• • •
Immediately after the trial, reporters mobbed the jurors wanting to know how they could have arrived at such an unexpected verdict. It boiled down to one thing: According to the instructions given by Wood, the State had not produced sufficient corroboration for Orchard’s testimony. Like Wood and most of the press, many jurors believed Orchard’s testimony and that Haywood was guilty—but that did not mean such a verdict could be rendered.100
An original eight votes for acquittal had eventually risen to eleven. “I believed that he was guilty and I still believe he is guilty, and I want the world to know it,” Samuel Gilman, the last man to vote for acquittal, said afterward. “I simply acquiesced in the verdict of acquittal because I felt that I could not do otherwise after I found the entire 11 other jurors consenting to the verdict, but not because I was convinced that it was right.”101
That comment was echoed by George Powell, the eleventh juror to vote for acquittal. “The jurors all thought Haywood guilty,” he overstated, “but some of them said the state under the instructions had not made out a case against the prisoner. . . . I did not feel that it would be right to hang the jury when a majority was for acquittal.”102 Similarly, juror A. P. Burns told the press, “I was firmly convinced, when we left the courtroom, that the first ballot would show a vote for conviction. I still retain the belief that Haywood was guilty, and only changed my vote because it struck me that if the evidence presented left eight men unconvinced of the guilt of the defendant, it would be impossible to get 12 men in another trial, and that it would be better to settle the question by acquiescing in their decision.”103
Juror O. V. Sebern thought the verdict to be “a grave miscarriage of justice—and many of the jurors concurred in this opinion. There was little or no doubt of the guilt of the defendant, but . . . the final instructions of the presiding Judge to the jury were such that . . . the resulting verdict was the only one that could be rendered.”104
Is it possible that Wood’s instructions were the lone reason for acquittal? Although nine of the jurors mentioned their significance after the trial, this is unlikely. Gilman explained this difficulty: “I cannot point out any particular instruction that seemed to decide the boys on a verdict of not guilty. . . . I believe it was the instructions generally. They couldn’t seem to make head or tail of them, but were convinced that the general tone indicated that the defendant should be freed. Some of them seemed to think the instructions were very strong regarding corroborative testimony and some said that they could not be clear as to the reasonable doubt.”105
On the other hand, jurors Sam Russell and J. A. Robertson stated they had been swayed by Darrow’s remarkable closing speech, an intriguing contrast to Richardson, who condemned it as “rank. It was enough to hang any man regardless of his innocence or guilt.”106 Some, such as Russell, found Orchard’s testimony untrustworthy, although the majority accepted it as honest. And that fact, more than any other, shows what was truly the masterstroke of the defense—convincing Steve Adams to recant his confession, the act that William Pinkerton said “pulled the plug on the state’s case.”107 For, based on the statements of the jurors, had Adams testified in support of Orchard, there seems little doubt that Haywood would have been convicted.
Of course, there were numerous other theories thrown around to explain the prosecution’s failure. Davis of The New York Times heard afterward “that the jury had been bought.”108 Siringo wrote that the jurors were worried about their safety and that of their families due to threats made by a fellow juror employed by the WFM.109 And the labor supporters—well, they just crowed that Haywood was innocent.
Meanwhile, the normally loquacious McParland was notably silent. He had spent a year and a half of his life on a case that had once again thrust him back into the national spotlight, a position he clearly felt he deserved. And he had believed when he gained Adams’s confession that he would finally triumph totally over what had become his archenemy: the WFM. To see Haywood, whom McParland considered the worst of that bunch, walk free must have been devastatingly disappointing. For once the newspapers did not carry his crowing reports, as McParland steadfastly refused comment on the case. Instead he turned his eyes to the future and the trials of Adams, Moyer, and Pettibone, each of whom, he agreed with Hawley and Borah, could still be successfully prosecuted. Justice could still be his.
