“RUM KING” ROMANCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 17 January 1925, Page 7

“RUM KING” ROMANCE

A WEI HD STORY

Australians and New Zealanders are probably already aware of the strange rum-running case at . San 1* ran cisco, where a prominent Vancouver lawyer, while acting for a captain and crow ot tlie Vancouver rum-running vessel, was ruthlessly arrested at two o'clock in the morning at his fashionable hotel in San Francisco and where the same attorney j limned his bail and returned to Britisb Columbia breathing vengeance on the Volstead officials of San Francisco. In connection with this orgy of Pacific Coast smuggling is a weird story which has just been unfolded at Seattle. It is a story in which the romance has a heroine woven around the greatest rum smuggling conspiracy yet uncovered on the western ocean, notorious for a gigantic traffic in illicit liquor brought to America's shores to meet the insistent demands of a thirsty \aukoe public, determined hr indulge in something stronger than water at Y ulotide. The heroine of this smuggling romance is a pretty and accomplished young English girl, until recently Miss Elsie Caroline J’arche, and now Mrs Roy Olmstead. wife of 'the ‘King of Rum Smugglers" of the Northwest. Petite, quiet and genteel is Mi's Olmstead, the last person on the. world to be suspected oil being the centre of the moiling, cursing, ligating surge of rum rebellion. But just as her husband has a disarming personality so has she, and if lie is a paradox his wife is the strangest enigma that so far has battled the authorities of the law. The heroine of the stiirv is an accomplished violinist and singer, and his had an excellent, education. iSlie lived in Liverpool, where in 1916 and till Christmas Day of 1918, she did valiant work for the British War Department, recruiting men for the Navy. In 1919 she left the Mother Country [of Montreal. With her she carried a passport vised by the Right Hon. James G. Balfour, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs. She also had a letter from Sir Auckland Geildes, former Ambassador, thanking her for her services during the v. orld war. In the autumn of 1920 she went to Seattle from Vancouver and took up her residence there. Under the name of Vivien Potter, Miss Parchc opened a beauty parlour in the stylish university district- of Seattle, and for several months did (splendid, business in the land of her adoption. Her next move was, surprising, she became an under-cover agent for the U.S. Federal prohibition agents. One of her duties- was to work up a case against Roy Olmstead, the ex-polieo lieutenant who had worked his way from poverty to the millionaire class in the game of rum smuggling. She became Iris bookkeeper, working in his downtown office, who,.; he employed a st A of twenty, used three telephones, and is said to' have hcmled the- biggest rum running bunnesji in America- The pretty detective learned many things. She learned how ho operat 'd six boats from Smuggle!s' Cove, and from the leper colony at Darcey Island and Pender Island, to Seattle; liowi lie obtained protection for his fleet; how he undercut the other fellows by paying cash and getting 7 per cent discount , from the Trust; how he beat the Canadian Customs and helped organise the Western Freighters; how he supplied 50 Seattle bootleggers from his great cavernous cache, south of the city : how lie paid 40 dollars a case at Sinug-hli>-,-s’ CoyeAhud sold it to Seattle nnuu.emen at 60 dollars a case; how his boats landing at West- Waterway invau-ibJy got the tip-off before the revenue or prohibition men could swoop down on them. “Get Hoy Olmstead,” the oflicers told her. Slie said she would. But when they were ready to present the evidence to the Grand Jury and ask an indictment against the rum smugglers’ king, she hesitated. "I can’t testify against linyj Ohnisbead,” she mid blushingly. “Why not?” they demanded. “Because I’m his wife,” *she replied. She had “gotten Roy Olmstead.” , Olmstead lias been Responsible for many a coup, said the prohibition agents, hjs greatest being to haVe divorced his first wife and made Miss Parchc his bride. There must have been rqmance' as well ab experience to the wedding. His lamous “fishing yacht” that burned was named Elsie after her. She became not only mistress of his mansion, but. she became an helpmate to him. As “Aunt Vivien” of his famous 100,000 dollar radio, Mrs Olmstead every night has been telling the youngsters of the Puget Sound region thrilling bedtime stories over KFQX. On, November 17 the Olmstead home was raided by prohibition officers and tiio Olmsteads and sixteen others were arrested. “Aunt Vivien” did not miss a story. On the evening she got out of gaol she broadcasted the story as if nothing had occurred. 11m Federal agents say that KFQX is a broadcasting station for Olmstead’s illicit busihess of rum smuggling, and have gone so far as to suggest that the famous bedtime stories are code messages to rum running at sea. Since her arrest every attempt has been made to “hang” something on the charming “Aunt Vivien,” but without succoss- Immijgrat'iotn authorities have I,i ied to deport her and stories have been circulated that she has a husband arid family in Canada. Among the congests in the Seattle .courts between Olmstead and the prohibition authorities, the latest resuled in a victory for the Rum King, when the enforcement officers were restrained by Court order from disabling or destroying tlie broadcasting station, from which they alleged the bedtime stories were really code messages by which smugglers of liquor communicated with confederates in Canada and Japan. Oilier charges are still pending against Olmstead.