Once, the Lumber Baron Inn was the home of its namesake — lumber baron John Mouat. A lavish mansion he constructed for his wife and their five children, the building was equal parts home and showcase of Mouat’s work.
But as often happens with old buildings, Mouat’s mansion eventually passed from the family’s ownership and exchanged hands several times before it became little more than a deteriorating tenement building. By the mid-20th century, it was a skeleton of its former self — the sort of place where low-stakes criminals, drug addicts, and teenage runaways congregated together. In short, it was a place where people went when they had nowhere else to go.
Unfortunately, these sorts of seedy locales often attract tragedy, and the Lumber Baron Inn was no exception. In 1970, a 17-year-old teenage runaway was raped and murdered in her room. When her 18-year-old friend walked in on the act, the man shot and killed her, too. The perpetrator of the Lumber Baron Inn murders was never identified…