Mr. Warner soon found the pocket-book containing the bonds under the mattress of her bed, and after examining them sufficiently to identify them, he gave them to the constable. Mrs. Sanford was then taken to my office, and, as Mr. Trafton had arrived from Cleveland, we tried to have an interview with her relative to young Trafton's death. She was too crafty, however, and she pretended to go into hysterics whenever we began to question her.
Meantime, Morton and Barlow had accompanied her, and Morton offered to get her a lawyer to advise her. She was very grateful to him, and said he was her only friend. He soon brought in a lawyer well versed in defending criminals, and the whole party then went to the justice's courtroom. At the close of the examination, she was held to await the action of the Grand Jury, and, in default of two thousand dollars bail, she was sent to the county jail. She told Morton that her lawyer could not half lie, and that she should not pay him a cent. She stood up, when the justice's decision was announced, and made quite a speech; and the native cunning of the woman was never more clearly shown than in this plea, which was undoubtedly invented on the spur of the moment. She claimed that young Trafton had given her the bonds to support her child, whose father he was, and she spoke with so much vigor and cunning that many persons believed her statement to be true. Thus, without consultation or legal advice, she invented in a moment the strongest possible defense against the charge of larceny,—the charge of murder had not then been brought.
When she was removed to the jail, she gave Morton the keys to her rooms, telling him to take charge of everything there, and to find a purchaser for her furniture. He therefore informed two young men who were lodging there that Mrs. Sanford had been arrested, and that they must find other rooms, as he intended to sell out the furniture. After they had gone he cleaned up the house, packed Mrs. Sanford's trunks, and made everything look as well as possible. While she was awaiting trial, he visited her every day and gave her various delicacies to improve the prison fare. One day he pretended to have pawned his overcoat for five dollars, in order to get her some lemons, tea, and sugar. She was very much touched, and she gave him five dollars to get back his coat; but this action was due to a momentary impulse. She had plenty of money, and was able to get anything she wanted; but her desire to hold fast to her money was greater than her wish for good food. Indeed, she came near jeopardizing her cause by refusing to pay the lawyer she had engaged, but finally she gave him a retaining fee of fifty dollars.
She was very anxious to learn who were the detectives employed in working up the case, and she said that she believed Barlow had had something to do with her arrest. Morton agreed with her, and, as the papers had said that there were three engaged in the case, he suggested that perhaps the two men whom she had turned out of doors were also detectives. She never suspected either Ingham or Morton for a moment; and when Ingham called upon her in jail, she was delighted to see him. She tried to get bail from the two brothers, named Pratt, who had occupied one of her rooms, as one of them had been very intimate with her; but they were afraid of getting mixed up in her difficulties, and so refused to help her obtain bail. She also asked Ingham to swear to a number of falsehoods about her intimacy with Trafton, and when he refused to do so, for fear of being tried for perjury, she said that she could get "her Billy" to swear to anything. This "Billy" proved to be one William Simpson, a barkeeper, and her former paramour. He was tracked for some time by my detectives, but he suddenly disappeared, and was not seen again until her trial for larceny, when, just as she said, he was willing to swear to anything. He then disappeared again, but I did not take much interest in following him up, as I knew that he would not dare to repeat his perjury when the murder trial should take place. His testimony was to the effect that he had overheard a conversation between Mrs. Sanford and young Trafton, in which the latter acknowledged that he was the father of Mrs. Sanford's child, having been intimate with her in Buffalo about eighteen months before. The question of a support for the child was discussed between them, and Trafton said that he would give her fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars in bonds, to enable her to bring up his child in comfort. The witness also testified that Trafton and Mrs. Sanford were very intimate with each other, often occupying the same room together; that Mrs. Sanford often spoke of her former intimacy with him; and that he inferred from their conversation that Trafton had been the cause of her separation from her husband. This testimony was very skillfully manufactured and artistically developed, so as to make Trafton appear in the light of a libertine and profligate, and Mrs. Sanford as a confiding wife, led astray by the wiles of a treacherous man. In spite of the bad character and appearance of this fellow Simpson, his testimony had enough weight with some of the jury to cause a disagreement, and Mrs. Sanford was remanded to jail.
Mr. Robert S. Trafton was anxious to bring her to punishment, as he felt confident that she had caused the death of his son. The circumstances of the case caused considerable delay, and it was not until January 27, 1873, nearly a year after her arrest, that the trial on the charge of murder took place.
The testimony in this trial was highly interesting on many accounts. The County Physician, who had made the first post-mortem examination of the remains, and who had given congestion of the lungs as the cause of death, stated that he found the deceased lying dead in Mrs. Sanford's rooms, and that he took charge of the property found in his possession. He stated that he should have made a closer examination if he had not found the bonds and money; but he did not suspect foul play, and therefore made only a hasty investigation.
By the testimony of two or three witnesses it was shown that on the night of Trafton's death Mrs. Sanford went into two saloons about midnight, asking for "her Billy," meaning the man Simpson, by whose testimony she escaped conviction on the larceny charge, he being then living on her bounty. While looking for him she was very wild and excited, her clothes being disordered, and her watch-chain broken. To one witness she said that she wished Billy to come to her house to look at the "prettiest corpse she ever saw." One witness testified that she returned to his saloon about five or six o'clock in the morning, and induced him to go up to her rooms to look at the body; he did so, and found the body of a man lying in bed, partly covered up. She had a large roll of money and papers in her pocket-book.
A surgeon of the highest reputation in Cleveland was called, and gave his testimony in the most direct and convincing manner, like a man who knew perfectly well what he was talking about, and who was not guessing at any of the facts as stated by him. He declared that death resulted from the blow on the right side, aided by the violence on the throat and neck. There was very slight congestion of the brain and of the lungs, but he was positive that death was not the result of either of these; indeed, leaving out of consideration the marks of external violence, he said that he should not have been able to account for Mr. Trafton's death. At the conclusion of his re-direct examination he said that death could be caused by a heavy blow of the fist, followed by choking, and he would swear positively that Trafton's death was produced by violence. The testimony of this witness was corroborated by that of several other surgeons of high reputation, and then a sensation was created by the calling of John Ingham for the prosecution.
As Mrs. Sanford saw her well-beloved friend, Jack, take the stand and acknowledge himself to be one of Pinkerton's dreaded detectives, she broke down and cried bitterly. Ingham related the history of his connection with the affair, stating the different stories which Mrs. Sanford had told about Trafton's death, and also her fear of going in the room where he died. He then gave the inside history of his arrest for the alleged robbery of Adamson, showing that it had been planned in advance by me to induce Mrs. Sanford to give him her confidence. After her arrest for larceny, he had visited her in jail, and she had tried to get him to swear that he had heard Trafton promise to give her the bonds to support her child. When he objected, on the ground that he might be arrested for perjury, she had told him that "her Billy," meaning William Simpson, would swear to it anyhow.
The testimony of Mr. Warner relative to finding the bonds in Mrs. Sanford's possession was corroborated by that of the constable; they also repeated Mrs. Sanford's remark made during the search, before any charge of murder had even been suggested: "By the way you act, I should think you were looking for a murdered man."