The Final Bow of Regina Geddes

By Shane Dunning

http://www.redshalereflections.com

Last December, I presented an article on "the blackest crime to ever disgrace eastern Montana." That crime, the murder of Clemence "Winnie" Brown, occurred in 1897 just north of Ashland. Richard Dixon confessed to being the masked man who rode up on Winnie Brown and shot him in the stomach. In his confession, Dixon revealed that he had committed the crime at the behest of his employer George Geddes and his wife, Regina. He also implicated another Geddes associate, Tom Welch, in a far-ranging conspiracy to kill Winnie Brown.

The supposed motive for the killing was to prevent Brown from testifying against George Geddes in an assault case from an incident earlier that year. George Geddes heard that Winnie Brown was saying unflattering things about his wife and lured the eighteen-year-old to the Geddes ranch with an offer of work. Once he arrived, Brown was tied up and beaten severely with a horsewhip and the butt of a gun by Geddes. Once he was released, Brown filed assault charges against Geddes and initiated a civil lawsuit for damages. According to Dixon's testimony, the potential damage to Geddes' finances caused the family to put into motion several attempts to kill Brown. One of the most intriguing aspects of the case was the active and determined involvement of Geddes' wife Regina in the conspiracy. This element gained considerable newspaper coverage in the three trials that resulted from Dixon's confessions. My December article goes into the details of the case and how all three conspiracy members eventually walked away scot-free. Regina Geddes was found not guilty in a sensational trial in Billings. George Geddes and Tom Welch were found guilty of second-degree murder. Still, the Montana Supreme Court demanded they receive a new trial because of over-reliance on the sole testimony of Dixon, a co-conspirator (who pled guilty and went to prison). Citing the high cost of the re-trials, the county declined to have a new proceeding. Geddes and Welch were released less than two years after their conviction.

After their release, following up on the perpetrators is almost as fascinating a story as the initial tale of Winnie Brown's murder, although admittedly less violent. The prosecuting attorney, TJ Porter, lost re-election when he next faced the voters. The failure of the three Geddes trials and the embarrassing effort to convict Little Whirlwind for the murder of John Hoover (the incident which spawned the "Cheyenne Outbreak of 1897") caused him to return to private practice in 1900. He would return to office four years later. Among his first clients as a personal attorney was an unexpected one: Regina Geddes.

Following her acquittal, Regina Geddes was released in 1898. George Geddes was released in 1899, but things were apparently not agreeable in the Geddes household. The husband had pressured his wife (and mother of least two of his three children) to sign a deed conveying a valuable piece of property before he quickly left the country. Regina Geddes was not a woman to get crossways. When George Geddes moved to New Zealand, Regina hired the very man who prosecuted her (and her husband) to get the conveyance set aside and claim divorce by desertion.

After the separation, the deserted wife announced that she was ready to tell what she knew touching the circumstances surrounding the murder of Brown and her testimony, it is said, casts sufficient light upon the case to enable impartial judges to discern the grave error made in giving Geddes his freedom.

Fortunately for the male Geddes, this effort came to nothing. He remarried in Australia and eventually returned to the US. George Geddes died in California in 1912.

Even a cursory reading of Regina Geddes' history rejects any notion that the infamous conspirator was any love-jilted waif. Instead, it reveals a shrewd, calculating, and forceful woman. George was not her first divorce by desertion. Mrs. Regina Burke of Helena was granted a divorce in September 1892 based on abandonment from her husband of two years, John F. Burke. Later that same month, the former Mrs. Burke was joined in matrimony to George S. Geddes. Geddes, it appears, was "heir presumptive to a large estate, that of his godfather, George Smith of Edinburg, Scotland." During the murder trial, the State believed that the real motive for Winnie Brown's death was that his lawsuit threatened Geddes' inheritance, rather than the possibility of losing money in a suit. According to rumors running rampant at the time of Winnie Brown's killing, the father of Regina Geddes' third child was Richard Dixon, and this was the "unflattering" accusation that also initiated George Geddes' whipping of Brown.

