The Deadly Secret of the Giant Street Bridge
A cold-blooded 1887 murder finally finds its motive in a hidden past, revealing a plot involving stolen identities, deserted wives, and a double-dating betrayal.
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.
Prosecuting Attorney Miller told a Post-Intelligencer reporter the inside history of the murder of Scherbring by Friedrich. In the 1870s, Julius Scherbring, under the name Alfred Korean, enlisted as a soldier in the 14th U.S. Infantry. He later deserted and re-enlisted under his real name in the 1st U.S. Artillery, where he met Albert Friedrich. In 1886, both men deserted and came to Seattle. Friedrich opened a shoe shop, while Scherbring worked on local steamboats. They soon became acquainted with two sisters and proposed marriage. Friedrich had previously confessed to Scherbring that he had a wife in Germany whom he had deserted. When Scherbring threatened to expose Friedrich’s past—revealing both his bigamy and his status as a deserter—Friedrich saw a barrier to his wedding. On July 14, 1887, Friedrich lured Scherbring to row around Duwamish Head. That same night, he shot him to death on the Giant Street bridge.
“He was watching every opportunity to commit the crime. That same night he did shoot him down on the Giant street bridge, and the atrocious details are known to every one.”
The bridge mentioned in this 1892 report—the Giant Street bridge—would have spanned the steep, industrial landscape of early Seattle, long before the regrades transformed the downtown waterfront. Today, the area near the old Seattle waterfront and Madison Street is a bustling corridor of modern development, a far cry from the rowboat-and-deserter era of the late 19th century.
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