June 21, 2022 • 43 mins
Karen's friend, Stephanie White, cracked the identity of DC Metro Police 'ex-Sergeant Greene", named numerous times in Captain Vollten's 1954 Addendum report. Who was this man and how did he play a role in the murders of Emory Smith and James Mitchell?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It wouldn't surprise me at all incompetence or corruption, especially
in DC. There was a lot of activity going on.
The case was forgotten by open up this can of worm.
There were things that were just best left buried. Welcome
back to Shattered Souls the car Barn Murders. I'm your host,
(00:23):
Karen Smith. This is episode fourteen. This podcast contains graphic
language and is not suitable for children. Previously on the
Carborn Murders. As I was approaching what I thought was
(00:44):
the end of my investigation, retired Montgomery County Detective Jack
to Me asked me if I was in possession of
an addendum report written by Captain Theodore Volton in nineteen
fifty four. That report was not included in the file
on my origin an old Freedom of Information Act request.
I don't know why, since I have evidence that the
(01:05):
nineteen fifty four report was inside the file. In twenty sixteen,
when NBC Washington did their story on the Carborn case,
that very frustrating fact aside, Jack to Me very kindly
emailed me a copy that he happened to have in
his files. The nineteen fifty four report was filled with
(01:26):
new information from two of Captain Bolton's confidential informants, and
it gave me the links I needed to put all
of the pieces together and cross the threshold from probable
cause to beyond a reasonable doubt, at least in my mind.
The addendum had some new names to find in research.
First on my list was to find out the identity
(01:47):
of ex Sergeant Green from the d C Metro Police Force.
Green's name was mentioned twelve times in this new report,
and Bolton's female informant directly implicated ex Sergeant Green in
the planning of the robbery and murders, along with my
primary suspect, William Clark. Detailed historical information on Washington d
(02:10):
C residence is really hard to find. There are no
lists of former d C police officers in historical archives,
no congressional records with specific names other than the politicians
of the time, and the name Green it might as
well have been Smith, Jones or Williams. Luckily for me,
I have a friend who is a crack researcher, and
(02:32):
she's incredibly adept at finding needles in a haystack. I
gave her a call and asked for help because I
was at a loss regarding where to begin to find
the identity of ex Sergeant Green. My friend is a
miracle worker, and without her help on this next element,
I'd likely still be sitting on my duff with no
hair left on my head, trying to figure this out.
(02:53):
Stephanie White, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude
for digging into the historical records like a piranha with
a t bone from the bottom of my heart. Thank you,
You're an angel on earth. Top shelf, Tequila's and dinner
on me the next time we get together, sister. After
Stephanie and I talked and traded a few emails, we
(03:15):
knew that finding ex Sergeant Green was going to be
a big hurdle. We knew he was an ex sergeant,
that he had to have left the d C Metropolitan
Police Force before nineteen forty, and his last name, no
first name, no initials. That wasn't a lot of information
to work with, But there was one small clue in
the nineteen fifty four report that gave both of us
(03:37):
a jumping off point. That was the mention that ex
Sergeant Green died in nineteen fifty. With that, we went
to work and in short order I got an email
in all caps. Stephanie found him. His name was Jonas
Willard Green. Once I had his full name, I was
(03:59):
able to find and a whole lot more than I
bargained for. Jonas Willard Green was the nexus for the
entire case, the major link I'd been missing. I'm going
to parse everything down and try to keep the majority
of the information on Jonas Willard Green focused on the
Carborn case, but there were historical details that spoke to
what I consider to be his contemptible character that I
(04:22):
need to include. So first, who was this man? Jonas
Willard Green the fifth was born on the fourth of
July eighteen eighty His father, Jonas Willard Green the fourth,
was a prominent lawyer in Manassas, Virginia. He died in
eighteen eighty one, when Green was only eleven months old.
(04:43):
His grandfather was an outspoken judge who ran for United
States Senate in Maine. Jonas Willard Green bragged that he
had attended the prestigious Virginia Military Institute, but that was
found to be a lie. He actually attended the less
prestigious Danville Military Academy in Virginia. After graduation, he joined
(05:06):
the d C Metropolitan Police Force in nineteen o one.
Jonas Willard Green married his first wife, Mabel Kincello, in
nineteen o one. They had one child, Jonas Willard Green,
the sixth, and they divorced a few years later. Mabel
Kincello listed herself as widowed on the nineteen ten census.
(05:26):
I assumed it wasn't an amicable divorce and Mabel never remarried.
Jonas Willard Green married his second wife, Gertrude Pond, in
nineteen twelve. Gertrude came from a very wealthy Silk Stocking
District family. Her father, William, owned a tobacco store and
he was a very successful businessman. William was a prominent
(05:50):
mason with social ties to the political and rich elite
of the Gilded Age in d c. Gertrude lived a
charmed life as a young girl a the aristocratic district
society and her father, William Pond, died in April of
nineteen twelve, around the same time frame as Gertrude's marriage
to Jonas Willard Green. Upon his death, William left his
(06:12):
vast estate to Gertrude's mother, Hattie Pond. According to Jonas
Willard Green, he met Gertrude when her gold mesh handbag
was stolen and he was assigned to investigate the theft.
Her purse was worth a hundred and eighty dollars in
nineteen twelve, the equivalent of about three thousand dollars today,
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so it would have been on par with maybe a
Louis Vuitton. Jonas Willard Green recovered her purse and returned it,
which is allegedly how their relationship began. Jonas Willard Green
moved his way up the ranks to police sergeant, and
his salary was around seventy five to a hundred dollars
a month, the equivalent of thirty six thousand dollars a
(06:53):
year today, not a windfall of money and certainly not
what Gertrude was accustomed to, But nevertheless, they got married
and they had two children, son Eugene and daughter Gertrude,
named after her mother. In nineteen fifteen, several officers in
the third Precinct, where Green was stationed, went to Atlantic
(07:13):
City for various reasons. One officer said that his wife
was ill, another was going on vacation. When Jonas Willard
Green put in his last minute leave slip, he fibbed
and told his superiors that his son was ill and
he needed to go to New Jersey to help care
for him. Atlantic City wasn't a hotbed of racketeering until
(07:34):
the nineteen twenties, but it was a vacation hot spot.
In nineteen fifteen, Jonas Willard Green left his wife and
son back in de c for some last minute trip
to Atlantic City. Now here's where the Green's story will
really start to pinch your eyebrows. In nineteen nineteen, Jonas
Willard Green was making a sergeant's salary, but he and
(07:57):
Gertrude purchased a mansion formerly owned by Governor Alexander Shepherd.
I found several photos of the Shepherd Mansion online, and
it was quite something to behold. It was on the
corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street, and it was
actually three stately mansions all connected into one block sized building.
(08:19):
It was known as Shepherd's Row. It was built for
Boss Alexander Shepherd in eight seventy three at a cost
of one hundred fifty thousand dollars, which was outrageous back then.
That equates to over five million dollars today. Here's a
description of the Shepherd Mansion. From the website The Streets
of Washington. The stately former mansion of Boss Alexander Shepherd,
(08:43):
on the northeast corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street Northwest,
was one of the most prominent of the great houses
that lined K Street during the Gilded Age. The house
was an emphatic expression of wealth and power. While Shepherd
lived there only for a few years, its prominence in
Washington social life endured for another half century, as diplomats
(09:06):
an industrialists made at their home and held lavish parties
in its ornate reception rooms, palatial in size and fittings,
magnificently furnished, an example of the union of great wealth
and noble taste. I don't know any cops who could
afford a place like that, let alone a lowly sergeant.
(09:27):
Jonas Willard Green bought the mansion for the bargain price
of twenty five thousand dollars in nineteen nineteen. That's still
over twenty years worth of his sergeant's salary if he
didn't spend a dime on anything else, including furniture or upkeep,
or food or clothes, or last minute trips to Atlantic City.
(09:49):
Even in nineteen nineteen, twenty five thousand dollars was pennies
on the dollar for what that place was worth. Why
was Jonas Willard Green able to mortgage it at such
a cheap price because he purchased it from Gertrude's mother, Hattie,
from the stable of properties bequeathed by her father. That
same year, Jonas Willard Green also purchased a large lot
(10:12):
on K Street from Hattie for ten whole dollars, another
basement price bargain by The Greens owned several other apartment
buildings along the K Street corridor that they transformed into
rooming houses. They flipped those profits and bought more properties.
