100 years ago in Spokane: Accused bigamist arrested after manhunt; wives upset to discover each other

From our archives,

100 years ago

Accused bigamist George E. Laird, 49, was arrested in Steptoe, Washington, after a manhunt “across the continent and back.”

The hunt ended not far from where it began, in Colfax. Months earlier, Laird’s wife – wife No. 1 – began to wonder why her husband was absent so frequently from their Colfax farm.

Wife No. 1 tracked him to a Spokane boarding house. She said she was expecting a surprise, but what she found was an even bigger surprise. She found her “big and handsome” husband living as man and wife with Wife No. 2, Lulu Krum, “24 and pretty.” Lulu was younger than some of Laird’s six children.

If Wife No. 1 was surprised, Wife No. 2 suffered the “greater shock.” In fact, she swore out a complaint against Laird on charges of bigamy.

However, Laird had already scented trouble and disappeared. Authorities traced him to Calgary and Edmonton, but police there apparently declined to send him back to the U.S. He was next seen in Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Toronto, where a Canadian immigration officer almost caught him.

Then Laird slipped back into the U.S. in Pennsylvania – where he had married Wife No. 1 26 years earlier. At some point, he decided that he would go back to the last place he thought anybody would look for him – back home in the Palouse country.

However, he was spotted by a deputy in Bonners Ferry on a train. From there, authorities traced him to Cheney and Steptoe by his train tickets. In Steptoe, authorities questioned a little girl who saw a “very tall and heavy man wearing a red beard” get off the train.

They found him in a house belonging to one of his children. When officers arrested him, he said, “I’m in bad, and don’t know how to get out of it.”