100 years ago in Spokane: The husband-and-wife suspects in the South Hill oil scam maintained their innocence on the stand

Mr. and Mrs. Alfred L’Ecuyer appeared in federal court and vehemently denied “planting” fake oil in their Southeast Boulevard basement well. They also denied any attempt to defraud stockholders in the oil company they subsequently founded.

“The oil that came there, I do believe, was sent from a higher spirit than I,” Alfred L’Ecuyer said.

Mrs. L’Ecuyer testified that oil and gas fumes from the basement had bothered them for years.

She refuted the charge that she bought inordinate amounts of kerosene and dumped them in the well. She testified that she did indeed purchase gallons of kerosene, but it was for the simple reason that she had been heating her home and cooking with kerosene. Furthermore, she said she began using kerosene because she was worried that wood or coal fires would be dangerous, because of the strong oil and gas fumes wafting up from the basement well.

A gardener testified for the prosecution that he saw L’Ecuyer carrying pails of some kind of oil down into his basement at 5 a.m. L’Ecuyer said that the only entrance into the basement was inside the house, and that he had never even met the gardener.

A large crowd, mostly “friendly to the L’Ecuyers,” packed the hearing room at the Federal Building.

The defense attorney opened his case by saying he intended to ask for a dismissal of the charges.

Also on this day

(From the Associated Press)

1944: The U.S. War Department announced it was ending its policy of excluding people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.