Other days
100 YEARS AGO Jan. 3, 1922
MOUNTAIN HOME — The safe in the local post office was blown Saturday night and $250 was stolen. The cracksmen used black powder and the sound of the explosion was heard for considerable distance. Dogs were sent for from Little Rock to trail the bandits.
50 YEARS AGO Jan. 3, 1972
■ A two-story apartment building under construction on Preston Drive … was destroyed by fire Sunday afternoon. The blaze was visible for miles. Marion (Bo) Fulmore, chief of the Baseline Volunteer Fire Department, said the fire began from an explosion at 4:30 p.m. on the first floor of the wood frame and brick veneer building. … He said the cause of the explosion and fire was unknown.
25 YEARS AGO Jan. 3, 1997
FAYETTEVILLE — A federal prisoner who escaped from the Washington County jail last year and his 69-year-old mother, who helped him, were sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court. Dennis Cordes, 48, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jimm Hendren to 51 months in prison to be followed by three years supervised release. … On July 8, 1996, Cordes climbed through a window that separates attorneys from their inmate clients in a visitors’ room at the jail. Cordes was awaiting sentencing on federal drug charges. Connie M. Lewis, an unlicensed private investigator who had been hired by Cordes’ family to aid in his defense, allegedly used a wrench to remove the windowpane during an unmonitored visit with Cordes. She has pleaded guilty. Cordes was captured July 15 sleeping in the back of a pickup 30 miles outside Tulsa. Authorities said that Cordes’ mother, Helen Wilkins, of Pineville, Mo., supplied vehicles used in the escape, acted as a driver and gave Cordes fake identification and a radio scanner to monitor police transmissions… At a later hearing Thursday, Hendren sentenced Helen Wilkins to 30 months in prison followed by three years supervised release and a fine of $4,000.
10 YEARS AGO Jan. 3, 2012
BEEBE —The estimated number of blackbirds that died on New Year’s Eve in Beebe rose to 400 on Monday, and authorities have no idea who set up the fireworks and aimed them at the birds’ roost. Police don’t know if the person was “a 14-year-old or a 70-year-old,” Beebe Police Chief Wayne Ballew said. For the second consecutive New Year’s Eve, hundreds of birds at the roost in a wooded area near the Windwood subdivision dropped dead in the White County town. Last year, up to 5,000 blackbirds died, many of them redwinged blackbirds. Authorities speculated last year that fireworks frightened the birds from their roost. Because blackbirds do not see well at night, they crashed into houses, cars, roads and other structures.