In times of war, the law falls silent.
—Cicero, Pro Milone
The trial began just thirty-eight days after Prager had been killed, unprecedented speed for such a complicated and sensational case. Never before had Madison County seen so many defendants on trial together on such a serious charge. The prosecution’s challenge was daunting. By its very nature, lynching was a remarkably public crime, much of its worth intended to serve as a warning to those who dared challenge common beliefs or standards in the community. But as conspicuous as lynching was, charges against lynch mobs were remarkably rare, with convictions scarcer still. If the case did go to trial, the burden of finding members of the mob guilty would fall largely to people who may even have been in the crowd themselves. And discerning who was most guilty among scores of people in a mob usually proved yet another overwhelming task. All those challenges and more faced prosecutors in Madison County on the first day of the trial, May 13.
The eleven defendants’ chairs stretched around the tables of both the defense council and the prosecution in Third Judicial Circuit judge Louis Bernreuter’s courtroom the first day of the trial. The fifty-five-year-old Bernreuter was the best choice of circuit judges to hear the case as he was the only one who didn’t live in the collar of Illinois communities east of St. Louis. His home was in Nashville, Illinois, some fifty miles east in Washington County. But Bernreuter had lived in Madison County the first nine years of his life. His father, a physician, was forced to move his practice there after he had shown sympathy to blacks in his hometown during the Civil War. His father’s compassion didn’t sit well with many of the town’s residents who had relocated, along with their pro-slavery sentiment, from Nashville, Tennessee.
Bernreuter had worked in labor jobs and taught school before reading law and passing the bar in 1894.1 By 1918 the balding but dignified jurist had served as a Third Circuit judge for fifteen years and would serve fifteen more before being voted out in the Democratic landslide of 1932. Principled and religious, Bernreuter was widely respected in Nashville and on the circuit. He and his wife, Wilhelmina, had raised a son and a daughter in Nashville, where he served as a Sunday school teacher for fifty years. For a hobby Bernreuter practiced his hand at drawing.
Save for Charles Cranmer, the defendants were all in high spirits, almost carefree, on the first day. Cranmer appeared somewhat nervous.2 But they were all nicely dressed, as they would be throughout the trial, wearing suits, ties, and polished shoes. Sheriff Jenkins housed the accused men in rooms on the second floor of the county jail, not in the bleak, poorly ventilated cells with common prisoners.3 And they were well fed, reportedly enjoying steak and other first-rate fare.
The men walked across the street from the county jail to the Courthouse each day without any handcuffs or shackles to restrain them. At times the eleven murder defendants were escorted by a single, indifferent sheriff’s deputy. Each of the men wore a thick red, white, and blue ribbon pin on his left lapel, lest the judge or jurors wonder about their allegiance. They joked with bystanders and whistled on their way to court and bantered with spectators and newspapermen when Bernreuter was not in the courtroom.4
Regrettable or not the trial would provide Madison County a national stage to show off its pride-and-joy courthouse, under three years old at the time. The Classical Revival–style building of white Georgian marble dominated downtown Edwardsville, with grand double-door entrances on each of its four sides. A great skylight and chandeliers illuminated the open rotunda and the oak and wrought-iron balustrades and ornate cornices outside the second- and third-floor courtrooms.
The day started off with UMW official Mose Johnson and others once again taking law enforcement into their own hands and bringing Gil Davis to the sheriff’s office, believing him to be George Davis, the twelfth indicted man, who had yet to be located.5 Davis, a former lead smelter worker, presumably went back home after being informed by the sheriff and the state’s attorney that he wasn’t the wanted man.
Once Bernreuter opened the trial at 9:00 a.m., the first order of business was a defense motion to quash the indictment of Cranmer because he had been called as a witness before the grand jury, and his name had somehow been left off some indictment documents.6 The prosecution argued that Cranmer was charged based on the testimony of others, not his own statements. It also stated that the lack of defendants’ names on indictments was not an issue in cases following the riots in East St. Louis, which had resulted in more than forty convictions. After a delay of several hours, Bernreuter overruled the motion.
The longest phase of the trial began when prosecuting attorneys started interviewing prospective jurors Monday afternoon and found that only three of the twenty-five had not already formed an opinion about the widely publicized case. And those three approved by the prosecution still had to pass muster with the defense, as jurors would be presented to the attorneys for the accused only in groups of four. In Madison County jurors were normally chosen from a jurors’ box, but it became clear that the trial would quickly exhaust that resource.7 Sheriff Jenkin Jenkins was ordered to bring in one hundred more prospective jurors after counsel from both sides saw the scope of their need.
Finding jurors who had not already formed an opinion was just one problem. Both the defense and the prosecution were allowed twenty peremptory challenges per defendant, allowing for up to 440 potential jurors to be disqualified with no reason whatsoever.8 There was no limit on the number of talesmen who could be rejected for cause by either counsel. Alien immigrants were allowed to serve as long as they were county residents and understood English, but attorneys could dismiss any prospective juror who opposed the death penalty, was over sixty-five, or was caring for a disabled relative. The county’s pool of eligible jurors was also already greatly reduced because miners and Collinsville residents were passed over and farmers generally were not chosen due to the crop-planting season.
About one hundred Collinsville residents attended the early days of the trial, including union leaders Mose Johnson and James Fornero. Some thirty area lawyers turned out the first day just to see the spectacle. Newspaper reporters, from both local and national publications, were out in full force. Also in the crowd were family members or friends of those charged. Fifteen women mingled with the defendants over the front rail, speaking of random matters back in town, laughing and joking.9
It was reported that the Odd Fellows organizations in Collinsville and St. Louis were watching the trial progress and were ready to prove that Prager was loyal to the United States, if needed. But there was no indication any IOOF members ever attended the trial.10 With none of the victim’s family or friends to watch the proceeding, the only people in the courtroom seeking justice for Robert Prager would be the attorneys seated at the prosecution table.
When proceedings kicked off the second day, the trial was moved to another, larger courtroom on the third floor where the defendants would not have to be lined up behind both the defense and the prosecution tables. The new courtroom allowed the eleven accused to sit in front of and behind the defense table with the most youthful and best-looking men, newspapers noted, now positioned in the front row and closest to jurors.11
One reporter was taken by the appearance of the defendants: “The men, most of them but youths, were listless and cared not to converse with one another when opportunity was offered. Yet their attitude betokened little worry and they left their chairs sprightly when court adjourned.” He was struck by how young most of the accused appeared: “They are not of the type one sees in City Jail, but rather of the typical small-town pool hall loafer sort. Even so, it is hard to imagine from their appearances that they were the leaders of a drunken mob, as has been charged, which relentlessly dragged a man to his death. All looked well-dressed and wore linen collars.”12
A photographer from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked the defendants if he might take their picture as they entered the courthouse on the second day. All agreed except Calvin Gilmore, who said he would be photographed only if he could hold an American flag in his hand.13 The others joined in the request. Given the era the flags were not hard to come by and the accused were photographed on the steps of the courthouse, along with Deputy Vernon Coons, all dutifully hoisting twelve-inch flags.
But the flags were all cut out of the photo, no small feat in 1918, before it was printed in the next day’s Post-Dispatch.14 Editor and publisher Joseph Pulitzer II, perhaps in deference to his father’s Hungarian lineage, would not help the defendants establish their patriotic defense on the front page of his newspaper.
The photo itself seems a study in dissimilarity, certainly not of a group you would expect to find together in public. The three older men were about twice the age of the six younger defendants. William Brockmeier, forty-one, and John Hallworth, forty-three, appeared hard-edged and all business in the back row. Calvin Gilmore, the oldest of the group at forty-four, looked cool and calm in the front. Wesley Beaver and Joe Riegel, twenty-six and twenty-eight respectively, blended easily with the younger men. Beaver was wide-eyed, as if in over his head, and Riegel’s expression could almost be called a smirk.
The younger men ranged from the tall and rugged twenty-two-year-old Richard Dukes, with his fedora strategically cocked on his head, to the youngest, seventeen-year-old Cecil Larremore, whose youthful face showed no sign of tenderness. Charles Cranmer, twenty, and James DeMatties, eighteen, showed some concern for the gravity of the situation they had found themselves in. Enid Elmore, twenty-two, was baby-faced and seemed unaware, while Frank Flannery, nineteen, was clearly the shortest of the bunch, though his scowl and menacing stare did everything to belie that fact.
