100 years ago in Spokane: Maybe husband’s on his farm, not murdered, wife says

The wife of Spokane stockbroker W.H. McNutt, who vanished weeks before, was apparently no longer convinced her husband had been murdered.

She now believed that he might be hiding out on a farm he owned in Pend Oreille County. This was based on a report that someone was erecting buildings on a farm owned by McNutt near Newport.

Mrs. McNutt was on the way to the the small town of Scotia, accompanied by the Pend Oreille County sheriff and a Burns agency detective, to check out the report.

Meanwhile, other reports had come in that people had seen McNutt driving his Stephens auto on Apple Way since his disappearance.

A conflicting report indicated that the men who had a financial dispute with McNutt had abruptly left Spokane after his disappearance. Detectives had traced the men to Los Angeles.

The Ahrens & Ahrens auto dealers in Spokane told police that McNutt had not yet paid for the car he bought from them, and they had asked that a warrant be issued for his arrest.

From the vice beat: A judge ordered the closure of a Trent Avenue lodging house run by Mrs. Beryl Fisk on the grounds that it harbored “women of ill repute.”

This was a result of information supplied by a self-described “vice crusader” in connection with the Civic Righteousness Committee.