A 200' aerial view overlooking the mouth of Indian Creek at the south side of Grays Harbor near Aberdeen, Washington.  Highway 105 crosses nearby as well as the remains of an old railroad bridge.  The tide was in at this time & while the shoreline has mostly returned to a natural state, one can see old pier pilings along the coast & further out in the water.  Spanning back more than a century from around 1902 to 1910, Grays Harbor around Aberdeen was a dangerous place as bodies of dead sailors would be wind up being found within the water.  This takes us to the timeline of German-American serial killer Billy Gohl (1873-1927).

Billy Gohl was a short, rounded fellow, tough and thick. There are many tales attributed to him. Some say that he bombed a cigar store. Other's say that he shot up boats staffed with non-union sailors. Some folks even credit him with shanghaiing numerous sailors into tedious lumber boat crews.

The most common description of Gohl's crimes revolve around his life in Aberdeen, Washington. In 1903, Billy Gohl became a delegate for the Sailor's Union of the Pacific in Aberdeen, a salty lumber town. No one really knew where he had come from, but his loose lips and ability to talk faster than most people thought made him a natural for the job.

Typically, sailors would come to the union office to look for work, check their mail, or stash valuables and money before wandering around town looking for liquor and pussy. Gohl became the head honcho of the Union office by 1909, and tended to man the operation by himself.

Between 1909 and 1912, Aberdeen became known as a violent port from whence sailors would not return. Usually, the missing sailors would float to the shore, dead from a bullet wound to the head, their pockets emptied. Around 200 some odd bodies were found in the waters around the Big Cut between 1903 and 1913, and most of them were thought to be sailors.

Gohl was very vocal about the slapdash nature of the police in Aberdeen at the time. He berated them for not being able to solve the heinous murders of his men. He called for more protection for sailors and demanded law enforcement apprehend the killer.

In fact, the killer was Billy Gohl. When a sailor came into the office to deposit their fistful of newly acquired cash, Billy would nod at them knowingly and lock the front door so they would not be disturbed. As soon as the coast was clear, he'd shoot, stab, beat, or strangle the man, take all his valuables, and drop the body into the ocean through a trap door he had installed in the floor.

Eventually, after doing this around 52 times, Gohl screwed up. He found a pocket watch on one of his victims engraved with the name August Schleuter. As he suspected that selling a watch with the name of the dead man on it would get him caught, Gohl left the time piece on the body.

When he was called down to the shoreline to identify the body a few days later, Gohl said "Yep, that's August Schleuter. He came in a few days ago to check his mail." Unfortunately, the man's name was in fact Fred Nielssen. Gohl was convicted in 1913 and spent the rest of his life in jail, saved from the executioner by Washington's 1912 repeal of the death penalty.

There was also other evidence to Billy Gohl as the main killer.  He lived in a shanty that existed here at the mouth of Indian Creek.  An accomplice of Gohl named John Klingenberg was brought back to Aberdeen after trying to jump ship in Mexico to escape prosecution, or possibly to escape Gohl.  Klingenberg was able to testify to seeing Gohl alone with a sailor, Charles Hatberg, whose body had recently been found in 18 inches of water at the mouth of Indian Creek by Gordon & William Lightfoot, tied down with a 50 pound anchor.  His body was found February 1, 1910 after he disappeared sometime around December 21, 1909. Hatberg had been shot with a .38 Automatic pistol which had been found in the salt flats by his body. The ownership was traced to Gohl. The motive according to Klingenburg's confession was that Gohl claimed Hatberg had told a "detective Miller" that Gohl had shot a cow the previous summer.

Gohl had already been arrested in February 1910 for the Hatberg murder and was convicted of two counts of murder, though suspected of 41 or more, found guilty on May 12, 1910 and sentenced to life imprisonment and taken to the State Prison on June 13, 1910. Besides Hatberg, the second count was for the murder of John Hoffman, a witness to the Hatberg murder who was shot and injured by Gohl on the night of the murder, and killed the next day by Klingenberg, for which Hoffman's killer was sentenced to 20 years.

Hoffman had been killed on December 23, 1909 after the Hatberg killing, and had been robbed of $400.00 and also disposed of in the Harbor near Indian Creek. In July 1910, a human skeleton was found in Indian Creek; however, it is not known whether these were the remains of Hoffman. Other corpses found in the Grays Harbor area were suggested to be victims of Gohl, including the body of Carl O. Carlson, found on April 27, 1910, floating in the harbor. Gohl was later transferred to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he died in 1927. He is buried in an open field above West Medical Lake, Eastern State Hospital.

Though only convicted for a couple murders, it is estimated that he may have killed over 100+ sailors.  If true, it would easily make him one of the deadliest serial killers in American history.

From: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Billy_Gohl

https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=history_theses