Q. Did you know before his death of the pocket in the breast of the shirt worn by him to Dubuque? A. No.
Q. Did you wash or prepare that shirt for him to wear on his trip to Dubuque? A. No. It was a heavy woollen undershirt, and the pocket was stitched inside of the breast of it.
Q. Will you recite the circumstances connected with the recovery of money from clothing worn by your father at the time of his death? A. (after some hesitation) When they told me that father was dead I felt very sick and bad; I did not know anything. Then father came to me. He had on a white shirt and black clothes and slippers. When I came to, I told Pat [her brother] I had seen father. I asked him (Pat) if he had brought back father's old clothes. He said, "No," and asked me why I wanted them. I told him father said to me he had sewed a roll of bills inside of his grey shirt, in a pocket made of a piece of my old red dress. I went to sleep, and father came to me again. When I awoke I told Pat he must go and get the clothes.
Q. While in these swoons did you hear the ordinary conversations or noises in the house about you? A. No.
Q. Did you see your father's body after it was placed in its coffin? A. No; I did not see him after he left the house to go to Dubuque.
Q. Have you an education? A. No.
Q. Can you read and write? A. Oh yes, I can read and write; but I've not been to school much.
Q. Are you willing to write out what you have told me of this strange affair? A. Why, I've told you all I know about it.
She was averse to writing or to signing a written statement. During the conversation she was quite emotional, and manifested much effort to suppress her feelings. She is a little more than medium size, of Irish parentage, of Catholic faith, and shows by her conversation that her education is limited.
Her brother, Pat Conley, corroborates all that she has recited. He is a sincere and substantial man, and has no theory upon which to account for the strange facts that have come to his knowledge. In his presence Coroner Hoffmann, in Dubuque, found the shirt with its pocket of red cloth stitched on the inside with long, straggling, and awkward stitches, just as a dim-sighted old man or an awkward boy might sew it there. The pocket was about 7 [seven] inches deep, and in the pocket of that dirty old shirt that had lain in Hoffmann's back room was a roll of bills amounting to 35 dollars. When the shirt was found with the pocket, as described by his sister after her swoon, and the money as told her by the old man after his death, Pat Conley seemed dazed and overcome by the mystery. Hoffmann says the girl, after her swoon, described exactly the burial suit, shirt, coat or robe, and satin slippers in which the body was prepared for burial. She even described minutely the slippers, which were of a new pattern that had not been in the market here, and which the girl could never have seen a sample of; and she had not seen, and never saw, the body of her father after it was placed in the coffin, and if she had seen it she could not have seen his feet "in the nice black satin slippers" which she described....