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…