Murder of the Goldmark family

The Goldmark family Moving to Washington In 1942, John E. Goldmark, a Harvard-educated lawyer and U.S. Navy officer from New York State, married, in Washington D.C., Irma "Sally" Ringe, a New Deal worker from Brooklyn, New York. After World War II, they moved to Washington State with their son, Charles, born in January 1944, and bought a ranch 250 miles northeast of Seattle, in Okanogan County, Washington, out of a desire to live off the land. In the "Catching Up With John" editorial in the Tonasket Tribune by editor Ashley Holden, John Goldmark was accused of being complicit in “a monstrous conspiracy to remake America into a totalitarian state which would throttle freedom and crush individual initiative.” On another occasion, Holden described Goldmark as "the idol of the Pinkos and ultra-liberals who infest every session of the legislature." Holden and other confederates used as arguments in their campaign the fact that Charles Goldmark went to the liberal Reed College and that Sally, during the Great Depression, joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Sally's interest in folk music was also cited as evidence of her communist sympathies. Former Republican state legislator and former chairman of the Washington State Un-American Activities Committee Albert F. Canwell, in a taped interview, accused Sally of having belonged to the CPUSA in 1948 - five years later than when she claimed to have left the party. Canwell once referred to Sally Goldmark as a "lesbian communist." The Goldmarks then hired attorney William Lee Dwyer and sued Holden and his allies for libel, winning $40,000 (U.S.) in damages. This ruling was later reversed on the basis of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in a ruling which stated that, although the accusations were clearly false, there was no evidence they were done with malice. The Goldmark family later moved to Seattle. John Goldmark never held political office again and died in 1979 of cancer. Sally Goldmark died in early 1985. While serving in Europe, he met Annie J. Carlstén, a French interpreter whose father was Swedish while her mother was French. Annie and Charles soon married, moved to Seattle, and had two sons. Charles joined the law firm Davis, Wright, Todd, Riese, and Jones, before leaving the firm in 1976 with his friend, Jim Wickwire (one of the first two U.S. mountain climbers to reach the K2 peak), to begin a new law firm, Wickwire, Lewis, Goldmark, and Schorr. Charles specialized in civil litigation. Meanwhile, his wife, Annie, continued her career in translating. In addition to his legal work, Charles also worked in politics, becoming a legal counsel for the Washington State Democratic Party and serving as the delegate for Gary Hart during the 1984 Democratic National Convention. In 1982, Rice was living in Seattle, sleeping in homeless shelters or in cars before meeting 40-year-old naturopath Anne Davis, with whom he had a relationship, before moving to her Capitol Hill apartment to live from time to time. Anne Davis introduced Rice to the Duck Club, an antisemitic, anti-communist, right-wing and ultra-nationalist study group led by retired U.S. Army Colonel Gordon "Jack" Mohr, self-proclaimed "national military commander" of the Christian Patriots Defense League, and whose Seattle chapter was led by former Boeing employee Homer Brand. Rice was so enamored with Mohr's articles, he attempted to contact Mohr in Mississippi where he lived, only to be rebuffed. Rice started to believe in a "Communist conspiracy aided by the international bankers and the Federal Reserve Board", as his defense counsel later said. Among the subjects discussed during Duck Club meetings were the alleged Communist ties of the Goldmark family, leading Rice to research the subject. Rice concluded that Charles Goldmark was the “regional director of the American Communist Party” and that Rice had to act to save America. Meanwhile, Rice's financial situation began to worsen, as he found himself deeper and deeper in debt and his unemployment compensation ran out 4 or 5 months prior to the murders. == Murder ==

