Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 75 years ago

A young Spokane woman and a married dentist were found dead from poison in the man’s parked car, the result of a lovers’ suicide pact.

“Bill and I have tried for three days to find some other way out of this awful dilemma, but there is no way,” the woman wrote in a note found next to her body. “It’s only because we love each other so very dearly that we are taking what it is to us the only possible way out.”

The dentist, 45, worked at the U.S. Indian Hospital in Tacoma. The woman, 33, was a lab technician there. He was married, but his wife was apparently living in Los Angeles. The car with their bodies was found on a secluded rural lane near Issaquah. An empty poison bottle was discovered.

Her parents said she “seemed to be happy” the last time they talked to her, and her brother said she planned to marry the doctor.

She was a Lewis and Clark High School graduate who had already had one unhappy marriage and divorce. She had previously spent months at St. Luke’s Hospital for a nervous breakdown. She was said to be “always of a moody type.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1800: Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.

… 1980: The U.S. launched an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran.