This day in history: Grim clues mounted in the case of three people found dead in a car near Mead

From 1976: More details emerged about the three persons who were found dead the previous day in a parked auto on a dirt road near Mead.

They were identified as Frank Marcel Myers, 59; Christie J.H. Myers, 85; and Mamie Ellen Haumont, 85. They all lived together in an apartment on North Fairwood Drive.

A vacuum hose ran from the car’s tailpipe into the window, and all three died of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning.

Yet police still were not certain whether it was a triple suicide or a “murder -suicide combination.”

Several indications pointed to suicide: a note on the car’s dashboard, addressed to the Ball and Dodd Funeral Home, specified burial wishes.

Also, when detectives searched their apartment, it was clear the three had “sold most of their furnishings and clothing over the last 10 days.” Some of the remaining items in the apartment “had notes taped to them indicating who owned them or whom they were to be given to.”

From 1926: Spokane was “rapidly becoming a (flower) bulb growing center.”

At least, that was the claim of T.E. Westlake of the Westlake Bulb and Flower Co.

“Only a few years ago, almost all the flowering bulbs consumed in the state were imported or shipped from the East,” he said. “Today, we’re supplying them instead.”

He said his firm had about 7 acres of “fine bulb growing land,” and was growing many gladioli bulbs and “great quantities of lily tulips and narcissus.”

He also said he was marketing bulbs in “almost every state of the Union.”