The Black Widow of Garden Springs
A Spokane detective identifies a deceased woman as a notorious murderess who allegedly poisoned her husbands.
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.
Following the death of a Mrs. Helen Minor at Sacred Heart hospital in Spokane, Detective J. F. McDermott identified the woman as Helen Greer, who had been convicted of murder in the second degree a decade prior. In 1893, Greer poisoned her husband, Jim Greer, at Garden Springs using arsenic, which she purchased under the alias 'Jane Williams' claiming it was to kill squirrels. She served seven years in prison for the crime. It was alleged that she had been married seven times and that all of her previous husbands had died or disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
“I secured an order from the coroner to have the body of Greer dug up and get the stomach examined. Two prominent physicians analyzed the ashes and enough arsenic was found to have killed a dozen men.”
This dark chapter of Spokane history reads like true-crime noir, reflecting the era's fascination with the 'poisoner' archetype. It highlights the persistence of law enforcement in an age before modern forensic databases.
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