Adams’s own testimony came on the last two days of February, and he carefully followed the defense line that “a deliberate conspiracy was formed among the officers of the penitentiary and the detectives to implicate the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners in the assassination of ex-Governor Steunenberg, and that this conspiracy was to be backed by false evidence, obtained by threats and bribes.”57
On March 1, final arguments began, and Darrow ensured that McParland was part of them. After insisting Adams had confessed under duress and “that every line of that confession is a fraud,” he turned on the detective. “This McParland, what is his trade?” he asked, continuing:
Is there any worse trade than the one that man follows? Can you imagine a man being a detective until every other means of livelihood is exhausted? Watching and snaring his fellow-men. Is there any other calling in life can sink to that? But yet we have been told it is an honorable profession. Well, that depends on how you look at it. . . . It is honorable compared with some things the State has done in this case. But it is not honorable in any old-fashioned sense of that word. McParland told the jury that this confession was given freely, voluntarily. Did he lie? Is he a liar? . . . [C]an you believe a detective at all? What is he? A detective is not a liar, he is a living lie. His whole profession is that, openly and notoriously.58
After five seemingly endless days of summations, the case went to the jury. For two days more everyone waited, until it was decided that, “[I]t might be dangerous to keep the jury together any longer. They had divided in two parties and had ceased to speak to each other. . . . [O]ne of the jurors . . . had taken a very decided stand for conviction and told those that differed with him they were simply murderers at heart or otherwise they would look at the evidence in the proper light and convict Adams whom they knew to be a hired assassin.”59
On the night of March 7, with six votes for conviction and six for acquittal, the judge determined that the jurors were hopelessly deadlocked, and discharged them. McParland was not surprised, as from the beginning the jurors had been a concern, and he had conducted investigations suggesting several of them had been bribed.60 The defense was equally suspicious of foul play. In a book that was hurriedly produced in order to besmirch Pinkerton’s and McParland prior to Haywood’s trial, Morris Friedman, a socialist and former Pinkerton’s stenographer, included an attack on the legal system, stating that Adams “very clearly proved his innocence of the murder of Fred Tyler. Strangely enough, however, his jury disagreed, and he will probably be tried again.”61
McParland did find some positive elements to take from the trial. Not only did the judge continue the case until September—meaning Adams would remain in custody—but Adams had “in his cross-examination admitted every word to be true in his written confession except the fact that when he said he murdered Tyler and Boule he lied.” This meant, McParland noted hopefully, that “if he should come back to the state he has not in reality injured himself as a witness in the Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone cases.”62
Before long, McParland had again started working on returning Adams to the fold. With Siringo, Thiele, Whitney, and Shollenberger, he left Wallace on the afternoon of March 8. On the train he met former sheriff Harvey Brown, who recently had started working as a freelance detective. The two dined together in Spokane, then talked late into the night, during which McParland proposed to pay Brown’s per diem and expenses if he would visit Lillard and convince him that it was best for both him and Adams to have Adams testify for the prosecution. “It is well worth the trying even if we are put to considerable expense,” McParland reported, having already noted somberly: “This is the only chance we have got.”63
CHAPTER 23
THE HAYWOOD TRIAL
On Tuesday, March 12—as McParland reached Boise—events that would have an overriding influence on the upcoming trials were made public. It was the first day of the judicial term, and the incoming judge for the Seventh Judicial District was Edward L. Bryan, who had defeated Judge Smith in the November election due to union opposition to the incumbent.1 From the start, McParland did not trust Bryan: “I am very doubtful as to whether Bryan, the Judge-Elect, can be depended upon or not. He was elected by Western Federation money.”2
More relevant than Bryan’s electoral support was that before the arrival of Miller the previous January he had been appointed to represent Orchard temporarily. Acknowledging this was a conflict of interest should Orchard appear as the primary witness, Bryan consulted Fremont Wood, the newly elected judge for the Third Judicial District—Ada and Boise Counties. Wood later wrote that Bryan “inquired if I would be willing to assume the burden of the trials if he disqualified himself and called upon me to try the cases. . . . I immediately advised Judge Bryan that I was not seeking the laborious task of trying these cases but neither was I running away from or seeking to avoid any necessary responsibility.”3 Bryan and Wood agreed that no mention of their accord would be made in advance. Thus, it was a surprise that when Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone appeared before Bryan for setting their trial dates, he withdrew in favor of Wood.4
Wood was to prove an inspired choice.5 A fifty-year-old native of Maine and the son of an abolitionist legislator, he had attended Bates College before reading law. He moved to Boise and started his law practice at the age of twenty-five, eventually becoming both the city attorney and an assistant U.S. attorney. In 1889, he succeeded Hawley as the last U.S. attorney for the Territory of Idaho, and the next year he became the first U.S. attorney for the new state. In that role, in 1892 he prosecuted the miners from the Coeur d’Alenes, convicting seventeen, including Pettibone. In more recent years he had concentrated on his private practice.
