The Persistent Mailbox Bandit of the Pacific Coast
Mortimer Fox, a serial forger and letter-box thief, faces three years at hard labor after his final spree targeting Seattle businesses.
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.
Mortimer Fox, alias J. Cohn, alias J. M. Myers, pleaded guilty to robbing Seattle post office boxes and was sentenced to three years at hard labor. Though his attorney claimed his crimes were the desperate acts of a hungry, unemployed sailor, Fox is a notorious criminal whose career began at age 16 in San Francisco. He became famous for targeting hallway letter boxes to steal checks and drafts, often posing as an innocent office boy. His pattern involved robbing boxes in California, skipping town to Seattle to do the same, and then fleeing to other states. He was finally tracked down by a local detective who noticed a man under the alias 'Myers' was repeating the exact criminal MO used by Fox in California. When confronted, he confessed and was sentenced to serve his time before being returned to California authorities for further charges.
“His boldness and youthful appearance resulted in nearly every case in the payment of the forged paper.”
Identity theft and mail fraud remain persistent, evolving challenges in Seattle. Fox’s story reflects how, even in the 1890s, criminals moved across state lines and leveraged aliases to exploit gaps in institutional security.
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