The Groom Who Vanished: A Tacoma Bride’s Wedding Day Turned to Ashes

A New York Furniture Manufacturer's Scheme.

From Tacoma, June 9: A furniture manufacturer from Chicago entered the store of T. & H. Harmon & Co., on Pacific Avenue, one of the long-time customers of the firm. He was a very pretty and very costly and prettily dressed young woman, who he introduced as his bride. The couple stopped at the Tacoma Hotel for a day or two, during which time Marshall, the different furniture house of the city, and minor business as was his custom for years past. On frequent occasions heretofore the young man has often been seen asking of money from Mr. Harmon, who knowing him to be a trusty employee of more than one house, never hesitated to accommodate him.

Before he left town on Wednesday he went in and stated that he was on his wedding trip and had run short of cash, and to have the honor of borrowing some. Mrs. Harmon having no suspicion that all was not right handed over the money and Marshall and his young wife took the train for down bound. On the following day Mr. Harmon received a telegram from Gibson, Park & Co., warning him not to advance any money to Marshall nor to trust him in any other way. The telegram stated that a letter would follow giving full particulars. A mild investigation set on foot after receipt of the telegram discovered that he had secured a loan from O. W. Lynch & Co., of Chicago, under the same name and that he had immediately thereafter stepped over into British Columbia.

Mr. Harmon says that while he had every reason to trust Marshall from his long business relationship with him and the high opinion in which he was apparently held by his employers, still he knew him to have been a liar and a thief for a long time. The story of his taking on his wedding trip under the light of these developments is open to very grave suspicion, as Marshall said he was married in Portland, and the young lady had come from the east to meet him. Mr. Harmon says he has no doubt that Marshall has worked the whole coast in this manner, and that some of his early checks, possibly from San Francisco, arriving at the home office, is what awakened the firm to the situation and caused them to send out warning to all their customers.

Marshall is a relative of ex-Governor Bartlett, of Illinois. He was selling goods 'on the able' for the Bankers Furniture Manufacturing company, of Kokomo, Indiana, and several other firms.