248

THE SHEEDY TRIAL.

(Continued from first page.)

the porch just after firing that shot, and very strangely both Mr. and Mrs. Hosman testified that after firing the shot the man whom they identified as a white man fell down at the corner of the porch. He claimed the utter fallacy of their positive assertion that the man was white by quoting the assertion of Mr. HOs man to the effect that when the man fell down, although it was late at night and the fugitive was thirty feet away in the darkness, the witness could see that he wore three or four days' growth of beard. He said that it was very likely that the supposed growth of heard was none other than Monday McFarland's swarthy complexion, else how did Monday McFarland long are it was known that Mr. and Mrs. Hosman would testify in the case at all, know that the man who fired that shot fell down at the corner of the porch, or any of the other facts as related by him and afterwards proven?

Of the two boys who had told of seeing two white men run south on twelfth street after the shooting, he called the attention of the jury to their hand-dog looks and behavior, and after calling attention to some discrepancies in their testimony dismissed them with a wave of his hand. He reverted to the fact that four of the six physicians had testified that Sheedy's death was due to morphine poisoning and not to the blow although they had to admit thereby that their first opinions in the case, prior to the autopsy, was in error.

In closing he said that it would have been simply impossible for anyone to have made the assault on John Sheedy as it was committed unless he had a confederate inside the house to signal him when Mr. Sheedy was coming out, just as Monday McFarland claimed Mrs. Sheedy signalled to him by raising the window blind. The plot will show that the north end of the house is but about twelve feet from the sidewalk. The testimony shows that Mr. and Mrs. Sheedy were sitting in the north room near the north windows, the curtains of which were up. The east window, opening out of the next room to the south, could afford no view of them. It would have been impossible for an intending assassin to watch their movements through the north windows, and he would have certainly been detected by the people passing along that much traveled street. It was too light upon the porch for an assassin to have escaped observation had he chosen to crouch there while waiting for his victim to come out. Any loiterer about the porch or front windows would certainly have attracted attention. But back about thirty feet or more from the fence, directly on the east side of the house, was an arbor, behind which the assassin must have secreted himself, just as Monday McFarland says in his confession she did, when he stepped upon the porch and struck that blow with the case. And what does Mrs. Sheedy say in her testimony before the coroner? The east window that opens upon the porch opens out of the sitting room, which is just south of the parlor. To get to the kitchen from the parlor one passes through the sitting room. Mrs. Sheedy says that she helped John on with his overcoat add hat and then started for the kitchen. Then it was that she raised the window curtain in the sitting room to let Monday McFarland know that her husband was coming.

Judge Weir's Effort.

The next speaker was Ex. Chief of Justice Weir, of Boise City, Idaho, who had come all that distance at the instances of his friend, Colonel Biggerstaff, Mrs. Sheedy's uncle, to assist in the defense of the unfortunate woman.

The judge began by commending the chief counsel for the defense for the honest and faithful work they had done for the prisoners. He complimented the jury for the careful attention they had given to the evidence, and finally complimented the state's attorneys for the manner in which they had conducted the case. Incidentally he paid a fine tribute to Judge Field and the various officers of the court for the impartial manner in which all things had been conducted.

He then discussed the two principal propositions of law involved in the case. The first principle, one upon which counsel would all agree, was that the law presumes the defendants innocent until they have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; not a doubt that might be conjured up, but a doubt that is reasonable. He quoted many principles and maxims of the law designed to serve as a shield for the accused and thoroughly fixed in the minds of the jurors the duty of considering the accused innocent until convinced of their guilt. After discussing these principles he attacked the theory advanced by the state as to the motive of the crime. He said that state endeavored to show that John Sheedy and his wife lived in great discord, and that the latter was therefore anxious to get rid of her husband; that to that end the state had shown that on one occasion she had said she had wanted to get a divorce. This was the strongest evidence shown by the prosecution on that pojat; that up to July last she was afflicted with a disease peculiar to women; that she was solicited to go east and put herself under the treatment of skilled physicians; that she did go, accompanied by her husband who left her there; that while there she met and fell in love with a young man named Walstrom, and that she procured him to come to Lincoln. And the theory of the state was that it was because of her love for Walstrom that she was led to imbrue her hands in the look of her kind and affectionate husband. He said that the state had failed to bring any evidence, except a few isolated facts, in support of their theory, and all in the nature of circumstantial evidence. He explained at great length the distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence, and urged the necessity of the establishment of a continuous chain of circumstantial evidence in order to convict, from which there must be missing not a single link.

