A Week of Tragedy in Pierce County
A string of suicides, murders, and accidents shocks Tacoma as a young student and an asylum patient end their own lives.
Two suicides and an attempted murder yesterday were added to the gruesome strain of tragedies which has taken place in Pierce County during the past week. On April 2, Alvin R. Lehmann disappeared and has been given up for dead. Friday night Millard Spellman, despondent and temporarily insane, committed suicide at the home of his sweetheart. Wednesday James A. Frace, a contractor well known in Tacoma, was murdered in the brush near his home. Saturday afternoon, Franklin I. Hammond and John Johnson, both of Tacoma, were killed in a train wreck at Bristol. Early yesterday morning a demented Italian tried to kill Conductor W. J. Hilby of this city on a Northern Pacific train near Bristol. Yesterday, Oliver Mead, an inmate of the Steilacoom asylum, and Oscar Spaberg, a student, hanged themselves.
Oscar Spaberg, 22 years old, who resided with his uncle, Ole Braget, at 2105 South M street, walked to his uncle's barn at Twenty-third and L streets and hanged himself. A note found in his pocket read: 'Dear Uncle: All that I have I give to father. Please forget me. I am better off dead. I am not worth all the love bestowed upon me. I am a great sinner.' For seven hours, his body remained hanging in the barn while a crowd of 400 morbidly curious persons gathered. Simultaneously, Oliver Mead, 66, an inmate of the Steilacoom asylum, committed suicide by hanging himself from his bedpost after tearing his shirt into strips.
“When the news was first spread, a large number of morbidly curious persons gathered about the barn, and during the entire seven hours the crowd aggregated an average of 400 persons.”
Public fascination with tragedy is a timeless human response, but the stark documentation of these mental health crises highlights a period before modern crisis intervention. The locations mentioned, like the old barn sites near South M and 23rd, are now long-settled residential neighborhoods in Tacoma, masking the difficult history that once played out there.
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