100 years ago in Spokane: The prosecution was dealt a major blow in the Codd retrial, and snacking on apples led to tragedy for a pair of siblings

Bernadine “Bennie” Collins, 24, took the stand in the Maurice Codd subornation of perjury trial and denied “virtually everything that (Beatrice Sant) had said.”

This was significant for two reasons. First, Sant was the star witness for the prosecution; the state’s entire case was built around her testimony. Second, Collins was a close friend of Sant. Sant had been visiting Collins at the Granite Building when the fatal Codd-Frank Brinton fight took place.

Collins, described by The Spokesman-Review as “24 and good-looking,” denied being offered money to testify and said she was never asked to testify falsely.

Collins said she did not see the fatal fight because she had gone over to her mother’s room. But Sant had waited at the light well, and called to Collins, saying “a man had fallen over the railing.”

Crucially, Collins testified that Sant later told her, “Brinton hauled off to hit Codd, but hit the railing and went kerflop over.”

Codd’s murder trial and this second perjury trial both centered on whether Brinton fell over the railing or was tossed over by Codd.

From the poisoning beat: Edgar Wornom, 9, died and his sister Marjory, 11, was in the hospital after possibly being poisoned by some apples.

Pathologists were still trying to search for a cause, but doctors thought the apples might have had a large quantity of “fruit spray” on them.

“We do not wish to say that it was the apple spray, for it might have been something else the children ate,” their doctor said. “There is no question but what it was some poison of this sort taken into the intestinal tract.”

Doctors believed Marjory was out of danger.