Jake Bird spent two years on death row before he was hanged in 1949.īird’s story would end on July 15, 1949, almost two years after his last crime. Police in Houston, Texas suspected he murdered a woman there as well. Other victims were confirmed in Louisville, Kentucky Omaha, Nebraska Kansas City, Kansas Sioux Falls, South Dakota Cleveland, Ohio Orlando, Florida and Portage, Wisconsin. He tallied 44 murders to his butcher’s bill, providing enough details about 11 of those murders, that the cases were officially closed.īird’s first kills were reportedly those of two women in Evanston, Illinois in 1942.
While still alive on Walla Walla’s death row, Bird continued to confess to crimes during his years on the rails. And finally, the court’s clerk died of pneumonia. Then one of Bird’s prison guards died of a heart attack. Then another police officer who wrote an official report on Bird passed of a heart attack.
Then the police officer who recorded Bird’s confession, he died of a heart attack, too. Next was Bird’s defense lawyer, who also died of a heart attack. The first to go was the judge who sentenced Bird to death - he died of a heart attack not long after the conviction. Taken as just another idle threat by a murderer, the “hex” didn’t get much notice. Photo courtesy: Murderopedia.Īs Bird was being sentenced, Bird declared, “I’m putting the hex of Jake Bird on all of you who had anything to do with my being punished. Jake Bird’s murders gained headlines around the region. He was convicted of Murder in the First Degree and was sentenced to death by hanging.Ī double killing in a city was news, but actually would have been forgotten had Bird’s story ended there. Bird eventually confessed to the killings, stating it was a burglary gone wrong.
He was taken to the hospital for his injuries and then delivered in shackles to the Old City Hall jail cells.īird almost convinced the officers that he was innocent, but the fact that he still had brain matter spattered on his shirt finally convinced the officers that they had their man. Despite their injuries, the officers managed to tackle Bird and handcuff. One officer was slashed in the hand while the other was stabbed in the shoulder. Two officers arrived at the scene only to find Bird covered in blood, still holding a knife as he ran from the scene. They screamed during the attack, alarming the neighbors who proceeded to call the police.
Bird entered their home and hacked them to death with an ax. The house still stands at 1007 South 21st Street. He was looking for work and came across the home of Bertha Kludt and her daughter Beverly June. The City of Destiny, after all, was the terminus of the transcontinental railroad, a fact that coined the term.įast forward to October 30, 1947. Tacoma serial killer Jake Bird is responsible for the death of more than 40 people nationwide, as well as a “hex” that took the lives of six others.īird was otherwise unremarkable wherever he went, but that would change when he reached the end of the line in Tacoma. He would then trade a day’s work for a night’s sleep and a warm meal wherever he stopped, only to hop back on another train and start the process again. Bird fit the bill as a stereotypical hobo, sneaking into train cars only to hop off once the train reached town. He had a troubled life that forced him to leave home at the age of 19 to seek his fortune by riding the rails of America. This is the story of Jake Bird’s hex.īird was born in Louisiana in 1901. Bird’s story is noted in anthologies of serial killers, often as one that seems too weird to be true.īut it is true. The strange story of Jake Bird is as good as it gets if you are looking for a chilling story about Tacoma’s crime history, yet it’s a story rarely known outside circles of true crime geeks.