The New Bloomfield, Pa. times. (New Bloomfield, Pa.) 1877-188?, 1879-11-04

and that the coat was not closed until
they began to tie him. Bat the police
once seton the suspected trail furnished
other evidence as TO his probable guilt.
In the pocket OF his ovefcoat were found
slight fibres Of the same cord as that
with which bis body was tied, and even
in the cotton cap, which, according to
him, one of the murderers wore, hairs
were found which on examination prov
ed to correspond exactly with those OF
the lad, and the prosecution claimed that
the youth had put this cap upon himself
several times in order to make It seem to
have been used. He had even put spots
upon 1t In various places to correspond
with the story that one of the assasslns
was black. All these points were elab-
GRATED on by the experts, the hairs being
submitted to close analysis, as well as
the morsels of fibre. ir
Taking the character of the youth
into consideration, public opinion gave
him up as good as hanged three weeks
weeks ago. 1t was proved on the wit
ness stand that he was youth of strong
passions, that he was always in need of
money and always borrowing 1t, and
that he was once heard to say y'' should
be well satisfied If the old woman,
(meaning his grandmother) would kick
the bucket, for need her pennies pretty
bad" This the public prosecutor de-
clared alone sufficient evidence of the
crime, for the youth who would talk
like that of his mothers mother, would
not hesitate to put his plan for her "tak-
ing off" into execution.
Against all this the defense raised the
objection that from all the testimony
there was not q single penny disturbed
in the house of the grandmother, and
that If money had been the motive, two
murders would have been necessary to
make the work available to the accused,
since his mother is inheritor and not he,
to which the prosecution responded that
Retson was not without intelligence and
knew very well that to have robbed his
grandmother on the night of the mur-
der would have been sure method of
convicting himself of the fact, and that
the money once in his mothers hands
he was sure of sharing as much as he
wanted of it.
The appearance of the lad himself
spoke very much in his favor, for he
had mild blue eye, light complexion
and brown hair, and seemed deeply
moved by every question asked him,
and almost tainted when the lawyers
made an allusion to him as the culpable.
So soon as put on the stand he answered
all the interrogator with self-posses-
sion and intelligence, disconnected his
adversaries in every respect, and visibly
affected the opinions of the jury. The
whole trial, however, hinged on the
problem of whether man could tie
himself in such a fashion or not, and to
give the jury the fullest light on the
subject fifty persons-athletes, expert
enced gymnasts, circus-riders and what
notified and united themselves by the
hour in the court room, the whole thing
winding up by leaving the question just
as undecided as ever; for while experts
were able to tie themselves, no single
man, unaccustomed to gymnastic exer-
cises, was able to put cord around his
own body, arms and neck, in the same
way that the youth was found bound,
for, as the police testified, the body was
SO tightly corded that the blood broke
through the skin in many places. The
accused was asked to tie himself, which
he did repeatedly, but his success or
unsuccess could hardly be taken as
evidence, since if he had the astuteness
to conceive in the first place, he would
not be idiot enough to ''give himself
away by repeating, to his own destruc-
tion, that which he had invented for
his own salvation. The jury deliberated
for long time, and finally the youth
escaped by discriminating eight to
four.