The Mystery of the Double-Wound Suicide
A grain dealer is found dead in his office with a bullet in his head and another in his chest, raising questions of how a single gun could be responsible.
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.
Shortly after 8 o'clock last Wednesday morning a startling discovery was made by A. R. Abers, a drayman, who took a load of baled hay to the feed store of Martin Ware on Washington avenue in Blaine. When Mr. Abers looked in at the window, he beheld the body of Martin Ware lying on his back on the floor, covered with blood, with a small .22-caliber rifle between his feet. City Marshal Overman and Deputy Coroner E. M. Adams arrived and found no signs of a struggle. Bafflingly, there were two gun-shot wounds: one over the left eye and another in the breast just below the left nipple. A small revolver was also found on the desk, cocked but unloaded. A jury was impaneled and determined the death was a suicide, despite the curious nature of the double wounds. The deceased had been playing cards at the Gilfillian-Tanner block until 5 a.m. the morning of his death, where he lost money. He was 26 years old and a member of the Knights of Pythias.
“If suicide, how did it happen there were two mortal wounds?”
The ambiguity of 'suicide by two wounds' remains a classic trope of historical true crime, often masking foul play in early frontier towns. Today, such a scene would trigger an immediate forensic investigation rather than a quick coroner's jury verdict, highlighting how much our standards of proof have shifted.
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