“This was a tempting offer, I must say, for a poor man to hear made, and I said, ‘Well, Henry, I will consider your proposition awhile and see you again later.’ Hardly had the words been uttered than he grabbed me with both hands, and at the same time spoke in a loud voice to the Marshal, who still remained near by, saying, ‘I’ll let Mack go in a minute, Marshal; I want to speak to him about a lady we knew in Denver.’ Then lowering his voice he continued, ‘Has Lizzie Borden got a lover? Can’t I allege that she has in my story to-morrow morning? I want something big to scoop this gang of newspaper fellows who are in the town.’ My reply to this was, ‘Great God, Henry, no.’ He talked on, saying, ‘Judging from what I heard to-day, somebody is in love with Lizzie.’ ‘No, sir,’ said I, ‘the utmost consideration is and has been shown to Miss Borden, and I never heard that she had a lover.’ The suggestion which Mr. Trickey made then was used in the great story which he bought some months afterward, and you can begin to see now, perhaps, why I was suspicious of the honesty of Mr. Trickey’s intentions. He continued, however, saying, ‘I know a great deal more about this case than the Fall River police, and right here I want to give you a straight tip, and you take it to Hilliard. It will give him a valuable clue to work on. If my friend Hanscom, on his return from the next interview with Lizzie Borden, is satisfied that she is guilty, he is going to pull up stakes and leave the town.’ This very statement, Mr. Trickey made again in the police office the next day in the presence of the Marshal and others. ‘So,‘ said Mr. Trickey, ‘if he leaves the town, you can jump Lizzie immediately.’ Then in parting from me, he said, ‘Don’t forget to consider my proposition, and connect with me to-morrow. Then I will square myself with you for the dirty deal I gave you in the Graves case.’ I would have smashed him in the nose right there, had not the Marshal been in hearing distance. I promised him to think the matter over and see him again. I walked up to the Marshal, and we
entered my room at the Wilbur House. Then and there I related what I have just told you, and also told of Mr. Trickey’s conduct in the Graves case. Went through it all from end to end. The Marshal said that he had overheard a part of the conversation, and that Mr. Trickey was up to just what he suspected. The Marshal said to me in the course of the talk, ‘Ned, if this man is what he represents himself to be, in connection with these people, you watch him, and look to me personally for help. Take plenty of time and use good judgment. Have everything in black and white.’ As I stated to you before, I had told him of my connection with the Graves case, and I suggested the advisability of my keeping in the background and under cover as much as possible, in the work before us. Dr. Graves was then under conviction of murder, and the Supreme Court had not passed upon his motion for a new trial. Until this was settled, I did not feel that I should be prominently mentioned in the Borden case, as there were many men, enemies to me, who would antagonize me at every step if they knew that I was a factor in the investigation. He told me to go ahead and follow these people to the end, and to spare no pains or expense to do the job well.
“Next morning I was given a great many anonymous letters which the Marshal had read, and in company with Inspector Medley, ran them down. That is, established a clue for work which was afterward carried out by Captains Harrington and Doherty. This was part of the work which I did for the police, and secrecy of it kept me in the background. I kept my eye on the movements of the people I have mentioned before, and at the end of the first month, made out my bill to the City of Fall River. It was allowed by the Board of Aldermen, but the Fall River Herald, in an alleged editorial, severely criticised the Marshal for allowing me to work on the case, and objected to me being paid for what I had done. I never rendered another bill to the City of Fall River, although I worked night and day for months. In view of the Herald’s criticism, I concluded not to bring the editor’s unjust ravings onto the heads of my friends, and so ever after that I paid my own expenses. I spent every cent of money I could rake and scrape to carry out the work assigned to me, until my family were all but destitute. I gave up all my time to this work, and stood still under the fierce and unjust thrusts of every editorial pen, with few exceptions, in New England. It made me a poor man, and eventually brought on an attack of nervous prostration, when I fell exhausted, penniless and perhaps friendless, in the streets of New York, and was carried into the Cosmopolitan
Hotel, where I lay among perfect strangers, while my wife and child fought alone the battle for life in Providence. Yes, I did this rather than have such learned men as the editor of the Fall River Herald spill his gall over the magnanimous sum of $106.00, which I claimed for work and expenses, while upholding in my humble way the dignity of, and straining every nerve to assist, the Fall River police. I took a solemn vow that no act of Ned McHenry should ever again compromise my friends Rufus B. Hilliard and His Honor John W. Coughlin. Therefore I plodded through in silence, and where is my reward? A few dollars for six months work of myself and wife, and half a dozen men whom I paid regularly. But I would not have you understand that I am complaining. Perhaps the City of Fall River will reimburse me when the end of the Borden murder case is reached. Now, in regard to all this bosh about my attempting to rob and defame newspaper men as a rule. I refer you to the Boston Post of October 11th, and there you will see how I saved a paper which has been friendly to me. You may ask the managing editor how I treated him and his men in this case, and I think it only fair that he give you an answer.”
