The Parenticide Club | Page 4

one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to
explain away.
At this, my attorney rose and said:
"May it please your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by
comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's
previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his later offense (if
offense it may be called) something in the nature of tender forbearance
and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling
ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any
hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the
honorable judge before whom he was tried was the president of a life
insurance company that took risks on hanging, and in which my client
held a policy, it is hard to see how he could decently have been
acquitted. If your Honor would like to hear about it for instruction and
guidance of your Honor's mind, this unfortunate man, my client, will
consent to give himself the pain of relating it under oath."
The district attorney said: "Your Honor, I object. Such a statement
would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is
closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three
years ago, in the spring of 1881."
"In a statutory sense," said the judge, "you are right, and in the Court of
Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your favor. But
not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled."
"I except," said the district attorney.
"You cannot do that," the judge said. "I must remind you that in order
to take an exception you must first get this case transferred for a time to
the Court of Exceptions on a formal motion duly supported by
affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was
denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the
prisoner."
The customary oath having been administered, I made the following
statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the
comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he
made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply
instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the court, without a stain upon
my reputation:
"I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich., of honest and reputable

parents, one of whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in
my later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near
Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency and prospered
beyond the dreams of avarice. He was a reticent, saturnine man then,
though his increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of
his disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad
event for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a
genuine hilarity.
"Four years after we had set up the road agency an itinerant preacher
came along, and having no other way to pay for the night's lodging that
we gave him, favored us with an exhortation of such power that, praise
God, we were all converted to religion. My father at once sent for his
brother, the Hon. William Ridley of Stockton, and on his arrival turned
over the agency to him, charging him nothing for the franchise nor
plant--the latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a sawed-off shotgun,
and an assortment of masks made out of flour sacks. The family then
moved to Ghost Rock and opened a dance house. It was called 'The
Saints' Rest Hurdy-Gurdy,' and the proceedings each night began with
prayer. It was there that my now sainted mother, by her grace in the
dance, acquired the sobriquet of 'The Bucking Walrus.'
"In the fall of '75 I had occasion to visit Coyote, on the road to Mahala,
and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other passengers.
About three miles beyond Nigger Head, persons whom I identified as
my Uncle William and his two sons held up the stage. Finding nothing
in the express box, they went through the passengers. I acted a most
honorable part in the affair, placing myself in line with the others,
holding up my hands and permitting myself to be deprived of forty
dollars and a gold watch. From my behavior no one could have
suspected that I knew the gentlemen who gave the entertainment. A
few days later, when I went to Nigger Head and asked for the return of
my money and watch my uncle and cousins swore they knew nothing
of the matter, and they affected a belief that my father and I had done
the job ourselves in dishonest violation of commercial good faith.