California Newspaper Transcriptions
Crimes and Criminals (pre 1924)
JULIUS PIER

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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JULIUS PIER

            On the night of May 1, 1895, Julius Pier, aged Hebrew second-hand 
dealer on C Street, between Second and Third, was murdered at the rear of his 
store, where he slept.  He was found next morning gagged and hog-tied, and 
showing signs of having made a fight, against odds, for his life.  Police 
Officer Hugh McCoy, who worked on the case with City Marshal J. A. Maben, 
discovered in a toilet bowl at the rear of the premises a portion of the shirt 
which was used to throttle Pier to death.  This clew led to the apprehension of 
Stuart A. Green, alias George Dunroy, a young electrician, who a few days before 
had installed an electric bell in the police station for the city.  He was 
wearing the shirt at that time, and McCoy remembered it on account of the flashy 
pattern.  Shortly after his arrest, Green confessed and implicated a barber, at 
the same time admitting that his was the master mind, and that he had planned to 
rob Pier for his money.  When Pier resisted, the pair murdered him, slowly 
strangling him to death.  Green was well connected in the East.  His father came 
to Marysville and employed counsel who saved him from the gallows, the jury 
voting for life imprisonment.  Marshall J. Miller, his barber accomplice, who 
conducted a shop on Second Street, near C, went into court and pleaded guilty.  
There was nothing for the court to do but pronounce the death penalty.  He was 
executed at San Quentin prison on September 28, 1896, after the supreme court 
had affirmed the judgment of the lower court.

History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles