This day in history: Patty Hearst, political pawn? Famed attorney William Kunstler labeled her trial a sham during a visit to Cheney

From 1976: Controversial civil rights attorney William Kunstler attended a rally on the Eastern Washington State College campus and labeled the sensational bank robbery trial of Patty Hearst as a political maneuver.

“The whole thing has been orchestrated,” Kunstler said. “The U.S. government is not putting up any serious fight. It may very well be that the administration wants to have her acquitted. It would not look very well if the daughter of William Randolph Hearst is in jail during an election year.”

Kunstler was in Cheney for a rally on behalf of Yvonne Wanrow, a Colville tribe member whose conviction for murder and assault in Spokane in 1973 would be considered soon by the Washington Supreme Court.

He believed that Wanrow’s case should never have been prosecuted. He said the man she killed was a “drunken pervert and child molester.”

From 1926: Charles Drechsel, 62, was working in his Spokane garden when he suddenly stepped on ground covering an old well and disappeared from sight.

His 7-year-old niece watched in shock as her uncle vanished. He had plunged 25 feet down the old well and could not get out. Fortunately, there was only 2 feet of water in the bottom.

The little girl raised the alarm. Two men in the neighborhood rushed over and dropped a ladder down the well – but it was too short. Drechsel climbed up as high as he could and the two men reached down, grabbed his wrists, and pulled him to safety.

He was being treated for bad cuts and bruises to his head, but was otherwise unhurt.