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Elise Olmstead, Seattle, circa 1926
Order an ImageElise Olmstead was the second wife of Roy Olmstead, one of the largest and most successful bootleggers in King County during the 1920s Prohibition years. Born in London, England in 1899 as Elsie Parsche, Elise originally immigrated to Vancouver, and after some back and forth across the border, by 1922 she was living full-time in Seattle as Elsie Campbell. At some point during this time, Elise began working for Roy Olmstead as a bookkeeper, where she became an informant for the government against Roy's bootlegging operation. Soon Elise became involved with Roy and stopped working as an informant, and in 1924, Roy divorced his first wife and Roy and Elise married. The couple had one daughter Patricia Olmstead born in 1925.
Soon after they married, Elise and Roy established the American Radio Telephone Company and the radio station KFQX, which they mostly operated from their home in Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood. It was suspected that the children's bedtime hour was used to relay coded messages to the various rum runners employed.
Suspicious of the activities, federal agents employed surveillance techniques and wiretapping to arrest Elise, Roy, and nine other men in 1924. After an initial Federal Grand Jury indictment in 1925, the 1926 trial proceedings at the time of this photograph were the largest in the country's history of liquor violations starting out with 47 defendants. Elise was acquitted, however, Olmstead was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and fined $8,000. After losing his appeal, Olmstead served his time at McNeil Island Penitentiary and was released in 1932.
Having converted to the Christian Science faith in prison, and now believing that alcohol was destructive, Roy Olmstead spent his remaining years counseling and teaching from the Bible, providing rehabilitative services to Puget Sound inmates, and operating a ministry from the Times Square Building until his death in 1966. Elise divorced Olmstead on the grounds of desertion without cause in 1943, and later married Earl J. Swisher in 1951. She died in Seattle in 1979.
Caption information source: HistoryLink.org.
Caption information source: Elise Olmstead: The Myth and Mystery of Seattle's "Queen of the Bootleggers," by Albert Gidari. Self published, 2024.
Soon after they married, Elise and Roy established the American Radio Telephone Company and the radio station KFQX, which they mostly operated from their home in Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood. It was suspected that the children's bedtime hour was used to relay coded messages to the various rum runners employed.
Suspicious of the activities, federal agents employed surveillance techniques and wiretapping to arrest Elise, Roy, and nine other men in 1924. After an initial Federal Grand Jury indictment in 1925, the 1926 trial proceedings at the time of this photograph were the largest in the country's history of liquor violations starting out with 47 defendants. Elise was acquitted, however, Olmstead was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and fined $8,000. After losing his appeal, Olmstead served his time at McNeil Island Penitentiary and was released in 1932.
Having converted to the Christian Science faith in prison, and now believing that alcohol was destructive, Roy Olmstead spent his remaining years counseling and teaching from the Bible, providing rehabilitative services to Puget Sound inmates, and operating a ministry from the Times Square Building until his death in 1966. Elise divorced Olmstead on the grounds of desertion without cause in 1943, and later married Earl J. Swisher in 1951. She died in Seattle in 1979.
Caption information source: HistoryLink.org.
Caption information source: Elise Olmstead: The Myth and Mystery of Seattle's "Queen of the Bootleggers," by Albert Gidari. Self published, 2024.
ID Number: 1986.5G.2278.1
Date: Circa 1926
Physical Description: 1 glass negative : b&w ; 4 x 5 in.
Credit: MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 1986.5G.2278.1
Copyright: All Rights Reserved
Subjects:
Temperance and Prohibition