9. Another Sharp Peal of Thunder: The Prosecution Rests

As Mrs. Gunness’ last hired man came to the stand, Ellsworth Weir poised his pince-nez on his Grecian nose, adjusted his starched cuffs, and took a pencil from the pocket of his piqué-edged vest. Weir was reputed to be an ingenious and merciless cross-examiner, and he meant to be ready for Joe Maxson when the prosecutor had finished. Beside him, Ray Lamphere pulled at his mustache.

Seated in the witness chair, small, sandy, worried-looking, Joe Maxson gave a nearsighted frown as the lanky prosecutor, Mr. Smith, began to question him:

Q. Did you know Mrs. Belle Gunness?

A. I worked for Mrs. Gunness.

Q. When, Mr. Maxson?

A. I went to work for Mrs. Gunness on February eighth, 1908. I worked for her until the fire.

Q. Do you know Ray Lamphere?

A. Yes, sir, I have known him for several years.

Q. Did you see him at the Gunness farm, Mr. Maxson?

A. I saw him around the place in March.

Q. Did you see him on more than one occasion?

A. Yes, I saw him again one evening later, standing in the evergreen tree near the house. He was in the branches about two feet from the ground, and he jumped down and ran. The same night I saw him running around the house. Mrs. Gunness had him arrested.

Q. What happened at the farm the day before the fire?

A. I worked grubbing around the place. Mrs. Gunness went to town. The children did not go to school that day.

Q. Why not, Mr. Maxson?

A. I don’t know.

Had Mrs. Gunness, then, had foreknowledge that something was going to happen? That question crossed people’s minds briefly as the prosecutor continued:

Q. When did Mrs. Gunness come back from town, Mr. Maxson?

A. About five-thirty. She brought toys and food, and a large can half full of kerosene.

Q. What was done with the kerosene?

A. I took it from the buggy and put it in the entry under the back stairs.

Q. At what time did you have supper?

A. At about six-thirty.

Q. What did it consist of, Mr. Maxson?

A. Bread and butter, dried beef, salmon, beefsteak, and potatoes. Everybody showed a fine appetite, and we all had a couple of helpings of beefsteak and lots of cookies and jam. After supper we played games. The main one was “Little Red Riding Hood and the Fox.” Mrs. Gunness loved to play this game, and almost cried if the bad fox chanced to catch Red Riding Hood. At eight-thirty I became sleepy and went upstairs to bed in my room above the kitchen. The last I saw of Mrs. Gunness, she was sitting on the floor with the children, playing with the toy engines and passenger coaches.

These words brought a different Mrs. Gunness into the courtroom. Here and there in the crowd parents of small children recalled, perhaps, how their own small fry had shared the Gunness toys, and met with affection and kindness from that strange, inexplicable woman. Had she really risen from the children’s games to kill them? Or had they perished, after all, clasped in her arms? The testimony went on:

Q. What did you hear during the night, Mr. Maxson?

A. Nothing.

Q. When did you awaken?

A. I was awakened by smoke, and looked out the window and saw all the brick part of the house in flames.

Ellsworth Weir sat forward to listen intently. Joe’s look of worry deepened. Weir was to raise a new doubt on the part of the defense. Here was the man who had escaped from the fire with not only his life, but also his belongings. Did he know more about that fire than he ever told? Did he set it himself, perhaps by accident?

There was little enough for Weir to go on. C. C. Fish, touring with Joe and the Gunness exhibit, had learned nothing damaging from Joe, in spite of a curiosity so persistent that Joe had taken alarm. Now Joe was to tell the story of the fire over again.

Q. What did you do then, Mr. Maxson?

A. I tried to break in the door to the main part of the house, but I couldn’t. I yelled, “Fire!” several times, and ran downstairs outside. Then I tried to go back in, but the roof had fallen into my room. I went to the front and tried to break in the door with an ax. The Clifford boy came first, and then William Humphrey came. The wind was blowing strong from the northwest. William Humphrey and I got a ladder and he went up to the second story. I came to town and notified the Sheriff and the coroner. The Fire Department came and pulled down the walls. I carried water to cool the ruins. I was still there when they found the bodies.

Ellsworth Weir put up his pencil. The day’s session was ending. He would have the night to plan his attack.

The Herald that night noted with sober satisfaction that the state was making excellent progress.

“The picture of Belle Gunness, she of the dark blue eyes, strange and bewitching, painted yesterday by Peter Colson, hung over the witness stand this morning when Joseph Maxson was recalled,” reported the Argus on Wednesday.

