100 years ago in Spokane: Former fire captain goes on trial for murder

Former Spokane Fire Capt. J.F. Grant was on trial for shooting Walter Layman in the street after he found Layman walking with his wife.

A man who lived next to the intersection at Montgomery Avenue and Washington Street said he heard the shot and cries for help.

“I looked out the window and I saw a man leaning over another in the street, and the fellow who was shot said, ‘For God’s sake, do not kill me.’ I shouted and told the man to cut it out or something of the kind. My wife would not let me go down.”

The witness said he then heard the man say to a woman, “I told you I would get him and I did.”

However, Grant’s defense attorneys told the jury that they would prove that Layman was “a member of a gang of crooks,” a bootlegger, a counterfeiter, an escaped convict and a suspect in a bomb plot.

“We are confident you will find that Layman was a desperate criminal and that this man is not guilty of murder in killing him,” said Grant’s attorney.

The Spokane Daily Chronicle reported earlier that Layman had escaped from two federal prisons.

The prosecutor called Mrs. Grant to testify, and she seemed “eager to testify against her husband, whom she has sued for divorce.” But, the judge refused to let her testify.

When she walked past her husband, she “was heard to mutter something.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis.