A Murder Plot on Puget Sound and a Sickbed Betrayal
A boat captain says two young 'timber buyers' planned to shoot him and rob an Admiralty Head rancher. The same circle of suspects is accused of robbing a sarsaparilla agent while he lay delirious in a Seattle hotel.
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 young men came down to the Pike Street dock last Friday evening and wanted to charter a boat to inspect pile timber land at Bush Point and Admiralty Head for a Seattle contractor. One gave his name as Walter Irving; he introduced the other as Harvey Ellis, a bookkeeper. They reached Bush Point on Saturday, looked over the land, and went on to Admiralty Head the next day. There Irving's father, who lived at Admiralty Head, suspected his son was in the smuggling business and questioned him. Ellis then told the captain that Irving had proposed killing him and robbing an old rancher named Crockett, who kept a safe at Admiralty Head. The plan was for Irving to say he had left his pocketbook at his father's, go into the cabin for a rifle, and shoot the captain at the tiller. Ellis said he was afraid of Irving. The captain secretly removed the rifle shells, hid the hatchet and stove poker, and put a pistol and shells in his pocket. When Irving later insisted on turning back for the pocketbook, the captain refused. That night, through a hole in the cabin door, he saw Irving and Ellis whispering together. In the morning Irving hunted for the rifle shells, then for the hatchet, and said that if he found it he would split the captain's head open. Back in Seattle the captain went to the chief of police and the prosecuting attorney, but was told nothing could be done. Irving promised to pay for the boat and did not. Mr. Whittlesey, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, said he knew Irving and thought he had been crooked for some time, and refused to vouch for him.
It was also learned that a detective was after Nat H. Young, Jr., Irving's partner, on a charge of stealing money from C.F. Heath at the Stevens Hotel. Heath, an advertising agent for the Hood Sarsaparilla Company, had employed Young in June. When Heath was taken violently ill, Young got himself installed as nurse. He took possession of Heath's money and watch, opened company letters, and wrote to Heath's sister in Maine that the Odd Fellows were murderers and Dr. Sweeney a quack. Young denied the theft and said Heath had asked him to take his place. Young, though only 19, had already been known as Gilbraith Young, Charley Young and Charlie Ellis. He had been arrested in December with Eldenia Tyler, a 15-year-old girl, and had married her to escape prosecution.
“He told Young that if he found the hatchet he would split my head open.”
The story has the shape of a modern true-crime podcast: a chartered boat, a whispered plot, a suspect with aliases, and a victim robbed while incapacitated. It also shows how lightly the era's justice system could treat a credible murder plot when the intended victim survived—and how quickly the press turned a 19-year-old's private life into public evidence of bad character.
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