CHAPTER 24
FOUR TRIALS
While Orchard was on the stand in the second of week of June 1907, new Shoshone County sheriff William Bailey brought Adams to Boise, where he was put into the Ada County jail, directly below Judge Wood’s courtroom. McParland had hoped that hearing about Orchard’s testimony might convince Adams to follow suit, or that the defense might make the mistake of calling him to impeach Orchard, in which case Adams’s confession could be introduced.1 But Richardson and Darrow were having none of this ploy. So there Adams remained, until Bailey took him back to Wallace two days after the verdict to again stand trial for the murder of Fred Tyler.2
Meanwhile, in the mountains of southwest Colorado, another alleged murder victim made the news when Bulkeley Wells led a party to where Adams had previously carried out the search for William Barney’s body. A dozen men digging found the bones of a man approximately Barney’s size. The Daily Journal of Telluride—a staunch supporter of the mine owners—promptly proclaimed them Barney’s bones and pointed the finger at St. John.3 Though a local dentist could not confirm that the remains were Barney’s, the claim received wide coverage.4
The approaching trial of Adams took on even greater significance in light of these events. Not only might a conviction persuade Adams to rejoin the prosecution for the trial of Pettibone for Steunenberg’s murder, it could mean he would testify against St. John for Barney’s murder.
Hot on the heels of the news from Colorado, McParland received the distressing report that Robert A. Pinkerton had died on August 12 on the steamer Bremen. Pinkerton had been crossing the Atlantic en route to Bad Nauheim, Germany, where he had hoped to receive treatment for the heart problem that resulted in his death.5 He was succeeded as the principal in New York by his son Allan, who had been the agency’s assistant general manager.
On September 23, about a month before Adams’s second trial was scheduled, Borah’s trial for land fraud got under way. As the government blew through forty witnesses, Hawley, representing Borah, cross-examined only two, while letting it be known that he considered the charges ridiculous. When the time came for the defense to make its case, Borah was the only witness called. He proved that he had never had a financial stake in the Barber Lumber Company, was retained solely as an attorney on a fixed salary, had no knowledge of any fraudulent activities, and had no responsibility for actions taken by the leadership of the company. On cross-examination, the prosecution could not discredit him in any way, and immediately thereafter, Hawley rested the defense’s case. The judge needed more time to prepare his instructions to the jury than they did to reach a conclusion. After only fourteen minutes, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.6
Meanwhile, on many newspapers’ front pages, next to the account about the Borah trial, was a grisly story. On September 30, when ex-sheriff Harvey Brown opened the gate to his house a dynamite bomb, similar to that which killed Steunenberg, exploded, shredding Brown’s left arm and leg, burning his face excruciatingly, and mortally wounding him. It was immediately suspected that the attack was both in retaliation for his arrest of Adams and a warning to those thinking of testifying in the upcoming trial.7 As a response, some prosecution witnesses soon disappeared—including a man named Archie Phillips, who reported that “he found a bag containing ten pounds of dynamite back of his house” before making tracks for British Columbia, and one William Chandler, who “fled to Butte, Mont, fearing that he will meet with foul play should he testify.”8
• • •
As the days grew shorter in October, some not-so-friendl
y rivals descended upon Rathdrum in Kootenai County—a town of seven hundred inhabitants about sixty-five miles west-northwest of Wallace. Nestled in a primarily agricultural area, Rathdrum had been selected as a change of venue because the prosecution hoped a jury consisting of farmers and lumbermen would give them a better chance of conviction than one in a mining center like Wallace. Jury selection began on October 25, with Henry Knight and Shoshone County prosecutor Walter Hanson leading the prosecution and Charles Heitman—who was originally from North Carolina but had practiced law in Rathdrum for nearly two decades—the defense, because Richardson had decided never to work with Darrow again. A few days later the heavyweights—Darrow and Hawley—arrived.9
In constant agony due to a virulent case of mastoiditis—an infection of the mastoid bone of the skull, located just behind the ear—Darrow had been told by specialists that he was risking his life by going to Rathdrum, where there was no hospital.10 However, Darrow felt compelled to go, as “Adams had turned his back on the State largely through his confidence in me. I had told him I would try his case; it was set, and I could not leave him.”11
Once again, jury selection proved extremely lengthy, so it was not until the afternoon of November 5 that the prosecution made its opening address. For several days the testimony plodded along, until Chris Thiele mentioned Adams’s confession. Darrow objected on the grounds that it had been obtained by threats and promises of immunity. Excluding the jury, Judge W. W. Woods (not to be confused with Judge Fremont Wood in Boise) allowed Darrow to examine McParland, in order to determine if the confession was admissible. The detective acknowledged that he had told Adams: “[H]e owed to himself and the community to expose the crimes that he had been implicated in, and who instigated him to commit them. I told him that he was simply a tool for other parties . . . and told him that there was such a thing as even a man that had committed the crimes that he had committed, that he might become penitent and would be forgiven his sins.”
