Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

Employees of the Pedicord Hotel in Spokane made a gruesome discovery in 1936. They went up to the room of Mrs. Mabel Dolores Naccarato and noticed a bad smell coming from a trunk.

When police arrived and opened the trunk, they found the 24-year-old woman’s badly decomposed body, which had been there for about two months. She had apparently been strangled.

Authorities had been seeking the missing woman for about two weeks and had previously checked out her room. But they hadn’t opened the trunk. Hotel employees found it when they were putting her belongings into storage.

Police were seeking the help of the Japanese consulates in Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles and other cities, because Mrs. Naccarato had apparently been seeing a Japanese man. The man, who was wanted on a number of forgery charges in Spokane, was also missing. He, too, had been registered at the Pedicord Hotel.

Mrs. Naccarato had been married three years earlier but had recently filed for divorce. The divorce had not yet gone through. Her husband was working in Trail, B.C., and was not a suspect in the case.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1880: Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.