A Hunger for Mayhem

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​In October, 1931, a strange discovery was made about 2 miles east of Pasco County near the Snake River bridge. It was the torso of a woman nailed to a telegraph pole.

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The woman's body was found nailed to a telegraph pole on the outskirts of Yakima, WA

The body appeared to have been staked to the post in the sagebrush at least a couple of weeks before. The spot was at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers, which were dragged for any clues.

The gruesome human remnants were found by H. R. Olson and A. R. Welch and his wife. The local authorities were stumped, since there were no reports of a missing woman in the area.

Based on the remnants of flesh still left, Dr. O'Brien from Pasco County said the woman had a fair complexion with auburn hair, and she was between 30 to 40 years of age. The deputies from Franklin County searched the area for the rest of the body, but nothing was found.  They asked for help from a Seattle criminologist, Luke May, who was sent pieces of the flesh. Three days later the mystery appeared to be solved. A caretaker at the cemetery reported that a particular grave had been disturbed.

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Yakima Ave. c.1920s

The body of Permelia Kanouse, 76, had been exhumed from the cemetery. She was buried on September 25, 1931. The casket had been split open. Fingerprint experts from Walla Walla penitentiary worked on the case. An elderly man Isaac (aka Izaak or Izak Samuel) Brooks, 81, with a prison record, was picked up for questioning.

Mrs. Kanouse had kept house for him for several years. He had lived in Pasco county for about 10 years after serving a stretch in Walla Walla prison. Isaac Brooks had a story all his own, and with good reason he was a suspect. 

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Mrs. Kanouse's tomb was desecrated in 1931.

In 1913, he was arrested in connection to the murder of John Murphy a camp cook. The man's "fiendishly mutilated" body was found in a shed in the stockyard in North Yakima.

Bloodhounds owned by former jailer J.O. Hawn, twice followed a trail from where the body was found, to the back door of Brook's shack in the southwest part of the city. This was two blocks from where Murphy died.

Murphy was 65 years old, and worked as a camp cook about the valley for several years. Due to his wounds, he had bled to death. Also arrested was a man named Jimmy Burns, Thomas Corbin and J.H. Timm, all of them laborers.

A few months before Murphy's murder, James Burns was assaulted in the same manner, in the same part of town. It led the residents of the town to believe there was an insane person at large, whose mania drove them to this form of mutilation.

​On December 19, James Fitzgerald, alias Jimmy Burns, was found working in an industrial camp near Pasco and brought back by Sheriff Joe Metzger. His testimony was said to have completed the chain of evidence against Isaac Brooks.

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Isaac Brooks was charged with mayhem a particular charge for how he mutilated his victims

Due to his confession authorities went searching for L.K. Fullerton, a county prisoner who in November said that Brooks made a similar attack on him. His story and the fact that a bloody mattress was found in the Brooks house, lent credence to his words.

In March, 1914, Isaac Brooks was found guilty of maiming workman James Fitzgerald. The prosecutors decided to charge him with the attack against Fitzgerald, who was described as a boy, and not the murder of Murphy, in which they only had circumstantial evidence, even though they were of the same "fiendish character. " He was charged with "mayhem", which was a specific and serious charge. It sprang from the word maim. However, the charge could only be applied when a victim lost a limb, the loss of a sense, was left disfigured or had life-altering changes to the body. Mayhem is usually the deliberate and intentional infliction of grave and severe bodily harm. What saved Fitzgerald, was that he was found before he bled to death., however Murphy had crawled into a shanty and died there.

​Fitzgerald positively identified Brooks as his assailant. The defense team tried to discredit Fitzgerald by saying he had once been a glass eater with a circus. Brooks who was an older man had lived in the area for many years, while the two victims were laborers who had been in the city but a few days when the "inhuman crimes" were committed.

Though never clearly stated, it was inferred that Brooks mutilated the by cutting off their genitals.

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Transients were many times tied to the agricultural jobs found in the area

James Burns like the other men, seemed to live the life of a transient. In May 1913, he along with Thomas Hardy had just arrived in Bellingham, Washington when they were arrested for stealing about 100 pounds of copper wire, and fittings from a building.

Men with no family or homes, were the ones targeted by Isaac Brooks. In May, 1914, Brooks, who was 58 years old was sentenced for an "unusual crime" and was ordered to spend 2 to 10 years at Walla Walla. It seemed the compulsion that had driven Brooks to attack at least two men was not extinguished during his prison term, and as to why he decided to punish Permelia Kanouse's corpse, remains a mystery.

Isaac Brooks was released for insufficient evidence, after being arrested for mutilating Permelia Kanouse's corpse. He died in 1943 at the age of 93.

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