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

From our archives, 100 years ago

William “Oklahoma” Fondren ended a dispute with Isaac A. Coplen, the postmaster at Amwaco on Lake Coeur d’Alene, in a startling way: He pulled out a revolver and shot Coplen dead.

 Fondren turned himself in and admitted to the shooting, but he claimed it was self-defense. A witness to the shooting told a different story.

The witness said he was sitting with Fondren in his barn when Coplen knocked on the door and attempted to hand Fondren some legal papers. 

Fondren refused to accept the papers. Coplen hotly told Fondren that he “didn’t own the land and never did.” Coplen said he stole it from a man named Strong and “broke him.”

Fondren’s only reply was to shoot Coplen in the head.

 The witness jumped up and yelled, “Man, what have you done?”

Fondren replied, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

Coplen was contesting Fondren’s right to the land, which Fondren claimed to have won in the Coeur d’Alene Reservation’s “land lottery.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak; gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed more than four weeks later.