This day in history: Jealous woman kills husband with explosives in CdA: ‘I placed six sticks of dynamite under the building’

From 1975: An apparent kidnapping in Spokane had a grisly end after a 25-year-old Spokane man released his hostage – his ex-wife – and then shot himself.

The alleged kidnapper broke into the home of his ex-wife and waited in the basement for her return. When she and her companion, a 29-year-old Spokane man, walked into the house, the ex-husband reportedly came upstairs wielding a gun.

He allegedly tied up the companion, hit him over the head with the revolver and dragged him to the tub. Then, he forced his ex-wife to leave with him in a car, The Spokesman-Review reported.

He took her to a farm outside of Spokane, but then released her and “told her to send the police.”

When police arrived at the farm, they found the man’s body in a field, with a bullet wound to the head.

From 1925: A massive explosion killed R.J. Miles, of Coeur d’Alene, and blew his shack apart, after his wife ignited six sticks of dynamite in a jealous rage.

Mrs. Miles confessed that she grew angry after a quarrel with her husband after she found notes he had written to another woman. He retreated to the shack behind their house, where he had been living for a while.

“I placed six sticks of dynamite under the building occupied by my husband,” she said in her confession. “It was entirely planned by me. I purchased the dynamite about a week ago from the Dingle Hardware Company store.”

She said she “went too far, but I was desperate … the man misused me and mistreated me.”

She was charged with first-degree murder and held in a Coeur d’Alene jail.