“Has he any relatives except his mother and brother?”
“Yes, he has four sisters.”
About this time Joseph Herriges, nearly dead with fright, returned with the police force, and expressed great gratification at the presence of the reporters, in order that they might tell his part of the story, and thus have reliable facts to give to the public instead of a pack of lies told by the neighbors. He said:
“John, when a boy, was very intellectual, and I had resolved to give him a good education, so I got him into the public school, also into a night school, and had him taught penmanship as well as cigar-making.
“Once when he attended a lecture he fell as he came down stairs, and struck his head such a violent blow that he never was the same boy afterwards, but gradually lost his mind. That has been about twelve years ago.”
It will be noticed here that the woman had previously stated eighteen years. This was the first discrepancy. Herriges continued:
“I took him to the almshouse, where he was under Dr. Robert Smith’s care for a month. Then his mother and his sister here visited every day.” [Here Herriges pointed to the woman who had positively said she was only a neighbor.] “At last, to please mother, I brought him home and called in Doctor Gardner, who said, after a long attendance, that he could do him no good. I have devoted my life to that boy, and washed him every day, and attended to his wants whenever I attended to my own, and combed and fed him.”
“Then how is it that his hair and beard have become just like felted cloth with filth, and how is it that he is covered from head to foot with vermin?”
“What! how!” exclaimed Herriges with a decidedly mixed expression on his countenance. “Was there vermin? Well I don’t know how he got them. I never saw any that’s certain.”
“Was he so very violent that you kept him locked up in this cage?”