a mounted policeman there very close just before that?” He didn’t want
to become involved. “Although I thought these men were thieves, I
didn’t call a policeman, I didn’t look for one.” But he did jot down
the license number of the Ford jitney--No. 5187--on the back of a
Western Union envelope with the notation, “Think stolen grip. S. F.
July 22.”
Thirteen-year-old Jimmy McDougall had been a flag boy with the First
California Volunteers that afternoon. His unit formed in Steuart
Street and had just turned the corner into Market Street when the bomb
exploded. While he was waiting for the Volunteers to join the parade,
Jimmy remembered seeing a light-brown leather suitcase “sitting where
the hole was afterwards.” He had first seen the suitcase, which was
about fifty-one inches long, ten inches wide, and a little more than
fourteen inches high, “about ten minutes before I started to march.”
But he hadn’t noticed any of the defendants in the area.
Before turning to les dames Edeau, Fickert called Detective John
A. Dolan who had “arrived at the scene of the explosion about five
minutes after it.” Like the other gendarmes who had preceded him on the
stand, he described the positions of the bodies, the condition of the
sidewalk, and the various pieces of metal that littered the area. When
Fickert turned the witness over to him, Cockran saw a neat opportunity
to put a small spike in Oxman’s story. He asked Dolan whether he had
noticed any cars on Market Street after the parade had started. The
detective, who had been assigned to look out for pickpockets on the
sidewalks, said that he had seen no automobiles along the line of march
and that he knew there was a general order excluding them from the area.
Sadie Edeau and her mother had both testified in the Billings trial.
Although the two women swore that they had observed Billings on the
roof of 721 Market Street, neither one had mentioned seeing any of the
other defendants. Now Miss Edeau said that, shortly after witnessing
Billings on the roof, “I saw Thomas J. Mooney and Mrs. Mooney ...
coming down from the way of 721 Market Street.” When Billings came out
of 721, she had watched him talking to Patrolman Moore. “I next saw
Billings meet Mooney in the center of the sidewalk a little past the
entrance to the Kamm Building a little further out on Market Street.”
When she last saw the trio, they “all started down to the Ferry.” A few
minutes earlier, she had seen Weinberg enter a “five-seated Ford” which
had been parked on Market Street, facing downtown, and “drive down
toward Third Street.” All of this had occurred “between half past one
and twenty minutes to two.”
Cockran was beside himself when he took the witness over.
Q. Now, Miss Edeau, will you tell us why you didn’t mention Mr. Mooney
and Mrs. Mooney and Israel Weinberg and the Kamm Building and that
automobile ... at any time during the trial of the Billings case?
A. Yes, I was never asked anything about them on the witness chair.
Q. Were you asked what you saw that day?
A. I was only asked what I saw Billings do.
In fact, she hadn’t even told Draper H. Hand, the detective who had
interviewed her in Fickert’s office before the Billings trial, all
that she had seen because she “wanted to stay out of the affair.” But
she insisted that she had revealed to him “about seeing the jitney and
seeing the officer honk that horn.”
However, there was someone in whom Miss Edeau had confided before going
to the police. She had spoken to Professor H. C. Migram, an elder in
her church. But, while she had told him “more than I told Mr. Hand,”
she was obviously not a lady who liked to reveal all at one sitting.
Q. Did you tell him everything you saw?
A. I didn’t tell him everything we saw.
Q. He told you to come over to the District Attorney and tell him
everything you saw?
A. Certainly.
Q. And as I understand you, you didn’t tell him everything you saw,
some of it you reserved until today?
A. Yes.
Q. Why didn’t you?
A. Because I didn’t feel like doing it.
Q. You didn’t feel like telling the whole truth?
You wanted to tell as much as you wanted?
A. The reason why I didn’t tell it was because I didn’t want to get
into it.
Q. But you were in it!
A. We need not have gotten into it if we didn’t want to be truthful.
Q. But the elder advised you to go and tell the District Attorney
everything you know?
A. Yes.
Q. And you went over and didn’t tell him all that you knew?
A. I think we did.
Cockran was muttering to himself when he sat down.
