Editor's note: This story contains graphic descriptions of racism and police violence.
From the depth of the pain in their voices, you’d think it happened yesterday. The night Portland Police entered the Jones' family home in Guild’s Lake, while everyone slept, without a warrant, and shot Ervin Jones in the back, killing the innocent man in front of his wife and two young children in their bedroom — no charges were ever filed against the detective who shot him.
Though it wasn’t yesterday — it was 1945.
Yet, to this day, the trauma Ervin’s family endures from what a grand jury ruled a “justifiable homicide” continues — Ardodia Perry, Ervin’s daughter, and Rhonda Winbush, Ervin’s granddaughter, are in deep pain almost 80 years after Ervin’s death.
“We are still the ones that have gone through all the pain and, myself, I've been through a lot with this,” Ardodia said.
Ardodia was only three years old when the round that killed her father grazed her forehead as she lay in bed with her brother, Robert, or RJ, and mother, Elva Jones. The detective shot at Ervin over the bed, with the rest of the family caught in the line of fire.
“My family, my mother, all of them could have been murdered,” Rhonda said. “And for them to say that it's justifiable homicide is painful.”
Surrounded by grief and trauma, the Jones family struggles to cope with the official ruling that their relative’s death was justified. Now, empowered to seek accountability, they want the city of Portland to change the death certificate and acknowledge wrongdoing.
Street Roots spoke with Ervin’s family, and multiple historians, and analyzed dozens of historical documents, including police files, newspaper articles, letters and photos related to the police homicide of Ervin Jones to form a comprehensive timeline of events.
Aug. 21, 1945 and the aftermath
The homicide of Ervin Jones and its aftermath was well-documented in multiple newspapers throughout Oregon, including The Oregonian, the Oregon Journal and Portland’s Black-owned newspaper, The Portland Observer. Cumulatively, the aforementioned papers published more than three dozen articles pertaining to Ervin’s’ death. Many official legal documents from this period were destroyed in the decade before Street Roots began its investigation.
On the night of Aug. 20, 1945, Portland Police said a man named Scott Thomas killed a woman named Beatrice Thomas in her Guild’s Lake residence in Portland during a dispute, according to articles by The Oregon Journal and The Oregonian.
Portland Police arrived on the scene after Scott Thomas fled. When they returned to the station, they were informed Guild’s Lake resident General Grant visited the station and told police Thomas was at the Jones’ home.
Acting on Grant’s information, police went to the Jones’ home. Ervin was innocent and not suspected of a crime.
In the darkness, at around 2 a.m. on Aug. 21, 1945, three police officers and an official with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office arrived at the Jones’ home. They had no warrant. They wore plain clothes.
Officers began banging on the Jones’ door, according to initial statements to the press.
That night, the four members of the Jones family, Ervin, Elva, three-year-old Ardodia and five-year-old RJ, slept in the living room of their small Guild’s Lake apartment, all four sharing a bed in a space far too small to comfortably accommodate all members of the family.
Elva’s two brothers, who also lived in the apartment, were working night shifts, and her two sisters, Susie Rambo, 26, and Zandaree Rambo, 16, slept in the apartment’s bedroom.
During a coroner’s inquest into the killing of her husband, Elva testified officers never identified themselves, a statement supported by the testimony of multiple other witnesses in the inquest.
The Jones’ neighbors, the Johnsons, lived on the other side of the paper-thin walls of the Guild’s Lake apartment. Jesse Johnson testified he awoke to forceful knocking on the Jones’ door and checked to see what was going on. He said officers never identified themselves, as he would’ve warned Jones of their presence. He heard one of the police officers shout, “Unless someone opens the door, I’ll shoot through it!” Johnson’s wife, who was not named in media coverage, gave similar testimony.
Susie, Elva’s sister, testified she never heard officers identify themselves, and she only woke up when Ervin entered her room to warn her robbers were breaking into their home. She subsequently hid behind a bed with her sister, Zandaree, who provided similar testimony.
Ervin, who thought the officers were burglars, retrieved a gun to protect his family.
