By all accounts, Dr. John H. Lyon was a well-liked, dedicated physician in the community of Roslyn. He had begun working for the Northern Pacific Coal Company there in 1887 and, along with Dr. George Sloan, provided medical services for the mining company’s employees.
However, on March 19, 1896, Lyon was walking home on a dark and cloudy night when he had a fatal encounter. He had begun the short journey in the company of Samuel Issacs, a local merchant, but then the two split off from each other to head to their respective houses.
However, just as he reached his door, he was struck twice on the head from behind. He collapsed in the yard and died shortly after from a fractured skull.
When his body was discovered the next morning, officials first thought he had been killed during a robbery attempt. However, the fact that he still possessed his wallet and jewelry quickly made them discard that theory. In searching the crime scene, investigators found what they believed was the likely murder weapon—a wooden table leg covered with blood and hair.
At the time, Roslyn was a brand-new community, having only been founded the previous year by the Northern Pacific Railway. The discovery of rich coal deposits in the hills north of Cle Elum had motivated the railroad, which needed the coal to fuel its locomotives, to create the Northern Pacific Coal Company and establish the town.
As a mining town, Roslyn experienced its share of tragedies. The most-deadly was an explosion in Roslyn Mine No. 1 on May 10, 1892, which killed 45 miners. It remains the worst mining disaster in Washington state history.
Lyon had an earlier brush with danger on September 24th of that year, when he was a customer inside the local Ben E. Snipes & Co. Bank in Roslyn when it was robbed by five masked men.
According to news accounts of the robbery, Lyon had just walked into the bank, behind one of the thieves. He saw the man was brandishing a pistol, so he turned to run out of the bank. As he did, he immediately encountered a second armed and masked man with two pistols. He threw his arms in the air and remained stationary.
After the three robbers snatched an estimated $5,000 from the bank, they ran to their horses. As they were mounting their horses, they shot and wounded Assistant Cashier S.A. Frazier, who had heard of the trouble and was running to the bank with a shotgun. As they rode out of town, they also shot another man named Cooley in the leg.
About two months after the robbery, three men from Pendleton, Oregon were arrested for the crime and brought back to Ellensburg to stand trial. Once in custody, the bank cashier and Lyons identified the trio as the robbers in spite of the fact there wasn’t much else to support their involvement.
One of the men was convicted while the other two were acquitted by the jury. In March 1893, the convicted man was released after securing a retrial because of the relative lack of evidence. It wouldn’t be until mid-1893 that the real robbers were correctly identified, but their subsequent trial ended with a hung jury because the eyewitnesses had already mis-identified the thieves in the previous trial.
After that, Lyon returned to his practice in Roslyn. Born in Pennsylvania in 1852, he had been married and divorced before arriving in the coal mining town. He had a son and a daughter from that first marriage. His son was said to have been 20 at the time of his death, while his daughter was 17.
In 1889, he married Jessie Mabel Condit in Ellensburg and the two had a daughter, Jessie Ariadne, in April 1892. Sadly, a few weeks later, Lyon’s wife, who was only 27, died and was taken back to New Jersey to be buried with her family members.
At the time of his murder, Lyon was a single father raising a four-year-old daughter. Following his death, Jessie Ariadne, was sent to New Jersey to live with relatives. She died there in 1949 at the age of 57.
Lyon’s killing triggered community outrage. The Ellensburg Capital newspaper later described him as a well-known citizen of Roslyn who had been “foully assassinated.”
According to accounts, the people of Roslyn immediately offered a reward of $400 for the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers. That amount was soon supplemented by the city of Roslyn, which put up a $300 reward, Washington’s governor, who put up $500, and Kittitas County, which posted a $300 reward (for a total reward of $1,500 or about $58,000 in today’s dollars).
On March 24, five days after the fatal attack, City Marshal L. J. Moore arrested two brothers, John J. and Thomas Jones, for Lyon’s murder. According to the Tacoma Daily Ledger, the two men were coal miners (although John Jones had not been employed since a mining strike in 1894).
The newspapers said authorities believed the Jones brothers had a beef with Lyon because the doctor had treated another brother, David, for an infection on his hand. Apparently, David, also a coal miner, ignored Lyon’s advice to remain home to rest and returned to work.
“During the first afternoon [he] returned home complaining of severe pains in his knee,” the Ledger said. “He went to bed and a month later died of blood poisoning. The Jones brothers frequently asked the doctor regarding his condition and were informed he was getting along nicely. He grew worse suddenly just prior to his death.
“The Jones brothers were greatly incensed and reached [the] conclusion, apparently, that Dr. Lyon had either deceived them regarding Dave’s condition or did not treat the case properly. The afternoon Dave died the Jones boys heaped abuse upon Lyon’s head in the presence of Dr. [W.H.] Harris, who had been called into consultation . . . the day the body was placed in the coffin one of the Jones boys is said to have declared ‘he would fix Lyon for this.’”
The paper also said that “the Jones’ are Welshmen and possess the clannishness and dogged determination for which their countrymen are noted.”
Additional details In the Ledger said the Jones brothers had “been shadowing Lyon nightly” to learn his habits and had lain in wait to attack him. Additionally, apparently footprints had been found that led from Lyon’s body to the door of the Jones house.
An interesting side note to the Lyon story appeared in the Seattle Post Intelligencer on March 21. According to the paper, a Dr. J. H. Lyons of Seattle was awakened early on the previous morning by four of his friends who immediately surrounded him and did a “joy dance.”
The perplexed physician asked what was going on and one of his friends produced a newspaper from the day before about a Dr. Lyons having been murdered in Roslyn.
“Mr. Lyons explained that there were two Dr. Lyons, one of whom had lived at Roslyn for eight or nine years,” the story continued. “’I am certain,’ added the doctor, ‘that I am not dead.’”
Dr. Lyons, who spelled his name with an “s,” also told the Post-Intelligencer that was acquainted with the deceased doctor and “remembered him as being a fine man and one who was well thought of.”
While the Jones brothers had been arrested for the murder by the city marshal, not everyone in Roslyn’s law enforcement community was convinced the case was iron-clad. One official, Detective Dan W. Simmons, a former Yakima County Sheriff who was working the case, believed the evidence was too slight and circumstantial, and he had recommended against arresting the two at that time.
On March 25, the brothers appeared before Justice Henry Smith, who heard the case against them and released them from jail due to a lack of sufficient evidence. The March 26 edition of the Yakima Herald noted that after the hearing, Simmons was “thoroughly disgusted with the work of the Roslyn officers who appeared more anxious to prevent any outsider securing the reward than to bring the guilty parties to justice.”
In spite of the hefty reward, no one was ever arrested again for the murder of Dr. Lyon. No local citizen ever came forward with information that could help the investigation and the case eventually faded away in the public consciousness and was never solved.
