The Man Who Shot His Ex-Wife and Asked a Stranger to Finish the Job
In a chilling display of domestic violence in 1914 Prosser, Harry Favor shot his divorced wife Lucile Schultz dead, then calmly helped her into a buggy and begged bystanders to kill him before fleeing.
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.
Harry Favor, of Prosser, shot and killed his divorced wife, Lucile E. Schultz, about 7:30 last Saturday evening. The tragedy, which was the culmination of a long series of domestic troubles, occurred two miles north of Prosser while Miss Schultz, with Miss Edith Fordyce and Miss Iska Wilcox, was driving to the home of her parents Mr. and Mrs. L. B. Schultz.
At a point near the farm of J. D. Powell, Favor appeared and stopped the rig by seizing the horse’s bridle. He commanded his former wife to get out of the buggy and accompany him. Following her refusal he drew an automatic revolver and fired three shots, two of which passed through the woman’s left arm and pierced her body.
The wounded woman was hurried to a hospital in Prosser and died about eleven o'clock the same night.
After the shooting, Favor remained on the scene and assisted Mr. Powell to get the wounded woman into his buggy. He requested Powell to take the revolver and kill him and then struck off through the sagebrush and up until this afternoon had not been apprehended.
The day following the crime blood hounds were brought from Granger and succeeded in trailing Favor to a water tank at Mabton and the authorities are of the opinion that he boarded a train at this point. Yesterday a man answering his description was arrested in Ellensburg but he has not yet been identified as the slayer.
This 1914 account of intimate partner violence reveals how domestic tragedies were often reported with detached, almost clinical language, focusing on the 'trailer' and the 'flight' rather than the victim's humanity. The incident mirrors modern conversations around coercive control and the lethal escalation of domestic disputes, where a 'long series of domestic troubles' culminated in murder-suicide attempts.
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