Submitted by the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office
(Article from the front page of the Ukiah Republican-Press newspaper, published Friday, June 17, 1904)
James Finley guilty in first degree
James W. Finley was convicted Saturday of murder in the first degree, the jury recommending imprisonment for life in the state’s prison for the killing of Frank Drake at Hardy Creek. Sentence will be pronounced next Saturday by Judge White.
The jurymen on the case were: Dan Jensen, W.B. Ontis, W.S. Mann, Earl Prather, A.M. Nolan, W.B. Campbell, Pete Johnson, J.F. Haun, Frank Walgamot, R.A. Spencer, F.M. Wilson, and W.S. Van Dyke. They are to be congratulated on their verdict as the murder was one of the most atrocious ever committed in this county. It now remains for the officers to find Jones and Lambert, the remainder of the trio, and send them to their just desserts.
Frank E. Drake was murdered in his cabin at Hardy creek on the evening of March 29th. The only witness was an Italian who occupied the same cabin but ran as soon as the first shot was fired and was unable to identify the assassin. The murderer was attired in a suit made of grain sacks and wore a black mask. Drake, who lived about an hour after help arrived, died without making a statement as to whom he suspected.
The case did not look very encouraging at first, but District Attorney Duncan, Sheriff Smith and Deputy Sheriffs Standley and Clark succeeded in weaving a chain of circumstantial evidence around Finley that would have convicted him even had the two women who were living with Jones and Lambert not broken down and told what they knew concerning the case.
The testimony of the two women brought out the fact that the robbery of Drake had been carefully planned and that a number of other crimes lay at the door of the desperate trio, several of which were committed in Humboldt county. Finley, Jones, and Lambert had come from Humboldt county some months before the murder. They had worked with Drake and found that he was in the habit of carrying considerable money. The robbery was planned, and Jones had made the suit and mask for the purpose. As Drake had taken a trip to Westport the robbers thought possibly he had left his money there, so when he returned Lambert was delegated to find out. He joshed Drake about going away and spending his money and Drake immediately fell into the trip and disclosed his wealth.
Finley, who had been away, returned that evening and was selected for the crime. He gave out word that he was going to his claim on the Mattole river and started out only to return after nightfall and lay concealed in the cabin until the night of the murder. The women testified that on Thursday night following the murder Finley came to the cabin and knocked on the window but that Jones and Lambert warned him to go away as the officers were after him and they did not want him caught there. They gave him a sack of provisions and he started out, continuing to elude the officers until he was caught at Colusa junction on April 25th.
Jones and Lambert and the two women were arrested and brought here but could not be held in jail as there was no evidence against them and it was thought they would remain to testify for Finley. They were not taking chances and as soon as released returned to Hardy creek and dug up their portion of the money secured from Drake and skipped.
The character witnesses summoned from Humboldt county proved of little avail as Finley’s own testimony in trying to explain where he got the $60 found on him when arrested proved him a gambler and a thief. He stated that he was a deft manipulator of the pasteboards and, with a confederate, had robbed a third party in a game of cards. He also stated that he had afterwards stolen the share his partner had secured.
The conviction of Finley is a victory for justice and the promptness and dispatch with which the case was handled are tributes to the justice loving and law-abiding citizens of Mendocino county.
DA Eyster: The story did not end there, as evidenced by an article published in the same Ukiah Republican-Press newspaper on Friday, Oct. 17, 1913.
Finley escapes hangman’s noose
James W. Finley, who murdered Frank Drake at Hollowtree, and who has spent the past eight years in the “condemned row” at the Folsom Prison, while his attorneys fought his case to the highest courts in the land to save his neck from the hangman’s noose, received a commutation of sentence to life imprisonment at the hands of Governor Johnson Saturday.
A plea from Finley’s aged mother in Kentucky that she be spared the disgrace of having her son hanged caused the Governor to act. Finley was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1904 from Ukiah for murder, and in 1905 participated in a prison break at Folsom. He was sentenced to die for the last offense but was granted many reprieves.
State officials of Kentucky interested themselves in the case.
