The Seattle Post Intelligencer

WASHINGTON NEWS

Probable Capture of the Davis Murderer.

WALLA WALLA, Nov. 29.—Detective V. D. Lambert and Constable Frank Morse, both of whom have been working on the case, to-day arrested Gordon Cooper, an ex-convict, for the murder of Thomas G. Davis a couple of weeks ago in a railroad cut just below the city. The prisoner was recently discharged from the penitentiary here, after serving a term for highway robbery at Colfax. He was formerly of Linn county, Oregon, where he cut a man badly and is said to have served a term in Salem.

The evidence, while circumstantial, points to Cooper. Three persons identify him as one of the three men seen in the locality about the time of the murder. Charles Armstrong, arrested last week and now in jail charged with larceny, is supposed to have been an accomplice, as he answers closely the description of the third party seen at the mouth of the cut about 3:30 p. m., on the day the body was found.

Cooper was identified by Miss Syckler as the man running away from an unoccupied house about 500 yards north of the railroad cut while a down train was standing near where the body lay, the train having been stopped by Jesse McKenny, who found the body. He was also recognized by Mrs. Johnson who saw Cooper, Davis and another man enter the cut on the west. He was identified by Oakley Johnson, who met the prisoner about 4:20 p. m., coming up the railroad toward town, and has been picked out by another as a man seen to climb over the top of the cut at about the place Davis' body was found the same evening.

The prisoner admits that he was in that locality at the time stated, but says he was digging potatoes for a farmer near by. The examination will not occur for several days, time being desired to procure further evidence. A third party, believed to have knowledge of the affair, is now in jail on another charge and will be held as an accessory.

Later.—The house of Cooper was searched this evening and a pair of blood-stained pants found. His wife even before she was told what her husband was arrested for, told the officers that her husband was home drunk the night of the murder.