The islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1891-1899, 1895-11-07
READY FOR THE JURY
The Prosecutions Closing Ar.
gument Delivered.
THE TEDIOUS DURRANT TRIAL
District Attorneys Peroration Brings
Tears to the Eyes OF All But
Theodore Durrant.

IuoOuOre DuTrauC. WnlIe the SpeCta.
tors in the crowded courtroom craned
their necks to catch every word of the
speaker, he delivered what is considered
in many respects one of the strongest
arguments ever made to California
jury. Aside from being logical and
convincing i'll his discussion of the
testimony, he made two or three
dramatic by-plays that put to a severe
test the iron nerves of the prisoner
Of these scenes the most impressive
took place in the early part of his ar
gument, when he spoke of how counsel
for defense had invoked the spirit of
Blanche Lamont and voiced her
thought by saying:
'Let him go free; he harmed me
not. F."
While looking intently at the frame
bearing Miss Lamont's dress, which
stood near the jury box, and telling
how, through the long days of the
trial, he had seen the young schoolgirl
clothed in all her innocence and purity,
Mr.. Barnes reached the climax of the
scene. Turning upon Durrant, who
was seated only three feet away, the
district attorney with clenGhed fists and
in voice of thunder exclaimed:
Il see her now. There she stands
behind him at this very moment; not
praying for vengeance for her deep and
remediless wrongs; not for the laws
retribution upon her murderer, but
with uplifted hands and streaming
eyes, praying God will not put it into
your hearts, by the mockery of ver-
dict of not guilty, to set free this mon
ster to prey upon other souls, pollute
with vile hands the unsullied snow of
other children and defy anew that God
of justice whose ministers you are"
Durrant was the least affected per-
son in the courtroom. While Mrs.
Noble, the dead girls aunt, wept
silently and everybody else was thrill
ed with the impressiveness of the scene,
Durrant sat stolid and Indifferent. AS
the district attorneys last words were
uttered, the prisoner whispered some
thing in the ear of his mother, who sat
near him, and smiled as if pleased at
the wit of his own remark.
Mr.. Barnes began his argument by
dwelling upon the personalities of Miss
Lamont and Durrant, outlining the
grounds upon which the state bases its
contention that no one but Durrant
could be the murderer. He spoke in
part as follows:
1.-THE individual who perpetrated
the hideous murder, with which the
defendant stands charged and which
has narrowed the soul and frozen the
blood of this community, is no ordi-
nary criminal; and his crime in every
respect in which it may be considered
is without parallel. 1t was not COM
mitted under blind and furious i'm
pulse to revenge some real or fancied
wrong to his person, his property or
his character, nor from motives OF
gain, nor in the commission of rob-
berry, nor yet under the hot spur of
jealousy, that hell of the injured lover.
1t was in every sense cold-blooded,
vicious murder. 1t was without the
slightest provocation or apparent ex-
cuse or palliation. The assassin chose
for his victim an innocent and helpless
maiden, in years almost child, almost
a stranger in our city, simple school,
girl, temporarily residing with rela-
tive and engaged in the struggle to OBJ
tain an education as teacher In the
normal school. She was undeveloped
in mind, pure in life and thought, pure
and unsuspecting in nature, and pre-
senting in body none OF the qualities
which are supposed to arouse the evil
passions of the seducer and Hbertine.
For the scene of his dreadful assault
the murderer selected an evangelical
church dedicated to the worship OF
! God, a temple where the doctrines and
life of Jesus Christ were taught and
| illustrated in Sabbath assembly, in
midweek prayer meeting and in social
gathering. He took the life of his
victim, not with the savage mercy of
the quick pistol or the silent knife, but
he tortured her with the lingering pro-
cess of strangulation, driving his cruel
fingers deep into the tender flesh Of her
slender throat; and so fercely did he
/ do his devils work that the stigma OF
his crime remained until the discovery
of the corpse, clearly discernible as the
cause of death, not only by the expert
surgical examiner, but by the most un-
| learned observer. What other, If any,
wrong was done her before her soul
exhaled and went to heaven we do not
/ know.
''The advancement of natural de-
composition baffled investigation and
made knowledge impossible, but we
know that either living or dying, or
dead, she was taken by him up the
steep stairs of the steeple of the belfry
of the church, where he supported the
poor body with blocks of wood. and
| left it there to rot in nakedness and
wither in the cool western wind that
swept through the lofty spire. He hid
the remains where he believed they
would remain undiscovered and receive
no promise of Christian burial. There
he left her. She was dead, but he
fancied himself safe from detection and
exposure. The heaven-pointing spire
of the Redeemer's church was his only
confidant and accomplish. No human
eye had witnessed his assault upon
Blanche Lamont. No ear had heard
her first shrek of terror and amaze
ment as this monster fell upon her, OF
the last stifled moan of dying agony
that preceded the awful silence ct her