This day in history: Christmas tree seekers trespass for evergreens; Paulsen heist witnesses testify suspect couldn’t have pulled off crime

From 1975: It was beginning to look a lot like … misdemeanor trespassing?

Spokane County deputies reported that seekers of Christmas trees were violating laws all over the county.

One Mead man called police to report that “a family in a red pickup had illegally executed their annual yule tradition on his private property.”

Police also arrested a Spokane man who admitted to cutting a tree on the Hatch Road hill, just south of the city. Deputies seized the tree and the saw used to cut it.

On Mt. Spokane-Day Road, a pickup truck loaded with trees was stopped because cutting in Mt. Spokane State Park was not allowed.

From 1925: Several defense witnesses testified to the effect that Isadore Edelstein could not have pulled off the biggest heist in Spokane history, because he was somewhere between Lincoln, Nebraska, and St. Louis at the time.

A former manager of a Lincoln hotel brought a register sheet which showed that Edelstein was at his hotel from July 20, 1922, to July 22, 1922.

The manager of a St. Louis bank said that their records show that Edelstein accessed his safe deposit box on July 25.

The Paulsen heist took place on July 23, 1922.

The detectives who arrested Edelstein in San Francisco said that Edelstein declared he could beat the Spokane rap because he could prove he was in Nebraska at the time. He pleaded with them all the way to the hall of justice. He also, they said, attempted to bribe them.