100 years ago in Spokane: Organizer of new effort to examine perjury trial denies KKK involvement

A citizen’s committee called for a mass meeting “to sound out public opinion” on the Maurice Codd subornation of perjury trial, and the proponents had to shoot down rumors that the Ku Klux Klan was involved.

“This meeting is not backed by the Ku Klux Klan,” said the head of the self appointed citizens’ investigating committee. “…Inasmuch as this is an open meeting, Klan members might be among those in attendance, but I can state positively that the Klan is in no way instrumental in the calling of the meeting.”

This was another bizarre twist in the long-running melodrama of the Codd case. There had been whispers of a Klan connection stretching all the way back to the Codd murder trial, but the local Klan denied it had any particular interest in the case.

It was never clear why the Klan would be involved in this controversy one way or another, since it did not have any obvious racial overtones. There had been some hints, from a juror, that there might have been a Catholics vs. Protestants angle, but nothing of that sort had come out in either of the trials.

The committee’s head said the mass meeting would discuss taxes and other policy issues, but the main focus would be on the Codd trial.

“I believe at least 95 percent of the people are opposed to letting the matter drop,” he said. “It is my belief and the belief of many others that the case should be tried and settled one way or another.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1887: Construction begins on the Eiffel Tower in Paris.