100 years ago in North Idaho: Posse looks for suspects in Post Falls bank robbery

A 17-man posse hiked 15 miles over the Idaho hills near Hauser Lake in search of several men suspected of robbing a Post Falls bank a week earlier.

They nabbed three men – although none had yet been charged with bank robbery.

One man was arrested on a warrant stemming from a previous bootlegging violation. Another was arrested for draft evasion. The third was arrested on a warrant charging him with being a “suspicious person.”

Authorities believed all three might have knowledge, at least, of the bank robbery. Police had been tipped off about their whereabouts by representatives of the Brinks and Pinkerton detective agencies.

From the court beat: A jury found aged rancher Harry Williams not guilty of murder in the death of Spokane firefighter Jack Batten.

The jury apparently accepted the defense argument that the death was not intentional. Batten was shot by a “rifle trap” set to go off when someone opened Williams’ cabin door. Williams then shot Batten a second time as he tried to drive away to get help

It took the jury only one ballot to make its decision.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1977: The legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.

1986: An explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)