This day in history: Authorities linked braggart to 9 murders. Spokane streetcar company proposed 10-cent fares

From 1975: Authorities remained skeptical that Thomas E. Creech had committed 42 murders, as he had recently bragged in a Wallace, Idaho, courtroom.

Yet they now believed that he was linked to at least nine murders in four Western states, the Associated Press reported in an article that ran in The Spokesman-Review. This included the two murders for which he was currently on trial. In some cases, bodies had been discovered using information supplied by Creech.

He had been formally charged with only two murders, a pair of housepainters in southern Idaho. The trial had been relocated to Wallace.

Creech denied being involved in those two murders and contended that he knew who the killers were.

From 1925: The proposal to raise Spokane streetcars fares from 7 cents to 10 cents was certainly controversial – but apparently not as alarming as it had been in years past.

“While the advance was somewhat higher than the city commissioners had anticipated, the request did not create hard feelings or call forth burning words of indignation as it did in the other raise four years ago,” said The Spokesman-Review.

The commissioners, if not the public, believed that Spokane United Railways had at least “made an honest effort to make the existing fares pay.”

Mayor Charles Fleming made two predictions, which time would later prove true. First, he said that higher streetcar fares would simply cause more people to take autos. Second, he said “that some other form of transportation may be found that can be run more cheaply than streetcars,” presaging the transition to buses.