Criminal - The Ghoul of Grays Harbor

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

The Pacific Northwest was said to be terrorized by a serial killer in the early 20th century. Bodies were floating to the surface of the Chehalis and Wishkah Rivers. A local police chief told reporters that he believed that they were dealing with “the greatest murderer of the age.” But the real story was a lot more complex. It’s about myth-making and working conditions, The Sailors' Union of the Pacific, and a man named William Gohl (often called Billy Gohl) who angered the wealthiest and influential people in town: “They saw him as a thorn in their side and as a person who needed to be removed.”  Aaron Goings’ book is The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In the early 20th century, in an especially rainy part of Washington state called Grays Harbor, bodies started floating to the surface of the Chehalis and Whisker Rivers. Police referred to the bodies as the Floater Fleet. One paper described what was going on as a reign of terror. And even today, more than a century later, many people believe the bodies were the work of a serial killer. Some say the worst serial killer in America. He came to be known as the ghoul of Grays Harbor.

I would occasionally have teachers mention the so-called ghoul of Grays Harbor. Historian and author Aaron Goings, he grew up near Grays Harbor. And I even remember in passing, people mentioning him, including my wonderful grandmother, I think, had some nasty things about him. What did your grandmother say? The only thing that really, that I can remember is that she used the word bastard. One newspaper reported that the ghoul of Grays Harbor, quote, littered the bay with his victims. Estimates range from 40 to nearly 200. In 1910, the Aberdeen chief of police told reporters that he believed that they were dealing with the greatest murderer

of the age. It was terrifying to think that one man could have killed so many people and disposed of them in the rivers without anyone seeing him for years. His name was Billy Gall, and he was the leader of a sailors' union. People said that when sailors went to the union headquarters, Billy Gall would befriend them. He'd find a way to ask about their money and valuables, who they knew in town, if anyone.

If a sailor was just passing through, as many were, he would shoot them, take their valuables, and send their bodies down a trap door into the river. But Billy Gall himself said the story about him was just the dream of some dime store novel writer. I'm Phoebe Judge.

This is Criminal. Tell me a little bit about what Billy was like. What did he look like? So Billy's appearance is a matter of debate, or I suppose it's a part of the myth. Many writers over the years have suggested that he was a massive person, but in fact, he was a person of fairly standard size. But people since then have exaggerated his appearance, his stature, his strength to make it seem like he was capable of terrorizing people because of his, just his massiveness. Billy Gall was born in Germany in the late 1800s and immigrated to America, where he worked as a sailor on what have been called the sweatshops of the sea.

And this was a brutal, a bruising industry. Many of these ships, including those written about by the most famous of these sailors, Jack London, described these hell ships. Sailors described being routinely and violently beaten by ships officers. One sailor was reportedly killed when a second mate knocked him down and jumped on his chest. The captain lied and said that the man had died of consumption. Sailors wrote about their mistreatment, not being fed enough or being given rotten food. One man was gagged because he was caught singing. And these accounts were collected into what was called the Red Record. And what they tell about in this Red Record is a history of just unimaginable cruelty, something that wasn't experienced in mines or

logging camps or any other industry, because the conditions were so bad with merchant sailors that many captains had to resort to kidnapping. So they would have to drug or beat up workers or sometimes other people, bring them to the ships. And when those workers woke up, they were out at sea and forced to work aboard ship. When they did return to port, it was lined with saloons. And sailors would drink with another group of workers in a dangerous industry, logging. By the early 20th century, Grays Harbor was the largest lumber port in the world, and the lumber industry at that time has been called more deadly than war. Workers knew

full well the dangers of their jobs, but what they demanded was at least a little bit of respect from their employers, and they demanded living wages. So beginning in the 1890s, blue-collar workers, especially in maritime transport, so sailors as well as longshoremen, begin to band together in these unions. Union membership in Grays Harbor was growing very quickly by the time Billy Gall settled there in 1903. And his life in Aberdeen was really dedicated to protecting his fellow sailors, those he called comrades. Billy was elected as the Aberdeen agent of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, which was the oldest local union and often seen as the most important.

