A Medicine Man Is Buried, but the Jury Says 'Parties Unknown'
Jerry Domnick confessed to killing the once-powerful medicine man Jim Bouchitt near Auburn — yet a coroner's jury refused to name him, leaving a murder with two answers.
Jerry Domnick, the Muckleshoot Indian who murdered Medicine Man Jim Bouchitt on the banks of Suls creek, near Auburn, a week ago last Sunday, and then hid his body, was arraigned before Justice of the Peace W. P. McElwain yesterday afternoon at 3 o'clock and committed to jail without bonds until next Friday, when he will be given a preliminary examination on the charge of murder in the first degree.
At 12 o'clock yesterday Coroner Askam held an inquest at Butterworth's undertaking rooms over the dead body of the once powerful 'medicine man,' at which there were no developments other than those given in the Post-Intelligencer yesterday morning. Anthony James told how Domnick confessed the murder to him, but this did not seem to be convincing to the jury, which, after being out ten minutes, brought in a verdict to the effect that death was due to a rifle shot by parties unknown.
Immediately after the inquest Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Wilshire took the principal witnesses to his office, where the names of all those who knew relative facts in the case were taken and complaint charging Domnick with murder was made out.
At 3 o'clock Domnick was brought down from the county jail to the justice's office by Deputy Sheriff McCory, and after the formalities of reading the complaint he was sent back to jail.
“The jury, after being out ten minutes, brought in a verdict to the effect that death was due to a rifle shot by parties unknown.”
A confessed killer and a coroner's jury that still returns 'parties unknown' is a case study in how Indigenous deaths were too often handled — a confession offered, a body guarded, and an investigation that named no one. The Muckleshoot and other tribes of this region have long pressed for the same thing this verdict denied: a straight account of how one of their people died.
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