100 years ago in North Idaho: A new lead in the poolhall killing turned out to be a familiar face

The search for the second fugitive in the Hope, Idaho, murder continued after witnesses saw a man “skulking in a thicket” near Sandpoint.

The first fugitive, Robert Ford, was in custody and helped guide searchers toward the spot where the other man was believed to be hiding. Police suspected the fugitive was the “two-gun man” who actually committed the Hope murder.

A man arrested in Addy, and who subsequently escaped from the Colville jail, was no longer thought to be the murder suspect.

Instead, authorities were now convinced that the fugitive was Mike Donnelly, a man who escaped from the state prison at Walla Walla three months earlier. Information from Ford and from a fingerprint expert seemed to confirm this.

Donnelly was a desperate criminal who was convicted of killing a deputy sheriff in Whatcom County. His first escape from Walla Walla ended in recapture in Montana. His second escape came when he jumped through an open window to a standpipe, and then jumped 16 feet over a hospital wall.

Ford and Walla Walla authorities warned that Donnelly was dangerous and would not hesitate to shoot his pursuers on sight.

Also on this date

(From onthisday.com)

1890: Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh shoots himself in Auvers-sur-Oise; he died of injuries two days later.

1962: Martin Luther King Jr. is jailed in Albany, Georgia.