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

From our archives, 100 years ago

It wasn’t unusual for people to drink themselves to death in Spokane in 1912, but this case was different. The victim, named Dorothy, was only 3.

A Seattle couple was traveling on the Northern Pacific train with their three small children in a sleeper car. The father said he gave each child just “a taste of whisky” when they left Seattle, apparently to help them sleep. Then he put the bottle under the pillow.

The next morning, they found the 3-year-old in a drunken stupor. The whisky bottle was half empty. They got off the train in Spokane and doctors tried to revive her to no avail.

From the unsolved murder beat: Police were intrigued when an informant came forward with a new clue in the city’s biggest mystery: the Anna Weber murder. 

A taxi driver claimed that he saw her the night of the murder, waiting for someone on Summit Boulevard.

Yet this informant turned out to be particularly unreliable. In fact, when he walked into police headquarters to make his statement, he was highly intoxicated.

Police were now investigating whether his cab might have actually hit her. He admitted to being intoxicated when he drove past her.

Also on this day

(From the Associated Press)

1953: The discovery of the double-helix structure of human DNA was announced.