Ray Lamphere’s thin hands clutching the arms of his chair betrayed his nervousness as Mr. Weir advanced to cross-examine Mrs. Gunness’ last hired man. He started by trying to discover some unsuspected connection between the woman and the man; and Joe, with his innocent, worried look, defeated the smart lawyer from the start.

Q. When did you first know Mrs. Gunness, Mr. Maxson?

A. When I went out to her place in the middle of February to apply for the job of farm hand. She told me Ray Lamphere had worked for her, but he drank so much she had to discharge him. She said he was a hard-drinking man and a thorough nuisance.

The defense lawyer switched the topic hastily:

Q. Now, Mr. Maxson, when did you first realize the house was on fire?

A. I was awakened about four o’clock in the morning by a roomful of smoke. My first thought was that Mrs. Gunness was getting breakfast. I thought the smoke was coming from the stove. I dressed, lit the lamp, and then looked at my watch. I saw it was too early for breakfast, and then I realized that the house was on fire.

Q. What did you do?

A. I tried to kick and beat down the door that opened from my room into the main portion of the building, but I couldn’t. I was almost overcome with the dense smoke. I snatched my things—

Q. What things?

A. My telescope bag, a pair of overalls, and a dirty towel from the closet shelf.

Q. What did you do with them, Mr. Maxson?

A. I put them by the carriage shed.

Q. You ran fifty feet away to the carriage shed to deposit your belongings before you made any further attempt to break in the doors?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then what did you do?

A. I tried to break in the front door, but I couldn’t. Finally I got out an ax to chop in the door panel.

Q. Is this the ax?

The cross-examiner, Mr. Weir, regarded the implement through his pince-nez as it was produced, and then looked at little Joe Maxson. The ax was a huge woodsman’s ax, big enough for some Paul Bunyan of a lumberman. It seemed a fitting weapon for the vanished Gunness woman to wield, but Maxson was obliged to admit that on the night of the fire it took him twenty swings to pierce the front-door panel. Mr. Weir continued:

Q. What did you see through the hole you chopped in the door, Mr. Maxson?

A. Nothing. The smoke was blinding.

Q. Then what did you do?

A. I thought that a crime had been committed, so I came into town and notified the Sheriff and the coroner.

Weir sheered away from the crime of arson. He shifted to his next topic of cross-examination, an orange that the Argus that evening chose to christen “a Gunness lemon.” Mrs. Gunness had handed it to Joe on the fatal evening.

Q. Did you eat the orange, Mr. Maxson?

A. Yes, I did. It tasted sort of queer, but I kept on eating it. I never thought much about it until after the fire, and then I told my sister that I thought something might have been placed in the orange. I remember that I struck the bed like a log that night and went to sleep barely a moment after my head had touched the pillow. If there were any noises the next morning when the fire broke out, I didn’t hear them because I was in such a sound sleep. I don’t usually sleep so soundly. I did not awake, as I said before, until the room was full of smoke, and then I was so dazed that it took me a while to realize that the place was on fire.

Q. And in spite of your dazed condition, you managed to save your belongings?

A. Yes.

Q. What did you carry to safety?

A. My telescope bag and some clothing.

Q. Didn’t you take a few dime novels, pick them up and put them in your pocket?

Joe was insulted. He shook his fist at his questioner and shouted loudly and angrily:

A. No, sir! I want you to understand right here and now that I do not read novels—no kind of novels!

Joe stood down in a huff. Weir gave the jury a look and sat down. William Humphrey was called.

William Humphrey was the resolute young man who had taken command at the Gunness fire, fetching the ladder and looking in the windows. His evidence was important, and Prosecutor Smith questioned him carefully.

Q. At what time did you reach the scene of the fire?

A. At a few minutes after four in the morning.

Q. What did you see, Mr. Humphrey?

A. William Clifford and Joe Maxson were just breaking in the front door. I climbed up on a ladder and looked in the windows of the two rooms on the west side. I saw mattresses and bed clothing, but no people. I came down. I couldn’t get anywhere near the east side of the house because the fire there was burning too furiously. Soon the walls began to fall, and the roof caved in.

Q. Were you present when the bodies were found?

A. Yes, sir, it was my shovel that first struck one of them. I assisted in taking them out and placing them on the undertaker’s wagon.

Mr. Weir cross-examined William Humphrey:

Q. You say you looked in the windows during the fire, Mr. Humphrey. What exactly did you see?

A. In the first room there was an iron bed with bare mattresses. In the second room there was an iron bed with mattress and some sort of a small bundle of bed clothing on it.