Leading the prosecution team would was Charles Middlekauff, the gray-haired, gruff and tough looking Illinois assistant attorney general who had some success in the prosecutions following the riots in East St. Louis. He was an 1891 graduate from the University of Michigan Law School and would later serve as a U.S. assistant attorney general. He lived with his wife and daughter in Freeport, near the Illinois border with Wisconsin.
Madison County’s state’s attorney Joseph Streuber, forty-six, would work alongside Middlekauff. Streuber, a Republican, had beaten lead defense counsel James Bandy, a Democrat, for the state’s attorney position in the 1916 election after serving as probate judge and city attorney in his hometown of Highland. He presented as both upstanding and sincere, a man whom county voters would want as their top law enforcement officer. At age seventeen Streuber had begun studying law whenever he was not working at his father’s sawmill or farm, and he passed the bar five years later.15 He and his wife, Katherine, had a son, William, who at twenty years old was near the age of most of the defendants.
Given Sheriff Jenkins’s cozy history with union men in general and miners in particular, it’s hard to know what level of expectation the judge and prosecutors had before giving him the assignment of finding unbiased jurors. Perhaps it was of little surprise when the potential jurors he brought forth Tuesday were even more opinionated than those who had come before the court Monday; all were strongly inclined to support the defendants. On the third day of the trial, Middlekauff and Streuber filed a motion with Bernreuter to relieve Jenkins and his deputies from the job of finding and overseeing jurors.
The prosecuting attorneys unloaded on Sheriff Jenkins’s performance since his election two years prior, saying he had “not exercised sound discretion” in performing his duties and that his office was negligent.16 They said that the sheriff allowed sentenced prisoners to roam at large instead of being incarcerated in the county jail; that he had been fined $1,000 in federal court related to the Lead Works case; and that he regularly failed to properly subpoena witnesses and find adequate jurors. In the Prager case specifically, they said Jenkins had only brought fourth those who favored the defendants or had shown other prejudice benefiting the accused. It was further noted that one of Jenkins’s deputies, Hannah Jokerst, was the uncle of defendant Richard Dukes.
After a session in the judge’s chambers, Bernreuter agreed with the motion and stripped Jenkins of the duties of getting talesmen and providing security for chosen jurors. The judge said that he needed to appoint men of the “highest standing and ability” who could step in immediately to find potential jurors, despite other jobs or responsibilities they might have. For that inconvenience Bernreuter said that the special bailiffs should be paid $10 per day. So began a process of trying to find special bailiffs. Despite the pay the men most desirable for the job were generally too busy to want it. Sheriff Jenkins told a reporter he didn’t mind being relieved of the juror duties. “I’m not a pro-German,” Jenkins said. “If they want another officer it’s all right with me.”17
The court could have sought jurors from another Illinois county, but transportation being what it was in 1918, it would not have been very practical. The state was not permitted to ask for a change of venue, and it was about the last thing the defense wanted. Two of the prospective jurors were typical of those interviewed. Asked his feelings about German immigrants, an Alton resident with an Anglo surname said, “I am pretty much anti-German.”18 Later, when asked his feelings particularly about Prager, the man said, “I still think he [Prager] was pretty far from home.” An Edwardsville clerk with a German surname was asked if he had formed an opinion on the case. “I think they are all guilty,” he said.19 The normally cool and considerate Bernreuter slammed his gavel down, causing many in the soporific courtroom to jump up straight in their chairs. The judge leaned forward from the raised wood-paneled bench and admonished the man for his gratuitous remark.
Also on Wednesday Judge Bernreuter dealt with Bernhardt Mueller, the Main Street barber who had followed the mob out the St. Louis Road and witnessed the hanging. The previous day Mueller was visiting an Edwardsville barbershop and discussed what he had seen the night of the lynching. Another man in the shop was a prospective juror and reportedly told Mueller that he could not discuss the case. Mueller was said to have told the man it didn’t matter as the lynching was the “most cold-blooded murder ever committed” and that the defendants deserved what Prager got.20 When sheriff’s deputy Vernon Coons heard of the conversation, he brought Mueller before the judge. In his chambers with the attorneys present, Bernreuter reprimanded Mueller and told him to refrain from any such conversations with possible jurors in the future. Mueller, stout and stern in appearance, with thick, round glasses, could only listen when the judge said that he might take up charges against Mueller later. But Bernreuter never did.
The five miners’ locals in the Collinsville area each contributed $100 toward defending the eleven accused men. The team of defense attorneys included James Bandy, fifty-two, the former circuit court judge and state’s attorney who lost his reelection bid in 1916 to Streuber. Bandy would be assisted by his twenty-seven-year-old son, Harold. The Bandys, arriving at court each day in their boater hats, seemed the embodiment of small-town attorneys. James exuded quiet confidence, while Harold, though competent, just seemed glad to be there. Both lived with their wives in Granite City.
The star of the defense team was Thomas Williamson, the tall and distinguished—some might say arrogant—Edwardsville attorney. One of the best public orators in southern Illinois, he had been the speaker at the Collinsville Neighborhood Committee meeting of the Illinois Council of Defense that had stirred the local crowd into such a patriotic fervor just nine days before Prager’s death.21 He served without charge to the defendants and played just a minimal part in day-to-day proceedings, but his stirring deliveries and probing interrogations late in the trial made him the star in the courtroom.
Prominent in the Edwardsville community, Williamson and his wife, Mattie, had four children. Then fifty years old, he began teaching at age seventeen, then attended Valparaiso University followed by Washington University Law School in St. Louis.22 He was a Presbyterian Church trustee and president of the Edwardsville School Board, but he was perhaps best known for the stirring Memorial Day speech he gave to the Grand Army of the Republic veterans in 1910. Copies of the address were widely distributed.
The three defense attorneys represented all eleven defendants. That they were tried together probably worked in their favor. In the modern criminal prosecution setting, there probably would have been multiple trials, with perhaps each defendant having a different counselor to represent his interests.
James Bandy’s questions to prospective jurors in the first week showed his hand in the planned defense. Bandy said Prager was a German spy and likened him to a burglar killed by a homeowner because he was not “in the peace of the people,” as stated in Illinois homicide statutes. Streuber, the state’s attorney, said that he would challenge that concept. He noted that Illinois Supreme Court decisions made clear that protections of the law extended to all. “The law protects foreigners, criminals and all others without question,” Streuber said.23
The process of finding impartial jurors seemingly took forever, although the pool of candidates had surely improved. The third floor of the courthouse was crowded with talesmen, who were being summoned in groups of one hundred to await their turn. The first groups collected by the special bailiffs were primarily businessmen who worked in the area of the courthouse in Edwardsville; the bailiffs would branch out farther in the county as time passed. Illinois’s attorney general had also sent six investigators to help check the backgrounds of the prospective jurors.24 But five days into the process, on Friday, May 17, just four jurors had been selected from the 279 men interviewed. “The Prager case is moving at a rate of speed which makes the snail, tortoise and other deliberately-geared mechanisms look like Saturday night speed demons,” one newspaper reported.25
As the tedious jury selection continued, Judge Bernreuter tried to relieve some of the stress Thursday evening by fishing in the Cahokia Creek Bottoms Area, below the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River Valley. The judge came back with no fish but covered in mosquito bites; he claimed that the local variety of mosquitos was a much tougher lot than those found in his hometown.26 Bernreuter told the selected jurors they could fish if they so choose, but that the fish were the only things at Cahokia Creek not biting. “If you know where there is a pond out on the prairie in the open, it might be alright,” the judge said. He cautioned the four men not to go where others might interfere with their work as jurors.27 They were allowed to read newspapers and magazines if the objectionable items had been censored by the clerk or bailiff. He encouraged them to exercise, take automobile rides, and play cards, but directed them not to discuss the case among themselves.
