Murder at the Davenport Hotel

Great Falls Tribune Clipping, November 8, 1951. Photograph of Ella Jayne Pryor

Mrs. Ella Pryor did not know why she shot her husband. That’s what she said to County Attorney Ted James on Wednesday, November 7, 1951.

She has had a lot on her mind lately. She had married James Pryor 2 months ago, after having lived with him for a year. She had been to see her doctor who found two tumors and had one chance out of five of having cancer. She went to a local sporting goods store and purchased a gun. She didn’t want to suffer. It was in a dresser drawer in their room at the Davenport Hotel.

She worked at the Top-Notch Café until 9 Tuesday morning. She felt she couldn’t do work properly and went home. She then went to the gravel pit where her husband was working and was with him all afternoon, riding around in his truck. At the end of the workday, they went home and played cards with another couple at the hotel. When they returned to their room, Mr. Pryor lay down on the bed and Mrs. listened to the radio for a time.

“I walked over to the dresser and just shot him,” she said. Mr. Pryor didn’t scream. He looked at his wife but said nothing, then opened the door and fled down the stairway. Mrs. Pryor shot several more times while following her husband.

Downstairs, Mr. John Leach, a clerk, was working in the hotel office. At 10:45, he heard shots. He looked out of his office and saw Mr. Pryor coming down the stairs, his wife following him with a gun. Pryor fell just as he rounded the corner, and Mrs. Pryor fired two more shots while he was lying on the floor. “I done it. I shot him,” she said. Robert Harvey, operator of the hotel, came out of his room and Mrs. Pryor tried to hand him the pistol but he backed away and informed her he was calling the police. Mrs. Pryor then said she was going to change clothes and upon her return she lifted her husband’s head and said, “Why did I do it,” and put the gun on a table.

Detail of newspaper clipping, “Bride of Two Months Kills Husband, 35, in Hotel Here. Great Falls Tribune, November 7, 1951.

Ella Pryor had shot her husband 6 times, 1 in front and 5 in the back. She had blood on her chin when she was taken into police custody. She was examined by two psychiatrists and pleaded guilty to murder. “Her action in shooting her husband may be best described as the explosion of an emotional time bomb, the fuse of which was lit in the emotionally deprived atmosphere of her childhood.” She had grown up in an orphanage, married at 16, left her first husband and child and then came to Montana with James Pryor.

On November 14, 1951, she was charged with 2nd degree murder and sentenced to life in the state prison. She accepted her sentence calmly. The only thing she said during her trial was that she was guilty.

Janye Pryor’s Prison paperwork, Record Series 197 (Montana State Prison Records), Montana Historical Society, p. 1

Janye Pryor’s Prison paperwork, Record Series 197 (Montana State Prison Records), Montana Historical Society, p. 2

For more information, visit this link to Montana History Portal

-Megan Sanford, Archives & Operations Manager