By SUSAN HELF

In the early morning of June 17, 1926, a carpenter was walking around the north end of Green Lake to go to work. In an alder grove on a point of land he discovered a pair of women's shoes next to the lake. He walked a few feet further on and found the woman - dead and nearly naked, sprawled near the shore. The body belonged to 22-year-old Sylvia Gaines.

From the moment Sylvia's body was discovered, the Gaines murder case became one of the most sensational in Seattle's history. For one thing, Sylvia was young and pretty, a graduate of an elite Eastern women's college. For another, she had a prominent relative: her father's brother William Gaines who was the chair of the King County Board of Commissioners.

The murder case was front page news for months. Seattle was shocked and fascinated by the sordid details that emerged concerning this young woman's life and death.

Sylvia Gaines was born in Massachusetts in 1904. Her parents split up in 1909, when her father, Wallace C. "Bob" Gaines, came to Washington State, leaving Sylvia and her mother behind. Shortly afterwards, the couple divorced. In September of 1925, Sylvia , having graduated from Smith College, came to Seattle to visit her father whom she barely knew. Less than ten months after her arrival, she was brutally murdered.. The prime suspect was her father, Bob Gaines, a World War I veteran.

At first Gaines was not suspected. On June 17, he reported his daughter missing, and after her body was found, he identified her at the morgue. Ewing Colvin, the King County Prosecutor (and a good friend of Gaines' brother William) thought Bob Gaines innocent-for what father would kill his child?-and thought it likely that "some fiend" had assaulted and killed Sylvia.

Evidence kept pointing to Gaines as the murderer. When authorities questioned Gaines the morning of June 17, he was very intoxicated and made statements to them suggesting that he knew who the murderer was. Later investigations turned up several of Gaines' neighbors and friends who saw him the night of the murder, very drunk and disturbed at his daughter's disappearance.

The murder trial began on Aug. 2, 1926. The prosecutor asked for the death penalty.. A jury was chosen, consisting of nine men and three women. The women jurors got a lot of attention from the press. Although women had received the vote in 1920, many states prohibited them from serving on juries-a prohibition that continued in some states well into the 1940s. Media and public attention was so intense that the judge ordered the jury sequestered in a downtown Seattle hotel.

Colvin called witnesses to testify about the events of the evening of June 16.. He quickly demolished the "fiend theory," that an stranger had raped and killed Sylvia; no one-neighbors or those walking by the lake near the murder site-had heard any outcry. This evidence made it very likely that Sylvia was not killed by a stranger, but by someone she knew and had no reason to fear.

Witnesses reported seeing Gaines at the lake shore around nine o'clock that evening, near where Sylvia's body was later found. He was bending down over someone or something. Other witnesses said they'd seen Gaines drive around the lake several times around the time of the murder.

Sylvia was strangled and her head battered with a blunt instrument. She died around 9:00 p.m. that night. Authorities found a bloody rock near the murder site. Later testimony established that she had been murdered in one spot and that her body had been dragged to another, several yards away, and arranged in a manner to suggest sexual assault.

Gaines testified that he and Sylvia had quarreled on the evening of June 16. Sylvia, in an angry mood, left their home at 108 N. 51st St. shortly after 8 p.m. that evening for a walk around the lake. Gaines said he left at about 8:40 when he drove around nearby streets looking for her and then drove to the home of his friend and drinking companion, Louis Stern, arriving there about 9:30 p.m..

Stern's evidence was damning. He reported that Gaines came to his house to drink and all but confessed to Stern that he'd murdered his daughter. Gaines said, "You know what I have always told you, that if anyone in my house told me when I should come and go and when I should drink and how much, why I would kill 'em ... Well, that's what happened."

Colvin had established where and when and how Sylvia had been killed, but he had to provide a motive.. Colvin's theory was that Gaines and his daughter had what was then called "an unnatural relationship." Gaines knew that Sylvia wanted to leave his home (she'd made plans to go stay with her uncle William Gaines) and he killed her to keep her from leaving him or revealing the incestuous affair.

According to Colvin, the "unnatural relations" had evidently been going on for most of Sylvia's visit. She came to Seattle in September of 1925 to get to know her father. She and her father had not seen each other since 1909, when she was five years old. Sylvia moved in with her father and his second wife, who lived in a small one-bedroom house. When Sylvia first came, she slept on the couch in the living room while her father and his wife slept in the bedroom. The three of them quarreled frequently. Mrs Gaines, evidently distraught about the situation, tried to kill herself in November of 1925. At that time, Sylvia and her father were threatening to leave the home and get an apartment.

Gaines' neighbor said she had believed the two were sharing a bed and that Mrs. Gaines slept on the couch. Other witnesses described angry quarrels that Gaines and Sylvia had had in public. A Seattle patrolman discovered Gaines and his daughter late at night parked in Gaines' car in Woodland Park-as teenaged lovers might. An employee of a downtown Seattle hotel testified that in November of 1925 she had seen Gaines and his daughter-in their nightclothes-together in bed

In his closing statement, Colvin said Gaines had been sexually involved with his daughter for some months, and that she was fed up and about to leave. On the evening of June 16, they quarreled, and Sylvia left the house to get away from him. Gaines went after her and found her walking near Green Lake and, in a jealous and alcoholic rage, killed her. Then, to make it look like she'd been raped and killed, he tore her clothes, dragged her body nearer the path and arranged her limbs in a manner to suggest sexual attack. He continued to drink heavily and confessed the murder to his friend Louis Stern.

The jury deliberated a little over three hours and found Gaines guilty. He was sentenced to die, appealed his case but was unsuccessful. He was hanged On Aug. 31, 1928, in Walla Walla.

The grove of alder trees is gone, replaced by more than 30 large cottonwoods. . Local legend has it that the community planted the cottonwoods on what is now called Gaines Point, in memory of Sylvia Gaines. Those cottonwood trees, which look to be about seventy years old, now provide roosting places for bald eagles, and other raptors. The Seattle Park Department says the trees must go because mature cottonwoods can drop their limbs and threaten public safety. The Parks Department plans to clear-cut the grove in April, removing the last physical reminder of this sad piece of Seattle history.