The Great Halloween Massacre: A dark time in Kennewick

Dressed in a black slouch hat and a sheepskin-lined coat, Jake Lake emerged from the trees with his rifle drawn and offered a sinister greeting.

“Good evening, gentleman,” he said, by a witness account. “You are looking for trouble and you’ll get it.”

Without hesitation, the convicted felon unloaded his gun on three lawmen and an unsuspecting citizen who had come to the Northern Pacific Bridge in Kennewick searching for suspected burglars.

What followed is often referred to as the “Great Halloween Massacre” or the “Poplar Grove Shootout.”

The gun battle on Halloween 1906 left four men dead, including Lake, two law enforcement officers and a member of a town posse. The town sheriff also was shot, but survived.

A second suspect — known as George “Kid” Barker — was eventually apprehended. Reports say he later escaped from the Benton County jail and was never tracked down.

The shootout nearly 110 years ago is the deadliest shooting involving law enforcement in the history of Kennewick, which had incorporated just two years earlier.

More than 50 years after the shootout, members of the Benton County Historical Association unanimously voted the incident the most exciting event in the city’s history.

“Up until that time ... (Kennewick) was kind of a sleepy little town. There wasn’t a lot happening,” said Corene Hulse, administrator at the East Benton County Historical Society & Museum.

Accounts of the firefight differ in newspaper accounts at the time — The Kennewick Courier and a newspaper in Spokane.

The trouble started Oct. 30, 1906, when at least one person broke into hardware and general stores. Marshal Mike Glover investigated the burglaries and sent word to Prosser to get help from Benton County Sheriff A.G. McNeill.

The sheriff boarded a train and arrived in Kennewick on Halloween morning.

Deputy Joe Holzhey and saloon owner H.E. Roseman set out to look for suspects at a homeless camp called the “hobo jungle” in a poplar grove.

A hostile pair of men apparently met the deputy and Roseman at the camp, so they left, hoping to meet up with the sheriff and marshal.

Together the four lawmen returned to the camp to question the suspicious drifters — a decision that proved to be fatal.

As the group approached the trees, Lake appeared and opened fire, reports said. Marshal Glover was shot dead and Holzhey was hit in the abdomen. He died a day later.

Barker, who was a teen at the time, also fired at them.

Roseman, the saloon owner, was unarmed and ran for cover. McNeill and Holzhey returned fire, and Lake was fatally shot.

McNeill was seriously wounded, but Roseman managed to put the sheriff in a cart and wheel him back to town.

Soon, word of the shootout spread in Kennewick — population of about 500 — and a posse formed to search for Barker.

“By dusk, some 200 men were armed and waiting when a Walla Walla prison guard arrived with a pack of bloodhounds,” according to a Herald story in 1979 detailing the shooting.

After hours of searching, the posse cornered Barker in a ditch. Posse member Forrest Perry was hiding in some brush when he began shouting for Barker to come out.

Posse members mistook him for Barker and fired at him. Perry was shot several times and died three hours later.

Barker was captured and taken to the Benton County jail. Newspaper stories at the time reported Barker admitted to firing his gun, but claimed he never struck any of the lawmen.

Some reports say Barker escaped the jail within a few days or months. There was speculation around town that Barker’s family might have paid for him to get out.

“The town saw enough tragedy that Halloween to last a lifetime, and if Barker wanted to go in peace, it was all right with the people of Kennewick,” Ralph Reed, a former reporter, told the Herald in 1979.

The town came together to bury Glover, who had reportedly been marshal in the city for three years and left behind five children. His headstone still stands at Riverview Heights Cemetery in Kennewick.

A funeral was held for Holzhey at the Methodist Church, but his body was returned to his hometown in Kansas.

In 1998, Glover and Holzhey were awarded the state Law Enforcement Medal of Honor as part of a state project to honor fallen officers dating back to 1855, according to the East Benton County Historical Society.

The fallen officers are memorialized on a plaque off Canal Drive and another in the Kennewick police station. They also were remembered at a 100th anniversary of the police department.

The plaque serves as a reminder to all officers of the sacrifice the men made to try and protect the city, said Kennewick police Sgt. Ken Lattin.

“Its a grim reminder, but it is a reminder each day we come to work that we need to be safe,” he said.

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 5:33 PM with the headline "The Great Halloween Massacre: A dark time in Kennewick."