If you think modern debates over immigration, jobs and “who belongs” feel heated…Murray would like to remind you it once tried to solve a crime by arguing about an entire empire.

Yes. An empire.

In November 1904, the smelter town nearly talked itself into driving out “the Austrians.” Not a few suspects. Not one neighborhood. Just… Austrians. All of them. Which, at the time, loosely meant immigrants from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire—today’s Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and more. It was less a specific nationality and more a catch-all for “new people with unfamiliar accents.”

The strange part? The crime that started it all was never solved and the perpetrator had no accent.

A Night of Violence

On Nov. 15, 1904, Gustave Schwan was attacked in her Murray home while her husband worked a night shift at the smelter. Her young daughter was beaten trying to protect her mother. Newspapers described a masked attacker who escaped into the dark. In the struggle, Schwan tore a peculiar-looking button from his coat — one of the only physical clues investigators ever had.

Mayor Joseph H. Stratton. (Photo courtesy of the Murray Museum)

A posse was formed to scan the southern part of town, finding a coat with no buttons…and no owner.

The town reacted exactly as you’d expect: fear, anger, outrage. There was real sympathy for the Schwan family and real anxiety about safety.

The attacker was on the loose.

But before that fact had time to settle in, something else took hold.

From Manhunt to “Foreign Problem”

Within days, newspaper coverage began shifting. The question quietly morphed from “Who did this?” to “What about all these foreigners?”

Attention turned to Murray’s growing population of Austrian and Greek smelter workers. Boarding houses were searched. Buttons on coats were examined. The idea took root that the assault might somehow be tied to the town’s “foreign colony.”

It didn’t matter that early reports noted Schwan believed her attacker did not have a foreign accent. The story was already moving in another direction.

By Nov. 22, public meetings were being held at Murray’s Trocadero dance hall. The stated purpose was community safety. The subtext was wages. American-born workers complained that Austrian and Greek laborers accepted lower pay. They were accused of sending money back home instead of spending it locally. Some residents argued Murray was being economically “drained” by people who weren’t permanent. Foreign customs and dress caused them stick out.

The then anti-LDS Salt Lake Tribune took a swipe at the Deseret News coverage, saying that it was covering up for the LDS church, which harbored foreigners by paying them wages and was thereby implicated in the plot. 

The Schwan assault was the spark, but labor competition was the firewood. 

Enter Mayor Stratton

Mayor Joseph H. Stratton stepped into the center of it all. He presided over meetings and urged that any action be taken along “lawful lines,” not mob violence. That’s the responsible part.

The less subtle part was his argument that Murray was “going downhill” because of its foreign population and that something had to change.

Newspapers reported proposals to pressure smelter operators to stop hiring Austrians and Greeks. Some accounts claimed Austrian residents began arming themselves, worried about being attacked. Sheriff Emery publicly warned that no forcible deportations would be allowed.

Leonidas Skliris spoke against anti-immigrant sentiment in Murray. (Photo courtesy of Utah State Historical Society)

For a few tense days, Murray wasn’t just a smelter town. It was a place where neighbors eyed each other across language and labor lines, wondering what might happen next. Some newspapers reported that 200 foreign laborers had left town.

A Different Voice

Not everyone joined the chorus.

Leonidas Skliris, a Greek labor contractor, spoke up publicly. He argued that it was unjust to blame an entire group for the crime of an unknown individual. Greek workers, he said, were law-abiding and hardworking.

It was a reminder that even in moments of collective fear, there were residents urging restraint — and pointing out that panic is not a legal standard.

The Part No One Could Fix

Through all the meetings, speeches, and headlines, one thing never changed: the original crime remained unsolved.

No Austrian laborer was convicted. No Greek worker was found guilty. The masked attacker vanished into history, leaving behind a torn button and a town that briefly considered solving a mystery by rearranging its demographics. In fact, the only one questioned about the crime was “Crazy” Chris Larsen, a Danish immigrant.

That’s the irony at the heart of the story. Murray nearly restructured its workforce over a crime that, in the end, had no proven connection to the people being targeted. By January, the story was all but forgotten by the newspapers.

Politics Has a Memory

Not long after the unrest, Murray voters chose new city leadership. Mayor Stratton was voted out of office. Local elections always involve many issues, but the immigration and labor controversy was part of the political backdrop.

Looking Back From Today

More than a century later, the language of 1904 feels dated — “alien labor,” “foreign colony,” talk of banishment. But the structure of the debate is strikingly modern: a violent crime, a worried public, economic anxiety, and quick conclusions about who belongs.

Other foreign groups replaced the Austrians and Greeks that left during this ordeal, especially Armenians and Italians brought in by the mills to fill their depleted ranks.  

The irony is that many of the families once described as “foreign” are now woven into Murray’s history so completely that no one thinks twice about their surnames on storefronts, school rosters or city councils.