Now abandoned by a second husband, Regina Geddes took the steps needed to survive. The next time her name appears in the newspapers, she is running a house of ill-repute in Forsyth. In August of 1901, she again ran afoul of the law. According to the Rosebud County News:

Sometime early in August Mrs. Geddes received a visit from Undersheriff W.H. Lyndes and was apprised of the fact that she was expected to pay a fine. No papers were served, no returns made to any court – no costs included, but in exchange for the twenty dollars she was given the following receipt:

Forsyth, Mont., August 2, 1901.

Received of Mrs. G. Geddes, et al. Twenty Dollars as fine for herself and two girls for the month of August 1901. W.H. Lyndes, Deputy Sheriff. $20

To put it bluntly, the enterprising deputy had not selected his shakedown victim with sufficient care. Mrs. Geddes began voicing her displeasure at being given this fine and displaying the receipt, which was apparently in the handwriting of the acting county attorney, J.C. Lyndes (the deputy's brother). After several weeks of this treatment, the undersheriff finally turned the money over to the county treasurer, which occurred on September 4th. A similarly ill-timed effort was made to put the matter on the docket of Rosebud County's court system. Judge Cassius Gates was apparently in poor physical condition and could not supervise the clerical work of his court. Under the direction of the Acting County Attorney Lyndes, the order charging Geddes with operating a house of ill-fame, Geddes' guilty plea, the fine of $20, and payment of the fine were finally recorded, along with supposed court costs of an additional $2.50. This irregularity was so glaring that Judge Gates denied receiving any court costs and refused to sign the order. A few days later, Judge Gates resigned his office (he died within weeks).

The Rosebud County News continued to torch the Rosebud County Sheriff's Department for several weeks on its editorial pages, with headlines like "Smoke Up, Gentlemen" and "Courts to Be Eliminated." It hit its sarcastic peak, however, with a screed entitled "Whose Twenty is This?"

County Treasurer Longley has a twenty-dollar bill with a history and is wondering who owns it. The rightful owner can, on proving his or her claim, recover the same. The twenty came to his office in the routine of business and although the county has no claim whatever on it, he was obliged to accept it and receipt, therefore. It is the same twenty that was collected from Mrs. Geddes by a deputy sheriff at the instance of the acting county attorney. The twenty in question reposed peacefully in the pockets of one of these gentlemen for over a month and might have been there yet but for the indiscretion of the former owner who told of the incident later. The money was then turned over to the treasurer as "fine collected" and that's the way it stands now. As no case has ever been instituted against Mrs. Geddes and no fines of this nature ever imposed on her, it is evident that the officers had no right to collect this money. But having collected it they were equally anxious to be rid of it and so unloaded it on the treasurer. And now it is cluttering up the books of the county treasurer – a maverick twenty with no one to father it. It threatens to be as homeless and friendless a waif as the thirty thousand turned in by Fred Whiteside during the Clark-Daly feud.

In November 1901, Regina offered to testify in the trial of notorious Helena abortionist Dr. E.S. Kellogg, who was accused causing the death of Adeline Bromley. Geddes claimed she was once employed in Dr. Kellogg office and had witnessed the accused physician "perform similar operations upon other women." Geddes' testimony was ruled out of order for being too remote.

Within two years, the name Regina Geddes seemingly disappears. There are no mentions of that by name in newspapers or official records. Interestingly, in 1951 Geddes wrote a letter using that name to the Helena Independent asking for information regarding the status of several Helena residents she knew in the past. The letter has a return address of La Center, Washington. This address would place her residing near both of her oldest two sons in the Portland, Oregon, area. At some point she married Charles E. Griffiths and lived on a farm in Yacolt, WA. The notorious Regina Johnston Burke Geddes Griffiths died in 1957 at the age of 82 and is buried in Washington State.