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FAMILY NOTE:
According to Alice and Joseph's great great great granddaughter, family members feel that Coon killed Alice and Joseph in cold blood. According to their little son Joe, he and his mother were in their home when they heard a gunshot. When that happened, Alice ran out of the house to see what was going on. After the second gunshot, which killed Alice, Coon came into the house to kill little Joe. Because Joe had hidden under the bed with his dog, he managed to survive.
Before Coon left the house, he grabbed Joseph's gun off...
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FAMILY NOTE:
According to Alice and Joseph's great great great granddaughter, family members feel that Coon killed Alice and Joseph in cold blood. According to their little son Joe, he and his mother were in their home when they heard a gunshot. When that happened, Alice ran out of the house to see what was going on. After the second gunshot, which killed Alice, Coon came into the house to kill little Joe. Because Joe had hidden under the bed with his dog, he managed to survive.
Before Coon left the house, he grabbed Joseph's gun off the mantle, which he later placed in Joseph's hand, in order to back up his story of self-defense. No one believed Coon's story, but he still got away with it because he was a mason. The story in the newspaper was influenced by his position to make him sound innocent instead of a murderous lunatic.
NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT:
Lying in wait behind a huge boulder on his place three miles south of town on the Malaga Road at an early hour this morning, J. W. Coon waited with rifle in hand until Mr. and Mrs. Joseph A. Charlton, neighbors with whom he had had a quarrel over water rights appeared at the point where the water in an irrigation ditch is divided to the two ranches and then taking careful aim sent a bullet through the heart of Mr. Charlton, who dropped to the ground instantly killed and then, as Mrs. Charlton turned to run, he sent a second bullet crashing into her back, inflicting a wound which, after she had staggered along the gulch towards her home for one hundred years, finally brought her to the ground in a dying condition in the hollow of a big boulder, where she lay on her breast until she bled to death. After finishing his gruesome work, Coon at once calmly telephoned Sheriff McManus that he had "had a little shooting scrape" and that he was ready to give himself up to the authorities. Taken into custody by the sheriff, Coon asserted that he shot in self-defense. The authorities found a rifle with one empty cartridge beside Mr. Charlton's body.
Sheriff McManus received notification of the affair about 6 o'clock this morning and it is presumed that the shooting occurred about 5:30. The story told the sheriff by Mr. Coon was to the effect that he had gone up to where the irrigation ditch was diverted from the ditch leading to the Charlton place and that there he had been fired upon by Charlton and that he had returned the fire but did not know where he had killed anyone or not.
When the sheriff arrived on the scene he found Mr. Charlton lying on his face with a .22 caliber rifle clutched in his hands and a hole in his forehead from which blood was issuing. Some fifty feet from where the man lay, the rocks and boulders were splattered with blood and marked the trail leading towards the Charlton house towards which Mrs. Charlton had run, a distance of about one hundred yards before she fell in the hollow of a big boulder and lying on her breast had bled to death.
Coon surrendered a 25-20 caliber rifle to the sheriff and offered no resistance whatever to arrest. He was at once lodged in the county jail. The sheriff then notified County Coroner Templeton who with a number of witnesses went to the scene of the fatality to take charge of the dead man and wife.
The place on which Mr. Coon lives is the old Tom Chisholm ranch about three miles below town on the Malaga road just this side of the little while school house. The Charlton place is about a quarter mile on down the road and just the other side of the school house. Both men claimed the water that flowed down the gulch back of the two places, most of the water coming from the overflow from the ditches on Wheeler Hill and from a spring further up the gulch. There had been considerable trouble over the water recently and it appears that Coon had been using the water exclusively for the past month.
Evidently sometime in the past twenty-four hours, Mr. Charlton had gone to a point on the Coon place where the water is diverted to one ditch or the other and had turned the water so that it would flow onto his land as the bed of the stream which had been dry for a month was moist and showed that water had been recently flowing through it. It appears then that Mr. Coon early this morning went up to turn the water back onto his place and with a 25-20 caliber rifle lay in wait behind some convenient boulder of thicket of brush to await developments.
