A DRAMATIC SENSATION;
Apparently the Fall River Officers Are Lying
Unmerciful Ex-Governor
A Scene in the Borden Trial at New Bedford Which Shamed Even the Counsel
for the People
A Tattered Web of Alleged Testimony
New Bedford, Mass., June 9 - The fifth day of the trial of Lizzie BORDEN for her life, was marked by the most dramatic sensation in its record. The tattered web, which the legal spiders for the commonwealth have been weaving around her, had one of its strongest threads snapped, by a sudden and totally unexpected blow, that left it sagging at one side. The government's witnesses did not agree. One stuck to the outlined programme in his testimony and another followed him with a startling disclosure. The first witness was brought back and made to confirm his apparent insincerity. John FLEET, the assistant marshal of Fall River, was the witness. He is the man to whom Lizzie said when he spoke of the murdered woman on the day of the murder.
"She is not my mother; my mother died when I was a child," He is also the man who found the handleless hatchet, and did not think it amounted to anything, so put it back where he found it, and hid an innocent hatchet, because he thought it felt damp and had been cleaned.
To-day he was in the merciless and masterful grasp of Lizzie BORDEN'S laughing counsel, Ex-Governor ROBINSON, and was testifying about the hatchets. The governor, who seems never to miss the shadow of a point, or a chance to expose the weakness of a witness, made this officer tell over and over again all that he would tell about the hatchets. He spent nearly an hour at it. He rattled him and made him disparage his own testimony, but it seemed to the spectators that the most the wizard of a lawyer effected, was to show that the searching of the house by the police on the day of the murder, was a trifling, superficial and careless piece of work. Then he let Mr. FLEET go.
After this one of FLEET'S subordinates.While he was going over the man's work, and they were discussing the finding of the axes, bang came a startling piece of information. The handle of the handless hatchet had been found at the same time that the blade was found. The police had found it and said nothing about it in their previous testimony. The importance of this piece of news can scarcely be overestimated.
"Mr. FLEET not only took the blade, but the handle also."
That was simply the substance of MULLALLAY'S thunderbolt. It fell like a
bombshell between the counsel on both sides.
Ex-Governor ROBINSON simply gasped "Wha-a-a-t' The handle? Who found
it? FLEET. FLEET was there, was he? Where is it now?"
The feelings of the counsel for the commonwealth may be imagined. They sat
rigid in their chairs like statues. Governor ROBINSON ordered the witness to
stand where he was until FLEET could be found. He was to have no chance to tell
the marshal what he had been saying. District Attorney KNOWLTON, leader for
the government, felt the glare of the ex-governor's eyes.
"Where is the handle?" the governor asked.
"I don't know," said Mr. KNOWLTON.
After another pointed inquiry he said, with a voice unlike his own:
"I never heard of it before."
Marshal FLEET was brought in and the friends of Miss BORDEN had seen that
no one had spoken to him on the way. In one minute he showed that he did not
know what had taken place. He was asked to tell once again what he found in
the box where the handleless hatchet was, and he repeated his former story.
"Did you find anything else?" he was asked.
"No, sir."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
The significance of this testimony will be apparent, when it is known that
Miss BORDEN'S friends believe that it was sought to show, at least by inference,
that she burned up the handle of the hatchet. The theory of the commonwealth
is that she took the hatchet, after murdering her father, broke off the handle,
burned it, and then cleansed the blade, rubbed it in ashes and put it in a box
in the cellar.
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IS THIS A CONSPIRACY
An Off Day For the Prosecutor's of Lizzie BordenFLEET said that he went out to the barn after his first visit to the cellar
in the morning. The barn was open at the time. He saw Mr. MORSE in the yard.
Bridget SULLIVAN was in the house when he went in the second time. He went over
the house again. He went into Bridget SULLIVAN'S room and made a casual examination
of the dresses hanging there. Subsequently he went down stairs and into the
room which had been occupied by Mr. and Mrs. BORDEN.
"I examined the bed," continued FLEET.
"How did you examine it?"
"We looked at the top of the bed."
"You three men, making a careful examination, looked
at the top of the bed?"
"Yes."
"What did you find there, anything?"
"No, sir."
"No hatchet on the bed, was there?"
"No."
"What did you do then?"
"We looked under the bed."
Did you find a man there?"
Miss BORDEN smiled at the question.
"No."
In going about the house, FLEET said, he noticed that wherever there was
a lock the doors were locked.
"Did you consider it remarkable that the door of Miss
Lizzie's room was locked?"
"I did not."