He then discussed Sheedy's life as a king among the gamblers of this city; and told of the troubles he had had with other gamblers and the enemies he had made, and claimed that the most reasonable theory of the crime was that he was killed with by or at the instances of some of these jealous enemies. He quoted the threatening letter received only a few days before Sheedy's death. He said that it was not until some days after the tragedy that some circumstance fastened suspicious upon McFarland and at once the policemen and detectives saw a chance offered by this tragedy to make money. He dwelt a length in criticism of the methods adopted by the officers is extorting the alleged confession from Monday, and said that although God, in His inscrutable wisdom, he made him black, he was a human being, endowed with a human soul, and was entitled to the protection of the law, which was in this instance denied him. He urged at length the incompetency of the alleged confession because it was obtained by threats, violence and promises of immunity. If the jury was of the opinion, from the evidence, that the confession was obtained by threats or promises, then the court would instruct them, they must exclude it from their consideration. To prove that it was so obtained he referred to the fact that Marshal Melich at the very time of making the arrest, had made the first promise of immunity. He said: "If you make these disclosures it will be easier for you." He referred rather less courteously for Detective Malone, who, he said, seemed to be the centre of the prosecution and was called upon for testimony whenever testimony was needed, and related the testimony of W. C. Carder to the effect that Malone had endeavored to make Monday believe that a mob was being organized outside of the jail to hang him, and that as soon as it reached a hundred it would come for him. Actuated by the fear thus engendered Monday had made the alleged confession. That was early Sunday morning. Later in the day this poor creature, feeling that he was deserted and that his life was in danger was brought before the mayor and the marshal and Denis Sheedy, with a short hand reporter behind the curtain, and there, still laboring under his violent sense of fear, had related the story introduced in the testimony. The speaker also referred to the repetition of the confession before the coroner's jury as having been similarly obtained by threats and promises, all having been practically a part of the same transaction. He contended that there was testimony to show that Monday was sworn when he recited the confession, and said that if the jury so found from the preponderance of testimony, that confession should not be considered by them. He then cautioned the jury not to place to high an estimate on the testimony of detectives, as they were hired to make evidence and were not over scrupulous as to how they did it. He especially contended that this confession whether true or false, could not be considered as evidence against Mrs. Sheedy. "But," said the judge, "it is not true; it is against human nature; it is preposterous, and should be spurned with contempt from the consideration of every upright, honest, unprejudiced and impartial man." The theory of the state is that Mrs. Sheedy, in connection with the negro, murdered her husband; that while he was lying upon his bed languishing and dying from the effects of that blow, she was so lost to the sentiments of humanity that she mixed the fatal dose of coffee and unknown to the physician in charge, administered it to her husband. He dwelt upon the probability of such a theory because of its repugnance to the idea of widely affection. Then followed the autopsy and the analysis of the contents of the stomach in which no poison was found. Then they brought a chemist from Chicago, took up the body again, submitted other portions of the body to an analysis, in their zeal to fasten the crime upon the wife, yet all the appliances of science had failed to reveal the presence of morphine poisoning or any other poisoning. He thought that at this point the prosecution would have paused to reflect up on the persecution of this woman and that Dennis Sheedy, who appeared to be furnishing the means therefor, would have foregone further prosecution, and in a burst of eloquence denounced the course of Dennis Sheedy as a malignant effort to persecute and destroy the beloved and innocent wife of his dead brother. He denounced the inference that there was any criminality in the acquaintance with Walstrom, and contended that the state had wonderfully magnified her little attentions to him into a crime in order to show that she had a motive to murder her husband, and had committed the unnatural crime of adultery with the negro to secure that end. It was a preposterous theory and yet it was the theory upon which the state would ask the jury to convict this woman of the awful crime of murder, a crime punishable by death.

"Can you in view of these few and isolated and innocent expressions of friendliness," asked the judge, "can you put the brand of infamy upon her? Can you because of them fasten the awful crime of murder upon this ill-used and persecuted woman?

He denounced the prosecution as the result of the love of money, the root of all evil, and said that he did not believe that jurors could not be utilized as factors in the perpetration of such persecution. "Down there in the little home," said Judge Wier, "it was not majestic in its appointments, it is true, but it was a home in which this loving husband and this loving wife had spent many happy years together."

