Seeberville Murders

The Seeberville Murders, also less commonly referred to as the Seeberville Affair or the Seeberville Massacre, was the murder of striking miners Steven "Steve" Putrich and Alois "Louis" Tijan on August 14, 1913, by a group of strikebreakers in Seeberville, Michigan, a suburb of Painesdale. The murders took place during the bitter Copper Country Strike of 1913–1914, one of the United States of America's most violent labour strikes, and are considered among historians as the first real casualties of the strike.

The deaths were especially significant considering that a local doctor classified the death of Steven Putrich as being that of a murder; later, after the Italian Hall Disaster, the coroner would completely skip his duty in classifying the deaths of any of the seventy-four victims. In addition to this interpreters were brought in during the Seeberville trials and the Coroner's inquest, whereas after the Italian Hall Disaster the government would refuse to use any interpreters whatsoever.

The Putrich Boardinghouse in Seeberville, Michigan, which was shot up by strikebreakers on August 14, 1913. The incident resulted in the deaths of two men, serious injuries received by two others, and a baby receiving powder burns to the face.

Initial Incident along the "Shortcut"

On August 14, 1913, two striking miners, Ivan Kalan and Ivan Stimac, went to South Range, Michigan, along with a group of other strikers to collect strike benefits. Upon their arrival they were surprised to find that there were no benefits for them as the Western Federation of Miners could not fully support a Strike of this size. Each of the men had a beer. After they were done drinking they headed back to their homes in Seeberville, Michigan. As they passed through Painesdale, Michigan, Kalan and Stimac decided to go into a mercantile store to buy some soda pop; the rest of the group continued on without them. After they finished their pop they continued on towards Seeberville. Kalan and Stimac knew of a shortcut which they then decided to take to Seeberville from Painesdale. This "shortcut" cut across mining company property and prior to this day no one had been told to keep off of the path.

As they were on the last leg of their trip, they heard a man yelling from behind them. This man turned out to be a trammer boss by the name of Humphrey Quick. Quick had been told by his boss, William Henry Schacht, to patrol the path and ensure that no one crossed this path. Quick told the two men, in English, that they could not cross this path. Kalan and Stimac were Croatian and Kalan spoke very little English. Stimac spoke almost no English. Kalan answered in broken English that they had always crossed this path before. Quick responded by taking out his billy club and angrily waving it in their faces, threatening to beat them with it if they did not comply. The two men simply responded as they had before and continued on walking.

It was at this point that Quick claimed that Kalan turned around as he continued walking away, raised his fist and shook it, saying, "You better watch out you son-of-a-bitch. I fix you for sure." When he did this Kalan and Stimac were about a hundred feet away. They then disappeared toward their boardinghouse in Seeberville.

Quick then went to his supervisor, William Henry Schacht, a German immigrant. On his way he encountered a man named Thomas Raleigh, a strikebreaker with a reputation for violence. Once Raleigh heard Quick's story he got excited; Raleigh insisted that they go find Quick's supervisor and obtain permission to go after Kalan and Stimac.

Quick and Raleigh told Schacht of the encounter. Schacht told Quick and Raleigh to go retrieve the two men and bring them to him so he could talk to them and explain the issue about the use of company property during the strike. Schacht understood that the issue at hand was a communication problem. Everyone involved in the conversation recalled that Schacht told them to, "Bring them down here and I'll talk to them."

From the captain's house, Quick and Raleigh made their way towards Seeberville, Michigan. On their way to the community, a few more men joined their group; some were Waddell-Mahon strikebreakers who had been deputized and others were locals who were not on strike.

The murders

When the mob arrived at the boardinghouse, Raleigh asked Quick to point out Kalan to him. Quick located Kalan near a group of men who were playing a lawn bowling game in the side yard next to the Putrich boardinghouse. Kalan was not playing the game, he had just finished his dinner and had came outside to chew some tobacco. Other neighbors were present at the scene. Raleigh shouted at Kalan something to the effect of "I want you." Kalan yelled back, "No. You can't take me." Strikebreakers began beating Kalan and anyone else nearby with their billy clubs and their fists. Stimac -- the other individual whom they were searching for -- was still inside the boardinghouse, finishing his supper.

Kalan managed to get away from the strikebreakers and get inside the boardinghouse. James jumped the fence sometime between the initial assault on Kalan and the moment Kalan entered the boardinghouse. Joseph Putrich, the landlord, told the gunmen that he "didn't want any trouble" around his house. The landlord's brother, Steven "Steve" Putrich, had come out into the yard when the mayhem began. Someone threw something toward the gunmen. It did not hit anyone, however it scared Cooper who was still wielding his firearm. Cooper was between the boarders and the baordinghouse; he was outnumbered and alone. The rest of the gunmen had returned to the street and were beyond the fence, outside the borders of the side yard. Then, a stick was thrown at Copper and hit him in the head.