The four jurymen relaxed over the weekend, not electing to fish or take an automobile ride. They did see a Red Cross parade in downtown Edwardsville and took several long walks, however.28 It was quickly back to reality as fireworks erupted between the two legal teams Monday morning, earning both sides admonishment from Bernreuter to be more “peaceable.” The attorneys continued to toy with each other throughout the jury-selection process. If an objection for cause was contested and overruled by the judge, a peremptory objection would be used. The defense went to great lengths to get a drafted soldier on the panel, only to have to use a peremptory challenge to have him dismissed when it didn’t like his opinions.29
Newspapers noted that people in the county seat seemingly remained detached from the murder trial. “Despite the fact that its wires lead to the corners of an interested and critical world, the town of Edwardsville maintains, thus far, in comparative indifference to the important trial.”30 During the long jury-selection process, the crowd in the courtroom had dwindled down to an average of about forty per day.
The Edwardsville community, however, was doing what it could to avoid its own civic embarrassments, the most recent case involving Rev. J. D. Metzler of St. Boniface Catholic Church. The priest had raised the ire of the local committee of the state council of defense, including Thomas Williamson, by allegedly making pro-German statements. He had also drawn criticism for not observing the Great War’s version of daylight savings time, causing the Angelus bells to be sounded one hour late.31 Repeatedly advised by congregation members that his life was in danger, Metzler finally agreed to leave town. The last straw reportedly was Metzler’s not allowing women of the church to loan out parish dishes to feed servicemen who had come for the Red Cross parade.32 Just after Prager’s lynching, Edwardsville’s mayor had sworn in fifty deputies to help city police maintain order when suspected pro-Germans in the community were threatened with tar and feathers.33
The defense strategy citing Prager’s alleged disloyalty was seemingly shut down by Judge Bernreuter on Wednesday, May 22, when he said disloyal talk would not be justification for taking a man’s life. The subject came to a head when Middlekauff said such testimony did not prove Prager wasn’t “at peace with the people.” The Illinois assistant attorney general told a prospective juror, “This is the law, and if selected as a juryman you will follow the law.”34
Middlekauff’s statement brought an explosive protest from the defense. Jurors and prospective jurors were cleared from the courtroom as they argued the point. James Bandy said it was not Middlekauff’s place to interpret the law. State’s Attorney Streuber shouted out in agreement with Middlekauff and said, “We do not represent that Prager was not disloyal,” but added that it did not mean that the immigrant wasn’t at peace with the people. He criticized defense attorneys for constantly keeping the war before prospective jurors in an effort to justify the killing, and said, “No law justifies lynching.”35
Bernreuter said that taking a life might be justified only if the accused was committing an act that was an immediate threat to life. “If you see a man laying ties on a railroad track to wreck a troop train or carrying a bomb to destroy public property, or setting fire to a factory or mine where munitions are manufactured, or government supplies produced then, if you cannot well cope with him yourself, you can kill him and it will be alright,” the judge said.36 If the man was merely making disloyal statements, however, he should be dealt with through the legal system, Bernreuter said. By noon that Wednesday, eight of the twelve needed jurors had been chosen from 525 men questioned.
After the closing out of ten days of jury selection on May 24, the eight chosen jurors and three jurors who were tentatively selected did go fishing that Saturday. They were accompanied by two bailiffs. Before he dismissed them Friday, Bernreuter thanked the men. “I know you are tired. I want to make it as comfortable for you as I can,” the judge said. “I want to compliment you men. Others were either afraid of the job or afraid of their duty.”37 The new courthouse allowed the men to be truly sequestered in the somewhat concealed fourth-floor jurors’ quarters on the west side, a dormitory-like area, complete with a lounge, bathrooms and showers.
One newspaper noted how evading jury duty had become a “popular pastime” in Madison County.38 For as many people in the county who had strong opinions about the guilt or innocence of the accused, just as many seemed to be doing everything they could to avoid serving on the panel. Friday afternoon the judge reprimanded five prospective jurors for “deliberately and willfully” disqualifying themselves.39 The men worked at the same store and, under questioning, gave the exact same answers although they had not been in the courtroom together. It was later learned that the store owner had directed the men to stay off the jury because the store was busy.
The drawn-out jury selection process did provide some moments of comic relief. Due to language barriers, communication with an Italian immigrant took extensive effort from the clerk and court just to get answers to the relatively simple screening questions; his term was short lived.40 Another prospective juror put his left hand in the air to be sworn in. “Other hand, other hand,” Middlekauff barked. The man’s response was to wildly wave just the stump of a right arm, which was concealed in his coat sleeve. Another talesman’s attitude toward the questions was described as “an exasperating smile and loud chewing of gum.” His rapid-fire answers to the attorneys’ questions were both far from the point and hard to understand, and they drew Bernreuter’s rebuke: “This is most serious and not to be made light of. Quit that smiling and don’t let me see you chewing gum anymore.” The man obeyed, then said he was very hard of hearing; he was finally excused. “He’s a good gum chewer,” Bernreuter said after the man left, “but I don’t believe he should serve.”41
Choosing the last group of four jurors took nearly four days, despite Judge Bernreuter’s offer to buy dinner for the attorneys if they could finish by the end of court hours one day. Both sides eventually agreed to stop questioning jurors on loyalty and international affairs, which helped greatly.42 The jury battle ended suddenly Monday afternoon, May 27, after 725 talesmen had been called. The monotonous juror selection had nearly emptied the courtroom, but when the defense saw no reason to reject Frank Weeks as the twelfth juror, defense attorney James Bandy called for the clerk to “swear the jury” at about 4:00 p.m.43 The eleven defendants, who had to watch for nearly eleven days, cheered and clapped their hands. Of the twelve jurors, eight came from Edwardsville, three from Alton, and one from Worden. State’s Attorney Streuber asked for evening recess before opening statements. The defense objected. Judge Bernreuter left the decision to the jurors. “We’ve had enough recess your honor,” one juror said, and the judge agreed.44
Opening statements were relatively brief, under thirty minutes total for both sides, given the gravity of the case. But the quick start of the trial had caught both legal teams off guard. Streuber spoke first, making it clear that the prosecution didn’t represent Prager or any pro-German sentiment, and that it had exerted considerable effort to keep anyone with pro-German sentiment off the panel. “We wanted only pure and loyal Americans on this jury. I hope there is not a man in the jury who has in him a drop of pro-German blood, for this is a question for true Americans to pass on.”45 Streuber said complaints against Prager should have been taken to authorities and he shouldn’t have been tried and executed by a mob. “We represent the law and the orderly enforcement,” Streuber said. “We ask that the majesty of the law be upheld.” He also outlined particular roles that seven of the eleven men had played in the incident and said that all were guilty of murder under Illinois’s conspiracy laws. That statute did not make it necessary for each man to have held the rope to be found guilty, Streuber noted.46
James Bandy fired the first shots for the defense. “We hardly know what these boys are accused of, but I want to say to you, I don’t have to tell you we are patriotic, you know that. A statement to a jury is not supposed to be a speech to show you wherein is patriotism. They claim the defendants, a great crowd, did lots of things that night, yet they have only 11 here before you.” He said the defendants were innocent and could not be connected to the actual hanging of Prager. Bandy would chip away at Prager’s loyalty, saying Prager was un-American and had referred to President Wilson as “a damn dog” who should be killed. He said the defense could prove that Prager had stated Germany would win the war and that America had no business in the conflict. “We don’t know who lynched him, but there was cause for it,” Bandy said. “When the evidence is over, you will find many things the state has not shown.” Bandy said he believed the jury, in its verdict, would not blame the Collinsville community for what it had done.47
As much as State’s Attorney Streuber was caught off guard by the quick trial start, it was not nearly as abrupt as his encounter that evening with Sheriff Jenkins. There had been bad blood between the two previously; they were both Republicans but led rival factions of the party in Madison County. After the trial closed for the day, Streuber went to May Brothers Café and Saloon, across from the courthouse on Edwardsville’s Main Street, to wait for the streetcar bringing his wife from St. Louis. When she arrived, they planned to drive to their home in Highland. In walking to the saloon, Streuber and Jenkins passed on the street. Streuber reportedly smiled and spoke to the sheriff. Jenkins responded that he didn’t want to speak to the state’s attorney and called him a pro-German.48
Jenkins was infuriated with Streuber after the exchange, so much so that one man tried to find Streuber and warn him that the sheriff was on the warpath. The recent animus was said to be the result of the charges of incompetence that Streuber had made May 15, when he had the sheriff removed from bringing in potential jurors. Jenkins found Streuber at the saloon and said, “You’ve got to stop putting out this stuff about me. We must have an understanding.” The sheriff didn’t like the state’s attorney’s response and challenged him to fight. Streuber declined, saying he had just come out of the trial and was nervous and worn out and that Jenkins was angry. “We’ll talk it over another time,” he told Jenkins. Jenkins said that he would settle the matter now and landed a punch on Streuber’s cheek. Friends stepped in to separate the men.49
Jenkins said he could prove that Streuber was pro-German and, in best schoolyard fashion, told the state’s attorney he could also “whip any friend” of Streuber’s too. The sheriff left May Brothers and so did the state’s attorney, the latter seeking treatment for a laceration at the office of Dr. Edward Fiegenbaum. The timing of the attack was suspect. It had been twelve days since Streuber had requested Jenkins’s removal from the duty of finding jurors. Since the trial had just started, Streuber could only speculate that Jenkins intended to injure him badly enough to prevent his participation in the proceedings.