Then the proverbial ship hit the fan. In March of
(10:35):
nineteen two, a story about the Greens hit the Associated
Press newswire and went national. The titles of the articles
ranged from millionaire cop to richest Cop to how I
made my first million. The storylines were filled with incredible pretentiousness,
(10:57):
and it gave me a fantastic glimpse into who the
Greens really were beneath their facade of false humility. Jonas
and Gertrude Green became two of the wealthiest d C
elites on just a policeman's salary. According to the articles,
by nineteen twenty two they owned nearly every single building
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in property along the fourteenth and K Street corridor. It
was like a monopoly board with red hotels covering that
whole area. At that point, the Green's rooming houses housed
three hundred people, They employed fifty servants, had limousines and chauffeurs,
and had banked over three million dollars in today's money.
(11:40):
The Greens received a personal thank you letter from then
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the future President, for providing
meals for their tenants during World War One when food
rationing became mandatory. World War One ended in nineteen eighteen,
so the Greens had various buildings and tenants dating back
(12:00):
several years, even before being gifted the Shepherd Mansion. According
to the various Associated Press articles, the Greens asserted that
they amassed their great wealth simply by being thrifty, spending wisely,
and working their butts off. The scales tipped in their
favor with a simple economic choice. They rented a single
(12:23):
spare bedroom in their four room apartment, and that tiny
little lease miraculously snowballed into the great wealth they had
by ninety two, three million dollars on a policeman's salary.
If you believe that crap, I have some swamp land
in Florida to offload. Jonas Willard Green's affectation knew no bounds.
(12:45):
This is a direct quote from Green in a Boston
Globe article. It was due to Mrs Green's economy in
our early married life that we are where we are today.
The first thousand dollars is the hardest to save. It
means the twisting and turning of every penny, doing without
pleasure that costs money, and contenting yourself with actual necessities
(13:07):
in the way of clothes. But my wife not only
did it, but seemed to get pleasure out of doing it.
I've always found real estate and first mortgages the ideal investment.
Work hard, save invest don't be a spendthrift, but don't
think you can make money without spending. Some property must
be kept up, pay well, and get the best help.
(13:30):
I select my workman, plumbers and paper hangers with the
same care as we select our servants. Good grief, I
just threw up in my mouth. Gertrude Green got her
chance to match her husband's hubris. In that same article,
this is what she said, Thrift is the best means
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of thriving. We did not have much when we started.
Hence we decided that we must practice every possible economy
and at the same time work hard. We this, my
husband and die in perfect accord, with the result that
we now have reached the point where it is possible
for us to enjoy some of the pleasures which we
were forced to forego immediately after our marriage. If the
(14:12):
young wife will work hard alongside her husband, practice every economy,
and keep her head steady, it won't be long before
they reached the point where it will be possible to
enjoy the pleasures they were forced to forego at first. Oh,
spare me the platitudes. They didn't have much when they started.
The theft of a three thousand dollar purse was how
(14:34):
they met. So remember, if you want to amass a
three million dollar fortune from a three thousand dollar monthly
salary in just a few short years, be sure to
heed the sage philosophical advice of Jonas and Gertrude Green
and save, save, save, twist those pennies. Go without work
your ass off, invest in mansions, and real estate, and
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be sure to suck some of that hard earned coin
a way to pay your servants and chauffeur's the best wages.
Most importantly, be sure to have a rich daddy with
a legacy of real estate holdings, businesses that you are
bequeathed in his will, and a mother who gifts even
more to you for pennies on the dollar. Once you've
mortgaged dozens of properties, rent hundreds of those rooms to prostitutes, raggeteers,
(15:22):
and underworld figures for a healthy kickback. It's really simple.
Nobody could ever accuse me of not calling things like
I see them. And when I read those articles, I
was indignant at the sheer dishonesty. I knew there was
so much more to the story behind the Carborn case,
and I couldn't find information about ex Sergeant Jonas Willard
Green fast enough. His story plummeted into the deepest depths
(15:47):
of corruption and fraud. The same month that the Associated
Press story hit nationwide, Jonas Willard Green harbored a prison
escape ee in one of his rooming house is. The
man had several aliases and had been brought to trial
in Alabama for misconduct with a young woman meaning rape,
(16:09):
and he had escaped from a prison camp. He made
his way to d C, and he hold up in
Green's rooming house before he hid in a hotel and
was apprehended. The Greens bragged about the diplomatic and elite
vacationers who occupied their rooms. But I guess a fugitive
from justice here and there rounded out the guest register.
(16:29):
Throughout that time, Jonas Willard Green remained a sergeant on
the d C Police Department. In the various associated press stories,
he told the reporters that he would not quit the
force regardless of his success, because he just loved the
thrill of police work. Sarcasm took another front seat in
my assessment of that statement. Sure, there was no ulterior
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motive to keep a badge and a gun when Green
had three million dollars in the bank and a bevy
of rooming houses to protect. Why would Jonas Willard Green
pay off another police official for protection from arrest for
running houses of prostitution when he could just do it himself.
Nothing to see here, folks, move along. This kind was
(17:12):
a real piece of work. In July of nineteen twenty two,
a couple of months after the Associated Press story hit
the news wire, Jonas and Gertrude Green purchased the four
story Gibbs Mansion for one thousand dollars, which Green converted
into an eleven story office building at a cost of
(17:32):
another one fifty grand quick math over four million today.
Jonas Willard Green said the rooftop garden would be the
best place that side of New York, and he planned
to conduct the orchestra himself. Asked once again if he
planned to quit the police force, he said, now, siree,
absolutely not. He would likely stay on until he died.
(17:54):
In September of nineteen twenty two, just six months after
the story about their thrift aaced wealth hit the front
page of newspapers across the country, Jonas Willard Green's decision
to leave the police force was made for him. Six
charges of misconduct were levied against Green after three District
(18:15):
Police inspectors tailed him for an entire week. The Metropolitan
Police Department spent the time, the manpower, and the energy
to shadow Jonas Willard Green. Seven. Somebody on the District
Police didn't want to deal with Jonas Willard Green's shenanigans
or the national spotlight that he shined on the department.
(18:38):
The six charges were brought before the Police Trial Board.
The bulk of them were pretty minor in nature, abandoning
his beat, driving his personal limousine on duty, naturally, visiting
with his wife and daughter during work hours, and not
putting his paperwork into the call box. Another charge was
more serious, making an untruthful statement to a superior officer.
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He was facing one of two outcomes, demotion or being sacked.
The administration went after him full force, which tells me
that they knew he was a bad apple, and they
needed hard evidence to either kick him off the force
or kick him in the teeth teeth. It was on
October third, nineteen twenty two. Green was found guilty on
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three of the charges, and the district commissioners ruled that
he be demoted from sergeant back to private. That went
over like a skunk at a garden party. In return,
Jonas Willard Green contacted his influential friends for assistance, and
he had plenty of them. A week later, pressure came
down on the district commissioners to refute the findings of
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the Police Trial Board. Ten members of the United States
Congress and several senators wrote letters directly to the Commission
on Jonas Willard Green's behalf. Twenty nine prominent business men
testified as to Green's wonderful character, requesting leniency, and strangely
or not, four captains and a lieutenant on the DC
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Police Force testified that Green was a great and charitable man.
Our payoffs considered charity. Well, none of it mattered. The
District commissioners stuck to their guns and told Green that
his new title would be Private. Green that humiliating demotion
was too much for a narcissist like Jonas Willard Green
(20:30):
to fathom. He was shocked that his friends in the
Capitol Building an elite society, couldn't get him off the
hook for breaking the rules. He thundered to the reporters
at the final Commission Hearing that he intended to find
out who started the whole frame up, nothing but a
bunch of bombastic bull On December seven, nine two, rather
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than take the demotion to Private, Jonas Willard Green shoved
his tail between his legs and quit the police force.
He announced to the bevy of newspaper men at the
Fine Commission Hearing that he would be going into the
real estate bonding and insurance business right after he returned
from an extended trip to Europe with his wife. She
was in very ill health, you know, and needed to
(21:12):
convalesce overseas. What a coward he ran across the Atlantic
with his wife and kids in tow until the heat settled.
