A Gambler's Murder, and the Widow in the Web
North Yakima detectives arrest five alleged accessories and a suspected triggerman in the killing of 'Tex' Bagwell, with a confession said to be in hand.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
NORTH YAKIMA, Aug. 22.—[Special.]—A web has been spun which promises to bring the murderers of 'Tex' Bagwell to justice. Mrs. Brazzald, alias Mrs. Bagwell, Frank Lavergne and his son Louis, J. H. King and L. D. Gosiyn are now in jail charged with being accessories to the murder, and a man named Harvey has been arrested in Walla Walla charged with firing the fatal shot. The case has been worked up by M. G. Wills, a local detective, and the attorneys for the prosecution claim that the evidence is very complete. A confession is said to have been secured from one of the accessories. Rewards aggregating $1,000, including one of $250 by the alleged widow, have been offered for the apprehension and conviction of the murderer. The date of the preliminary examination has not yet been named.
“A web has been spun which promises to bring the murderers of 'Tex' Bagwell to justice.”
A century before true-crime podcasts, local papers turned murders into serial mysteries: a gambler shot dead, a widow arrested, rewards posted. The case shows how quickly suspicion could attach to a spouse and how frontier justice leaned on private detectives and cash bounties. North Yakima is now Yakima, but the old name still lingers in the region's memory.
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