The Kongsle Bombing

Pearl Kongsle

"I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits."
~John Webster, "The Duchess of Malfi"

It is difficult to solve a murder when you have a lack of obvious suspects. When the motive is equally mysterious, the task becomes nearly impossible. One of the stranger--and more gruesome--examples occurred in a quiet Seattle neighborhood in 1959.

62-year-old Pearl Kongsle had been widowed for ten years. Her late husband, Guy, had been a Puget Sound master mariner. The couple had had no children. Mrs. Kongsle had recently sold her home, and soon planned to leave Seattle on an extensive trip. On the evening of September 2, Mrs. Kongsle and a neighbor, Alberta Bowman, had dinner at a nearby restaurant. They skipped dessert, as Bowman planned to bake them an apple pie. At around 8:45, Bowman brought the freshly-baked pastry to the Kongsle house. As she climbed the front steps, she noticed a brown-paper bag had been placed on top of the steps. She tried to pick it up, but she found it too heavy. She noticed that "something rolled inside." Very fortunately for herself, Mrs. Bowman did not try to investigate the parcel any further.

She found Mrs. Kongsle in the living room with another neighbor, Edith Friedman. "Pearl," said Mrs. Bowman, "what is that sack on the porch? There's a noise in it and something going on in there."

Mrs. Kongsle went to investigate. When she began to examine the package, there was a terrible explosion. "When she picked it up, it went off in her face," Mrs. Bowman later recalled.

The blast broke the windows of nearby houses, blew the hubcaps off a nearby parked car, and caused about $5,000 worth of damage to the home. The place where Pearl Kongsle had been standing was now a foot-wide crater. Whoever left that package meant some very, very deadly business.

Alberta Bowman and Edith Freeman suffered burns and injuries from the blast, but thankfully they were far enough away to avoid serious harm. What was left of Pearl Kongsle was beyond any sort of aid.

A seemingly completely innocent housewife being assassinated by a homemade bomb was a crime totally unknown to the Seattle police. The device had been completely obliterated in the blast, leaving the type of explosive used, and how it was triggered, a mystery.

The motive also remained a puzzle. Mrs. Kongsle's entire background, as far as is known, had been one of placid, comfortable respectability. She had no known enemies, and no discernible reason for anyone to wish her harm. Was the crime meant to be a mere practical joke, created by someone who was both clever enough to put together a bomb and stupid enough to have no concept of how powerful it might be? Was the real target Kongsle's tenant, William J. Meyers? (However, Meyers was in the hospital at the time of the blast--something that surely would have been known by someone planning his murder.) Was it just the random act of a lunatic, with no motivation other a lust for pointless destruction?

The investigation into the murder only became more complicated when it emerged that this was not the only highly disturbing incident connected to Mrs. Kongsle.

Three weeks before Pearl's murder, her brother-in-law, Elmer Kongsle, and his wife Johanna found several sticks of dynamite scattered in the front yard of their home in nearby Alderwood Manor. The perpetrator was never found. Less than five months before this incident, Elmer and Johanna's oldest daughter Betty and her husband, Major Robert Douglas Baker, both suddenly and unexpectedly died at Ft. Lewis, Washington. At first, it was believed the couple had contracted botulism during a recent vacation in Mexico. However, tests ruled out any food poisoning. The cause of their deaths remained unknown. What made their deaths all the stranger was that their three young children remained completely healthy.

There almost had to have been some thread tying together the Pearl Kongsle bombing, the dynamite found in Elmer Kongsle's yard, and the mysterious deaths of Betty and Robert Baker. Something that would provide a coherent explanation for these eerie and seemingly senseless events.

If so, this thread has yet to be found. The Kongsle murder is still thought of as Seattle's "coldest cold case."

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

On February 23, 1967, the "Syracuse Post-Standard" covered the story of a mini-Tunguska event that took place in New York state.