And that snide little statement was also Green's way of
saving face to let it be known that he had
the means to travel to Europe while the peasants toiled
back home. Wrapped attention was taken away from the police department,
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where Jonas Willard Green was concerned, but his shady dealings
within the district were just getting started. In May of
nineteen three, after they returned from their European jaunt, and
just five months after quitting the police department, Jonas Willard
Green opened a high end clothing business called mill Green
Incorporated at twelve g Street, Northwest. The business venture only
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lasted nine months. In February of ninety four, a New
York clothier called the Flapper Dress Company sued mill Green
Incorporated for failure to pay its debts on credit. Mill
Green's went bankrupt a month later. In March, the local
newspapers were filled with bankruptcy salads, and the dissolution of
(22:20):
mill Green Incorporated dresses, coats, capes, furs, mirrors, dress form,
sewing machines, partitions, rugs. It seemed like everything but the
light bulbs went out the door. The bankruptcy court date
was pushed forward and ratified on December second, n for
a final hearing that was to be held right after
(22:41):
the first of the year. Greens Fale business didn't survive
that long. On December, Mill Green went up in flames. Curiously,
the fire ignited on the second floor, where all of
the remaining clothing happened to be stored. On the third
floor as an apartment occupied by a woman and her daughter.
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They barely made it out alive. After the second fire
alarm was sounded. The fireman carried them out of a
window and down a ladder just in time. Not one
to pussy foot around, Jonas Willard Green immediately filed an
insurance claim for ten thousand dollars for the loss of
the stock of gowns and dresses. I guess his bankruptcy
sale wasn't a complete success. Arson and insurance fraud. How
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could anyone think otherwise? The Greens continued running their multitude
of rooming houses, which were filled mostly with young single
women who listed their occupations as clerk or typist or none.
That was a bullseye to prostitution. DC police officer Mina
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Van Winkle, the first policewoman to try to clean up
the vice problems in the nineteen twenties, was in charge
of the Women's Bureau, and she took it upon herself
to patrol areas where women of the night loitered, including
the vast swaths of boarding houses. Through her professional experience
with countless girls and women from the street, Mina Van
(24:10):
Winkle also concluded that beauty salons were fronts for prostitution.
Beauty salons well well. To illustrate another example of the
prostitution hustling rings that ran unchecked in d C, here's
a quick story from the book Washington Confidential, written by
journalists Lee Mortimer and Jack Late in nineteen fifty about
(24:33):
their encounters with the underworld. Mortimer and Late wrote in
very tactless terms, but I fact checked their assertions on
several claims and found out that they were spot on
with their information. During their investigation of DC's rackets, they
interviewed a woman who became a heroine addicted prostitute. This
(24:54):
is the story from their book Washington Confidential. Doris said
that she lived in a small town in West Virginia.
She and a girl high school mate occasionally did a
little freelance poring on Saturday nights on call of a
bell boy in a local hotel. Once he sent them
to a room occupied by two men, one whose name
was Griggsby, tried to sell the girls on coming to Washington.
(25:17):
He said he'd put them up in a swell house.
The teenagers were afraid of the big city. Griggsby told
them the landlady of the house was in the next
room and called her in. She was a motherly sort.
They consented to come with her. They found themselves in
the house of a madam named Billie Cooper on Seventh
Street in the one thousand block. Interrupting real quick, this
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is a note from me. This is at seventh and
K Street, in the area where the Greens had rooming houses.
Back to the story. Doris told us that she was
an instantaneous success in the Cooper manage. She was only seventeen.
Madam Cooper's clients were charmed after she'd been in the house.
A few weeks, the madam asked Doris if she'd like
(26:02):
to get a kick. She produced a hypodermic needle and
gave the child a shot in the arm. Doris liked
the sensation wanted more. This went on for several weeks,
Doris said, and every day Billy Cooper increased the frequency
of the shots. One day, Doris woke up nauseated and ill.
Billy Cooper exclaimed, you're hooked. She informed Doris that she
(26:26):
had become a dope fiend that henceforth Doris must pay
for the shots. The girl went into debt though she
was taking in up to fifty dollars a day, and
no matter how much she made, the dope always cost more.
She knew no one else who sold it. She was
truly hooked, which was Billy Cooper's original purpose, to keep
the girl in her joint and take her money away
(26:49):
from her. Just one truly sad, sick story of thousands
in Washington, d C. During that era. The girls coming
into d C from rural areas and other cities would
take a room in a place like the Greens, then
wind up as a sex worker and kick back a portion,
if not all, of their earnings to their pimp or
(27:10):
to the rooming house owner to keep a roof over
their head. It's no coincidence that the majority of the
tenants in the Greens rooming houses were young, single women
with no legitimate means of income listed in the census records.
Whether malcontented board or just greedy, Jonas Willard Green hazarded
another business venture in nineteen nine. Green's Company Incorporated, located
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in the brand new National Press Club Building. Officer Mina
Van Winkle knew her stuff. It was a beauty salon.
This is where the story picks back up on the
Carborn case and the links between Jonas Willard Green, William Clark,
Mary Branch, and James Weir. When William Clark was interviewed
by Detective Frank Brass, he said that James Weir had
(27:59):
a of interest in the Shingle Shop beauty parlor. Clark
also said that woman gave it to him. I don't
know why, but she gave it to him. A beauty
parlor had to be the connection, It said so in
the nineteen fifty addendum, I had to dig through a
decade's worth of historical phone directories to get addresses for
(28:20):
Green's Company incorporated the Shingle Shop and the Modern School
of Beauty, owned by James Weir's sister, Niva Barradinelli. I'm
not a big drinker, but after I cross referenced everything
rest assured, I popped the bottle of champagne I bought
for this moment, and I danced around my office like
(28:40):
an idiot. This was it. I found the hook, the intersection,
the alliance. Here is the association that broke the case
and solidified the information from the female confidential informant that
the murder was planned in a beauty salon operated by
Jonah Willard Green, and that William Clark was present at
(29:03):
that meeting. Gertrude Green's father, William, owned a tobacco shop
before he died in nineteen twelve. He bequeathed all of
his properties to Gertrude's mother, Hattie. Hattie died in nineteen
twenty eight, and Gertrude came to own the tobacco shop property,
which was located at thirteen sixteen f Street Northwest. The
(29:28):
Greens changed the tobacco shop into Green's Company, incorporated, a
beauty salon in nineteen twenty nine. Advertisements for their new
salon said that it was located in the National Press
Club building, which was enormous and it took up nearly
a city block. That building had several entrances. One entrance
(29:48):
was at thirteen sixteen f Street Northwest. James Weir's Shingle
Shop had addresses of thirteen seventeen and thirteen eighteen f Street,
northw best. The Modern School of Beauty was also located
at eighteen f Street Northwest. Green's beauty salon, the Shingle Shop,
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and the Modern School of Beauty were all the same
business located in the National Press Club building. The old
Tobacco Shop bequeathed to Gertrude Green. Clark's mention of that
woman who gave the Shingle Shop to James Weir was
Gertrude Green. James Weir worked for the Greens, and the
(30:31):
Shingle Shop was half owned by Weir and half owned
by Jonas and Gertrude Green. That solidified the direct ties
between James Weir, William Clark, and Jonas Willard Green. The
nineteen fifty four report detailed the female informant statement that
the robbery and murders were planned in a beauty salon
(30:52):
operated by Jonas Willard Green and that Green, William Clark,
and several others were present at this meeting. After I
made that connection, I knew the female informant was telling
the truth and that her information, as well as the
details provided by the mail informant, were at the crux
of the solution to this case. There was more work
(31:13):
to do, but the groundwork was set, and the one
thing left to figure out was why the Carborn case
sat on a shelf unsolved for decades. Jonas Willard Greene
eventually moved the main office of Green's Company, Incorporated to
twenty five forty fourteenth Street, Northwest, likely because the superficial
(31:33):
pious partnership between Jonas and Gertrude went down the toilet
for all of their sanctimony and platitudes back in nineteen
twenty two. They got divorced in nineteen thirty two, and
Jonas Willard Greene married his third wife, Catherine. Green. Moved
his office to Columbia Heights on fourteenth Street, just two
(31:53):
blocks from Gerard Street and Harvard Street, where William Clark
and James Weir lived. During Mary Branch's interview the day
after the murders. She said that a police officer came
to her apartment on Sunday night and had a talk
with William Clark. She said the officer had blonde hair
and his name sounded like Creek or Greek. Jonas Willard
(32:16):
Green had blonde hair, and he lived just two blocks away.
Mary Branch also said the officer's age was around twenty
nine or thirty and she saw him in uniform on
Thirteenth Street Southeast. Jonas Willard Green was fifty five and
he hadn't officially worn a police uniform since nineteen twenty two.