Collinsville mayor John Siegel was the first of eleven prosecution witnesses called on Tuesday, May 28, and he told the story as he remembered the night of April 4, just fifty-four days earlier. He said he didn’t know many of the people in the mob; he had learned Joe Riegel’s name only that night. He also remembered Wesley Beaver, a character from a local saloon, and William Brockmeier, formerly a coal miner union president. The forty-six-year-old mayor, who had practiced medicine in town nearly twenty years, said he could identify only three men in the mob of about three hundred.50
Collinsville city attorney and former mayor R. Guy Kneedler followed Siegel on the stand. He had been among the community leaders who tried to calm the mob on Main Street and in front of city hall. He corroborated Siegel’s account. He had recognized Richard Dukes and Joe Riegel in the crowd several blocks away but said he recognized no one in the mob at city hall. The forty-five-year-old former mayor said that he felt he knew everyone in town. Asked why he didn’t recognize any faces in the mob at city hall, Kneedler replied, “Probably because I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular.”51 The testimony of the mayor and the former mayor established a pattern that would continue with most witnesses throughout the trial. Men of standing, many of whom were born and raised in Collinsville, would name few, if any, of those they had seen the night of the lynching.
The defense challenged the prosecution’s premise that anyone in the mob was as guilty as those who had held the hanging rope. When Mayor Siegel referred to the mob in generalities, defense attorneys objected. Who specifically, they wanted to know, was the mayor referring to? Which defendants could be specifically identified, and why were they singled out from hundreds of others in the mob? What was the difference between a bystander and a mob participant? Asked how he had seen the men in the mob, former mayor Kneedler said he had been speaking among them. “Oh, you were one of the crowd then?” a defense attorney asked. “Yes, I was one of the crowd,” Kneedler said.52 Bernreuter later allowed that witnesses could use the term they in describing the mob.
Despite the great interest in the case, there were a limited number of spectators Tuesday. At the start of testimony, once dozens of potential witnesses had been excluded from the courtroom, spectators numbered just seven women and twenty-five men.53 With temperatures approaching ninety degrees outside, courthouse windows were open, and trains passing just south of the courthouse nearly drowned out the critical testimony of witnesses. Even the defendants who were seated next to the witness box had to be attentive to hear the testimony.
John Bruso, a lumber company owner and foreman of the coroner’s jury in Collinsville, spent two hours on the stand that day. With the prosecution knowing that witnesses and the accused would not be as forthright as they had been for the coroner’s jury just a few days after the lynching, Bruso was asked to report what the jury had been told at the inquest. Defense attorneys objected that the inquest had been closed and said that the defendants were not advised of their rights and did not give statements voluntarily. Bernreuter overruled and allowed the testimony, but he criticized the closed inquest.54 The defense then continually sought clarification of which pronoun the inquest witness used, I, they, or we, whenever Bruso mentioned specific actions. Defense attorneys also objected when Bruso admitted reviewing the inquest transcript to refresh his memory during the lunch recess. Bernreuter agreed this time, ruling Bruso could testify only to what he personally remembered. Bruso would end up implicating six of the defendants as being in the mob at city hall or the lynching scene.
Critical eyewitness testimony came from two young men who were in the Bitzer Garage service car the night of the lynching. The car was loaded down with eight riders already, boys who were curious to see what would happen to Prager, before three or four others jumped on the running boards and ordered driver Harry Linneman, eighteen, to take them to Schmidt’s Mound Park for tar. Linneman told how he had followed the mob after seeing it head west on Main Street.55 Along the way he picked up friends who likewise wanted to see what all the ruckus was about. After being unable to find tar at Schmidt’s, Linneman was ordered to drive back to town and told to stop once again atop Bluff Hill. When the service car stopped, the hanging rope was removed from the car.
Linneman identified three of the defendants as being at the lynching scene. He had seen Joe Riegel grab the rope and place it over the tree limb, and he also identified James DeMatties and Charles Cranmer as involved. He had stayed in the car and did not see what was happening under the tree, but he did hear someone call out that everyone in the crowd must touch the rope.56 One of the riders in Linneman’s car, twenty-year-old Edmund Nagel, also testified that Riegel had placed the rope on the tree. He had also seen Wesley Beaver bring Prager out of city hall, where he noted that Richard Dukes was in the crowd. Nagel had seen defendant Cecil Larremore at the lynching scene, handling papers that he took from Prager’s pocket. Defendant James DeMatties had ordered the service car to stop upon its return from Schmidt’s, Nagel said. Clarence Nagel, Edmund’s twenty-two-year-old brother, would be called to the stand the next day and name Frank Flannery as also being at the lynching scene.
Louis Gerding, twenty-two, had driven another car carrying young men who were following the mob that night. He and two friends had seen the crowd after leaving a moving picture show and followed it to city hall. The trio had then driven behind the mob out the St. Louis Road; eventually they were told to point the car’s headlights on the lynching tree. Prager had used the left front fender of Gerding’s automobile to write his last note because the car had a spotlight. Gerding provided the court its most graphic account of the incident. Despite being in the midst of all the activity at the lynching scene, Gerding said he could not identify anyone in the crowd. He was asked if he knew what would happen as Prager walked away after writing his note: “I had a suspicion,” he said. Defense attorney James Bandy continued on the point: “Just sat and watched the entertainment—that’s what it was to you, wasn’t it?” Asked if he had been entertained, Gerding said: “I saw all I cared to see.”57
Barber Bernhardt Mueller’s appearance opened the trial Wednesday with the most damaging testimony yet against Joe Riegel and the others. He also withstood the most blistering attack from a defense team bent on impugning his patriotism. Mueller said that he had followed the mob after it had gotten Prager from city hall, as had so many others. He identified Beaver and DeMatties as carrying the flag in front of the procession in the early going and said he had seen Dukes in front of city hall. At this point lead defense counsel James Bandy objected, saying that Mueller was a testifying defendant and should be charged as the others. “Your theory is that anyone who saw the occurrence is guilty?” Bernreuter asked. Bandy said yes and was promptly overruled.58
Among those actively involved atop Bluff Hill, Mueller identified only Cranmer and Riegel. He had not seen who placed the rope on the tree or around Riegel’s neck, but he would be the only witness who admitted seeing Riegel yank on the rope: “He pulled on the rope but he couldn’t raise the man.”59 Riegel then called out to the crowd for help, and a good number rushed up to the rope, Mueller said. He had been unable to identify others on the rope. Prosecutors said Riegel’s call for help was not just to help with the task of lifting but to establish a pledge of secrecy among everyone involved in the hanging. Mueller admitted that he had not objected or tried to stop the lynching, saying he was afraid to act.
Bandy accused Mueller of being pro-German, an allegation the witness fiercely denied. State’s Attorney Streuber said Mueller was a member of the National Council of Defense. “Don’t you know you can’t get into a meeting of the Council?” Bandy asked.60 Again Mueller angrily denied the charge. State’s Attorney Streuber asked Mueller if he had received any form of notice that he was suspended from the group, and Mueller said no.
