Starvation Heights

In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses came to a sanitarium near Seattle to undergo the revolutionary fasting treatment of Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called “Starvation Heights,” the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, groaning in pain, waiting for death.

It was in a house in Olalla that Claire Williamson breathed her last breath. She had fallen into the hands of Dr. Hazzard, a woman of extraordinary evil and greed who would stop at nothing short of murder to achieve her ambitions.

Some saw Linda Hazzard as a woman ahead of her time. She stood up for her gender, challenged the medical establishment and became a leading advocate for natural ways of healing. Drugs and surgery, she said, were not the best cures. Some called her a brilliant and gifted healer; some were certain she was a fiend. The method of the murder was unheard of in the annals of crime. The ambitious doctor was alleged to have starved Claire Williamson to death to gain control of her family’s considerable fortune.

At her death, Claire Williamson weighed less than 50 pounds, less than half her weight before the fasting cure. Still, the doctor insisted her patient’s weight had nothing to do with her demise. Her autopsy noted cirrhosis of the liver as the cause of death. After the autopsy, Claire’s diamond rings were slipped from her emaciated fingers and put into Linda Hazzard’s jewelry box. Her gowns found their way into the doctor’s wardrobe. The victim’s gold fillings and crowns were pulled from her teeth and sold to a local dentist.

The doctor told Claire’s sister Dora that it was her dead sister’s last wish that she spend the rest of her days at the sanitarium. Dora resisted, but was told she was so unbalanced that she couldn’t possibly care for herself. Within days of Claire’s death, Dr. Hazzard met with county officials seeking guardianship for Dora. The doctor’s scheme, the prosecution later insisted, was to prove Dora insane and force her to remain in Olalla permanently. Once that was accomplished, Linda Hazzard would control the entire Williamson estate.

It was British Vice Consul C.E. Lucien Agassiz’s outrage that sparked an investigation into the sanitarium. The Williamson sisters had been tricked and manipulated by the American doctor, who wanted their money to complete her ambitious plan for a world-class sanitarium. And it hadn’t been the first time. Consul Agassiz put together a long list of patients who had died while under Dr. Hazzard’s fasting cure. Death certificates of sanitarium patients issued by doctors other than Linda Hazzard usually noted starvation as the cause of death. Those made out by Dr. Hazzard offered various ailments as cover.

As reporters broke the news of the dead heiress and the walking skeletons of Olalla, some suggested Dr. Hazzard had exercised some kind of black magic or mind control over her victims. A reporter cautioned people to avoid looking into the doctor’s eyes, as she might bewitch them. Another wrote, “Many accounts of the family’s action declare that the woman asserts an iron will over all with whom she is thrown in contact, her powers ranging from the weakened patient at the fasting sanitarium to the husband.”

Port Orchard, the Kitsap County seat, had never seen a trial the likes of the Hazzard case. In fact, no place had. The stakes were high for both the “starvation” doctor and the men who scorned her methods.

Prosecuting attorney Thomas Stevenson called Hazzard a “financial starvationist” and “a serpent who trod sly and stealthy, yet with all her craft left a trail of slime.” After the judge denied any of the doctor’s former patients the opportunity to testify, it was clear from the outset that Dr. Hazzard was in terrible trouble. The prosecution had ample ammunition. Stevenson proved Dr. Hazzard had written Claire’s will. The last entry in Claire’s diary, written the day she died, had also been forged by Linda Hazzard.

The defendant’s outspoken nature had inspired women from across the Northwest and beyond, and hundreds flocked to the trial. One reporter tallied 248 women in the line: the wives of navy officers, society women, even an odd consortium of female private detectives. Linda Hazzard played to the crowd like a politician on the stump. “I am a great believer in women and will defend members of my sex at all times. I would willingly place my fate in the hands of a jury of women at any time,” she told the press during a court recess.

Throughout the three-week trial, each day was marked by some spectacular feature. Dr. Hazzard was admonished repeatedly by the judge for her brazen coaching and signaling to defense witnesses. One defense witness was accused of trying to bribe a former sanitarium nurse. The vice consul’s home was burglarized and Claire’s trunk of personal papers was ransacked. Police speculated the culprit was one of Dr. Hazzard’s zealous supporters.

In the end, Dr. Hazzard lost and was convicted of manslaughter. On February 4, 1912, she was sentenced to the state penitentiary at Walla Walla for two to twenty years of hard labor. She returned to Olalla in 1920 and built her great sanitarium. She ran her business as if nothing had ever happened. But it had, and old-time Olallans never forgot the woman doctor, or Starvation Heights.