“Captain Schaack sent a couple of men to me yesterday to find out if we could get this man again. I took them over to where I had found him previously. His employer told me that after he got away from me on the 6th of this month [May] he came back and finished the day’s work, and he had not shown up from that time to this. His tools were there, and he did not call for his money. His sister had called for the money several days after he quit, but he did not give it to her.”
“He had a good job, didn’t he?”
“He was a machinist, working at a turning-lathe.”
Schnaubelt was described as having sandy whiskers, about six feet tall, weighing about 190 pounds, large and bony, not very fleshy, and about twenty-four years of age.
Lieut. John Shea, then in charge of the Central Station, testified to the same facts and that the police had been unable to find the man in the city.
At the time there were no strong circumstances connecting Schnaubelt with the massacre, but suspicious evidence ought to have held him in custody for a day or two until all his antecedents could have been inquired into. His release was a sad mistake, and the fact that he hastened out of the city shows the fear he had of being directly connected with the throwing of the bomb. The evidence of various parties points to him as the guilty party, and it was fortunate for him that he escaped.
C. M. Hardy, a leading attorney of Chicago, testified to a conversation which he had had with Spies the day before the Haymarket tragedy.
During this conversation, which occurred accidentally in a restaurant, “Spies,” to use the words of the witness, “turned and said to me laughingly, ‘Are you with us?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘If you mean that I am in favor of the laborer getting well paid for his labor, I am with you, but no further than that.’ ‘Well,’ he said, still laughing, ‘you had better be, for we are going to raise h——l,’ and then went on.”
On the 28th of May the grand jury concluded its labors and returned into court fifteen indictments for murder, conspiracy and riot, against Spies, Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Lingg, Fielden, Schwab, Neebe, Schnaubelt and some lesser lights in the Anarchistic circle.
The trial began on the 19th of June. No case ever brought before the Chicago courts excited so much interest or brought out a greater crowd. Not one tithe of the throng of people who were eager to see the notorious defendants were able to find place in the court-room.