The Prisoner Who Promised to Come Back and Kill the Sheriff
Caught sawing their way out of the Colfax jail, three depot burglars were hauled to the penitentiary — one of them vowing to return for Sheriff Canut and his deputy before he would consent to hang.
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.
James Bell, John Collins and George Smith have been received at the state penitentiary from Colfax to serve sentences of three years for burglarizing the Northern Pacific depot at Uniontown in Whitman county last September.
These are the men who recently tried to saw their way out of the county jail at Colfax but were caught in the act.
Before being taken out of the jail to be brought to the penitentiary, Smith, who is said to be the worst of the trio, announced his intention of returning to Colfax on the expiration of his sentence and killing Sheriff Canut and Deputy Sheriff Nessly. He declared that to kill these two will be the aim of his life, and that when he accomplishes that result he will be willing to be hanged. A charge of robbery and a charge of attempting to commit an unmentionable crime will be filed against the trio before the expiration of their sentence, and they will probably be taken back to Colfax to stand trial on those charges.
“He declared that to kill these two will be the aim of his life, and that when he accomplishes that result he will be willing to be hanged.”
County jails and the people who guard them have always run on the same fragile bargain: the men inside are counted, watched, and let out again. A prisoner who saws at the bars and then narrates, in detail, who he intends to kill is the recurring nightmare of every sheriff in the state. The Colfax trio's threat also shows how a three-year sentence could quietly become much longer — new charges waiting at the end of the term, a practice that still shapes how criminal sentences stack today.
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