St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-03-08
IN ANOTHER HOUR
Attorney Erwin Will Finish
His Address to the Hay
ward Jury.
BEFORE THE HOUR OF NOON
The Jury Will Be Considering
Whether Hayward Shall
Hang.
tERACITY OF CLAUS BLIXT
fhe Theme Upon Which Mr..
Erwin Harped About
All Day.
tERACITY OF CLAUS BLIXT

Could King Agrippa have listened
TO the arguments of Attorney Erwin
yesterday he would doubtless have
answered him in much the same
spirit he did the Apostle Paul on a
memorable occasion: Almost thou
persuadest me to believe Claus Blixt
a liar"
He might have felt constrained
to make such an observation with
out having his opinions as to the
guilt or innocence of the defendant
shaken in the least, as thousands of
people have almost daily since the
trial began.
The belief that Blixt lied even on
the stand as to the manner in which
he took Catherine Ging's life is wide
spread, and yet such is the strength
OF his awful story in a thousand es-
sential particulars that it is general
ly accepted.
At the time of his examination, the
GLOBE suggested that he had told
a coherent story except as to the
actual details of the murder. That
it was true he acted as the tool of
Hayward and fired the shot as he
said he did, but before discharging
the weapon had beaten the unfor-
tunate woman into unconsciousness.
The theory was advanced that, brute
and murderer though he had con-
fessed himself to be, the coward in
his heart concealed the fact that he
fought with a defenseless woman
and beat her with a piece of iron.
But the cur spirit in him would
permit him to say that he scarcely
knew what he was Sdoing-prompted
him indeed to say: 1T was just
luck 1 hit her. 1 never looked. L
did not take aim. 1 just fired, and
it was all luck hit her."
If BliXt lied in this it was neces-
sary for him to invent other lies to
support it, for TO believe his story as
it fell from his lips on the witness
stand is almost impossible. A pool
of blood was in the middle of the
buggy seat, yet he never got a drop
of it on his clothes. The mark of the
Woman's heel on that lonely road
showed that she struck on her feet
when she was thrown out of the
buggy, a fact which renders the
fractures of the skull by a fall alb
solutely impossible. The manner in
which he says he held the lifeless,
form in the buggy during that awful
ri ~
prints under the buggy, are things
which it is hard to believe.
1t was these things and a great
many others in connection with
BliXt's statements which occupied
Attorney Erwin on the second day
of his address to the jury.
At 5 o'clock last evening he in
formed the court that it would be
impossible to finish, and secured per-
mission to talk an hour or an hour
and half longer this morning. But
in whatever he said BliXt colored
all his objects. He was the ocean
to the river of his thoughts that
terminated ALL" and it seemed as if
he could never tire of talking about
him and the inconsistencies of his
several statements.
With consummate skill he sought
to establish an intimate relation
ship between the first statement of
Blixt and the testimony of Adry.
He insisted with the keenest analyti-
cal reasoning that BliXt's first state
ment, made at the very scene of his
crime on that Sunday afternoon
when he drove to the spot with May
or Eustis and Chief Smith was alb
solutely true in every important
point, save that he had substituted
Harry Hayward for his real ac-
complice, the mysterious third man.
The testimony of Blixt had been
distorted and g1amored over with
the halo of religious belief. 1t should
be analyzed by the searching light
of common sense. He implored the
jurors to discredit the testimony of
a man who had told so many contra
dictory stories in the hope of re-
ceiving clemency. The attorney bent
the whole powers of his mind to an
elaboration of the terrible story
told by the real murderer Every
circumstance that had the remotest
bearing on the material evidences
of BliXt's statements was compre-
hended in his argument.
First he took the tracks of the
buggy wheels, camped at a point
not far from where the body was
found and between the open wheels
as the buggy had stood were the
prints of human feet. Why was
any one standing up so close as that?
For no other purpose save a whis-
pered conversation, for BliXt had
sworn that he did not get out of the
buggy, and these tracks were not
his.
Then he had the bloody clothes
brought out, and with these drenched
garments planted on the floor be-
fore the twelve good men and true,
he pointed to the marks of blood
upon the front of the shirt-waist.
the efflux from the awful wounds in
the nose and lip.
But most plausible of all these was
his comment on the condition of the
sealslin sacque, so graphically illus
trated by placing the sacque about
the slender shoulders of his slender
clerk, Walter Schumacher. This
sacque bore a stain upon the collar,
not upon the rear, where the wound
in her head was found, but on the
left side, where it would be up