CRIME HISTORY - First Secret Service agent killed at mine shaft
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
November 3, 2009
On this day, Nov. 3, in 1907, U.S. Secret Service Agent Joseph A. Walker was shot and killed outside a secret mine shaft in Colorado.
Walker was the first Secret Service operative to be fatally shot in the line of duty.
Walker and three other agents were dispatched west of Durango to investigate a land fraud case when they discovered an air shaft in the ground that had been homesteaded to the superintendent of the Porter Fuel Co. Walker stood guard outside the hole, and the other three slid down a rope to the bottom of the shaft.
Inside, they found a cavernous and surreptitious coal mine. While the three men delved deeper, they heard gunshots and rushed to the opening. The rope had been tossed into the hole, and they were trapped. For hours they tried to climb their way up the walls of the cave.
Finally, one of the men made it to the rim and found Walker dead from multiple gunshot wounds. The Secret Service eventually arrested two men suspected of being assassins for the fuel company.
Both suspects were acquitted. A year later, both suspects apparently committed suicide.
- Scott McCabe
