Elizabeth Zack worked in a Centralia drive-in theater. She had married 22-year-old Ronald Staley less than two months earlier, not long after discovering she was pregnant. For reasons now unknown they decided to end her pregnancy with the help of a 19 year-old friend, Donelle Hulse, who evidently had some experience inducing abortions and at whose house the fatal operation took place. Elizabeth suffered an air embolism and died as her husband rushed her to the hospital. Ronald Staley and Hulse were arrested on manslaughter charges. The two defendants blamed each other and Hulse decided to plead guilty on the eve of the trial. Staley was convicted after a trial that was followed closely in the Daily Olympian. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. No word on what sentence Hulse received. Elizabeth Zack Staley was buried in Centralia.

Born in Russia and brought to America as an infant, she grew up in Seattle, graduated from Ballard High School and briefly attended the University of Washington. A year before her death she took a job as a key punch operator with Seattle First-National Bank. Why she sought help from Jack Blight, a 61-year-old construction worker and avid fisherman, is not known. He was a neighbor and family friend. She was almost six months pregnant and the abortion attempt caused an air embolism that killed her. Why there were marks on her neck that led the coroner to suspect that she had been strangled was not explained in any of the news coverage that followed. Nor was the curious fate of Jack Blight who pled guilty to a charge of manslaughter and took responsibility for dumping the body. Blight was sentenced to probation instead of a long prison term typical in such cases. An article in the Everett Herald suggests that the Snohomish County prosecutor accepted Blight’s claim that someone else had been primarily responsible for the abortion.