Cooper panicked; he turned and simply shot the first person he saw. A bullet hit Steven Putrich in the abdomen; Putrich had nothing to do with the incident on the trail that day, he was simply the brother of the landlord. He had now been fatally shot by Cooper. The other gunmen then reacted by rushing back into the yard, surrounding the boardinghouse, and firing their guns into it.

As the guns belched forth, Joseph Putrich's spouse, Antonia, rushed with their seven-month-old daughter from the dining room through the kitchen and out behind the line of men firing through their windows. As she leaped from the shed, powder from a gun fired close by blackened and burned her baby's face. Her three and four-year-old children remained in the dining room.

Cooper then chased Kalan into the house and continued shooting all the way. Once Cooper opened fire, the hired girl, Josephine Grubetich, abandoned her dishwashing and ran through the dining room into the master bedroom. She saw both rooms filled to the brim with smoke, heard the shouting, and paused between the two rooms. Cooper emptied his gun, firing into the kitchen in the back of the house into the front rooms of the house.

Steven "Steve" Putrich (1873 - August 15, 1913), one of the two first martyrs of the Copper Country Strike of 1913–1914.

According to Arthur W. Thurner's 1984 book entitled Rebels on the Range: The Michigan Copper Miners' Strike of 1913-1914, "Albert Tijan, at the first rough handling of Kalan in the yard, jumped through a window; he ran upstairs to the boarders' bedrooms, then down again, in time to witness the men, guns drawn, at the windows and Josephine and the children running into the dining room. He returned upstairs. As he ran, he heard one shot, then the fusillade. Moments later, his eighteen-year-old brother Alois came up and collapsed in his arms, saying, 'Borther, they killed me.' He had been shot as he reached the foot of the stairs. Albert placed Alois who indicated he had been hit on his left side on one of the beds. He pulled up his brother's shirt and talked to him but got no response. Antonia Putrich, after turning about excitedly on the road outside, oblivious to neighbor Lisa Mutka's beckoning her to take shelter across the road, waited until she saw the deputies walk away. Steve Putrich remained in the yard until Cooper came out of the shed. One of the Italian neighbors saw him grow pale and limber, then walk into the house. When Mrs. Putrich reentered, she found him mortally wounded, standing in the kitchen. 'I am shot,' he told her, 'and if anything happens to me, send my money to my children.' He was taken upstairs."

At the bottom of the staircase lay Stanko Stepich, with his feet in the dining room. He had been shot in the arm, and then, as he started to run upstairs, was shot in the back. He attempted to climb on his hands and knees but had slipped down onto a little landing at the bottom of the staircase. Joseph Putrich heard Stepich moaning, "They killed me, they killed me," but he did not stop to examine him. Putrich moved up the narrow stairs. Alois Tijan, dying, blood trickling from his mouth, muttered, "Uncle, take off my shoes." Steven Putrich cried to his sibling Joseph from the other bed, "Oh, brother, they shot me too" and he pointed to his bleeding stomach. Joseph Putrich rushed over to a nearby store and telephoned a doctor. Josephine, coming upstairs where she saw Alois Tijan dead and Steven Putrich dying, went downstairs at once "to get a candle for the man who was dying."

Once the shooting ceased, Ivan Stimac fled from the boardinghouse. Caught in the barrage of bullets in the dining room, he had been hit in the side. The pain was keen, but he ran upstairs, stumbling over the body of Stanko Stepich and thinking, "Gee, they killed him." He saw the Tijan brothers, one dying, the other lamenting. He panicked, grabbed his coat, dashed out of the boardinghouse, and "ran up in the bush." He stayed in the woods until dark, then went to the house of a friend, Frank Stiglich, and spent the night.

Once the doctor arrived he soon realized that there was little he could do for Tijan except make him comfortable as he lay dying. He also could do nothing to aid Steven Putrich at the house, but thought there was hope if they could manage to get him to the mine hospital in Trimountain, another small mining town just up the road from Seeberville. Putrich would make it to the mining company hospital but would die the next day thereafter. According to Steven Lehto's 2013 book, Death's Door: The Truth Behind the Italian Hall Disaster and the Strike of 1913: "His death was is remarkable for at least one reason: Of all the death certificates for people killed by strike violence in 1913, including the seventy-three for the victims at the Italian Hall, his was the only one which indicated a cause of death. The attending doctor -- not the coroner -- deemed his death 'homicidal' in nature."