“Forgiven his sins?” Darrow asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Did you tell him by whom?”
“By God, of course.”
“You did not tell him by you? . . .”
“I haven’t the power of absolution.”
“We thought you had.”12
As the interchange continued, Darrow elicited that McParland had told Adams the story from the Bible of David and Uriah—how “David never thought he had committed a crime until his attention was called to it by the prophet Nathan. . . . David became a penitent and wrote the Penitential Psalms, confessed his crime.”
“You did not tell him he got hung by the neck until dead for killing Uriah?”
“No, I have never read any record of that.”13
To some it seemed that Darrow won the confrontation, yet that afternoon Woods ruled that Adams’s confession was admissible. Late the next day McParland was back on the stand to read the confession into the record and testify as to how he had obtained it. The following morning, Darrow and the detective continued their wrestling match. Early on, Darrow pressed McParland about his methods for obtaining confessions:
Q: Can you tell about how many confessions you have obtained in your business?
A: I could not.
Q: Went up into the hundreds?
A: I dont hardly think so.
Q: Ever fail to get one when you went after it?
A: Not if the party was guilty, I never failed that I know of.
Q: Ever fail when they were innocent?
A: Invariably.
Q: You have failed, then, when you have tried to get it? . . .
A: Yes, when I tried to get a confession from an innocent man.
Q: You have tried that?
A: I have, considered that he was guilty until I talked to him. . . .
Q: And you say you never failed to get one from a guilty man?
A: Never.
Q: And the fact that a man gave you a confession was proof to you that he was guilty?
A: Very conclusive proof.14
As Darrow hammered at the detective about his background, his time with the Molly Maguires, and how his involvement with the Steunenberg case began, McParland made several errors of fact in his answers. He said he was born in 1839 (five years too early), that he came to the United States in 1857 (ten years too early), that he joined Pinkerton’s in 1869 (three years too early), and that he became involved in the Steunenberg murder in 1896 (ten years too early).15 Were the mistakes caused by a failing memory? Were they a form of bragging, by making it look like he “had been around”? Was he having a subconscious laugh at Darrow by not telling the truth? Any of these seem possible—but what is certain is that no one picked up on the errors other than the date he claimed to have become involved in the Steunenberg case.
Darrow then returned to how McParland obtained Adams’s confession. He drew out the story of the detective speaking of Kelly the Bum, little Jimmy Kerrigan, and “Patsy” Butler, all of whom turned state’s evidence.16 Darrow tried to catch McParland on conflicting comments between his testimony in the current trial and the previous Adams trial, and then he suddenly shifted back to the confession. In a mocking manner he asked McParland about his stories of David and St. Paul. “You told him David was a murderer and Paul was a murderer?”
A: No question about that.
Q: And David had become a man after God’s own heart, in spite of that?
A: He had done penance, yes.
Q: Paul had become a mighty man in the Christian Faith?
A: Yes, sir. . . .
Q: Did you have any purpose in it? . . .
A: I had the purpose to show that his soul might be saved. . . .
