Fort Lawton Riot - Investigation

Investigation

By sunset on the day Olivotto's body was discovered, Fort Lawton commanding officer Colonel Harry Branson (1890–1963) had ordered all evidence destroyed. No fingerprints were secured, no footprints saved, no weapons properly catalogued. When Branson tried to ship the black soldiers to San Francisco that same day, he was countermanded after a subordinate reported his attempt to the Pentagon.

The riot and lynching was front page news in Seattle, and became a major story across the United States. The United States Army sent its best young prosecutor, Leon Jaworski (1905–1982) of Houston, to conduct a two-month investigation. (Jaworski would eventually distinguish himself as one of the best-known American lawyers in the 20th century, culminating in his appointment as special prosecutor in the investigation of the Watergate scandal and the winning litigant in United States v. Nixon.)

During weeks of interrogations, Jaworski's investigators offered immunity to several soldiers who would agree to testify. Most refused, including Samuel Snow and Roy Montgomery. Five black soldiers agreed, however, to testify for the prosecution in exchange for immunity. Six decades later, all five were said to have had unrelated grudges against many of the men they accused.

Most Italian prisoners-of-war were unable to identify a single black soldier, citing the darkness and confusion. Two, however, offered confident identifications of dozens of the Americans and those two became Jaworski's main witnesses. Decades later, both were shown to have been previously identified as unreliable security risks by officers of the Military Intelligence Corps.

As reports of the riot and lynching reached the Pentagon, General Elliot Cooke (1891–1961) was sent to Seattle, charged with determining who, if anyone, had failed to prevent the riot and lynching. Cooke did his investigation before Jaworski had arrived. Cooke was not responsible for helping Jaworski with the criminal investigation, but Jaworski was given access to all of Cooke's interrogations and conclusions.

In a classified report to Virgil L. Peterson, the Inspector General, Cooke concluded that the Fort Lawton commander had botched the initial criminal investigation, recommended Branson's demotion and/or reassignment and ordered that Lomax be court-martialed for abandoning his post during the riot and lynching.