A Murderer Pries His Way Out of the Steilacoom Asylum
Gianini, convicted of killing a Jewish peddler in Eastern Washington, removed a bar from his cell window and vanished; scouts were sent out in every direction.
Gianini, the man who murdered a Jewish peddler in Eastern Washington last spring, escaped from the Steilacoom Asylum on Monday night, the 15th instant. He loosened and removed one of the bars from the window of his cell, making his escape easy. Scouts were sent out in all directions. He was described as a small man.
“He loosened and removed one of the bars from the window of his cell, making his escape easy. Scouts were sent out in all directions.”
In 1883 the territorial asylum at Steilacoom also held people convicted of violence, with little of today's separation between mental-health care and criminal punishment. The escape shows how public fear and institutional failure have long been tangled together—and how quickly a local manhunt becomes a civic alarm.
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