Scene Of the Crime

Scene Of the Crime


Massacre at Erland's Point

November 26, 2020

The cast of characters read like an old version of Clue and the mystery of Who Done It? was just as intriguing.

Not just one, but six people murdered in a waterfront cottage on the tip of Erland’s Point in the spring of 1934.  The wealthy community was just about six miles outside Bremerton, but it was a world apart.

While the port town of Bremerton was always busy and bustling with ships and cargo constantly churning in and out of the harbor and people coming and going all hours of the day and night.

The hamlet of Erland’s Point was a haven from the noise, An easy getaway where the well-to-do could just do nothing. A place where the well-heeled could kick off their shoes and not worry about who might be watching.

It was both close to home and out of the way.  The perfect place for murder.

The Scene of the Crime was laid out like a game board.

The bodies were strewn all around the cottage: at a card table in the game room, by the fireplace in the entryway, in repose in a bedroom. Violence had erupted in nearly every room in the house.

And the victims seemed just as random.

A wealthy grocer and the older woman he married.

A vaudeville actress and her prize-fighter husband.

A retired Navy machinist and a Bremerton bartender.

As for the murder weapon, was it the revolver?  Or the hammer?  Or the rope found at the scene?

And who was behind this massacre?

It was more than the local police could handle. More than even the county sheriff could take on. So, they called in the man who would come to be known as America’s Sherlock Holmes.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this case of life imitating art, history repeating itself, and a bizarre love triangle driving it all.

In the end, one killer would walk and one would get the noose.

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