100 years ago today: Investigators working on chicken house killing

Deputies were working on several new clues in the Chicken House Murder mystery.

They did not specify the exact nature of the new clues, but they said the country around Elk, Wash., was being “scoured today to locate certain persons and certain objects which may throw light on the mysterious murder.”

The murder took place in an abandoned chicken shed between Cheney and Medical Lake, but the victim, J.F. Olson, was from Elk.

His brother-in-law recently arrived from North Dakota to make a positive identification of the body. He said he believed the murdered man was, in fact, Olson, but the identification was considered less than definitive because the brother-in-law admitted that he hadn’t laid eyes on Olson for 30 years.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s officers appealed for information from the public.

“The next tip may uncover the assassin,” said a deputy.

From the missing persons beat: Elliott Michener, 15, was still missing days after he embezzled $4,500 from his Philadelphia employers. His mother originally said she thought he stole the money so he could come to Spokane and visit his dying father in the hospital.

Now, however, she had a new and bizarre theory. She said that maybe he wanted to come out west to “shoot Indians.”

He was devoted to Wild West tales. He once told his mother, “Gee mother, if I could go out to Boise and get a canoe and a couple of guns, I could pepper Indians along the bank of that river.”

She hired Pinkerton detectives to look for the lad.