As to what happened when Mr. and Mrs. Charlton appeared cannot be definitely known as there were no known witnesses to what occurred. Just two empty shells were found which fit the rifle that Coon surrendered both ejected at the same spot. Mrs. Charlton was probably carrying the hoe which was found near where she was shot. Evidently she had turned to run when Mr. Charlton was fired at as the bullet entered her back at the right shoulder and coursing upward passed out through her neck below the chin. A large artery from all appearances was severed as from that spot the blood was splashed in large splotches on every hand to where she fell some hundred yards down the stream. The bullet which killed Mr. Charlton entered the breast near the heart and no doubt caused almost instant death though he may have run some fifty feel before the fell. There was very little blood spilled by Charlton's body and where he fell no doubt with some force, his head struck a good sized boulder which broke the skin in his forehead and at first sight appeared to be a bullet wound.
That shots were fired from both sides is evident from the fact that an empty .22 caliber cartridge was found near where Charlton stood. At the point where the shooting took place the gulch leading down from Wheeler Hill widens out in the form of a delta and is strewn with rocks and large boulders which have been washed down the mountain side. Here and there is a clump of bushes struggling to gain a sustenance from the barren and sandy soil and a pitiful little stream of muddy water trickles down among the rocks and through the thirsty sand on its way to the green alfalfa fields and fruit laden orchards not a hundred yards away. Over this murky pittance of water a dispute arose which brings to an end two lives and untold sorrow and suffering to many others.
In the Charlton family were four girls and three boys, the only one at home at the time being the youngest son, a child of some 6 years of age. The youngster becoming alarmed at the absence of his parents and not knowing where they were, had crawled under the bed in fear an was there found crying by friends about 9 o'clock. Crying bitterly for his mother and complaining that he was hungry, the little lad was taken by kind hands and given something to eat not yet knowing of the terrible catastrophe that has come into his life. Two of the girls in the family are married and there are two other girls fifteen years or more of age, who are living in town. Two grown sons reside at Cashmere and all have been notified of the sad happening.
In the Coon family there is the wife and two daughters and three sons, one daughter married and the other grown to womanhood. Of the boys, the youngest is a lad of about 10 years and the other grown. Mr. Coon had very little to say and seems to take the affair as a matter of course. He is a man 56 years of age and has always been held in high esteem by his friends and neighbors, being a good father and a man of religious convictions. His wife, a woman near the same age as her husband, is shocked and almost distracted at the action of her husband.
The murdered man and wife were about 50 and 46 years of age respectively. They were well known throughout the valley and have always been held in the highest esteem. They had a pretty little place with a young orchard and were hard working and industrious people. Both bodies are in charge of County Coroner Templeton. No arrangements as to burial have as yet been made.
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NEXT DAY'S NEWSPAPER:
"We expect to prove that the killing of Joseph A. Charlton by Mr. Coon was done entirely in self defense and that the killing of Mrs. Charlton was purely accidental," declared O. P. Barrows, attorney for John W. Coon, charged with the murder of the Charlton's at his ranch three miles south of town on the Malaga road early yesterday morning to a representative of the Daily World this morning.
Evidence gathered by the county authorities yesterday and today seems to indicate that yesterday's awful tragedy, which has shocked the entire community by its ghastly details, may have been attended by features not developed by the early investigations. The county prosecuting attorney, the county sheriff, and the county coroner visited the scene of the affray yesterday, took pictures of the locality, interviewed witnesses and gathered evidence from every possible source. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Charlton were removed to the Hall & Templeton undertaking parlors where an autopsy was performed by Doctors Culp and Kaupp yesterday afternoon.
