100 years ago today in Spokane: Woman confesses to stink-bomb plot

Spokane theater audiences had been holding their noses for a week after several “gas bombs” – better described as stink bombs – had been let loose in the Majestic Theater and the Class A Theater.

Investigators were baffled for days until Eva Jury, 20, a local waitress, made a confession. She said she had been paid by the local motion picture operators union to let loose stink bombs in non-union theaters. She said that she personally dropped several bottles of stinky stuff in the aisle of the Majestic, and she accompanied another union man who dropped a “bomb” in the Class A.

She implicated several local union men, who were put under arrest.

However, a “mystery man” known only as “Mr. Fisher of Seattle” had not yet been tracked down. “Mr. Fisher” was implicated by Jury as the main conspirator in the stink bomb plot. He was the one who dropped the bomb in the Class A Theater, and he had been trying to get her to go to Seattle and Portland to set off more stink bombs.

“Mr. Fisher” disappeared from Spokane as soon as Jury was arrested. Police believed he was a regional leader of the union and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Police said the owner of the Majestic Theater deserved credit for uncovering the plot.

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(From the Associated Press)

1938: Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom, or deliberate persecution, that became known as “Kristallnacht.”