Murder & Vigilantes

On a summer night in 1885, David M. Fraser, owner of the Fraser General Store in Pierce, was killed while sleeping in the back of his store. It was alleged that five Chinese men entered the store while others set off fireworks along Main Street during the stormy night. The next morning Fraser's packer found his body after Fraser failed to arrive for his usual breakfast at a nearby boarding house. Evidence at the scene indicated that Fraser had been attacked with axes, hatches, and knives, with blood on the pillow, bed, floor, and trailing to the front door, where the struggle ended with a gunshot through the mouth. Blood on a rack of pick handles suggested he had tried to seize a weapon, yet his safe and property were left untouched. Seven Chinese suspects were jailed, and citizens from Lewiston and the Camas Prairie came to Pierce and arranged an unusual trial. Because there was little evidence and no confessions, Lon Sears, who had learned Chinese in the mining camps of Warren, Idaho, was disguised as a drunken Indian and placed in jail with the suspects, but the ruse failed. A mock hanging was then staged at the Pierce Confession Tree in an effort to frighten the guilty into confessing, but this also failed. The court released the two oldest prisoners and sent the remaining five by hayrack wagon with a deputy sheriff toward Murray, Idaho, for further trial. Three miles south of Pierce, at Hangman's Creek, masked vigilantes intercepted the group and hanged all five prisoners between two black pine trees without interference from the guards. The vigilantes were never found. The Chinese men were buried in the Chinese Cemetery in Pierce, and according to custom their bones were later dug up, washed, and sent back to China. Fraser was buried in the Pierce Cemetery, and the community of Fraser was named in his memory.

Idaho · United States