William Frazee, Ex-Policeman Known For His Marksmanship

William E. Frazee was something of a modern-day Davy Crockett who loved to dazzle audiences with his marksmanship.

One friend still keeps the two halves of a business card that Mr. Frazee cut in two when he shot it edge-on with a handgun.

Others remember his feat of shooting at the blade of an ax, splitting the bullet in two, and smashing a clay pigeon with each of the half-bullets.

As a young man, he challenged carnival wrestlers and played semi-professional football for the Renton Rams.

It was as a police officer that Mr. Frazee, who died May 29, was best known. His death, of heart disease, came just two weeks before he and his wife, Mary, would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary

As a police officer, he was the stuff of legends.

When he applied for a job as a Renton police officer, Mr. Frazee was a fraction of an inch under the 5-foot-10 height minimum. According to the family story, he spent the better part of a weekend lying down before having himself carried into the police station.

He qualified for the job by a hair.

Dirk Verhagen, the best man at Mr. Frazee's wedding, believes he made a good police officer because he was patient and even-tempered. "But if someone gave him a bad time, he would just love to wrestle him."

His daughter Betsy was working at a Renton movie theater years ago when she was approached by a patron who had known her father when the patron was in trouble with the law. The patron said Mr. Frazee later helped him get a job, "and that had made all the difference in his life."

The story of his departure from the Renton Police Department isn't a story his family and friends like to recall. In 1972, he pleaded guilty to a charge that he helped to secretly bug a conversation between a murder suspect and his lawyer in the city jail. He was captain of the Renton detectives at the time.

Mr. Frazee left the department on a disability leave and then retired. Prosecutors asked for a six-month jail sentence and a $1,000 fine, but King County Superior Court Judge George R. Stuntz, after receiving pleas for leniency from 268 of Mr. Frazee's supporters, placed him on four months' probation.

Stuntz called Mr. Frazee "an honorable police officer who made a mistake in the investigation of one of the most brutal set of murders ever to occur in King County." The judge said the officer had made the mistake "out of zeal for the protection of society."

Mr. Frazee later went to work for the Seattle Municipal Court as a process server, working there until the day of his death. He was 71.

Mr. Frazee, a native of Colorado, at 21 became chief of security for Pacific Car and Foundry, which was making tanks and other military equipment during World War II.

He was detective in the King County sheriff's office before he was hired as a patrol officer by the Renton Police Department, where his father-in-law worked.

Mr. Frazee was one of two Washington state police officers selected in 1950 to attend the FBI's police academy. He participated several times in the prestigious national sharpshooting competition at Camp Perry, Va. In 1962, he won several first-place awards and placed third overall. He also was a collector of antique guns.

Besides his wife, of Renton, he is survived by a son William R. Frazee, Renton; daughters Sally Frazee, Renton, and Betsy Frazee, Port Townsend; and sisters Betty Haker, Stanford, Mont., Margaret Saulness, VeLora Richardson and Carol Peterson, all of Seattle.