McParland could also be found at breakfast time in the hotel café, where—photos suggest—he had done a sterling job in replacing the pounds he had lost during his illness the previous autumn. The socialist editor Ida Crouch-Hazlett noted that when he drank his coffee, “He sucks it up so that you can hear it all over the room.”38 Most important, a significant part of McParland’s time was spent conferring with Gooding, Hawley, Borah, or his operatives. And it was these meetings that showed he was still the leader of the prosecution, for, as Titus wrote, “when McParland speaks, all civil officialdom in the capital of Idaho listens and quakes.”39
• • •
About half a mile away from the Idanha, a square, brick building with a wooden cupola stood amid lawns lined by trees.40 Much of the Ada County Courthouse had been left shabby by a quarter century of rough winters and housing the county jail in its basement. This was certainly the case for the third-floor courtroom that was the domain of Judge Fremont Wood.41 The room measured about 70 feet by 45 feet, and had bare plaster walls and long, hard, uncomfortable benches that provided space for 250 people. Acknowledging the significance of the upcoming trial, Wood had ordered fifty chairs added “inside the rail,” meaning that spectators were sitting virtually knee-to-knee with the attorneys and jury.
The judge’s chair was in an elevated position at the east end of the room, with the jury directly in front of and below him. Although the juror’s backs were normally to the judge, their chairs pivoted so that they could see him when he spoke. A raised witness box faced the judge and jury, with the prosecution and defense at tables on opposite sides of it. The court stenographers sat directly in front of the witness, and reporters filled the chairs behind the lawyers, making what was an extremely small space even more confined. Compared to four prosecutors—Hawley, Borah, Canyon County district attorney Owen Van Duyn, and William Stone representing the Steunenberg family—there were eleven defense attorneys, although all were rarely present at any one time. Haywood sat at the end of his attorneys’ table, virtually within arm’s reach of one of the jurors, and no more than seven or eight feet from the witness stand.
This was the setting on May 9, when jury selection began, a complicated, all-male process that entailed extensive questioning of the potential jurors (or “talesmen”), by first the prosecution and then the defense. Either side could challenge the talesman “for cause,” that is, prior knowledge of or bias about the case, victim, defendant, or primary witness; holding a position that could not be changed by evidence; or for specific views about all manner of related issues. The judge then either sustained the challenge, thereby excusing the talesman, or not, in which case the man continued in the process. Each side also had ten peremptory challenges that could be used to eliminate anyone for whom the judge had not sustained the challenge for cause.
Long before they met in court, however, both sides began canvassing potential jurors—sending out agents to chat with unsuspecting men who might eventually be jury candidates. Posing as salesmen, customers, or migrant workers, the canvassers attempted to discover their targets’ political and social views, opinions about the labor struggle, and thoughts about the case, the defendants, and Orchard. They then recommended which men their side should accept, reject, or examine further. If by this process one side could stack the jury, it could determine the verdict before testimony ever started. Thus, such information was considered as valuable as gold dust.
It was in this task that one of McParland’s most successful agents—C. A. Johnson of the Seattle office, known as Operative 21—was engaged.42 He had been sent to Caldwell following Steunenberg’s assassination and, posing as a miner from the Coeur d’Alenes, had slowly wormed his way into the socialist community to such an extent that in the summer of 1906 he was elected to the Socialist Party’s six-man Canyon County central committee. More important, he was chosen to lead the defense’s canvassing efforts in the county. When the trial was moved to Ada County, Operative 21’s controllers on the defense moved him—much to McParland’s joy43—to head the canvassing operation there. Thus, as jury selection began, the prosecution knew exactly what the defense knew and how they likely would proceed, enabling the prosecution to get rid of the most dangerous potential jurors.
