100 years ago in Deer Park: A whodunit was over after a woman confessed to killing her husband, but was let off by prosecutors

Waneta Richter confessed to shooting her husband to death in Deer Park, but the county prosecutor released her and sent her home.

Why?

Because her husband had a history of abusing her. He was threatening her with a board when she shot him.

Those details came out at an inquest into Jack Richter’s death. The prosecutor said he was also planning to release Matt Grubisch (variously rendered Grovich or Grubesich), a neighbor who was a witness to the shooting. Waneta Richter had originally told officers that Grubisch shot her husband but later changed her story and confessed.

From the booze beat: Spokane’s federal Prohibition chief issued a warning to buyers of bootlegged Canadian liquor: It’s “deadly poison.”

“Almost all of the liquor coming across the border under American labels has been doctored,” he said. “… If I was a drinking man, I would drink local moonshine products in preference to the so-called imported liquors. The local product is dangerous to health, but the imported stuff is worse.”

He claimed tests revealed that Canadian liquor under counterfeit American labels was “many times more deadly than it was ever suspected,” but he did not go into details.

“You can go as far as you like in describing the bad features of this stuff, and when you get through you will not have told the half of it.”