McParlan did not meet with his chief immediately. But the day after he wrote his impassioned letter, Linden, who had been in Chicago and Philadelphia, returned to the anthracite region, and he would have quickly contacted his agent. McParlan spent the next week gathering information from individuals who now seemed shaken not only by the arrest of Doyle, Kelly, and Kerrigan, and the release of the details about the organization, but by the brutal actions at Wiggans Patch. “The Mollies are now confident that there is a traitor in their midst,” McParlan wrote the day after the killings. Then, following Wenrich’s bail, he noted that “the Molly Maguires feel ‘a terrible itching’ for vengeance, and think they will be sure to retaliate, but there is no telling at present when or where they will act.”72 As McParlan discovered, the reason for this hesitancy was simply a lack of definitive information about who the killers actually were. Dennis Canning, the county delegate for Northumberland County, told him that “they must all keep quiet and they would soon find out who were the perpetrators of the outrage and then they would have a chance to see what they had better do.”73 In fact, they would not soon find out who the perpetrators were, and to this day it remains a question without a definitive answer.74
After cooling down for a week following his resignation letter, McParlan traveled to Philadelphia “for consultation.” There Franklin, and perhaps even Bangs, Pinkerton, or Gowen, used any and all available arguments and promises to convince McParlan to continue his undercover role. One powerful tool had been given them just that week, when Archbishop James Frederic Wood of Philadelphia formally excommunicated the Molly Maguires. He also reissued his pastoral letter of January 1864, again condemning all secret societies, but this time adding a short but significant phrase. After “Molly Maguires,” it now stated “otherwise the Ancient Order of Hibernians.”75 McParlan was extremely devout, and he had most likely initially taken on the assignment in part because it was an opportunity to fight a crusade of sorts for the Catholic Church, so another direct call to assist the Church against an outcast group would have been difficult to ignore. Additionally, he knew that he was nearly at the end of his labors, that he might well have a bright future with the company, that Pinkerton’s was not responsible for the vigilante actions, and that the death of Ellen McAllister was (in today’s parlance) simply regrettable collateral damage. McParlan also undoubtedly saw a chance to make a name for himself as a hero of American justice. Therefore, despite his moral and emotional qualms, he eventually agreed to proceed with his investigations.
While McParlan was still in Philadelphia, Franklin decided to address the issue of his operative being too conspicuous to vigilantes. “His hair was nearly all out—merely straggling hairs all over—bare clean down the back of his neck,” Franklin later testified. The superintendent had “thought probably his hair would grow in again, but it did not, and I . . . bought a wig for him, at Dollard’s Chestnut Street.”76 So on December 23, with only a chin beard of his own hair77 but sporting a large reddish-blond wig, he once again entered the anthracite region.
CHAPTER 8
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
James McParlan was not the only Catholic heavily influenced by Archbishop Wood’s condemnation of secret societies. In the week before Christmas, Daniel O’Connor, the priest at Mahanoy Plane, warned his parishioners that: “Bad men are a terror anywhere, but particularly so in the coal region. Beware of the Mollie Maguires. If you have a brother among them pray for his repentance, but have nothing further to do with him, and remember that he is cut off from the Church . . . Let them fight their own battles, for you have a conscience, and they have none. They are scum and a disgrace to us as Irishmen and American citizens.”1
Within a short period, others used a more violent approach with the Molly Maguires. Hugh McGehan, identified in the Strictly Confidential handbill as the murderer of Benjamin Yost, was shot at twice by vigilantes, once in late December and then again while walking home early in January 1876. Although he was not wounded, in an escape reminiscent of Daniel Dougherty’s, he could point to bullet holes in his clothes.2