Sgt. Dan Mitola and Det. Mike O’Leary pounded on one door, demanding entrance to the home. Det. John Bard Purcell, went to a window on the opposite side of the home.
Elva awoke to her husband asking, “Who knocks?” before hearing glass shatter in the door where Ervin was standing, according to her testimony in the coroner’s inquest. After the door window shattered, Ervin walked toward a bookcase away from the door. Ervin raised an empty hand toward the door at the same time the window over the family’s bed shattered. Almost instantaneously, Ervin collapsed to the floor without ever having so much as pointed his gun, Elva testified.
Purcell, who was standing at the window over the bed, had fired his gun across the bed occupied by Ervin’s wife and two small children, grazing Ardodia’s head with a round and striking Ervin in the back.
Chaos erupted as officers swarmed the house.
“Lay the gun down or I’ll blow your damned brains out,” said one of the officers to Ervin as he lay dying on the floor, according to Susie’s testimony, as reported by The Oregonian.
Ervin died shortly after Purcell shot him inside his home.
He was just 37 years old.
‘Murderous impulse’
The first article revealing the police homicide of Ervin Jones was published on the front page of The Oregon Journal later that day — Aug. 21, 1945.
As subsequent news of Ervin’s death spread throughout the region via Black-owned newspapers, anger grew in Oregon’s Black communities. Within weeks, members of Portland’s Black community called for an investigation into what transpired.
“The taking of Jones’ life was ruthless in the most elementary sense,” Portland Observer editor William H. McClendon wrote on Sept. 20, 1945. “The detective who fired the death dealing bullet had to shoot directly across a bed where two babies were lying, frightened and screaming. The lives of these children, being endangered, did not even deter this officer from his murderous impulse.”
The Rev. George W. Brown of the Gona Street Community Church, located in Guild’s Lake, spoke on behalf of the interests of the Jones family following Ervin’s death, calling for a “probe” into police actions that night, according to articles in The Oregonian and The Observer.
Churches throughout Portland called on the city to investigate, and on Sept. 7, 1945, then-Multnomah County District Attorney Thomas Handley announced there would be a coroner’s inquest into Ervin's death.
Multiple letters to the editor published in The Oregonian immediately after the homicide of Ervin reflected anger among Portlanders and desire for an official investigation into his death.
"I do hope that because of what happened to me and my family something will be done to protect others from suffering the same misfortune.”
Elva Jones, in a letter to the editor published by The Oregonian
Oct. 23, 1945
Soon after the District Attorney announced the coroner’s inquest, the NAACP got involved. The NAACP sent attorney Irvin Goodman to represent the interests of the Jones family during the inquest.
The city of Portland offered no assistance to the Jones family after Ervin’s death. Instead, Portland-area churches collected money to fund Elva and her sisters’ journey back to Portland to testify in the inquiry, as the Jones family had accompanied Ervin’s body back to Louisiana for burial and had not returned to Oregon.
The coroner, Dr. Earl Smith, hand selected the all-white, primarily elderly six-member coroner’s jury for the inquest. The NAACP lawyer representing the Jones family argued it was unfair and for a homicide that occured in a Black neighborhood, a jury should include Black Portlanders. The coroner disagreed, and the inquest moved forward with the all-white jury. Testimony in the inquest began Oct. 9, 1945.
During their testimonies, the Rambo sisters testified Portland Police brought the accused killer, Scott Thomas, to their apartment following Ervin's death. Both the sisters and Thomas said they did not know each other and had not seen each other before, according to their testimony.
The police officers involved in Ervin's death said they knocked multiple times, identified themselves, and that they were within their rights “to go in after (Ervin)” because it was a murder investigation and Ervin did not open the door.
Throughout the inquest, Purcell and other police officials questionably framed Ervin as the aggressor, claiming Ervin shot at police as they attempted to gain entry to his home. It was then, according to Purcell, he shot Ervin in the back, contradicting Elva’s testimony.
Purcell gave statements during the inquest regarding the precise timeline and the type of gun the detective used that conflicted with prior statements to the press.
The other officers present when Purcell killed Ervin gave testimony supporting the detective.