Preparation Rice's girlfriend, Anne Davis, had gone on vacation for Christmas and had left food and money for him with the understanding he would be out when she came back. Rice pawned Davis's television for $10. Days before the murders, Rice tested chloroform on himself and bought a pair of manacles and a toy pistol. He also bought an M1 Garand but decided not to use it because of the noise it would have made. These items and other tools and weapons appeared in a list entitled "Basic Armament for One Man Mission" in a notebook, written by Rice, found by police in a search of Anne Davis' apartment two days after the crime. Massacre of the Goldmark family On Christmas Eve 1985, Rice, posing as a taxi cab driver who had a package to deliver, gained entry to the Seattle home of Charles Goldmark. Rice had previously gone to the house of a neighbor before learning he was mistaken, and then going to the Goldmarks' house. However once he found them in the house on the day of the attack Rice determined that he had to kill them as well. At 7:10 p.m., he tied the family up: Charles, his wife Annie, and their two children, 12-year-old Derek and 10-year-old Colin. He then chloroformed them after robbing them of their valuables (including a bank card Charles gave him a false access number for, and the keys for their car) and learning guests were coming for 7:30. Fearing he could not have enough time to extract information about the Communist conspiracy from Charles, and that the Goldmark family could identify him, he searched for a weapon, settled for a steam iron and a kitchen knife and bludgeoned and stabbed them to death before leaving. On the same evening, Christmas Eve 1985, shortly after his murderous assault on the Goldmark family, Rice made an attempt to retrieve items bearing his fingerprints at the crime scene, but gave up on that idea after seeing the heavy police presence there. He agreed to complete the confession, and wrote the following: At this point Rice asked for an attorney and Seattle lawyer William Lanning came to speak to him for an hour and a half, concluding with Lanning telling the policemen his client agreed to speak to them even though he knew his declarations could be used against him. Rice confessed the crime to two detectives in a tape-recorded testimony, explaining his motivations, his preparations for the attacks, and manner of the murders. After Rice's arrest, information and documents about municipal bond lawyer and civic activist James R. Ellis were found among his belongings, leading to speculation that Ellis was the next target. == Legal process ==

At trial, Rice invoked the insanity defense, arguing that he was not responsible for the crime; his lawyer, Anthony Savage, stated that Rice's associations with right-wing groups exacerbated his paranoid delusional disorder, which three doctors, examining Rice, all diagnosed. Rice was convicted on June 5, 1986, of aggravated murder for the four deaths and was sentenced to death five days later, on June 10, 1986. The conviction was later overturned on the grounds that Lannen had provided him with an incompetent defense. Rice repeatedly displayed psychotic symptoms throughout his trial, but his attorney failed to emphasize them in his defense. In 1998, Rice pleaded guilty to the crimes in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. He remains in prison serving out a life sentence. The Goldmark Murders remain one of the most notorious antisemitic hate crimes as well as politically motivated killings in recent memory in the United States, even though the victims were not actually Jewish and Communist as the killer mistakenly believed. There was a controversy over whether Rice had been influenced by the Duck Club. == Legacy ==

In 1986, the Goldmark Foundation was established, with the purpose of giving to the cause the Goldmark family would have supported, contributing more than $200,000 to various local causes, or $500,000 if matching dollars were also counted. In the beginning, it gave small grants, around $2,500, to small nonprofit groups that needed modest boosts, before switching to give more substantial grants, in the range of $25,000 range, to make an enduring impact. Among the beneficiaries were: • The Young Men’s Christian Association, to help disadvantaged children to attend Camp Orkila on Orcas Island, in the Salish Sea, where the Goldmark children went to camp. • The nonprofit Legal Foundation of Washington, which counts Charles Goldmark among its founders, to pay for the Goldmark Equal Access to Justice Internships for law students, providing law interns to organizations that cannot usually afford them yet need them in order to function. • The Seattle-Nantes Sister City Association for scholarships furthering understanding between France and the United States. • The Bush School, where the Goldmark boys studied. • The Harborview Medical Center. • The Victims Assistance Unit of the Seattle Police Department, whose work for the victims after the massacre were saluted by friends. In 1992, a plaque was inaugurated in Seattle, at Madrona Drive and Lake Washington Boulevard, in the newly named Goldmark Overlook, to honor the Goldmark family. This plaque read: It was the first time in Seattle that private citizens who had been murder victims ever received a memorial. The Goldmark Foundation donated $15,000 for the $83,000 overlook, a part of the plan by the local Parks and Recreation Department to beautify the lakefront. Charles Goldmark's brother, Peter J. Goldmark, is former Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands and head of the Washington Department of Natural Resources. == Bibliography ==

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