An Italian Fruit Dealer Beaten to Death in His Tacoma Cabin
Conchilla Siverdore, 32, was found dead in his bed at Nineteenth and D streets, his skull crushed and three stiletto wounds over his heart. Two of his neighbors were arrested on suspicion.
Conchilla Siverdore, aged 32, an Italian fruit dealer, was found dead last night in bed in his cabin at Tacoma, corner Nineteenth and D streets, with his brains beaten out and three stiletto stab wounds directly over his heart. Pincini and Guiseppe Morsete, Italian fruit dealers, neighbors of the murdered man, have been arrested on suspicion.
“his brains beaten out and three stiletto stab wounds directly over his heart.”
This is the whole record of a man's death: three sentences, two arrests, no follow-up on the page. Tacoma's Italian fruit vendors were a tight, marginal community in 1892, and an unsolved killing in a cabin at 19th and D would likely never have made the papers at all had the violence not been so extreme. The brief item is a reminder of how much of the city's immigrant life survives only as a crime blotter entry.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.