Paul Anderson, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who had gotten a full confession from Joe Riegel before he testified at the inquest, was covering the trial. Like Riegel’s statement to the coroner’s jury, the interview he granted to Anderson was damning, implicating him from the time Prager was taken from city hall to the point when his feet were lifted from the earth on Bluff Hill. The prosecution knew it was critical. Although Anderson had been subpoenaed as a witness for the trial, no one from the prosecution team thought to exclude the newsman from the courtroom when testimony began. When it came time for him to testify, the court quickly ruled that Anderson could not since he had heard other witness testimony.61 It seemed a major blow to the state’s case.
Patrolman Fred Frost again gave his version of the incident, noting John Hallworth’s comments that Prager should be turned over to the officer. Officer Martin Futcheck told of his unsuccessful effort to get Prager out to Frost’s car.
The trial pace seemed to pick up speed when the defense stopped its frequent challenges to prosecution questions, most all of which the judge overruled. Still there were sharp exchanges between the two legal teams, requiring Bernreuter to “hush wordy tiffs” between counsel.62 Overall, however, the trial was less spectacular than many had expected.
Albert Kneedler, the nineteen-year-old nephew of the former mayor, testified in his U.S. Army uniform, having enlisted on May 17. Kneedler said that Cranmer, Beaver, and Enid Elmore were at city hall, but like so many other witnesses, he identified no one at the lynching scene. He reported seeing Prager struck so hard at the lynching scene that he was knocked flat on his face.63
The remainder of the fourteen prosecution witnesses called that second day mostly provided undisputed facts about what had occurred. Coroner Roy Lowe, like coroner’s jury foreman John Bruso, was allowed to testify only from memory and could not use the inquest transcript. The general responses from witnesses named few participants at city hall and fewer still from the lynching scene. No one besides Mueller and the occupants of Linneman’s car identified anyone who had touched the hanging rope.64 And only Mueller identified Riegel as having pulled on the rope. The names of the perhaps two dozen men or boys who helped raise Prager to his death were never mentioned in court and were committed only to whisper and innuendo for generations to come in Collinsville.
Those with a very limited recollection of the lynching scene included Notley Shoulders, twenty-eight, a city alderman and construction foreman by trade. He was among a handful of witnesses who claimed to have heard an approaching streetcar and left to get on just before the hanging. A theatrical equivalent might have been watching a two-hour show and then departing just before the final act. Yet Bernhardt Mueller, who had ridden the same streetcar into town, said that he saw the whole lynching.65
At 3:00 p.m. Wednesday the prosecution provided the biggest surprise of the day when it said it would close its case within one hour on Friday. There would be no court on Thursday in observance of Decoration Day, May 30, the judge decided, and the prosecutors said they needed time to find one or two more witnesses. Defense attorneys objected to the delay, but Judge Bernreuter said it was reasonable given the protracted time it had taken to seat the jury. Little earthshaking information would be revealed by the last of those whom the prosecution called to the stand. The bigger story seemed to be the number of witnesses who would not appear.
Prosecutors had subpoenaed at least sixty-nine witnesses for the trial, but they would call just twenty-six to the stand. The six investigators from the attorney general’s office had been delegated to help round up those expected to testify for the state. Some of the witnesses may have been redundant or otherwise unnecessary, but given the climate of intimidation in Collinsville, it’s fair to assume that many weren’t called because they wouldn’t be very forthcoming about what—or more importantly whom—they had seen. Most of the witnesses already called had identified defendants only as being part of the mob and had not tied them to specific acts that were more incriminating. If prosecutors had indeed brought forth the strongest witnesses who gave them the best chance to win convictions, it had proven the state’s case wasn’t at all strong.
With the defense saying it would not take more than one day to present its side, there was some optimism that the trial could end Saturday, June 1. Judge Bernreuter wanted to pick up the extra day that week to make up for the holiday and extended time it had taken to find a jury. The eleven defendants seemed cheerful, and why not, with their attorneys already predicting acquittal.66
Jurors were making the best of their relative confinement, which for the first-chosen men was more than two weeks. The jurors got along well, and three of them played musical instruments, with David Fiegenbaum on guitar, William Dippold on mandolin, and the coronet appropriately being played by Frederick Horn. They entertained every night, usually followed by refreshments. The music of Sunday evening was entirely sacred, but other nights it was of the patriotic and popular variety.67
Back in Collinsville the city’s largest contingent ever of “selected men” had been sent off that week, with seventy-eight departing on Monday and an additional nineteen on Wednesday. Stars for the new inductees helped fill the city’s service flag at Main and Center Streets. Both groups were given the now-standard send-off celebration by city leaders, with one businessman telling the newly drafted soldiers, “Au revoir, but not goodbye.”68
When the defense team got its turn Friday morning, its approach could be described in just two words: disloyalty and denial. The attorneys’ plan was to paint Prager as a disloyalist and to have the defendants deny just about anything and everything that might be incriminating. The first witness brought to the stand Friday was Thomas Holt, a Maryville miner and justice of the peace in the village. Lead defense attorney James Bandy asked him, “Did Prager ever say the war was uncalled for and that the President ought to be shot?”69 The prosecution quickly objected, stating that Prager’s patriotism was not on trial. The jurors were taken from the room while counsel argued the issue.
Lead defense attorney James Bandy said the testimony should be admissible in that it showed provocation for the lynching and would perhaps provide for a lighter sentence for those who might be found guilty. For the prosecution Charles Middlekauff questioned Holt about his conversation with Prager, which took place the day before the hanging. Holt said that the victim had told him he was a Socialist and opposed to the war and that the United States had made a mistake in entering the war. Holt told Middlekauff that he had reported the conversation with Prager to others the day after the lynching.70
Judge Bernreuter ruled that the conversation could not have been provocative to the miners if they did not learn of it until after the lynching. The judge said that the defendants must have been aware of it before the lynching for it to have any impact on the case. “If any of these defendants had heard reports that Prager was disloyal, if as Prager walked down the street and cheered for Germany instead of for the United States and the Stars and Stripes, there would have been substantial provocation which would mitigate their punishment,” Bernreuter said.71 Holt was then dismissed as a witness. Worth noting is that Holt’s discussion with Prager in Maryville was apparently unwitnessed and stood in sharp contrast to every other indication that the immigrant had become a fanatical American patriot.
In the afternoon session, defense attorneys made another attempt to slip in witnesses to prove Prager’s disloyalty. They were residents of Niobrara, Nebraska, where Prager had a dustup with the locals in 1915. Some witnesses to that encounter came forward after reading about the lynching. But Judge Bernreuter disallowed the testimony, again since there was no proof that the defendants knew about the incident before the hanging.72 (The Niobrara testimony may have been completely factual but still irrelevant since Prager apparently did not manifest patriotism for his new nation until 1917, when the United States entered the world war.)
When the eleven defendants took the stand in their own defense on Friday, jurors saw and heard everything from accurate recollections to outright lies and deceit. The state had failed to present any evidence implicating most of them for doing anything other than just being in the mob at various times. From the awkward introductions of evidence heard by the coroner’s jury to the inadmissibility of Riegel’s newspaper interview, the evidence linking a murder charge to most of the defendants was tenuous at best.73
John Hallworth spoke of watching Prager being taken from his home and of his own efforts to discourage violence and get the men to initially turn Prager over to the police. A witness confirmed his assistance to the police on Main Street, and no other part of Hallworth’s testimony was refuted.
Enid “Peanuts” Elmore acknowledged being in the crowd at city hall and said he had followed the mob down to the start of the St. Louis Road and then gone home. His testimony was never refuted.
Frank Flannery acknowledged being at the lynching scene but denied involvement and said that he had left prior to the hanging. His testimony was apparently never refuted.
Wesley Beaver acknowledged being at city hall and said that he had carried the flag out on Main Street for two blocks before handing it off to another person and then returning to his job at Fulton’s. But he had also been seen on the front steps of city hall earlier and had a hand in getting Prager out of the building. Between his account and those of witnesses were great discrepancies concerning Beaver’s level of involvement.
