The Shadow on Lake Washington
A grizzly discovery on Mercer Island leads to a frantic, suspicion-filled murder investigation in 1886 Seattle.
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.
Testimony continued in the Miller murder trial, centering on the discovery of a body in Lake Washington. Witnesses described the tense atmosphere on the lake in the days surrounding the disappearance of Mr. Colman. Little Jack, an Indigenous witness, testified to seeing a man paddling a dark boat near the island, describing the man's intense, hateful gaze. Another witness, Mattie Mathieson, recounted seeing a white boat circling the island and hearing mysterious shots at dawn on February 8th. Investigators later found a blood-stained boat near the island containing a set of false teeth and a pocketbook, which were presented to the court. The defendant, Miller, reportedly appeared at neighbors' homes shortly after the event, appearing deeply troubled and repeatedly asking why so many people were searching the lake, while obsessively claiming he had no friends left.
“He looked with intense hatred at Mr. Colman and I whenever we passed. He seemed to fear that someone had been stealing boats before I went to the place.”
This 1886 murder investigation highlights the isolation and reliance on the waters of Lake Washington long before the bridges and dense development of today's Seattle. It captures a moment where the lake was not just a scenic boundary, but a site of intense surveillance, social suspicion, and local tragedy.
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