The Mysterious Death at King and Commercial
A man is found dead in a derelict shack, prompting a coroner’s jury to declare foul play, while the Police Chief dismisses it as a bizarre accident.
The inquest over the remains of Dan McKenzie, who was found in a cabin at the corner of Commercial and King streets Tuesday morning, was held yesterday. The jury considered the evidence sufficient to return a verdict of murder by unknown persons. Police Patrol Driver Frank B. Johnston stated that he was impressed with the idea that the cuts on the hands and wrist had been made with a knife during a row. However, Chief of Police Jackson was astonished by the verdict, stating, 'Everything points to accidental death. The cuts on his arms and hands could have been made by the broken glass in the shack. For myself, I can't see any motive for killing him.' A peculiar detail of the affair is that McKenzie had been seen with a silver watch and an Odd Fellow card, neither of which were found on his body.
“I can't see any motive for killing him. Of course, now that the verdict has been rendered, we will investigate further.”
The intersection of King and Commercial (now part of the historic Pioneer Square district) was the heart of a rough-and-tumble industrial zone in the 1890s. The tension between a coroner's suspicion of murder and the police department’s tendency to minimize deaths involving the transient population remains a common friction in modern civic reporting.
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