Q. Was the room on fire?

A. The fire was beginning to come through the floor.

Mr. Weir smiled. He had elicited a telling point for the defense. According to the state’s contention, the four fire victims had been suffocated, clinging together in Mrs. Gunness’ bed on the second floor, and had fallen, bed and all, into the basement when the floor gave away. The defense theory was that the bodies were not in any bed when the fire started, but were already corpses, stacked together in the cellar. Now a state’s witness had testified that the beds were empty before the floor burned through.

Mr. Weir was not going to let up on Joe Maxson. The more doubts the jury picked up about Maxson’s part in the fire, the better. Weir asked William Humphrey:

Q. Did you see some things by the carriage shed, Mr. Humphrey?

A. Yes, I did. There was a handbag. On top of it were two paper-covered books. They looked like dime novels.

Daniel M. Hutson, Mrs. Gunness’ neighbor across the way, was now called to the stand. He was a little man with whiskers, “a talking man,” they called him in La Porte. Smith started off with him in a chatty tone: “I presume you knew Mrs. Gunness?”

“I thought I did!” exclaimed Mr. Hutson darkly.

Mr. Hutson made his description of the fire so vivid and interesting that it was like a Burton Holmes lecture, even though he had very little to contribute that was new. The wind was strong that morning, he said, and above the roaring of the flames he thought he heard cartridges exploding. He took a look-in through a window on the west side of the house, and thought he saw a trunk on fire. He helped find the bodies. They were lying with their heads to the west, with six to ten inches of ashes under them. He had burned the soles of his shoes wading in hot ashes.

Mr. Weir did not attack the credit of this witness. Mr. Hutson was going to have something very important to say for the defense later. Weir elicited the opinion that the burned adult body that Mr. Hutson had helped dig out of the ruins might have weighed 165 pounds in life, and so could not be Mrs. Gunness, who tipped the groaning scales at 280 pounds.

After lunch on Wednesday, Prosecutor Smith was ready to roll up his heavy artillery—the officials who had had charge of the investigation. The biggest gun was advanced first.

“Albert F. Smutzer!”

Smutzer advanced to ascend the witness stand with affable self-confidence, a smile on his pleasant, rosy face. He was dapper in polka-dotted bow tie, his curly brown hair parted with a double flourish, his bright brown eyes alert.

The courtroom crowd sat up. Here was the man most closely identified with the investigation of the Gunness affair. As the sheriff in charge of the case, Smutzer had been from the first completely committed to the state theory that Mrs. Gunness was dead and that Ray had killed her.

Many of the spectators grinned in expectation. They were Smutzer’s political cronies and fellow loungers at Rubber Bill’s. They expected good old Al to acquit himself handsomely.

Others in the crowd stared at the personable official with narrowed eyes. They had heard the gossip about him. Was it true? Was this nice-looking fellow in cahoots with a murderess? It was hard to think so. What would he say from the witness stand? Every ear was alert as Prosecutor Smith began:

Q. Mr. Smutzer, did you know Belle Gunness?

A. Yes, sir. She visited my office several times.

Q. Do you know Ray Lamphere?

A. Yes, sir, I do.

At the defense table Ray Lamphere lifted his eyes and looked at Al Smutzer, a dull look that seemed to hold neither fear nor hope nor hatred. Beside his client, Worden fixed an intent gaze on the rosy, confident face of the witness as Mr. Smith continued his questions:

Q. Did you know that Lamphere quarreled with Mrs. Gunness?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. When did this quarrel come to your attention, Mr. Smutzer?

A. Last February. It was on the fourteenth day of January, as we now know, that Andrew Helgelien was killed in the Gunness house. About the middle of February, Mrs. Gunness wrote a letter to me and complained that Lamphere was annoying her in all sorts of ways, sticking his face in the windows at night, prowling around the house, and so on.

Q. What reply did you make to Mrs. Gunness?

A. I thought little of the complaint at the time, for it looked like a case for a constable. So I wrote her that if he kept it up to have him arrested.

Q. What did Mrs. Gunness reply?

A. I received another letter from Mrs. Gunness in which she said that she was afraid Lamphere would do her some harm and that he was still bothering her.

Q. Have you the letter?

A. Unfortunately I tore up both of the letters.

Q. What steps did you take, Mr. Smutzer, in consequence of this letter?

A. I rang up Smith, the saloonkeeper, when I got the second letter and told him to send Lamphere around to me. In an hour Lamphere came to the side door of the jail and asked for me. I told him to keep away from Mrs. Gunness’ house or I’d have to arrest him.

“But my tools are there,” he said to me.

“If you can’t get your tools without fighting with that woman, then send a constable for the tools,” I said to Lamphere.