William Brockmeier acknowledged being at city hall in the mob and speaking with the mayor, but he said he had been unable to catch up to the mob after it left city hall. Yet a church pastor reported seeing him get on the interurban at the Hardscrabble stop, where the mob had just stopped the streetcar.
Calvin Gilmore said that he had seen the mob at city hall and had gone home shortly thereafter. A witness, however, reported seeing his daughter yelling from the interurban at the Hardscrabble stop, trying to get her father to go home with her sometime later.
Richard Dukes admitted being at city hall and following the mob out the St. Louis Road. He also acknowledged walking nearly two miles from uptown to where the pavement ended on the St. Louis Road, but he said that he had not gone the one hundred or so steps farther to the lynching site and denied being within twenty feet of Prager at any time. He denied making any comment threatening Prager to Mayor Siegel at city hall; he said that he had merely stated Prager would not last fifteen minutes if the angry mob got to him. Dukes’s version of the discussion also contradicted witness statements.
James DeMatties said that he had followed at the rear of the mob on Main Street and left the site of the lynching when he heard someone mention they had found a rope. He denied ordering the car to stop on Bluff Hill. But witnesses reported seeing him carry the flag in front of the procession and his ordering at least one car to stop at the hanging tree.
Cecil Larremore acknowledged being in the crowd at City Hall but said that he had not gone to the lynching scene but rather stopped a short distance away because of a foot injury suffered in the mines three months earlier. But a witness identified him as going through the papers found in Prager’s pockets under the hanging tree.
Charles Cranmer admitted to being at city hall and going to the lynching scene, but said that he had not gotten within one hundred feet of the tree. He said that he had provided paper and pencil to Prager upon request and stood by Gerding’s automobile when the note was written. To be standing by the car, Cranmer would most certainly have been much closer to the lynching tree than he admitted.
Joe Riegel basically denied everything incriminating. He said that he had showed his discharge papers to Mayor Siegel in an effort to help him protect Prager. He said he had followed the mob and urged the men several times to “be careful” of what they did to the immigrant. He denied ever being closer than twenty feet to Prager, except for when he wrote his farewell note. He acknowledged no part in removing Prager from city hall or his lynching. He said that a “big man” named Davis had put the rope on the tree, conveniently citing the name of the defendant who had never been located. Riegel said someone had given him Prager’s last note and told him to send it to Prager’s parents. He denied incriminating statements he had made to the coroner’s jury and in the interview with Paul Anderson of the Post-Dispatch. Most all of Riegel’s critical testimony was contradicted by witnesses or in his prior confessions.
Riegel said that a deputy sheriff had taken him to the coroner’s inquest and that he was not properly sworn in and was “badly frightened” by the questioning. Dukes also implied that he was threatened at the inquest. Cranmer also said that Assistant Attorney General William Trautmann had threatened him when he testified before the grand jury.
In rebuttal the prosecution primarily attacked Riegel’s sanitized version of the evening’s events. It had been most repellent to hear testimony that directly contradicted the accounts of a number of reliable witnesses and Riegel’s own confessions. Mayor Siegel was recalled to again describe Riegel’s actions at city hall. Middlekauff also read incriminating paragraphs from the Post-Dispatch interview, after each one asking Riegel if he had not made the statement. “No sir,” was the consistent reply. The defense made continual objections to this process, all of which were overruled by Bernreuter. But Riegel did manage a smile when Middlekauff read one portion of the interview: “I had a lot of liquor in me when I started, and because I had been in the Army the crowd kind of made me the big man in it,” Riegel said. “I was kind of swelled up about that.”74
During rebuttal the prosecutors were able to refute more of the defendants’ testimony when they put the stenographer from the coroner’s inquest on the witness stand. He confirmed from his shorthand notes critical portions of that testimony, which differed greatly from what the jury heard from some defendants in Judge Bernreuter’s courtroom eight weeks later.75 The prosecution also benefited by putting Paul Anderson of the Post-Dispatch on the stand, ostensibly to verify Riegel’s virtual confession in the April 10 interview. Anderson had been barred from testifying earlier in the trial because he was in the courtroom when witnesses should have been excluded. But in rebuttal Anderson’s testimony would allow the jury to hear the incriminating admissions of the man most responsible for Robert Prager’s death.
The defense ended its case by parading ten character witnesses to the stand to speak of the positive qualities of the defendants, some vouching for several of the men on trial. Most were connected to the mining industry, but four spoke of Charles Cranmer’s work at the East St. Louis stockyards. The defense portion of the trial took just six hours, no doubt shortened because Bernreuter would not allow most of the testimony about Prager’s alleged disloyalty.76
When he rapped his gavel to adjourn at 4:30 Friday afternoon, the judge was pleased that the case would soon come to a close, a week earlier than he had once anticipated.77 Despite its inability to introduce any significant testimony that would paint Prager as unpatriotic, the defense was content with its case. No doubt it was glad that most witnesses had done such a meager job of tying any of the defendants to the actual lynching. The state had made its strongest case against Joe Riegel at the lynching tree. But even in that instance only one man in a crowd of one hundred, barber Bernhardt Mueller, had been brave enough to tell the jury about Riegel pulling on the rope two months earlier. Commenting privately, the prosecutors too acknowledged the fragile nature of their case and hinted they would be satisfied with just one or more convictions of the eleven charged.
Emotions were still running high, and they certainly weren’t checked at the courthouse door that evening. Lead defense attorney James Bandy ended up taking the same interurban car home to Granite City that Paul Anderson of the Post-Dispatch took to the newspaper office. He shouted to other passengers on the streetcar that Anderson had been born in Germany, was not an American citizen, and was pro-German. None of that was true, but Bandy carried on: “That fellow has been up on the witness stand trying to protect a German spy, and trying to send a lot of American boys to the penitentiary.”78
When closing arguments began at 8:00 a.m. Saturday, the first day of June, the courtroom’s curved wooden benches filled for the first time, with most everyone expecting a verdict by day’s end. And with one last chance to sway the jury, the facts of the Prager lynching again took a secondary role to the cause célèbre of 1918, patriotism. Both the prosecution and the defense told the jury that it could best show its patriotism by finding the defendants, respectively, guilty or innocent.
State’s Attorney Joseph Streuber spoke first to the jurors, calling the case one of the most important in Madison County history, with implications reaching all over the United States. He reminded the jurors of their great responsibility and then played the loyalty card. “Love for our country is not the mere shouting and singing of patriotic songs and flying of flags, but includes love for that which the country stands. Can any loyal American say that America stands for mob law?” Streuber said.79 “The man who justifies mob law is a disloyalist. Any man who says America stands for mob rule is a traitor to America.”80
Streuber briefly touched on the testimony against each defendant before saying that the court had been fair in not allowing some allegations of Prager’s disloyalty to be heard. He said the defense had been unable to prove that any of the defendants had knowledge of those allegations before Prager was lynched.
“The cause of this present war is Germany’s lawlessness,” the state’s attorney said. “Can this jury approve of mob law?”81 Streuber told the jurors that when Prager was hung, the happiest man in the world was Kaiser Wilhelm and the most displeased were President Woodrow Wilson and Governor Frank Lowden.
All three defense attorneys would take part in the closing arguments. Harold Bandy, the son of lead defense counsel James Bandy, was up first and challenged the charges that had been brought. “These defendants are charged with murder, not participation in a mob. They are indicted for murder and cannot be convicted for gathering at the City Hall and shouting against pro-Germanism. The most serious thing they did was disturb the peace,” Harold Bandy said. “Unless you believe these men went out with malice in their hearts to hang Prager, it is your duty to acquit them.”82 He also attacked the credibility of two of the most damning witnesses, reporter Paul Anderson and Bernhardt Mueller.
