The High-Stakes Custody Tug-of-War

Over on Coos Bay, Oregon, there lived a family in easy circumstances and apparently happy. But with the changes of time came discontent. Separation of husband and wife followed, and the mother applied to the court and obtained the custody of their child. The child was given into the charge of a man deputized by the sheriff to take him to his mother, and on the way the father met them, and forcibly taking the child, fled. The sheriff immediately ordered his deputy, Mr. Rayburn, to find and secure the child. This gentleman started out in a driving rain, and after a tiresome search, tracked the father and child to Salem, and from there to Portland. At the latter city, he arrived to find that the persons he was seeking were on their way to Victoria, with one day’s advantage of him. He followed as rapidly as possible, and overtook them in this city. Here he confronted the father and demanded the child, but soon found that the father was fully armed, and would resist his demand if persisted in. There seemed to be some hitch in the law that made it necessary for the deputy sheriff to send to Oregon for other papers before he could lawfully compel the father to surrender the child; still, he would not allow him to proceed to Victoria. This being the case, both parties urged Marshal Thorndyke to take the child in charge until the case was legally decided, and he consenting, took the boy, a bright little fellow of three and a half years, to his home. The father then hired a lawyer to get possession of the child, but not succeeding, tried to steal him away. This failing, he endeavored to frighten Thorndyke, but this, and his offers of bribery, utterly failed to give him the child. In the mean time, the deputy sheriff had sent to Oregon for the necessary papers to secure the child, and to arrest the father on a charge of kidnapping. Learning this, the brave but defeated man offered to let the child be taken back if proceedings against him were stopped. The matter was thus compromised, and last night Mr. Rayburn left the city on his return home with the child, after coming to this office and publishing a card of thanks in the Dispatch for the assistance rendered him by our city police, and to Mrs. E. A. Thorndyke for her care of the child. The father remains in the city, and announces his intention to make Seattle his home.