Dutch May Prescott
died August 30, 1916
On the front page of September 1, 1916, the Coconino Sun gave Flagstaff one of the darkest headlines in its history: Murder and Suicide or Was It Double Murder, Bloody Tragedy. The bodies of Dutch May Prescott and her husband had been found in a blood-drenched room in the rear of a house in the red light district, partially covered by bedding that had been set alight and then gone out. Coroner J. O. Harrington took charge of a scene the paper described in the unsparing detail of the age: a razor in the yard, a six-shooter fired against the wall, notes left behind.
The Sun weighed the evidence in its headline and could not decide. A century later, nobody has decided. The inquest wrote down what it could, the rumors named names it could not print, and the district went back to work.
What makes Dutch May more than a crime story is everything before that night. She was one of the district’s operators, a woman who accrued property on the wrong side of the tracks in an economy built to prevent exactly that. The book’s blurb puts it precisely: Dutch May Prescott kept the red-light district in the black.
Wicked Flagstaff gives Dutch May the chapter the inquest never closed: her business, her property, the night of August 30, 1916, and the names Flagstaff whispered afterward. This page is the front page; the book is the file.
Cite this page
Chicago“Dutch May Prescott.” Wicked Flagstaff, the Book. https://wickedflagstaff.com/people/dutch-may.
APAWicked Flagstaff, the Book. (2026). Dutch May Prescott. https://wickedflagstaff.com/people/dutch-may
Citing the book itself? Edition details and ISBNs are on the buy page.
