100 years ago in Spokane: A 22-year-old was suspected of shooting and killing a woman in a jealous rage, and Flora Watson’s body was finally laid to rest after a protracted faith-healing attempt

John Hardiman, 22, was charged with murdering Goldie Flaugher in a jealous rage on a Spokane street.

Yet when his mother came to visit him in jail, he denied it.

“Mother, I didn’t kill Goldie,” he said. “She was shot when she was scuffling over the loaded revolver. I don’t know how this will come out, but I am innocent. My conscience is clear.”

He claimed that he and Goldie talked and walked all night, and then “a friendly scuffle” ensued over the gun. He claimed an explosion ensued and she stood up, embraced him and said she was shot.

Maybe but accounts from witnesses and police told a different story. A police sergeant reported that when he arrived on the scene, Hardiman said, “Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy. I have shot the girl.”

Friends of the two said that a group of them had been on an all-night drinking binge. One said he had given the gun to Hardiman “to shoot cats.”

A neighbor reported that after Flaugher was shot, Hardiman fired shots into his house “in an effort to arouse someone to obtain assistance.”

From the funeral beat: Miss Flora Watson was finally laid to rest at the Riverside Park Cemetery.

This ended the macabre saga that began two weeks earlier, when a group of 45 faith healers kept her body in their revival tent and anticipated her return to life.

After nine days, authorities were finally alerted and her body was taken to the undertakers.

Yet even as her coffin was lowered into a grave, some “voiced the opinion that had she been unburied a little longer, life would have returned to her body.”