Unfortunately for the prosecution, in April or May the defense identified Operative 21 as “a detective who was in the employ of the other side,” and, according to Gooding, he “was warned to leave the state or suffer the death penalty.”44 Gooding blamed the state auditor—who had demanded to see the detailed expense claims from Pinkerton’s—for the leak that allowed the defense to uncover “every secret service agent in the state.”45 This included Cole, who in June was “shown the door and told not to come back.”46 But McParland believed there was a more nefarious reason for the exposure of his agents, and he intensified his search for moles. In so doing he discovered two defense operatives—a Boise policeman and a detective—who had infiltrated the prosecution.47 But somewhere, he believed, there was a more subversive turncoat.
The uncovering of Operative 21 made the defense team even more wary in jury selection—as they could no longer fully believe their reports—and the questioning process dragged on day after day, until approximately 250 talesmen had been considered.48 Finally the jury was filled, although only after each side had used its peremptory challenges. The dozen men selected formed a remarkably uniform group.49 Nine were farmers, one a real-estate agent, one a carpenter, and one a foreman for a fence-building company. Nine were native born, two came from Scotland, and one from Canada. Only one had belonged to a union, and that was fourteen years before. Only one was less than fifty years old. Judge Wood approved the selections and scheduled testimony for the next day.
• • •
At 9:30 on the morning of June 4, the formidable, six-foot-four-inch James H. Hawley began the prosecution’s opening statement in the most widely covered trial in Idaho history. To reporters from the eastern United States—and there were many, including Oscar King Davis of The New York Times and John Carberry of The Boston Daily Globe—Hawley’s phrasing, verbosity, and lack of Eastern-style eloquence must have made them think he was some rustic bumpkin who would quickly be out of his depth. But the “old sagebrush lawyer” knew exactly what he was doing—he understood the mentality of Idaho jurors and how to communicate with them.
Nevertheless, within minutes Darrow interrupted Hawley, supposedly questioning the form and purpose of an opening statement.50 It was the beginning of a pattern followed throughout the trial, as Darrow picked at Hawley with sarcastic and belittling comments. This was a tactic Darrow used throughout his career—attacking an opposition attorney in continuous and malicious ways to throw him off stride. It would work for many years, and it would work on Hawley, making him just that much less effective.51
Hawley promised that the State would prove that the inner circle of the WFM was responsible for the murder of Steunenberg, that they “traded in blood” and “employed hired assassins to take life and destroy property.” This would be proven by the appearance on the stand of both Orchard and “James McParland, the terror of the evil doers throughout the west and whose very presence in any community is security for the good order of that community.”52
The rest of the day was spent with a series of witnesses establishing the events surrounding Steunenberg’s death. Then the next morning, around 10:30, Orchard—the monster the nation had read about but few had actually seen—was called to the stand. One of those escorting him was Siringo, who, bored of being assigned to the Idanha-bound McParland, had volunteered to be a bodyguard for Orchard.53 Like two of the other special bodyguards, Bob Meldrum and Rudie Barthell, Siringo made no bones about coming into the courtroom heavily armed.
