Prison mugshot of Billy George, who was convicted of killing William Lusby in 1911.
It was a crime that shocked a rural community more than a century ago.
A husband and his wife were found by their son badly beaten inside their blood-spattered home, with the couple hanging on for life.
Angeline Lusby would survive the ordeal, but her husband, William R. Lusby, died from his wounds, and two Yakama Nation men would be sentenced to state prison for killing him for not paying them money.
William Lusby was born in Pettis, Mo., on Sept. 10, 1850, and sometime after 1880 went west, settling in Goldendale. It was there on Feb. 22, 1883, that Lusby married Angeline Thompson, who had also come from Missouri and was 10 years younger than he was.
In 1889, with three children, the Lusbys moved to Toppenish, and later to the Ahtanum area, where William Lusby farmed. In 1910, William and Angeline Lusby moved to Granger for a year before moving to Alfalfa, near Toppenish, and leasing land for farming from the Yakama Nation.
On April 14, 1911, two Native men came to the Lusby home and asked for the lease money. The Lusbys informed them that they had already made the lease payment to the Indian agent at Fort Simcoe, and they left. Later that evening, one of the men came back again asking for lease money, and the Lusbys told him again that they had paid the money to the agent, but gave the man dinner before he left, seemingly content.
Angeline Lusby later said she was awakened that night when she heard someone in the house, and two men were in their room demanding the lease money. After refusing to pay them, first William and then Angeline Lusby were beaten by the men, who had armed themselves with firewood, rendering them both unconscious.
Angeline Lusby said she recalled coming to around 2 a.m. but passed out again. One of their sons found them at 9 a.m. that morning in pools of blood with blood all over the walls, including a bloody handprint.
Bloody clothes and a blood-covered piece of firewood were found near the house.
William Lusby was taken to Toppenish Hospital, where doctors found he had been hit between seven and 12 times in the head, crushing his skull. Angeline Lusby was taken to the hospital in Granger, where she was diagnosed with a skull fracture and it was determined she had been beaten all over her body and someone had tried to strangle her.
Sheriff's deputies noted that $300 -- roughly $10,267 when adjusted for inflation -- was still in the house.
William Lusby died from his wounds on April 18, 1911. He was 60 and buried in the Zillah City Cemetery. Doctors decided not to tell Angeline Lusby of her husband's death right away because of her condition.
Angeline Lusby, when she regained some of her strength, identified her attackers as Jim Johnson and Billy George.
Johnson already had a reputation as a dangerous man. Johnson's wife had been found beaten to death and his daughter's dismembered body was found on railroad tracks. While some believed Johnson was responsible, no arrests were made in that case.
George was arrested in Toppenish, while Johnson was found in a friend's tent a few miles outside the Lower Valley city.
Johnson refused to answer questions without the assistance of an interpreter, and once one was secured, he said George was responsible for the attack. Johnson was first held in the Granger jail while George was held in the Toppenish jail, a move believed to have been taken to avoid a lynching.
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The pair were later booked into the Yakima County jail, which at that time was at the courthouse in Yakima.
Their trial was scheduled for June but was delayed to give the men time to raise money to hire attorneys by selling their land allotments on the reservation.
George was the first to go on trial, starting on Nov. 6, 1911. Angeline Lusby was the first witness, describing how Johnson came to their home demanding lease money, and later how he and George attacked her and her husband.
George Linn, a 14-year-old boy, testified that he found bloody clothes under a nearby railroad trestle, while another witness identified the pants as George's because of a hole he had poked in the seat of the pants the day before the attack.
While the trial was going on, two men were accused of offering witnesses liquor if they would refuse to testify against George.
George's attorney argued that his client was not at the scene of the crime, working for someone several miles away at the time of the attack. George's defense also argued that Angeline Lusby's identification of the men was wrong and that Johnson was physically incapable of committing such a crime.
After five days of listening to evidence, it took jurors four hours to find George guilty of second-degree murder. George was sentenced in January 1912 to 10-to-30 years in the Washington State Penitentiary, with the judge ordering him to be sent to the Walla Walla prison as soon as possible.
Johnson's trial started Feb. 2, 1912, with Angeline Lusby again presented as the state's first witness.
Johnson's attorney argued that Johnson was mentally ill as the result of a head injury, and produced witnesses who testified that Johnson was too weak to have committed the crime, as traveling back from asking for the lease money had exhausted him.
Johnson's mother was called to the stand to describe his mental condition and her efforts to treat him on her own.
Utilizing an interpreter, Johnson took the stand himself and testified of the interrogation he went through at the jail, and that he was told if he would confess and testify against George he could go home.
A jury found Johnson guilty of second-degree murder, rejecting an option to find him guilty of first-degree murder, after deliberating for three hours. As an accomplice, he was sentenced to 10-20 years, a decade less than George's sentence.
Johnson would serve five years before dying at the prison on June 16, 1917. He is buried at the prison cemetery.
Angeline Lusby recovered from her wounds and died on Jan. 28, 1940. She is buried next to her husband in Zillah.
It Happened Here is a weekly history column by Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Donald W. Meyers. Reach him at [email protected] or 509-577-7748. Sources for this week's column include "Murder and Mayhem in Central Washington" by Ellen Allmendinger, the Washington State Archives, familysearch.org, findagrave.org, The Inflation Calculator by Morgan Friedman and the archives of the Yakima Herald-Republic.