But ultimately, the most vigorous, orchestrated, and unrelenting response to the Molly Maguires’ killing spree was initiated by Charles Parrish, the president of the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company, who had “determined to spare neither effort nor money to bring the murderers of John P. Jones to punishment, and to demonstrate . . . that the power and majesty of the law were supreme.”3 He was joined in his purpose by both Gowen and Asa Packer, the head of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and one of the richest men in America.4
Each of the three rail and coal companies assigned their leading lawyers to work with Carbon County district attorney Edward R. Siewers in the prosecution of Michael J. Doyle, Edward Kelly, and Jimmy Kerrigan for Jones’s murder. Charles Albright—who had reached the rank of brevet brigadier general during the Civil War, had served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and was the head of the most successful Mauch Chunk law firm, which provided legal counsel for the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company—was the lead lawyer for the early cases. He was joined by the Reading’s Francis W. Hughes, an elder statesman of the Pennsylvania legal profession and previously a state senator, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, and Schuylkill County district attorney. And from the Lehigh Valley Railroad came Allen Craig, a three-time state representative, former district attorney for Carbon County, and the railroad’s chief counsel, as well as Packer’s personal attorney.5
The defense lined up an imposing team as well, with Daniel Kalbfus and Edward Mulhearn of Mauch Chunk—the latter the only Irish Catholic member of the Carbon County bar—joined by three former Pottsville prosecutors: John W. Ryon, U.S. congressman J. B. Reilly, and Lin Bartholomew, who had successfully defended Gomer James from the charge of murdering Edward Cosgrove.
On January 16, 1876, a motion for change of venue was denied, surprisingly, with the “undue excitement” of the case and the inflammatory articles in the local newspapers. Shortly thereafter the three prisoners were granted separate trials (see Appendix B for details of each of the Molly Maguire trials; the appendix can be found at www.penguin.com/PinkertonsGreatDetective or www.susannagregory.com/beauriffenburgh/pinkertons-great-detective). Two days later, with the Mauch Chunk courthouse guarded by a large force of Coal and Iron Police, jury selection for Doyle’s trial began. Officially, the choice of Doyle as the initial defendant was because he was “supposed to be the one who fired the fatal shot,” but it was probably also influenced by Kelly’s appearance as a fresh-faced lad, whereas Doyle “wears the countenance of a determined, villainous desperado,” with a “dogged and defiant expression, and looks more like a prize-fighter or Fourth Ward rough than anything else.”6
With fifty-two-year-old President Judge Samuel S. Dreher presiding, three days were occupied with choosing the jury. The selection process has since been condemned from a constitutional standpoint for deliberately excluding Irishmen.7 It has been claimed that this set a precedent for subsequent Molly Maguire trials—as did a similar exclusion of Catholics—while supposedly stacking the jury with “Pennsylvania Dutch,” whose native tongue was German and therefore had little understanding of English.8 However, an examination of the different trials’ voir dire—the preliminary examination of prospective jurors under oath to establish their competence and suitability—shows that, although the lack of Irish was notable, there were Catholics of German descent on a number of the juries. Further, the claims about the number of jurors struggling with the language in the first two trials in Carbon County seem to have been overstated9—and it appears to have been the defense that was hopeful that any language issues would be helpful to their cause, rather than the prosecution.10
Once the testimony started, language became the least of the defense’s concerns, as the prosecution’s parade of 122 witnesses left little doubt about Doyle’s involvement.11 In the moments before the killing, Doyle was seen walking toward the site
where Jones was shot, and although no one actually saw him pull the trigger, he was seen running away with a pistol in his hand. Witness after witness contributed to the overwhelming circumstantial evidence indicating that Doyle had been the shooter, while Albright—dressed daily in his full general’s uniform to emphasize his allegiance to law, honor, and the United States—elicited such strong testimony that the cross-examinations (usually carried out by Bartholomew) failed to dent the prosecution’s case. Whenever there was a tricky legal point, Hughes conducted the argument on behalf of the Commonwealth, usually in opposition to Ryon.