The speaker drew a sentimental and eloquent picture of the relations of husband and wife, referring to the testimony that showed Mr. and Mrs. Sheedy sitting side by side in the cheerful parlor just before the assault, and that showing her beside his bed the next day calling upon him to speak to her, and said that history of criminal jurisprudence told of no case that would equal this if she were guilty.

Judge Weir's talk lasted about two and one half hours and was one of the ablest ever delivered in this county. During the pathetic recitals of happy home life experienced by Mr. and Mrs. Sheedy, she burst into tears and her frame shook with paroxysms of grief. The effect was contagious and there were many tear-bedimmed eyes in the house when concluded.

Colonel Woodward's Argument.

Colonel W. H. Woodward, one of the attorneys appointed to defend Monday McFarland, was especially happy in his eloquent remarks, and not only made friends for himself as the able lawyer and advocate that he is, but made friends for his client as well. He began by announcing that he expected to show that this prosecution was the result of a conspiracy as blacks as hell itself. he was not so lenient with the state's attorneys as Judge Weir had been and charged that in the opening of the case they had resorted to practices fare more damnable than any that had been unearthed beneath the bright canopy of heaven. Money, he declared, was the moving power in all this work. Mrs. Sheedy was a woman without issue and by the law was entitled to one-half of her husband's fortune. But if she was convicted of this crime the whole of this property would go to his heirs, and she would not get a cent. Dennis Sheedy, who coveted these defendants and absorb the whole property. When the second analysis failed to reveal the presence of poison, the attorneys in this conspiracy come into court still contending that poison had been administered but that it had passed out of the system and could not be found.

Colonel Woodward next discussed the confession and its admissibility. He argued that in the first place it was inadmissible because persuasion, inducements and threats had been used to extort it, and second, it was not true, and he analyzed it and brought out its inconsistencies. When Malone told him that he had better make a clean breast of it as the mob was coming to hang him if he didn't and those in the office walked around heavily over the floor to simulate a mob, Monday protested that "If they hang me they will hang an innocent man." He analyzed the language of the alleged confession and comparing it with the language used by McFarland on other occasions show that it was not his. He paid his respects to "Jim" Malone, and called attention to the testimony in reference to his methods and claimed that Lausner had testified that Malone had imprisoned him for two weeks and refused to liberate him, trying in the meantime to get some statement out of him against Mrs. Mary Sheedy.

Mr. Hall interrupted the speaker to say that there was no such think as that in the testimony, but Mr. Woodward contended that there was, and denounced the act as a "high handed outrage which ought to subject Jim Malon to punishment. And this is the man whom this miserable blood-thirsty prosecution would have jurors believe to be a quiet, lamb-like gentleman, as gentle as a dove, who would not have done anything to injure or frigten this miserable negro, Monday McFarland, into telling this miserable story.

He called attention to the fact that the law books show the names of a hundred people who have been executed upon circumstantial evidence in cases where subsequent evidence proved them to have been innocent. He referred to the recent attempt at suicide of William Windnagel, the Randolph street butcher, who was found nearly dead in the rear of his shop with his throat cut, while a man named Carr was seen in the room with a bloody knife in his hand, and as soon as some one entered he started to run. He told how, if Windnagel had not recovered to tell that he had attempted suicide, the man Carr would have fallen a victim to circumstantial evidence. Mr. Woodward contended that it was possible to conceive that John Sheedy was never murdered at all. "I have grave suspicion," said he, "that if no medical gentleman had ever crossed the threshold of John Sheedy's home that night he would have been alive today."

He told of the discrepancy of the expert testimony as to the cause of death, and ridiculed unmercifully the inaccuracy of the medical theories advanced, but in any event four out of the six physicians introduced had sworn that the blow administered by Monday did not cause death. He dwelt upon the possibility that the druggist might have given Dr. Hart something other than sulfonate, or that thirty grains of suifonal, taken in connection with his many wounds and diseased organs, might have caused his death. Certain it was that the doctors had not definitely found the cause of Sheedy's death. First they had declared it to have been caused by compression due to the blow, and after the autopsy, when they found they had made a mistake in their diagnosis, they had to find an excuse for that mistake. The speaker then took up the confessions of his client and endeavored to show that many of the things he was reported to have said were very impossible. He ridiculed the idea that Mrs. Sheedy had ever frightened Monday as the latter claimed in that confession she did, and contended that it was very improbably as Monday must have known that had he gone to Sheedy and told him all, Sheedy undoubtedly would protect him. He read from the confession wherein Monday had told of having once borrowed a revolver with which to commit the murder, but had returned it and didn't remember from whom he borrowed it. He contended that this was improbably, because the detectives had never discovered from whom Monday had borrowed any such weapon, which they certainly would have done if he had ever borrowed one.

