The following article was copied from the
Philadelphia Inquirer of the date indicated in the article.
The article appears to be from a correspondent in
Wilkes Barre, Pa.
This speculative article is displayed here
only for
the curiosity of the readers.
HAD GOWEN A DOUBLE
Startling Clue Furnished by an Ex-Mollie Maguire
THE LAWYER FOLLOWED FOR YEARS
A Stranger Dressed Like Gowen Said To Have Bought the Revolver, Entered the Hotel Room, Shot His Victim and Then Escaped.
WILKES BARRE, Dec. 22, 1889 ---- An ex-lodge master of the Mollie Maguire organization furnishes a local paper with what he claims is a sure clue to the Gowen tragedy. He says the ex-president of the Reading Railroad did not commit suicide, but was murder
ed by a man who personated the lawyer and in appearance resembled him very much.
The man in question had been following Gowen for years with a view of taking his life. In order to carry out the plot successfully, the stranger dressed exactly like Gowen and during the week the lawyer spent in Washington, his double stopped at the same
hotel and noted every movement. It was he who purchased the revolver at the Washington store. Returning to Wormley's, he watched Mr. Gowen and when the latter left the hotel, the stranger went up to Gowen's room and secreted himself.
When Gowen returned, the man in the room threw his overcoat over him and then shot him. The murderer then, with the aid of an assistant, escaped by way of the window. The murderer blamed Gowen for many of the murders in the coal regions, and to avenge the
death of a friend on the gallows, he made up his mind to kill the railroad man sooner or later.
THE FAMILY'S VIEWS CONFIRMED
Mrs. Gowen and the immediate relatives of the deceased lawyer in Philadelphia have from the first, positively refused to credit the theory of suicide. They declared that the facts of the case were totally against any such assumption, and were firm in the
faith that he was murdered. The statement of the Mollie Maguire confirms in a startling manner, the family's views.
Captain Linden, upon his return from Washington last week, expressed his belief in the theory of suicide, but it is known that the captain, at the request of Francis I. Gowen, employed a number of special detectives to trace all the Mollie Maguires who ha
d recently been released from the Penitentiary. The superintendent of the Pinkerton Detective Agency had a complete list of these ex-convicts, and he placed his men upon their tracks with instructions to report to him every move they had made since their
release.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 22, 1889
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