100 years ago in Spokane: Pilot confesses to operating booze plane, but pins bootlegging on another

Cecil Langdon confessed that he had piloted Spokane’s notorious rum-running booze plane – but he denied that he was the pilot who was nearly nabbed by Prohibition agents at the Parkwater airfield.

In fact, he denied ever carrying booze in the plane. He was merely experimenting in using ski runners, instead of wheels, to land on snow. He said the pilot who used the plane for rum-running was named Jack Smith.

Authorities were unconvinced that Langdon was telling the truth. He was arrested in his Spokane hotel room, apparently because of information gleaned from the suspects who had been arrested after they loaded some of the booze in their car at Parkwater.

When agents rushed the plane, the pilot hopped back in the cockpit and took off to the north. He apparently landed at a Five Mile Prairie ranch.

Several Five Mile Prairie residents chatted briefly with the pilot before he departed. Police were bringing those witnesses to Spokane in an attempt to identify Langdon as the pilot.

Apparently, agents were still unsure whether Langdon or Jack Smith was the culprit. Smith was also being sought.

From the shooting beat: A 17-year-old Oregon runaway confessed to shooting his friend, Wiley Napoleon Post, at the Yardley freight yard. Both boys were waiting to jump a freight train.

“I killed him, but it was an accident,” Charles Sieforth told police. “The gun went off when I was trying to fix it and the bullet hit him in the heart.”

This was a turnaround from his earlier statement, when he told police that Post had been shot by “an Italian or Greek.”

Sieforth confessed after another boy, who had been riding the rails with them from Pasco, told police that Sieforth had purchased a revolver at a local pawn shop. The gun was found buried in the snow nearby.