The never-solved ax murders that shocked Billings a century ago
My biography of Dave McNally remains the top priority on my writing plate. I’ve received outstanding editing of the manuscript and am still tweaking it a bit while waiting to see if a publisher “bites” on the project.
If not, I’ll go the self-published route. No matter what, look for Dave McNally: the Montanan Who Revolutionized Baseball (the current working title) by the summer of 2025.
A writer’s gotta write. So, I’ve embarked on another project, the story of a double-ax murder that took place a century ago today (on December 6, 1924) in Billings. The crime has never been solved. And I have to confess that despite having been a reporter for the Billings Gazette for 20 years and a Billings resident for most of more than the past half-century, I was unaware of this crime until about six months ago.
Ironically, when I started my career as a newspaper reporter, with the Grand Junction, Colorado, Sentinel, in the fall of 1974, my boss, the city editor, had come to western Colorado from Newark, New Jersey. I’ll also remember something that Jay Brodell said to me, a 23-year-old reporter.
“Gaub, I’ll show you how to write up a triple-ax murder in thirteen grafs (paragraphs) or less.” Well, Jay, all these years later, here’s the draft version of what may become the start of my sixth book ...
“Today’s the day. It’s the picnic at South Park. Let’s go!,” a Billings father said to his four young children on Thursday, August 7, 1924.
He heard a chorus of excited yeses from four youngsters: Glenn, ten years old; Helen, eight, Louise, six; and four-year-old Myrtle.
Nels Anderson and his wife, Annie, helped their children into the family’s Ford Roaster for the short drive from their home on Custer Avenue to South Park.
August 7, 1924, turned out to be a typical summer day in Billings, Montana, then a booming city of about 15,000 people. It was 46 degrees at daybreak, and the temperature peaked at 86 degrees under partly cloudy skies.
It was a perfect day for a major community event for Billings. Now in its fourth decade, people gave the city along the Yellowstone River, nestled between the Rimrocks’ sandstone cliffs, the nickname “Magic City” because of its explosive population growth of 284 percent from 1890 to 1910, when it had 3,211 residents, and 212 percent from 1900-1910, when its population reached 10,031. Growth had slowed a bit by 1920 when the census found Billings’ population was 50 percent larger than ten years before.
The event was a citywide picnic at South Park. Five days earlier, Mayor William Beers had issued a proclamation designating August 7 as the day of the farmers’ harvest festival and community picnic. In his announcement, the mayor said he hoped everyone in Billings could take part in the event, which was sponsored by the Billings Commercial Club, the predecessor of today’s Chamber of Commerce.[1]
We can’t say for sure that the Andersons attended the picnic, but it’s possible given the type of family outings they enjoyed[2] and the large community attendance at the picnic.
Beers asked his constituents “to help in extending a friendly welcome to the hundreds of our neighbors from the surrounding territory who will be present as our guests upon this worthy occasion.” The festival would display “the proper spirt of gratitude for the bountiful harvest which has been showered upon us this year,” the proclamation said.
The mayor asked all businesses that could to close at 11 a.m. for the rest of the day. Possibly, the Andersons joined the bandwagon by temporarily shuttering their business; they owned and operated a combined barber shop and beauty parlor (marcel parlor in the day's terminology) at 2912 Minnesota Avenue where Nels gave men haircuts and his wife fancied up women’s hair.
A Billings Gazette article about the mayor’s announcement said indications were that thousands of farmers and business people with their families would crowd South Park for the occasion. There, they would enjoy “a day of picnicking, ‘eats’ and a general good time.”
The picnic lived up to its advance billings. About 8,000 to 10,000 people turned out, making lunch time a “hectic hour of (the) day with floods of coffee served, (a) glacier of ice cream distributed and punch aroma filling atmosphere.” The park’s pool was a big attraction, and speeches, songs, band music, and dancing ended a “perfect day.”[3]
Billings residents had no way of knowing that four months later that Nels and Anna would be the victims of a tragic, gruesome murder. That crime, which shocked Billings and Montana, remains unsolved a century later.
Saturday, December 6, 1924, seemed like a regular day to the Andersons and their children, living in a house at 738 Custer Avenue, which was then on the far west end of Billings.
The Andersons had moved into the then-new house a few years before. Close to downtown Billings, it still had pastures on three sides, which appealed to Nels’ love of horses and dogs. He built a shed in the backyard for the family’s horses, and their dog also slept there.[4]
The number of men with long hair and whiskers surprised the Andersons when they moved their family from Miles City to Billings in 1920. Perhaps they couldn’t afford a shave and a haircut, or maybe there weren’t enough barber shops in Billings to serve the prospective clientele.
Nels opened a barber shop. Annie saw opportunity, too; she liked to cut and curl women’s hair. As one of her daughters recalled, women would “let their hair grow long, then would take three strands of it and braid it.” Annie would roll the hair into a ball shape and place that either atop a woman’s head, held by hairpins, or at the back of the neck.
Annie knew how to make “beautiful curls” after cutting a woman’s hair, and her work became popular. She and her husband went into business together.
Nels and Annie prepared for a day of work at their combined barbershop/women’s beauty shop on Minnesota Avenue. Christmas was coming, and as the parents left, their children might have voiced their wish to get something special from Santa Claus that year.
A Billings boy could have asked for most everything imaginable to a kid from the Yegen Brothers’ Toytown: “a real steam engine or auto, automobiles and armored tanks and trucks that look real—fast-running racing cards, taxicabs and trains that run on tracks.” And more: erector sets, sleds, guns, bouncy balls, horses, bears and other animals.[5]
And a boy’s sister had plenty to stir her imagination, too: “beautiful sleeping or walking dollars and mama dolls.” A girl could set up housekeeping for her dollars with realistic furniture plus complete sets of dishes. And she could ask for games, storybooks, doll cars and doll dresses and many other things that would please feminine fancies in the 1920s.
Maybe Glenn asked for a bicycle from Chambers Hardware Store.[6]
Although it was Saturday, the Anderson children expected the family’s usual routine on school days. By the time they came home from school, dinner would be cooking, the table set with a clean tablecloth, dishes and the best silverware arranged for seven people, the Andersons plus Nels’ sister, Anna Erickson, a widow who looked after the children while their parents were working.
“We always at 6:15 when everything was ready, and my parents would be there—and ready to eat,” as their second-youngest daughter, Louise, recalled decades later.
That day, however, “something went wrong. Our parents hadn’t arrived yet, which was most unusual,” she said.
(To be continued)
[1] Billings Gazette, August 3, 1924
[2] Myrtle (Anderson) Pomeroy said, “We would go on picnics and family outings,” in memories she shared with her youngest son, Glenn. He provided a document with those memories to the author in November 2024.
[3] Billings Gazette, August 8, 1924
[4] Undated recollections of Louise Anderson, known to her family as Goldie, provided by her grand-nephew, Glenn Pomeroy.
[5] Billings Gazette, December 3, 1924
[6] Billings Gazette, December 4, 1924