(32:37):
The district detectives investigating the Carborn case never verified or
refuted Mary's claim about a police officer, which told me
there was no point because they already knew Jonas Willard
Green's identity. That could also explain the obvious fold over
Mary's interview questions about a police officer and his phonetic
(32:59):
name in description in Mary Branch had a habit of
telling half truths when it suited her own interests, as
evidenced by her convenient amnesia about Francis Gregory's name and
forgiving William Clark a false alibi. Mary knew exactly who
Jonas Willard Green was, just like she knew. Francis Gregory
(33:19):
recall the letters that William Clark wrote from prison. One
of them asked Mary Branch to contact a man in
the office of United States Senator carter Glass. I wondered
how someone like William Clark would have a connection to
a United States Senator, but I could now conclude that
one way would be through an association to Jonas Willard
Green and his plethora of elites in the US Capital
(33:41):
who wrote letters to the d C Commission on his
behalf during his trial. Not only that carter Glass was
from Lynchburg, Virginia, Jonas Willard Green's family was also from Virginia,
and his father was a prominent attorney. Carter Glass could
have been an old family friend of the Greens. Despite
all the newspaper reports and public spectacle surrounding Jonas Willard Green, Strangely,
(34:07):
Captain Volton never fully named Green in his nineteen fifty
four report. Volton referred to him only as ex Sergeant Green,
which might connotate that Volton didn't know who Green was,
But a paragraph at the bottom of the second page
of his report dispelled that notion, Volton wrote to my recollection,
(34:28):
there was a man by the name of Orville Staples,
also known as Jack Staples, who had been convicted of
bootlegging and gambling, and who was also a former d
C policeman discharged that did know worked for or was
closely associated with ex Sergeant Green. Volton knew of this man,
Orville Jack Staples, and his affiliation to Jonas Willard Green,
(34:52):
so he knew exactly who Green was, but he didn't
name him outright in his addendum, only referring to him
as ex Argent Green. Another question for the back burner.
I had to research Jack Orville Staples and Bolton's allegations
about bootlegging and gambling to see if I could find
a connection between Staples and Jonas Willard Green. Ex cop
(35:16):
Orville Staples had quite a track record, and there was
only one brief mention of him in the nineteen thirty
five file. A known slot machine racketeer was questioned about
the Carborn murders and he mentioned Orville Staples during his interview.
He said, Jack Orville Staples, an ex policeman out of Washington,
(35:37):
d C, is connected with a slot machine hijacking outfit,
and he has also connected with the Oriole coin machine
company in Baltimore. Staples used to trip liquor between Baltimore
and d C. I found a glut of historical news
articles about Orville Staples, none of them good. In the
mid nineteen twenties, Staples was a district police officer and
(35:59):
he constantly in trouble for one thing or another. When
Staples needed help, he ran to his fixer and defense attorney,
Thomas Blanton, a Congressional House representative from Texas. In nine
Staples was accused of heisting a truck filled with bootleg
liquor from two drivers headed into the district from Philadelphia.
(36:21):
Staples shook them down for a cut of the profit.
Staples was also accused of accosting a woman in her
own home, just like Jonas Willard Green before him. Staples
was brought up on charges before the Police trial Board.
His defense attorney, Thomas Blanton, was a show boat. He
was loud and obnoxious, and he would shout over the
(36:42):
prosecuting attorneys to make his point. After the Police trial
Board recommended that Orville Staples be fired from the police department,
Thomas Blanton took it up a level to the district
commissioners to have that recommendation reversed. Thomas Blanton said that
the charges against Orville's Apples were a frame up because
Staples ratted out the police chief and other administrative higher
(37:06):
ups for drinking on duty in defiance of prohibition. Staples
also alleged that his superior officers routinely took payoffs from
racketeers around town. Staples told Blanton that certain people were
immune from prosecution dependent upon their willingness to pay off
the police, and Staples boldly added that the U. S.
(37:27):
District Attorney's office was part of the scheme. Staples wasn't wrong,
and Blanton made his client out to be the whistleblower
rather than a participant. The lowdown about his superior officers
went over like poop in the punch bowl because it
was true and Staples was labeled as a persona non gratta.
(37:49):
The police administration had it in for Staples as a result,
and they recruited one of their own to put the
final notch in his commission case. One of staples coworkers,
officer Fredrick Shank, was the star witness for the police
department in the district commission trial, and Shank threw Staples
under the bus. After Shank's testimony, Orville Staples was summarily
(38:13):
canned from the police department. Not so fast, of course,
this story has a twist. A few months later, star
witness Frederick Shank was arrested for firing five shots at
two other bootleggers when he stole their truck filled with liquor.
He was found guilty and sent to Leavenworth Prison. Frederick
(38:35):
Shank was either extraordinarily arrogant and stupid thinking that he
would be insulated by the police administration, or he was
just a patsy. Regardless, Frederick Shank wrote a letter to
Orville Staples from his prison cell. Shank apologized to Staples
for actually framing him. As a result, Staples was offered
(38:57):
his job back on the DC Police, but he turned
it down. Staples did a complete one eighty and he
went into the slot machine and bootlegging rackets. On February twelfth,
nineteen thirty four, Staples was arrested for stealing a slot
machine from a local business. His brother, Ralph Staples was
(39:18):
arrested several times for running bootleg liquor into the district
In cars that were rented in Orville Staples name. He
left his badge and gunned behind to become the kingpin
of the d C slot machine and bootlegging rackets. I
was unable to find any newspaper articles that directly linked
Orville Staples with Jonas Willard Green. All I had was
(39:42):
the word of Captain Volton in his nineteen fifty four
report that said they were somehow affiliated. After the nineteen
twenty two Associated Press news articles about Green's dubious wealth
and the subsequent fallout, Jonas Willard Green flew under the
radar and he stayed out of limelight. He operated his
illicit raggets, prostitution, and likely loan sharking quietly in the
(40:07):
background until he died of a heart attack in nineteen fifty.
There were some really important reasons why Jonas Willard Green
was never arrested or mentioned in the papers after nineteen
twenty two, other than in the real estate and probate
sections I've talked about the district government set up in
the nineteen thirties along with District Commission President Melvin Hazn.
(40:30):
Hazen was directly appointed to that position by President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, and Hazen was known around town as the
Lord Mayor of Washington, which wasn't meant to be a compliment.
He whined and dined with the President and others in
the Capitol, and he chose to work with the d
C Metropolitan Police Department in his portfolio of duties. Hazen
(40:54):
worked closely with Superintendent of Police Ernest Brown on all
matters police related and the problem matic rackets that were
operating wide open all over the district. I mentioned that
sweet deals were made for certain people at the top,
and most often there was a fall guy in place
at each racket joint who would agree to go to
(41:14):
jail in place of the boss if the police decided
to rate it, regardless of any payoffs. These were called
programmed raids. They were a sham and the police used
them to satisfy an angry public and make it appear
as if the cops were doing their job. Programmed raids
were used to show anyone who asked questions about why
(41:35):
certain rackets were still operating that the police did go
into that specific business, but nothing illegal was happening at
that moment. The reason nothing illegal was happening was because
the racket owner was tipped off by the cops in
the first place. When the heat came down every so
often with demands for the police to rid the city
(41:56):
of the gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution rackets, the special places,
the ones that paid the police off, would get a
hot tip beforehand, and no arrest would be made of
any one in charge. Maybe the poor schlubs bellying up
to the bar might be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct,
then released with a small fine. The places that didn't
(42:18):
pay for police protection were the ones to go down
on the books and give the public the perception that
crime was being eliminated. It was a racket within the rackets.
The district commissioners, especially Commissioned President Melvin Hazen, knew exactly
what the police department was doing and gave quiet permission
(42:38):
because the profits were just too plentiful for everybody. History
has shown that if illegal rackets flourished in a city
like Deasey, rest assured that the people in charge of
their suppression were pocketing money to allow them to operate.
Commission President Melvin Hazen ran with the elites in power,
(43:00):
and he had a lot of friends in the White
House and in the Capitol Building. He could fix a
lot of law enforcement problems for his special friends. Jonas
Willard Greene wasn't just Melvin Hazen's special friend. They were cousins.
(43:21):
If you have information about the car Barn murders, go
to the Shattered Souls Facebook page and leave me a message.
