The Shadow of the Noose: The Murder Trial of O.B. Miller
A gripping courtroom drama unfolds in Seattle as O.B. Miller faces his third trial for the 1887 murder of two men on Lake Washington.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The trial of O.B. Miller for the murder of I. Manning Colman and Wilbur Patten, on the 8th of February, 1887, occupied the attention of the District Court. Mrs. Colman testified that her husband, in company with Wilbur Patten, took a small boat toward Mercer Island on his way to town. Mrs. Colman described her husband’s clothing, false teeth, watch, and other articles. Frank D. Graham testified that he had searched for the bodies of Colman and Patten. On the point of Mercer Island, he found the men's coats in the water, along with two silk handkerchiefs caught in the brush. The next day, he found an indelible pencil and a black felt hat in the water. Coroner Minor, who examined the bodies after they were recovered, testified that he found a bullet in Colman’s head and identified the weapon as a Winchester rifle. Numerous witnesses, including local Indians who were hunting in the area, testified to seeing a dark boat with a lone white man in it during the time of the disappearance. O.B. Miller, the prisoner, maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings.
“For the third time the noose hovers above his head.”
The 1887 Miller trial captures a moment in Seattle's history when Mercer Island was a wild, sparsely populated frontier, and Lake Washington was a site of deep mystery and tragedy. Today, the geography of the lake remains central to Seattle's identity, though the silent waters of the 1880s have been replaced by the bustling transit of the I-90 bridge and residential density that would be unrecognizable to the original witnesses.
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