He got married. His wife, Bessie, ran her own business and supported the union however she could. She was said to be seen around town wearing a sailor suit and cap. One paper once said that Billy always appeared very fond of his wife, and the two were seen frequently taking a quiet stroll together. Aaron Goings says that a big part of Billy's job was patrolling the docks, looking for missing workers. When a Union sailor died, Billy planned the funeral

and sold their possessions for money to send to their families. He helped organize parades and picnics for Labor Day and the Fourth of July. He pressured ship owners and captains to honor union contracts and called for boycotts of companies that did not. He had studied law and sometimes acted as an attorney for union members. He also acted as a translator for sailors who didn't speak English. But this goodwill only extended to immigrants from certain countries. The union had rules about who could join, which Aaron Goings describes as an unsubtle way to restrict membership to whites. Billy campaigned for better working conditions for white sailors,

while participating in organizations dedicated to excluding Asian immigrants from finding work. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited people from China from coming to the United States to find work, had been in effect for more than 20 years, and would remain in place for almost 40 more. Billy Gall helped white sailors find places to live and sometimes helped them build very basic shelters along the waterfront. He wrote editorials about the terrible conditions on the so-called hell ships, like the ones he had once worked on. He wrote,

Local sailors saw Billy Gall as a hero. Employers, though, saw him somewhat differently, both in newspapers and in statements from lumbermen and shippers. We see a very different picture. We see that they actually hate Billy and refer to him as a pirate and refer to him repeatedly as a violent thug and anarchist. Many states passed anti- or criminal anarchy laws in the early 20th century, and anarchists were not allowed to emigrate to the United States. So by calling Billy an anarchist, by accusing him of all of this type of violence and the like. Employers really want to paint him in the press that they largely control as a criminal element. They saw him as a thorn in their side and as a person who needed to be removed.

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

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For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Around Grace Harbor at the beginning of the 20th century, there were a number of extremely wealthy people making money manufacturing and shipping lumber. I think it's maybe hard to wrap our heads around how much money was generated by the lumber industry for the owners and the managers. But in all western Washington towns, there's massive mansions in the wealthier parts of town that were a century ago the homes of the rich, the homes of the shippers and the lumber manufacturers. These manufacturers and shippers were determined to prevent unions from disrupting their booming businesses. They enlisted the help of politicians and newspaper editors to form

coalitions trying to undermine union efforts by any means necessary, sometimes by strategically placing newspaper stories, sometimes with outright violence. They made use of every option available to intimidate and silence workers who wanted better wages and conditions. And then, in 1906, a massive earthquake hit San Francisco. It was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Eighty percent of the city was destroyed. The city needed to be rebuilt. And to rebuild the city, locals needed building materials. And the best source of those building materials,

and one of the closest locations where those materials could be obtained was Grays Harbor. So in 1906, as we get into spring of 1906, there's this potential for massive profits flowing to Grays Harbor in the wider Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately for the sailors, the shippers absolutely refused to increase their wages or otherwise improve their conditions. So there's an increase in profits going to employers, but they refuse to share those profits with sailors. The Sailors Union of the Pacific organized a strike, a big one. The longshoremen agree to go out on strike alongside the sailors, and they just refuse to load any ships that did not agree to the union's terms. In response to that, local police and local officials turn to strike-breaking firms. These are firms that provided usually men, but not always men,

to go to the scenes of strikes and actually physically assault striking workers. And so this was a major booming industry in the early and mid-20th century as thousands or tens of thousands of strike breakers would be sent to areas experiencing a strike. With the police department deputizing these strike breakers as special police officers, and with many dozen strike breakers in the city, Billy actually begins leading armed raids of sailors and of longshoremen on ships that were being loaded by scab sailors and that were being protected by these special police, these strike breakers. prominent members of the local employing class, a man named William B. Mack, who was manager of the S.E. Slade Lumber Company, the largest lumber mill in Aberdeen. He is aboard ship as it's being loaded by a scab longshoreman about to set sail. Billy and a number of sailors actually lead a raid on that ship, demand that the scabs stop loading and not load the lumber, and eventually they trade shots. Throughout the strike, there's a series of violent confrontations on the city streets. Billy and many other sailors pull scabs off of the street cars.

They attack the scabs as they're on their way to the docks. And they really using the type of violence that we usually associate with strike breakers, Billy and other union members really control the docks, control the port and do not allow scoperated ships to operate during the strike. The strike continued for several months, and the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest came to an almost complete standstill. Manufacturers and shippers were losing a lot of money, and they were furious.

Billy and his fellow unionists had proven that they could shut that profit spigot completely. Local papers criticized and demeaned the striking workers. One piece read, quote, to call them human would be to do an injustice to the rest of the people. In the early fall of 1906, manufacturers and shippers finally agreed to meet the demands of the sailors and increased monthly wages. The strike was over. And that September, Grays Harbor produced and shipped more than 29 million board feet of lumber. Billy and others had proven that a relatively few number of workers could shut down the world's largest lumber port. for the timber industry, for the shipping of this important commodity

that is in fact the only real thing that is produced of value on Grays Harbor and in so many other parts of the Pacific Northwest. From there, Billy Gall created an alliance with Grays Harbor workers from all kinds of industries. Longshoremen, teamsters, caulkers and joiners, ship carpenters. It was called the Grays Harbor Waterfront Federation, and Billy was elected president. And then, in 1909, the Seattle branch of a large shipping firm

threatened to take their business elsewhere unless Billy Gall was removed from Grays Harbor. Local employers, after years of really burning anger toward Billy, had formed an organization, an anti-union organization called the Citizens Committee. Citizens Committees were very well known across the United States as being employers' organizations dedicated to busting unions. In Grays Harbor, their first order of business was to back the election of an anti-union mayor named Edmund Burke Benn, who hated how much influence Billy Gall had in town.

