Just as the police captain was giving orders to the cops, a bomb was thrown from the crowd into the ranks of the police. The cops turned their guns on the workers, wounding 200 and killing several. Parsons evaded a police search until he turned himself in on the day of the trial. The trial itself was a classical frame-up. The prosecutors produced no evidence that any of the eight men threw the bomb, nor that any of them had conspired to throw the bomb.
Anarchy is on trial.
These men have been selected, picked out by the grand jury and indicted because they were leaders. Convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and save our institutions, our society. All were sentenced to death except Neebe. The rest were hanged on November 11, 1887. Six years later, Illinois Gov. John Atgeld freed Neebe, Fielden and Schwab and posthumously pardoned the five executed men, revealing that much of the evidence was phony and that the trial was a charade.