"All the doors were securely provided with locks,
were they not?"
"Yes, sir."
FLEET said that the trio then went down into the cellar. They looked over
the cellar and examined the axes and hatchets a second time.
"The room in which the hatchets and axes were found
was pretty dusty."
"Was it ash dust?"
"Well, I don't know. There was dust there, though."
The witness was handed the hatchet with a claw head.
"When I saw that hatchet it was damp and looked as
if it had been washed. There was one red spot on it. I do not see the spot now."
"Was that spot blood?"
"I don't know."
"Was it paint?"
"I don't know what it was. On one of the hatchets
there was considerable dust."
The hatchet without a handle was then taken up. FLEET said it looked, when
he found it, as if it had been lying in the dust pile. In the handle was the
break. It was new.
"I will not say," said FLEET, "that there
was any dust on the breaks."
"Now yesterday you said there was dust there, and
to-day you say there was not. Now, you don't want either of those statements.
Now what do you want?"
"I want to say," said the witness calmly, "that
I don't know whether there was any dust on there or not."
FLEET said it was about 11:45 o'clock when he reached the BORDEN house on
the morning of the tragedy. A doctor was in his house just before he was summoned.
The doctor had taken out his watch and remarked that it was 11:35 o'clock. Several
minutes later FLEET had received the summons. It took him, he thought, about
five minutes to reach the BORDEN house.
Ex-Governor ROBINSON here called the attention of the witness to the testimony
which he gave at the inquest, when he said he had reached the house of the BORDENS
between 11:45 and 12 o'clock.
Captain Philip HARRINGTON, of the Fall River police, was the next witness. His attention, he said, had been called to the murder at about 12 o'clock on the day it happened. He hurried to the house. He saw both bodies and noticed that the blood about the bodies did not correspond. Some of it was quite dark, the rest was bright. When he looked at the body of Mr. BORDEN a drop of blood trickled from the head and down the side of the face. It was 12:15 o'clock when he reached the house. He met Lizzie in the house and talked with her.
"I asked her when she had seen her father last. She said he had been to the postoffice, and that when he came back she asked him if he had anything for her. He said he had not, and she said he had lain down on the sofa and she had gone out into the barn."
"I remained there twenty minutes, she said to me.
When she came in she said she found her father dead. I asked her if she had
seen anyone about at the time and she said she had not."
She told him of the man who had a quarrel with her father a few days before.
He wanted to know more about that man but she could tell him no more.
"I cautioned her," added the captain.
"How did you caution her?"
"I told her that in the mental condition in which
she was then she could not remember many of the details that might be of value
to the police in the search for the criminal. I told her that perhaps she could
talk more on the next day when there had been an opportunity for her to recover
her composure. I asked her what the motive might be for killing her father.
She said it could not have been robbery, because her father's watch and money
were on his person."
"She called attention to that, did she?"
"Yes."
"How was Miss BORDEN dressed?"
"She was dressed in a red and white striped
dress. The waist was plaid and the front was full and loose. It was cut in semi-train
or bell skirt. That's all."
I should think so," ejaculated three of the lawyers
at once.
Lizzie was very much amused at the description of her costume.
HARRINGTON said that when he was talking with her, Miss BORDEN'S eye was
even and steady.
"I asked her how she came to fix the time she had
been in the barn so accurately. I asked her if she could not have made some
mistake or if she might not have been out there half an hour or fifteen minutes.
She said that she was sure it was twenty minutes."
The witness told how he came across Dr. BOWEN as the latter was burning a
piece of paper with the name Emma on it in the BORDEN kitchen stove. HARRINGTON
said that he asked him what he was doing, and the doctor said the paper he was
burning did not amount to anything. As the doctor removed the cover of the stove
to put in the paper, HARRINGTON said he saw a roll of something in the stove.
He pulled it out. It proved to be a bundle of charred paper, twelve inches long
and two inches in diameter. He turned that over to Dr. DOLAN, the medical examiner.
HARRINGTON was one of those who tossed over the hay in the barn. He said that
before they touched the hay the atmosphere in the barn was stifling. After he
finished in the barn he returned to the house.
"In all your searching about the house," asked Dr. MOODY, "did
you find any weapon of any kind with any marks of blood on it?"
"I did not."
The policeman was asked by Mr. ROBINSON to describe again the costume that
he had described previously as having been worn by Miss BORDEN. He prefaced
the description by stating that the description was his own, and that no woman
had helped him to prepare it.
"Did you take the description or did some lady?" he was asked.
"No, sir, I did it myself. I wrote it from my recollection."