The mayor installed a new chief of police, George Dean. The Citizens Committee also hired agents from an organization called the Thiel Detective Agency. The Thiel Detective Agency was a for-hire group of labor spies, which had broken off from another agency, the Pinkertons. What labor spies did, this was their job, was to collect money from business owners or politicians and the like, and to infiltrate unions or to infiltrate working class neighborhoods, to gather or often manufacture evidence, to spread rumors about workers, labor activists, and the like, and to do everything they could to bring unions to heel, to make sure that unions or working-class organizations were defeated. In the summer of 1909, a, quote,

prominent citizen reported that Billy Gall had stolen his bicycle. The bike was Billy's. Then he was accused of stealing some clothes, and there was even a trial. The jury quickly found him not guilty. Billy knew he was being targeted. He told a local paper he was a victim of spite. So throughout 1909, especially near the end of 1909, these labor spies gather evidence. They infiltrate Billy's circles.

They befriend him and they tell the local police chief exactly what he wants to hear. They spread rumors that Billy was bragging about having committed all these murders, including having committed the murder of a man named Charles Hadberg. Billy knew Charles Hadberg. They were roommates and worked together. And Billy called him one of his best friends. The claim that Billy had bragged about killing Charles Hadberg and worked together, and Billy called him one of his best friends. The claim that Billy had bragged about killing Charles Hadberg came from a saloon owner who was actually a Thiel Detective Agency spy. His name was Patty McHugh, and he had slowly developed a friendship with Billy.

Patty McHugh claimed that Billy had said he'd killed Charles Hadberg and dumped his body in the river. Patty McHugh also said that Billy had given him an idea of where in the river the body was. And sends the police chief out to find the body. The body is not there in 1909. Dean and other officers are unable to find the body. The body does turn up in February of 1910. It's taken to the local coroner's office.

And local officials say that this body that had supposedly been in the water for six weeks, deteriorating and the like, but it belonged to Billy's good friend, Charles Hadberg. The sailors of Aberdeen go as a force, as a group, force their way into the morgue to inspect the body. And what they say is that body does not belong to Charles Hadberg. That is not his body. That is another person's body. Billy wants to see this body. He wants to inspect it to see for himself. Hadberg was, after all, his best friend, one of his best friends. They won't let Billy inspect the body either. The mayor, local police, some local business owners go to the morgue and say that body is Charles Hadberg. Billy admitted

to this labor spy that he killed Charles Hadberg. We found the body. But on the other hand, Hadberg was a sailor. Sailors are itinerant workers. The only people likely to know who he was were his fellow workers, were his fellow unionists. And they said that is not Charles Hadberg's body. Ultimately, that doesn't matter. Ultimately, authorities decide the body belongs to Charles Hadberg. Based on the claims of the labor spy Patty McHugh, Billy was arrested for murder. The day he was arrested, the Daily World newspaper in Aberdeen ran an article linking Billy, not only to the death of Charles Hadberg, but also to the dozens of bodies found in the rivers, the so-called floater fleet. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, Thank you. out for. And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics,

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arguing that the accusations were clearly an attempt to discredit the union. While he was in prison waiting for his trial to begin, Billy asked authorities to give him the third degree and said he could prove he was innocent in five minutes. He said, At the same time, the Thiel detectives looked for witnesses to testify in court that Billy had killed Charles Hadberg. They started looking for a man named John Klingenberg,

who, according to saloon owner and spy, Patty McHugh, was Billy's accomplice. They found him on a lumber ship to Mexico. The manager of Aberdeen's largest lumber mill, William B. Mack, was more than happy to get involved. Billy had shot at him years before during the strike. William B. Mack sent a wire to the Mexican port and asked the captain to basically kidnap John Klingenberg.

