Pinkerton’s Great Detective

by Beau Riffenburgh

  Campbell’s attorneys, however, failed to address this point, if they considered it. Instead they presented a series of witnesses who testified that Doyle and Kelly had not been at Campbell’s saloon prior to the murder. They then attempted to show that McParlan was an accessory before the fact—and thus ineligible to testify—and to lessen his credibility by demonstrating that he had made no effort to warn the victims. This last strategy was taken to its extreme by Kalbfus, who said: “[I]f he saved a thousand lives it would not atone for the one he took,”45 but Franklin and Linden refuted this by pointing out the early warnings that McParlan had given about the threatened assassination.

  The defense concentrated its closing arguments on McParlan’s credibility. He was a hireling of the Reading, Kalbfus said, whose task was to help in the destruction of the AOH. He had refused to save Jones when he was only a few miles away, because he had planned the crime himself. Fox then launched into an impassioned speech against informers in general and McParlan specifically, while repeating that the detective “encouraged and promulgated the murder of Jones. McParland is the man who made Mrs Jones a widow.”46

  The jury, however, did not accept the defense’s premises, and on July 1, after a short debate, it returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. The defense immediately appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Although the appeal claimed four separate errors, the key complaint concerned McParlan’s alleged role as an agent provocateur. If this appeal was upheld, his testimony could be eliminated not just in the Campbell case but all upcoming ones as well. “He counsels and encourages them to commit an act of murder, intending, in his own mind, to frustrate their designs,” the appeal stated. “Without his encouragement, it is safe to assume that they would not have attempted the murder. His plans to secure their victim’s safety fail, and he is murdered. Why is not the detective an accessory before the fact? His mental intentions may have been good enough, but his acts and declarations to the conspirators were the immediate cause which produced the death.”47

  It was for naught. The Supreme Court judges confirmed the verdict, holding that: “A detective who joins a criminal organization for the purpose of exposing it, and who, without any felonious intent and solely for the purpose of discovering, arresting, and punishing the criminals, counsels and encourages members who are about to commit crime is not an accessory before the fact, and his testimony is not to be treated as that of an infamous witness.”48 McParlan’s role had been officially validated, but that would not prevent him from being vilified ever since.

  • • •

  Long before the Supreme Court ruling, McParlan had moved on to other cases. In fact, before he even concluded testifying in Campbell’s trial, Franklin wrote to Kaercher: “As soon as he is finished I propose to send him to Pottsville in order to have him appear.”49 Therefore, four days before Campbell was found guilty, McParlan was ready when Thomas Munley went on trial for the murder of Thomas Sanger and William Uren.

  From the start the Munley case appeared to be the most difficult. Although many men had been in the vicinity when the murders took place, none but mine owner Robert Heaton had seen their faces, which had been obscured by hats and coats. No one had the least idea of a motive, including McParlan—even though he had heard the confessions of the five shooters, he did not know why they had done it, and neither he nor the prosecution would have any help from Kerrigan, who knew nothing about it whatsoever. It appeared that the case might come down to whether the jury would convict on McParlan’s word alone, without any corroboration.

  Fortunately for the Commonwealth, although several of the regular prosecutors were still in Mauch Chunk, the case was led by Kaercher, Gowen, and Hughes. Nevertheless, the early testimony gave the defense hope, as only one of the first fifteen witnesses could identify the culprits: Heaton stated that “I had a full view of them; every time I fired my pistol they turned full around upon me, faced me full in the face.”50 However, under cross-examination, his claim was damaged by the admission that he had been about 550 feet away. He was still certain, he said, that one of them was Munley because, before the shooting, he had seen one of the men sitting “in a peculiar and apparently constrained position, with his hands down in his lap and his body bent in a straight line from the hips upward and forward to the head and neck, with no curvature of the back.”51 He had seen Munley sitting in the same position at the habeas corpus hearing.

  With the prosecution in a rocky position, a lucky and bizarre twist suddenly strengthened its case, when Jeannette Williams of Raven Run accompanied her husband to court after he was subpoenaed to testify. On the day of the shooting, her son made motions to go outdoors after hearing the shots, but she grabbed him to prevent him from doing so. As she did, a stranger with a pistol passed her door, and she saw his face. When she entered the courtroom with her husband, she immediately recognized Munley as that man. She asked to testify, and Gowen made sure the jury appreciated her ability to make the identification. “The art of the photographer has discovered a method whereby, in an instant of time or less than an instant, in a pulsation of the heart, in the winking of an eye, you can take the picture of a man while he is moving at full speed before you,” he explained. “Why should not the eye of this woman be able to do the same thing?”52

  Despite the helpful reports from other witnesses, the heart of the case once again was McParlan’s testimony. Repeating much of his usual information, he also added an account of the pre- and postmurder interactions with the killers. He described how Doyle told him that the murder would be committed, and acknowledged that he had loaned him his coat despite knowing that the purpose was “to prevent detection afterward.” He also told of the confession at Lawler’s saloon after the murder, during which: “I learned . . . that the name of the boss that was shot was Sanger and that the colliery he was boss at was operated by Heatons.”53

