Sheriff's deputy killed in 1903 gets second memorial

Olympia Weekly Capital report

Last Sunday afternoon, about 3 o'clock as David Morrell, deputy sheriff and jailer of this county, was putting the prisoners back in their cells after giving them dinner, he was attacked by Christ Benson, a man waiting for transportation to Walla Walla to serve a one-year sentence for robbing his companion of $45.

Benson stepped behind the unsuspecting jailer and dealt him a terrific blow with a piece of lead pipe which he had torn from a sink in his cell and secreted upon his person. Dazed, but not disabled, Morrell drew his revolver and turned upon the prisoner only to receive another blow from the weapon. A terrible struggle then ensued, during which the prisoner secured the revolver and apparently from sheer lust of murder fired three shots into the almost unconscious jailer, two through the body and one through the head. Death was instentaneous (sic). The murderer then took the keys from the murdered officer, picked up his bat and, while the terrified prisoners huddled in the corner, let himself out of the jail and walked out of the city in broad daylight, and at this writing (Thursday) has not been apprehended.

The murdered jailer was a veteran of the civil war and served several years in the regular army after its close. He was experienced in the handling of prisoners, having been warden of the territorial penitentiary and deputy warden of the state penitentiary. He was a man utterly devoid of fear, but still careful and vigilant in the handling of prisoners. While an excellent judge of the character of the class with whom he had so long dealt he was deceived in Benson, having remarked on the inoffensive nature of the prisoner. This mistake cost him his life.

But for the pluck of the wife of Sheriff Mills there would have been a wholesale delivery of prisoners, as they had recovered from their terror and gathered upon the stairway when she appeared on the scene with a revolver, having been summoned by a trusty, and held them in check until the officers appeared, when they quietly submitted to be locked up.

One of the prisoners was so shocked by the scene to which he was an unwilling witness that fears were for a time entertained for his family.

An adopted son, Fred Bonny, a lad of 11 years, is the only member of the immediate family of the deceased. By his will, which has been opened, his property, consisting of two houses and lots, a $500 bank account and some bonds, are left to young Bonny, with A.L. Callow as executer (sic) of the will and guardian of the boy.

The funeral, which was largely attended, was held Tuesday under the auspices of the G.A.R., Odd Fellows and Masons, and the remains were laid to rest in the Masonic cemetery, a lot having been secured adjoining that owned by the state, where the unclaimed dead of the Washington volunteers are laid to rest. There, under the shadow of the monument erected to their memory, David Morrell, his duties done, sleeps the last long sleep, while his murderer, the brand of Cain upon his forehead, flees through the woods and swamps with a price on his head. "Dead or alive" the proclamation reads and death is the only hope of rest to the outlawed man, for the earth is not large enough to afford him a safe retreat.