The Jailbreak at Edison
Four fugitives, including men driven out of Wenatchee by vigilantes, are recaptured after an armed struggle.
Charles Thompson, alias Johnson, George Sullivan, Pat Dunlap and William Erwin were captured this morning at Edison. They had broken out of the jail, which was very rickety. Sullivan and Dunlap were held for trial today in $2,000 bonds on the charge of holding up and robbing F. J. Schofield recently. The others are part of the gang heretofore reported as having been driven out of Wenatchee by a Vigilance Committee. An inquiry is being made into the intimation that Erwin had a hand in killing a man in a freight car at Ellensburg. He and Johnson disarmed Officer Chamberlain at Edison when he tried to capture them. By blowing his whistle he summoned assistance enough to capture them in a barn.
“The others are part of the gang heretofore reported as having been driven out of Wenatchee by a Vigilance Committee.”
This episode captures a volatile moment in Washington history where 'vigilance committees' enforced their own brand of justice in the frontier era. The cycle of criminalization and exclusion, paired with the state's struggle to maintain secure detention facilities, highlights a period of intense civic instability that would eventually be replaced by more rigid, centralized law enforcement.
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