James Bandy followed his son before the jurors and placed blame everywhere but with the defendants. “This has been a case of persecution since the day of the hanging,” he said. “There are usually two sides to the case, but this is an exception. Detectives, the Attorney General’s office and the newspapers have all been called upon to contribute,” Bandy said.83 “The State’s Attorneys duty is not to persecute, and when he found out after investigation that these men were innocent he should have had the manhood to stand up and nolle the cases.”84
“Loyalty should have been an issue in this trial,” Bandy asserted. “We could have justified the action of the patriotic men of Collinsville, had not the court prevented the introduction of testimony to show what inspired the people of Madison County on the night of April 4 and the early morning of April 5.”85 He also accused State’s Attorney Streuber of being deliberately unpatriotic by keeping Dukes and Riegel out of the army, as both were now subject to the draft.
Bandy challenged why others had not been charged in the crime since the mob comprised as many as three hundred people at times. He said that many of the witnesses brought before the court were just as guilty as the defendants: “There was the big editor Schimpff, who tried to get the death note, Horstman the saloonkeeper, Gerding who turned on the spotlight, the goggle-eyed barber, Mueller, Mayor Siegel and the policemen who were there, and the little two by four editor Monroe over there—why weren’t they indicted. They are all old heads, all but Monroe, and this hanging was done by old heads, not boys. Cranmer is indicted because he furnished the paper and pencil. He was no more guilty than the others I have named.”86
The lead defense counsel called Herald editor J. O. Monroe and Post-Dispatch reporter Paul Anderson “fixers” for their reporting on the lynching, the investigation, and the trial. (During a later court recess, James Bandy would laugh about the statement to the newspapermen: “You boys have enough sense to know how to take that.”)87
Bandy continued to play on the age of most of the defendants when he said, “This hanging was done by old heads. The miners were afraid Prager would blow up the mine, and they put him out of the way.88 The elder Bandy continued: “This man Prager was not loyal. He was a pro-German and the people of Collinsville knew it and others knew it. I know the jury will do its duty and that tonight these boys will be seated around the dinner table with their parents and this jury will find consolation in having done its duty.”89
The defense team saved its biggest weapon for last. The great orator of the group, Thomas Williamson, provided the patriotic, nearly two-hour finale for the defense, just as he had provided the stirring finish to the first meeting of the Illinois Council of Defense in Collinsville days before the lynching. Tall and dashing, Williamson was both dramatic and engaging to the jurors, commanding the area in front of the jury box. He told the jurors that he was assisting in the defense pro bono because he felt the “persecution” had gone far enough. “I believe the highest duty any man can discharge is to defend men innocently charged with a crime such as this.”90
Williamson referred to Streuber’s closing comment about the kaiser being pleased with the lynching. “The State’s Attorney seems to be the link of community between the Kaiser and the President,” he said. “If he is the Kaiser’s representative here and his other representative at the press table there is taking down testimony [pointing to Monroe], tell Wilhelm for me that I say ‘To hell with the Kaiser and all his cohorts.’”91
The Edwardsville attorney embraced a new line of defense that had been used successfully just two months earlier. In one of the Oklahoma shooting deaths of an alleged disloyalist in early 1918, the defense in the case had broached the concept that some laws written in peacetime were not applicable during war. S. L. Miller, an “operative” of the county council of defense in Tulsa, was charged with murder for shooting restaurant waiter Joe Spring. But Miller was found innocent March 26. “It wasn’t S. L. Miller that was on trial for murdering Joe Spring yesterday,” said a report in the Tulsa Daily World. “It was the patriotism of Tulsa and the principle of a new unwritten law that makes it justifiable for a man to slay one who speaks out against the country that shelters and nurtures him.”92
Williamson would not pass on the opportunity to see if the theory carried weight with the jurors in Madison County too. “The people are the supreme power in America,” he stated eloquently. “When the murder law was written we were not at war. America’s greatest burden has been that we have been permitted in the past to say what we wanted about the government. There is no room on American soil for any man who is not for the American republic.”93
The prominent attorney cited another prevailing notion, espoused in the nation’s most popular war book, to make his point. James Gerard, the American ambassador to Germany before diplomatic relations were broken off in early 1917, penned My Four Years in Germany upon his return to the states.94 By 1918 it would be the top seller among war books in a nation obsessed with the European conflict, with the story of waning diplomatic relations beating out titles about men in combat and life in the trenches. In the book Gerard tells of a conversation with Arthur Zimmermann, the acting German foreign affairs secretary. The exchange followed the sinking of the Lusitania, a period of obvious tension between the two nations.
The diplomats spoke of German submarine warfare and the calls for revenge made by many Americans in 1915. “The United States does not dare do anything against Germany because we have 500,000 German reservists in America who will rise in arms against your government if your government should dare to take any action against Germany,” Zimmerman said, repeatedly striking a table with his fist. He was referring to the mandatory military requirement for German men before they were considered reservists who could be recalled for duty, well aware of the great German immigrant population in the states.95
Ambassador Gerard was unmoved. “I told him we had 501,000 lamp posts in America, and that is where the German reservists would find themselves if they tried any uprising.” After relating the diplomatic conversation to the jurors, Williamson added, “and you can’t put a German reservist on a lamp post by due process of law.”96
Williamson also cited a recent case in Madison County and one federal ruling stating that German aliens had no protection under U.S. laws. He continued his shotgun approach by again hammering the point that the lynching witnesses were as guilty as the defendants; referencing the Germanic names of the judge, the assistant attorney general, and the state’s attorney; accusing the state of delaying the trial; complaining that news coverage had been slanted against the defendants; and warning that every pro-German in America would laugh with glee if the men were convicted.97
“They will tell you that because of the hanging of Prager, the Kaiser will seek revenge,” the fiery Williamson said. “There is nothing in the way of brutality the Kaiser has not done and the Prager case will have no bearing on the Kaiser in his future acts. If you punish these men for gathering at City Hall, your verdict will stamp you as being opposed to men who are loyal, and in the favor of disloyalty.”98
“Suppose you were in Collinsville on the night of April 4 and you heard the cry, ‘We’ve caught a German spy?’” Williamson asked while dramatically pointing his finger at the jurors. “Would you have sneered at the idea? Would you have passed it from your memory without a second thought?”99
“There isn’t a man on trial here who would not shoulder a gun and follow a flag into battle, even to giving up his own life for America,” Williamson said. “There are a large number of drafted men leaving Edwardsville tonight for camp to fight the Germans. They are going to halt pro-Germanism. If these men are hanged, think of the contrast.”100
The attorney asked the eleven defendants to stand at the close of his appeal. “Their lives have been an open book,” Williamson told the jurors. “These boys may have made mistakes. But let the men among you who has [sic] never made a mistake cast the first ballot to send them to the penitentiary,” Williamson said. “Let them return home to supper tonight.”101 When Williamson concluded, the courtroom—the majority of it anyway—burst into applause.
In an era when public speaking was big entertainment and an important part of social discourse, Williamson’s words stirred the courtroom. Although both sides made important points, it was Williamson’s patriotic oration that would make the strongest impression on those in the courtroom and would be best remembered. A young Collinsville teenager was taken to the trial by his father that day just to hear Williamson’s closing words. Sixty years later he wrote that he could still “hear the applause that burst out when the eloquent counsel concluded with a verbal waving of the stars and stripes.”102
After breaking for lunch, the prosecution had one more opportunity to influence the jurors in the rebuttal made by Illinois assistant attorney general C. W. Middlekauff, who also spoke nearly two hours. He said that he agreed with about three quarters of what Thomas Williamson had said but urged the jury to show its loyalty and patriotism by upholding Illinois law. Middlekauff acknowledged that everyone connected with the case was patriotic—that was not an issue. “If the lynching at Collinsville is permissible, it may occur at any other city. The State is not seeking revenge, but it wishes to prevent like offenses.”103 He touched on the part that conspirators played in the lynching, noting that if Prager had never been taken from his home he would not have been hanged.
