The Shadowy Killing of the Italian Chieftain
Conflicting accounts of a posse's lethal encounter in Valley, Washington, raise questions of vigilante violence and missing money.
VALLEY, Wash., Dec. 23.—Since the excitement has worn from the tragedy enacted here last week, in which Frank Weatherwax, with a posse of five men, pursued and shot to death G. J. Dilio, the Italian chieftain who murdered his partner, Antonio Vecchio, in Spokane, there is no end of vicious talk in the neighborhood by persons who scout the idea that the shooting was necessary. Almost every member of the posse tells a different story of the capture. One account claims the posse tracked the man through the snow and found him lying face down under his coat. While one member moved to handcuff him, others held rifles on the motionless form. At the first movement, they fired, claiming they did not know who they were shooting. Dilio was known to have had $390 on his person when he arrived at the Weatherwax hotel earlier, yet after his body was locked in a hotel room until the coroner arrived, less than $5 remained. The public is now calling for a formal investigation into the circumstances of the killing and the whereabouts of the bankroll.
“There is no end of vicious talk in the neighborhood by persons who scout the idea that the shooting was necessary.”
This account captures the brutal intersection of frontier justice and law enforcement accountability. The discrepancy between reported robbery victims and the state of the corpse echoes modern debates regarding police transparency and the handling of evidence in controversial deaths.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.