White/Caucasian male Con Sullivan, about 52 years old, set out to the far end of the Aleutians with his brother Florence and a friend, F. J. Rooney, to prospect on Unimak Island. Contemporary newspapers reported that the killings occurred “last June,” specifically June 7, 1901, while some later compilations list July 23, 1901, as the date of death. The men were described as newcomers from Montana headed north for gold; on Unimak their camp was waylaid and the three were shot and robbed.
Suspicion quickly centered on a drifter using multiple names—Fred Hardy, also known as Fred Watkyns and “Diamond Dick.” He was apprehended and taken to Unalaska for a special term of the U.S. District Court, Second Division. By mid-September 1901, press dispatches from Unalaska reported Hardy had been found guilty of murdering Con and Florence Sullivan and Rooney on Unimak Island the previous June. Court records confirm that on September 10, 1901, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang.
Hardy's case moved through appeals, but by July 1902 the sentence stood. Newspapers announced that he “must hang,” with the execution fixed for September; territorial notices placed the hour at 9:40 in the morning in Nome. Accounts noted the grim setting: an addition hastily constructed onto an ice-house across from the jail, where spectators were kept at a distance. On September 19, 1902, the sentence was carried out, marking one of the early territorial hangings remembered in Alaska's capital-punishment history.
In the years since, memorial traces of the victims and the case remain scattered. A burial notice for Cornelius O'Sullivan—killed on Unimak Island and later honored with services in Grand Rapids—fixes his death in 1901, aligning with the period of the Unimak murders; reference works on Alaska executions likewise list the victims as Florence and Con Sullivan and F. J. Rooney. Even where sources differ on the precise date—June 7 in contemporaneous press and historical summaries, July 23 in some later crime listings—the arc is consistent: a White/Caucasian male prospector, Con Sullivan, about 52, was among three men ambushed, robbed, and murdered on Unimak Island, and the killer, Fred Hardy was arrested, tried, and hanged the following year.
