The importance of Lathem’s testimony lies in the fact that at the time he took Ruef with the shirt-box to Ford’s office, Ford had just received from the Relief corporation officials $50,000 in small currency, which made two large bundles, which were carried to Ford’s office by Abbott and himself and placed in Ford’s desk. This was at the noon hour. A little after one o’clock Ruef went to the Western Pacific Safety Deposit vaults where he then had a deposit box. The cubic contents of this box was not sufficient to accommodate those two bundles. Ruef at that time secured two additional boxes. The cubic contents of all three boxes together was just sufficient to nicely accommodate said two bundles.
The theory of the prosecution was that Ruef carried bribe money in box and package.
At the trial, Lathem stated that the story which he had told before the Grand Jury was not true.
From January 12, 1909, to June 20, 1909.
Earl Rogers showed himself particularly clever at goading. His ability in this line was shown to advantage also, at the trial of Clarence Darrow, charged with jury fixing at Los Angeles, whom Rogers defended. The Fresno Republican in comparing the two cases said, in its issue of July 12, 1912: “When Heney tilted, as prosecutor against Earl Rogers as an apologist for crime, he was the ‘wild man of Borneo,’ to the more staid and polished members of the San Francisco bar. But now that Fredericks and Ford, prosecutors of Los Angeles, lost their tempers under the goadings of this same Rogers in the Darrow case, nothing is said about the wild man of Borneo. Fredericks and Ford, unlike Heney, are recognized as the socially elect of the profession, but Heney in the wildest excitement of the Calhoun trials, never tried to throw an ink bottle at Rogers, as Ford tried to do the other day. Plainly, as a matter of social etiquette, it depends upon whose ox Rogers gores.”
See footnote [269].