He dwelt in ridicule and denunciation upon Monday's story of how Mrs. Sheedy had beaten him and referred to his client as "this poor, miserable negro," to the confession as "this poor, miserable statement," and to the state as this "this blood-thirsty, miserable prosecution."

Continuing Colonel Woodward said: "Was there any body else connected with this assault? I claim that the evidence points to the fact that there was, that it points more unerringly toward somebody else than it does toward my poor client." He reverted to the fact that no one saw Monday McFarland around the house at the time, but on the contrary Henry Krause was seen running, not toward the alley, but the southwest corner of the yard, and he had said the man ran down the alley. How did he know Krause says that John Sheedy shot one at him, but that he got behind a tree. The testimony of Krause wherein he explained how he came to be at that point was commented upon in ridicule. I don't say that Mr. Krause had anything to do with the assault, but I do say that his conduct on that occasion cannot be explained upon any other theory than that he was connected with it. The speaker took up the testimony of Hymen Goldwater and contended that no credence should attach to it whatever; that he never saw that cane and that his testimony was manufactured by Jim Malone. He showed the cane found in Monday's possession after the assault, how similar it was to the cane found at the Sheedy residence, and contended that Malone had procured Hymen Goldwater to identify the cane found as the one he had sold to Monday. He dwelt upon the testimony of L C Burr, wherein that latter claimed that Glodwater had told him that he had never had the fatal cane in his shop.

The gold ring which they harped on had never belonged to Mrs. Sheedy. It had never occurred to the state that he could have had a ring of his own.

He then took up the testimony of Krause again referred to the testimony. Implicating Oleason, John, Bradeen and Williams in the suspicious entertained by John Sheedy. And there is one thing I want to ask the counsel for the state, continued Colonel Woodward, and if they know it will take very little time for them to tell this jury. Where was Frank Williams on that eventful Sunday night? Where was he, I say? Have they told us? No. One witness says he was at work at Bradeen's and another that he was somewhere else. Now, where was he? I don't know where he was at, the time of the assault, but I know where he was a few moments afterwards. Across the street, not a block away from the Sheedy residence, at the same place where Monday McFarland was also, at Bud Linsey's. Don't you believe gentlemen of the jury, that Frank Williams knew something about that crime? I don't believe that Gleason had anything to do with it. Ab Carder swears that Sheedy meant Gleason when he said the "big man." I don't believe it. If he had meant Gleason he would have said the tall man. When he said the big man he meant the heavy set man. And it is a little remarkable that Frank Williams, as the evidence shows, skipped to Denver when his prosecution began.

He harmonized the evidence of Mayes and the two boys Hitchcock and Curry and continued; Ah Carter had said that Sheedy had hired him to watch two men, Gleason and Williams, and after the assault when Sheedy said that it was the big man of the two he meant Williams. The same man who fired that shot on the 9th of December was the one who committed that assault on the 11th day of January, and it was a white man. Which would you believe in reference to that matter--the confession of Monday McFarland that he did it or the testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Hosman to the effect that the assailant was a white man? Is not the latter statement much the more reliable; and is it not clearly proven that that shot was fired by a white man? The speaker commended the identification of the fatal cane by W. W. Carder as compared with the identification of the same cane by Goldwater, reasoning that if that was Carder's cane it could not have been the one which Goldwater sold to Monday Mcfarland. The testimony of George Bradeen to the effect that William Gleason was in his place at the hour of the assault was probably true, but nowhere did Mr. Bradeen show that Frank Williams was there at the time, although it was shown that Williams was an employee there. It was a little remarkable that the evidence shows that at the gambling room, twenty-five minutes after the assault, it was stated that the gamblers had something to do with it. How did they come to say that? Was there not some foundation for that assertion?

Colonel Frank Hall's Plea.

Colonel Frank M. Hall, who is supposed to represent the Sheedy estate and to have been employed by John Fitzgerald, one of the administrators, made his maiden effort in addressing a jury in a capital case, and all sides unite in saying that it was one of the many brilliant speeches in this remarkable case. He defended the state's right to exhaust every possible avenue for the purpose of apprehending the proper parties and gathering evidence to convict them. Speaking of the murder, he charged that it originated with Mrs. Sheedy and that McFarland was simply her pliant tool. He said:

I think that Mrs. Sheedy had the nerve and wicked intent of purpose and the heart to have stood opposite that door and slugged John Sheedy as he came out if she had had the physical strength to have done it. If you think for a moment that she did not have the courage you do not know the woman. This murder of John Sheedy was not a murder in a fit of passion. It was not the murder of revenge. It was committed as a matter of pure dollars and cents. Now if you can find any palliating circumstances any mitigating facts about a murder that has been concocted, that has been planned, that has been schemed for three or four months before it is carried out, apply them to Monday McFarland.

