Wednesday, March 28, 1934

Went to school with Pauline. I stayed tonight in History and read the chapter that I missed yesterday.

Leo Hall, convicted and later hanged for Erland's Point murders

On March 28, 1934, six people are massacred in a beach house on Erland’s Point, six miles
northwest of Bremerton, in Kitsap County. Three days later, neighbors are alerted to the murder
 scene by barking dogs. Fueled by excessive and sensational press coverage, the murder investigation
turns into a circus. After a week, the investigation stalls and the killer’s trail grows cold. In October
1935, 18 months after the sensational crime, Leo Roderick Bernard Hall, age 33, an ex-fighter and
dry-dock worker is arrested for the mass murder. In another news-frenzied event, Leo Hall is hanged
at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla on September 11, 1936.
 
His accuser was Peggy Peterson Paulos, age 27, a local barmaid and waitress, who told police
she was Hall’s reluctant accomplice in a bungled robbery at Erland’s Point. When the killing began,
Paulos ran for her life. Both Hall and Paulos were charged with the murders in Kitsap County
and went to trial in December 1935. The jury convicted Hall of first-degree murder, sentencing
him to death; Paulos was acquitted and set free.