Officer William H. Cunliffe is murdered on June 17, 1911.

HistoryLink.org Essay 3809 : Printer-Friendly Format

On June 17, 1911, Seattle Police Officer William H. Cunliffe (1866-1911) is shot and killed by unknown assailants on First Hill.

Officer Cunliffe was on foot patrol in the area of Summit Avenue and Columbia Street in the early morning hours of June 17. There had been several residential burglaries in the area the night before. The officer stopped one or possibly two men he found on the street and he was shot. The nature of his wound suggested that he was talking to someone when he was shot from the side.

Five persons were arrested in a boarding house at 1115 Madison Street, but were later released. The City of Seattle, King County, and the State of Washington offered a reward of $1,250 for the killer's arrest. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer collected $360 to augment Mrs. Cunliffe's widow's pension of $33 a month. One donor was John Considine, who had killed Police Chief Meredith 10 years before.

No one was ever charged with Officer Cunliffe's killing.

Sources:
Michael D. Brasfield, "An Examination of the Historical and Biographical Material Pertaining to the Violent Deaths Involving Seattle Police Officers (1881-1980)" (Undergraduate thesis, University of Washington Library, 1980), 23.

By David Wilma, May 23, 2002

Travel through time (chronological order):
< Browse to Previous Essay | Browse to Next Essay >

Related Topics: Crime |

Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.