  Once again the defense hammered at McParlan for not warning Sanger. Again and again Ryon asked if he could not escape from Hurley: Could he not leave at dinner? Could he not tell him that he was going to the telegraph office? Could he not devise another means of escape? “I seen no means,” McParlan replied. “[T]here might have been other men that could, but I did not see any, and I do not see any now.” Could not, Ryon demanded, McParlan get the man drunk, so that he could leave him? “Well, the truth was I do not think there was enough [alcohol] in Shenandoah to make him drunk.”54

  Throughout the trial the defense proved far more vigorous than it had in previous trials. Munley’s father, brother, and sister testified that he had been at home, and friends supplied other alibis. Then Ned Monaghan, the former constable for Shenandoah and a member of the AOH, attempted to discredit McParlan by testifying that he had been arrested for stealing a watch, had suggested killing Daily Herald reporter Tom Fielders, and had been the primary mover in planning the murder of Bully Bill Thomas. It briefly seemed that the tables might be turning, but under Gowen’s searing cross-examination the damage was undone, and Monaghan’s credibility was shattered when he was arrested as an accessory before the fact in the murder of Gomer James.

  L’Velle and Bartholomew gave powerful summations for the defense, declaring the case an example of religious and nationalist discrimination, and demonizing McParlan as a mercenary hired to crush the AOH, a man guilty of “collaborating to allow Doyle and Hurley to escape,”55 and a murderer who made no attempt to save Sanger.

  But these were gentle waves compared to the tsunami that Gowen unleashed. In the most compelling address of the trials, for three hours he mesmerized the crowd in the courthouse, sweeping away any chance that Munley would walk free. Beginning with a point-by-point review of the prosecution’s evidence, he dismissed each of the defense witnesses. Munley’s brother took the brunt of Gowen’s biting tongue about false alibis. “Mr Bartholomew says when an occurrence which fixes a date in the memory of a man is brought to his attention, he can probably rec
all from that little clue many other circumstances that occurred at that same time,” Gowen stated. So, “I asked young Munley what he ate for breakfast on that morning, and he remembered . . . that he ate ham. Now, where is there an Irish Catholic in Schuylkill county that ate ham for breakfast on that Friday morning?” Michael Munley, still in the courtroom, shouted that he had said he ate eggs, but Gowen confirmed his point from the original court record. “Now he says it was eggs,” he concluded, “and if we would prove that there was not a chicken in all the world that laid an egg that day this witness would take the stand and swear that he meant turtle eggs.”56

  Gowen then turned to McParlan, who, he noted, worked under an agreement of no extra compensation for achieving results, guaranteeing an honest and honorable transaction.57 He disputed L’Velle’s claim that crime had increased since McParlan’s arrival, challenged the notion that McParlan was an accomplice, and denied that Hurley, Doyle, and others had truly escaped. “There is no place on the habitable globe where these men can find refuge, and in which they will not be tracked down,” he roared. “Let them go to the Rocky Mountains, or to the shores of the Pacific; let them traverse the bleak deserts of Siberia; penetrate into the jungles of India, or wander over the wild steppes of Central Asia, and they will be dogged and tracked and brought to justice.”58

  Gowen also pointed out that, Irish Catholic by birth, McParlan had natural sympathy for the accused, yet could work against them because of their overarching evil. As a result, the safety of the whole of society has been greatly increased. “And to whom are we indebted for this security?” he asked. “To whom do we owe all this? . . . [W]e owe this safety to James McParlan, and if there ever was a man to whom the people of this county should erect a monument, it is James McParlan, the detective.”59

  Gowen concluded by asking the jury to link their names forever “with that of McParlan and of others who have aided in this glorious crusade.” [emphasis in original]60 Within days this speech had been published by a local print house in a pamphlet that sold thousands of copies throughout the anthracite region, the state of Pennsylvania, and even New York City and Boston. More important to Gowen, however, within an hour of the case going to the jury Munley had been pronounced guilty of first-degree murder. Like Campbell, he was sentenced to be hanged.

  CHAPTER 10

  ONE AFTER ANOTHER

  Neither the prosecution nor the defense had time to rest after Gowen’s remarkable speech, because the next day testimony began in the retrial of four of the men accused of murdering Yost—Duffy having elected to appear separately. After nine witnesses established the circumstances of the policeman’s death, Kerrigan again gave his version of events, this time without contradiction from his wife, who did not testify.1

  Yet again, however, the star witness was McParlan, whose battles with Bartholomew and Ryon reached new levels of bellicosity. For example, when Ryon interrupted McParlan, the detective quickly broke in: “Hold on. I was just going to state. You wanted his statement to me.”

  “I asked you a question,” Ryon barked, “and, when you have answered it, that is enough.”

