100 years ago today in Spokane: One Dodd witness arrested on purjury while others go missing

Rose Fagan, a witness in the sensational Maurice P. Codd murder trial, was arrested on a perjury charge.

She was one of the witnesses who rebutted the prosecution’s charge that Codd tossed Frank P. Brinton over the railing during a fight at the Granite Building.

Her attorney claimed she was not guilty. He said that prosecutors “took her into their private office and by third-degree methods tried to force her to admit that she was guilty of perjury.” She refused and was released on bond.

Meanwhile, the county prosecutor’s office admitted that three of the witnesses called to testify into a grand jury probe had disappeared.

Those missing were Beatrice Sant, one of the leading defense witnesses; Mrs. J.W. Fryett, the daughter of one of the jurors; and “a man named Cook.” Fryett and Sant were said to have left Spokane sometime after the trial. Sant’s mother thought she was in Seattle. Fryett’s husband said he did not know where his wife was.

A number of other people who testified at the Codd trial had been called before the grand jury, which was probing “all details of the Codd murder case.”

Also on this day

(From the Associated Press)

1896: the U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorsed “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept renounced 58 years later by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

1910: Halley’s Comet passed by earth, brushing it with its tail.

1980: the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.