100 years ago in Spokane: Grand jury to question witnesses from sensational murder trial

A grand jury was scheduled to begin questioning many of the witnesses who testified in the sensational Maurice P. Codd murder trial.

“The jury can return indictments or make a report with recommendations, or do both,” said The Spokesman-Review. “It can indict persons if 12 of the jurors agree the prosecutor might be able to convict. Warrants would then be issued and the persons arrested.”

The unofficial citizen’s committee looking into accusations of perjury and witness-tampering had completed its investigation, and had turned its findings over to the grand jury.

From the divorce beat: The Rev. John F. Rice, a former Colfax pastor, took the stand in a divorce proceeding and tried to explain away his wife’s charges of infidelity.

The pastor said the incident occurred when he was alone in a cabin on a homestead near Harrison, Idaho. He said he had gone to bed with his clothes on, when the woman from the neighboring homestead “surprised” him.

He said he found her with him when he awoke, but he “lectured her and sent her away.”

This apparently didn’t quite square with the story his wife heard, from the mouth of the neighbor woman herself.

The pastor’s wife confronted her husband, and “fainted” when he admitted the woman had been in his bed. The case was continuing.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

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 while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)