She Followed Him West, and Then She Followed Him With a Revolver
Nine years after a New Hampshire lumberman's wife ran off with the hired nurse, the truth of a killing in Centralia came out — along with a note saying there was nothing left but to kill the man who ruined her life, and then herself.
Chehalis, May 15 — It now transpires that there was a history behind the tragedy at Centralia yesterday. The real name of the man who was killed was Joe Cope. The woman was the wife of M. E. Jones, of Bar's Location, Glen Sutton, N.H. Nine years ago Cope was employed there to nurse. Jones was a wealthy lumber man. Cope and the woman ran away, taking her daughter Kittie, now in the state reform school. They lived four years at Wilson and three at Centralia. Cope treated the woman brutally.
A note to the girl found last night said she was homeless, penniless and friendless, and that nothing was left but to kill Cope, who had ruined her life, and then herself. On Monday night she waited at the door of the theater with a loaded revolver, intending to kill Cope when he came out, but her intention was discovered and prevented.
“Nothing was left but to kill Cope, who had ruined her life, and then herself.”
Then, as now, a killing that grew out of years of domestic cruelty was reported as a lurid melodrama rather than a case of abuse — the woman's note is the only place her own account survives. The paper gives her no name of her own, only her husband's. A century and a quarter later, intimate-partner homicide is still usually the end of a long, documented history of violence.
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