The prosecution’s case was missing only a motive. McParlan had laid out the background of the trade for the murders of Jones and Yost to his employers, but he was still under cover, so his testimony could not be introduced. However, such a conspiracy was hinted at because Doyle, when arrested, had been carrying an AOH button and part of a letter from Jerry Kane, the Mount Laffee bodymaster, to Carroll, giving mysterious instructions for Doyle. And when Alexander Campbell was accused of harboring Doyle, Kelly, and Kerrigan before the murder of Jones, the implication that the AOH was at the heart of the murder gained even more credence.
Unintentionally emphasizing the prosecution’s conspiracy theory, members of the AOH sat prominently in the courthouse throughout the trial. Among them was McParlan, who, it has been suggested, used his contacts to improperly pass on information about the defense tactics to the prosecution.12 Although McParlan had certainly filed reports about potential alibis the previous October when the case first was scheduled for court, and he continued to pass on any information that he could,13 it is highly unlikely that reputable attorneys like those for the defense would have trusted an unsavory, heavy-drinking thug like “McKenna”—who was not even their client—with their delicate trial preparations.
As it turned out, any defense preparations that had been made came to nothing. On January 31, two weeks after the beginning of the trial and with the courthouse still stuffed to the brim with reporters and fascinated members of the public, the Commonwealth rested its case. To the shock of those in the courtroom, the defense, which had been rumored to have almost one hundred witnesses, announced that it would rest without calling any of them. The tale immediately spread that the prosecution’s case had been so thorough that all the false alibis would only bring perjury charges.14 Regardless, Judge Dreher quickly ordered the final summations to proceed. Craig initiated the process, speaking for two and a half hours and trying to terrify the jury into a conviction by warning: “If this man goes free you will be compelled to turn your houses into castles, and go about your business girded about with pistols and knives to protect your lives. Lawlessness will reign supreme, and peace and good order give way to riot and blood shed.”15 He was followed by Hughes for the prosecution, then Bartholomew and Kalbfus for the defense—both of whom pleaded for the jurors to believe that Doyle had only been in Lansford to seek work, and to remember that the AOH was a noble organization “having for its object nothing that is bad except in the diseased eyes of the learned counsel for the Commonwealth.”16 Albright then closed the summations with a masterful call for justice.
When the judge turned the case over to the jury, he instructed them that “it is very difficult sometimes to find out the motive that impels a man to commit a crime. But, though no motive may have been proven, if the guilt of this prisoner has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, then you will convict him.”17 And convict him they did, returning a guilty verdict at nine o’clock the next morning.
Ever since the trial had begun, the newspapers had given sensational warnings that “a band of their comrades three or four thousand strong may, on any day, march into town, attack the Court House, release the criminals, and shoot down all opponents.”18 Now, at the very moment the verdict was announced, a fierce commotion broke out and the startled audience whipped around in fear, expecting to be set upon by Molly Maguires. Instead, it was three snarling dogs fighting at the rear of the courtroom.19
• • •
Doyle’s murder conviction—the first for a man branded a Molly Maguire—was a major triumph for the railroad and mining companies, and it encouraged Gowen to become personally involved. Even more important was that during the trial, Kerrigan—with “his shrewd, cunning eyes, his small stature and the uneasy, fidgety motion of his body”20—suddenly turned state’s evidence.