It seems to me that the attitude of Mrs. Sheedy in connection with this murder ought to be enough to paralyze the strongest heart, to break down the strongest mind, either male or female. Why in the name of God, look at the devastation that has been caused and spread behind this murder. Who was Monday McFarland when he was employed to commit this murder? You are told he was a barber, that he has a family. What is to become of him? To be hung? What is to become of his family, a widow and orphan children with the farther punishment for crime? Why it seems to me that the very thing itself out to deter a woman or anybody from ever hiring a man who, so far as we know, had been an honest, upright citizen up to that time, to commit a murder, and for what? Aye, for the purpose of enabling this woman to satisfy a guilty love. Here was the master hand, hers was the master mind, hers the genius that planned this murder and laid out the manner in which it should be carried out. It is beyond my comprehension how a man can get through the facts in this case honestly and carefully and reach any other conclusion. You do not believe for a moment that Monday McFarland went there and murdered the best friend he had on earth out of a spirit of revenge or in mood of vengeance. No, you do not believe that.

I will tell you what I think it was induced him to do it, I think it was the prisoner, Mrs. Sheedy; and how did she do it? Why, she appeared to him in more alluring form and shape than did satan when he tempted Christ on the mountain. She first holds up to him the alluring temptation of money. The price that he was to receive; the amount that as to be counted out for him, which would have made it a mere matter of dollars against ounces of blood. "oh, most pernicious gift, can thus seduce." He did not take kindly to the scheme. Then the next thing, after she had dazzled his eyes with the gold, and with the sparkling diamond after she had dazed his senses with what he expected to receive--he was to become rich--her next step was to unfold to him her deplorable condition. She was abused; her husband had threatened her life, thus arousing the man's sympathy for a woman's wrongs. What next? Knowing that she must have this man in her power completely and absolutely, after she had appealed to his cupidity, after she had held up to his gaze the allurements of wealth to barter away for murder, she then offers to barter away her virtue and her womanhood; and for what? For the murder of her husband. Great God, was every womanhood and virtue thus bartered away for such a commodity?

There is an old saying, I believe, that is fraught with great truth. That is the proposition that "murder will out." It is true that crime may go unpunished for a time, but tardy justice will o'ertake it soon. So in this case, there was the fatal mistake that was made in connection with this murder, like every other murder, almost. There was the terrible mistake that Mrs. Sheedy made when she entrusted the murder of her husband to Monday McFarland. When she thought that Monday McFarland's mind could be made the safe storehouse for that secret. There is where she made the mistake. There is where she made a blunder in thinking that such a diabolical crime as that could be locked in the mind of Monday McFarland and nobody should ever know of it.

Great God, in all this universe, has not made a single nook or corner where can be ever safely hid the crime of murder. The human mind is so situated that murder in the mind of heart is repugnant to every other natural faculty or natural thought. It is at war with your very nature, and when a man thinks he can commit murder and because, forsooth, he does it in the night, when no man sees, when man knows, that therefore it is locked from the world in his own brain and heart, he makes a mistake.

Col. Stearns for Mrs. Sheedy.

Col. R. D. Stearns, who next spoke, began by stating that Dennis Sheedy was not here, it is true, but his money was and was serving every purpose that his presence could. The great effort was to deprive Mr. Sheedy of her right to the half of that estate. In this had to be done by convicting her of the murder of John Sheedy, it would be done if hired detectives and bribed witnesses could accomplish it. Somehow, Mrs. Sheedy did not please the counsel for the state. She sat quietly in her seating taking a deep and intelligent interest in the progress of the trial and they called her a woman of iron nerve, and therefore capable of committing any crime. If she had given way to the feelings in her heart and spent her time in weeping, they would have referred to her as a deceitful being whos hed crocodile tears for effect on the jury.