He is drugged, knocked out, imprisoned, and taken back to Gray's Harbor aboard ship. When he arrives in port, he is not allowed a lawyer. He is in fact taken into a hotel and interrogated by a private citizen. The private citizen is either W.B. Mack or the Thiel agent, the spy McHugh, we don't really know. Together, they work up Klingenberg's story. And the story they work up is that Klingenberg killed Charles Hedberg on Billy's orders. And that really serves as the center of the narrative that Billy is a murderer. From that point forward, it's really fairly clear that Billy is going to be convicted of murder. During the trial, the prosecution presented Klingenberg's confession that he had committed the murder under orders from Billy. The saloon owner and spy, Patty McHugh, testified. The prosecution also repeatedly accused Billy

of killing a local cigar dealer, even though no body had been found, in spite of enormous effort, and Billy had not been charged. Billy's defense had several prongs. The first part of his defense was that Charles Hedberg was one of his dearest friends and that he would never have killed one of his friends. He said things like, he is one of my dearest friends. I would never harm a hair on his body. He also said that Hadberg had told him that he was leaving Grays Harbor and that he had moved to Alaska. The biggest part of Billy's defense, though,

was that this entire operation was an anti-union conspiracy. The prosecutor responded, May God strike me dead if such a condition exists. Billy's wife, Bessie, paid close attention throughout the trial. She even stood up and objected to a state witness whose name was not on the witness list. When the jury left the courtroom to deliberate, Bessie went up to her husband's side. Billy told her, Don't worry, no matter what the verdict is. Be cool and calm.

Bessie said, I will prepare myself for a verdict of guilty. If the verdict is not guilty, I will have a pleasant surprise. In Washington State at this time, in order to serve on a jury, you had to pay property taxes. In other words, you had to be wealthy enough to own land. Aaron Goings notes that it was hardly a jury of Billy's peers. He was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to hard labor in the state penitentiary for the rest of his life. Do the bodies keep showing up in Grayays Harbor after Billy goes to prison?

Yes. Floaters keep turning up in Aberdeen and Hoquiam waters. This happens throughout the 1910s, throughout the 1920s. Evidence of floaters, of dead bodies, showing up in the waterways. You can see it looking in local newspapers. You can see it looking in police reports and in mortuary records. Aaron Goings says he thinks there are a lot of explanations for the floaters. First, it was extremely dark and unsafe around the harbor. No lights and a lot of bars. Second, shipping and logging were dangerous jobs, and working conditions

were designed for speed, not safety. They died after being hit by a pile of lumber, died by being hit by a tree falling. They died after a night of partying, falling into the water. Billy had fought to have streetlights installed along the riverbanks. He wrote to newspapers about what he saw as preventable deaths. He criticized negligent saloon owners, some of whom he thought drugged customers or served bad liquor.

Billy wrote, the dead will rise out of their watery graves to attest the damnable methods used by these human sharks in order to get rich quick. But nothing was done, and Billy was blamed in the end for the deaths he tried to prevent. At the time of Billy's sentencing, several locals began to create this myth that by removing Billy, they had eliminated all the violence, all of the death,

all of these really horrible stories, this floaters, that the floater fleeted and floated away, I suppose. But the reality is that even with Billy gone, the structural problems that created so much death, created so much violence, remained. And the evidence is fairly clear that Billy did not launch the floater fleet. But in fact, the floater fleet was the result of a lot of different causes. And by sentencing one person to prison, they could not end this violence. It remained for years after Billy was in prison. Billy Gall always maintained his innocence.

He died in March of 1927 after being transferred to a hospital from prison. Today when people talk about him, they tell a serial killer story. The ghoul of Grays Harbor who created a reign of terror. That's what you find when you Google him. You would find a lot of hits, and those hits would all tell versions of the same story. And that story would be that long before the Green River Killer, long before Ted Bundy, the Pacific Northwest produced one of the world's worst serial killers, the America's most prolific serial killer, as he's often labeled, a person

who, between 1903 and 1910, terrorized Grays Harbor's workforce and was basically responsible for not only the violent crimes, but most of the criminal activities in that area. And the crimes that journalists attributed to Billy and that subsequent authors have attributed to Billy just seemed so out of character for who he was and what he spent his life doing. His life was dedicated to making the waterfront a decent, safe, and dignified place for those people who, like him, spent their lives at hard work, never achieving much in the way of money or wealth or property, but that they did so much of the hard work that made the lumber trade possible.

They made the profits going to wealthy people possible. And Billy wanted those lives to be lives of dignity. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Susanna Robertson is our producer. Engineering by Russ Henry. Audio mix by Johnny Vince Evans, Michael Raphael, and Rob Byers of Final Final V2. Aaron Goings' book is The Port of Missing Men, Billy Gall, Labor, and Brut brutal times in the Pacific Northwest.

Julie and Alexander creates original illustrations for each episode, and some merch. We have bags and shirts and even a water bottle. You can see it all at thisiscriminal.com. Follow us online and let us know what you think about the story, or if you have another story you'd like to hear us cover. We're on Twitter, at Criminal Show, Instagram, at Criminal underscore Podcast,

and on Facebook, at This Is Criminal. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia. From PRX. medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with

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