UNKNOWN

Posted by cathy gowdy on Sunday, February 01, 2009 at 07:11:53 :

Marin Journal
Thursday, July 31, 1913
Page 5

Stranger Suicides Near Sausalito

A man was found dying on the road between Fort Baker and Sausalito at 8:30 o’clock on Sunday morning by W. H. Carr of San Francisco.

Mr. Carr and wife were driving by when Mr. Carr saw the man, but having already passed several intoxicated men, Mrs. Carr asked her husband to drive on, judging from the heavy breathing of the prostrate figure that the man was drunk.

Mr. Carr did drive on a short distance, but decided to return and investigate. Bending over the body, he discovered blood on the head, and started for help, when his wife said that she smelled something burning.

Mr. Carr then turned the body over, and found that the clothes of the dying man were blazing above the wound where the bullet had entered the heart. He extinguished the flames and went to Fort Baker for aid, but the sufferer died in an unconscious state before reaching the hospital at the fort.

Nothing was found on the body to indicate the identity of the dead man; the only scrap of paper was a postage stamp. In his purse was $1.90. He weighed 150 pounds, height 5 feet 10 inches, no 8 shoes, wore a striped brown suit, black hat and golf shirt.

The Coroner thought that he was probably a laboring man.

There was some suspicion of murder, and Dr. Kuser, who held an autopsy still thinks that it was impossible for the man to have fired but one of the two balls that penetrated his body, because either wound would have rendered the man helpless.

There was a very ugly wound on the head, that might have been caused by a pick, or by falling from an embankment upon a sharp stone.

The consensus of opinion is that it was a case of suicide, and that the stranger, who probably came from San Francisco for the purpose of taking his life, had taken the precaution to destroy all clues to his identity.

The body will be buried on the County Farm today from Sawyer’s undertaking parlors.