Topic: Crime
Like all sizeable American cities, Seattle since its earliest days has attracted its share of prostitution, gambling, illegal drug and liquor sales, and a variety of other behaviors and activities tha...
Official corruption began in Seattle's early days and continued with only sporadic interference for more than 100 years. Territorial laws, and later state laws, banned various vices, but were largely ...
Chinese immigrants, largely men, began arriving in Seattle in the 1860s, and played a key role in the development of Washington Territory, providing labor for the region's mines and salmon canneries a...
Tacoma's Eddie Bentz was never as famous as some of his partners in crime, such as Machine Gun Kelly or Baby Face Nelson, but then, Eddie never liked cheap publicity. J. Edgar Hoover, or more probably...
Bob’s Chile Parlor was a gambling den in downtown Seattle in the 1950s and 1960s — when city officials turned a blind eye to illegal vice and Seattle beat cops extorted payoffs from c...
Easily one of Seattle’s all-time quirkiest and best-loved neighborhood dives, the Café Racer Espresso (5828 Roosevelt Way NE), has since 2005 offered up good coffee, simple food, cheep beer, and fu...
During the 1950s and 1960s, Charles O. "Chuck" Carroll was, arguably, the most powerful man in Seattle and King County. As King County Prosecutor he was the effective head of all law enforcement in th...
In this People's History file, Mindi Reid, granddaughter of the renowned Seattle criminologist Luke S. May (1892-1965), recalls him as a beloved grandfather. Luke May, known as America's Sherlock Holm...
After the shoot-out between Snohomish County Sheriff Donald McRae and his posse and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) at the Everett City Dock on November 5, 1916, known as the Ever...
Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), acclaimed as the creator of modern American detective fiction, spent a winter in Tacoma not long before he began writing the stories that would make him famous. This acco...
Steven Farmer, a Seattle airline steward often praised for his leading-man good looks, found himself unwittingly cast as villain and victim in a real-life legal, moral, and medical drama in 1988, when...
Michael Atkins relays the story of William Hamilton, an Irishman who came to Seattle in 1909. One of Hamilton's grand nieces in Ireland posted a query on a usenet group on the internet. Intrigued, Atk...
During the 1890s Seattle, to boost its economy, actively sought an army post. The War Department also desired an army presence and encouraged the City to provide free land. The land was conveyed in 18...
From a police officer's vantage point, former UW police officer David Wilma recounts the anti-war protests of May 5, 1970, a response to the United States invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. ...
Orville Ozmund Gossett (1911-1982) was a musically gifted young man from Idaho who as a teenager was taken in and raised by his uncle and aunt, Robert and Florence Warner, in Tekoa (Whitman County). G...
Journey back to 1902, and follow the trail of Harry Tracy -- the Wild Northwest's last desperado -- one step ahead of the posse. Written by Alan J. Stein and designed by Chris Goodman.
Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard was a sadistic and greedy quack who convinced patients that only by starving themselves for months at a time could they regain their health. Unsurprisingly, many of her pati...
For almost 20 years beginning in 1896, Clarence Hillman was one of the most prominent businessmen and real estate developers in Seattle. His aggressive and even fraudulent sales of vacant land laid ou...
Physician and historian Charles May Anderson of Sprague, Lincoln County, wrote this fascinating account of rural life in the early twentieth century and the pursuit and death of murderer and prison es...
This bibliography on crime, law enforcement, and justice was prepared as a community history resource by staff of the former King County Office of Cultural Resources, now 4Culture (King County Cultura...
The Lady of the Lake is a true story of the disappearance of Hallie Latham Illingworth. A tale of murder, a body that turned to "soap," and the hunt for a killer has absorbed readers and storytellers ...
Mary Kay Letourneau, at one time a respected elementary school teacher in Burien, became a convicted sex offender whose illicit relationship with a student has repelled and fascinated people around th...
Norman Kim "Norm" Maleng was King County Prosecuting Attorney for 28 years, during which he implemented legal reforms, mentored future judges and politicians, and made national news while prosecuting ...
Washington became one of the first two states, along with Colorado, to legalize adult recreational use of marijuana when voters approved Initiative 502 on November 6, 2012. The vote was the culminatio...