The coroner’s inquest included two days of testimony from witnesses including Elva, her sisters, the Jones’ neighbors and various Portland Police personnel. After less than two hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a determination: Purcell acted “in performance of duties and in protection of himself and fellow officers.”
Following the determination in the coroner’s inquest, Black community leaders called on then-Oregon Gov. Earl Snell to impanel a grand jury regarding Jones’ killing. The following week, a grand jury hearing began, featuring the same witnesses as the coroner’s inquest.
Although Street Roots was unable to locate media reports describing the racial demographics of the grand jury, 1940 census records matching the names listed for grand jury members indicate the grand jury was likely also all-white.
The grand jury reaffirmed the findings of the coroner’s inquest on Oct. 19, 1945. In spite of multiple witnesses’ testimony contradicting police statements, the jury reaffirmed the previous determination that the killing of Ervin Jones was a “justifiable homicide,” and declined to indict Purcell.
No charges were ever filed in Ervin’s death.
Police contradictions
Following Ervin’s death, police changed their narrative multiple times and made several provably false statements. Immediately following his death, police misidentified Ervin as a similarly named man with a criminal record who lived in a different state in statements to the press. Ervin did not, in fact, have any criminal record.
Police refused to release the official report from Ervin’s death. Police claimed Ervin shot at them as they broke in his door — allegations for which they offered no evidence — directly conflicting with the Jones family’s version of events, which said Ervin never fired his gun.
During the coroner’s inquest, the police narrative about what happened the morning of Aug. 21 remained fluid around their changing — and contradictory — statements.
Comparing his testimony to police’s initial statements, Purcell contradicted himself multiple times — on where he stood outside the Jones’ residence, the type of gun he carried, whether or not he broke the Jones’ window and where Ervin lay after he shot him.
Perhaps most questionably, Captain of Detectives James Fleming made a claim on Oct. 13, 1945, just days after the inquest, for which he refused to provide proof. Fleming said police obtained a signed statement from an unnamed witness confirming Thomas was inside the Jones’ home when police shot Ervin. Fleming failed to explain how Thomas escaped a house surrounded by police. The evidenceless statement angered the NAACP, who demanded a grand jury investigation and release of the official police report.
Scott-free
Following the grand jury’s decision not to indict Purcell, Portland City Council voted to pay all legal fees incurred by Purcell, $750, but offered no assistance to Elva.
After the conclusion of the investigations, in a letter to the editor published by The Oregonian, dated Oct. 23, 1945, Elva Jones wrote: “I want to thank everyone who has shown kindness to me and my sisters during our stay in Portland and all who made it possible for us to return to testify at the coroner’s inquest and the grand jury investigation… I do hope that because of what happened to me and my family something will be done to protect others from suffering the same misfortune.”
Purcell went on to enjoy the fruits of a successful career in law enforcement, according to a personnel file and court records obtained by Street Roots. Purcell ascended the ranks, eventually being appointed director of public safety and sheriff of Multnomah County in 1970 before retiring with a pension in 1974.
Policing was a Purcell family affair, and John Bard Purcell enjoyed several promotions during the tenure of infamous then-Chief of Police “Diamond” Jim Purcell — John Bard Purcell’s brother. His homicide of Ervin Jones is not mentioned in his personnel file. John Bard Purcell died in 2003.
Backdrop of race and ongoings in Portland
The homicide of Ervin Jones occurred in a deeply racist city.
Anti-Black racism was overt and commonplace in Portland during the 1940s. An Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary on civil rights in Oregon depicts signs on businesses prohibiting Black and Jewish Portlanders, equating them with dogs, while stating “White Trade Only,” advertising the city’s hatred. A photograph published in the Portland Telegraph just 24 years earlier showed the mayor, chief of police and multiple other Portland city officials posing with hooded members of the KKK.
Life in Portland was deeply segregated. Despite no official segregation policies in Portland, Black Portlanders were barred from participating in many aspects of public life by the majority white population, according to Justin Vipperman, an instructor of history at Southern Idaho University.
Vipperman authored a paper on Portland’s civil rights movements, which includes Ervin’s death.