But no one paid attention to Siringo—all eyes were on the witness. George Kibbe Turner of McClure’s Magazine described the fascination in finally seeing the man: “The first emotion on seeing Harry Orchard is in
variably astonishment. This is the confessed assassin of eighteen men. In appearance he is like nothing so much as your milkman—the round-headed, ruddy-faced, sandy-mustached milkman, with his good-natured diffidence, breaking easily into an ingenuous smile. A year and a half ago, when he was first arrested, this man was clearly one of the most dangerous characters our civilization can produce. His face . . . possessed the characteristics of a clearly developed type—the nervous eyes, the compressed lips, and the hardened face muscles of the hunted beast we call the criminal.”54
Other accounts also pointed out contrasts between Orchard when he was arrested and his appearance on the stand. “Orchard the criminal wore a badly fitting coat, no natty collar, no well-tied scarf, no jaunty negligee shirt. His hair was hacked, not trimmed. He was unshaven, not well-groomed. . . . The eyes were shifty and watery. . . . This man might be guilty of anything,” John Nevins wrote in The Milwaukee Journal. But, he continued, “Orchard the witness might be a Sunday school superintendent. He is carefully attired—collar, cuffs, scarf, even to the quietly displayed watch chain, which lies across his benevolent breast. He affects dark colors, as becomes one contrite and oppressed with a sense of his own wickedness. His hair is cut in the mode, well-trimmed. The mustache is carefully arranged. His hands are perfectly kept, his nails manicured.”55
Equally amazing as this transformation was Orchard’s testimony, starting with the admission that his real name was Albert E. Horsley, a fact that in the past year Darrow’s investigators had failed to uncover.56 For the next day and a half Hawley carefully took the confessed killer from his birth in Ontario, Canada, through his string of atrocities, starting with the explosion in the Vindicator mine.57 He detailed an attempt on the life of Colorado governor Peabody, the murder of detective Lyte Gregory, and the Independence depot bombing, all done, he said, in the company of Adams. He then described how he made two attempts on the life of former Bunker Hill and Sullivan president Fred Bradley in San Francisco, tried again to kill Peabody, planned the murder of former Colorado adjutant general Sherman Bell, and set bombs intended to eliminate state Supreme Court justices Goddard and Gabbert, the latter of which killed a passerby instead. Finally, he recounted the harrowing story of Steunenberg’s assassination.
Now came the defense’s chance to break Orchard’s testimony and the State’s case. Richardson and Darrow both wanted to conduct the cross-examination, but ultimately it went to the stern, reserved, schoolmasterly Richardson, who for a full week—twenty-six hours in court—grilled, badgered, intimidated, inveigled, and tried to outwit Orchard. He sought to portray the witness as not only a murderer but also a womanizing bigamist, a heavy drinker and obsessive gambler, a thief and swindler, an arsonist, a cheat, a braggart, and a liar. Yet, although he drew out admissions of even more crimes than those to which Orchard had already confessed, he was unable to make Orchard contradict himself, or to shake his testimony. It was a major defeat for the defense and left many newspapermen convinced of Orchard’s honesty and religious conversion.
“Orchard is now the stronger moral force of the two,” Davis wrote in The New York Times, continuing: “His self-possession is undisturbed and unshakable. His equipoise is amazing. Self-reliant, calm, steady, and alert, he meets and repulses assault after assault that would crumble and break down the sturdiest resistance based upon any other foundation than his. Richardson has planned a campaign against a house of cards. He finds a fortress built of granite, and without the wit or willingness to admit his error, batters his head against it in the vain attempt to force his faulty tactics to succeed.”58
One of Richardson’s tactics was to try to show McParland as the man behind the scenes pulling the strings; the man who had forced the confession and regularly prepped Orchard for his testimony; the driving force behind the prosecution. Day after day Richardson tried to force Orchard to admit collusion with the detective, but each time, Orchard denied it.59 On June 13, as Orchard’s time on the stand neared its conclusion, Richardson
commenced to bore in hard in the apparent effort to show that Orchard had been induced to make his confession by the promises of Detective McPartland and others, and in the hope of securing immunity from punishment for himself. Every resource at the lawyer’s command was used in that effort.
His voice boomed out its loudest, and he employed with utmost vigor the tactics of blustering, bullyragging, and browbeating which had not succeeded at any point before. Then he lowered his tones and tried the other sort of attack with wheedling insinuation. He sneered and scoffed.
