100 Years Ago
The February 4, 1926 Colorado Transcript reported on yet another bootleg liquor operation. In this case, Coroner Billy Woods received an anonymous phone call, alerting him to the presence of a body in a ranch house located northeast of Golden. The coroner and his assistant entered the house and found a dead man in bed, in an upstairs bedroom. They also found a cat “in the last stages of starvation” trapped in a box on the first floor.
The Coroner summoned Sheriff Walter Johnson. The Sheriff found “a good-sized still, several barrels of mash and about a gallon of whiskey.” He believed that the man had died of poison but was unsure whether it came from the still or another source. The state prohibition officer was summoned and he recognized the man as someone who had been involved in a Denver bootleg case.
The coroner estimated that the man had been dead at least ten days. The sheriff’s investigation found a witness who said that two men had been at the house five days earlier.
It is thought that perhaps his partner, going to the place for a load of whiskey, found the body, covered it with blankets, penned the cat in the box so it could not disturb the body and then fled, notifying the coroner some time later.
The article did not include the fate of the cat.
A follow-up article the following week identified the body as William Byram of Denver. Byram had been convicted of murder in 1905, spent six years in the penitentiary, and was then pardoned.