Black Portlanders were not welcome in large swaths of the city. Many restaurants refused to serve Black diners and Black patients were housed separately in local hospitals.
“The race relations in Portland at the time was not great,” Vipperman said. “You've got a lot of poor whites who see themselves as better than African Americans, even though they're living in the same neighborhoods, especially in Vanport.”
There were less than 2,000 Black people in Oregon prior to World War II. The Black population in Portland jumped during wartime with the influx of nearly 20,000 Black people who primarily came to the area to participate in the war effort by working for one of the nearly 80 defense companies building warships and other equipment.
The increasing population of Black Portlanders was not welcomed by most white Portlanders, who sought to exclude their Black neighbors from as many aspects of public life as possible.
“(Black Portlanders) were barred from Portland downtown, and there are multiple pictures of ‘No ‘N***o submitted here’ signs in downtown Portland,” Vipperman said. “It’s as close to a sundown town without being a sundown town as you can get in Portland (at the time) because businesses were not allowing African Americans in.”
The city sought to confine Black Portlanders to certain sections of the city, such as Vanport and Guild’s Lake, which were located in the far north of Portland near the Columbia River.
New hope in Portland
Recent Black migrants from Louisiana, the Jones family sought opportunity and the American Dream in Portland as a part of the war effort working in the massive defense and shipyard industry. Ervin followed his brother’s family to Portland from Louisiana, enticed by the prospect of prosperity and success on the West Coast.
The families lived in Guild’s Lake, a wartime housing development for employees of the Kaiser Shipyards and other wartime defense production companies.
Guild’s Lake and Vanport were the only two of 25 wartime housing developments where Black families could live, and even within the developments, they were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods.
The families who lived in these homes were effectively tenants and had no ownership claims to the homes, according to Tanya Lyn March, a historian, author and tour guide in Portland who has extensively researched Vanport, Guild’s Lake and the killing of Ervin Jones. To live in one of the developments, a resident had to be employed by one of the defense companies.
The neighborhoods where Black Portlanders lived were infrastructurally insulated, which made it difficult for Black Portlanders to reach other parts of the city, March said.
“When you compare the two developments in the treatment of people, it’s a very different experience,” March said. “They ran out of money by the time they built the section for African Americans. Guild’s Lake was built by the housing authority, and the housing authority very clearly didn't want people to know African Americans were living there.”
Despite facing hostility from most white Portland residents, the Black communities in Vanport and Guild’s Lake were full of hope and excited by the future, according to March.
“They were a community that had strengths and assets and hopes and dreams, that was looking on the up,” March said. “(Black migrants from the South) come here and at first, during the war years, things are better, for a little, little bit. They’re galvanizing, they're starting the Urban League, they're getting involved with the NAACP, their children are getting education, they're going to integrated schools for grade school. There is hope, and that is almost worse, when it goes away — when the shooting happens.”
Aftermath of Ervin’s death
Ervin Jones’ family suffered in the immediate aftermath of his death. Upon returning to Louisiana, where Elva and Ervin’s two oldest children had remained, Elva had to inform them of the tragic death of their father.
The news was devastating to the family’s two eldest children, including Ervin Jones Jr., who is still alive and is also seeking answers about his father’s death.
After Ervin’s death, Elva and her children struggled to make ends meet living off of Social Security benefits that came through her late husband, living in poverty. She went on to have six additional children, but never remarried.
Elva suffered from mental illness, according to her daughter, and never recovered after her husband’s killing. She died, still in pain and confusion, at the age of 56.
After Ardodia and Ervin Jones Jr. turned 18, Elva’s social security benefits were cut off for reasons still eluding Ardodia, plunging her mother deeper into poverty and compounding her suffering. A historian for the Social Security Office did not respond to requests for comment regarding policies from that time period.
Although Ervin’s family returned to Louisiana shortly after his death and did not return to Portland, the effects of Ervin’s death on Portland outlasted the family’s presence.
A pivotal moment
The police homicide of Ervin Jones traumatized not only his family, but reverberated in Black communities throughout the region.
