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

down to
whether or not the jury was going to believe that Mrs. Parker had
written "the Peabody sheet" in the presence of the detective, when her
husband claimed that, with the exception of Mabel's signature, he had
done it himself and carelessly left the paper in his desk in the room.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Parker's copy of the signature of Alice Kauser,
made in court in an attempt to shield his wife.]
The prosecuting attorney was at his wits' end for an argument to meet
the fact that Parker had written a sample forgery of the Kauser
signature before the very eyes of the jury. He found it at last in an offer
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