Mellie Edeau not only vigorously confirmed her daughter’s version,
but insisted that they neither knew of any reward nor were “after
the reward.” “Such a thing as that would not appeal to me,” she told
Cockran. After Patrolman Moore, Peter Vidovich and Herbert C. Wade had
repeated the testimony they had given in the Billings trial, Fickert
called T. K. Stateler, a Civil War veteran who, like young Jimmy
McDougall, had also seen “a suitcase at the place where I afterwards
saw the indentation on the sidewalk.” Stateler, who didn’t have the
stamina he had had at Gettysburg, had tired on his walk from his office
to his unit’s assembly point in Steuart Street. “I looked for something
to sit down on,” he said, “and I saw the suitcase. It was in the shade
and it occurred to me to sit on it.” But a solid belief in private
property had won out and he had decided to rest his G. A. R. bones on a
nearby fence instead. As for the suitcase, “it looked like an old one,
dark tan I should say.”
Fickert closed out his case with a lecture on the detonation of
dynamite by Arthur H. Crane, an explosives expert, and the testimony of
the officers who had arrested Billings and Weinberg. Lieutenant Bunner
had picked up Billings at the Lane Hospital on July 26th. Later that
day, he had searched the suspect’s home at 2410 Mission Street where
he had uncovered a can of .22-caliber cartridges, a loaded .32-caliber
pistol, a .22-caliber rifle, and ten ball bearings. Detective Hand
had apprehended Weinberg in the famous Ford jitney that same day at
the corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Market Street. Sergeant William
R. Proll, accompanied by two policemen and the ubiquitous Martin
Swanson, had ransacked the Mooney studio in the Eilers Building on July
26th. They had found “fifteen .32-caliber cartridges ... also three
steel-jacketed bullets ... nine .38-caliber cartridges,” as well as an
Iver Johnson pistol. On Tuesday, January 30th, twelve days after Cunha
had arisen to address the newly impanelled jury, he informed Judge
Griffin that “the State rests, your Honor.” Now it was Mooney’s turn.
Fickert’s case depended on convincing the jury that the cause of the
blast was a time-bomb concealed in a suitcase which Mooney and Billings
had planted at Steuart and Market Streets. Yet, there were witnesses
who had seen an object falling from a roof just before the explosion
occurred. Dr. Mora J. Moss, a physician who was marching with the Sons
of the American Revolution, happened to look toward a building on the
southwest corner and “saw a black object falling through the air.”
When he noticed it, it was between twelve and fifteen inches from the
ground. “It disappeared,” he testified, “behind the people standing
on the sidewalk and a violent explosion immediately followed.” At the
time, he was sure that it was a signal bomb to start the parade and had
been dropped from the Ferry Building.
Fannie Dahl, Charles F. Hollfender, Louis Eris, and Maud Masterson,
all of whom had been standing in the crowd on Market Street, also had
seen “a dark object” flashing by. Dr. Moss had described it as “a foot
to fourteen inches in length and three and a half to four inches in
diameter.” Eris thought that “it seemed to be cylindrical in shape
and about a foot across.” To Mrs. Masterson it resembled “an object
like a balloon falling.” Janice Compton, who had a sixth-floor room
in the Terminal Hotel, had been watching the parade from her window
when she “saw a man crawl along the cornice of the building then
being demolished just east of the saloon, walk across the roof of the
southwest corner building and lean over the cornice and return, and in
a second the explosion occurred.”
Thomas U. Doidge, who worked for the Fine Arts Engraving Company,
said that he had been standing near the trolley pole in front of 721
Market Street, waiting for the parade. After the street had been
cleared of all traffic, a car drove up and parked so close to him that
he had to step aside so that its driver could get out. A few minutes
later, Patrolman Moore had walked over and asked Doidge, “Is this your
car?” When the witness answered, “No, sir, the driver has gone in the
building here,” Moore “took hold of the horn and honked four or five
times.” Shortly after the policeman had continued on his beat, the
driver came out of 721, entered his car and turned left into O’Farrell
Street. Doidge had not noticed any “suitcase or anything else in his
hand.”
