The Ghostly Note of Joe Davis
After his wife’s death in Oregon, a man jailed in Seattle took his own life in his prison cell, leaving behind a haunting, misspelled confession that claimed they had died for each other.
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.
Joe Davis, the man who has been under arrest here on suspicion of having murdered his wife in Clackamas County, Oregon, a few weeks ago and who detailed an account of how she died last night, was found hanging in his cell at the city prison this morning. In a scrawling hand and imperfect construction and orthography, he left the following note, written on a large cardboard: 'Poor Alto died. God knows how she died a natural death. All is gone without our lives. A bigger book could not have been printed if the life and adventures of Alto Dawson. We died for each other. Our lives were but one. The one could not live without the other. Goodbye to all on earth. Officer Pirm has treated me like a man. I have to die in his cell, but I cannot live without Alto.' In order to commit the act, he had torn the mattress in the cell into strips and fastened several of them around an iron bar in the window. Then, after securely fastening his feet together, in some manner he got on top of the old stove in the cell, placed his neck in the noose and kicking the stove from under him, ended his life. When found, a handkerchief covered his face and his muscles did not show signs of much suffering. The theory is advanced by officers that Davis killed the woman and afterwards suffered remorse which deranged his mind.
“I have to die in his cell, but I cannot live without Alto.”
This 1887 report captures the grim, often dehumanizing nature of Victorian-era crime reporting, where a suspect’s desperate final words were treated as public sensation. Today, we view these cases through a lens of mental health awareness, but the underlying tragedy of isolation within the carceral system remains a hauntingly familiar struggle.
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