100 years ago in Montana: Mother of Spokane politician on trial for murder reveals ‘family secrets’

From our archive, 100 years ago

The prosecution and the defense agreed on many of the relevant facts in the murder trial of Miss Edith Colby, a former candidate for Spokane city commissioner.

They agreed that Miss Colby had moved to Thompson Falls, Montana; had taken a job as a reporter for a local newspaper; had become embroiled in a fierce intra-party Republican feud; had been insulted by county Republican chair A.C. Thomas, who told her she belonged in the “red-light district”; had confronted him on the street the next day with a gun; and then, when he refused to apologize, shot him dead.

However, they differed wildly in explaining her motivation for this act. The state said she was simply angry and vengeful. When Thomas started to walk away, she fired two or three shots, and hit him with at least one. When the postmaster, standing nearby, protested, she told him to “stand back,” upon which she fired a fourth shot, directly at Thomas’s head. When she was arrested by the sheriff, she told him, “If you had insulted me, I would have shot you.”

The defense laid out a case that Miss Colby was a mentally disturbed woman who didn’t really know what she was doing and was not in control of her emotions or her actions. She had intended only to scare Thomas and make him apologize. Afterwards, she wasn’t even aware she had shot him, believing that she had simply fired into the sidewalk.

In the most sensational testimony of the day, Miss Colby’s mother took the stand and “bared family secrets.” She said that Miss Colby’s grandparents were first cousins and that her father suffered from “inexplicable spells of madness.”

She said her daughter was “always very nervous” and her mental state deteriorated as a result of two failed romances. The first occurred when she was 22 or 23, and the other more recently when she became engaged to a Spokane doctor, who then broke the engagement. A friend testified that Miss Colby had “acted peculiarly” ever since the engagement was broken.