Murder and leather work Part 2: The dark history of a Frannie leatherworker from Boston to the West

Last week I wrote about the feel-good story of Diane McIntyre Rodgers reconnecting with a leather purse made by her father, George McIntyre, who was killed in 1980 near Warren, Montana.

She originally wanted to share that family story and learn about the small leather business her father ran in Frannie in the late 1970s. She also mentioned, almost in passing, that her father had lived a hard life and had been murdered. I expected a story with some rough edges, but what I found instead was far darker.

After hours of digging through old newspaper accounts and public records, the outline of George McIntyre’s life came into view. It included multiple prison terms and a double homicide in Montana decades before he ever set foot in the Big Horn Basin. I warned Diane before we had a long phone conversation that some of what I had found was extremely difficult. She agreed to talk anyway. Even so, the details landed heavily.

In her own words, Diane’s earliest memories were not the warm ones people like to imagine when they picture a small leather shop in a tiny Wyoming town.

“I know my dad was a severe alcoholic,” she told me. “I remember vividly … every night was a bad night when he came through the door because he was extremely violent.”

That sentence was an early reminder that a person can be remembered in very different ways. In Frannie, several people recalled a man who could be friendly in daylight and skilled with his hands. At home, Diane remembered a man who frightened his family when he drank. As we talked, I walked her through what I had learned of her father’s timeline, and she filled in what she had been told over the years — some of it accurate, other parts stretched or reshaped by time.

George McIntyre was born in 1926 and raised in Boston. Diane’s knowledge of his extended family was limited, partly because she was young when he passed and partly because her mother wanted distance after George was murdered. She remembers meeting her paternal grandmother just once.

According to Diane, her father joined the Navy as a teenager during World War II, probably at age 16 or 17. His mother had to sign for him to join at that age, she said. Like many families, theirs carried wartime stories that were retold and reshaped. Diane grew up hearing that he had served on a ship that saw disaster.

I have every reason to believe that McIntyre was serving aboard the U.S.S. Franklin in March of 1945, off the coast of Japan, when the carrier was struck by bombs and a kamikaze attack and engulfed in flames. McIntyre was among the survivors of a crew that suffered nearly 1,300 casualties.

Available records indicate McIntyre remained in the military for at least a year after the war. In 1946, he was charged with desertion and served a short sentence in military custody. Not long after his release, he was arrested in Oregon on a larceny charge and sentenced to nine months in the state penitentiary in Salem, where conditions were so harsh that inmates launched a weeks-long hunger strike.

The most serious episode came in the early 1950s when he was convicted in Montana for the murder of two men. In the spring of 1952, McIntyre was staying near Harlem, Montana, with two men he worked alongside on manual labor jobs. In April, he returned alone to their lodging one night, driving one of the men’s cars. When the landlady asked when the others would return, McIntyre replied, “Don’t worry about them, they won’t be coming back.”

McIntyre left the following day with the vehicle and the men’s belongings. About a week later, the bodies of the two men were discovered roughly 50 miles away. Both had been horrifically beaten, stripped of their clothing and partially buried in an apparent attempt to conceal their identities. The case may have gone cold had one of the men not been identified through fingerprints. Investigators quickly identified McIntyre as the primary suspect and issued local and national bulletins for his arrest.

Nearly nine months later, McIntyre was located in the Boston area, living only a few miles from his parents’ home, and taken into custody. He was returned to Montana, quickly convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for first-degree murder.

Diane did not grow up with that version of the story. Instead, she was raised with a simplified explanation that allowed her mother to believe she had married a man with a troubled past, but not a monstrous one.

“My mom told me, when I was much older, that he had served time after getting caught doing something they shouldn’t have been doing,” Diane said. In her understanding, the worst of it involved helping someone bury a body.

“He was just an accomplice. That’s all,” she said.

Records and newspaper accounts tell a far different story. They indicate McIntyre served roughly 16 years in the Montana State Penitentiary at Deer Lodge for those killings.

What happened next may be the most unlikely part of the story. After serving 16 years under harsh conditions, George A. McIntyre was granted a full and complete pardon by Montana Governor Thomas Judge. Every attempt I have made to obtain additional information from state authorities has been met with delays and red tape.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the wake of the Vietnam War, there was growing recognition of the long-term psychological effects of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. During that same period, there was also increased sympathy for some World War II veterans who committed crimes after returning home. I cannot confirm that this shift was the reason for McIntyre’s pardon, but it seems likely the governor concluded that 16 years in prison was sufficient punishment for a man who had served in some of the most brutal battles of the Pacific Theater.

Diane said her mother was furious after George’s death. Only then did people begin telling her what she had not known while they were getting married.

“My mom was so upset because he had lied to her,” Diane said. “She was very angry, and she wanted me to stay as far away from that family as I could get.”

Her mother came from a very different world, one marked by education, travel and stability. Diane described a woman who built a career in education and later became principal of the Boston School for the Deaf.

“Her heart was for children that had disabilities,” Diane said.

By Diane’s account, her mother, Patricia Quinn, met George about 1974 while he was working in a Boston restaurant. Their relationship was an unlikely collision of backgrounds.

“It was the good girl, the sweet, good girl, who comes from a great family,” Diane said, “has met … the bad boy.”

Why they left Massachusetts for a tiny town on the Wyoming state line remains central to Diane’s reflections. She believes fear played a role.

“I think it was for him to get away from the Mafia,” she said, explaining that her mother believed George had ties to organized crime. “You can’t just leave. You have to flee.”

The move brought them to Frannie, right on the state line, close to Montana but separated by jurisdiction. In 1966, that line likely represented a real barrier. A Wyoming driver’s license, a home and car titles were issued locally, with little practical way to cross-check a criminal past just a few feet away.

George and Patricia’s time in Frannie was calmer than his earlier life, but the ways he coped with whatever lived inside him were alcohol, violence and, at times, deep anger. In the end, a life shaped by violence ended the same way.

In 1980, George was shot and killed near Warren, Montana. The shooter claimed self-defense, and no one was convicted. Diane described escalating tensions including threats and a dispute involving a man renting space in the shop. Her mother’s version was blunt: George walked into the trailer, went to the refrigerator to get a beer and was “shot in the back.”

The more likely version is that McIntyre was about to physically attack Jeff Ball, a gunsmith and former friend. At one point, McIntyre had even served as Ball’s best man. Their relationship had deteriorated into open hostility.

Even at age 53, McIntyre was a physical threat. Court records noted his remarkable strength, and he was known to challenge much larger men to contests of strength for money. When Ball believed McIntyre was about to come across the table and kill him, he fired twice.

There were at least four witnesses who largely told the same story. After the fatal shooting, Ball and his wife immediately drove to Bridger, where he turned himself in. Ball was held for several weeks in the Carbon County jail in Red Lodge.

Years later, Diane went searching for answers. She requested her father’s records and contacted the Frannie Police Department. An officer who had known George returned her call and offered a complicated view.

“He told me my dad was a wonderful man,” Diane said, “and he had all these demons.”

Diane does not excuse her father’s actions.

“I understand my dad was a complete jerk,” she said, then added, “Murder is murder.”

After George’s death, Diane’s mother fell into a deep depression. Eventually, her mother remarried and moved Diane away, likely in an effort to escape the weight of gossip and public judgment.

For those who have wondered about that little 3-year-old girl in Frannie whose father was murdered in 1980, there is some peace in knowing the rest of the story. Diane grew up to be a healthy, happy adult with a beautiful family, a strong career and the knowledge that the cycle of violence passed down through families can, in fact, be broken.

For me, as a writer and amateur historian, there are still gaps in this story that continue to haunt me. Some answers may never be found. Human nature is rarely simple. What does seem clear is that George A. McIntyre tried more than once to start over, including his move to Frannie. What he could not escape were the demons of violence, trauma and alcoholism that so often follow the horrors of war.

George McIntyre has been dead for 45 years. Perhaps in knowing more of the truth, his daughter Diane can find some measure of understanding and comfort in the knowledge that her own life has been free of the forces that destroyed his. And perhaps there is also a lesson here for the rest of us, a reminder to look out for one another and to confront hate and violence before they grow into something that cannot be undone.

If any readers know more of the story or can add to Diane’s understanding of her father, please reach out to this reporter at jbernhisel@gmail.com.