The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin

by Henry M. Hunt

"And bear in mind, gentleman, that the men who had control of the lock, the Lake View men, were in the house—were in the Carlson cottage before Lorch. Schuettler enters the house, examines it and leaves it; Wing enters there, 'examines' it and leaves it, and then they send Lorch there, and they tell him to look about the cottage. Gentlemen, mark you, they tell him to look, and there right in the middle of the cottage, under some kind of furniture, they find a key. Now he tries to correct himself; he sees it is a most important matter; he tries to correct himself as to dates. Now then, gentlemen, there was a pot of paint in the house, and the paint is daubed on two or three inches thick. There is the paint; a whole pot of it right in the house. The pot of paint in the house of course accounts for the daubing on the floor; that is why it was put there.

"Then we have the trunk question; the key must be lost in order to account for the breaking open of the trunk. But, gentlemen, that trunk might easily have been broken open by simply throwing it down on the sidewalk, without any force at all, and it would have broken open of itself without being kicked open at all. But, gentlemen, for finding the key which fits the lock on the trunk, that, gentlemen, may account for the fact that the top of the trunk was broken off. Mr. Foster alluded to the confused way in which Officer Lorch fixes his dates as to the finding of the key, and to the fact that while Lorch could tell what he was doing on half a dozen days on both sides of May 25th, he could not tell what he was doing on May 25th. Now, as regards the paint upon this key. Just take a look at it, examine both sides of it, and you will see from the even edges of the paint that it was held by one end and the other dipped in. This side is rubbed off a little, you see, but it is evident it was dipped in. Dipped in, gentlemen. Well, did the police do it? I don't know, you don't know. But there is one circumstance that can not fail to strike you forcibly, namely, that the lid was evidently broken off from behind while the hasp and lock remain intact. This is evidence which in itself contradicts the theory of the State that the top of the trunk was torn off in order to get the body out of it. Gentlemen, this is an attempt to counterfeit the truth, but it is hard to counterfeit truth. God Almighty has so made it that it is hard to counterfeit it. You can not sink the truth. You can not cover it up. It is like a buoy in the water. It may be sunk under the surf ace for a short time, but when you come to stir the water by cross-examination, it will surely come to the surface again. It is hard to counterfeit the truth."

PERHAPS THE POLICE KILLED CRONIN.

"If Dr. Cronin was killed in there, in that cottage, and his body placed in the trunk, and if his murderers afterward painted that floor, they must have found that key there. They must have known that the key was lost; they must have been desirous of finding it, and if they had painted that floor, and the key was lying there, they must have found it. They would have looked pretty carefully for it and yet, lo and behold! there, right in the middle of the floor, it is found by Officer Lorch. But remember Schuettler had been there, Wing had been there, the whole Carlson family had been there, from the 21st to the 24th of May, three whole days before Lorch found it. Do you think that the Carlson family went around there and never touched any thing? I don't know; I hardly think you do. Now, right in the middle of the floor, under a washstand or some other piece of furniture, the key was found, and of all the men in the world to find it who should it be but an officer who had been a trunkmaker who found it. Lorch, whose business is trunkmaking, was the man who found it. He had worked in a trunk factory, and when he found the key, as he says, he worked for some time in order to get it to fit. Of course a carpenter might have found it, a molder might have found it, a stone mason might have found it; but of all the suspicious circumstances in the world, the most suspicious in connection with the finding of this key was the fact that it was found by a trunkmaker."

DID NOT TRACE THE WAGON.