"Well, let's have it," said the lawyer, and all the spectators
leaned forward and began to smile.
"The dress," began the witness, "was a blouse waist with pink
stripes, large and small, alternating. Pink was the most prominent color. In
it was a large diamond shaped figure. Some of the stripes ran on the bias. There
was a stand-up collar. The waist was loosely spread in front. From the waist
to neck the dress was puffed. There were bright red ribbons over the hips. The
skirt was cut semi-train or bell shape."
The laughter had not subsided in the court room when the ex-governor asked:
"What business were you in before you went on the
police?'
"I was a painter."
"Before that?"
"In the book business.
"Were you ever in the dress-making business?"
asked the lawyer, amid general merriment.
It was some time before Lizzie BORDEN recovered her composure entirely. A
question or two more and the witness was through.
Captain Patrick H. DOHERTY of the Fall River police, was called. He said
that when he went around examining the BORDEN house, just after the murder,
he saw a bundle of hair on the bed in the room in which Mrs. BORDEN lay dead.
There were spots of blood on the pillow shams.
"When I first saw her," DOHERTY said, "she
was face downward upon the floor. Her hands were outstretched in front of her
head."
"How far was her head from the wall?"
"About six or seven inches."
"When I was down stairs I met Miss RUSSELL and Lizzie.
I said to Lizzie: ‘Miss BORDEN, where were you when this was done? She answered:
‘It must have been done while I was in the barn.'"
DOHERTY said he asked her if her father had a Portuguese working over on
the farm and she said he had not. She told him the names of the men on the farm
and said they would not hurt her father.
"What sort of a dress did Miss BORDEN wear that morning?'
"I think she had on a light blue dress. It had a small
figure in it. I don't remember the color of the figure."
DOHERTY said that it had been very hot in the barn that morning.
"You were not one of the policemen who pulled the
lock off Miss Lizzie's door, are you?" ex-Governor ROBINSON asked.
"No, sir," was the reply.
"You never saw Miss BORDEN with a pink wrapper on?"
"No, sir; I never did. The next morning Miss BORDEN
wore the same blue dress she wore on Thursday."
Michael MULLALAY, another Fall River policeman, was then called to the stand.
MULLALAY told of a conversation he had with Lizzie BORDEN. She told him that
among the things her father had on his person when killed were a silver watch
and chain, pocketbook with money in it and a gold ring.
"Did you find any trace of blood outside the house?"
asked Mr. MOODY.
"No, sir," the witness replied.
MULLALAY identified the hatchet without the handle. He said the break was
new when he saw it first, and that it looked different then from what it did
now.
Recess was taken at this point.
MULLALAY took the stand again after recess. In searching about the premises,
he said, in answer to a question, that he had seen no weapon with blood on it.
Some of the testimony given by MULLALAY a few minutes later took on a curious
interest. Ex-Governor ROBINSON was asking the witness about the hatchets found
in the cellar. He said there had been no dust on the hatchets when he saw them.
It was when the lawyer began to question him about the hatchet without a
handle that the interesting testimony came out. MULLALAY told his questioner
that something had been found in the cellar besides what had been enumerated.
It was nothing less than the missing part of the handle.
"Where was it found?" asked the surprised lawyer,
while everybody leaned forward anxiously.
"It was found in the box with the hatchet," was
the reply.
"Where is it now?" The question came quick and
sharp:
"I don't know, Assistant Marshal FLEET found it."
Ex-Governor ROBINSON turned to District Attorney KNOWLTON and asked: "Does
the government know anything of that missing part of the handle?"
"The government has no knowledge of it."
FLEET was recalled to the stand. In a few rapid questions he was asked about the finding of the handle. He said he had not found it, had not seen it, and did not know of anybody who had seen it or knew anything of it. There was an awkward pause for a moment and then he was excused.
Charles H. WILSON, a policeman in Fall River, was placed on the stand. He said that on the morning of the murder he had heard Lizzie BORDEN say that she had been out to the barn and later that she had been out there for twenty minutes. When they were searching the house he heard her say, too: "I wish this search was ended. I can't stand it any longer, I am sick."
Anna M. WHITE, the official stenographer of the Fall River court, testified that there had been a conversation between Mr. KNOWLTON and Miss BORDEN there. The defense objected until it could have an opportunity to discuss the propriety of permitting the matter to go before the jury. The court excused the witness until to-morrow when the question of admitting the matter will be argued.
