The Cedar Mountain Assassin
Charles W. Nordstrom faces the gallows after the Supreme Court upholds his murder conviction for a cold-blooded shooting in Cedar Mountain.
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.
Charles W. Nordstrom will be hanged for the assassination of Willie Mason at Cedar Mountain. Nordstrom, a former employee who left following a wage dispute, returned to the ranch on November 27. As the family sat for supper, Nordstrom fired a 44-caliber bullet through a window, killing Willie Mason. The Supreme Court rejected his appeals regarding the constitutionality of his trial and evidence gathering, affirming the original conviction. Sheriff Woolery has ordered a death watch, as authorities fear Nordstrom may attempt suicide before the execution.
“The assassin took to the mountain and had disappeared but the startled inmates had recovered self-possession.”
This case highlights the harsh penal realities of Washington's frontier era. The location, Cedar Mountain, was a significant coal-mining community in southeast King County that has since faded into history, illustrating how landscape change often erases the sites of such grim civic history.
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