Mr. Forrest alluded to the fact that nobody from the State had attempted to trace the wagon from the cottage, and insinuated that the reason that they had left this phase of the case alone was because the route of the wagon described by the witnesses for the State did not correspond with any rational idea of what the route would be of persons driving from the cottage to the place where the body was finally disposed of. Mr. Forrest alluded to the testimony of the expressman Mortensen, and referred sneeringly to his remarkable memory by which he was enabled to remember every article of furniture he hauled to the Carlson cottage from the Clark street flat, although there was nothing in the particular incident to distinguish it from others of its kind. Mortensen had been in the custody of the police, ever since the coroner's inquest, until he took the witness stand. He did not identify the trunk as the one he hauled, but said it was one just like it. He pretended to identify the other articles of furniture. It was plain he was drilled on this point, and, great God! if they drilled the witnesses on minor points, how did they know but they drilled them on more important things! He drew attention to the fact that neither of the Carlsons had said a word about seeing a trunk in the Carlson cottage at the coroner's inquest, but this was before the Clan-na-Gael had taken charge of this case, for when the trial came on, old Carlson was ready to swear that he had gone out expressly one night in April or March to see the trunk, and he peeped in through the window for that purpose, and then he sees the trunk and nothing else. This testimony came just before the mimic from Millbank prison came upon the stand and gave an exhibition of his powers of mimicry in a case in which a man was on trial for his life. "Well, did the judge in the English court say you were a dangerous man?" Mr. Clancy was asked, and he says, "Oh, yes, but it was only because I was a Fenian. That's all; and they tried to arrest me for being a Fenian, and I drew out my revolver and I deliberately tried to murder them (two policemen)." "That's nothing, gentlemen of the jury; this makes him a hero; this is one of the patriots who have been betrayed and sent behind British prison bars; this man who tried to murder two English policemen in the execution of their duty is one of the patriots of Irish patriots. So says your public prosecutor. Well, but the judge said he was a dangerous man, and he served out his fourteen years in Millbank prison. And now he comes here, having become a great mimic, a wonderful actor, and coolly and deliberately tries to mimic the life of poor Pat O'Sullivan away."

At this point, on the suggestion of Mr. Forrest, a recess was taken.

Before the jury retired, Juror Culver expressed a desire to take the map of Lake View introduced in evidence along with him. Mr. Forrest said he could have it, but Bailiff Santa interfered and said it could not be done without the sanction of the Court. Mr. Forrest turned to the judge and said as neither the State nor the defense had any objection to the jury having the map he thought it might be allowed. Judge McConnell said the jury could have the map but not at this particular time.

Mr. Forrest resumed his argument on the following day, Tuesday, speaking for five hours. He dwelt at length on the dry subject of blood corpuscles, and insisted that Drs. Belfield, Tolman and Haines had been mistaken in their testimony. The failure of the State to put in evidence the letter sent to the Carlsons from Hammond, Ind., informing them that the cottage was no longer needed by the murderous tenants, was due, so counsel argued, to the fact that it was afraid the defense would prove it was not in Martin Burke's handwriting. He argued at length, with the apparent purpose of convincing the jury, that it was a huge conspiracy planned to strangle his clients; that the witnesses for the State were hired perjurers, and that the lawyers were the tools of a body of men who were seeking to control an organization for political purposes, and concluded his third day's talk by telling with dramatic effect a story about the fate of a pleasure-seeker who innocently, in exploring the base of a huge cliff in Scotland, ran upon the cave of a band of smugglers. The man peered into the cave. The smugglers detected him, and believing he was a spy captured him and sentenced him to death. They tumbled him over the brow of the cliff, and his body was dashed to pieces on the jagged rocks below. A rope was used in the execution, and on this fact the lawyer laid especial stress, but just as he was rounding up his brightest and most luminous period, Judge Longenecker brought him to a dead halt by asking, in a matter-of-fact tone, what the authorities did to the man who cut the rope.

The appeal for the prisoners was closed on the following day (Wednesday, Dec. 11th,) when Mr. Forrest again spoke for five hours. He went over, in detail, the evidence relating to Dinan's horse, ridiculing the testimony of Mrs. Conklin and dwelling on the conversation between Coughlin and Dinan, to show that the former had given the correct version of it, and that therefore there was a presumption in favor of his innocence. There was no evidence that Coughlin had any motive for desiring Cronin's death, and the main testimony against him was that of thieves and keepers of disreputable resorts; nor was there any proof that Burke was connected with the crime. Concluding the most lengthy speech of the trial, Mr. Forrest said: