100 years ago in Spokane: Lulu Siler may not have killed her husband after all, but she was still a suspect in the investigation into his grisly death

The A.B. Siler case took another twist when investigators found that his wife, Lulu Siler, did indeed stand to collect on a $5,000 insurance policy in the event of her husband’s death. The oft-rumored policy was finally found in their safety deposit box.

Yet this discovery did not make investigators more certain that Lulu Siler cut the throat of her husband. It made them suspect that “there may have been a suicide agreement … to the effect that Siler would take his own life after which Mrs. Siler might remove all traces or instruments with which death was accomplished.”

The policy contained a clause making it void in case of suicide.

“Finding the policy makes us all the more certain that Mrs. Siler has guilty knowledge as to how her husband met his death,” said the Sanders County, Montana, sheriff. “There is no doubt that the woman knew of the suicide clause. Even if she had no hand in his death or no guilty knowledge that he contemplated suicide, it would be in her favor to remove any weapons that might be found. Then it would appear as if the man had been murdered.”

The prosecutor said a trip to the Silers’ home in Spokane to gather evidence was mostly fruitless.

“We have found traces of family quarrels, which I suppose happens in most families, but nothing that could even be construed as a motive for the murder has been developed.”

Plenty of suspicious evidence had already come to light near Thompson Falls, where Siler’s body was found with a cut throat. Lulu Siler was the last to see him alive, and she was later seen washing out a blood-covered towel. She also had no explanation about why she waited so long to report finding her husband’s body on a railroad siding.