Chapter 5

DEATH OF A LUMBER BARON

It was a quiet September evening when one of Bay City’s lumber barons, Franklin Eddy Parker, a forty-nine-year-old accomplished businessman and industry leader, went out for a stroll.

It was the long Labor Day weekend. Businesses would be closed again on Monday, so Parker was not in a major hurry to get home to bed.

Parker had been born into the prosperous Eddy lumbering family through his mother, Laura Matilda Eddy, and he had partnered with relatives in several sawmills and lumber operations in Bay City. In other words, he was wealthy and resided on Center Avenue, the smart address for many in the well-to-do set.

On that Sunday evening, September 4, 1916, Franklin E. Parker and his wife, Mary, had entertained in their home at 1406 Center. Among those who attended were relatives Charles F. Eddy and his wife who lived across the street in the same block.

Parker was energetic and often went for walks before retiring for the night, and on this evening, he walked the Eddys back to their home at the corner of Center and Lincoln Avenues, where the Central Fire Station is today. According to Mrs. Eddy, Parker then continued on to visit a friend nearby and was walking east back toward his home when two shots rang out.

According to police, Parker was walking on the sidewalk across Center opposite from the Eddy home when two men approached him from behind and ordered him to raise his hands. He turned his head and attempted to swivel his body around when one of the men fired a .32-caliber pistol, the bullets striking him in the back and arm. Stunned by the gunfire and the burning pain, Parker continued to turn to face his attackers and instinctively swung his walking stick at them.

Lumber barons like Parker made their fortunes with sawmill operations like these along the river, where the floating booms, ready for the cutting season, were herded. Bay County Historical Museum.

Parker was gunned down as he strolled through this quiet, upscale Center Avenue neighborhood. Bay County Historical Museum.

The fact that he still was upright seemed to unnerve the two bandits, who turned on their heels and began running north on Lincoln. Police noted that if robbery was the intent, they failed to take anything. In the meantime, the wounded Parker staggered into the street and attempted to wave down two motorists who sped past him. Finally, a third driver, identified as automobile salesman William E. Bouchey, saw the man in the street and went past him, but as he did, he recognized Parker and turned around, motoring back up to him. He got out and asked what was wrong.

“I’ve been shot,” Parker groaned and stumbled to the car. Bouchey helped him into the vehicle, and they drove up the block to Parker’s home. He helped the lumberman get inside the house, where his family could help and call for a doctor. In the meantime, other people who heard the shots called police.

Mrs. Eddy said when she heard the shots, she looked out her window to see a man stumbling in the street. She didn’t recognize him as Parker and thought it was someone who was intoxicated.

“He was walking around in a circle,” she said. “I heard him say ‘I’ve been shot.’ He repeated this two or three more times and just then an automobile came by. He motioned for the driver to stop but it went right on.”

She said eventually a car stopped, and the man was helped. She later learned from another neighbor that the man in the street was Parker.

The doctors who came to the Parker house began tending to the wounds, and it seemed, for a time, that the victim was responding to the treatment, although they were not able to remove the bullets. Later, though, his condition worsened, and he was taken to Mercy Hospital. An X-ray showed that the bullet that entered his back was lodged in his liver. The other bullet hit the right arm and moved up into the shoulder but was not considered life threatening.

He again seemed to rally for a brief time, but after a few hours, his condition declined. Surgery was required. Authorities reported that he was wheeled in to surgery and, at about 6:00 a.m., died on the operating table. Doctors reported that the bullet not only had penetrated the liver but also had damaged the kidney, and there was extensive internal bleeding that was difficult to stem.

The police acknowledged there were no new solid leads in the case, but the police chief said more than a dozen suspects had been rounded up. All of them had alibis and were released.

The public learned of the death of lumber baron Franklin Eddy Parker after he was shot down on Center Avenue. Bay City Times-Tribune, September 5, 1916.

Parker was taken here, Mercy Hospital, where he expired. Bay County Historical Museum.

Some important information did surface about the night of the shooting. Police said their immediate investigation discovered that a home at 1212 Park Avenue occupied by Blaine Bristol had been burglarized prior to the shooting. That was about twelve blocks from the shooting scene.

