EVERETT – Sunday’s story about a 1934 Halloween murder in Everett hit particularly close to home for one reader.
Tom Cooper grew up hearing tales about Henry Young, the Alcatraz inmate who in 1944 admitted to the fatal shooting of Everett baker William Buehrig.
Tom Cooper’s father was Leslie Cooper, who prosecuted Young and sought the death penalty.
Cooper, an Everett attorney now in his 60s, said he first heard of Henry Young when he was 9. He went hiking in the mountains with his dad as well as former Everett Police Chief George Nelson. Around the campfire, he remembers the adults talking about how much they distrusted Young, who convinced a local jury he shouldn’t be hanged.
Leslie Cooper long believed Young confessed to the Snohomish County killing as a ruse so he could make an escape attempt.
Cooper and Nelson heard Young’s confession in a cell at Alcatraz. His dad described Young as wiry, fit and a brilliant criminal.
“He didn’t buy his story at all,” Tom Cooper said. “He swayed the jury and did an acting job and my father was convinced he would escape. My father felt strongly he was too dangerous to incarcerate. He was a danger to the other prisoners and he was a danger to the guards.”
Young had fatally stabbed fellow Alcatraz inmate Rufus McCain in 1939. Defense attorneys claimed Young had been in isolation for three years and couldn’t be guilty of that murder because he was “psychologically unconscious” from being mistreated. The California jury bought the argument and convicted Young of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.
That verdict was the basis for the 1995 movie “Murder In The First,” which depicted Young as a martyr and victim. Hollywood ignored Young’s violent past and the Everett murder.
Tom Cooper told his dad about the movie shortly before he died.
“He was rather incredulous,” Cooper said.
The prosecutor’s son said he also found it hard to believe Hollywood would make such a portrayal.
“I watched the movie but nothing in it rang true to me, especially since they completely left out Everett,” he said. “I thought it was kind of insulting.”
The case of Henry Young was one small part in his father’s long and distinguished legal career.
Leslie Cooper much preferred the company of another Henry with Everett ties. He was the county’s chief deputy prosecutor under Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson and took over for Everett’s native son when Jackson won a seat in Congress. Jackson became a long-serving U.S. senator and ran for the presidency.
Leslie Cooper later became the city attorney for Everett, a position he held for more than two decades.
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