DA Eyster: According to the Mendocino Coast Model Railroad and Historical Society, “Hardy Creek is a mile or so from Union Landing. The mill at Hardy Creek (which was around the point from Juan Creek) was part of the Cottoneva Lumber Co. at Rockport. The mill had a wharf and a railroad. The town had a large hotel. The mill was operated by E.T. Dusenbury, one of the owners of the Cottoneva Lumber Co. The mill was destroyed by fire and was never rebuilt. The area was named after R.A. Hardy, who was responsible for a wharf and chute there in 1892. The wharf was 590 feet long with a wire chute at its end.”
See also, < https://www.hrcllc.com/histo…/stories/cottoneva_lumber.htm >
The Finley story continues
(From the front page of the San Francisco Call newspaper, published Wednesday, Oct. 25, 1905)
An accomplice of James W. Finley in the murder of Frank L. Drake in Mendocino County has confessed that Finley told him he robbed the Bartlett stage on two occasions, was implicated in a car barn robbery in this city and committed numerous other daring crimes that kept the law officers busy.
If tales told by him to a man who was convicted as one of his accomplices in one crime are true, James W. Finley, the convict who was so badly wounded in the Folsom prison-break of last December and who is now in the Sacramento County jail, is the perpetrator of several daring crimes, the authorship of which was never discovered by the law officers of the various parts of the State where they were committed, though every effort was made to ferret out the guilty man or men. It was to Charles N. Stephens, alias Jones, who was convicted of having helped plan the killing Frank L. Drake at “Hollow Tree,” or Monroe, in Mendocino County, that Finley made his statements regarding the crimes he had committed.
Drake was a lumberman and had saved $300. Finley went to his cabin at night to rob him and shot him dead when he showed signs of resistance. Stephens and W.H. Owens were convicted on the testimony of Mrs. May Ottie and her daughter, named Ketchings, with whom the two men were living, of having planned the murder and robbery with Finley. Both are now at San Quentin prison, serving life sentences. Stephens was brought to the prison on Sunday by Sheriff Smith of Ukiah. On the way he told the Sheriff all about Finley’s statements.
According to Finley’s stories, he held up the Bartlett stage twice, robbed a saloon-keeper in a small place in Mendocino County of $1,500, helped rob the Piedmont car barn in Oakland, when the night watchman was shot; killed a messenger named Overmeyer near Ukiah three years ago, held up several persons in a saloon in the Fresno mountains, held up street-car conductors in Los Angeles, robbed a faro bank at some county fair and committed numerous other crimes before finally getting his desserts when he robbed and killed Drake. He also planned the robbery of a lumber company’s paymaster, Stephens says.
Confesses state robberies
Warden Tompkins drew much more from Stephens at San Quentin prison yesterday. The young man did not seem desirous of concealing anything Finley had told him, but he did not remember full details in any of the cases. It developed that he first met Finley through taking up a quarter section of timber land at the request of the latter, this land to be sold to timber grabbers who had employed Finley to locate for them. Stephens did not remember their names, if he had ever heard them.
“I remember that Finley told me he had held up the Bartlett Springs stage twice,” said Stephens. “He told me also that he had worked as a street-car conductor in San Francisco and while so employed had, with another conductor, robbed the office of a street-railway company at a car barn, the night watchman being killed by them during the robbery. He said that immediately after the crime they mingled with the crowd that gathered and were foremost in assisting in the search for the robbers. He said they secured $2,000 or $3,000 in this robbery.
“Most of the crimes he told me about were committed by him alone, he said. Without assistance he entered a saloon in the mountains in Fresno County and held up a half dozen men who were in the place, taking whatever they had. He got $600 out of this robbery; I remember him saying.
“Then he said he had made some streetcar holdups in Los Angeles in 1902 or 1903. He also told me about holding up a faro bank at some county fair five or six years ago. I cannot remember the name of the place, not being familiar with the State. Another crime he told me of was the holding up of a saloon kept by Mike Griday at a place called Eusaw, as I remember it, in Northern Mendocino County. He said he got $1,000 or $1,500 out of this.
Plan to rob paymaster
“Finley told me his method of avoiding detection was to get away into the fastnesses of the mountains immediately after the commission of a crime. He would remain hidden in some wild place that only he knew, he said, until the excitement had died out, and then appear in some other locality, put on good clothes and mingle freely with the people.