Shattered Souls the Carborn Murders as produced by Karen Smith
and Angel Heart Productions
It wouldn't surprise me at all incompetence or corruption, especially
in DC. There was a lot of activity going on.
The case was forgotten by open up this can of worm.
There were things that were just best left buried. Welcome
back to Shattered Souls the car Barn Murders. I'm your host,
(00:23):
Karen Smith. This is episode fourteen. This podcast contains graphic
language and is not suitable for children. Previously on the
Carborn Murders. As I was approaching what I thought was
(00:44):
the end of my investigation, retired Montgomery County Detective Jack
to Me asked me if I was in possession of
an addendum report written by Captain Theodore Volton in nineteen
fifty four. That report was not included in the file
on my origin an old Freedom of Information Act request.
I don't know why, since I have evidence that the
(01:05):
nineteen fifty four report was inside the file. In twenty sixteen,
when NBC Washington did their story on the Carborn case,
that very frustrating fact aside, Jack to Me very kindly
emailed me a copy that he happened to have in
his files. The nineteen fifty four report was filled with
(01:26):
new information from two of Captain Bolton's confidential informants, and
it gave me the links I needed to put all
of the pieces together and cross the threshold from probable
cause to beyond a reasonable doubt, at least in my mind.
The addendum had some new names to find in research.
First on my list was to find out the identity
(01:47):
of ex Sergeant Green from the d C Metro Police Force.
Green's name was mentioned twelve times in this new report,
and Bolton's female informant directly implicated ex Sergeant Green in
the planning of the robbery and murders, along with my
primary suspect, William Clark. Detailed historical information on Washington d
(02:10):
C residence is really hard to find. There are no
lists of former d C police officers in historical archives,
no congressional records with specific names other than the politicians
of the time, and the name Green it might as
well have been Smith, Jones or Williams. Luckily for me,
I have a friend who is a crack researcher, and
(02:32):
she's incredibly adept at finding needles in a haystack. I
gave her a call and asked for help because I
was at a loss regarding where to begin to find
the identity of ex Sergeant Green. My friend is a
miracle worker, and without her help on this next element,
I'd likely still be sitting on my duff with no
hair left on my head, trying to figure this out.
(02:53):
Stephanie White, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude
for digging into the historical records like a piranha with
a t bone from the bottom of my heart. Thank you,
You're an angel on earth. Top shelf, Tequila's and dinner
on me the next time we get together, sister. After
Stephanie and I talked and traded a few emails, we
(03:15):
knew that finding ex Sergeant Green was going to be
a big hurdle. We knew he was an ex sergeant,
that he had to have left the d C Metropolitan
Police Force before nineteen forty, and his last name, no
first name, no initials. That wasn't a lot of information
to work with, But there was one small clue in
the nineteen fifty four report that gave both of us
(03:37):
a jumping off point. That was the mention that ex
Sergeant Green died in nineteen fifty. With that, we went
to work and in short order I got an email
in all caps. Stephanie found him. His name was Jonas
Willard Green. Once I had his full name, I was
(03:59):
able to find and a whole lot more than I
bargained for. Jonas Willard Green was the nexus for the
entire case, the major link I'd been missing. I'm going
to parse everything down and try to keep the majority
of the information on Jonas Willard Green focused on the
Carborn case, but there were historical details that spoke to
what I consider to be his contemptible character that I
(04:22):
need to include. So first, who was this man? Jonas
Willard Green the fifth was born on the fourth of
July eighteen eighty His father, Jonas Willard Green the fourth,
was a prominent lawyer in Manassas, Virginia. He died in
eighteen eighty one, when Green was only eleven months old.
(04:43):
His grandfather was an outspoken judge who ran for United
States Senate in Maine. Jonas Willard Green bragged that he
had attended the prestigious Virginia Military Institute, but that was
found to be a lie. He actually attended the less
prestigious Danville Military Academy in Virginia. After graduation, he joined
(05:06):
the d C Metropolitan Police Force in nineteen o one.
Jonas Willard Green married his first wife, Mabel Kincello, in
nineteen o one. They had one child, Jonas Willard Green,
the sixth, and they divorced a few years later. Mabel
Kincello listed herself as widowed on the nineteen ten census.
(05:26):
I assumed it wasn't an amicable divorce and Mabel never remarried.
Jonas Willard Green married his second wife, Gertrude Pond, in
nineteen twelve. Gertrude came from a very wealthy Silk Stocking
District family. Her father, William, owned a tobacco store and
he was a very successful businessman. William was a prominent
(05:50):
mason with social ties to the political and rich elite
of the Gilded Age in d c. Gertrude lived a
charmed life as a young girl a the aristocratic district
society and her father, William Pond, died in April of
nineteen twelve, around the same time frame as Gertrude's marriage
to Jonas Willard Green. Upon his death, William left his
(06:12):
vast estate to Gertrude's mother, Hattie Pond. According to Jonas
Willard Green, he met Gertrude when her gold mesh handbag
was stolen and he was assigned to investigate the theft.
Her purse was worth a hundred and eighty dollars in
nineteen twelve, the equivalent of about three thousand dollars today,
(06:32):
so it would have been on par with maybe a
Louis Vuitton. Jonas Willard Green recovered her purse and returned it,
which is allegedly how their relationship began. Jonas Willard Green
moved his way up the ranks to police sergeant, and
his salary was around seventy five to a hundred dollars
a month, the equivalent of thirty six thousand dollars a
(06:53):
year today, not a windfall of money and certainly not
what Gertrude was accustomed to, But nevertheless, they got married
and they had two children, son Eugene and daughter Gertrude,
named after her mother. In nineteen fifteen, several officers in
the third Precinct, where Green was stationed, went to Atlantic
(07:13):
City for various reasons. One officer said that his wife
was ill, another was going on vacation. When Jonas Willard
Green put in his last minute leave slip, he fibbed
and told his superiors that his son was ill and
he needed to go to New Jersey to help care
for him. Atlantic City wasn't a hotbed of racketeering until
(07:34):
the nineteen twenties, but it was a vacation hot spot.
In nineteen fifteen, Jonas Willard Green left his wife and
son back in de c for some last minute trip
to Atlantic City. Now here's where the Green's story will
really start to pinch your eyebrows. In nineteen nineteen, Jonas
Willard Green was making a sergeant's salary, but he and
(07:57):
Gertrude purchased a mansion formerly owned by Governor Alexander Shepherd.
I found several photos of the Shepherd Mansion online, and
it was quite something to behold. It was on the
corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street, and it was
actually three stately mansions all connected into one block sized building.
(08:19):
It was known as Shepherd's Row. It was built for
Boss Alexander Shepherd in eight seventy three at a cost
of one hundred fifty thousand dollars, which was outrageous back then.
That equates to over five million dollars today. Here's a
description of the Shepherd Mansion. From the website The Streets
of Washington. The stately former mansion of Boss Alexander Shepherd,
(08:43):
on the northeast corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street Northwest,
was one of the most prominent of the great houses
that lined K Street during the Gilded Age. The house
was an emphatic expression of wealth and power. While Shepherd
lived there only for a few years, its prominence in
Washington social life endured for another half century, as diplomats
(09:06):
an industrialists made at their home and held lavish parties
in its ornate reception rooms, palatial in size and fittings,
magnificently furnished, an example of the union of great wealth
and noble taste. I don't know any cops who could
afford a place like that, let alone a lowly sergeant.
(09:27):
Jonas Willard Green bought the mansion for the bargain price
of twenty five thousand dollars in nineteen nineteen. That's still
over twenty years worth of his sergeant's salary if he
didn't spend a dime on anything else, including furniture or upkeep,
or food or clothes, or last minute trips to Atlantic City.
(09:49):
Even in nineteen nineteen, twenty five thousand dollars was pennies
on the dollar for what that place was worth. Why
was Jonas Willard Green able to mortgage it at such
a cheap price because he purchased it from Gertrude's mother, Hattie,
from the stable of properties bequeathed by her father. That
same year, Jonas Willard Green also purchased a large lot
(10:12):
on K Street from Hattie for ten whole dollars, another
basement price bargain by The Greens owned several other apartment
buildings along the K Street corridor that they transformed into
rooming houses. They flipped those profits and bought more properties.
