The Tragic Death of Mollie Flippen

Shortly before 8 o'clock yesterday morning, a woman known to the town as Mollie Flippen was burned to death. She had been having a drunken carnival, and the windows of the neighborhood of Pacific Avenue and Ninth Street were peopled with sightseers. She was taken to the house where she lived—kept by Annie Walker on D Street. This morning her father, a well-to-do old farmer of Hillsboro, Oregon, was telegraphed briefly: 'Mollie burned to death, come at once.' Surrounded by the women of the house with whom she had lived the past four years, the body lay in the front room, the limbs wrapped about by white cloth. In the adjoining room lay Annie Walker, the proprietress of the house, who told how it happened. 'Annie came in about 3 o'clock this morning—came in here to build the fire. She was dressed in a loose Mother Hubbard and a chemise, nothing more, only her stockings. She left the door of the stove open and turned her back to the fire. In a moment the dress was afire. Ed, there, who is sleeping on the lounge, sprang up and tried to wrap a blanket around her, but she got away from him. It lasted only a second. She seemed to lose her mind at once, for she picked at the skin that was burned loose and pulling it off by the handful, cried, 'Look at the rags that are on me!' We sent for Doctor Brown at once and he came and covered her with oil and gave her ether.' Mollie Flippen will be remembered as one of the three women concerned with the murder of a man named Brown in a house of ill fame in Portland about five years ago. That murder was the sensation of the day. The women were arrested, and Mollie Flippen turned state's evidence. She came to Seattle shortly after and has ever since been in the house where she died.