On the afternoon of July 22nd, Wade Hamilton, an employee of the
Eilers Music Company, had been photographing the parade with a small
Brownie folding camera from the roof of 925 Market Street. Four of his
pictures were taken from the rear of the roof and, when he developed
them, he noticed that the Mooneys were included in a group of persons
standing within camera range. A large jeweler’s clock on the opposite
sidewalk also showed up in the photographs. When the defense attorneys
asked Hamilton to let them see prints of the films, he refused and
immediately turned them over to Fickert. At the Billings trial,
blurred prints, which failed to show the clock in the background, were
furnished to the defense and introduced in evidence.
Now, Maxwell McNutt, who had taken over for Cockran, was determined
to force the prosecution to come across with Hamilton’s negatives. He
asked Griffin to order the Police Department to “produce the films
referred to by this witness.” Cunha gave him a bit of a fight.
MR. CUNHA: I believe they are in the possession of Mr. Blum, the
police photographer.
MR. McNUTT: We will ask that they be brought here before the witness
leaves the stand.
THE COURT: Yes, send for them.
MR. CUNHA: It is Mr. McNutt’s business not ours, to send for them.
MR. McNUTT: I have no control over Mr. Blum. Go and get Mr. Blum and
tell him to deliver the films which were delivered to him a week after
the day of the Preparedness Day Parade.
Cunha, after reminding McNutt that he “had copies of those at the last
trial,” gave in meekly. When the films were brought into the courtroom,
Hamilton identified them as those he had taken on July 22nd.
Theodore Kytka, a photography expert for the United States Government,
had made enlargements of Hamilton’s pictures. They clearly showed that
the Mooneys had been on the Eilers Building roof at 2:01 p.m. and 2:04
p.m. on the day of the parade. Since the Eilers Building was more than
a mile away from the corner of Market and Steuart, it was difficult to
see how Mooney could have been in two places at approximately the same
time unless one was prepared to accept a theory later advanced by Mrs.
Edeau that a person’s “astral” and “physical” bodies can be separated
at will.
John C. Lawlor, another Eilers Music Company employee, had gone to
the roof with his wife “about a quarter to two, ten minutes to two,
something like that.” He had seen Rena Mooney there “about ten minutes
to two.” However, in the Billings trial, he had testified that “I first
went up about ten minutes to two and that I remained there about ten
minutes and started to go down the street and had an engagement and met
Mrs. Mooney coming on the roof alone.” His wife, Gertrude, remembered
that Mooney had also been on the roof “but I can’t say what time it
was.” Mr. and Mrs. Mario Cresafulli had seen the couple there at 1:50
p.m. as had Mrs. Julia de Lorenzo.
Before the Mooneys had gone to the roof, they had been in their
fifth-floor studio-apartment. Benjamin Kirsch, who had his tailor shop
in Room 503 of the Eilers Building, had seen Rena Mooney “going down to
the mezzanine floor with a sheet of music in her hand” between one and
1:30 p.m. Harry Rosenblatt, Mrs. Kirsch’s brother, arrived at the shop
“between one and half past” and met the Mooneys there as did Sam Green,
a family friend. Nicholas Hugh Treanor went to Mrs. Mooney’s studio on
the morning of July 22nd and did not leave until 12:30. Rebecca Cutler,
a violin pupil, said that she had come for a lesson that morning but
that she couldn’t remember “what time of day it was.”
Rena Mooney testified that she had seen three of her pupils on the
morning of the parade. Camille Leger had arrived first, only to
announce that “she would rather not take her lesson that week because
she had been on vacation and had not practiced.” Mrs. Mooney told the
girl not to give it a second thought since the cancellation “was just
as well for me as I was going on a vacation myself.” She had decided to
purchase some underwear at Schwartz & Goodman’s on Fifth Street and the
girl accompanied her to the elevator. While she was out, Rena stopped
in the Clarion and bought a shirt and a tie for her husband.
After Rebecca Cutler’s violin lesson, the Mooneys decided to go up
to the roof to see the parade because a huge flag on the front of
the building had blocked all their windows. Martha Timberlake, Mrs.
Mooney’s cousin, and Belle Hammersburg, her sister, went to the roof
with the couple and stayed there until the parade ended. Hilbert
Roberts, a fourteen-year-old pupil of Mrs. Mooney’s, “saw her on Parade
Day on top of the Eilers Building while the parade was going on,” but
didn’t know what time it had been.
