Packed Courtroom.
With the courtroom packed to the doors and several hundred men and women struggling to gain admission, the actual trial of Mrs. Dora McDonald, widow of Mike McDonald, commenced. Assistant State's Attorney Edward S. Day made an opening statement of the case. Trembling and his eyes flashing, he pointed a finger at Mrs. Dora McDonald and in a ringing voice denounced her as the murderess of Guerin.
"Dora McDonald became acquainted with Guerin, who was about 14 years old. His parents lived a short distance from the McDonald home.
"A friendship between Mrs. McDonald and the boy began, which his mother and other relatives later tried to end. Three years later the McDonalds removed to the Drexel boulevard home, but the intimacy of Webster Guerin and Mrs. McDonald continued.
"At any event, as time passed on, dealing meantime gently with the woman and developing Web into a young man of more than six feet in height, the two were seen frequently together. Relatives of both testified that the two kissed each other; that at times Mrs. McDonald grew jealous, in all apparent intent, over him; that she wrote poems and set them to music to show what seemed to be the very depths of a despairing heart.
"The woman was insanely jealous over him." "He had wandered out from her love into the light of other women's eyes. Driven to distraction by the thought that the boy she had taught to love had grown up to love another, she murdered him."
"No," said the defense. "This woman was the victim of blackmail. First she had been hounded until she gave way to the big youth, and then she had paid him money from her hoard in the hope that she might free herself of him."
Testimony on the blackmail point was clouded by the maze of recrimination, but the State could not deny that Mrs. McDonald had on several occasions given the young man money with which to leave the city, but that each time he had returned "broke" within a few days.
Mr. Day's denunciation of Mrs. Dora McDonald was bitter, but the defendant appeared to take no notice of what the lawyer was saying.