The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1908-07-24


wrote a note explaining that she had
left money with SmithwicE to pay her
bill, but he did not pay it, but later
came and said he wanted to put pack
age in the suit case. He took the case
to the depot, where Miss Lee inter
cepted him and recovered it, holding it
until last Monday, when the bill was
paid.
Asked IL she thought Mrs. O'Neal
a proper person to have. charge of a
child, she replied that she would not
want a child who was related to her
to be so raised
All this testimony was taken at the
Lee home, to spare the witness from
going to the court room. At the court
house the next witness was w. ]. Mel
son, formerly of Hattiesburg, but now
of Pass Christian. He is brother of
Mrs. O'Neal, and with another brother
assisted O'Neal to secure possession of
the child in controversy, while it was
living with its mother in Hattiesburg
few weeks ago, after telegraphing
o'Neal to. go there for that purpose.
Nelson made a rather poor witness,
and was disappointment to the de-
Tense. He had been expected to tell
something of the alleged misconduct
of his sister at Hattiesburg, and Of
the nightly visitors she had there,
but the closest questioning would not
bulge him into any admission that
her visitors were anything more than
honorable callers who sometimes re-
NAMED until IL or IL o'clock. His
reason for telegraphing O'Neal to go
down there was that he had been sup
porting Mrs. O'Neal and the child
and that having lost his position, he
felt that the father was better able
to take care of the latter.
At the time of the kidnapping he and
his brother, as well as Mrs. O'Neal,
were at his house, where she and the
child were living. His. brother went
to the gallery, to get the child, and he
himself had handed it over the back
fence to O'Neal, who then returned
to Jackson. Mrs. O'Neal then left his
house saying she was ,going to follow
the child, after telegraphing to Jack
son to try to have O'Neal arrested.
| Witness did not again see his sister for
several days.
Little Lille Belle Guyton, the 49,
year-old daughter of the proprietor
of the hotel at which Mrs. O'Neal
stopped in Mendenhall during the term
of court at which she had case there
a few months ago, testified as to Mrs.
O'Neal's conduct while there, follow
ing which her mother had ordered her
to leave the hotel.
Mrs. O'Neal had a room with two
windows opening on the front gallery,
and three different men were men
toned as having been in this room
with her during +he two OF three days
she was there.
On two different occasions she had
looked through the window and made
observations of which she related to
her mother, who had ordered the wo-
man to leave the hotel, after first
asking Judge Billiard if she had the
legal right to do so. "
On one of these occasions she had
seen Ben Smithwick and man
named Mckay, who had been men
toned earlier in the trial as frequent
visitor at the Hattiesburg house where
Mrs. ONeal and the little girl had
lived with her brothers. That one Of
these men was drunk, and she put him
Fin bed; that Smithwick had a suit case
filed with whisky lying open on the
floor One of the men had tried to
shoot Mrs. O'Neal, but she took the
pistol away from him unloaded it and
gave 1T back to him. She then went
out on the gallery and he followed
her with the pistol.
The witness, brighteyed little
girl, became very much mixed up in
cross examination in such platters as
to the time of day or night the Incl
dents occurred, and it was with the
greatest difficulty that she described
the location of articles in the room.
but she could not be shaken on the
main facts.
She admitted that she had not told
her mother of some incidents becaIse