Summary

It’s not hard to rattle off the names of notorious criminals in the recent past of the Inland Northwest. Joseph Duncan. Robert Yates Jr. Kevin Coe.

But long before these names appeared in the newspapers, other killers and criminals captivated the region’s attention and filled the news pages.

For this special series, reporter Meghann M. Cuniff went deep into The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Daily Chronicle archives to unearth the stories of killers whose names used to be right on the tips of residents’ tongues.

Complete Coverage

News >  Washington

Bills aim to aid job seekers with criminal history

OLYMPIA – Tarra Simmons says she knows all too well what it’s like to have to check a box on a job application that reveals her criminal history to an employer before she has a chance to explain. “I was at the lowest point in my life,” she told the Associated Press.
News >  Spokane

‘Roving eye’ helped jury convict killer

The grisly hatchet murders in a tiny home on East Sprague Avenue in 1944 led to a young man’s death on the gallows in Walla Walla. More than 60 years later, Woodrow Wilson “Whitey” Clark remains the 10th and last convicted Spokane killer to be executed in Washington.
News >  Spokane

Teen killer’s demands helped police solve case

The phone call to police on Christmas Eve 1976 promised more slayings if police didn’t pay $10,000. “He said two more people would be killed with a .32 pistol and their throats would be cut,” then-Deputy Police Chief Robert Colliton told the Spokane Daily Chronicle.
News >  Spokane

Killer ‘crazed with jealousy’

His attorney blamed the shotgun murder on a “gnawing conscience” and called the killer, Charley C. Hanes, a religious man who loved his family and who had already paid for the crime with his eye. On Dec. 29, 1954, Hanes received an even stiffer penalty: life in prison.
News >  Spokane

Ex-boxer said he and murder victim fought over teeth

The taunting note on the dead man’s chest was the first clue. “This will teach you not to fool with married women or sell bum whiskey,” it read, pinned to the clothes of a man with a history of bootlegging liquor during Prohibition.