Sought Vindication to Spare Her Aged Mother.
For Dora McDonald, life had been lived when Guerin died. It mattered not after that whether she went to the gallows or to freedom. But for one reason she would not have cared a whit whether her case was fought before a jury or not. The one reason was vindication that her mother might be spared something of shame.
The vindication, however, was sought at a costly price—the price of a life and heart and love bared to a gaping world. It was an expensive effort to wash off the stain of an indictment.
At the trial Assistant State's Attorneys Edward S. Day and William H. Rittenhouse wrangled with their own witnesses and tried one after another to have them testify to things they never saw or heard.
They attacked Inspector John Wheeler, Officer J. G. S. Peterson, Thomas F. McFarland, Detective Wooldridge, Police Matron Elizabeth Belmont, Charles Freudenberg, an old soldier 60 years old, and threatened him with an indictment; Louis Jacobs, Lorenzo Blasi, Herman Hanson and Charles B. Williams.
All of those accused except Detective Wooldridge considered the fulminations of Attorneys Day and Rittenhouse a good joke. They regarded them as the vaporings of temporarily disordered intellects, minds that had become rattled by a case which was too big for them.
Owing, however, to the peculiar position in which he was placed as the officer who made the arrest, Wooldridge was forced to take cognizance of the matter.
Wooldridge denied the statements made against him and branded them as malicious lies manufactured out of whole cloth. He asked for a hearing before the Civil Service Board, which was granted to him after the trial was over.
It was fully shown at the investigation how Wooldridge had been treated in the matter, and the motive for his transfer; it was also shown that he knew no new facts, neither did he meet or know any witnesses except those who had testified to the Coroner and Grand Jury.
The motives for his transfer and the reports were fully uncovered and exposed.
Detective Wooldridge was exonerated by the entire Board of Civil Service Commissioners.
Day and Rittenhouse simply sewed up the case in criminations and recriminations.
Assistant State's Attorneys Day and Rittenhouse were outgeneraled, outclassed and whipped, and wanted to throw the blame for the acquittal of Dora McDonald on the Police Department and failed. They did everything but try the case.