Contamination of the Crime Scene

After the group ran out of ammunition, they began to tamper with the crime scene and plant evidence to make it appear as if the battle had been two-sided. According to Lehto, "After the gunmen who fired their guns ran out of ammunition, they paused and walked out to the road in front of the house. ... Several witnesses would later testify [that] they saw the gunmen casually walk out to the road and reload their guns -- just in case they needed to do some more shooting -- and then they started gathering rocks, bottles and sticks and throwing them into the yard." Lehto asserts that an actual police officer would have taken steps to preserve the crime scene at least until an investigation had been completed instead of fabricating evidence to support their position.

Albert Tijan (left) and his brother, Alois "Louis" Tijan (right).

In addition to the above, the gunmen subsequently began to dump spent shells from their guns into the dirt. Later, children came by and picked up the shells. Lehto notes that an actual police officer would have removed them from their guns and saved them as evidence rather than disposing of them immediately. Lehto concludes that these actions were performed because the gunmen knew that the evidence had made them look bad.

Lehto continues, "Thomas Raleigh and the gunmen started walking casually away from the house they had just shot up. Raleigh and his band of accomplices did not bother to call the police. After they traveled a little distance from the yard they realized they were in a pickle. Not worrying about whether any of the men in the house needed medical attention, Raleigh instructed the other gunmen to accompany him back to the house to conduct a search; he did not bother to call the sheriff or a doctor in the meantime. ... Less than a half-hour from when they had emptied their guns into the house, Raleigh and the five others were still willing to pretend they were police officers. With their guns drawn, they went back into the boardinghouse and demanded the tenants show them their weapons. The boarders denied having any. Not believing them, Raleigh and the others tore the house apart looking for weapons. They found none."

As the gunmen ransacked the boardinghouse, they noticed that some of the more brave neighbors had come over to aid the victims. The gunmen found this most troubling; the neighbors became potential witnesses and so far, the circumstances of the situation were developing in such a manner that did not benefit the gunmen to any extent. A neighbor named Peter Klobacher testified that as he was coming downstairs from visiting the wounded and dying upstairs at the Putrich boardingouse, Cooper "chased me out of the house."

After searching the house only to find that the boarders were telling the truth, that there were no weapons, Raleigh walked around the front yard of the home. Whenever someone came by to see what the excitement was, he would shoo them away. At least one witness later testified that Raleigh walked over to him and pointed his gun at him saying something to the effect of, "You'd better leave unless you want me to shoot you, too."

Arrests of Stimac and Kalan

Once Stimac had returned to the Putrich boardinghouse the next morning, he was arrested by Harry James and taken to the hospital.

Anthony Lucas, the Croatian prosecutor for Houghton County, Michigan.

During the scuffle in the side yard, the attackers had hit Kalan in the head with a billy club several times; as a result, Kalan was dazed, He somehow managed to get away from the deputies and into the boardinghouse, but there he found himself in the crossfire of the strikebreakers and guards firing from inside the boardinghouse and through the windows of the boardinghouse. Once the continuous firing ceased and the situation settled a bit, Kalan went outside and saw them taking away Steven Putrich, who was near death. Some of the gunmen then recognized Kalan as being one of they men whom they were searching for earlier in the day so they promptly grabbed him. Because they had no warrant for his arrest and they were not police officers, they hauled him over to the mining company office and instructed him to wait there while they figured out what to do with him.

According to Lehto, "When the men took Kalan into custody, he was not being arrested. He was being kidnapped. The strikebreakers dragged Kalan to the mine office, assuming that they could then get him handed over to a friendly law enforcement officer, with the help of mine managers. While Kalan sat in the office waiting to see where he would get dragged next, a deputy came by and spit on him. After an hour and a half, they then took him to Houghton, to see if they could get him arrested for something. They did not bother to see if he needed medical attention even though he had been hit in the head repeatedly with billy clubs and fists. The next day, Quick filed a formal complaint ... After he did that, warrants were issued for the arrests of Kalan and Stimac. The warrants were issued after Kalan was kidnapped. It is unclear if the warrant for Stimac was issued before or after he was taken into custody. In either case, the eventual arrests of Kalan and Stimac was highly irregular and probably illegal."

Anthony Lucas, the prosecutor for Houghton County, paid a visit to the shot-up boardinghouse and instantaneously deemed that the shootings were murders. He requested that Houghton County Sheriff James A. Cruse arrest all six of the men who had gone to the house to get Kalan and Stimac. Cruse promptly refused and instead arrested Kalan. The men whom Lucas desired to be arrested for the shootings became the star witnesses of the case against Kalan.

The arrest warrants for Kalan and Stimac were issued on August 15, 1913, however it is unclear if they were indeed signed by the magistrate before or after Stimac was taken by Harry James. The arrests of Kalan and Stimac took place on either the 14th, 15th or the 16th of August, 1913. James took Stimac to the hospital first to get his gunshot wound attended to by someone with medical expertise.

Quite

Sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 07, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.