He distorted answers and tried the old method of testifying to his own deductions, putting them into the form of statement-questions, acting as if he expected Orchard to agree to them at once. But Orchard resisted every attack. . . . He denied from first to last that he had been promised immunity by McPartland to confess, declaring that he had had it in mind to do so before he ever saw the detective.60
Finally, Richardson gave up. He was beaten. Most of those who had heard Orchard’s testimony agreed with the assessment of C. P. Connolly of Collier’s that he was “the most remarkable witness that has ever appeared in an American court of justice.”61 Darrow, however, was not so sure, thinking that his success could be attributed to Richardson’s lack of ability, for, as Darrow later told a reporter, Orchard could think four times while Richardson did so once.62
Without Adams to testify, it was now incumbent upon the prosecution to corroborate the different elements of Orchard’s testimony, and for the next eight days a series of witnesses attempted to do so. Incident by incident, they elicited information that confirmed various details of Orchard’s story, proved some of his movements, and attempted to show a motive. But many of the connections were tenuous, and when Hawley and Borah concluded their case on June 21, they could not have been truly confident. Certainly a great deal of evidence pointed at Haywood and the WFM—but most of it had come from Orchard. Would it be enough?
The defense did not think so, and when Borah announced that the State rested, Richardson presented a motion—speaking for two and a half hours—for a directed verdict of acquittal; he was followed by Borah and Darrow.63 Expecting Judge Wood to take some time to determine his ruling, the attorneys were stunned when he spoke immediately. “Gentleman, the court is clearly satisfied that this case should be submitted to the jury,” Wood stated, adding that although “[o]rdinarily it would be the duty of the court to give its reasons,” he would not do so, as there were three others indicted on the same charges, and thus “the court will refrain from . . . pointing out the reasons for overruling the motion.”64
If Wood’s timing and decision were surprising, his reasoning was even more so. However, it would be a quarter of a century before he finally disclosed it.65 Shortly before jury selection, Darrow, feeling the need for a local lawyer on the team, invited the prominent Ada County attorney Edgar Wilson to join the defense. Wilson had been a partner in a legal practice with Wood before entering Congress in 1895. Wood thought that “our previous association could in no way affect my ability to try the cases and to exact justice,” so Wilson joined the defense. However, when Richardson asked for a directed verdict, Wood was in a quandary. He believed that “there was very little legal corroboration upon which a verdict of guilty could be justified,” yet he was concerned about the way it might look should he grant the motion to his old partner’s side. Therefore, he ruled that the trial should proceed.
• • •
On the morning of Monday, June 24, McParland was sitting in the lobby of the Idanha when a touring acting company arrived to check into the hotel. Remembering almost half a century later the strange atmosphere and the vast number of armed men loitering throughout the hotel, the troupe’s lead actress wrote: “A big man came over to me and asked me if I was Ethel Barrymore, and when I said yes, he said, ‘I was a great friend of your father’s. My name is McFarland. I’m a Pinkerton man.’” Although the twenty-seven-year-old Barrymo
re did not remember the Great Detective’s name correctly, she certainly recalled the experience. When she asked McParland what was going on, he told her that because of the trial, the whole town was like a fort. He then invited her to a room upstairs and lifted up a mattress so she could see a collection of Winchester rifles. “He said there were rifles under every mattress in the hotel.”66
At the very moment McParland was chatting to the actress, Clarence Darrow was in Judge Wood’s courtroom making the defense’s opening speech—which had been postponed from the beginning of the trial. With this speech he set the pattern and tone for the defense for the rest of the trial.67 First, Darrow hoped to convince the jury that the mine owners, their political allies, and their operatives—particularly Pinkerton’s—had conspired to destroy the WFM through their creature, Harry Orchard. Second, he hoped to impeach Orchard’s testimony at so many points that his entire confession would be shown to be a “great fabric of untruths.” And third, through sarcasm and innuendo, Darrow hoped to implant in the minds of the jury that the man at the center of this diabolical web was James McParland.
In the next three weeks the defense called more than eighty witnesses. Some testified that they had seen Orchard when he claimed he was elsewhere. Some raised the idea that he had a vendetta against Steunenberg due to financial losses he suffered in 1899. W. F. Davis, whom Orchard had said was in charge of dynamiting the Bunker Hill and Sullivan concentrator, denied his involvement. It was suggested that the explosion in the Vindicator mine had been an accident. And it was offered that the explosion at Fred Bradley’s house had been caused not by a bomb but by an exploding gas main.68
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