A Forged Plea Sent a Tacoma Woman to a Gig Harbor Road—and to Her Death
A letter claiming her sister was seriously ill drew Mrs. Henry Schulz to an isolated road near Gig Harbor. Days later, bloodhounds found her body, and suspicion settled on her son-in-law.
TACOMA, Wash., April 11.—An unknown assassin, shortly before noon Monday, April 4, waylaid Mrs. Henry Schulz, a Tacoma woman, and shot her to death with a .38-caliber revolver on the unfrequented Artondale road, Gig Harbor. While her frail body lay quivering, the fiend silenced his victim with a club. Mrs. Schulz had been decoyed to her death by a fake letter that told of the serious illness of her sister, Mrs. P. Habericht of Gig Harbor.
Until Sunday afternoon, when sheriff's officers and bloodhounds found the partially decomposed body of Mrs. Schulz where the assassin had dragged it, her fate was not known.
Strong circumstantial evidence implicates Chas. J. Wezler, the dead woman's son-in-law.
Willie Burrell, the 15-year-old boy who delivered the message, says the description of the man who hired him tallies exactly with the description of Charles J. Wezler as given to Sheriff Morris, except that the man wore silver-bowed spectacles.
“Mrs. Schulz had been decoyed to her death by a fake letter that told of the serious illness of her sister.”
The case has the shape of a modern true-crime story: a forged family emergency, a remote road, and a suspect close to the victim. It also shows how domestic violence and coercion can hide behind the language of family obligation—and how much early investigation depended on bloodhounds and eyewitness descriptions.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.