George A. PETTY, of Fall River, took the place of Miss WHITE. He said he
had lived in the BORDEN house. On the morning of the murder he saw Bridget SULLIVAN
when she was preparing to clean the windows. It was after 11 o'clock when he
got to the BORDEN house. There was no crowd around the place then."
"What did you do?"
"I went right in the room where Mr. BORDEN was. Dr.
BOWEN had just covered him with a sheet. I then went up stairs and looked at
Mrs. BORDEN. She lay half way between the bed and the window. She lay on her
face, her head about eighteen inches from the wall. It was dark in the room
and I couldn't see very well. I got down on my knees by the body and put my
hand on the back of her head. Her hair was matted with dry blood. It felt very
rough under my hand. I had my hand right on the back of her head."
"Did you notice any of the blood about the floor?"
"Yes, I saw clots of it. They were hard and shining.
They looked to me as if they had been skimmed over before they had dried."
The defense didn't ask any questions.
Augustus P. GORMAN was called long enough to establish the fact that the police had been telephoned, and Mrs. CHURCHILL was recalled and asked about a dress she saw on Lizzie BORDEN on the morning of the tragedy. She said the dress was a faded blue in color.
At this point the jury was excused until 9 o'clock to-morrow morning. The question raised by the defense as to the propriety of admitting the evidence that Lizzie BORDEN gave at the inquest is a novel one. It is the first time that the point has been raised in this state. The argument on this point will be made to-morrow morning, and the court will render a decision on Monday morning. All the lawyers in the state are interested in the result.
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WAYLAID BY PUPILS
Amsterdam, N. Y., June 9 - A special from St. Johnsville, to the Morning Sentinel says:
Professor S. Reed BROWN, for several years principal of the high school in this village, is lying at his lodgings in a very much broken up condition. His nose is broken, his body bruised and his face frightfully disfigured. He was waylaid in his door yard last night by four of his former pupils and brutally assaulted. Arrests have been made but Mr. BROWN'S condition is so serious that he could not leave his room to attend a court examination to-night, and an adjournment to June 16th was taken.
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PURELY PERSONAL
-W. F. BALKAM is in the Adirondaks.
-Mr and Mrs. Joseph MICHAELS and their daughter started for Chicago to-day.
-Dr. and Mrs. R. H. HOFHEINZ sail to-day from New York, on the steamer Elbe, for Europe.
-Mr. and Mrs. John W. THOMASON, of Frankfort, N. Y., are visiting at A. MOSHER'S, No. 1 Stone place.
-Eugene McDONALD, formerly of Rochester, and now of Syracuse, was in Rochester yesterday visiting many old friends.
-Mrs. J. SANKEY and Miss May SANKEY of San Francisco, Cal., are visiting Mrs. M. YAUCH'S of No. 30 Oregon street.
-Mrs. Belle BALDWIN, of Wichita, Kansas, with her son is visiting her parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. O. MARSHALL, at No. 859 East Main street.
-Miss Jeannie DENIO, daughter of the late James F. DENIO and William H. KETCHUM were married last Wednesday evening by Rev. A. S. CRAPSEY.
-Hon. Hugh FRASER and wife, of San Francisco, Cala., have returned to this city on a visit and are stopping with relatives at No. 4 Sterling street.
-Mrs. Agnes KE?LER, of No. 27 North Clinton street, celebrated her 91st birthday yesterday, receiving the congratulations of a host of friends and relatives.
-Edward A. LOCKWOOD and Miss Anna M. DAILEY were married last Wednesday afternoon at 4 o'clock at the Episcopal residence of Bishop McQuaid by Rev. Father VAN NESS.
-Very Rev. Father BONAVENTURA, superior of the capuchin monastery at Yonkers and Rev. Father CAPISTRANO, of the Church of St. John the Baptist, New York, are guests of Rev. Fidelis OBERHOLZER, rector of the Church of the Holy Redeemer.
-Last evening at their charming home, No. 32 Tracy park, Mr. and Mrs. George W. BURLING delightfully entertained a number of their friends at a reception given in honor of the twelfth anniversary of their marriage. Mrs. BURLING is a daughter of C. D. CASTLE, of Seneca Point, Canandaigua Lake, and both her father and mother were honored guests at the reception.
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STOLE SHOES
For some time past a gang of boys has been stealing shoes from the shoe stores of the city, and especially from the store of S. V. LINES, on Main street. Yesterday afternoon Mr. LINES saw John CAHILL, a boy apparently about 15 years of age, run off with a pair of shoes that had been hanging in front of the store. He called Officer ALLEN, who chased the boy for several blocks, finally capturing him. CAHILL says he is 13 years old, but the police say is much older.
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