100 years ago in Spokane: Local leaders continued to mourn the loss of President Harding, who died shortly after a trip to the area

Spokane and the rest of the state were still grappling with the implications of the shocking death of President Warren G. Harding.

“It is certain that no section of the country has suffered so severe an immediate loss as the West, and especially Alaska,” Washington Gov. Lewis Hart said. “… I had the pleasure of visiting with the president and Mrs. Harding for three days in their private car. They were the most enjoyable days I have ever spent. We people out here had hoped for great results from the information the president had gathered on his trip. Of course, to a great extent, that is now lost.”

Hart was probably referring to the intense lobbying that state officials had done to promote the Columbia Basin irrigation project. Harding, during his visit to Spokane, came down firmly in favor of funding the massive project.

From the police beat: An unidentified prisoner, age about 40, was found dead in his cell at the Stevens County jail in Colville.

He had hanged himself with a window cord.

The man may have been “an escaped murderer from the Alabama state prison.”

The man had been jailed as a vagrant, but Alabama authorities said he might have been Walter Coleman, an escapee.

When asked if he was Coleman, the man denied it, “but appeared to be visibly surprised by the question.”

He was also the same man thought – at one time – to be one of the fugitives in the recent Hope, Idaho, murder.

The incident embarrassed Stevens County authorities, because the man walked out of the jail while left unattended in the office.

The sheriff soon found him again, near Addy.

The death “writes finis to the mystery of his identification,” the Chronicle wrote.