Mr. Stearns then offered to read them Judge Maxwell as to the duty of a public prosecutor, but the state objected and the court ruled it out, to which the defense expected. He contended that the duty of a public prosecutor was as much to prevent the persecution of the innocent as it was to secure the punishment of the guilty, but in this instance the county attorney had sat there like a bound boy without an effort to direct the case and taken a secondary part in the proceedings. He denounced the sort of brotherly affection spoken of by opposing counsel as having been exhibited by Dennis Sheedy. The $550 he had put in the bank to her credit had been obtained by the transfer of some property he had no authority to transfer; he had taken away John Sheedy's gold watch worth $300 or $400 and all of the dead man's clothing. Mr. Stearns took up the confession and pointed out the fact that Monday claimed that Mrs. Sheedy met him on the back birch that fatal night, hugged and kissed him and gave him a goblet of whiskey and did a number of other acts which it would have been impossible to perform in less than ten minutes, and yet the testimony shows that in less than ten minutes before the assault Mr. and Mrs. Sheedy were sitting in the parlor together. He said further that the testimony of William Chinn would show that Monday's story was untrue and that his presence at Chinn's place as Chinn told of it could not be accounted for upon the theory that he had struck that blow, which was struck between 7 and 8 o'clock.

He then took up Jim Malone and denounced his method in general. In referring to Hyman Goldwater and his boy he denounced them. He said that Malone and Goldwater had conspired to hang an innocent woman to secure the reward, and recited the testimony of L. C. Burr to show that Goldwater had admitted that Malon had offered to pay for the identification of the cane; that he had admitted to Burr that it made no difference whether or not he had ever had the fatal cane in his shop, he wanted his money all the same. He quoted the testimony of Carder and Barnes to show that the cane was formerly owned by Carder instead of the one Monday had purchased from Goldwater. Goldwater had testified as he did because he wanted to stand in with the officers. So with the ring. It was claimed that it was also found in the possession of a pawnbroker, and this pawnbroker had joined in the conspiracy that he might stand in with the police. He thought it not a wonderful coincidence that Monday knew all of the facts necessary for him to make up this story, as they had all been made public by the press. He claimed that every fact needed for Monday to make up that story and make it fit the surroundings could have been obtained from reading the newspapers prior to Monday's arrest.

He took up the fact as shown by the evidence that that cane was not found on the Sheedy porch for some twenty minutes after the assault and that the officers had previously looked all over the porch with a lantern for traces of the blood of the assailant.

He reverted but briefly to the methods employed in securing Monday's various confessions and said he was content to leave the competency of them as evidence entirely with the jury. He believed the testimony was sufficient to convince them that it was incompetent, but even if it were some things in it that stamped it as totally unique. Some portions of that confession are so contrary to every principle of human nature, so opposed to anything that one every encounters, that they are beyond the power of belief upon any evidence. The counsel had depicted Mrs. Sheedy as a woman devoid of refinement. The hand of the Holy Father was always legible. The pictures that he draws and the lines he writes upon the human countenance are always easily read, and he pretended to say that no one could look into the fact of Mary Sheedy and say that she was not a cultured woman endowed at least with the instincts of her sex. He went on to depict the revolting nature of the accusation against her and contended that all nature refuted them. He contended that there was no record of anyting so revolting as was charged. He ridiculed the idea that Monday, whom they charged with being heels over head in love with Mrs. Sheedy, should kill John so that Walstrom, another lover, could come in and take her forever away from his sight and his embraces. That was hardly lover like.

Had Mrs. Sheedy been desirous of a separation it would have been an easy matter of her to have gone to the courts of a divorce and secured it. John Sheedy was an all-around sport and had his little loves in many quarters. She would not have had to murder him to get her freedom.

Mr. Stearns said that in view of the conflicting nature of the testimony in relation to poisoning, he did not think that the jury were prepared to believe that John Sheedy was ever poisoned. The doctors who were in the pay of the prosecution had been enabled to change their minds about what caused death because of the money there was in it. If they had noticed those symptoms they claim to have noticed on the day of their consultation, why in the name of God didn't they do something to relieve the sufferer? The speaker roasted the physicians unmercifully and claimed that they had been trained by "Dr" Lambertson, especially Dr. Winnett, who, Mr. Stearns contended, had been trained by Lambertson to hold up John Sheedy's skull in court daintily, like a bouquet in the hands of a school girl as she tripped to school, to create a sensation, while Lambertson's bull dog grinned through the open door at the cunning of his master.

He contended that Monday McFarland's confession was not true, and if it were true the jury should never fall to remember that it was powerless to affect Mary Sheedy,

(Continued to page 5.)