Kerrigan was a murderer, a drunkard, a braggart, a man of low morals, and a venomous enemy, but he was not a fool, and the parade of prosecution witnesses made him realize the game was up. His actions generally were self-serving and full of bravado, but were often carefully considered, as shown by how he earned his nickname, Powderkeg—one cold day, while working as a miner, Kerrigan approached a group of his colleagues sitting around an open fire and asked them to make room for him. When no one did, he seized a nearby keg of powder and placed it in the center of the fire, causing the men to flee for safety. Kerrigan then removed the keg from the fire and sat in the choice seat to warm himself.21
Kerrigan’s decision to turn state’s evidence was also prompted by finding that lawyers had been hired for Doyle and Kelly, but “not a finger was ever moved in behalf of Jimmy Kerrigan. He was left alone. This fact he discovered and without doubt determined to punish the desertion of himself.”22 Another incident that helped push Kerrigan into the arms of the prosecution occurred late in Doyle’s trial, when Alfred Brenheiser testified that while working at the jail in Mauch Chunk the previous October, he had heard a conversation between Kerrigan and Doyle. “They spoke from one cell to the other; they were just opposite each other. . . . I heard Kerrigan say, ‘To-morrow they [the defense lawyers] will take our statements to Mount Laffee to get them to correspond with the witnesses. They are afraid I’ll squeal.’”23
At that moment, “Kerrigan was unable to contain himself; he jumped up excitedly and exclaimed to the witness: ‘I don’t want you to get up there and swear a false lie on me; I can’t stomach it.’ He was pulled down to his seat, but continued: ‘I don’t want any man to swear my life away like that: and that’s a lie, by God!’”24
Within the next day or so Kerrigan asked to speak to Captain Samuel Peeler of the Coal and Iron Police, to whom he blurted out a lengthy confession. The astonished officer wasted no time calling in Albright and Hughes, and Kerrigan repeated his story, giving full details of the trade for the Yost and Jones murders, the roles of the men involved, and even his own actions, although he downplayed these considerably, not knowing that the attorneys were already familiar with McParlan’s tale. According to Kerrigan, the Yost murder had been instigated by Duffy after he was knocked around by Yost and McCarron. Duffy contacted Roarity, who supplied one of the guns as well as McGehan and Boyle. And Alexander Campbell was not only fully aware of the Yost plans, but arranged the murder of Jones.25 It is unknown what exactly was promised to Kerrigan, but he became a star witness in at least fourteen trials and was never prosecuted.
With a firsthand witness other than McParlan, the authorities could now take decisive action, and three days after the Doyle verdict was announced, the Coal and Iron Police, in conjunction with Pinkerton’s, simultaneously arrested Carroll in Tamaqua, Duffy at Buckville, Roarity in Coaldale, Campbell and McGehan in Summit Hill, and Boyle in Lansford. The newspapers immediately speculated that there was an informer.26 But was it Doyle, Kelly, or Kerrigan?
Then, after almost a week of intense conjecture, two more arrests were made: Munley and Charles McAllister, for the murders of Sanger and Uren. Neither Friday O’Donnell nor Michael Doyle was found, and the authorities did not realize that they had the wrong McAllister. These arrests were extremely alarming for any Molly Maguires, because Doyle, Kelly, and Kerrigan knew nothing about Sanger and Uren. It was apparent that there must be another informer.
Hot on the heels of this second set of arrests, the news broke that Kerrigan had turned state’s evidence. On February 12, a habeas corpu
s hearing was held for the five accused murderers of Yost, and Kerrigan took the stand to implicate each, as well as Campbell for the Jones murder.27 Despite the judge’s ruling that nothing stated in the hearing could be divulged, both The Daily Miners’ Journal and the Daily Herald immediately published details, setting in motion a remarkable plot.
This was unveiled when McParlan traveled to Tamaqua to see Mary Ann Higgins, still under the pretense of courting her. He found Mary Ann’s sister Fanny, Kerrigan’s wife, there as well, and was shocked to discover the entire family engaged in pinning the Yost and Jones murders on Kerrigan, whom they viewed in the worst way possible—as a squealer. McParlan learned that four days before—virtually while Kerrigan was testifying—Mrs. Kerrigan had sworn an affidavit that on July 5 he had loaded his revolver and left home, not returning until morning, when he said “that he had shot officer Yost, and if she ever spoke of it he would blow her brains out.”28
But the plot did not end with sworn statements. Knowing that the pistol in the authorities’ possession was Roarity’s but intending to swear it was Kerrigan’s, Mary Ann said that she would “get a few cartridges belonging to Roarity’s revolver, and bring them to court on the pretense that they were found in Kerrigan’s drawer,” and would confirm in court that “Kerrigan told her on the 6th that he shot Yost.” Moreover, Charles Mulhearn would “swear that Kerrigan bought a revolver of [sic] him about two years ago, and the one that shot Yost was the one.”
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