They said thieves broke in by cutting a screen and opening a side door. They drew on the tablecloth a skull and crossbones and outlined a hand. Police weren’t quite sure to make of it but realized it had been done for a reason. The thieves found two small cash banks and took them to the basement to open them. About ten dollars in cash was taken.

“The men who robbed the home of Blaine Bristol helped themselves to both beer and whiskey,” said police chief George Davis, quoted in the Times-Tribune , “and there is the possibility that the job was done by amateurs who, their brains fired up by liquor, set out on a more reckless career. We do not know, of course, whether Mr. Parker was shot by professional holdup men or by local talent in that line, but it seems quite apparent that whoever did the shooting lost their nerve when the victim did not fall after the second shot was fired. Consequently, no attempt was made to search him for valuables.”

Mr. Parker was an interesting figure in Bay City’s history, though his name is not as well known as some of the other lumber kings.

Franklin Eddy Parker was born in Bangor, Maine, on January 28, 1867, to Edward Everett Parker and Laura Matilda Eddy Parker. He attended the Boston Latin School, where his parents had moved when he was still quite young.

Based on a brief biography in the Bay City Tribune in 1912, Parker attended Harvard University, graduating in 1889. He also took some postgraduate law classes.

He may have been at odds with his family since he didn’t go right into the lumber business. Instead, he struck out on his own, going out West to work for the Montana Union Railroad in Butte, and later, he became chief clerk in the general agent’s office of the Union Pacific Railway. He came to Bay City, where several of his relatives were engaged in the lumber industry, in 1891 and was employed as a commercial agent for the Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad. Two years later, he was promoted to superintendent of the water lines for the same rail line in Ludington.

In 1894, he returned to Bay City and finally went into the lumber business as secretary and treasurer of the Eddy, Sheldon Co. He also held the same position later with the Mershon, Schutte, Parker & Co. lumber firm. In 1908, he took over as president, and the company became Mershon, Eddy, Parker & Co.

While he was working for the railroad, young Franklin Parker had his Bay City offices in the Pere Marquette station. Bay County Historical Museum.

The Tribune noted that Parker served as president of the Saginaw Valley Lumber Dealers Association and as a trustee of the National Wholesale Lumber Dealers Association. He was also elected association president, evidence that he was nationally known and respected.

He married Mary Beecher Bishop of Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1882. They were the parents of one son and two daughters: Franklin Eddy Parker Jr., Mary Bishop Parker Smith and Laura Loranne Parker.

Parker was a vestryman with the Trinity Episcopal Church and held membership in the Bay City Club, Saginaw Country Club, Bay City Country Club and the prestigious Harvard Club of New York.

Charles E. Pierce, former Bay County prosecutor and a defense attorney in a number of criminal cases, told reporters that he believed the crime was committed by youths rather than hardened professional criminals.

I have found that the code of professional criminals is never to take a life unless it becomes absolutely necessary to protect their own. Here is a case where the object of the footpads was given no show whatever. He was simply shot in the back, after which the perpetrators hastened away. The motive may have been robbery, but if it was, the highwaymen gave no indications of it by their actions. The act was one of the most cowardly in the annals of local history.

The abundance of timber on the river gave rise to powerful lumber barons who respected Parker enough to elect him leader of their association. Bay County Historical Museum.

His words might have held the truth in most cases, but when it came to the South End Gang in Bay City, his observations proved unflinchingly wrong. This appeared to be the gang’s first major violent act but not its last. However, police did not link the shooting to the gang—at least, not right away.

Three days after the shooting, the Bay County Board of Auditors authorized a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Parker’s murder.

In a related incident, police said they were notified by William Mitchell, owner of Bay City Auto Co., that he was driving west on Fifth Avenue toward Johnson Street on the night of the shooting when someone tried to get him to stop his car. He said a man was in the road and another on the sidewalk, somewhat in shadow. The one in the road had raised his hands trying to get him to stop the car, but he continued forward, forcing the man to jump out of the way. Mitchell said he reported it just in case the men he saw were the ones involved in the shooting.

Citizens began offering money to authorities to add to the reward, and by September 9, the reward amount had reached $3,000. Flyers were printed informing the public of the reward, but no one came forward.

Day after day—then month after month—went by, but there was no progress. Leads dried up. A year passed and then two and three. The case went cold with zero new leads, and the files were put in a cabinet—not forgotten, but simply inactive, waiting for a day when some glimmer of information might appear.