He shuffled away a few steps and then turned to me with a queer look in his eyes.

“If I tell what I know of that woman I can make it mighty hot for her,” he said.

“Why don’t you tell it?” I remarked.

He stopped as if in deep thought. Then he said: “Mrs. Gunness is harboring in that house a man named Helgelien who owned a gambling house in Aberdeen, South Dakota. A man was killed there and ten thousand dollars was stolen. This man Helgelien fled with the money, and she has him there in that house.”

Q. Did you act upon this information, Mr. Smutzer?

A. I called up Captain O’Brien, of the Chicago police, and also interviewed the Mansfield police, but at neither place was there any record of a murder and ten-thousand-dollar theft in a gambling room. Then I wrote to Aberdeen and the answer that I got was that Helgelien was a well-to-do farmer living near Mansfield, that he was of good repute and not wanted for any crime whatever.

Q. Go on, Mr. Smutzer.

A. It was about the first of March that Lamphere came to me again. This was six weeks after the murder of Helgelien. “I promised you I would let you know if that man Helgelien left the Gunness farm,” he said. “Well, I just came to tell you that he went away this morning. I saw him taking the five-ten train, westbound, for Chicago. He had a satchel with him and evidently he is going away for good.”

I believed what Lamphere told me, for the man looked truthful enough at the time. I asked him how he happened to know that Helgelien left, and he said he just happened to be at the station and saw him buying his ticket.

In fact, it was this statement of Lamphere that misled me later when I was informed of the suspicions that Helgelien had met his death on the Gunness farm. When Frank Pitner, the banker, said to me the morning after the fire that he had not slept all night and that he believed Helgelien had been killed out there on that place, I told him he certainly was mistaken, for Lamphere had seen the man leaving town.

Q. Now, Mr. Smutzer, did you know of Lamphere being arrested at the instance of Mrs. Gunness?

A. It was after Lamphere had come to me and told me about seeing Helgelien take the train that Mrs. Gunness caused his arrest. When Mrs. Gunness and her hired man, Joseph Maxson, came to me to have Lamphere arrested, that time Maxson brought with him a bar of iron a foot and a half long which he said Lamphere had left on the place while prowling around the night before. I thought then, and I still think, that Lamphere intended to kill Mrs. Gunness with that bar of—

Ray Lamphere’s bent head came up with a jerk. He seemed ready to jump to his feet and protest, but Worden’s loud voice forestalled him as the defense attorney shouted:

“Objection! This witness must be warned! He is trying to get matter into the record that he knows will be ruled out. He knows he must not offer his conclusions, but only the facts. He knows that conclusions are for the jury.”

The official witness knew all that perfectly well. After he had been duly warned, the prosecutor continued:

Q. Did you ever see Lamphere molesting Mrs. Gunness, Mr. Smutzer?

A. On one occasion when Mrs. Gunness came to the courthouse to complain about Lamphere, Lamphere was there and followed her around, staring at her. I asked him why he did not let her alone.

Q. What did he say?

A. He did not answer me.

Q. Now, Mr. Smutzer, you were present at the fire on April twenty-eighth?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. At what time did you get to the fire, Mr. Smutzer?

A. I was in Indianapolis on the twenty-seventh and returned home at midnight. Deputy William Anstiss was staying at the jail. We went to the fire about five o’clock.

Wirt Worden’s pencil scratched a note. Ray Lamphere’s eyes were veiled again.

Q. Did you conduct a search for the bodies of the victims?

A. Yes, sir. Fire Chief Whorwell and his men pulled down the walls, and about nine o’clock with some men whom I hired to dig we began the search. The bodies were found in the northeast corner, where the rubbish was deepest.

Q. You had charge of taking out the bodies, Mr. Smutzer?

A. Yes, sir, I did.

Q. Describe them.

Smutzer repeated the grisly facts. Reporter’s pencils raced as the official introduced a touching detail:

“The older girl appeared to be protecting the smaller girl, for she had her arm around her. The smallest child was lying in the left arm of his mother.”

“Objection!” cut in the resonant voice of the defense attorney once more. “Another conclusion of the witness! It is not proven that the adult body was in fact the boy’s mother!”

The objection was sustained. Unruffled, Smutzer continued: “In the left arm of the adult. There was a small hole in the head of this child.”

“What was underneath the bodies, Mr. Smutzer?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Underneath the bodies were ten or twelve inches of debris. There were pieces of a mattress, and bedsprings. At either end were the head and foot of a bed, and on either side a side rail.”

Worden took quick notes as the ex-Sheriff’s testimony went glibly on. Sitting on the wall that fateful day, he had seen no such items of furniture when the bodies were found.

