New Britain herald., 1926-09-20
Who Is Guilty?

Who Is Guilty?
 The question I am asked oftener than any others are, am l satisfied with the way the case has been handled, both four years ago and now; and who do l think commit ted the murders of my mother and Mr. Hall?
 I was not satisfied until now with the way the case has been investi- gated. Nobody could expect me to be if they knew the carelessness that clouded the entire thing from the minute the bodies were found until the investigation was reopened re- gently. As all the world knows, they were not even examined enough to bring out the frightful fact that my Mothers throat was cut, all though an eyewitness told me after wards that when Mothers body was lifted, the head fell backward and had to be held in place. It was at tached only by the vertebrae in the neck. This was only admitted after the bodies had been exhumed a month later.
 How would any girl in my place feel? Knowing what I know and listening at all these hearings four years ago, to all those confiictions and confusions, how does anyone expect me to have been satisfied with the handling of the case then. Rules and laws and usual ways of doing things seemed to me to have been totally ignored. Valuable articles that were part of the evidence were lost and some of them found again under mysterious circum- stances, and some have never been found. What was I to think? What would anybody have thought ? What did the whole country think? And they ask me If I was satisfied.
 However, everything is different since the reopening of the case q few weeks ago. I am thoroughly satisfied with the work of Senator Alexander Simpson. Detective Cap tain Harry Walsh and others who are doing their best to bring the guilty ones to punishment.
 I do not feel bitter toward the slayer or slayers. Their crime is on their own soul. I believe in capital punishment, most emphati- cally, and I would like to see the guilty ones take what the law says they should.
 The law, I have learned, is a very strange thing. If a person is guilty. 1t seems to me much easier 10 have a lawyer protect him and get him free, than for an innocent person to be proved innocent. l can't see why they let people su- spected Of crime to have private criminal lawyers that they pay im- mcnse sums to, to keep them safe. If a person Is charged with a crime, I think they ought to have public lawyers who are paid by the state, to defend them, just as they assign a lawyer to a poor person, and just as they assign a district attorney to convict an indicted person,
 Anybody that listened to the first proceedings in this Hall-Mills mur- der case would have lost every bit Of feeling they may have had about the dignity of the law and the exist ence Of equal justice for all. But now, through the untiring activities of Senator Simpson, I have regained respect for the law and it's officers.
 Senator Simpson is a wonderful man and I almost begin to have a glimmer of hope that he will bring out some of the truth. Mrs. Jane Gibson, the "Pig Woman" as the newspapers call her. is one Of those you cant help but admire because they have personality.
 She certainly had nothing to gain CT lose by telling the truth about what she saw that awful night Of September 14th-no axe at all to grind. Mrs. Gibson is what you call "a character" She does what she wants to do in the way she wants to do il: she has the courage Of her convictions; and no fear of any body.
 She may be eccentric. but she Is certainly sensible and courageous. She is q good deal of q mystsry- says she doesn't know where she was born, only that it was some place in the United States; but that has nothing to do with her honesty. She may not have education, but she certainly is intelligent and level headed. She is a hard worker, minds her own business looks after her farm, her house. her husband and kid (she has a grown son and a baby), and has q straightforward way with her that just "gets her across" I cant find any other words for it,
 You cant help liking her. Mrs. Gibson is about the best illustra- . ton Of what personality is and what it can do. that l ever saw.
 Even though I didn't know her before she testified al the first hear ing four years ngo, and still don't know her except from seeing her in connection with this case, there have been many times when l thought of her more as a motherly Samaritan.
 Mrs. Gibson under oath, positive ly identified Mir. Carpenter and Willie Stevens as people she saw out there near DeRussey's Lane that terrible niEht-saw the flashlight on their faces. She never had met them and didn't know who they were, she said, al the time she made the iden- tifcation. She also says she heard woman cry. "Oh. Henry."
 I am only Charlotte Mills, daugh- ter Of one of the murder victims, the Mother who stood for all that was dear and happy in my life. and for all that the future held. ap