“This Ends Everything Between Us”: A Spokane Hotel Room, a Revolver, and Two Children
Mark McCiammy shot his wife twice and turned the gun on himself in a downtown Spokane hotel. She survived twelve hours — long enough to ask that she not be buried beside him.
Spokane, Feb. 24. — "This ends everything between us," were the words uttered by Mark McCiammy preceding the enactment of a bloody tragedy at a local hotel Sunday afternoon, which put an end to the domestic differences between him and his wife.
McCiammy is dead from a bullet from a 38-caliber revolver with which he blew out his brains, and his wife is lying at the point of death, with two bullet holes through her body, one bullet having passed through the liver and the other taking effect below the heart, while a third passed through her left wrist, all fired from the pistol in the hands of her husband.
After examination Dr. Witter gave it as his opinion that she could not recover.
The only eye-witness to the shooting was Mrs. Lucy Smith, a chambermaid.
The McClammys had two children, a boy 8 years old and a girl 6 years of age.
With a final request that her body be not interred alongside that of her husband, Mrs. McCiammy died 12 hours later.
“"This ends everything between us."”
In 1909 a murder-suicide in a Spokane hotel room was filed under "domestic differences" and printed alongside patent-medicine copy, with the wife's name reduced to "Mrs. McCiammy." A century later, courts grant protection orders and newsrooms have written rules for covering intimate-partner homicide — but the mechanics of the story, a man's parting declaration and two children left behind, have barely changed. Firearm access inside a violent relationship is still the risk factor advocates in Spokane warn about most.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.