Meanwhile, Smutzer was looking at the state’s collection of grim relics, and identifying the rings, the bits of bone, and the watches. After he had once more detailed the finding of the bodies in the hog lot, the Wednesday session came to an end.

It was none too soon for Ray Lamphere. As they marched him back to the jail, he gulped the cold air of the November twilight as if he had come out of a charnel house.

As Wirt Worden turned over the newspapers that night, his eye must have moved unseeing over the news from Paris (where a machine built by the Wright brothers had soared to the record height of one hundred feet) to light upon good news nearer home.

The defense had already won the case for Lamphere—as far as the insurance company was concerned. The concern said flatly that they were not going to pay off on the burned house.

“We will have to be shown,” they announced, “that Mrs. Gunness did not set the fire herself!”

Worden marched into the courtroom the next morning with renewed confidence in his step. The defendant’s eyes, hollow with sleeplessness, watched him enter, and so did a jammed courtroom. The very corridors were seething with people, for the whole town was eager to be on hand for the duel soon to come. The ex-Sheriff would complete his testimony for the state that morning, and then the battle of cross-examination would begin. Worden and Smutzer had been at swords’ points ever since the very beginning of the investigation. Which one would come out on top?

Again the table was littered with ugly relics of the fire. The charred teeth lay there in a broken grin. Ray Lamphere turned away his eyes. The crowd stared. Smutzer mounted the stand with a volley of smiles for friends in the throng, and R. N. Smith rose to take up the thread for the prosecution:

Q. Now, Mr. Smutzer, did you make any further search in the ruins?

A. Yes, sir. After the finding of the bodies in the hog lot, we returned to sifting the ashes. Louis Schultz constructed a sluice box.

Q. Where is Louis Schultz now?

A. I do not know.

Worden noted this unfortunate fact ostentatiously, and looked at the jury. The officials ought to have known the whereabouts of so important a witness as the man who found the teeth. Smith went on:

Q. Previous to this search, Mr. Smutzer, did you have a conversation with Mrs. Gunness’ dentist, Dr. Norton?

A. Yes, sir. During this conversation Dr. Norton furnished me with a description of the bridgework in Mrs. Gunness’ mouth.

Q. During the search, did you set a guard on the ruins?

A. Yes, sir. A guard went on duty at five-thirty every evening, and remained on duty twelve hours, his term of service extending from May first to May twentieth.

R. N. Smith looked satisfied. That would take care of Worden’s insinuation that the teeth might be a plant. By this testimony, it would have been impossible for any unauthorized person to approach the sluice box to plant faked evidence or for any other purpose.

The prosecutor picked up the teeth. Ray Lamphere averted his eyes with a shudder. The ex-Sheriff’s open smile did not change. He identified the teeth, uppers and lowers. They were found at different times, he thought, the upper set about ten-thirty, the lowers about eleven thirty, on the morning of May 19. He was on the grounds when they were found, and he took them and showed them to Dr. Norton.

“Your witness,” said Mr. Smith at last.

Wirt Worden arose and faced the ex-Sheriff. In that crowded courtroom, even the wise heads did not know how much was at stake. The witness and the lawyer were enemies in a life-and-death struggle for the fate of the defendant. Hollow-eyed and tense, Ray Lamphere leaned forward to watch the two men who held his life.

The antagonists measured each other. The popular ex-Sheriff had the advantage, sitting there handsome, confident, smiling, unassailable. The bulldog defender came against him armed with secret knowledge.

Q. And when the teeth were found, Mr. Smutzer, what did you say to the miner when he handed them to you?

A. I said, “I thought you would find them in that pile.”

Q. Why did you think so?

A. Because that pile of debris came from the corner where the bodies were found.

Then why didn’t he look there first, instead of waiting a week? Some of the spectators found this puzzling.

Suddenly a shudder ran through the crowd. Worden had produced the most terrifying exhibit of all—a bare skull, eyeless and chopfallen, the lower jaw missing. Ray Lamphere eyed it coolly. The ex-Sheriff was just as cool as Worden asked:

Q. Do you recognize this skull, Mr. Smutzer?

A. Yes, sir. That is a skull that was found in an abandoned privy vault on the Gunness farm, three weeks after the fire.

Q. Were you present when this skull was found?

A. Yes, sir. I went out that evening with Deputy Marr, Hutson, and Brogiski, the Polack handy man.

Q. What for?

A. For no other purpose than to search for bodies.

Q. And you found this skull?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. When found, Mr. Smutzer, this skull carried a braid of long, light hair?