In the days following Ervin’s death, public interest in the case increased, as did news coverage.
Ervin’s death was a pivotal event for the civil rights movement in Portland, according to Vipperman.
“It's something that, in the first few Oregonian issues, it's not found on page one, but as it starts to build and more people are interested in it, all of a sudden, it's hitting the front page, and you're kind of like, 'oh, my gosh, this is a big deal,'” Vipperman said. “And I would say it's that George Floyd moment, where we see … it's very public, it’s public and now even white people are appalled by what happened.”
The lack of response or genuine concern by city officials alarmed Black residents, as evidenced by their increasing public calls for transparency and an investigation into the police conduct preceding Purcell’s killing of Ervin. White elites in Portland were concerned about how the incident could affect the city’s image, according to Vipperman.
March described a growing, hopeful community stricken by the cruelty of the police’s actions and the city’s lack of response.
”This case was critical, because you have a population of African Americans prior to World War II, you can argue 1,800 in the entire state, maybe a little bit more,” March said. “Now, by 1945, you have 20,000, and a lot of those individuals wanted to stay. And then you have this shooting which basically says ‘You're not safe in your own home.’ You know, in that there's no protections, right? Like, this was their home, there was no warrant. The police did not announce (themselves), it's very much like Breonna Taylor.”
A needed change
Although Ervin’s death is nearly 80 years in the past, the pain is still fresh for his family struggling to cope with the lasting trauma.
For Rhonda and Ardodia, who are still grieving, it’s past time to clear Ervin’s name.
The knowledge Ervin’s death certificate labels his death a “justifiable homicide'' is especially devastating.
They want the city of Portland to change the record and acknowledge wrongdoing in Ervin's death.
“For me, it would be that they changed that decision on his death certificate. He was murdered unjustly,” Rhonda said. “There's no way that they can come up with saying that that was justifiable. The paperwork that has been provided through history shows that he was murdered for no reason. I have books, I have documents, showing that he was murdered for no reason. And then for my mother, she was grazed by the bullet on her forehead, she lived with that, and did not even know why. Because nobody explained to her what happened.”
Street Roots reached out to Portland City Commissioners Carmen Rubio, Mingus Mapps and Jo Ann Hardesty, as well as Mayor Ted Wheeler, regarding Ervin Jones’ case. Representatives for Rubio and Mapps did not express prior knowledge of the case or the procedures by which the family could seek to change Ervin Jones’ death certificate. Hardesty, Ryan and Wheeler did not respond to a request for comment, as of publication.
Street Roots also reached out to the coroner’s office, which did not respond, regarding the official process by which a death certificate could be amended. It remains unclear whether an official process to change a historical death certificate exists, posing a barrier to healing for Ervin Jones’ relatives.
What happened to her father was never fully explained to Ardodia, and she only came to know more of the story long after he died.
“The only thing they said, (is) the bullet grazed my head. Grazed it. So, we were in the bed with my mother and my father, Ervin, my brother and I. So it's pretty rough,” Ardodia said. “I'm praying that we can get through this when it's such a confused mess. I would like to be compensated for my mother losing her check for Social Security, and all the anguish and the heartache. It's been rough. We lived in poverty and it was bad for my mother and us. So, I mentioned also, just like my daughter, justice. Justice.”
Unknowns
The Jones family was left with many painful, unanswered questions about what happened to Ervin and how their lives may have been different if he were still alive.
Ervin’s family did not know what happened to him until relatively recently, when another relative sent them letters and a copy of the 1945 death certificate declaring Ervin’s death a “justifiable homicide.” The revelations led Rhonda to look into her grandfather’s death, but didn’t yield the answers the family was looking for.
Street Roots learned of the Jones case when a community organizer approached the paper with a tip. Street Roots began investigating with the approval of the family.
“Well, I just want to know the history of my father's death. We've been concerned about everything. So I have a chance now to know exactly, hopefully, what happened,” Ardodia said before Street Roots began its investigation.
Street Roots shared its findings in interviews with the family, which the family felt were illuminating.