Then the proverbial ship hit the fan. In March of
(10:35):
nineteen two, a story about the Greens hit the Associated
Press newswire and went national. The titles of the articles
ranged from millionaire cop to richest Cop to how I
made my first million. The storylines were filled with incredible pretentiousness,
(10:57):
and it gave me a fantastic glimpse into who the
Greens really were beneath their facade of false humility. Jonas
and Gertrude Green became two of the wealthiest d C
elites on just a policeman's salary. According to the articles,
by nineteen twenty two they owned nearly every single building
(11:19):
in property along the fourteenth and K Street corridor. It
was like a monopoly board with red hotels covering that
whole area. At that point, the Green's rooming houses housed
three hundred people, They employed fifty servants, had limousines and chauffeurs,
and had banked over three million dollars in today's money.
(11:40):
The Greens received a personal thank you letter from then
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the future President, for providing
meals for their tenants during World War One when food
rationing became mandatory. World War One ended in nineteen eighteen,
so the Greens had various buildings and tenants dating back
(12:00):
several years, even before being gifted the Shepherd Mansion. According
to the various Associated Press articles, the Greens asserted that
they amassed their great wealth simply by being thrifty, spending wisely,
and working their butts off. The scales tipped in their
favor with a simple economic choice. They rented a single
(12:23):
spare bedroom in their four room apartment, and that tiny
little lease miraculously snowballed into the great wealth they had
by ninety two, three million dollars on a policeman's salary.
If you believe that crap, I have some swamp land
in Florida to offload. Jonas Willard Green's affectation knew no bounds.
(12:45):
This is a direct quote from Green in a Boston
Globe article. It was due to Mrs Green's economy in
our early married life that we are where we are today.
The first thousand dollars is the hardest to save. It
means the twisting and turning of every penny, doing without
pleasure that costs money, and contenting yourself with actual necessities
(13:07):
in the way of clothes. But my wife not only
did it, but seemed to get pleasure out of doing it.
I've always found real estate and first mortgages the ideal investment.
Work hard, save invest don't be a spendthrift, but don't
think you can make money without spending. Some property must
be kept up, pay well, and get the best help.
(13:30):
I select my workman, plumbers and paper hangers with the
same care as we select our servants. Good grief, I
just threw up in my mouth. Gertrude Green got her
chance to match her husband's hubris. In that same article,
this is what she said, Thrift is the best means
(13:50):
of thriving. We did not have much when we started.
Hence we decided that we must practice every possible economy
and at the same time work hard. We this, my
husband and die in perfect accord, with the result that
we now have reached the point where it is possible
for us to enjoy some of the pleasures which we
were forced to forego immediately after our marriage. If the
(14:12):
young wife will work hard alongside her husband, practice every economy,
and keep her head steady, it won't be long before
they reached the point where it will be possible to
enjoy the pleasures they were forced to forego at first. Oh,
spare me the platitudes. They didn't have much when they started.
The theft of a three thousand dollar purse was how
(14:34):
they met. So remember, if you want to amass a
three million dollar fortune from a three thousand dollar monthly
salary in just a few short years, be sure to
heed the sage philosophical advice of Jonas and Gertrude Green
and save, save, save, twist those pennies. Go without work
your ass off, invest in mansions, and real estate, and
(14:57):
be sure to suck some of that hard earned coin
a way to pay your servants and chauffeur's the best wages.
Most importantly, be sure to have a rich daddy with
a legacy of real estate holdings, businesses that you are
bequeathed in his will, and a mother who gifts even
more to you for pennies on the dollar. Once you've
mortgaged dozens of properties, rent hundreds of those rooms to prostitutes, raggeteers,
(15:22):
and underworld figures for a healthy kickback. It's really simple.
Nobody could ever accuse me of not calling things like
I see them. And when I read those articles, I
was indignant at the sheer dishonesty. I knew there was
so much more to the story behind the Carborn case,
and I couldn't find information about ex Sergeant Jonas Willard
Green fast enough. His story plummeted into the deepest depths
(15:47):
of corruption and fraud. The same month that the Associated
Press story hit nationwide, Jonas Willard Green harbored a prison
escape ee in one of his rooming house is. The
man had several aliases and had been brought to trial
in Alabama for misconduct with a young woman meaning rape,
(16:09):
and he had escaped from a prison camp. He made
his way to d C, and he hold up in
Green's rooming house before he hid in a hotel and
was apprehended. The Greens bragged about the diplomatic and elite
vacationers who occupied their rooms. But I guess a fugitive
from justice here and there rounded out the guest register.
(16:29):
Throughout that time, Jonas Willard Green remained a sergeant on
the d C Police Department. In the various associated press stories,
he told the reporters that he would not quit the
force regardless of his success, because he just loved the
thrill of police work. Sarcasm took another front seat in
my assessment of that statement. Sure, there was no ulterior
(16:51):
motive to keep a badge and a gun when Green
had three million dollars in the bank and a bevy
of rooming houses to protect. Why would Jonas Willard Green
pay off another police official for protection from arrest for
running houses of prostitution when he could just do it himself.
Nothing to see here, folks, move along. This kind was
(17:12):
a real piece of work. In July of nineteen twenty two,
a couple of months after the Associated Press story hit
the news wire, Jonas and Gertrude Green purchased the four
story Gibbs Mansion for one thousand dollars, which Green converted
into an eleven story office building at a cost of
(17:32):
another one fifty grand quick math over four million today.
Jonas Willard Green said the rooftop garden would be the
best place that side of New York, and he planned
to conduct the orchestra himself. Asked once again if he
planned to quit the police force, he said, now, siree,
absolutely not. He would likely stay on until he died.
(17:54):
In September of nineteen twenty two, just six months after
the story about their thrift aaced wealth hit the front
page of newspapers across the country, Jonas Willard Green's decision
to leave the police force was made for him. Six
charges of misconduct were levied against Green after three District
(18:15):
Police inspectors tailed him for an entire week. The Metropolitan
Police Department spent the time, the manpower, and the energy
to shadow Jonas Willard Green. Seven. Somebody on the District
Police didn't want to deal with Jonas Willard Green's shenanigans
or the national spotlight that he shined on the department.
(18:38):
The six charges were brought before the Police Trial Board.
The bulk of them were pretty minor in nature, abandoning
his beat, driving his personal limousine on duty, naturally, visiting
with his wife and daughter during work hours, and not
putting his paperwork into the call box. Another charge was
more serious, making an untruthful statement to a superior officer.
(19:02):
He was facing one of two outcomes, demotion or being sacked.
The administration went after him full force, which tells me
that they knew he was a bad apple, and they
needed hard evidence to either kick him off the force
or kick him in the teeth teeth. It was on
October third, nineteen twenty two. Green was found guilty on
(19:24):
three of the charges, and the district commissioners ruled that
he be demoted from sergeant back to private. That went
over like a skunk at a garden party. In return,
Jonas Willard Green contacted his influential friends for assistance, and
he had plenty of them. A week later, pressure came
down on the district commissioners to refute the findings of
(19:46):
the Police Trial Board. Ten members of the United States
Congress and several senators wrote letters directly to the Commission
on Jonas Willard Green's behalf. Twenty nine prominent business men
testified as to Green's wonderful character, requesting leniency, and strangely
or not, four captains and a lieutenant on the DC
(20:10):
Police Force testified that Green was a great and charitable man.
Our payoffs considered charity. Well, none of it mattered. The
District commissioners stuck to their guns and told Green that
his new title would be Private. Green that humiliating demotion
was too much for a narcissist like Jonas Willard Green
(20:30):
to fathom. He was shocked that his friends in the
Capitol Building an elite society, couldn't get him off the
hook for breaking the rules. He thundered to the reporters
at the final Commission Hearing that he intended to find
out who started the whole frame up, nothing but a
bunch of bombastic bull On December seven, nine two, rather
(20:51):
than take the demotion to Private, Jonas Willard Green shoved
his tail between his legs and quit the police force.
He announced to the bevy of newspaper men at the
Fine Commission Hearing that he would be going into the
real estate bonding and insurance business right after he returned
from an extended trip to Europe with his wife. She
was in very ill health, you know, and needed to
(21:12):
convalesce overseas. What a coward he ran across the Atlantic
with his wife and kids in tow until the heat settled.
