Bodies of Colman and Patten Recovered from Lake Washington
After weeks of searching, a homemade underwater viewing device helps recover the bodies of two men murdered on the water.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Several days ago, we reported that an overcoat, an undershirt, and some other articles belonging to Wilbur Patten, who was supposed to have been murdered with James Manning Colman on the morning of February 10th, had been found floating in Lake Washington near the south end of Mercer Island. This discovery exploded the theory that the men had been shot from the mainland. The honor of finding the bodies belongs to Charles Strauss and F. Graham of Newcastle, and Thomas Murphy, a neighbor of Mr. Colman. Thomas Murphy relates that they took Colman’s boat, a dragging apparatus, and a sort of tube with which a person can see in deep water to search. Working along the shore, they came upon Patten’s body in 15 feet of water, lying face up. Ten feet farther on lay the body of James Manning Colman. As they drew his body to the surface, they saw a great hole in his left temple where a death-dealing leaden missile from the assassin’s gun had penetrated his brain. When they first raised them, they looked perfectly natural, but before they got them to town, they had turned black.
“We took Colman’s boat, a dragging apparatus, and a sort of tube with which a person can see in deep water, and started out in search of the bodies.”
The 1886 murder of Colman and Patten on Lake Washington remains a haunting reminder of the relative isolation of the area at the time. Today, the south end of Mercer Island and the lake itself are central hubs for the city, but the mystery of who pulled that trigger persists as one of Seattle’s earliest documented major crimes.
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