Police report trail goes cold on fiery mammoth departure

Jeslyn Lemke | Jul 21, 20110

Palouse artist Thad Froio poses next to the wooden mammoth he and fellow artists constructed in the spring time. Froio was upset to learn it had been burned to the ground the night of July 10 in an apparent act of arson.

The Palouse Police department has no further leads on who burned the wooden mammoth downtown July 10.

Chief Jerry Neumann said all his potential leads have gone cold and the case of who torched the 12-foot-tall wooden behemoth is still open.

Construction of the new Palouse Community Center is set to begin July 25 at the site where the mammoth burned.

The wooden structure was built this spring by Palouse artist Thad Froio. Located on the future site of the town’s community center, Froio had hoped to create a massive publicity event for the center by inviting people to a public burning of the mammoth.

However, the regional Department of Ecology learned of the plan and doused the plan with a phone call to Froio. The mammoth could not burn because some of its framework included treated or painted wood.

Neumann said he had several tips of people “near” the mammoth at the time it burned on Sunday night. Patrons at the beer garden of the Palouse Tavern were rumored to have been discussing “just burning” the mammoth, Neumann said.

Froio and other fellow artists spent almost a month building the structure from discarded lumber from the Palouse Tavern. The mammoth had life-size legs, a head and a trunk.

The DOE learned of the planned burn when a copy of a Gazette story on the mammoth was dropped off at the DOE office in Spokane. Froio was told he couldn’t burn processed lumber.

He had planned to disassemble the structure and build it in Idaho.