“I have no sympathy for Prager, and probably he is in the place where he ought to be,” Middlekauff said. “For the sake of argument, let us say that Prager was a German spy, tried and convicted. The question is whether you can afford to set a precedent in Illinois that mobs can go to jails and take out prisoners, try, sentence and execute them in half an hour. If that principle is established, we may as well tear down the courthouse and say to the crowds, ‘go to it.’” Middlekauff continued: “I would be glad to see these boys go to their families. But the law and order of the State depends on your conviction of those whom the evidence shows to be guilty.”104
“There is a big way and a small way to try this case,” Middlekauff said. “One way would be to take these men to the city hall at Collinsville, call in their relatives and friends and let them say: ‘These are good boys; they may have made a mistake, but we will let them go this time.’ Probably half of the residents of Collinsville are in favor of turning them loose. The other way and the right way is to try them before a jury that will enforce the law, and mete out justice to them,” Middlekauff said.105 “The big way is to consider President Wilson’s declaration to make the world safe for democracy. Make our laws and enforce them. Before we go to Europe to teach democracy we should maintain it here.”106
Around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, the closing arguments concluded, and Judge Bernreuter allowed a ten-minute recess before giving instructions to the jurors. The high temperatures of earlier in the week had abated somewhat, and the eighty-degree weather made the third floor of the courthouse slightly more tolerable.
Besides the hubbub of the trial, it was another patriotic weekend in Edwardsville. After wrapping up the Third War Bond Drive, the town held a send-off on Saturday for forty-one young men leaving for the army. A local manufacturer paid the expenses for twenty-five-member contingent of the Jackie Band, from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center near Chicago, to be in town to help with the festivities. The band traveled throughout the Midwest during the Great War after being formed by John Philip Sousa, who would do his part by enlisting in the navy reserve. Sousa was considered the March King after composing most of the patriotic march songs of the era, not the least of which was “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Though he was now sixty-two years old, there was no better man to organize a marching band.
The Jackie Band came into the courthouse lobby when a brief rain shower passed over, but it had been directed not to play for fear of disturbing the trial. When Judge Bernreuter called the recess, someone took the liberty of informing the band, which again began playing patriotic airs, the first of which was “The Star Spangled Banner.”107 It was almost as if the defense attorneys themselves were scripting the grandiose musical production in the open atrium below.
Joe Riegel, sitting amid the defendants while the trial was in recess, began tearing up as the music ascended into the courtroom from the marching band little more than one hundred feet away. Whether fearing for his own mortality or incarceration, suffering sudden pangs of guilt, experiencing a wave of patriotic emotion—or just for the benefit of the jurors—the rough-and-tumble Riegel had tears streaming down his cheeks for the twelve men to see just before they retired to the jury room.108
Bernreuter culled sixteen instructions to the jurors from a laundry list of sixty-six points of information, most submitted by the imaginative defense team. Also provided were definitions from the Illinois statute on murder, manslaughter, and being accessory to a crime. Among the instructions the judge provided were the following:
The jury is free to find some defendants guilty and others innocent, and could choose a different punishment for each defendant, including death, life imprisonment or not less than 14 years prison time on the charge of murder.
The murder had no connection to the war.
Prager was entitled to all protections of Illinois law even though he was an enemy alien.
Those who conspire to commit a crime are as guilty as others charged even though the lynching was not part of their original plan.
Whoever incites a crime is guilty, as an accessory, equally with the principal.
It was not necessary for any defendant to have placed the rope around Prager’s neck. Any defendant who aided, assisted, advised or encouraged was equally guilty as an accessory.109
It was about 3:15 when the jurors were sent out to make their decision, and it wouldn’t take long. The jurors considered the state’s case flimsy. For all the testimony that had been provided, most of the suspects had been scarcely connected to the actual lynching. And the jurors were in no frame of mind to convict anyone as an accessory to murder for earlier actions at city hall or elsewhere. Jury foreman Keith Ebey noted that the only man to identify Riegel as having pulled on the rope was Bernhardt Mueller. Yet men who claimed to have left the tree before the lynching, Notley Shoulders and saloon owner William Horstman, would ride the same interurban car back to town as Mueller. It was an apparent contradiction that the state had failed to address in rebuttal, and at this point it was denigrating the most credible witness who had seen Riegel lead the hanging effort. And nothing connected any of the eleven men beyond a reasonable doubt, the jurors said.110
Two ballots were taken, the first was 11–1 for acquittal of all eleven defendants. A vote taken minutes later would make it unanimous. In under ten minutes the jury had reached its decision.111 And in the end, the lack of witnesses to definitively connect the men to the crime would be the undoing of the state’s case. What part patriotism or other influences played in the verdicts will never be known.
The defendants had been taken back across North Main Street to the county jail when the jury began its deliberations. No doubt a verdict had been reached before they had an opportunity to settle back into their beds. They were then ordered back to the courtroom. Friends and family members climbed onto benches to get a glimpse of the defendants as they returned to the packed chamber to learn their fate. The jury had been out just forty minutes, the defendants forty-two minutes.
Despite the optimism the attorneys held at the defense table, the atmosphere was tense when foreman Ebey handed the verdict he had written in longhand to Judge Bernreuter.112 As for his histrionics, Joe Riegel was still crying when he returned to the courtroom. The judge thanked the jurors for their service, particularly for their tolerance in waiting out the tedious jury selection. After the judge silently reviewed the verdict, he passed it to the deputy circuit clerk to be read. The Jackie Band, which had patriotically entertained in the lobby earlier, happened to be leading the parade of new soldiers past the courthouse at the time. And in a surreal moment, the ensemble would be playing “Over There” just as the clerk announced that the men had been found not guilty.113
Pandemonium erupted in the courtroom after the verdict was read, with loud cheers and people clapping and stomping their feet. Men threw their hats in the air. The defendants rushed to thank their attorneys before the crowd surged toward the curved wooden railing to embrace them.114 Virtually the only people not taking part in the wild celebration were the attorneys, the reporters, and the officers of the court. Edwardsville juror John Groshans said, “Well, I guess nobody can say we aren’t loyal now,” as he waved to the defendants. “We’ve done justice of the right sort for Madison County.”115 Bernreuter repeatedly rapped his gavel to try to restore order, but the clamor of the raucous crowd drowned out his efforts.116
With the help of the attorneys, the crowd finally quieted to grant some level of judicial decorum, allowing Bernreuter to dismiss the jury. The defendants then shook the jurors’ hands, thanking them. Within thirty minutes the courtroom was clear. Some of the defendants left arm in arm and joined up, at least briefly, with the patriotic parade that continued to march up and down North Main Street led by the Jackie Band.117
None of the court observers was particularly surprised by the verdict.118 The case was effectively lost in the intimidating undercurrent that washed through Collinsville during April and May 1918, cleansing the grim details from the public consciousness of the one hundred or so witnesses to the lynching. The overblown flag-waving and blind nationalism during the trial probably weren’t necessary to win the acquittals, but they were the elements remembered most by those who sat in the courtroom. Forty some years and many criminal trials later, newspaper publisher J. O. Monroe would call the trial simply “a farcical patriotic orgy.”119
Within minutes of the verdict, word reached Collinsville by phone. A bulletin was placed in front of the Herald office on East Main Street, and a five-cent extra edition was on the streets by 6:00 p.m. The defendants rode interurbans or automobiles back to Collinsville with their families and friends. After spending the last month or more in jail, the men “greeted their freedom with unbounded delight.”120
Hundreds celebrated at Martin Fulton’s and other uptown saloons when the acquitted men arrived back in Collinsville. Each of the former defendants had celebrity status now; in some cases they were surrounded by a circle of congratulatory friends as they moved from bar to bar. Drink always flowed freely in the saloons but never so much as on Saturday nights. That the verdict had been rendered late Saturday afternoon seemed nearly divine patriotic intervention. Before the celebration was over, scenes of uproarious drunkenness played out in many of Collinsville’s nineteen uptown saloons.121 But there was reason to celebrate: the miners and their friends had proven that they were above the law—that they were invincible.
And the workingmen of the Collinsville area were celebrating not just the acquittals of the eleven charged men but also the apparent end of official inquiry into the Prager affair. No longer did they have to fear that an unchecked bystander would speak to an investigator or on the witness stand of the scores of others who were intimately involved but not charged—those unnamed men who had taken Prager from his home, beaten him with their fists, goaded the mostly young and drunken crowd into storming city hall, and then prodded the mob to lethal violence as it walked out the St. Louis Road. Those unnamed men and boys who helped raise Robert Prager to his death, they too could breathe a sigh of relief tonight and raise yet another toast to Uncle Sam.