This day in history: Man sentenced in kidnapping, slaying of 13-year-old girl. Country Clerk’s Office facing nepotism charges

Wed., June 3, 2026

By Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review

From 1976: Thomas Edward Mahrt was sentenced to two life terms for the kidnapping and murder of Nanette Marie Martin, 13, a newspaper delivery girl.

Mahrt pleaded guilty and revealed why he committed such a horrendous crime. He said that early in the morning, while driving home from a breakfast restaurant, he saw what he thought was a newsboy.

“He had a scrawny, underfed appearance,” Mahrt later wrote in a note found by police. “It was this that got up my courage because he wouldn’t be able to fight back.”

When he realized it was a girl, “it ignited ideas he previously had concerning rape,” he told prosecutors. He brandished a pistol and ordered her into his car.

Then, he drove her to his apartment where he raped and killed her. He later bought a camera and photographed her body.

Those photographs would lead to his capture. About three weeks later, Mahrt’s landlord was repairing a window in Mahrt’s apartment and saw the photographs. He called police who soon arrested him.

Marht, 78, remains in prison at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.

From 1926: The Spokane County Clerk’s Office was in an uproar over nepotism charges.

“Approximately $16,000 a year has been going to two families of relatives, (which) has put the office in a turmoil and several nonrelatives are thinking seriously of filing for the office,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

The nepotism issue came to the surface after County Clerk John Gifford died and was replaced by an interim official, who found that many relatives of both Gifford and Chief Deputy Clerk Robert Koontz were employed in the offices (three relatives of each).

Interim County Clerk Nels Paulsen who was appointed by the county commission was “opposed to nepotism” and there was “a feeling in the office” that he would begin discharging some members of the two families soon.

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