1886 Coroner's Jury Rules on Lake Washington Deaths
A jury concludes two men were murdered near the south end of Lake Washington, though no culprit is named.
Ever since the bodies of L.J. Baldwin and Wilbur Patten were recovered, the coroner's jury has succeeded in examining witnesses from time to time, in order to arrive at a verdict. On Wednesday evening, after the jury viewed the bodies and heard testimony, they returned the following verdict: We, the undersigned jury, duly empanelled and sworn on the 6th day of March, 1886, by the coroner of King County, to inquire into the cause and circumstances attending the death of two persons whose bodies were found in the waters of Lake Washington, do find that the names are James Manning Conway and Wilbur Patten, residents of said county, and that they came to their death on the 5th day of February, 1886, near the south point of Mercer Island, in King County, Washington Territory, by means of gunshot wounds, inflicted wilfully and of deliberate and premeditated malice, with intent to kill and murder the said James Manning Conway and Wilbur Patten. While the evidence brought before the jury does not positively name who performed the said wounds, it is easy to see in their minds the belief that a party of two or more persons is the guilty party.
“It is easy to see in their minds the belief that a party of two or more persons is the guilty party.”
Lake Washington was a wild and largely remote frontier in 1886, where identity and law were easily lost. Today, the area around the southern tip of Mercer Island is one of the most affluent residential corridors in the Pacific Northwest, with the violence of the 19th-century frontier largely replaced by the pressures of modern real estate.
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