100 years ago in Walla Walla: Surgery helped a Spokane inmate remember what led to his brain damage – but forget his alleged crimes

An exceptionally bizarre story of amnesia emerged from the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, concerning a Spokane inmate.

Joe Straghan, a former Spokane Boy Scout scoutmaster, was serving a term at Walla Walla for “improper acts with small girls.”

He began having seizures in prison, and a prison surgeon attempted to relieve his seizures with a brain operation. The surgeon discovered that Straghan’s skull had been fractured in the past and that a piece of bone was pressing heavily on his brain.

The operation relieved that pressure – and the results were unexpected.

Straghan’s first words were, “I hope they don’t punish the boy. They didn’t mean to drop me. Is the fire out?” Investigation showed that when he was a soldier during World War I, Straghan was evacuated from a hospital fire and the attendants dropped him on the concrete floor, fracturing his skull. The “boy” he was referring to was the attendant responsible for dropping him.

For the past five years, Straghan had no memory of that incident, but now it came flooding back.

Now he exhibited a different form of amesia. He had no memory of the crime that sent him to jail, and no memory of ever having been in Spokane.

When told why he was in prison, he was reported to be “sitting in his prison cell, his frame shaken with sobs because of the acts which sent him to prison.”

Prison officials said they would support parole for Straghan because they were convinced that he had not been in his right mind when the crimes were committed.