The Enigmatic Death of a Diplomat

On June 14, 1904, Kent Loomis, the brother of Assistant Secretary of State Francis R. Loomis, sailed from New York aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm II.  His mission was to travel to Addis Ababa in order to deliver an important trade treaty between the United States and the Ethiopian King Menelik.  This treaty had, for some time, been a matter of intense interest among the European powers.  His traveling companion was a wealthy, flamboyant entrepreneur named William H. Ellis.  Ellis was a frequent visitor to Ethiopia, and had campaigned to be given this mission himself, but the State Department declined to entrust him with the task.  This was a bitter disappointment for Ellis.  He had hoped to use delivery of the treaty as a signal to King Menelik that Ellis had the backing of the American government in his various ambitious business ventures in Ethiopia.  There are even suggestions that he hoped Menelik would appoint him as heir to his throne.

Loomis never made it to his destination.  Sometime on June 20th, he vanished from the ship.  There was conflicting evidence for what had happened to him.  Soon after he disappeared, the Kaiser Wilhelm made a stop at Plymouth, England.  One passenger swore later that he saw a dazed-looking Loomis go ashore at that time.  The captain and head steward, however, were equally positive that Loomis could not have disembarked.  Ellis claimed that Loomis had been drinking heavily during the voyage, and had an unfortunate habit of sitting precariously on the ship’s railings.  (This was not corroborated by any of the other passengers.)  Ellis expressed his opinion that his cabin-mate, while in a state of intoxication, had accidentally fallen overboard.  A further oddity was when it was noted that the tags on Loomis’ luggage had all been altered.  They showed the initial “E” instead of “L,” and the first name had been erased.  In Loomis’ mysterious absence, Ellis was given possession of the treaty, enabling him to complete the diplomatic mission after all.

Loomis’ whereabouts remained a complete mystery until a month later, when his body was found washed up on a beach fifteen miles from Plymouth, with an ugly wound on the back of his skull.  An autopsy found that this blow on the head had killed Loomis before he entered the water, but they were uncertain whether this injury came from an attack, or from striking his head on some part of the ship’s ironwork when he fell overboard.

The mystery of Loomis’ death has remained unsolved.  Ellis died in 1923 in Mexico City.  His obituary in Time magazine called him “one of the most remarkable men who ever acted as agent for the State Department.”

One certainly cannot argue that.