A Violent Quarrel Near Riffe
A drunken dispute between two young men in Lewis County ended in a fatal shooting and a subsequent suicide.
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.
Lewis county added another sensational murder to her record Sunday, the murderer committing suicide soon after killing his victim. The tragedy occurred near Riffe, a postoffice 42 miles from Chehalis, in eastern Lewis county. Mack Justice about noon met Julian Coleman near Riffe and they quarreled over liquor. During the quarrel Coleman shot Justice in the head with a revolver. Both men were armed with pistols. Coleman fled down the road about half a mile and shot himself with the same revolver with which he had killed Justice. Justice and Coleman were unmarried and each about 25 years old.
“Lewis county added another sensational murder to her record Sunday.”
Riffe is a vanished town, having been submerged in the 1960s by the creation of Riffe Lake. This report documents a grim, transient moment in the life of a community that no longer exists on any map.
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