A century ago in the Inland Northwest

The city was buzzing over the sensational murder trial of Josephine Baruth, a housewife who shot her husband, C.L. Baruth, to death in their Medical Lake home. The details were lurid. The wife testified that she had previously found her husband attempting an indecent act with their 11-year-old daughter. Then, on the morning of the murder, her husband had chased her around the house with an iron poker after she had asked him where he had been the day before. She fetched a pistol and shot him. The story took a strange turn right before trial, when reporters discovered that the couple had been divorced years before and had never remarried. The outcome? A jury found her guilty of manslaughter. She was sentenced to 6 ½ years of hard labor.