Mamie Walsh Part One

Work of a Fiend

1892 was a boom year for Portland. Portland consolidated with East Portland and Albina (North Portland) in 1891 tripling the city’s acreage and increasing its population by half to over 70,000. In 1892 Portland was the largest city in the northwest and business was booming. The depression that would hit the city in the spring of 1893 was still over the horizon.

On June 22, 1892, school was out and Mamie Walsh, 14, the daughter of a prominent Milwaukie farmer, was staying with family friends, the Luellings, near the Willamette River just south of Sellwood. That day she went out to pick berries by the river at about 4:00pm. She didn’t come back that night.

Alfred Luelling enlisted neighbors to search for the missing girl. Shortly after dawn Mamie’s body was found. She had been raped and strangled. Her underwear, hat and bucket were missing. The search party turned into a posse, determined to find and lynch the killer.

To read the rest of the story you will need to get my book: