100 years ago in St. Maries: Man accused of murder captured after 6 weeks on the run

Joe Farri, a fugitive on a murder charge out of Wallace was found “skulking through the timber” near St. Maries and captured after six weeks on the run.

He gave himself up to a timber cruiser who stumbled upon him. Farri told the timber cruiser “any punishment given him now would not equal the agony he has suffered while eluding capture.”

He was emaciated, starving and suffering from exposure.

The story began in early August, when he got in an argument with his boss over wages. Farri said he took out his gun and pulled the trigger in a fit of anger. Then he went to his cabin, grabbed a blanket and some food – not enough – and fled to the mountains.

He subsisted on a few fish he caught with his only fishhook and a couple of grouse. He was reluctant to use his gun, because of fear of being heard. He broke into two cabins and stole some rice and matches, but this was not sufficient either.

He was being held – and supposedly fed – in the St. Maries jail until he could be turned over to Shoshone County authorities.

From the rail accident beat: The rail shop strikers’ executive committee blamed defective wiring on the signals and a missing tail light on the switch engine for the train crash that killed six rail workers near the Parkwater yards.

Some of the striking workmen went to the scene of the wreck the day after the collision. They found the “block signal,” which would have alerted the passenger train engineer to the presence of the work train, showed a clear track ahead. The implication was that the lack of skilled, experienced shopmen and maintenance workers had created unsafe conditions.

Federal, state and county investigators were sifting through the evidence, but had not come to any conclusions. Some of the testimony was described as “conflicting.”

As for railroad management, a “cloak of silence” had been thrown over the incident. All employees were ordered not to discuss the subject.