The False Priests of Tacoma
Two con artists passing themselves off as Catholic missionaries hoodwinked a congregation in Buckley, performing masses and collecting offerings before being chased down and arrested in Tacoma.
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.
Two priestly appearing men, who claim to be priests, were jailed in Tacoma on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses. They refused to give their names, but were registered on the city jail docket as Albert Kilet and Auguste Laurentz. Their arrest followed a chase by F. D. De Mers, a trustee of the Buckley Catholic church. The men had arrived in Buckley, represented themselves as Catholic missionaries, and were allowed to conduct mass and vespers. A local Catholic periodical had recently warned of an impostor traveling through the Northwest—a small man of about 60 who spoke poor English and French with a German accent—who had been denounced by the Bishop of Montana. Despite the warning, the pair took three collections at Buckley and administered sacraments for fees. When De Mers confronted them, they fled to Tacoma on a freight train. De Mers tracked them down, but they attempted to escape again before being taken into custody by police. Local priests confirm that the impostors had been degrading the calling of the church for over a year, preying on small towns that lacked permanent clergy.
“They stubbornly refused to give their names... The impostors worked in small towns having no clergymen, and by collections and fees defrauded Catholics west of the Mississippi river out of many hundreds of dollars.”
This 1892 account of religious grifters highlights a recurring issue in rapidly growing frontier cities, where the lack of established institutions created a power vacuum for con artists to exploit. Just as faith-based charities today face scrutiny regarding accountability, the Buckley congregation found themselves vulnerable to those wearing the symbols of authority to hide fraudulent intent.
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