Wood was generally welcomed by both sides as a man already proven to be fair, honest, and open-minded. “We think that Judge Wood will try this case impartially,” McParland reported. “He is a man of strong character and will show no favors.”6 Wood demonstrated his impartiality immediately, ruling both against and in favor of defense motions.7 When Richardson asked that the defendants be discharged due to how long the case had taken to come to trial, Wood refused, on the ground that the defense’s filings “in the habeas corpus cases had automatically deprived the Court of the power to proceed.” But he did agree to a change of venue from Canyon County to his own District Court in Boise, where he announced jury selection would commence on May 9, 1907. The three men were being tried separately, and Haywood—whose vehemence, violence, and socialism made him the prosecution’s primary target—would be first in the dock.
Although most labor leaders and press were content with Wood, they were less so with another public figure—Theodore Roosevelt, the president of the United States. For some time Roosevelt had had a private but ongoing dispute with E. H. Harriman, the head of the Union Pacific and several other railroads, over whether the president had made unfulfilled promises in exchange for Harriman raising much needed funds during Roosevelt’s reelection campaign.8 The same week in October 1906 that the Supreme Court ruled on the habeas corpus appeals, Roosevelt—goaded by comments reputedly made by Harriman to New York congressman James Sherman that he “could buy Congress [and] buy the judiciary”—dictated what was effectively a memo in the form of a letter addressed to Sherman. In it he stated: “But it shows a cynicism and deep-seated corruption which makes the man uttering such sentiments, and boasting, no matter how falsely, of his power to perform such crimes, at least as undesirable a citizen as Debs, or Moyer, or Haywood.”9
Filed away, this document did not see the light of day until early April 1907, after a copy of a letter from Harriman—claiming Roosevelt had pressured him for campaign contributions and then renounced his part of the bargain—found its way into Joseph Pulitzer’s New York newspaper, The World.10 In response, Roosevelt ill-advisedly released his earlier letter to the Washington press to show that Harriman’s version was “a deliberate and willful untruth.”11
The result
of this mudslinging was not what Roosevelt expected, as he was soon widely condemned—particularly by socialists and labor groups—for trying to prejudice the upcoming trials in Boise. In short order, national demonstrations and parades took place throughout the country, with the slogan “I am an undesirable citizen” worn on badges by those expressing their displeasure with the president. Roosevelt thereafter released letters he had written to show that he was not antiunion, had not expressed an opinion on the prisoners’ guilt, and had even written to the U.S. attorney general to prevent any miscarriages of justice in the Haywood case.12 It was to no avail, as the issue was neither quickly forgotten nor forgiven, and demonstrations were held up to the week before the trial, showing a groundswell of support for Haywood.
• • •
Meanwhile, in the final two months prior to the trial, both the prosecution and the defense flooded Idaho with undercover spies, hoping to glean anything that might give them an edge. It was virtually impossible for McParland even to keep up with every aspect of the investigation, much less run the entire Western Division. That is perhaps why, not long after the Adams trial, the Western Division was split in half, with a new Pacific Division—consisting of the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland offices—being placed under the direction of McParland’s old assistant and close friend John C. Fraser, who now became one of an inner circle of eight running the agency.13 McParland’s Western Division was decreased to Denver, Kansas City, Omaha, and Spokane, but this was in no way viewed within the agency as a demotion or downgrading.
