The Desperate 'Stake' of a Fugitive
After shooting an employer in Seattle, a wounded man is discovered in a cabin near a brickyard, revealing a tale of poverty, gambling, and a botched robbery.
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.
Officer Farrell, alerted to the scene of a crime, found the suspect, William Martin, hiding in a small cabin near the brickyard. Martin was in a wretched state, having been shot during his escape the previous night. 'I can’t walk,' Martin said when ordered to move. When asked why, he replied, 'You hit me in the back last night. My legs are full of blood and I am naturally weak. If I hadn’t been shot, I never would have given up this way.' Martin confessed he had intended to rob his employer, Fred Neitzel, hoping to 'make a stake' for himself. Instead of finding a fortune, he secured only about six dollars and discarded cigar boxes he mistook for loot, finding they only contained poker chips. Martin, who had been drifting through the region working in salmon canneries and losing his wages to gambling in Olympia, claimed he had only one dollar to his name when he committed the murder.
“When asked if he was hungry or driven by want to commit the deed, he replied in a very matter of fact manner that it was nothing of the kind; that he simply wanted to make a stake.”
This 1887 report echoes the recurring modern tensions in Seattle regarding economic desperation and the cycles of housing instability. The brutal reality of a man killing for a 'stake'—and the subsequent vigilante response from the community—remains a stark, haunting reminder of how Seattle's civic peace has historically been balanced on the razor's edge of inequality.
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