72 Years Ago Two Humboldt County Lovers Went Out For a Date— One Was Found Shot Dead and the Other Never Seen Again

Henry “Red” Baird and Barbara Joe Kelley [Clipping from The Humboldt Standard  March 22, 1963 page 5]

The oldest case on the Humboldt County Sheriff’s timeline of Unsolved Cases took place 72 years ago.

Henry “Red” Baird and Barbara Joe Kelley had gone out together for two months. Red was a World War II Veteran and a bakery truck driver. Barbara was a waitress at a Fortuna restaurant called the Sweet Shop and known to be deeply religious.

The couple told their parents they would be going to a show on the evening of June 17, 1950. This would be the last evening their parents would see either alive.

The next morning, two Eureka fishermen found Baird’s body lying face down in the sand of Table Bluff Beach with a single gunshot wound to his head wearing nothing but his socks and shoes. Baird’s clothing was folded neatly next to him and investigators found his girlfriend’s clothes underneath except for her shoes and stockings. This suggested to investigators someone had made her strip off her clothing at gunpoint and led her away.

Gayle Patrick Irish [Clipping from The Humboldt Standard  March 22, 1963 page 1]

The Humboldt Standard, an early periodical out of Eureka (1875-1967), provided the reporting that informed this review of the long-standing cold case. Their coverage in late March 1963 provided a thorough account of the murders in 1950 and the subsequent attempts to tie Irish to the killings.

Irish, at the time of his confession, was serving time for a 1958 sex conviction in Kern County, just seven years after a similar 1951 conviction of “outrages against a 12-year-old girl” in Humboldt County. Before that, he had worked as a laborer for the Mercer-Fraser Company until 1958 also working at Mum’s Cafe on lower F Street residing at the Cairo Hotel at 130 F Street in Eureka.

Irish told deputies he was “prowling” around Table Bluff beach in his car in the early morning of Sunday, July 18, 1950, when he found the couple sitting in Baird’s vehicle “on the beach under the bluff.” Irish told the deputies he proceeded to order the couple out of the vehicle at gunpoint, forced the pair to strip, and shot Baird in the back of the head, and drove Kelley 35 miles away off a logging Road in Crannell where he raped and murdered her.

Irish was flown to Humboldt County to take investigators including then Humboldt County Sheriff William Pederson to the place where he said he had dumped Kelley’s body. On Saturday, March 23, 1963, Irish along with Humboldt County deputies and detectives went to the site where he purported to have buried Kelley. 

[Clipping from The Humboldt Standard March 25, 1963 page 11]

Irish provided authorities with more details of his detainment of Kelley. After shooting Baird in the back of the head on the beach, Irish led Kelley to his car where she wrapped her naked body in a blanket. During the 35-mile ride to the logging road off Crannell, Kelley was “frozen with fear” and was “unable to cry out” while driving through the more populated towns of Eureka or Arcata.

Two months after the killings, Irish told authorities he returned to the spot where he dumped Kelley’s body and noticed that many of the logs appeared to have been moved. 

During his on-the-ground visit to Humboldt County, some information came to light that corroborated his confession. A widely known Eureka boxer by the name of Oliver Haneurne told Sheriff Pedersen that he had actually worked with Irish the year of the murders in the Cranell woods near the area Kelley was reportedly murdered. Haneurne was actually taken to see Irish and Irish immediately recognized him.

Georgia Pacific Woodsboss Earl Shipley assisted investigators by using the company’s log loaders to actually move logs around in the area Kelley was supposedly left to no avail.

After multiple fruitless searches in the Crannell area, a break in the case occurred on March 26 when HCSO was contacted by a family outside of Trinidad who said their children had found human bones behind a log three years previously and one of those bones was wearing a wristwatch. 

[Clipping from The Humboldt Standard March 23, 1963]  

Deputy Simmons said that investigators believed Irish was the murderer of Kelley and Baird saying “this boy has too much knowledge of the details not to have first-hand information.

The search for the bone-wearing watch did not turn up anything but the children did pinpoint the approximate area they found the remains which was the same area Irish said he had shot and killed Kelley thirteen years before. The spot was described as “four miles up the private road from the Crannell gate and nearly five miles up this side of the Candy Mountain area where Irish led the field force in a massive search last Sunday and Monday.”

The next day, a second “hot clue” was reported in the same area the bone with the wristwatch was located. A hunter contacted HCSO and told investigators that in the fall of 1962 he had found a woman’s black, patent leather shoe four miles up the from the Crannell gate, but thought nothing of it at the time.

[Clipping from The Humboldt Standard March 23, 1963]  

Irish left Humboldt County on April 1, 1963, without any concrete evidence to tie him to the killings of Kelley and Baird. He was slated to stop in Sacramento with investigators to undergo a polygraph test where he would be asked questions about the crimes.

Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s listing on the murder of Baird and disappearance of Kelley mentions nothing of Irish, and states clearly she “remains missing to this day.”

HCSO asks that if anyone has information to share about unsolved crimes to contact the “Crime Tip Line at 707-268-2539, submit information using our Online Crime Tip Form, or email [email protected]. Please reference the case number associated with the case when reporting information.” Barbara Joe Kelley and Henry Lawrence Baird’s case number is 195003681.