This day in history: Serial killer sentenced to hang. Tight hats were causing conundrum for those with poor eye sight

From 1976: Thomas Eugene Creech, whose murder trial caused a sensation in Wallace was sentenced to hang by a Boise judge.

He was convicted of first-degree murder for killing two itinerant house painters on a remote Idaho mountain road. After all of his appeals were rejected, a judge imposed the mandatory death penalty.

During his Wallace trial, Creech took the stand and claimed that he had committed 42 other murders, sometimes as part of a Satanic cult, and sometimes as a paid hit man. But he insisted he did not kill the two house painters.

The jury disagreed.

Police throughout the West discounted most of those 42 claims – “but said Creech did lead them to previously undiscovered bodies.”

His death sentence later was reversed to life but he was resentenced to death in 1981 for killing another inmate. Creech, now 75, remains on death row at the state prison in Kuna, Idaho.

From 1926: A front page story in the Spokane Chronicle claimed there was a “burning issue right now in Spokane.”

“(It is) whether the well-dressed maid shall wear a hat that is in style, or a pair of correct glasses,” the Chronicle reported. “She can’t have both, it is agreed by both the milliner and the optometrist.”

This – spectacular? – problem apparently stemmed from the current craze for “tight-fitting hats” worn well down toward the eyebrows. These clashed with the most popular style of glasses, “the heavy horn-rim type with bows standing well out from the side of the head.”

There was a ray of hope, said the paper. The new spring hat styles were about to make their debut, and “the style is expected to change to broad brim models.”