The Killer Who Died Before the Verdict
O. H. Miller died under indictment for two murders. From an asylum, his son claims he knows where the murder weapon lies—at the bottom of a lake near Mercer Island.
Although the late O. H. Miller escaped punishment for the murder of J. Manning Colman, an indictment for the murder of young Patten, the companion of Colman, was still hanging over his head at the time of his death, and it is possible that further evidence in regard to both crimes might have been found if William Miller, who is now in the Steilacoom insane asylum, spoke the truth.
It will be remembered that William Miller was sent to the insane asylum after making himself the terror of his neighbors for several weeks, but his keepers say that he ought to be at Walla Walla, for the trouble with him is 'cussedness,' not insanity. Some three or four months ago he told the sheriff that, if Gov. McGraw would promise him liberty, he would show the spot where the gun with which his father killed Colman and Patten lay at the bottom of the lake. He did not hesitate to say that his father murdered the men and threw the gun into the lake, and told how he and his mother were camped on the trail leading from the Colman ranch to Newcastle, while his father and sister were camped on the south end of Mercer Island, just far enough around to the west to be out of view from where Mrs. Colman was anxiously watching her husband go on his last journey.
“He did not hesitate to say that his father murdered the men and threw the gun into the lake.”
This is true crime in the pre-forensics era: an indictment that death foreclosed, a jailhouse-style confession from an asylum, and a lake that may still hold the evidence. It also shows how casually the era's press and courts treated mental illness as 'cussedness.'
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