Convict Took Up the Pen While Serving in One

During his 34 years behind bars for murder, Frederick David “Chick” Galloway aspired to be more than a convict.

That’s how the onetime child vaudevillian went into prison a murderer, but came out a newspaperman.

Nearly 70 years ago, the man journalists nicknamed “The Ukulele Murderer” started one of the earliest California prison newspapers.

Galloway was sentenced to life in 1927 for killing another man in a drunken brawl. He had hit the man over the head with an automobile crank -- this was the era before cars were started with a key -- then stolen the victim’s car and ukulele.

When Galloway entered Folsom State Prison, radios were part of America’s furniture, Charles Lindbergh had completed the first transatlantic flight and newspaper reporters prided themselves on christening murder cases with catchy names like “Tiger Woman.” When he was freed, in 1959, television sets had invaded homes and the space race was underway. The killer’s father was Emil R. Galloway, a former Congregational minister who was editor of the Santa Cruz Weekly Herald when his son was convicted of murder. The younger Galloway grew up performing in vaudeville in New York, singing and dancing -- and playing the ukulele.

In 1917, Galloway, then 15, lied about his age and joined the Army. He was sent to an overseas field hospital in World War I. After the war, he spent nine months at a federal prison in Georgia for driving a stolen car into another state. Despite his felony conviction, somehow he reenlisted in the Army -- and still played vaudeville on the side.

He deserted the Army in 1926 and made his way to San Jose, where he sang and danced at a local festival. His partner was Andrew Pashute, who also sang, danced and played the ukulele.

The night of May 23, 1926, after they shared a bottle of bootleg liquor while sitting at the side of the road, Pashute threatened to turn Galloway in as a deserter and claim the reward. An angry Galloway picked up the car’s hand crank and swung ferociously, hitting Pashute in the head again and again, killing him.

Galloway hid Pashute’s body behind some shrubs and drove the car to Salinas. When the car broke down, he hitchhiked south to Venice Beach. For two weeks Galloway sang and danced along the boardwalk, using the alias Fred Rowland, until he was arrested for murder.

On the drive back to San Jose, he entertained the two police officers by singing and playing “The Prisoners Song” on his victim’s ukulele.

Now if I had the wings like an angel

Over these prison walls I would fly

And I’d fly to the arms of my poor darling

And there I’d be willing to die.

A jury convicted him and sentenced him to hang. But his case was retried after a judge learned that a juror had said she would vote to hang any man who was a “drunkard.” On retrial, Galloway was sentenced to life in prison.

While there, he found himself following in his father’s footsteps as a newspaperman. In 1936, he began pecking away in his cell on a typewriter, founding the four-page Represa Sports Telegram, the Folsom inmates’ first newspaper, which contained sports and prison news. In 1938, Galloway won a medal and the title “all American sports editor on penal publication staffs.” In an interview with The Times that year, he said, “I’ll swap the medal for an assignment as a roving reporter, with permission to rove.”

The paper was later renamed the Folsom Observer, and its staff grew.

Galloway began to teach a writing class to help other convicts, an effort that would eventually persuade authorities that he could become a productive citizen.

He walked a fine line between what the prison administration would permit him to write and what the inmates wanted to read. His byline was his prison number, 15025.

He wrote from the heart and from experience, about how his first cell had no plumbing and how he and five bunkmates drank water out of a rusted, red-painted bucket. He described the doings of Medusa the spider, “who gratefully accepted the bugs I snared for her from their lair in the bedsprings.”

Galloway corresponded with Bill Conlin, then the sports editor of the Sacramento Union. In a 1955 column, Conlin wrote of his prison pen pal: “In a particular field -- sports writing -- he’d gain our vote for the nation’s top 10. In general knowledge, vivid insight and graphic description, he frequently went unbeaten and untied, even though his byline all these years has been a Folsom Prison number.”

Galloway not only wrote about matches of boxing, softball, tennis, shuffleboard, horseshoes, bowling and marbles, but he helped Wardens Clyde Plummer and Robert A. Heinze stage tennis and baseball exhibition games at the prison.

In October 1940, a temporary tennis court was built in the main yard and, there, Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs and future Wimbledon winner Jack Kramer played a match -- the prison has no record of who won. A few years later, Riggs returned to Folsom to play any convict willing to challenge him. Right-handed Riggs played left-handed and beat everyone, including Galloway.

On Feb. 2, 1941, major league baseball players, from such teams as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, showed up to play an exhibition game. In the stands were two world heavyweight boxing champions -- Max Baer and the “Great White Hope,” Jess Willard. Prison fans went wild.

In 1949, Galloway -- who had beaten the hangman -- came close to being killed by a fellow inmate. He was the unwilling witness when a prisoner slit the throat of Willard Borton, the “Phantom Burglar of Bel-Air,” who had stolen jewelry from movie stars’ homes.

Galloway pleaded for his life, promising not to rat on the murderer, but the killer slit his throat anyway. Galloway barely survived, but he never snitched.

In 1955, Galloway, then 53, was transferred to the California Men’s Colony near San Luis Obispo, then known as the “old men’s home,” where geriatric inmates often spent their final years.

But before Christmas Day, 1959, he was paroled. “When I walked through the front gate, feeling almost naked in my civilian clothes -- so light after denim -- my sponsors were waiting for me,” he later wrote.

His sponsors were a San Fernando Valley couple, their names still buried deep in the state’s records. She was a social worker who had become interested in Galloway’s case and worked for his freedom.

At first, he couldn’t leave the house, except on foot. The motion of a car nauseated him. He spent his days with three young neighbor children and two German shepherds, King and Cocoa.

“King’s the kindest-hearted animal in the world but cursed with an insatiable taste for metal,” he wrote in a letter to a friend. “He actually drools for zippers, safety pins, buttons, even needles. His eyes ... would melt the heart of a district attorney. But the very first night, he chewed the zipper off the only pants I own.”

“Hank” Osborne, city editor of the now-defunct Mirror, The Times’ partner newspaper, sent a reporter to write about Galloway’s first days of freedom. But the reporter found more than a story, and told his editor so.

“Hank, I don’t want to write this story. I want you to give this guy a job on the paper,” said former Mirror and Times reporter Paul Weeks. Osborne did just that, and Weeks waited two decades to write Galloway’s story.

Galloway worked at the Mirror, then at The Times, until he retired in 1973. Some of the stories he wrote were about prison inmates and the work they did on behalf of orphans, such as repairing toys and raising money for Christmas gifts.

After he retired, he married for the first time, a retired waitress named Esta. She died in 1982; he died five years later, at age 85.

“Despite his tumultuous past, Chick was a model of decorum at The Times,” said veteran Times reporter Eric Malnic. “Assigned to handle the city desk ‘nut phone,’ to which incoming complaints, weird story ideas and assorted ramblings were funneled, Chick invariably listened with patience and sympathy. No matter how abusive the callers became, Chick never raised his voice ... responded in kind or slammed the phone down in exasperation.

“And thanks to his journalistic instincts,” Malnic said, “he often ferreted good story ideas out of the avalanche of verbiage he listened to every day.”