idaho in kidnapping the three defendants that they raised a lot of money for their defense…and sent the very best.
Yep. Clarence Darrow, once again. Haywood was the first of the defendants to stand trial. And almost unbelievably, Darrow got him acquitted. This came as a surprise to many people – heck, it surprised me when I read about it – but ultimately, however good Darrow was, it seems to have come down to a very fair minded judge (Fremont Wood) and Idaho law.
Specifically, the prosecution had no evidence – none at all – of any conspiracy between Haywood and Orchard except Orchard’s own testimony. And according to Idaho law, the uncorroborated word of a co-conspirator in a crime, without additional supporting evidence, was insufficient for conviction. (I think this may actually be a general principle in common law, but I Am Not A Lawyer, and can’t say for sure.)
Without any testimony but Orchard’s, and with the judge’s instructions to the jury reminding them that wasn’t enough, they pretty much had to let Haywood go. Pettibone was tried second; Darrow defended him for part of the trial, but got sick and withdrew. Darrow’s co-counsel continued the defense, and Pettibone was acquitted as well. Having gone 0-2, the state of Idaho dropped the charges against Moyer rather than going to trial.
Probably the definitive account of the case is J. Anthony Lukas’ Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
…and it kind of pains me to say it, given the circumstances, but Big Trouble, while worth reading, is not without problems. The biggest one is that Lukas spent seven years researching it; and everything he found in those seven years seems to have made it into the book. Governor Steunenberg is walking downtown? Lukas tells you, not just every building he passes, but when that building was built and what business was there at the time. Ethel Barrymore came through town while the trial was going on, and actually met Orchard and the Pinkerton men? Lukas goes off into the history of American theatrical production at the turn of the century. Darrow, the other lawyers, and the press may have gone to see baseball games on Sunday (there not being much else to do)? Lukas wants you to know about baseball at the time, and specifically about Walter “Big Train” Johnson (who was still playing local ball in Idaho: he didn’t get called up to the Senators until 1907.)
There’s a lot of good and interesting stuff related to the legal climate of the time in Lukas’ book. The trial itself is almost an anti-climax, compared to everything that led up to it. In addition to the questionable “extradition” of the defendants, the Pinkertons also infiltrated Darrow’s defense team. The mine owners were secretly subsidizing the prosecution, too. One of the more interesting points that Lukas makes is that, at the time, and especially in Idaho, criminal prosecution wasn’t like the Ben Stone/Claire Kincaid view we have today.
But there’s also a lot of stuff where he feels like he’s saying “Look! Look at all the research I did! I suffered for this; now it’s your turn!” I think there’s a Turkey City term for this, but I can’t find one that exactly matches.
Part of the problem may have been the circumstances I alluded to above. Lukas was a big shot writer with the NYT: he won a Pulitzer in 1968 for “The Two Worlds of Linda Fitzpatrick”, a story I vividly remember reading in Reader’s Digest when I was younger, but didn’t associate with him until now. In 1985, after seven years of research, he published Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
If the Western Federation of Miners wasn’t guilty, who killed Steunenberg? Lukas suggests in an epilogue that he found some correspondence in his research that points to Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone’s guilt. Lukas has obviously done more research than I have, but I don’t find his epilogue convincing; it seems to basically come down to “all these unrelated third parties who were active in radical politics thought they did it”. As I see it, there are two other possibilities. One is that Orchard did the crime, but without the direct involvement of the WFM; “on-spec”, if you will. Perhaps he thought blowing up Steunenberg would give him an “in” with the officers of the union, and gain him desperately craved respect and/or money.
Possibility number two: Governor Steuenberg was involved in some shady deals for federal forest lands. They were so shady that, according to Lukas, Steuenberg almost certainly would have been indicted, if it hadn’t been for the inconvenient fact that he got blown up first. William Borah, who you may recall was one of the prosecutors, was indicted during the trial; he managed to get Roosevelt to keep things quiet until after Haywood’s trial. Once Haywood was acquitted, Borah stood trial on the federal charges…and he was acquitted, too. Borah went on to a long career as a US Senator. (He also famously had an affair with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, which resulted in an illegitimate daughter. Alice supposedly wanted to call the girl “Deborah”, but was finally persuaded that the name “De Borah” wasn’t a good choice.)
Anyway, I think it at least possible that Steueberg’s death may have been related to the land deal, and Orchard was either hired (by people who lied to him) or framed and convinced to confess. He does not seem to have been the most stable of individuals. I can easily see Orchard being conned into giving a false confession, especially given some of the promises McParland apparently made to him.
Orchard was sentenced to death, but the governor commuted that to life in prison due to Orchard’s cooperation in the trials. He died in what is now known as the Old Idaho State Penitentiary on April 13, 1954, 48 years after his arrest and 46 years after he entered the pen. He was 88.