At this point the writer asked Mr. McHenry if he furnished Mr. Trickey with a list of the witnesses for the government. He replied, “The only living evidence that I furnished Mr. Trickey with the names of living witnesses, is that I did tell him that I, my wife and Bridget Sullivan were witnesses for the prosecution, and that he knew before I told him. I defy contradiction of this statement.”
“Did you furnish him with that list of names which it is alleged that he showed the managing editor of the Globe, in order to convince him that the story which he had bought from you was true?” Mr. McHenry answered, “That list of names is in Mr. Trickey’s own handwriting, and if you or anybody else want further evidence of the truth of this statement, examine the affidavits of those persons who were present when he wrote the list, and which are now locked up in the Attorney-General’s office, Commonwealth Building, Boston.”
MRS. NELLIE MCHENRY.
“Who made these affidavits?” I asked, and he answered, “Several persons, but all of them were not summoned to the Grand Jury to testify. For instance, there are two Providence policemen, two Providence lawyers, two of my men, and Captain Desmond of Fall River, who know about this case, but were not called. All this documentary evidence against Mr. Trickey is in his own handwriting and laid away in the same place, and marked exhibit No. 1. I want to say here and now that Andrew J. Jennings has been clean and
free in this whole business. In justice to the man I do not believe that he did in any way give his sanction to the action of other friends of the accused woman. I say this through no fear of Mr. Jennings, but because he would not countenance any such actions as Trickey represented to have come from those friends. As to the story I furnished Mr. Trickey, he had the gist of it in his pocket three weeks before it was printed in the Globe. I gave him a skeleton of what the alleged witnesses would testify to, and he carried that around with him, I suppose. The Attorney-General has the affidavits of eight witnesses to this transaction, all of whom heard what was said at the time I gave him the story. In an editorial of the Globe of October 12th, this statement appears: ‘Reports are examined at short notice, and sometimes under great hurry and excitement, etc.’ Now, that was no excuse for printing the stuff I sold Mr. Trickey, for he had the skeleton of the story for three weeks at least, and if he had wanted it primarily for the Globe, there was no reason why he could not have examined it at his leisure. The editorial goes on to say the story was so well written and on the face of it appeared to be so plausible, that it was used without attempt at verification. Now, I never read stronger language than that, and I consider it a great compliment to me from the editor of the Boston Globe. After Mr. Trickey had made the proposition to buy the State’s case from me, I lay in bed that day and thought the matter over, and formed some idea of the story which I would give out. That night Trickey came down and he and I worked on the story, writing it out from the skeleton. He wrote and I dictated. We were at it until three o’clock in the morning. This was on Thursday before the Monday on which the story appeared in print. Mind you, I had not given the bogus witnesses names to him until that night. In the skeleton there appeared no names. But the separate statement of each witness was numbered, from 1 to 25, and it read something like this: Witness No. 1 will testify to so-and-so; Witness No. 2 will testify to so-and-so; and in this manner through the whole list. That night I told him who the witnesses were and he used their names instead of the numbers. After this was completed he showed me a draft made out by a certain gentleman payable to me in the sum of $5000. It was drawn on Andrew J. Jennings, and was in payment for the government’s