100 years ago in Spokane: Women deny they were married to ‘Bluebeard’ Huirt

Press reports speculated that “Bluebeard” Huirt, in jail in Los Angeles, had as many as 27 wives – some from Spokane.

However, a number of the women listed as his “wives” vehemently denied they were married to him.

One Spokane woman indignantly stated, “I want this cleared up once and for all. I do not know the man, never saw him and never had any correspondence with him.”

A Spokane Daily Chronicle reporter showed a photo of Huirt to another of his supposed wives, and she said she couldn’t be certain it was the man she knew as L. Gordon, to whom she was betrothed.

However, several other women had no trouble identifying him. At least two of them were in Los Angeles, assisting with the investigation.

One of those women, Elizabeth Williamson-Lewis, told police she met him a year after her first husband died and she was “very lonely.” He was so “kind and courteous and affectionate” that they soon married. She said he continued to treat her with kindness.

“I was so happy,” she said. “In fact, I once told him it was too good to be true. I felt it could not last. Somehow my intuition told me something was wrong somewhere.”

He later went away without explanation, taking her jewelry and $3,300 in cash.

Meanwhile, police were investigating reports that some of his wives disappeared. Officials near Olympia were operating on the assumption that a body found there was Bertha Goodnich, of Spokane, one of several missing wives. A chart of the dead woman’s teeth was being sent to a dentist for identification.