For the time being, McParland’s attention was on the upcoming trial, and his greatest hope remained “turning” Adams. For almost six weeks he waited impatiently to hear if Brown had any success with Lillard.14 But on April 17, he received word that the “old man says he would rather see Steve hung than return to that McParland gang.”15
McParland immediately devised a new tactic. Through his friend Thomas McCabe, a deputy sheriff in Shoshone County, McParland suggested that another deputy, Carson C. Hicks, try to influence Adams. He knew that Annie had more influence over her husband than anyone else, so McParland suggested Hicks “throw himself in the way of Mrs Adams” and counsel her that “the State is the only one that can befriend Steve now, neither his uncle nor his array of counsel can do it.” He laid out in great detail the conversation Hicks should conduct, how he should bring his own wife into the meeting, and that he should supply Adams cigars or a pipe.16
It did not take long for that plan to go awry, as only six days later Hicks was involved in a barroom brawl in which he shot Billie Quinn, a former miner and a member of the WFM, in the chest, fatally wounding him.17 Miraculously, a form of McParland’s plan still went ahead when Hicks was placed in Adams’s jail cell. Shortly thereafter, McParland wrote to Hicks’s lawyer, the former Adams prosecutor Henry Knight: “I have taken the matter of Mr Hicks’ trouble up with Mr Hawley and Governor Gooding, and both desire me to say that while they would do everything in their power for Mr Hicks, if he succeeds in getting Adams again on the right track, he can depend upon it an extra effort will be made on part of the state to see him through this trouble.”18 He then again detailed the ways Hicks might “work on Adams.” Within a week McParland heard from Hicks: “Steve is on the fence and don’t know which way to ‘Jump.’”19 McParland responded, “[Y]ou know what is wanted and just keep along the lines as you are doing, and I think you will eventually be successful, however your time is short.”20 Too short, it turned out, for as the trial began, Adams had still not “jumped the right way.” Nevertheless, it appears that someone let Hicks know that his efforts were appreciated, because when he went to trial in September, he did not show the slightest remorse or even any particular interest in the proceedings. Despite what the prosecutor described as “overwhelming evidence,” the jury found Hicks not guilty in less than five minutes.
Hicks was not the only one facing trial. In mid-April, new senator and associate prosecutor William E. Borah found his preparations interrupted when a federal grand jury meeting in Boise returned an indictment against a number of individuals associated with the Barber Lumber Company for fraud in the acquisition of timber claims. Having served as a company attorney, Borah was among those indicted. The charges must have affected his performance in the trial, as they disturbed him enough to consider resigning his new office. McParland immediately proclaimed it “simply the work of the Western Federation.”21
Of course, McParland saw unionists and socialists behind all sorts of nefarious behavior. One thing that annoyed him no end was that “Shoaf either through malice or to mislead the public always reports my name as McPartland. In talking with these gentlemen I wish Mr Borah, Mr Hawley, and yourself would impress upon them that the proper way to spell my name is McParland.”22 More important, he was certain prosecution secrets were being divulged to the defense by spies. And if there was one thing he understood, it was how to play spymaster.
One of McParland’s most successful spies was Arthur C. Cole, referred to as Operative 28. Cole had been the secretary of the Citizens’ Alliance in Cripple Creek in 1904 and, while serving in the Colorado National Guard, had ordered the troops to fire on the union hall in Victor after the miners refused to leave.23 In 1905, he started working for Pinkerton’s, and not long after Steunenberg’s assassination, he investigated Orchard’s Colorado background. McParland then turned him into a double agent, sending him to Darrow to volunteer to testify about a series of intended outrages by mine owners, including blowing up the Independence depot, which the owners planned to blame on the WFM.24 McParland’s goal was to convince Darrow to call him as a witness, so he could testify that Darrow had paid him to perjure himself.
