DIAMONDS HIS BEST PAL
Ex-con, rich widow wed, then she’s dead
It is always a bad sign when a groom returns from his honeymoon without his bride.
Often, it’s nothing serious, maybe just a lover’s spat that is soon resolved. But when James E. Mahoney appeared back in Seattle without his new wife in late April 1921, there were many reasons to suspect something awful had happened to her.
Mahoney, 38, was a rough character, an ex-con well known to local police. In 1919, he landed in the Walla Walla State Penitentiary, sentenced to five to 30 years for drugging and robbing a man in Spokane. He got out in two, thanks in part to the efforts of his sister Margaret “Dolly” Johnson.
Then there were the unique characteristics of the bride, the former Kate Mooers, 68. She was a plump divorcée with false teeth, gray thin hair dyed a bright red, and a hot temper.
Looks and the 30-year age difference aside, Kate had qualities that made her the woman of Mahoney’s dreams — like heaps of glittering diamonds she wore almost all the time and the luxury sedan she drove around town.
Then, there were rumors of a hefty bank account — at least $200,000 (more than $3 million today), from her ex, a doctor she had hooked up with in the Klondike.
In January 1921, Detectives Charles Tennant and Chad Ballard, who had previous dealings with Mahoney, spotted him strolling along a Seattle street. They assumed he was up to no good and kept an eye on him.
By that time, Mahoney and Mrs. Mooers were already an item.
The two had met through his mother, Nora, 61, and sister Dolly, 35, who managed one of Mrs. Mooers’ properties. They introduced James to their boss, and he began to woo the old woman.
On Feb. 10, the couple married in a civil ceremony and moved into the bride’s home in the posh
Sophia apartments, a building she co-owned.
Soon, they started planning a monthslong multidestination honeymoon, starting in Minnesota. On April 15, Mrs. Mahoney withdrew $1,600 from her bank account. The happy couple told neighbors they were heading off on their journey.
Less than two weeks later, James was back in Seattle. Kate, he said, had decided to travel with friends to Havana. He was sent home to take care of business, armed with a power of attorney with her signature. It gave him control over all her property, including a safe-deposit box with a fortune in cash and jewelry.
Before long, he was living it up at nightspots in expensive suits with diamond stick pins.
Police were already worried about the missing bride when Kate’s nieces offered evidence that their aunt’s signature had been forged on letters and documents. Handwriting experts confirmed that the signatures were not hers.
Detectives Tennant and Ballard carefully traced Mahoney’s movements after the couple supposedly left on their honeymoon.
For the bride, they learned, the trip had been brief and horrifying. The case became widely known as the Mahoney Trunk Murder.
One day after Kate made the bank withdrawal, her husband ordered a truck from a moving company. The driver told detectives he took Mahoney and a large, heavy trunk to nearby Lake Union. There, the two men unloaded it onto a white rowboat. Mahoney was rowing out onto the lake as the driver left.
The boat was traced to a local boat builder who said he had rented it to a man who called himself George Glassford. Later, the builder identified Mahoney by sight as the renter.
Other clues turned up at a hardware store and an attorney’s office. Clerks at the store said that on April 16, Mahoney bought 30 feet of hemp rope and 10 pounds of quicklime.
The day before, Mahoney and a woman visited the office of attorney Emil J. Brandt, requesting a power of attorney that authorized Mahoney to administer her estate. Brandt knew Mrs. Mooers, but he had not yet learned that she had married. The woman who accompanied Mahoney that day was not Mrs. Mooers, Brandt told police. She signed her name, “Mrs. James E. Mahoney.”
He later identified the woman as Mahoney’s sister Dolly.
When police picked up Mahoney for questioning, his pockets were filled with Kate’s jewelry, about $25,000 worth. He said she had given them to him for safekeeping.
He was held on forgery charges, but detectives had only circumstantial evidence supporting a murder. There was the big problem: Where was the body?
The answer to that question came in August when a steamer trunk tied with hemp rope bobbed to the surface of Lake Union.
Inside was a woman’s corpse, her face melted away with quicklime. Autopsy results revealed she had been given a heavy dose of morphine and was stuffed into the trunk while still alive. Her skull was crushed.
Investigators also found Kate’s false teeth and other personal belongings with the body.
Defense attorneys tried to cast doubt by saying that police planted the body and there was no way to prove that the mangled corpse was Kate. The trunk Mahoney rowed out with, his lawyers said, contained Irish whisky. For all anyone knew, Kate was in Cuba.
It took five hours for the jury to find Mahoney guilty and to vote for the death penalty.
Before his hanging on Dec. 1, 1922, there would be two separate confessions. First, his sister Dolly, who got a lengthy prison sentence for forgery and theft, said she killed Kate in self-defense. Authorities dismissed it as a last-ditch attempt to save her brother.
Then, in late November, Mahoney himself gave a blow-byblow description of the murder. He blamed the slaying on Kate’s stinginess and nagging.
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