Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1914-08-05
mrs. HALL s Fight
FOR HER LIFE
Witness for the Defense
Strikes Hard Blow and
Hurts Cause.
ORDEAL FOR ACCUSED
Suspected Woman Has Lost Her Sc
renity and Shows Signs of Great
Anxiety During Day. c

! Louisa, Va, August 5.-Every eff
fort of the defense was yesterday eX-
erted to prove that the bullet which
killed Victor Hall at Green Spring on
April 18th was not fired from Victor
Halls pistol, and was, therefore, not
fired by Mrs. Victor Hall, who is
being tried for the murder of her
husband.
The bullet extracted from the mur-
dered mans brain weighs 12S grains.
Bullets found in Victor's pistol
weighed $50 grains each.
The Commonwealth claims that
some of the lead was probably
scraped from the bullet which killed
Victor Hall when it bored through
the mans skull, the skull bones be-
ing harder than lead.
r. A. Campbell, of Fluvanna, the
first witness, was put forward by the
defense as an expert on firearms. He
produced handbook compiled by a
cartridge company, showing the
weights of pistol bullets, the company
issuing the book not being the one
that made the cartridges found II
Victor Halls pistol.
Attorney Fulton objected to the in
PRODUCTION of the book. because it is
not standard work, because it does
not give the weights of the make of
cartridges found in Victor's gun, and
i,ecarsc ne could rot cross examine
the man who wrote it.
The court ruled that the book could
be introduced as collateral evidence,
and in order that witness might tes-
t;fv as to certain tests recently
made by him.
Juryman Riddell asked the witness
if bullet would lose any lead in
penetrating hard substance. Wit
ness replied that some of the lead
might be shaved off, he could not
say how much.
DR.. Harry Porter was put on the
stand and said that the bullet made
\ hole in Victor's skull, which, in his
Judgment could not have been made
if the pistol had been fred at very
close range.
While most of the defense's testi-
mony was of nature to aid Mrs
Hall in her fight for liberty, it is
equally true that it afforded much
capital to the Commonwealth. In
several instances the witnesses for
the defense played into the hands
of commemorative Attorney Bibb
and Attorney N. ]. Fulton, who is
assisting him, and the prisoner at
The bar began to show signs of anX-
iety that were unnistakable. Once
during the testimony of Mrs. n. w.
Hall, her mother -in-law, the accused
woman bowed her head in her arms
and wiped her eyes, as if in an eff
fort to keep back the tears. The
recital, and the aged woman excited
the sympathy Of both court and
spectators. r. Lindsay Gordon, of the
defense, examined her with all gen.
tleness and the attorneys for the
Commonwealth were no less restrain
ed in their methods of cross-examina-
ton. Tears rolled down her cheeks
as she told of the wound which Vic
tor suffered, and she wept again as
she testified that her daughter-in-
law had been a good and true wife to
her son..
It was Miss Jennie Roberts who,
in an apparently determined effort to
testify in favor of the accused, de-
livered a staggering blow to the
defensc. Under sharp cross-examina-
ton, she was made to admit that she
had had a, telephone conversation
with Mrs. Hall shortly after the mur-
der, and that; Mrs. Hall informed her
that she was suspected of the mur-
der, suspected of doing away with
Victor Hall, in order that she might
have the witnesses brother, ". j.
Roberts.
Magistrate James f. Hester, who
acted as coroner at the inquest over
Victor Halls body, was subjected to
gruelling cross-examination, from