Imperial Valley press., 1931-07-31
TESTIMONY in
FLOOD CASE IS
BADLY TANGLED
Mother And Daughter Ar
rayed Against Each
Other In Legal Battle.

REDWOOD CITY. Calf, July 81.
tU,P)-A tangled web of testimony
the life story of woman who spent
38 years wringing precarious liv-
ing out of a girlhood romance that
went wrong, was before the jury in
the $4,000 900 Flood will suit to-
day at the close of Mrs. Eudora
Forde Stearn Willette's two days on
the stand.
Buoyed one moment by the SYM
pathy OF attorneys for the recog-
nized heirs of James L. Flood and
shrinking back the next under the
denunciation of Mrs. Constance May
Gavin's legal battery, Mrs. Willette
clung throughout to her main story
that Mrs. Gavin, her daughter
was not the daughter Of Flood.
The one-time San Francisco dane
ing favorite fought back nervous
tears time and again as she faced
Mrs. Gavin and told this newest
story of hers, striking at her daugh,
ter's claims to a S4,000,000 share in
the Floods vast bonanza fortune.
Money, small sums and large
money for dire necessities when she
was hungry, money for luxuries and
travel-thiS was the burden of Mrs
Willettes testimony, the handspring
that propelled her life since Con-
stance May was born to her in the
early nineties. She got money from
Flood when she could, then from
Mrs. Rose Flood, his first wife, and
then at last approached the daugh-
ter who had been taken into the
Flood household
She was paid money. she said, in
1926 when she made the affidavit
naming Flood as Constance Mays
father-Eugene Aureguy an estate
investigator, gave her SIS and later
other sums. once for shoes when her
feet hurt her and again to move in
to a better apartment with her
aged mother.
Since last January, when she
made the amazing recantation that
James Cannon, a theater worker
now dead, and not Flood, was the
father, Mrs. Willette has been cared
for by the Flood estate. she testi-
fled.
Hints at NObleman
Once she limited that nobleman
Count Orloff," might have beer
the father, but she checked hersel'
and refused to continue. She me-
the nobleman at a famous Sar
Francisco hotel of the COS, and HI
"showered attentions" on her, sh'
said
At another point an affidavi
Mrs. Willette made in 1927, veal
after Floods death, was introduced
It said, Constance was born of a
friendship that existed between
Mr.. Flood and myself" But Mrs
Willette still insisted Cannon was
the father.
Didn't you ever accuse Cannon
of the fatherhood and ask him for
help?" she was asked.
NO, I didn't want to see him
again."
Then came another revelation
rocking the courtroom, that Mrs,
Rose Flood perpetrated a mother
hood hoax" when the baby Con-
stance was taken into the multi
millionaires household. The affi-
davit said Mrs. Flood was afraid
that scandal would attend upon the
child coming into the home and
she had enioined me to secrecy, as
she made all plans to pave the way
for the advent of the child as hers
and wrote her people to the effect
that she was about to become a
mother"
Mrs. Gavin, the Los Angeles bank
teller's wife, paled as she watched
her mother on the stand, but no
look passed between them. The
battle of mother against daughter
with money the gulf between them
lasted until Mrs. Willette haltingly
left her chair and walked blindly
out of court.