That glimmer came in a strange way over four years later. It wasn’t only the fact that there was a lead but also the source of the lead that surprised police. A career criminal, a robber and murderer convicted in the slaying of two men during a South End bank robbery, offered information to an officer taking him to prison.

Aloysius “Long Legs” Nowak, twenty, a member of the South End Gang and one of four gang members to rob the bank on January 15, 1921, claimed that the gang leader, Steve Madaj, was the one who had pulled the trigger and murdered Franklin Parker.

Steve Madaj was identified as the killer of Franklin Parker. Bay City Times-Tribune, February 7, 1921.

On February 4, 1921, after Nowak and the three other gang members were sentenced to life in prison for the bank robbery and murders, he talked to one of his guards, a Bay County deputy sheriff escorting him on the train to Marquette. Nowak embellished the story somewhat, but that didn’t rule him out as the second man who attacked Parker. In any event, he knew Madaj well and actually was one of his trusted lieutenants, running a crew of his own. He claimed Madaj had knocked Parker to his knees and then shot him. He said after the shooting, the gang members ran down Lincoln Street to Fifth Street, which meshes with the statement given by motorist William Mitchell who said a man tried to stop his car on Fifth.

The Parker murder might have been one of the early attempts at armed robbery by Madaj, but he quickly honed his skills and committed numerous robberies and murders later on. He was in the Bay County jail awaiting trial in another series of robberies when his gang hit the bank and he was told of Nowak’s statement.

Madaj admitted he had told gang members that he had shot Parker to bolster his image as leader, but he really didn’t have anything to do with it. However, based on Nowak’s accusation and further investigation by Bay City police and even a private investigator from Grand Rapids hired by local banks, evidence turned up pointing to Madaj as the one who killed Parker, and Madaj was charged with first-degree murder.

Investigators looked for evidence besides Nowak’s statements and came up with another source that was even more solid—Madaj’s accomplice.

The trial started in Bay County Circuit Court on March 14 with the painstaking process of selecting jurors, running through several panels before defense attorney James L. McCormick and prosecutor William A. Collins ran out of challenges and agreed on a jury.

Observers noted that the courtroom was overflowing and that more than three hundred people lined the sidewalks between the jail and the county building, across Center Avenue from each other, as seven armed sheriff’s deputies walked the gantlet of the curious citizens making sure no one got too close to Madaj.

Once in the courtroom, Collins told the jury that Madaj’s companion involved in the shooting, a gang member named Stanley Delestowicz, would testify and name Madaj as the shooter. Delestowicz had already pleaded guilty to being involved in the robbery-murder. He testified that Madaj said they were going to go along Center Avenue until they found someone to rob. They saw Parker and moved quickly up behind him, ordering him to put his hands up, and as Parker was about to turn around to face them, Madaj fired twice with a .32-caliber pistol.

He said they were surprised that Parker didn’t fall down right away and were worried the noise would alert the neighborhood, so they ran off, heading north on Lincoln to Fifth Street and then north again to the railroad crossing, where they split up. Delestowicz said he ran all the way to the fairgrounds on the eastern city limits and hid for a while to make sure no one was coming for him. He then walked down another set of tracks to Tuscola Road, where he met up with Madaj. He said they walked down Columbus to Farragut Street, where they split up again.

Madaj took the stand next and claimed he was not even in the city when Parker was murdered. He claimed that he was in Cleveland, Ohio, after being laid off from a Munger farm as a farmworker. He said he didn’t even associate with Delestowicz until sometime during 1917.

The jury was given the case to deliberate in the late afternoon and, ninety minutes later, returned with a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. For a brief moment as the jury verdict was read, Madaj showed his first signs of emotion, dropping his head and wiping at his eyes, but then he straightened up and regained his indifferent pose.

Bay County circuit judge Samuel G. Houghton sentenced Madaj on March 17, 1921, to two terms of life in prison without parole, one for the Parker murder and the other, for which he pleaded guilty, for attempted prison escape when he tried to break out of Jackson Prison from an earlier auto theft conviction.

A heavily guarded Madaj was taken by train immediately to Marquette Prison to begin serving his two life terms.