The San Francisco call., 1898-12-20
SWears Mrs. Botkin Addressed the
 Package.
Terrible Story of Vice Unadorned Told in the Court
 Room.

John P. Cunning is a prisoner in the | County Jail by the order of Superior Judge Carroll Cook Cunning will re- main there until he tells the names of women of this city with whom he ! claims, with shameless unconcern, to | have been intimate. The trial of Mrs l Cordelia Botkin reached yesterday a dramatic climax. The scene in the courtroom during the afternoon has had few parallels in San Francisco. l There were only two witnesses on the stand and both narrated a story of shocking immortality and unbridled lust. One of these witnesses, Miss Liz zle A. Livernash, related what she claimed had been told to her by Mrs.
 Botkin. The other, John P. Cunning, pictured disgusting scenes and inci- dents in which he had been one of the leading actors. His testimony was a confession of his own degradation in which, IL his manner of speech and at- titude indicated anything, he took con- siderable pride. In courtroom crowd ed to the very doors he confessed a moral obliquity that stamps him as despicable.
 Dunn1ngs material evidence for the prosecution may be briefly summarized.
 Ihls man, who admitted yesterday that
 he deliberately deceived his wife and dlshonored his home, could do little more than declare that the anonymous letters Tn the case and the address on the package of poisoned candy were writ
 ten by Mrs. Cordelia .Botkin Beyond
 this Cunning knew nothing except that
 ne mad suggested during his intimacy
 with Mrs. Botkin that his wife was
 pass1onately fond of candy The rest was an unvarnished revolting story of
 unadorned vice. 1t was a story that
 told or unbridled, vulgar passion in a man and woman without refinement. eoucatlon or the common restraints of decency.
 This story was told plainly, without an effort to disguise or soften a mean ing. It was vice in rags, the whisky. soaked passion of the Barbary Coast. And the man who confessed 1t. whose presence on the witness stand was moral pollution, had the indecent ef- frontery to characterize San Francisco as city involved in an immoral at- l mosphere. There was something of horror in the calmness with which this man admitted his own viciousness and | when he was released from the witness stand to be taken to jail there was a murmur of relief and satisfaction in the crowded courtroom.
 Hundreds of fashionably dressed women, and girls who were hardly more than children, listened to this dis gustfng recital. They were at a tension to hear every word spoken Their eyes shifted from the speaking figure on the witness stand to the woman before the bar. There was in the manner of the man an utter absence of shame and across the woman's face now and again would fit the shadow of a smile at the narration of some escapade with her former paramour.
 There was no session of court in the morning as sister of one of the jurors was dead. At the opening of the afternoon session Miss Lizzie A. Livernash, an occasional reporter for the Examiner, took the stand. Miss Livernash had much to tell. Quick and sharp of speech, nervous and positive of manner, she related for an hour a new edition of La Terre. As a reporter Miss Livernash gained the confidence of Mrs. Botkin after the Dover mur- ders had been committed and Mrs. Bot kin was suspected of the crime. AS | witness Miss Livernash told what she had learned as a conf1dant and as an eavesdropper.
 l She related what Mrs. Botkin had | detailed to her of the liaison with Dun | ming. Miss Livernash told more than that, and described what she heard | while listening at the transom of a door. The witness covered ground that l has been tracked more than once in this case. The progress of the illicit love of Dunning and Mrs. Botkin was traced l from its inception to it's continuation. | Scenes on the race course. at road | houses, in the park, in cafes, saloons and low resorts were pictured. Orgies | at 927 Geary street were described in merciless detail.
 Cunning was represented in physical and financial distress, whisky-lade poverty stricken and mentally despond- ent. Now he was at the race track squandering his money and that of others. Again he was the recipient of money from his jealous mistress. Now the picture was that of a drunken mother and her drunken son, one with her paramour, the other with his mis- tress. The story from the witness stand shocked even those who fed their morbid curiosity with it.
 Miss Livernash spared no detail in l passing. If one escaped her she in terrupted the progress of her story to 1 recall it. The great audience listened ] in absolute silence to the end to learn ! that more than once Cunning would | have taken his own life had it not been | iYat1, ood Of ic iC%,- : She fed him, housed him clothed him