'The Copper Trail' picks up the story of 'Lady in Room Number Nine' from where it all started

Theresa Evans' life was tragically taken from her in a Butte hotel room. Her passing was not only unfortunate and untimely, but also gruesome and horrific. Theresa was murdered.

However, her grandson, Anaconda native and author Larry Ohman wasn’t about to let her story go untold. Ohman penned a book chronicling the tragedy of her passing, “Lady in Room Number Nine: My Grandmother’s Murder at the Empire Hotel,” and now he has written a book examining her early life.

“I didn’t intend to write a book when I first started looking at this. Eventually I found some newspaper clippings where she’d been beaten in a hotel room in Butte. I asked my mother about it. She shared a little bit, but not very much. I went to the archives in Butte and found a 70-plus page coroner’s inquest about the murder. Once I got a hold of that, I wanted to share that information with my family, and the more I thought about it, I thought, 'this would make an interesting murder mystery.' So I just kinda used that coroner’s inquest to make the book.” 

His first book was so successful that he recently penned another titled “The Copper Trail: A Journey of Survival from Ireland to Montana.”

“The book is a prequel to my grandmother’s ancestors that emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. and eventually came to Butte and Anaconda after the potato famine,” Ohman explained.

The book is broken down into three parts, the first of which focuses on their time in Ireland. 

“I did a lot of research about what the Great Hunger was all about and how the potato famine impacted Ireland and how devastating it was, and how these families survived,” he said.

The second part is about the immigration experience of Irish people coming to the U.S.

“There’s a lot of information in the story about what it was like to immigrate, you know, be on one of those coffin ships, how they came across, and all the difficulties they had trying to immigrate to the United States. It’s historically accurate, but I weave it into the story so there’s some fictional characters that are sort of experiencing the factual stuff,” he said.

In the third part, Ohman covers their journey from New York to Butte and Anaconda.

“There’s a whole section on the grand opening of the Montana Hotel. I did a bunch of research on the grand opening and what that was like, how many people came, what the furnishings were like, and the Tammany Bar. I have three or four chapters that deal with the Montana Hotel and what Anaconda was like at that time. So I think the Anaconda people would find that very interesting,” he said. 

Ohman even touches on Marcus Daly and William A. Clark’s battle to make Anaconda the state capital. 

Ohman himself has an interesting backstory. He was a physical therapist by profession, but retired in 2018. He now resides in Eagle Idaho with his wife, Peggy. They were in Lewiston, Idaho for about 34 years before they relocated to Eagle. Both Larry and Peggy (Billquist) were both originally from Anaconda. He’s one of eleven kids. His parents owned the A&W where the May Palace currently resides. They also owned one in Deer Lodge and Virginia City. Now, with two books under his belt, he can add published novelist to his list of accolades. 

“The Copper Trail: A Journey of Survival from Ireland to Montana” is available for purchase on Amazon. There is also a book signing scheduled for Saturday, July 22, but details haven’t been finalized yet. Copper Village Museum and Art Center also have a handful of copies to sell, as does the World Museum of Mining in Butte.