Wireless Expert Disappears Following Mysterious Note
A Marconi Company employee vanishes after writing a cryptic message to his assistant.
The story, cleaned up
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Although the police have scoured the city in search of H. S. Werby, a wireless expert employed by the Marconi company, who left Seattle Friday for Tacoma, where he wrote a mysteriously morbid note to S. Christoneon, his assistant, they can find no trace of him. Werby had been intending to marry a girl in England, and received a letter from her just before his disappearance. He wrote a short note, in which he hints broadly that he would never be seen again after coming to this city, and then dropped out of sight. It is strongly believed that Werby committed suicide.
“He wrote a short note, in which he hints broadly that he would never be seen again.”
The Marconi company was the vanguard of early wireless communication, and this disappearance captures the isolation of transient technical professionals in the pre-war era. The case reflects a time when a missing person could effectively vanish into the gaps of a city's record-keeping.
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