When the Williamson sisters reached Seattle in February 1911 for treatment, they discovered the facility was not yet ready. Instead, Hazzard put the sisters in an apartment on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. This apartment was where Hazzard began “treating” the sisters with her homemade broth, a mixture of canned tomatoes and water, given twice daily. Claire and Dora were then given hours long enemas in the bathtub. They would frequently collapse from the procedure, so canvas supports were fitted into the bathtub to catch the women when they would inevitably faint.
The Williamson sisters were eventually transferred the Olalla facility two months after they initially arrived in Seattle. By the time they were admitted to Wilderness Heights, they both weighed 70 pounds. Claire and Dora were both prone to alternative treatments of the era, a fact well known by their family members. The sisters both knew if they had told their family of the plan to be treated by use of starvation, their family would have disapproved and prevented them from treatment. For this reason, the women did not tell a single member of their family where they were. If their family had known, they surely would have been alarmed at the sisters’ declining state.
By the time anyone from Claire and Dora’s past became alerted of their condition, it was far too late. Margaret Conway, their childhood nurse, had received an odd cable from the women. Conway felt that the message was so unusual and nonsensical, something must be wrong with the sisters. The nurse bought a ticket to the Pacific Northwest to check on them, but when she arrived, she received grave news.
Samuel, Linda’s husband, met Conway as she was getting off her ship. He informed her Claire was dead. Samuel blamed her death on a concoction of drugs she was given in childhood, claiming the drugs had shrunken her internal organs and given her cirrhosis of the liver. According to the Hazzards, Claire was already far too ill when she arrived for treatment for fasting to have any positive effect. When Conway finally saw Dora, she was in utter shock. Dora, now weighing a meager 50 pounds, looked like an unrecognizable person. Despite the fact that Dora was obviously starving to death, she refused to leave Olalla.
The entire horrific story was unraveling. Linda Hazzard was named executor of the deceased Claire’s estate and was now Dora’s guardian. Samuel Hazzard was also donned Dora’s power of attorney. While the girls were agonizingly fading away, the Hazzards helped themselves to the Williamson sisters goods. Their jewelry, clothing, and furniture now belonged to Samuel and Linda. Linda Hazzard was so brazen and unconcerned over the welfare of Claire and Dora, she delivered news to Margaret Conway wearing one of Claire’s robes.
Because of Conway’s station in life, she was fearful of the overbearing presence of Linda Hazzard. Conway’s servant position meant she had no authority to release Dora from the doctor’s deathly grasp. It was not until the sister’s uncle, John Herbert, arrived that Dora was finally freed. However, Dora’s freedom did not come easy. After significant haggling, Herbert paid Hazzard a thousand dollars for Dora’s release.
Eventually, the involvement of the British consul in nearby Tacoma became the Hazzard’s undoing. Justice for the lives lost was finally to be served. On August 15th, 1911, Linda Hazzard was arrested by Kitsap County authorities for the first degree murder of Claire Williamson. Hazzard refused to take responsibility for the deaths of her patients. It was her belief, as stated in Fasting for the Cure of Disease, that “[d]eath in the fast never results from deprivation of food, but is the inevitable consequence of vitality sapped to the last degree by organic imperfection.”; that is, if you died while fasting, you had another ailment that would have claimed you anyway.
The jury, wholly unconvinced by Hazzard’s testimony, returned with the verdict of manslaughter. Hazzard’s license was revoked and she was forced into hard labor to pay for what she had done to her patients and their families. Altogether, she served in Walla Walla for two years, fasting off and on to prove the legitimacy of fasting.