When the case against Mr. Coon comes up for trial in court, the testimony that will be presented by William coon, the sixteen-year-old son of the man accused of the double killing, will undoubtedly be the most important evidence that will be offered. The youth was with his father when the shooting occurred and was an eye witness so far as known the only one beside his father, of the whole affair. Under instructions from his attorney, P. P. Barrows, Mr. Coon will not talk and his son is under a similar injunction to refrain from discussing the shooting with any person in any way. Mr. Coon, however, has no hesitancy in saying he shot in self-defense; that he is perfectly willing to tell his story in its entirety, as he has nothing to conceal; but that he feels he must obey the instructions of his attorney. He remains calm and collected and though saying he is sorry the affair had to happen, he declares that he shot to save his own life.
The autopsy performed upon the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Charlton revealed the fact that Mr. Charlton was shot through the heart and Mrs. Charlton in the back and that the latter wound had been made by a bullet that had evidently struck some other object before it hit Mrs. Charlton and had been flattened out. This would ten to corroborate a statement Coon is understood to have made; to the effect that he had never fired a shot at Mrs. Charlton and had no thought of doing so; that he did not even know she was struck until he was told about it after he had been brought to jail here.
After receiving the wound in the back, Mrs. Charlton ran for three hundred yards down the gulch and when she finally fell, she was out of sight of Coon and his son at the scene of the shooting. It is therefore entirely possible that if Coon did shoot Mrs. Charlton accidentally, he was not aware of the fact when he surrendered to the authorities.
Testimony that has so far been gathered tends at this time to indicate that the shooting was done in a gun fight between the two men; that hot words were exchanged between them at the division point in the irrigation ditch where the affray took place; that Charlton may have fired the first shot, at any rate it is evidently the intention of the Mr. Coon's counsel to claim that he did; that Coon then fired at Charlton but missed him, the bullet striking a rock and glancing to one side, hitting in the back Mrs. Charlton, who had started to run from the scene at the first show of hostilities but had gone only a few steps that Charlton may or may not have fired a second shot (only one exploded cartridge from his rifle has been found at the scene of the shooting); and that coon then sent a bullet crashing through Charlton's heart. Coon, it is understood, claims that he did not even know that Charlton was dead when he surrendered, though he knew of course that he had been hit. It is believed that supporting their claim of acting in self-defense, Mr. Coon's counsel will assert that the affair happened in the manner set forth above, and they will probably have the evidence of Mr. Coon and that of his son, an eye witness, to support their case.
While Mr. Coon is a prisoner in the county jail and will, of course, be continued in custody, no information charging him with a crime has been filed as yet by the county authorities. The coroner has not held an inquest and will not do so, so that whatever action is taken against Coon will be in the form of the complaint filed direct in the superior court.
Relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Charlton arrived here today and made arrangements for the double funeral. Services will be held in the Hall & Templeton Undertaking parlors tomorrow morning at 10:30 o'clock and the bodies will be shipped to Ellensburg on train No. 1 accompanied by relatives. Many kinsmen of both Mr. and Mrs. Charlton live in that vicinity, including the mother of Mr. Charlton and the mother of Mrs. Charlton. Their bodies will be laid to rest in the family lot in the cemetery there alongside those of Mr. Charlton's father and that of Mrs. Charlton's father.
Joseph Andrew Charlton was 50 years of age and had lived in the valley thirty years. He is survived by three sons: Herman, Milby H. and Joe Alexander, Jr.; and by four daughters, Misses Tressa, Verna, and Pearl and Mrs. Velma Shiflett, all the sons and daughters living here. He also leaves two brothers, William and Fred living at Ellensburg; one in Ontario, Ore. and one in Livingston, Mont., and one in California.
Mrs. John Alice Charlton was 45 years of age. She has two brothers living in North Yakima, German and Joy, and two brothers in Ellensburg, Robert and Calvin. She also has the following sisters, Mrs. William Dale, Mrs. Shuster and Mrs. Frost of Ellensburg and Mrs. Bender of North Yakima.
Mr. and Mrs. William Dale, Mr. and Mrs. William L. Charlton of Ellensburg, Fred Charlton of Corville and German Gage of Ellensburg were here today to make the funeral arrangements.
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