The person identified as the perpetrator was Harry Rowe, 39, who lived at the local YMCA, which had the ninth largest membership of all YMCAs in North America.
[4][5][6] [7][8] This revelation prompted police investigations and led to the arrest of 69 men "for crimes ranging from so-called indecent acts to sodomy.
Considered "unprintable" content, it still prompted attacks against the YMCA, its sponsors, and the city's upper class, especially by the working-class newspaper The Portland News and its editor Dana Sleeth.
She described him as flirting with clientele at his restaurant in 1911 before his disappearance, and recounted that he was first in Quebec, then she sent a stepson (from his previous marriage) to Europe and found him in Germany.
Rigó had previously been embroiled in scandal, eloping with Clara Ward, Princesse de Caraman-Chimay despite still being married to her first husband.
[5] One of the most prominent members of the vice clique was Edward Stonewall Jackson McAllister, a Portland attorney, Progressive activist, leader in the state Democratic Party, and friend of William Simon U'Ren and C.E.S.
But Oregon Supreme Court justice Charles McNary, in his dissent in McAllister, shed more light on the matter: The testimony of the witness Harry Work is undisputed, and, in narrative form, is that he met Roy Kadel on one of the busy thoroughfares of Portland, and accompanied him unwittingly to the office of the defendant, where both remained in the reception-room until Kadel was beckoned by defendant to enter his private office; that, growing impatient at the failure of Kadel to return, Work stepped into the hall and knocked on the door leading into defendant's private office, whereupon defendant opened the door and Work entered and saw Kadel wiping his penis with a handkerchief; that Work ejaculated [blurted out], "Hello, what is this?"
and Kadel replied, "McAllister and I are having a little trade," which, in the parlance of the morally depraved, means the performance of the act defined in the indictment; that Work further stated: "Well, I'm in a hurry; I am going back to the hotel"--and defendant remarked, "All right, boys, I'll see you again"; thereat Work and Kadel stepped into the hallway and were gone.A warrant for McAllister's arrest was issued November 19.
According to a contemporary news report in The Morning Oregonian, he was in Marshfield (now called Coos Bay) on that day, "taking depositions in a legal case."
So if you were satisfied that one was possessed of this unnatural or abnormal sexual sense, you might infer that he had a motive, a reason or a force, impelling him to do such an act.The defense would later argue on appeal, successfully, that Kavanaugh made a prejudicial error in giving his personal opinion to the jury rather than stating only matters of law.
McAllister made a closing argument for the defense on his own behalf, described as "an eloquent plea", wherein "he charged that he [was] the victim of a conspiracy.
[3][20] Others associated with the clique included William H. Allen, who attempted to commit suicide with chloroform at the YMCA following the exposure, Horace Tabb, physician Harry Start (and witness Robert Ray), clerk and bookkeeper Edward Wedemeyer, George Birdseye, Fred A. Clark, Alonzo "Billy" E. Ream (1856-1930), Earle Van Hulen, Fred Rodby, George Parker, Earl Taylor, Kenneth Hollister, Will Phelps, Horace Tabb (at the Multnomah Hotel) and Lionel Deane.
[9] Discussing the scandal, a letter to the editor in the Portland News said "If these degenerating practices were committed by Greeks or Hindus, these lily whites... would be in favor of drowning them in the Willamette [River].
"[26] People opposed to sterilization, including Catholic clergymen and reformers such as William Simon U'Ren, formed the Anti-Sterilization League and successfully forced a referendum on this legislation.
McNary wrote the dissent for McAllister's case, which was emotionally charged and "revealed a deeply seated personal discomfort with same-sex eroticism."
[3] Notably, these convictions were not reversed on the basis that oral sex was not covered under Oregon's sodomy law, as the legislature feared the court might rule.
In fact, despite legislation previous to Start ensuring that fellatio counted as a "crime against nature," the court ruled that this was necessarily true because, among other reasons, the mouth and anus are both openings of the alimentary canal and therefore equally unsuited to sexual intercourse.