Death Before Daybreak

It was a chilly morning, jus’ after midnight, November 8, 1947, when the four Reno Police officers, a Captain, a Sergeant and two detectives, entered the darkened hallway of the Carlton Hotel at 218 North Sierra Street, near where the Ace Motor Lodge now stands. By the time the acrid-smell of the gun smoke cleared, two of Reno’s finest would be dead.

When they knocked on the door Reno Detective Sergeants Gene Cowan and Darrell Reid were met with resistance by one of the suspects but were able to disarm him. Meanwhile, Sergeant Allen Glass and Night Captain Leroy Geach entered the adjoining bedroom where they located a second suspect in the bed.

As Geach, 56, removed the blanket, the suspect immediately opened fire; the bullets passing through Geach into Glass, 36. Both were shot and killed, by a teen, “who discharged a .38 caliber super automatic seven times…”

Neither had an opportunity to draw their weapon, let alone return fire.

Alerted to the gunplay, Cowan fired four shots at the man in the bed using gun he had just taken from the other man, striking him once in the side, causing the suspect to quickly throw down his gun and surrender. Reno Police Chief Clayton Philips said the suspect had vowed he’d “never be taken alive,” and had signed a confession that he had killed the two police officers.

Seriously wounded, Geach was quickly taken by ambulance to the hospital; however, he did passed away en route. A mortally wounded Glass died in the hotel room.

Geach had been with the agency for 12 years and was survived by his wife and two sons. He had been born in Montana, coming to Nevada to work on the railroad in Goldfield.

He was elected to the Nevada Legislature in 1927 and later joined the Nevada State Police. He joined the Reno Police Department in July of 1935, having served the citizens of Reno for twelve years.

Glass had been with the agency for three years, having enlisted in the U.S. Navy during WWII in the middle of his police career. Born in New York, he was married but had no children.

On November 11, 1947, both Captain Geach and Sergeant Glass were laid to rest at the Mountain View Cemetery in Reno following an emotional service. Cowan and Reid, among others, served as pallbearers, carrying their body’s to the grave.

Blackwell was convicted of the murders, sentenced to death, and executed April 22, 1949. Prior to his entering the gas chamber, he told authorities that his life of crime had snowball into its inevitable conclusion because he hung out with “wrong kind of people at an early age.”

Even though Blackwell was only 19 when was executed he had already an extensive criminal background. He was born in Tacoma, Washington, and started to get into trouble when he was very young. He was sent to the Washington State Reformatory, and in 1947 escaped.

He returned to Tacoma and shot and wounded David Wold who was 17 years old. Blackwell said that Wold had squealed on him.

Blackwell then returned to the Washington State Reformatory where he enabled two companions to escape. They then went on a robbing spree throughout Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Nevada.

Nine days after his initial escape from the Reformatory, Blackwell and his companions came to Reno. After robbing Charlie’s Cocktail Lounge at 325 South Virginia Street and The Highway 40 Tavern at 640 East 4th Street, of $3,800, they retreated to the Reno hotel.

Arnold Thomassen, of Syracuse, Nebraska, the 21-year-old man behind the door, was taken into custody without harm. He too was an escapee from the reformatory in Tacoma.

A third suspect, also a fellow escapee 21-year-old James Blake, of San Francisco, was arrested an hour after the shooting, as he returned to the room. He claimed he was only the get-away driver and had nothing to do with the actual robberies.

Thomassen and Blake pleaded guilty to robbery in district court January 22, 1948 and were sentenced to terms of from five to 50 and five to 40 years in prison.

Two days after having been sentenced to death, January 8, 1948, Blackwell was granted a stay of execution by action of the Supreme Court. He had been sentenced by Judge Mcrwyn Brown in district court to die during the week of March 14 to 20, 1948.

The action was said to be a routine legal procedure following the filing of a notice for a new trial by Ernest Brown and Robert Wells, defense attorneys. Their appeal was based on the idea that Judge Taylor Wines had no legal right to disqualify himself in the case after accepting Blackwell’s plea of guilty; and the second that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that the killing of Geach was premeditated.

Wines disqualified himself after the confessed slayer entered a surprise plea of guilty to the first degree murder charges. In disqualifying himself, Wines stated, “My views on capital punishment are matter of common knowledge in this court and in this city. My feelings amount almost to prejudging the case. It is something I cannot rid myself of.”

Wines was strongly opposed tp capital punishment for minors. His views on capital punishment would arise again in the case of Laszlo Varga, a Hungarian refugee that was accused of raping 22-year-old Billee Rahe Morning, a Wells, Nevada Presbyterian minister’s wife and then beating her to death with a rolling-pin.

Varga died in Nevada’s gas chamber June 11, 1949. While awaiting execution he attacked and stabbed a prison guard several times with a pocket knife he had concealed on his person.

As for Cowan, he had joined the Reno Police Department in the late 1930s as a patrolman. He quickly rose through the ranks to his assignment in Detectives and acted as a witness to the execution of Blackwell.

At 5:14 that morning, Blackwell was strapped into the chair and by 5:26, he was dead, but not before recognizing Cowan with a nod and wink. An instant later the cyanide pellet, suspended by a string under the death chair, dropped in the pot holding the sulphuric acid , creating the lethal fumes.

He took a deep breath and was unconscious with in seconds, according to official documents, filed by Nevada State Prison Physician, Dr. Richard Petty. Blackwell’s parents escorted his body from the prison to the Garden Cemetery in Gardnerville for burial.

The Silver State National Peace Officers Museum in Virginia City has several items related to this crime, including Cowan’s badge, the handcuffs he placed on one of the suspects, his hand-gun, as well as the gun used by Blackwell to shoot and kill both officers.

Both Geach and Glass are enshrined at the James D. Hoff Peace Officer Memorial, dedicated October 22, 1988, in Reno’s Idlewild Park. The memorial is named after Reno Police Officer James Hoff who was killed in 1979 while working undercover narcotics case by the suspects he was investigating.