Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Was there a break in the case of Spokane’s most notorious unsolved crime – the 1911 assassination of police Chief John T. Sullivan?

A Spokane police detective believed so. A hobo named Joe Brown, alias Joe Raymond, was shot by a railroad “bull” (guard) in California. Brown believed that he was dying and he begged a freight conductor to take him to a hospital.

“Take me in, don’t let me die out here,” he begged. “There is a $10,000 reward on me and you will get it.”

Then Brown told the conductor that he was the man who shot the police chief in Spokane.

Brown’s wound was not as serious as first feared, and he soon recovered. Then he recanted his confession and said he made it all up. Yet authorities in California passed the information to Spokane, who sent Detective Martin J. Burns to investigate.

Burns learned that Brown was, in fact, living in Spokane at the time of the shooting and was working as a laborer. Burns believed Brown might well have been the assassin, although he had no other evidence to go on. He also learned that Brown was “the emotional type of Frenchman” and had once been detained on an insanity charge.

As it turned out, another, more plausible suspect would turn up in 1924 in Alabama. Yet no charges were ever filed and the assassination remains officially unsolved.