Brutal Eastside Halloween murder remains unsolved nearly 60 years later

If you ask most of the Bridle Trails business people who work nearby, they have no idea. Not the woman who works at the gas station on the corner. Not the guys behind the counter of the noisy TechCity bowling alley. Not even the real estate people having a meeting in the conference room yards from where it all happened 58 years ago this Saturday, on Halloween in 1957.

But across the parking lot from the bowling alley, over at Earl’s Barbershop, they actually have heard about it before and know a few of the details. Over the sound of electric clippers and the background chatter of ESPN, two of the men there can even repeat a few of the rumors that flew around after a murder was committed just 150 feet away and nearly six decades earlier.

The facts surrounding the case are pretty slim. A 39-year-old man named Norton Gregory operated a little gas station and convenience store called Greg’s Grocery on the old road between Kirkland and Redmond, just west of an intersection still called Snyder’s Corner on a few old maps. Around 10:30 a.m. on Halloween morning in 1957, a customer found Gregory near death and bleeding from gunshot wounds to the head, laying on the floor inside the old building that housed the tiny shop.

“That was a day I’ll never forget,” that customer, Mrs. N.R. O’Farrell, told a reporter in 1992. “And I never set foot in the store again.”

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King County Sheriff’s deputies were summoned by phone and two officers arrived within minutes. Norton Gregory, the coroner would later report, died of five gunshots to the head, including three at close range.

At the time, King County Sheriff Tim McCullough theorized that Gregory may have surprised someone he recognized robbing the cash register who then panicked. Other rumors and unsubstantiated theories circulated about gambling debts and personal grudges, but no motive other than robbery was ever officially spoken of by authorities. For a small-time robbery, the murder seemed needlessly brutal.

Snyder’s Corner is now surrounded by retail, restaurants and offices, and lies at the center of a community of thousands of homes and apartments. But in 1957, that part of Rose Hill was a very different place, and much more rural.

Gregory opened his store on what’s now NE 70th Street in 1952. The area was growing, and before NE 85th Street became the main east-west route between Kirkland and Redmond, some thought NE 70th would become the area’s main thoroughfare and commercial district.

That’s what the late Jim Gaines told a reporter in 1992, and why Gaines opened the bowling alley, originally called Totem Bowl, on NE 70th near Greg’s Grocery in 1957. Many people in the area still have fond memories of the bar at Totem Bowl, which was called the Kaw-Liga Lounge (after the old Hank Williams’ tune about the lovesick cigar store decoration), and of the big mural over the pin setting machines, which had what might now be considered politically-incorrect Native American themes and images. It was a different time and place.

Totem Bowl and Greg’s Grocery were the only two retail businesses in the neighborhood at the time of the murder, and they were surrounded by trees. Don Corey was one of the first two deputies on the scene. Corey told a reporter in 1992, “To this day, I wish that we could have searched more back in those woods. There were so many dirt side roads back there.”

Gregory was married. At the time of the murder, he and his wife, Helen, lived a few blocks from the store with their six kids, all under 17. Incredibly, Helen Gregory re-opened the store on her own in mid-November. Then, in 1958, she married sheriff’s deputy Melvin Moe.

The investigation was intense and became front-page news in Seattle, but nothing came of any leads that were followed. As the days, weeks and then months went by after the death of Norton Gregory, Sheriff Tim McCullough called it “one of the toughest cases that has ever happened in King County.”

In late 1958, a break came when a teenager confessed to the crime and told authorities to look under the University Bridge for the weapon. The community breathed a sigh of relief, and Norton Gregory’s widow was quoted in local papers expressing gratitude to investigators. But then a records check showed that the young man had actually been a patient at Western State Hospital in Steilacoom at the time of the murder.

Since then, the case has only gone increasingly cold, and the last notes in the case file were made in 1966. Detective Scott Tompkins of the King County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit says that the murder of Norton Gregory is one of nearly 200 “cold cases” of homicide (or missing persons assumed to be homicide victims) in King County dating back to the 1940s.

“We still get tips several times a month on cold cases,” Detective Tompkins said. “Typically, it’s in the form of a technology,” such as fingerprint software, “where before, a print was too small to be identified, and now with new software updates, it can be identified as somebody.”

Due to the loss of federal grant money, King County no longer operates a dedicated cold case unit, but Detective Tompkins says that when tips come in, even on the coldest of cases, detectives investigate.

Detective Tompkins says that since Norton Gregory died almost 60 years ago, it’s likely his killer is also now deceased. But, he said that it’s not without precedent for murderers (or for somebody who knows something about a particular crime) to come forward with information about very old crimes as they face their own mortality.

Meanwhile, the area around the site of Greg’s Grocery has changed radically. Major residential development exploded in the Bridle Trails area in the 1960s, and the Bridle Trails Shopping Center was built in the late 1970s. Even though NE 85th became the main Kirkland-Redmond road, there’s plenty of traffic whizzing past the site of the old grocery.

In a further sign of changes to Rose Hill and the entire Eastside, the old Totem Bowl was renamed TechCity Bowl a decade or so back in a re-branding makeover that gives the Bavarianization of Leavenworth a run for its money. The colorful mural was painted over, and the lounge was renamed the Ten Pin Tap Sports Bar. As that old Hank Williams’ song goes, “poor old Kaw-Liga, he don’t know what he missed.”

Detective Tompkins welcomes tips on the murder of Norton Gregory or any King County cold case homicides. The Major Crimes Unit can be reached at 206-263-2090 or via email: mcutips@kingcounty.gov.