Q: And did you have any purpose in relating to him about “Kelly the Bum,” and telling him the State always treated its witnesses fairly, if they treated it fairly?
A: Certainly; that was stated for the purpose of leading him up to a confession.17
Darrow spent most of the morning grilling McParland in a fashion so sneeringly unpleasant that Hawley frequently objected, finally exclaiming that such tactics would simply not be tolerated. “Do you mean to say that my life is in danger?” shouted Darrow in a display of histrionics. Before tempers escalated further, the judge interrupted and forced the two to settle down.18 At the lunch break, Darrow left for Spokane to see an ear specialist,19 having asked to recall McParland upon his return, and in the meantime leaving his associates to continue.
Late on the morning of November 14, McParland again took the stand, but it was not until midafternoon that he made one of his most telling statements—although neither the defense nor the prosecution realized it. On redirect examination, inquiring about his investigations when he first met Adams, Hawley asked: “State whether or not you were investigating affairs in northern Idaho, or the killing of Tyler and Bouley?”
“I never heard of them until Adams told me about it,” McParland responded.
“I was about to ask you whether you knew about Tyler and Bouley, or knew anything about these men prior to that time?”
“I never did,” assured McParland.
Moments later, on re–cross-examination, Darrow returned to the topic: “Do you swear that Harry Orchard told you nothing about any killing of claim jumpers up on the St. Joe River in north Idaho?”
“He didnt tell me of any claim jumpers in Idaho.”20
And thus, as he had many years before, McParland perjured himself on the stand about a key aspect of his knowledge of a relevant crime. On January 27, 1906—the first day of his confession—Orchard had told McParland how Adams, Mason, and Glover had killed Tyler.21 It is clear from the transcript of the confession that this—and Orchard subsequently tying him to other crimes—is what made Adams a figure of interest. This was such a fundamental part of the sequence of events that it is impossible it could have been a m
istake or have slipped McParland’s mind.
McParland had also lied about his own background in his testimony the previous day, when he told Darrow that he had spent thirteen years at sea before coming to the United States.22 This draws into question the inaccurate dates he gave during that same exchange, and suggests that they were not mistakes, but more intentional lies. These falsehoods from the previous day are truly unfathomable. One can comprehend McParland lying about the material in Orchard’s confession because it made a stronger case for the prosecution—a case he had worked on for a year and a half—and because McParland’s ethics, even under oath, seem to have allowed this as they evolved over many years spent trying “to do good by doing bad—preventing crime or apprehending criminals by resorting to lies, deceit, trickery.”23 This lie about Orchard’s confession fits this category perfectly: The end justifies the means.
But the statements about his past were simply gratuitous falsehoods under oath that accomplished no known purpose—making them inexplicable. Was Darrow right? Had McParland lived with lies so long that he could not distinguish them from the truth? Had he become so influential a figure in his own circle—and his own mind—that he felt he could do as he pleased, say as he pleased, and truth be damned? Or was he simply willing to do anything, say anything, to “win”? That these are even possibilities leaves a large question mark over the rest of his testimony and many of his actions at this stage of his career.
• • •
After McParland’s testimony, the State rested. For the next week the defense presented alibis for Adams, and then called the defendant to the stand, where he remained two days, being “subjected to a most rigid cross-examination” by Hawley.24 Then, after Annie Adams testified, the defense rested. The prosecution and defense had agreed that the closing arguments would be limited to a total of seven hours per side, and when these were completed on the evening of November 23, Judge Woods gave the jury their instructions, which were considered to be “in favor of the State in that it is stated, should it be shown that special inducements had been offered Adams by Detective McParland of the Pinkertons, they must be disregarded and a verdict of guilty found. But not unless some worldly promise had been given Adams should the jury regard the plea of the defense that Adams has been influenced. The judge further instructed the jury that if the confession as to the killing of Tyler had been made as incidental to the Steunenberg confession, the verdict should be accordingly found for conviction.”25
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