McParland also had plans for numerous other operatives mentioned only by number,25 as well as having at his fingertips vast amounts of information the prosecution hoped to use. As far back as March 1906, he had recognized Moyer as the weak link of the trio and had suggested visiting him “with a view of breaking him down.”26 The idea resurfaced in December, when Hawley learned “that Moyer and Pettibone are not on speaking terms with Haywood at the present time.” McParland thereupon developed an elaborate plan to convince Moyer how Haywood and Pettibone “wanted Orchard and Adams . . . to kill you after your release from Telluride jail giving as a reason that if you had not squealed you would surely do so. Then . . . your murder would be blamed on the Mine Owners.”27
Nothing came of these plans, but as the trial approached, McParland still hoped to find a way to take advantage of the situation. He was also waiting hopefully for the antipathy between Darrow and Richardson to escalate. “[T]here is a great deal of discord existing between [them],” he wrote after the Adams trial, continuing, “Richardson has assumed full charge of the Adams case, much to the disgust of Darrow. Darrow told my informant . . . that Richardson’s cross-examination of me injured their case and that Richardson knew in advance how the testimony was procured and that being the case he should have known in cross-examining me in the manner which he did he would draw out matters that should not have been placed before the jury.”28
At the same time, McParland had other revelations about Darrow that he wished to exploit, although he never did. “In addition to Darrow being a Socialist, both he and his wife are free lovers,” he reported. “Darrow said . . . a man had a right to leave his wife if she didn’t suit him.”29 Even worse was the attorney’s attitude about McParland himself: “Darrow considers me not only his enemy but the enemy of everything that is good and virtuous. My informant told him this evening that he agreed with Mr Gowan [sic] in his memorable speech on the Mollie Maguires, that if there was a man in the country who deserved a monument erected it was me. . . . Darrow said, ‘Well, if any other man had done that work I think a monument should be built for him, but a double-dyed villain like McParland should not be recognized by decent people.’”
• • •
When the trial fina
lly began, McParland and Darrow found themselves closer in their accommodation than either wished. Both had chosen to stay in the Idanha, the fine, French château–style hotel—complete with four turrets, a crenellated roof, and dormer windows on the top floor—that, at six stories, towered over Boise. Just as it dominated the city physically, the Idanha’s magnificent, marble-floored lobby and ornate public rooms were the scene of most social, political, or cultural events of note.30
It was on May 4, 1907—a little more than a week after Darrow, his wife, and his stenographer took residence there—that McParland again settled into the Idanha, which had been his base in Boise since he had taken over the investigation sixteen months before.31 The prosecution team claimed a sizable part of the third floor—with suites for the governor (who moved his family in due to threats made against them) and the Great Detective and rooms for Thiele, Siringo, and Shollenberger. Armed Pinkerton’s agents made certain that no undesirables—socialists, union men, photographers, or reporters32—found their way into that wing. In fact, the hotel had such an overwhelming number of operatives that Richardson and Miller were rumored to have moved out, because they found the corridors “patrolled at all hours by rubber-heeled sentinels.”33
McParland soon could be found accompanied constantly by Siringo, now fifty-two years old but still in fine shape and as dangerous as ever, with his Colt .45 and a walking stick holding a hidden twenty-inch blade that he could wield as effectively as he had his Bowie knife a decade before.34 A strategic decision had been made that McParland should not attend the trial, as he made too obvious a lightning rod for verbal attacks by the defense that might distract the jury from its “true purpose.” But he was still visible, taking daily walks with his bodyguard35 and presiding over a horde of journalists—the “war correspondents of the capitalist press” as Shoaf called them36—well-wishers, and idle gawkers. “Here he sits and smokes and receives homage,” Hermon Titus of The Socialist wrote. “Most pass by with awed looks, while some few are proud to be seen sitting alongside and basking in the great man’s halo.”37
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