The Strychnine Widower: Northport Man on Trial for Poisoning His Insane Wife
George L. Pepoon stands accused of killing the mother of his three children for $1,000 in insurance and a new bride — with a paroled convict as the state's star witness.
The trial of George L. Pepoon, of Northport, for the murder of his insane wife by administering strychnine, was started at Colville Monday. A jury was secured in half a day, the following from the east side of the county being accepted: Otto Iverson, Newport, logger; Wm. Elmer, Newport, farmer; A. L. Bach, Locke, farmer; A. S. Bradley, Locke, farmer; Jas. Davis, Calispel, farmer.
That the defendant, George L. Pepoon, administered strychnine to the mother of his three children, with the intention of relieving himself of an insane wife; that he eyed the $1,000 insurance she carried in the Women of Woodcraft; and that he intended to marry Mrs. Maude Keller, now Mrs. Pepoon, with his wife out of the way — these will be the points the state will attempt to prove, according to the preliminary statement by Prosecuting Attorney H. G. Kirkpatrick.
The connection of Maude Keller with Ray Wilcox, a paroled convict who is charged with Pepoon with poisoning Edith Pepoon, by paroling him from the state penitentiary at Walla Walla and sending him to Pepoon, was followed by her hasty marriage to Pepoon before the expiration of the legal time limit following divorce. The intent of the state is to show, at least by inference, a conspiracy between Pepoon, Wilcox and Maude Keller.
“That the defendant administered strychnine to the mother of his three children, with the intention of relieving himself of an insane wife... will be the points the state will attempt to prove.”
A century before true-crime podcasts, Stevens County readers followed this poisoning case in their weekly paper — a husband, an insurance policy, a secret lover and a jailhouse informant. The Pepoon trial has the same ingredients today's streaming documentaries are built from, but it played out in a Colville courthouse with Newport loggers and farmers in the jury box.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.