And that snide little statement was also Green's way of
saving face to let it be known that he had
the means to travel to Europe while the peasants toiled
back home. Wrapped attention was taken away from the police department,
(21:34):
where Jonas Willard Green was concerned, but his shady dealings
within the district were just getting started. In May of
nineteen three, after they returned from their European jaunt, and
just five months after quitting the police department, Jonas Willard
Green opened a high end clothing business called mill Green
Incorporated at twelve g Street, Northwest. The business venture only
(21:59):
lasted nine months. In February of ninety four, a New
York clothier called the Flapper Dress Company sued mill Green
Incorporated for failure to pay its debts on credit. Mill
Green's went bankrupt a month later. In March, the local
newspapers were filled with bankruptcy salads, and the dissolution of
(22:20):
mill Green Incorporated dresses, coats, capes, furs, mirrors, dress form,
sewing machines, partitions, rugs. It seemed like everything but the
light bulbs went out the door. The bankruptcy court date
was pushed forward and ratified on December second, n for
a final hearing that was to be held right after
(22:41):
the first of the year. Greens Fale business didn't survive
that long. On December, Mill Green went up in flames. Curiously,
the fire ignited on the second floor, where all of
the remaining clothing happened to be stored. On the third
floor as an apartment occupied by a woman and her daughter.
(23:03):
They barely made it out alive. After the second fire
alarm was sounded. The fireman carried them out of a
window and down a ladder just in time. Not one
to pussy foot around, Jonas Willard Green immediately filed an
insurance claim for ten thousand dollars for the loss of
the stock of gowns and dresses. I guess his bankruptcy
sale wasn't a complete success. Arson and insurance fraud. How
(23:28):
could anyone think otherwise? The Greens continued running their multitude
of rooming houses, which were filled mostly with young single
women who listed their occupations as clerk or typist or none.
That was a bullseye to prostitution. DC police officer Mina
(23:49):
Van Winkle, the first policewoman to try to clean up
the vice problems in the nineteen twenties, was in charge
of the Women's Bureau, and she took it upon herself
to patrol areas where women of the night loitered, including
the vast swaths of boarding houses. Through her professional experience
with countless girls and women from the street, Mina Van
(24:10):
Winkle also concluded that beauty salons were fronts for prostitution.
Beauty salons well well. To illustrate another example of the
prostitution hustling rings that ran unchecked in d C, here's
a quick story from the book Washington Confidential, written by
journalists Lee Mortimer and Jack Late in nineteen fifty about
(24:33):
their encounters with the underworld. Mortimer and Late wrote in
very tactless terms, but I fact checked their assertions on
several claims and found out that they were spot on
with their information. During their investigation of DC's rackets, they
interviewed a woman who became a heroine addicted prostitute. This
(24:54):
is the story from their book Washington Confidential. Doris said
that she lived in a small town in West Virginia.
She and a girl high school mate occasionally did a
little freelance poring on Saturday nights on call of a
bell boy in a local hotel. Once he sent them
to a room occupied by two men, one whose name
was Griggsby, tried to sell the girls on coming to Washington.
(25:17):
He said he'd put them up in a swell house.
The teenagers were afraid of the big city. Griggsby told
them the landlady of the house was in the next
room and called her in. She was a motherly sort.
They consented to come with her. They found themselves in
the house of a madam named Billie Cooper on Seventh
Street in the one thousand block. Interrupting real quick, this
(25:39):
is a note from me. This is at seventh and
K Street, in the area where the Greens had rooming houses.
Back to the story. Doris told us that she was
an instantaneous success in the Cooper manage. She was only seventeen.
Madam Cooper's clients were charmed after she'd been in the house.
A few weeks, the madam asked Doris if she'd like
(26:02):
to get a kick. She produced a hypodermic needle and
gave the child a shot in the arm. Doris liked
the sensation wanted more. This went on for several weeks,
Doris said, and every day Billy Cooper increased the frequency
of the shots. One day, Doris woke up nauseated and ill.
Billy Cooper exclaimed, you're hooked. She informed Doris that she
(26:26):
had become a dope fiend that henceforth Doris must pay
for the shots. The girl went into debt though she
was taking in up to fifty dollars a day, and
no matter how much she made, the dope always cost more.
She knew no one else who sold it. She was
truly hooked, which was Billy Cooper's original purpose, to keep
the girl in her joint and take her money away
(26:49):
from her. Just one truly sad, sick story of thousands
in Washington, d C. During that era. The girls coming
into d C from rural areas and other cities would
take a room in a place like the Greens, then
wind up as a sex worker and kick back a portion,
if not all, of their earnings to their pimp or
(27:10):
to the rooming house owner to keep a roof over
their head. It's no coincidence that the majority of the
tenants in the Greens rooming houses were young, single women
with no legitimate means of income listed in the census records.
Whether malcontented board or just greedy, Jonas Willard Green hazarded
another business venture in nineteen nine. Green's Company Incorporated, located
(27:36):
in the brand new National Press Club Building. Officer Mina
Van Winkle knew her stuff. It was a beauty salon.
This is where the story picks back up on the
Carborn case and the links between Jonas Willard Green, William Clark,
Mary Branch, and James Weir. When William Clark was interviewed
by Detective Frank Brass, he said that James Weir had
(27:59):
a of interest in the Shingle Shop beauty parlor. Clark
also said that woman gave it to him. I don't
know why, but she gave it to him. A beauty
parlor had to be the connection, It said so in
the nineteen fifty addendum, I had to dig through a
decade's worth of historical phone directories to get addresses for
(28:20):
Green's Company incorporated the Shingle Shop and the Modern School
of Beauty, owned by James Weir's sister, Niva Barradinelli. I'm
not a big drinker, but after I cross referenced everything
rest assured, I popped the bottle of champagne I bought
for this moment, and I danced around my office like
(28:40):
an idiot. This was it. I found the hook, the intersection,
the alliance. Here is the association that broke the case
and solidified the information from the female confidential informant that
the murder was planned in a beauty salon operated by
Jonah Willard Green, and that William Clark was present at
(29:03):
that meeting. Gertrude Green's father, William, owned a tobacco shop
before he died in nineteen twelve. He bequeathed all of
his properties to Gertrude's mother, Hattie. Hattie died in nineteen
twenty eight, and Gertrude came to own the tobacco shop property,
which was located at thirteen sixteen f Street Northwest. The
(29:28):
Greens changed the tobacco shop into Green's Company, incorporated, a
beauty salon in nineteen twenty nine. Advertisements for their new
salon said that it was located in the National Press
Club building, which was enormous and it took up nearly
a city block. That building had several entrances. One entrance
(29:48):
was at thirteen sixteen f Street Northwest. James Weir's Shingle
Shop had addresses of thirteen seventeen and thirteen eighteen f Street,
northw best. The Modern School of Beauty was also located
at eighteen f Street Northwest. Green's beauty salon, the Shingle Shop,
(30:10):
and the Modern School of Beauty were all the same
business located in the National Press Club building. The old
Tobacco Shop bequeathed to Gertrude Green. Clark's mention of that
woman who gave the Shingle Shop to James Weir was
Gertrude Green. James Weir worked for the Greens, and the
(30:31):
Shingle Shop was half owned by Weir and half owned
by Jonas and Gertrude Green. That solidified the direct ties
between James Weir, William Clark, and Jonas Willard Green. The
nineteen fifty four report detailed the female informant statement that
the robbery and murders were planned in a beauty salon
(30:52):
operated by Jonas Willard Green and that Green, William Clark,
and several others were present at this meeting. After I
made that connection, I knew the female informant was telling
the truth and that her information, as well as the
details provided by the mail informant, were at the crux
of the solution to this case. There was more work
(31:13):
to do, but the groundwork was set, and the one
thing left to figure out was why the Carborn case
sat on a shelf unsolved for decades. Jonas Willard Greene
eventually moved the main office of Green's Company, Incorporated to
twenty five forty fourteenth Street, Northwest, likely because the superficial
(31:33):
pious partnership between Jonas and Gertrude went down the toilet
for all of their sanctimony and platitudes back in nineteen
twenty two. They got divorced in nineteen thirty two, and
Jonas Willard Greene married his third wife, Catherine. Green. Moved
his office to Columbia Heights on fourteenth Street, just two
(31:53):
blocks from Gerard Street and Harvard Street, where William Clark
and James Weir lived. During Mary Branch's interview the day
after the murders. She said that a police officer came
to her apartment on Sunday night and had a talk
with William Clark. She said the officer had blonde hair
and his name sounded like Creek or Greek. Jonas Willard
(32:16):
Green had blonde hair, and he lived just two blocks away.
Mary Branch also said the officer's age was around twenty
nine or thirty and she saw him in uniform on
Thirteenth Street Southeast. Jonas Willard Green was fifty five and
he hadn't officially worn a police uniform since nineteen twenty two.