  “You asked the question,” McParlan retorted, “and you answered it yourself; and the answer is not correct.”2

  Although Kaercher led McParlan through his now familiar background information and his interactions with Carroll, Roarity, and McGehan, as well as their confessions—which implicated the three of them as well as Boyle—the defense did its best to change the trial into an indictment of the detective. But as before, he wriggled off any hook they set for him, giving witty responses that always made him seem to be the victor. Thus, hoping to show McParlan was a liar, Ryon asked, “Did you tell these people to whom you applied to become a member of that organization that you wanted to go into it for the purpose of betraying its secrets?”

  “I did not,” said McParlan scornfully, “there would not have been much strategy in that.”3

  One issue the defense addressed regularly—unlike in Campbell’s trial—was that McParlan’s testimony showed him to be the recipient of an extraordinary number of confessions. Since he was always on his own or with Kerrigan when he received them, there was no one to dispute what was said.4 The first such incident came when, despite having met Carroll only ten days before, “We got into conversation respecting the murder of Yost, Carroll and I, he then stated that the parties that came to shoot Yost came to his house upon the night previous, the same night that Yost was shot; he stated that they had but one pistol, and that he gave them a little one-shooter.”5

  Even in the defense’s initial address, Ryon pointed out that McParlan claimed only he heard the confessions, and anybody else was excluded from the conversations, even the men’s friends of many years. “Four men were in that saloon. Who heard that conversation?” Ryon told the jury he had asked, to which McParlan had replied, “Nobody heard it; we were way off at the end of the counter, and they were way off at the other end, and I know they could not hear.” So, Ryon continued, “[y]ou say you were talking to him, a stranger to you, in an undertone, to prevent his neighbors and friends, members of the same society with you, from hearing anything?” “O, yes,” responded McParlan.6

  How could anyone believe this, Ryon asked, as not only had McParlan just happened to go to the right saloon for that initial confession, but the owner had admitted his guilt the second time they had ever met? “That is a little too thin,” Ryon said. “That is thinner than water.”7

  The defense also disputed Gowen’s claim that the AOH was a criminal organization and thus membership in it made one guilty as an accessory to every one of its crimes.8 However, as often as not, their contentions were negated by McParlan’s quick, clever responses. “Was there anything immoral or illegal in the [AOH] by-laws or constitution?” Ryon asked. “O! no,” responded McParlan, “there was nothing immoral or illegal; it was the violation of them where the immorality came in.”9

  After nine volatile days, the jury heard final summations. The defense concentrated on the accusation that the trial was bolstered by ethnic and religious bigotry and on McParlan’s lack of credibility. With Gowen unavailable, Albright and Hughes each powerfully offset these charges. McParlan had “exposed violence and tracked the murderers into their very dens. He has taken off the thin gauze that covered their faces, and you have discovered what hideous monsters they are,” Albright proclaimed. “But because James McParlan has done this are you to be told that you are not to believe him? Are you to shut your eyes to these facts and seal your consciences to the truth. . . . This is no crusade against any nationality. This is not war against any Church. This is a war against crime, and crime should not be exempt from punishment.”10

  Hughes then defended the accuracy of McParlan’s testimony, as proven by his reports. “McParlan has told us upon this witness stand that he made daily reports of everything he did and said,” he stated. “Is it not a shame, is it not a commentary upon this attack upon McParlan, that when he comes into this Court with the records of his life in his hands, holding them out to the gentlemen upon the other side, that they might see if he varied in his statements to the breadth of a hair, and if he had deviated in the slightest degree, they could have said, look at your reports and show your reports, and yet they never did so? . . . They did not dare to present these reports in evidence before you.” Hughes waited for that to sink in, before continuing: “We could not do it. The law would not permit us to do that because the law is that a party cannot give in evidence the previous declarations of its own witness to corroborate him, but if these gentlemen wanted to contradict McParlan why did they not call for the reports? . . . The best and most infallible means of disproving the truth of the statements of McParlan, if they were untrue, were right there in their possession, tendered to them by us, and they refused to take them.11

  The jury was convinced, and within three hours all four defendants were declared guilty.

  • • �
��

  Each of the trials so far had been for murder. That changed two weeks after the second Yost trial, when nine men were brought before Judge Walker in Pottsville, charged with aggravated assault and battery with intent to kill Bully Bill Thomas. This was no minor event, however, because among the defendants were the region’s most powerful AOH leaders: John Kehoe, the “King of the Mollies”; Dennis Canning, the Northumberland County delegate; Christopher Donnelly, Schuylkill County treasurer; “Yellow Jack” Donahue, the Tuscarora bodymaster; James Roarity, the already convicted Coaldale bodymaster; Michael O’Brien, the Mahanoy City bodymaster; Frank McHugh, the secretary for Mahanoy City; and the two Shenandoah men who actually pulled the trigger: John Morris and John Gibbons. The other two in the party that attacked Thomas—Doyle and Hurley—were still on the run.

  It was not just the defendants that gave the trial such import, however. Only two of the nine had actually shot Thomas; the others were charged with conspiracy for having been at the June 1, 1875, meeting in Mahanoy City where the decision to kill him had been made. And this conspiracy, according to Gowen, would prove that it was more than just a small, ruthless set of individuals that was the criminal element of the AOH, but rather it was the entire organization, which sought through terror and fear to control the southern anthracite region.