Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Police were baffled by the murder of a shy 22-year-old Spokane woman, whose body was found on a steep slope above the Spokane River, below Summit Avenue.

Police said it was the “most puzzling murder since the (assassination) of Capt. Sullivan.”

At first, the police reported that she had been shot in the head. But a subsequent autopsy revealed that she had been killed with one thrust of a knife, probably a pocket knife, through her skull. Her jaw had also been broken.

She had told her parents she was going out to work as a server at a neighbor’s holiday party. But investigation showed there had been no such party. The parents said their daughter had no “romantic entanglements” that they knew of.

Footprints in the snow indicated that she had been walking home up the open slope and had seen something or somebody at the top that caused her to turn back down the slope.

There were numerous signs of struggle in the snow. Her murderer apparently wiped off the knife blade in the snow. The footprints of the killer had, unfortunately, been obliterated by gawkers before police arrived.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1958: The anti-communist John Birch Society was formed in Indianapolis.