(32:37):
The district detectives investigating the Carborn case never verified or
refuted Mary's claim about a police officer, which told me
there was no point because they already knew Jonas Willard
Green's identity. That could also explain the obvious fold over
Mary's interview questions about a police officer and his phonetic
(32:59):
name in description in Mary Branch had a habit of
telling half truths when it suited her own interests, as
evidenced by her convenient amnesia about Francis Gregory's name and
forgiving William Clark a false alibi. Mary knew exactly who
Jonas Willard Green was, just like she knew. Francis Gregory
(33:19):
recall the letters that William Clark wrote from prison. One
of them asked Mary Branch to contact a man in
the office of United States Senator carter Glass. I wondered
how someone like William Clark would have a connection to
a United States Senator, but I could now conclude that
one way would be through an association to Jonas Willard
Green and his plethora of elites in the US Capital
(33:41):
who wrote letters to the d C Commission on his
behalf during his trial. Not only that carter Glass was
from Lynchburg, Virginia, Jonas Willard Green's family was also from Virginia,
and his father was a prominent attorney. Carter Glass could
have been an old family friend of the Greens. Despite
all the newspaper reports and public spectacle surrounding Jonas Willard Green, Strangely,
(34:07):
Captain Volton never fully named Green in his nineteen fifty
four report. Volton referred to him only as ex Sergeant Green,
which might connotate that Volton didn't know who Green was,
But a paragraph at the bottom of the second page
of his report dispelled that notion, Volton wrote to my recollection,
(34:28):
there was a man by the name of Orville Staples,
also known as Jack Staples, who had been convicted of
bootlegging and gambling, and who was also a former d
C policeman discharged that did know worked for or was
closely associated with ex Sergeant Green. Volton knew of this man,
Orville Jack Staples, and his affiliation to Jonas Willard Green,
(34:52):
so he knew exactly who Green was, but he didn't
name him outright in his addendum, only referring to him
as ex Argent Green. Another question for the back burner.
I had to research Jack Orville Staples and Bolton's allegations
about bootlegging and gambling to see if I could find
a connection between Staples and Jonas Willard Green. Ex cop
(35:16):
Orville Staples had quite a track record, and there was
only one brief mention of him in the nineteen thirty
five file. A known slot machine racketeer was questioned about
the Carborn murders and he mentioned Orville Staples during his interview.
He said, Jack Orville Staples, an ex policeman out of Washington,
(35:37):
d C, is connected with a slot machine hijacking outfit,
and he has also connected with the Oriole coin machine
company in Baltimore. Staples used to trip liquor between Baltimore
and d C. I found a glut of historical news
articles about Orville Staples, none of them good. In the
mid nineteen twenties, Staples was a district police officer and
(35:59):
he constantly in trouble for one thing or another. When
Staples needed help, he ran to his fixer and defense attorney,
Thomas Blanton, a Congressional House representative from Texas. In nine
Staples was accused of heisting a truck filled with bootleg
liquor from two drivers headed into the district from Philadelphia.
(36:21):
Staples shook them down for a cut of the profit.
Staples was also accused of accosting a woman in her
own home, just like Jonas Willard Green before him. Staples
was brought up on charges before the Police trial Board.
His defense attorney, Thomas Blanton, was a show boat. He
was loud and obnoxious, and he would shout over the
(36:42):
prosecuting attorneys to make his point. After the Police trial
Board recommended that Orville Staples be fired from the police department,
Thomas Blanton took it up a level to the district
commissioners to have that recommendation reversed. Thomas Blanton said that
the charges against Orville's Apples were a frame up because
Staples ratted out the police chief and other administrative higher
(37:06):
ups for drinking on duty in defiance of prohibition. Staples
also alleged that his superior officers routinely took payoffs from
racketeers around town. Staples told Blanton that certain people were
immune from prosecution dependent upon their willingness to pay off
the police, and Staples boldly added that the U. S.
(37:27):
District Attorney's office was part of the scheme. Staples wasn't wrong,
and Blanton made his client out to be the whistleblower
rather than a participant. The lowdown about his superior officers
went over like poop in the punch bowl because it
was true and Staples was labeled as a persona non gratta.
(37:49):
The police administration had it in for Staples as a result,
and they recruited one of their own to put the
final notch in his commission case. One of staples coworkers,
officer Fredrick Shank, was the star witness for the police
department in the district commission trial, and Shank threw Staples
under the bus. After Shank's testimony, Orville Staples was summarily
(38:13):
canned from the police department. Not so fast, of course,
this story has a twist. A few months later, star
witness Frederick Shank was arrested for firing five shots at
two other bootleggers when he stole their truck filled with liquor.
He was found guilty and sent to Leavenworth Prison. Frederick
(38:35):
Shank was either extraordinarily arrogant and stupid thinking that he
would be insulated by the police administration, or he was
just a patsy. Regardless, Frederick Shank wrote a letter to
Orville Staples from his prison cell. Shank apologized to Staples
for actually framing him. As a result, Staples was offered
(38:57):
his job back on the DC Police, but he turned
it down. Staples did a complete one eighty and he
went into the slot machine and bootlegging rackets. On February twelfth,
nineteen thirty four, Staples was arrested for stealing a slot
machine from a local business. His brother, Ralph Staples was
(39:18):
arrested several times for running bootleg liquor into the district
In cars that were rented in Orville Staples name. He
left his badge and gunned behind to become the kingpin
of the d C slot machine and bootlegging rackets. I
was unable to find any newspaper articles that directly linked
Orville Staples with Jonas Willard Green. All I had was
(39:42):
the word of Captain Volton in his nineteen fifty four
report that said they were somehow affiliated. After the nineteen
twenty two Associated Press news articles about Green's dubious wealth
and the subsequent fallout, Jonas Willard Green flew under the
radar and he stayed out of limelight. He operated his
illicit raggets, prostitution, and likely loan sharking quietly in the
(40:07):
background until he died of a heart attack in nineteen fifty.
There were some really important reasons why Jonas Willard Green
was never arrested or mentioned in the papers after nineteen
twenty two, other than in the real estate and probate
sections I've talked about the district government set up in
the nineteen thirties along with District Commission President Melvin Hazn.
(40:30):
Hazen was directly appointed to that position by President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, and Hazen was known around town as the
Lord Mayor of Washington, which wasn't meant to be a compliment.
He whined and dined with the President and others in
the Capitol, and he chose to work with the d
C Metropolitan Police Department in his portfolio of duties. Hazen
(40:54):
worked closely with Superintendent of Police Ernest Brown on all
matters police related and the problem matic rackets that were
operating wide open all over the district. I mentioned that
sweet deals were made for certain people at the top,
and most often there was a fall guy in place
at each racket joint who would agree to go to
(41:14):
jail in place of the boss if the police decided
to rate it, regardless of any payoffs. These were called
programmed raids. They were a sham and the police used
them to satisfy an angry public and make it appear
as if the cops were doing their job. Programmed raids
were used to show anyone who asked questions about why
(41:35):
certain rackets were still operating that the police did go
into that specific business, but nothing illegal was happening at
that moment. The reason nothing illegal was happening was because
the racket owner was tipped off by the cops in
the first place. When the heat came down every so
often with demands for the police to rid the city
(41:56):
of the gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution rackets, the special places,
the ones that paid the police off, would get a
hot tip beforehand, and no arrest would be made of
any one in charge. Maybe the poor schlubs bellying up
to the bar might be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct,
then released with a small fine. The places that didn't
(42:18):
pay for police protection were the ones to go down
on the books and give the public the perception that
crime was being eliminated. It was a racket within the rackets.
The district commissioners, especially Commissioned President Melvin Hazen, knew exactly
what the police department was doing and gave quiet permission
(42:38):
because the profits were just too plentiful for everybody. History
has shown that if illegal rackets flourished in a city
like Deasey, rest assured that the people in charge of
their suppression were pocketing money to allow them to operate.
Commission President Melvin Hazen ran with the elites in power,
(43:00):
and he had a lot of friends in the White
House and in the Capitol Building. He could fix a
lot of law enforcement problems for his special friends. Jonas
Willard Greene wasn't just Melvin Hazen's special friend. They were cousins.
(43:21):
If you have information about the car Barn murders, go
to the Shattered Souls Facebook page and leave me a message.
Shattered Souls the Carborn Murders as produced by Karen Smith
and Angel Heart Productions
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