A true crime chronicle published in 2014, “Murder in the Fourth Corner” by Todd A. Warger, has become one of Whatcom County’s best-selling history texts. Its sequels, “Murder and Mayhem in the Fourth Corner” and “More Murder and Mayhem in the Fourth Corner,” have expanded to include crimes in Skagit and Island Counties – but all focus on Washington’s frontier era from the mid-nineteenth through early-twentieth centuries.
“I work at the Whatcom Museum, so I’ve been there for over 30 years now,” says Warger. “I found it very interesting, as I was going through so many newspapers and other research projects for exhibits, that there was, for a short time, quite an adventurous time of different horrendous crimes during settlement. And nobody’s really touched them. Many of the cases I read about, I found myself sympathizing with the victims – and how, in many cases, the criminal was a victim of the circumstances of the times. So I started feeling kind of remorse for obviously the victims, but in some cases, what it was like to live here at the time.”
These books have avoided stirring up tragedies within living memory, and in so doing have uncovered a pioneer history that has risked being forgotten. As curious readers will find, specters of local homicides and cold cases still haunt the present.
Heroes and Villains
Several victims documented by Warger were high-profile community members in their time. Lake Padden takes the family name of Michael Padden, who perished in a property dispute after neighbor Susan Clark had ordered her 10-year-old son Thomas to fire on him.
“Addie Roper was a huge name not just because of the heinous crime, but because she was such an independent and powerful woman,” says Warger. “She was highly involved in all activities that were going on in Blaine at the time.”
Recurring figures such as Sheriff Will Wallace also emerge from the investigations.
“I’ve done several three or four or five stories where he was the poor sap who had to solve the case,” says Warger. “The community would just ride him and make fun of him, and he just had his own methodology. In the end, he always solved the cases. But I would say if I were to take a side: who did I feel the worst for and admired the most? It would have been Wallace. He had the hardest time. He had the hardest crimes. I would not wish that upon anybody at all.”
The criminals documented here range from Frank Romandorf, called “the Maple Falls Monster” and “probably Washington State’s first serial killer,” to the wild west outlaws behind crimes such as the Canadian Pacific Railway Robbery.
“One of the most notorious, if you were in Sumas, would have been ‘Terrible Jake Terry,’” says Warger. “He is probably one of the last of the… not big, but last of the mediocre outlaws, and literally put the entire town under siege for two days.”
Revisiting Ghosts of the Past
Suspicions of “unclaimed bodies somewhere out in the woods” are not the only legacies these stories have left, Warger says. Victims can be remembered.
“Everybody writes about the bad guy,” says Warger. “They don’t write about the good people. Again, a lot of these people you wouldn’t even recognize anyway. They came here as pioneers or to start a new life. They were just struggling to become something, and they did the best they could. For whatever reason, they get caught up in something bad. So their legacy is kind of tempered in trying to draw out who they really were.”
Sites of the Roper, “Maple Falls Monster,” and other high-profile cases still have a lingering aura in their vacancy where “murder houses” once were.
“There are some identifiable areas today that you can go to, and some of the tours in town do it,” says Warger. “Probably the most notorious would be… they called it Elk Street at the time, but State Street, where the old red light district used to be. That building where the old butcher area was is fairly intact, although the murder took place behind it in a little shack.”
Following the Trails Gone Cold
As Warger says, “The most shocking response I have had from these books is people contacting me, going, ‘Our family split three generations ago. We had no idea why. We read your story. Now we know.’ It is amazing that 100 years later, 110, 120 years later, there is either a deep divide of people trying to figure out what happened to their family, or there is still a healing process.”
Readers have even rediscovered family connections in town and contacted Warger from other states and countries.
“I’ve had some direction, especially from the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies,” says Warger. “There have been a few stories where family members that I’ve been able to trace and find have been very helpful and supportive.”
Warger has also received support from coauthors, publishers at Village Books, Whatcom County Historical Society, and venues such as Colophon Café and The Vault Wine Bar, where he has held readings. You can follow “Murder in the Fourth Corner” on Facebook for more on history and events.