A. There was no hair of any consequence in connection with this skull.

Worden was stopped cold. According to his information, corroborated by the newspapers and by eyewitnesses, the skull when found wore a long braid. It was a woman’s skull. The body it belonged to was missing, the lower jaw was missing—unless body and jaw had turned up in the ashes. But Worden could make nothing of it now. He would have to prove the braid by witnesses of his own.

Meanwhile the ex-Sheriff was standing pat. As long as he kept his head, Smutzer had the advantage, and he knew it. With an unperturbed smile he parried every thrust made by Worden.

Q. Mr. Smutzer, you went to Texas on May twenty-second?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. What for?

A. To investigate a clue.

Q. What clue, Mr. Smutzer?

A. A confession which implicated Ray Lamphere.

Q. Was it a true confession?

A. No, sir. It was proved to be a fake.

Q. During your absence in Texas, who was in charge at the farm?

A. Mr. Hutson was in charge.

No loophole there. Desperate, Worden continued to probe for a chink in that smiling armor with questions that got more and more insistent and personal:

Q. Have you any special interest in this case?

A. No, sir, no more than anyone else. My only interest in the case is to get to the bottom of matters and discover the truth.

Q. Aren’t you trying to prove some special theory?

A. No, sir.

Q. Aren’t you trying to prove in spite of everything that Mrs. Gunness is dead?

A. No, sir.

Q. Come, Mr. Smutzer, have you done anything to find Mrs. Gunness? Have you followed up all the clues to her whereabouts after the fire?

A. I did all I could to unravel the mystery, even to calling in the Pinkertons for ten days, and going all the way to Texas myself.

Q. Did you investigate reports of an automobile going through Hobart and Valparaiso on the night of the fire?

A. I had not heard such reports.

Q. (significantly) Have you an automobile?

A. Yes, sir, a red Ford runabout.

Worden had gone as far as he dared, and Smutzer had not flinched. The defense lawyer sat down exhausted.

Ralph N. Smith, rising to re-examine, dropped his eyelids innocently as he asked the questions that would quash all this talk about red automobiles:

Q. Were you ever out at the Gunness farm before the fire, Mr. Smutzer?

A. No, sir, never.

Q. Was your automobile ever standing at the farm before the fire?

A. No, sir, it never was.

Q. Is there another automobile in town that looks like yours, Mr. Smutzer?

A. Yes, sir. Wirt Worden has one!

With a broad grin, the ex-Sheriff rose and retired victorious. The crowded courtroom let out the tension of the long duel in a stir and a murmur. This clear-eyed, smiling witness must be an honest man, they whispered. He must be maligned by the whispers of gossip and the innuendoes of the defense. If Smutzer thought Ray was guilty, then very likely he was, they told each other.

It was late Thursday afternoon when the Sheriff left the stand. In the week just ending, the prosecution, after proving the corpus delicti to its own satisfaction, had proceeded to show that Ray had abundant motive to burn up Mrs. Gunness, and means handy in the shape of the kerosene can under the stairs.

Prosecutor Smith had tried to show opportunity by placing Ray at the scene of the crime, but that attempt back-fired. He found only one man who would testify that he had seen someone fleeing from the scene. That man had known Ray for twenty years. When he came to testify, he would not say that the man was Ray.

There had been plenty of evidence about Ray’s doings later. At six A.M. he appeared at his cousin’s farm, four miles away, to borrow a broadax. He refused to eat any breakfast.

“As I was coming along,” Ray remarked to his cousin, “I saw the Gunness farm on fire.”

“Then,” observed his cousin, “you will probably be pulled by the police.”

“If I am,” replied Ray rather strangely, “then I hope the straight of it will come out.”

At six-thirty Lamphere appeared at Wheatbrook’s. He told about the fire; at first he thought it was Diesslin’s, but as he came closer he decided it was Mrs. Gunness’.

“Did the folks get out?” asked Wheatbrook.

“I don’t know,” said Ray, “but as I was coming along I thought I heard somebody holler.”

At eight-thirty Ray was on the job at Warwick’s farm, building a barn. He worked calmly enough until dinnertime came near. At eleven-thirty he threw down his tools, complaining that he felt ill, and took himself off.

In the middle of the afternoon he came back.

“What about the people in the burned house?” he asked Wheatbrook.

“Maxson got out all right,” replied Wheatbrook, “but I don’t know about the others.”

All this had been testified to by Ray’s friends when they were on the stand. To round out the story, Prosecutor Smith now called to the stand the officers who at five-thirty that afternoon had arrested Ray Lamphere.

