Seeberville Murders
As they passed through Painesdale, Kalan and Stimac went into a store to buy some soda pop; the rest of the group continued on without them.
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.
[2][3] 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.
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.
Quick located Kalan near a group of men who were playing a lawn bowling game in the side yard next to the Putrich boardinghouse.
Meanwhile, 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.
Once Cooper opened fire, the hired girl, Josephine Grubetich, abandoned her dishwashing and ran through the dining room into the master bedroom.
According to Rebels on the Range: The Michigan Copper Miners' Strike of 1913-1914 (1984) by Arthur W. Thurner,"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.
Steven Putrich cried to his sibling Joseph from the other bed, "Oh, brother, they shot me too", and he pointed to his bleeding stomach.
The pain was keen, but he ran upstairs, stumbling over the body of Stanko Stepich and thinking, "Gee, they killed him."
"[1][2][3] 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 a 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.
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.
"[citation needed] As the gunmen ransacked the boardinghouse finding no weapons, they noticed that some of the neighbors had come over to aid the victims.
A neighbor named Peter Klobacher testified that as he was coming downstairs from visiting the wounded and dying upstairs at the Putrich boardinghouse, Cooper "chased me out of the house.
"[2][3] 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.
"[2][3] Anthony Lucas, the prosecutor for Houghton County, paid a visit to the shot-up boardinghouse and instantaneously deemed that the shootings were murders.
Lucas, after paying a visit to the scene and interrogating witnesses, called upon Cruse to deprive the two deputies and four Waddell men of their stars and place them under arrest.
It stopped on its journey north to Red Jacket to pick up mourners from South Range, Atlantic Mine, Houghton, Hancock, Dollar Bay, Hubbell, and Lake Linden.
At Red Jacket, passengers formed a procession with thousands of others who met first in the early afternoon at the Palestra and then marched to the funeral conducted by Father Medin at the Croatian Roman Catholic church of St. John the Baptist.
"[4][11][12][13] The solemn funeral was a massive demonstration of striker solidarity; about five thousand individuals participated, and the strike leaders addressed the mourners after the religious graveside ceremonies.
Joseph Cannon, a prominent WFM organizer, declared that the "crime" for which the strikers' two brothers had been struck down was trying to bargain collectively with their employers.
Tijan compared conditions in Michigan to oppression by Turks and Habsburgs in the Balkans, stating "there is the sultan of industry and his countless satraps".
[6] Cannon attacked Governor Woodbridge N. Ferris "as an accessory before the fact of this lamentable double murder" and Sheriff Cruse whose "hands dripped with blood."
He accused the corporation-controlled press of assisting in the murders by falsifying facts and lashed out at the mine owners: "Long have you grown fat by keeping us lean."
He accused the state of Michigan and the nation of having "failed to protect us in our peaceful efforts to obtain the merited better conditions ...
"[4] On Friday night, August 14, a large number of strikers and sympathizers gathered at the Kansankoti Hall in Hancock.
Laura Cannon, a reporter for the Miners' Magazine, said that as of August 16, 1913, "the excitement runs high and nervous tension is keen, a reign of terror prevails throughout the district.