“I first met Finley in Humboldt County three months prior to the murder of Drake, and it was then he induced me to locate the land. Almost immediately he began talking crime to me. He had a plan to rob the Riverbank Lumber Company’s paymaster by holding up the engine on which he took the monthly payroll money to the lumber camps. He was to do this job this summer, but his arrest for the killing of Drake prevented him. The company’s practice was to send the money, they paid off in cash then, to Corbell, and from there the paymaster took it to the logging camps on a special engine on the extension road. There was usually $20,000 or $30,000 sent up each month.
“No, he didn’t talk so much about derailing or flagging the engine. His scheme was to disguise himself as a detective and ask permission to ride on the engine to the camps, on the pretense that there was a man there he wanted, and to hold up the paymaster on the way. Only the engineer and the fireman went with the paymaster. I told Finley I would have nothing to do with this, as crime didn’t pay.”
In reply to a question by Warden Tompkins, Stephens said Finley seemed to be telling of his crimes to let him know how safe and profitable such work was, to induce him to join with him. “I believe that most of what Finley told me was true,” said Stephens.
Car Barn robberies
The Bartlett Springs stage was held up by a lone highwayman almost on top of the grade on July 20, 1903, and again by a lone highwayman on July 6 of the following year near the top of the Brim grade. In the first robbery $200 was obtained and in the second $250. The officers were convinced from the similarity of the highwayman’s actions on both occasions that one man committed both robberies.
The post office directory does not show a town by the name ‘Eusaw” in Mendocino County.
In 1892 the car barn on Haight street at the park in this city was robbed. The watchman was shot at, but not hit. In 1894 the Piedmont car barn in Oakland was robbed, and on this occasion the watchman was killed.
On the way to San Quentin Stephens gave Sheriff Smith a knife three inches long he had made from a piece of steel from a ready-made necktie. He had spent eight days sharpening it on the jail floor, he said, and had intended to open the veins of his wrist in case he was sentenced to be hanged. He confessed that he had tried to get the other prisoners to block the door so he could kill Cal Toney, the jailer, but they refused. He made keys for the jail door, but they broke in the lock.
Stephens said the report that Finley owned a well-stocked farm in Stanislaus County was true and that he had bought it with the proceeds of robberies.
“They only wanted me as witness at first,” said Stephens, “and let me go, with instructions that I report every few days. I got tired [of] reporting and went to British Columbia. I came back a short time ago, and the two women with whom Owens and I lived swore us into prison. It was the old woman, Mrs. Ottie, who really planned the robbery of Drake, as she wanted the money to go to Oregon with. In trying to save her, for the sake of the girl, with whom I was in love, I got myself into this.
“Well, I’d sooner die in jail in my own country than live a wanderer in a foreign land,” he concluded.
Stephens is a Tennessean and came to this State four years ago. Finley is from Kentucky.
Finley is now awaiting trial in Sacramento on a charge of murderous assault upon Captain of the Guard Murphy during the Folsom break.
(DA EYSTER: Using the correct spelling we know the ‘Eusaw’ robbery did indeed happen as evidenced by an article in the Ukiah newspaper published on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 1899:
Usal Robbery
The successful holdup and robbery of Mike Freitag’s saloon at Usal Monday night caused quite a stir on the northern coast. It is said that two masked robbers got away with $3000. A reward of $1000 for the capture of the robbers caused a diligent scouring of the surrounding country. Constable Redwine of Covelo took up the hunt and deputy Sheriff Stevenson was instructed by Sheriff Smith to use every endeavor to capture the thieves. Suspicion fell upon two men who had been attending the races at Round Valley, and upon leaving Covelo had gone in the direction of Usal.”
DA Eyster: The Usal robbery was reported statewide, as evidence by a news article in the Salinas Californian newspaper published on Saturday, Nov. 11, 1899:
Bold robbery at Usal
The Overland and Coast stage driver last night brought news of a bold robbery at Usal, when Michael Frietag, the proprietor of a saloon was slightly wounded by a shot fired by one of two masked highwaymen. The liquor dealer was relieved of several hundred dollars. A number of customers were in the saloon at the time of the hold-up and were herded together and cowed by cocked revolvers while the robbery proceeded.”
DA Eyster said the Finley case shows that “It’s clear many things weird, notorious, or criminal – and sometimes all three – have over the years been attracted to and passed through our beautiful county!”