Early on the morning of November 13 of the previous year, a pit about 9 feet wide and 2 feet deep was discovered on the farm of Howard Lacey of Venice Center, in Cayuga County. There had been reports of a loud "sonic boom" or "explosion" the previous night, at about 12:30 a.m. One person reported seeing a "bright white light" in the sky about an hour before the noise was heard.

The hole was examined by state police, members of the Air Force, several scientists, and a host of looky-loos, but no one was able to determine what had caused it. Ralph J. Turner, an assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University, said there was "no direct evidence" that the pit was of meteoric origin. He added, "There is no definite evidence that it was a hoax or of dynamite origin. No order or remains characteristic of that were found. At this time its origin is enigmatic. It does seem safe to say that it was formed by some sort of explosion."

Professor of Geology Ernest H. Muller threw up his hands, reporting that he had "no further conclusions," and "no conclusive evidence to prove it had extraterrestrial origins." Turner noted that the meteorite "would have to be of a size not commonly found...just big enough to get through the earth's atmosphere without disintegrating and large enough to still cause an explosion."

So there the matter rested...until exactly one year later. On the night of November 12, 1967, the exact same thing happened: an ear-splitting explosion in the middle of the night, followed by the discovery of a large crater on Lacey's farm. Again, the usual band of curiosity-seekers and professional eggheads examined the site, and again they went away scratching their heads.

On the night of November 12, 1968, the whatever-it-was put on a third performance: Loud boom, big crater. And everyone was still baffled about what was causing the damn things. An army ordnance expert could find no trace of an explosive device in any of the craters. An investigator from the Air Force went over the area with a Geiger counter but found no radiation. A geologist from Cornell took soil samples and found "absolutely no traces of any known man-made explosives." The state police said the craters were definitely not man-made.

So, was it an unusual variety of meteorite? An unusually clever hoax? Flying saucers?? No one knew for sure, although one local woman who believed in space aliens formed a UFO club aimed at solving the mystery.

By early November of 1969, great anticipation was building to see if there would be another encore.

Well, anticipated by everyone but Lacey himself. The "Oneonta Star" for November 11 quoted him as grumbling that "It's really getting to be a little monotonous...I even hope it doesn't happen this year."

As November 12, 1969 drew near, people came from all across the country to camp out on Lacey's farm to see the expected show.

So, of course, nothing happened. No explosion, no crater, nothing. And it never returned. As far as I can tell, the annual mystery blast, like the "Poe Toaster," departed for good without anyone ever solving the riddle of its existence.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Today's mini-mystery took place in Pasadena, California, on December 12, 1931.  While 29-year-old Marie Galloway Baker slept in her bedroom, only a few hours after the end of a "gay bridge party" at her home, an explosion went off that hurled her bed nearly through the roof. It half-demolished the house, and killed her instantly. Her 60-year-old husband, a wealthy oil man named W.A. Baker, was sleeping in the den at the time. He "escaped without a scratch," although he was only about 20 feet away from his wife's room.

Investigators were utterly baffled by what caused the explosion. Gas was ruled out early. Bomb experts found no trace of detonation materials such as dynamite or powder. The Associated Press reported that "the full force of the explosion was concentrated almost beneath [Mrs. Baker's] room." Although other sections of the large one-story home were damaged, the area where Mr. Baker slept was untouched. (No explanation was given why the couple slept apart.)

Baker said he had been involved in several contentious oil transactions, and conceded "It looks as though someone was after someone." However, no one had any idea who that "someone" may have been, and the cause of the blast was never discovered. The jury at Mrs. Baker's inquest had no choice but to return an open verdict.

The Bakers had been married only five years. Two years before they wed, Mr. Baker's first wife hanged herself following a long illness. Charles Fort, who took note of this strange tragedy in his book "Wild Talents," slyly hinted that the baffling death--murder?--of the second wife may somehow be traceable to the restless, unhappy spirit of the first.

But, of course, we all find such speculations utterly ridiculous.

Don't we?