Blood on the Card Table
A festive night at an O'Brien saloon ends in a horrific murder-suicide, leaving the community reeling and questions of old grudges swirling in the air.
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.
A terrible tragedy occurred at O'Brien station, on the Northern Pacific line twelve miles south of Seattle, at a late hour Sunday night. Michael Crowley, a bartender, shot and killed Richard Harn, and then took his own life. The scene of the tragedy was Morgan O'Brien's saloon, where Crowley served as bartender. The business was unusually busy that evening with twenty or more men drinking. Richard Harn and a man named Charley were playing cards, both in a jolly mood, with Harn contributing songs and dancing. A dispute later arose between Crowley and Charley over payment for drinks. Crowley struck the Swede, and when Harn intervened to protect his friend, a fight followed. Crowley pushed both men out of the door, but when Harn returned shortly after, Crowley retrieved a .38-caliber revolver from behind the bar, walked up to him, and fired at point-blank range. Harn fell dead instantly. Crowley then turned the weapon on himself, firing three times until he fell dead on the floor. Investigators later found the card table in disarray, with four aces still visible in one hand. The coroner's jury ruled the event a willful murder followed by suicide. Harn, 34, leaves a wife and four children; Crowley was remembered as a popular if heavy-drinking bartender.
“Crowley gazed at his fatal work a moment then turned, and, placing the revolver to his own head, fired.”
The O'Brien station area, now part of the Kent Valley, was once a hub of rural industry and social conflict. Much like today's headlines concerning the intersection of substance use and interpersonal violence, this 1892 tragedy illustrates how quickly local social spaces could turn lethal in the frontier era.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.