Olympia's 'Wild Woman': The Mabel Fain story

David Scherer Water

A story unearthed

Given how little we know about Olympia's earliest women, the recently uncovered backstory of Mabel Fain is especially significant. Mabel was a Wild West character who lived larger than life, defying expectations. Her remarkable story gives us a rare picture of what life was like in this town a hundred years ago.

In April, I was doing research for an upcoming guide to Olympia parks. After calls with the city and interviews with people in the neighborhood, the most interesting thing I had on Harry Fain's Park was that no one could tell me who Harry Fain was.

So, I wrote, "No one knows anything about Harry Fain." I was going to remove the section altogether until I remembered how much you people love to prove me wrong.

An initial tip from a JOLT commenter, coupled with help from our now-shuttered state library, brought to light the dramatic story of Harry Fain, but even bigger revelations were still to come.

Steve Slaughter, author of a book about his famous great-uncle, the bank robber Tom Slaughter, and Lynn Welton, Olympia resident and great-granddaughter to Mabel Fain, spoke with me. The title of this article is the phrase both used when describing her.

Partners in plunder

Mabel Fain was born Mabel Murphy in Joplin, Missouri, on May 4, 1889. Not long after cars first appeared, her brother began stealing them with his buddy Tom Slaughter. It wasn't long before a courtship began.

A photo of Tom Slaughter in 1920.

Courtesy of Steve Slaughter

Tom was a handsome crook with a history of jailbreaks. The Dallas Morning News called him "the hardest man in the United States to keep behind bars." Mabel helped a few of his escapes, supplying him with one and possibly two of the guns he used to break his way out of different prisons.

Tom also broke locks, sawed through bars and shimmied down ropes made from bedsheets. His most famous escape involved breaking out of the prison infirmary after pricking his face and arms with a needle hundreds of times to fool doctors into thinking he had smallpox.

Amidst their daring exploits, Tom and Mabel also shared moments of lighter humor. Here they are playing 'horsey.'

A photo of Tom and Mabel in 1923.

Courtesy of Steve Slaughter

The two also rode real horses. Tom gained a reputation for getting away on them and would be immortalized as one of the last American bank robbers to get away on horseback.

The couple also spent time in automobiles. In 1918, they were arrested at a traffic stop when police found stolen items in the vehicle they were driving. Their car was also stolen, but somehow the police missed that.

In 1921, things came to a bloody end for Tom during his final jailbreak. He was double-crossed by his breakout accomplice and cellmate Jack Howard. Howard was working for the warden. Tom was shot in the back in more ways than one.

Forged by necessity

Now a widow, Mabel started life over working at the family's restaurant in Missouri. She also started dating one of Tom's friends. Guess who? Yeah, it's crazy. Harry and Tom were buddies.

Things were working out well for the new couple, and they got married, but nobody wanted to run the restaurant. So, they sold it and, along with some "savings," they purchased raw land 2,000 miles away — land that today is the site of Harry Fain's Park.

It was decided that Mabel's parents and her two daughters — Tomasine, the older one from the marriage with Tom, and Eva, the younger one from the marriage with Harry — would get from St. Louis to Olympia by train. However, Mabel and Harry would make the journey on foot. This was no small ordeal. Mabel made it here despite contracting rubella along the way and being pregnant.

Mabel's misadventures in Olympia are documented in my Harry Fain story. Today, we add this sobering fact: Had Mabel's criminal record come out during her 1937 murder trial, it's unlikely she would have gotten off on temporary insanity.

Mabel’s back story also raises new questions about the  consequences of her legal strategy. It’s clear from her daughter Eva’s memoir that it felt at times like all Olympia was gossiping about it. At home, it was never talked about. At school, Eva struggled with admitting her last name.

As an adult, Eva became a clerk at Ralph's Thriftway. It's no small irony that the Olympia Police Department gave her a reward for foiling a major counterfeiting operation. Eva became an advocate for women experiencing domestic violence and was the stability that held her family together. It was Eva's decision to have the park named to honor her father.

Members of her family still live on the original homestead. Last week, they gave me a tour. The large farmhouse where it all started is gone. Mabel burned it down to collect the insurance money. 

But Mabel was more complex than this tale suggests. Perhaps out of grief or penitence, Mabel subsequently spent all but the last year of her life living in a primitive structure intended for raising poultry, and her mother-in-law lived in an adjacent mother-in-law referred to as "The Shack."

Today, all that remains of these hovels is this single hose spigot, a fitting symbol of an arson and the wild woman who did what was necessary.

A photo of a water spigot, as seen in Olympia on July 4, 2025.

David Scherer Water | For The JOLT News

David Scherer Water is a former employee of the Washington State Library. He explores absurdity in local culture through the lens of comedic nonfiction. He is the author of a history book and this column. Both have the same title. Discover more of his work here.