True Stories of Crime From the District Attorneys Office | Page 8

on his own part in open court during his "summing up" to write for the jury from memory a better forgery of the Kauser signature than that written by Parker himself, and thus to show how simple a matter it was to learn to do so. He had taken up his pen and was about to give a sample of his handiwork in this respect when the defendant grasped her counsel's arm and whispered: "For God's sake, don't let him do it!" whereupon the lawyer arose and objected, saying that such evidence was improper, as the case was closed. As might have been expected under the circumstances, considering the blunders of the prosecution and the ingenuous appearance of the defendant, the trial ended in a disagreement, the jury standing eight to four for acquittal.
The District Attorney's office now took up a thorough investigation of the case, with the result that on a second prosecution Mrs. Parker was confronted with a mass of evidence which it was impossible for her to refute. A boy named Wallace Sweeney, sentenced to the Elmira Reformatory, was found to have been an active accomplice of the Parkers for several years, and he was accordingly brought down to New York, where he gave a complete history of his relations with them. His story proved beyond any doubt that Mrs. Parker was the forger of the checks in the possession of the District Attorney, and of many others beside, some of them for very large amounts. The evidence of Sweeney was of itself quite sufficient to warrant a conviction. To make assurance doubly sure, however, the District Attorney upon the second trial moved a new indictment, setting forth as the forgery a check signed "E. Bierstadt," so that when Parker took the stand, as he had done in the former trial and testified that he was the forger, he found himself unable to write this new signature, and hence his testimony went for nothing.
But even the testimony of Sweeney was that of an accomplice, requiring corroboration, while that of Peabody remained the evidence of "a mere policeman," eager to convict the defendant and "add another scalp to his official belt." With an extraordinary accumulation of evidence the case hinged on the veracity of these two men, to which was opposed the denial of the defendant and her husband. It is an interesting fact that in the final analysis of the case the jury were compelled to determine the issue by evidence entirely documentary in character. It is also an illustration of what tiny facts stamp whole masses of testimony as true or false.
On her examination Mrs. Parker had sworn among other things: (1) That she had no knowledge of the envelope, the back of which had been used by Parker for the purpose of directing Rogers, Peet & Co. to deliver the clothes and money to his messenger--and, of course, that the words "Mr. Geo. B. Lang" were not in her handwriting. This was one of the envelopes claimed by the prosecution to have been originally addressed in pencil and sent to themselves by the Parkers through the mail for this precise purpose. (2) That she had never seen the "Kauser practice sheets," and that the words "Alice Kauser," repeated hundreds of times thereon, were not in her handwriting. For some reason unknown to the District Attorney, however, she admitted having written the words "I am upstairs in the bath-room" upon a similar sheet, but claimed that at the time this was done the reverse of the paper was entirely blank.
Microscopic examination showed that among the words "Alice" and "Kauser" on the practice sheets some one had written a capital "M." One of the legs of the "M" crossed and was superimposed upon a letter in the word "Alice." Hence, whoever wrote the "M" knew what was on the practice sheet. An enlargement of this "M" and a comparison of it with the "M" in the defendant's signature to her formal examination in the police court, with the "M" in "Mr." in the address on the envelope and with that in the "Mrs." on the "Peabody sheet," rendered it obvious that they were all written by one and the same hand. Therefore it was clear that the defendant was familiar with the contents of the practice sheets (Fig. 8.), even if she had not written them herself and had not told the truth in this regard.
Moreover, it was fairly easy to see that the same hand that had written the words "I am upstairs in the bath-room" upon the second practice sheet had at the same time and with the same pen written the rest of the sheet. This was clearly perceptible on examining the "e's" and "a's."
A comparison of the address "Mr. Geo. B. Lang" (on