Much was expected of these witnesses. A rumor was buzzing around town that when first quizzed by the police, Lamphere had actually confessed to the crime. Worden must have regarded the police witnesses with grave misgivings. What had Ray babbled out? Nothing was impossible.

The officer who actually arrested Ray was Deputy Leroy Marr. Marr temporarily dropped his duties as court bailiff and came to the stand to be sworn.

With his medium build, medium face, and medium voice, Marr did not look like the man to arrest a desperate criminal singlehanded. For that matter, Ray Lamphere, gnawing his knuckles with a worried look, did not look like a desperate criminal; nor had he acted like one when arrested, as Prosecutor Smith soon elicited from the deputy.

Q. Mr. Marr, did you see the defendant on the day after the fire?

A. Yes, sir. That afternoon I rode out in an automobile with Deputy William Anstiss to get Lamphere at John Wheatbrook’s. The roads were muddy. About a mile from the place I got out and walked on alone. Lamphere came to the door just as I got to the gate. I said, “Ray, get on your coat and come to town with me.”

Right away he said, “Did those three children and that woman get out of the building?”

I said, “What building?”

“That building near town,” he replied.

Q. Was anything further said, Mr. Marr?

A. Yes, sir, I asked him where he was when he saw the fire. He said, “When I got along by the house the smoke was coming out of the windows and around the roof.”

I asked him, “Did you see anyone around the place?” and he said no. Then I said, “Why didn’t you yell?”

“I didn’t think it was any of my business.”

Q. When did you see the defendant next, Mr. Marr?

A. I saw him next after Lamphere had sent for the prosecutor on the evening of his arrest.

Q. What did he say?

A. I heard the prosecutor ask him if he had slept with Nigger Liz, and Lamphere said, “Yes, but for God’s sake, Smith, don’t put that in any statement!”

Ray Lamphere looked down at his clenched hands, and a dull flush crept up his thin cheeks under the contemptuous stares of the righteous. What if the old voodoo woman was stouthearted and stanch? She was neither law-abiding nor respectable, and for all her protective affection and wish to help him, she could only do him harm in his ordeal. She could not even be present to give him moral support. Feeling the tide of public disapproval, Worden renewed his decision not to call Nigger Liz to prove an alibi. It was worse than useless.

Satisfied with his effect, the prosecutor went on:

Q. When did you see Ray Lamphere again, Mr. Marr?

A. About one week later. I asked him how he came to quit work for Mrs. Gunness. He said he got fired, and that Mrs. Gunness wanted him to go back, but he wouldn’t, because he was afraid. When I asked him what he was afraid of, he wouldn’t tell. He said it was not fair to his lawyer to talk any more.

Ray’s lawyer was wishing his client had talked less. When his turn came to question Deputy Marr, Worden chose to prepare the ground for a little red-herring chase.

Q. Mr. Marr, did you and Attorney Smith take a cab and go out to the farm one night after the fire and force the lock on the shed and get a trunk and bring it to town?

A. Yes, sir, except that I can’t say the lock was forced.

Q. What was done with the trunk?

A. It was delivered at Mr. Smith’s office.

Q. Why did you go out at night?

A. We had just heard of its being there late that afternoon.

What was in the trunk? The general curiosity had to go temporarily unsatisfied as William Anstiss came to the stand.

Anstiss was a good officer, tall, well built, courageous, always on the job. “He was more sheriff than Smutzer was,” people said in La Porte. At the time of the fire he was Smutzer’s chief deputy, and now he had just succeeded him as sheriff. Anstiss was a slow talker. His tight mouth had a sardonic quirk. Every measured word he said tightened the noose around Ray Lamphere’s neck.

Mr. Smith began by eliciting from him what he knew about Lamphere’s shenanigans that winter, saying Helgelien was wanted for murder, and then coming back to report that he had left town. Anstiss then went on to confirm Smutzer’s story of how they went to the fire, and told of his part in the arrest.

Anstiss had had Ray in charge after he was arrested, and had quizzed him repeatedly. It was when Smith brought up that topic that the noose began to tighten:

Q. Did you have any conversations with the defendant?

A. Yes, sir, I had several. He told me he stayed at Lizzie Smith’s that night, and set the alarm clock for three A.M. At that time he said he got up and found it was raining a little, and he lay down again. He drank a bottle of beer. Then he went across to the Lake Shore tracks. He saw a man and woman coming with a baby in a gocart. He hid behind the signalman’s tower until they had passed.

