The Unexplained Death of Fred Round
A mother finds her son dead in his East D Street bedroom with a revolver between his knees, but the angle of the wound sparks doubts about the suicide theory.
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.
Lying on his bed, in a pool of blood that was flowing from a bullet hole in the back of his head, Fred W. Round, a young man 22 years of age, was found dead at 7 o'clock this morning by his mother, Mrs. Adelaide Round, at 3018 East D Street, when she went to her son's room to arouse him. On the edge of the bed, near the young man's knees, was a revolver. Horror-stricken, the mother ran to a neighbor, and the police were notified. While officers initially leaned toward a suicide theory, an element of mystery entered: the shot was fired from behind, entering the head two inches back of the left ear. The revolver was lying between his knees, not near his head. Mrs. Round reported that her son had been acting strangely and had recently asked her to move to Vancouver with him.
“Suicide was the first theory advanced by the officers, but as the case was investigated an element of mystery entered into it.”
Unsolved deaths or suspicious circumstances in domestic spaces often left families trapped between police dismissiveness and the need for closure. The 'East D Street' location situates this tragedy in the historic heart of Tacoma's residential life at the turn of the century.
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