A Guard Called It an Escape. A Witness Called It Murder.

Seattle, March 24, 1895.

To the Editor: In speaking of the jail escapes at Seattle, your paper mentions Thomas Dryden as one of them, and says he was afterwards captured only to be sent to Walla Walla, where he was later shot to death while attempting to escape. I do not write this under the impression that the public are very much interested in knowing whether Dryden or any other convict has been shot to death or murdered, if such a thing could be possible as far as a convict is concerned; but I would like to correct your account of his death, for to tell the public he was killed while attempting to escape is not telling them the truth. If you will permit me I will tell you how it did occur and make an affidavit to it if you wish.

The prisoners at Walla Walla penitentiary are surrounded by brick and wooden walls and armed guards and hounds, the last mentioned being of more use than the other precautions. Every evening and at noon the prisoners in the jute mill have the privilege of going to the sink and washing their cells. On the evening of February 14, 1894, Dryden took his towel and started down the public passageway in the jute mill toward the sink to wash himself, for it was just before lock-up time. When he got a little more than half way, another prisoner spoke to him, and as Dryden half turned round and stooped to speak to him he was shot down by Guard Phil Berry, making the third prisoner he had killed there. They then gave it out that Dryden was trying to escape, and of course whatever Cochran, Cameron and others chose to say about it the papers published. But these are the facts of the case, and I can prove it.

Cameron, the deputy warden, was in the yard with Berry at the time of the shooting, and, although I was at work close to this for several months, I saw Cameron there so late in the evening before, and it was the second time he was ever seen in that post without having some visitors with him, and after the killing of Dryden I never saw him there. Warden Cochran was at the back of the mill standing at a well where some fourteen or fifteen men were at work. When he heard the shot he jumped away from the well, saying as he rushed off: “Oh, I guess Perry has got his man.” As there were other armed guards as well as Berry in the mill, how did he know it was Berry that shot, and how did he know that he had shot anyone?

I put a full statement of this case, giving every circumstance connected with it, for I was right there when it happened and saw it all. I went before the city and county attorneys at Walla Walla and tried to have this case inquired into, but they could do nothing. As a last resort I went to Olympia and saw the governor and the investigating committee that was about to start for Walla Walla. They were to inquire into the doings of the prison officials.

THOMAS HAYDEN. Hoffman House.