In June 1902, two fugitives crossing the Columbia River held a ferryman at gunpoint, demanding that he drop them off near Fisher’s Landing. Hundreds of discombobulated men, including the Oregon National Guard and a sheriff’s posse, had hounded them for a week unsuccessfully. The fugitives, slippery as cockroaches, mocked their pursuers by doing the unexpected and never showing up where rumors promised.
Harry Tracy and David Merrill escaped the Oregon State Penitentiary June 9 near Salem, Ore., using rifles somehow smuggled into the prison. Shooting their way out, the convicts killed three guards and an inmate. With their escape, the last, longest and most disorganized of outlaw hunts began.
Merrill grew up in Vancouver. Legend has him meeting Tracy in a Portland saloon, where a logger claimed Merrill cheated at cards and was about to throttle him. Tracy stepped in, knocked the man unconscious, and initiated a friendship with Merrill. Not long after, Tracy married Merrill’s sister, Mollie.
Donning party masks, the brothers-in-law robbed Portland butcher shops, trolley cars, grocery stores and saloons during daylight, never pocketing more than a few dollars. Eventually, annoyed by such petty crimes, the police caught Merrill and got him to confess. A judge sent both men to prison in 1901.