Wirt Worden resolved to redouble his efforts to find that family of three with their gocart; but he never found them. The prosecutor went on:

Q. Did Lamphere tell you why he hid, Mr. Anstiss?

A. He said he did not want to be seen coming from Mrs. Smith’s.

Q. What else did Lamphere say?

A. He claimed to have gone out Park Road. He said he left Park Road and hid in a small clump of trees, then crossed to a stone road leading to the Gunness farm. According to the story he told me, he first saw smoke coming out of the Gunness house at this time. He said that finally he left the road and went across the fields to his cousin’s. After I had investigated his story, I went to Ray in jail and said, “Ray, you’ve been lying to me. You’ll put your foot into it this way. When you went through that clump of trees you went over a rail fence, didn’t you?”

Lamphere answered yes. I asked him whether he wasn’t running when he went down a slope, and Ray answered, “Yes, I guess I was running.”

When I wanted to know why, he said he was in a hurry to get to his work. I told him he did not take the stone road, as he said, because a man was working there and would have seen him. Then Lamphere said he went only a short distance on the stone road.

Q. Did Lamphere tell you anything about the Gunness cellar?

A. Yes, sir. He told me that Mrs. Gunness never kept the outside cellar door locked. He said he made that cellar door himself and that as a matter of fact it had no lock on it. I asked him if she didn’t lock the inside door from the cellar to the first floor. He said no; that that door opened into a little corridor. I asked him how a man could get into the rooms of the house if he went through the cellar and up into that little hallway. Lamphere said that was easy, you could get into the kitchen and the lean-to bedroom, because she only locked the door into the brick part of the house and never locked the door into the wooden part.

Then Ray Lamphere—or anybody else—could easily have got in the lean-to to fetch the kerosene under the stairs and spill it in the cellar before applying a match. If Anstiss’ testimony was accurate, opportunity was as solidly proved as motive.

The afternoon was growing late. Anstiss had still some damaging testimony to report. Smith led him forward:

Q. Now, Mr. Anstiss, what else did Lamphere tell you?

A. In one of my early talks with Lamphere, he told me that he had stayed in Michigan City on the night of January fourteenth, when he went to trade horses with Mr. Moo. When I discovered that he had returned on the eight-o’clock trolley, I questioned him again. I said, “Ray, I want to be fair with you, but you have been lying to me. If you are innocent it is bad business to lie about anything. Why didn’t you tell me you got off at the icehouse switch that night? You don’t deny it now, do you?”

“No,” said Lamphere, “I did get off.”

Then I asked him, “Why didn’t you come and tell us when you caught her killing Helgelien? Why didn’t you do it, instead of telling that stuff about Helgelien going away?”

“I didn’t do it because—” Lamphere, said, stopping suddenly and looking directly into my eyes.

“But you don’t deny you saw her killing Helgelien?” I said.

“No, I don’t deny it,” Lamphere said, “but I don’t want to talk about it. It wouldn’t be fair to my lawyer.”

At this sensational admission, Ray Lamphere fidgeted uneasily, the listeners murmured, the reporters’ pencils raced, and even the solid jury looked impressed. What lay behind this admission of guilty knowledge? Guilty deeds? Was the man on trial an accomplice in those multiple murders? If so, he deserved to die, whether he burned up Mrs. Gunness or not!

At the nadir of hope for Ray, in the gloom of the afternoon, court adjourned.

Overnight the town was abuzz. It was the general belief that Anstiss’ testimony had driven the final nail in the accused man’s coffin. How could the defense find a way to repair the damage?

On the morning of Friday, November 20, drained of hope, numb to fear, Ray Lamphere dragged himself wearily into court after a sleepless night on his hard jail cot. His indomitable attorney gave him a reassuring glance, and rose to cross-examine William Anstiss. Worden soon punctured the witness’ certainty as he asked:

Q. Mr. Anstiss, didn’t you tell a reporter you were doubtful about Lamphere being guilty of arson?

A. I said I was positive about his having seen the killing of Helgelien, but that some things that had happened made me less positive of his guilt on the arson charge.

Q. Was that when you heard about there being poison found in the bodies taken from the Gunness house?

A. Yes, that was it—but [hastily] I understand that matter now.

Q. On the fifth of May, didn’t I say to you that if you would hunt more for Helgelien’s body and less for evidence against Lamphere, the public would be better served, and didn’t you reply: “I saw Helgelien go down and get on the five-o’clock train myself?”

A. No, sir, I did not.

Q. Did you ever ask Ray if he set the fire?

A. Yes, sir, several times.

Q. What did he tell you?

A. He said no.

Worden thought that was a good place to stop.

So did the state. As ten A.M. was striking, with corpus deliciti, means, motive, and opportunity all neatly wrapped up, the state suddenly rested.