“(Ardodia) always knew this had happened,” Rhonda said. "She always knew that she was grazed by a bullet, but she never had a full story like (Street Roots) just gave us.”
The other family members who witnessed Ervin’s death, Elva’s sisters, never spoke to their family members about what happened. Ardodia said her uncle, Dennis Rambo, who lived at the Guild’s Lake home, spoke of Ervin’s death only once, sharing her father’s last words.
“He said that you could hear Ervin say when they shot him, ‘I was just trying to protect my family,’” Ardodia said.
Rhonda and Ardodia have never seen a photo of Ervin Jones, and they wonder what he looked like.
Rhonda still wonders how differently her family’s lives would have played out if her grandfather was not killed by Purcell. Would the family have remained in Portland? Would more of their Southern family members have followed? Would they have the better life they moved to Portland in search of? Rhonda will never know.
The dream of a prosperous future on the West Coast died along with Ervin, and none of his relatives have returned since Elva and her two sisters testified in a coroner’s inquest and before a grand jury in 1945.
“My mother suffered, she was almost four years old. (The whole family) suffered,” Rhonda said. “And my grandmother suffered, I can't even tell you a lot about my grandmother. My grandmother died when I was four years old. So it just was a lot of tragedy we have, and it went from generation to generation to generation. This is still carrying on, and we want it to end.”
RJ, who was five years old when he witnessed his father’s killing, was terribly affected by the trauma of the incident — he experienced homelessness, mental illness and ultimately died of a drug overdose before the age of 40.
“(RJ) was mentally ill because of the tragedy that he suffered, and nobody understood that. Everybody saw something was wrong with him, but there wasn't,” Rhonda said. “He needed help. He was old enough (to remember), he was five years old. So we know now they had adverse childhood experiences, both of them."
Ardodia still thinks of her brother, RJ. “He suffered so, my brother, I love him and I miss him,” Ardodia said.
The widespread pain in the Jones family shows the breadth and depth of suffering a traumatic event can have not only on those who witnessed it firsthand, but those who experience the event indirectly.
“All these people (victims of state violence) that we hear about in the news now, that's going to impact their families for years,” March said. “That the cycle is perpetuating itself, PTSD, whatever you want to label it. You have the police officers who do this action, but what failed the family? Because the officers will say they're impulsive, and they're stupid individually, right? What failed them is the justice system.”
A 2017 study by Pepperdine University examined the traumatic effects of police violence on ethnic minorities and found both direct and “indirect” victims suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and that police misconduct and brutality is a contributing factor to experiences of dehumanization for marginalized minorities. Incidences where there is no accountability for survivors compounds the trauma.
Violence at the hands of police has far-reaching effects on victims, affecting many aspects of survivors’ lives and health.
The study asserts that the consequences of intergenerational trauma have a long-lasting impact on a survivor’s mental, physical and psychological well-being, and can cause a host of mental and physical health problems. “Instead of many ethnic minorities experiencing post-traumatic stress, they experience ongoing traumatic stress because of the continued widespread exposure to racism, violence, and intergenerational poverty, the study concludes.
Time to heal
Rhonda and Ardodia don’t want the cycle of pain and trauma to continue.
Rhonda, who has a daughter and granddaughter herself, and Ardodia, a doting grandmother and great-grandmother to them, want closure to this painful chapter. They’re calling on city officials to acknowledge Ervin’s death and condemn the city’s tacit endorsement of the police’s conduct.
The Pepperdine study makes several suggestions with regards to healing for victims of police violence, including accountability for the perpetrators.
“We got lots of things we’re happy about, it's just getting through the hurdles of life and wondering why. What went wrong? What was going on?" Rhonda said. "And now we know that it's generational things that have occurred in our lives that we needed to know.”
Ardodia does not remember much about her father, given that he died when she was so young. She recalls how he cared deeply for her and used to buy her nice dresses and shoes. He was dedicated to his family.
“He must have been an awesome person, because he was trying to get all of us from down here where it was so bad, and get us into jobs, and get us from down here to Portland, Oregon,” Ardodia said. "He only wanted us to have a better life. He had plans for everybody to get out of here and living good.”
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