“Bluebeard” Huirt, shackled to a bed in a California hospital, was visited by one of his many wives, Elizabeth Williamson of Spokane.

He told her “not to worry” and that he could “explain everything.” He said he could not go into details because he was too weak from his self-inflicted wounds.

Williamson, however, was unmoved. She wrote to a Spokane friend, saying, “His record, as far as they have traced it, is the worst criminal record they can find anywhere. Many of his wives are missing, and no doubt, had God not guarded over me, I would have been next.”

Police in several states, including Washington, still were attempting to track down his many wives, and, in some cases, to identify bodies. Huirt married a number of women in Spokane and British Columbia, usually under false names.

From the court beat: Jurors were selected in the trial of Henry Voss, charged with murdering Glenn Miles in Coeur d’Alene during a shivaree (or charivari) gathering gone wrong.

Miles was one of a number of youths who gathered outside the newly married Voss’s window and sang and chanted. Voss said he fired a shot to scare them off, and the bullet struck Miles.

A correspondent reported that “interest in the case is acute” in Coeur d’Alene. Feeling was divided between those who thought Voss was within his rights and those who bitterly disagreed.