When Mooney took the stand, he confirmed his wife’s account of their
activities on July 22nd. He had left the apartment for breakfast at
Hoffman’s Restaurant at 9:30 that morning and returned an hour later.
He recalled that Rebecca Cutler had left his wife’s studio “in the
neighborhood of 1 or 1:15.” A few minutes later, Mrs. Hammersburg and
Mrs. Timberlake arrived and, at approximately 1:30, the quartet went up
to the roof. “We did not leave the roof,” he testified, “until the last
section had passed.” Like his wife, he denied being either at Steuart
and Market Streets or 721 Market Street at any time during the day.
Israel Weinberg, a Russian-born ex-journeyman carpenter who had turned
to hacking early in 1915, had met Mrs. Mooney when a Mrs. Strager (his
wife remembered the name as Trager) recommended her as a music teacher
for his son. Until he was arrested, he had never met Nolan or Billings.
At 2:05 on July 22nd, he had been paying a bill at the gas company
office on Grant Avenue. Then, after buying some chops and a loaf of
bread, he went home and had his lunch. At 4:45, he had driven to the
Ferry and “kept working until ten o’clock that night.” When it came to
denials, he was just as definite as the Mooneys. “I did not drive a
jitney on parade day up to 721 Market Street or to Steuart and Market
or carry as passengers Mooney, Billings, Mrs. Mooney and a man with a
stubby mustache.”
Weinberg insisted that he had picked up two men at 29th and Valencia
who ordered him to take them to the 12:20 Ferry. Although he told them
that “I guess I can make it,” he had arrived five minutes too late.
Then, the cabbie picked up two more passengers on E Street who were
destined for Fillmore and Sutter. When the cab reached Golden Gate
Avenue and Jones Street, Weinberg said, “I saw a jitney driver I know,
Simon Statler.” Later a Simon L. Sutter testified that “I saw Israel
Weinberg driving around Golden Gate Avenue and Jones St. between 12:30
and around 1 p.m. or probably a little after. I don’t know the exact
time. It was in the early afternoon.” Esther Caplan, who ran a misfit
clothing store at 1269 Golden Gate Avenue, had seen Weinberg “between
half past one and two on Saturday” when he had stopped in for a few
minutes to read her a letter from his wife, who had gone east for the
summer. David J. Smith, an old friend, had met him on Golden Gate
between Webster and Fillmore “about a quarter to two.” Weinberg was on
the sidewalk, walking toward his cab, when Smith, who was accompanied
by Leon Carasso, a life insurance agent, had hailed him.
On February 9, 1917, the jury returned a verdict, finding Mooney guilty
of murder in the first degree. Cockran immediately moved for a new
trial on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the
evidence, but Judge Griffin decided to let things stand as they were.
On February 24th, he sentenced the defendant to be “hanged by the
neck until you be dead.” If this wasn’t the end of the road for the
thirty-year-old ex-moulder, it was as reasonable and uncomfortable a
facsimile as a union man could ask for.
But there was more to come. On April 11th, the _San Francisco Bulletin_
published photostatic reproductions of a series of letters between
Oxman and one F. E. Rigall, the proprietor of a pool hall in Grayville,
Illinois. In the early morning hours of December 14, 1916, the Oregon
cattle dealer had written an urgent--and misspelled--note on the
stationery of the Hotel Terminal to his old friend, urging him to
“cum to San Frisco as a expurt witness in a very important case.” He
promised him “mileage and all that a witness can draw probly 100 in the
clear.” Oxman closed with the plaintive plea that “I need a witness.”
Two days later, Rigall wired: “Will come. Wire transportation and
expenses.”
Oxman answered him at once. “Your Telegram Received,” he wrote, “I
will wire you Transportation in Plenty of time.” But there was one
condition. “You will only hafto say you saw me on July 22 in San Frisco
and that will be easey dun.” In the meantime, he advised his friend
that “the silent Road is the one and say nothing to any Body the fewer
People no it the Better.” On Christmas day, Oxman informed Rigall’s
mother that he was “sending Ed transportation tomorrow.” Perhaps, he
would be able to use her, too, as “a Extry witness” might come in very
handy.
Rigall arrived in San Francisco on January 6, 1917, and registered at
the Terminal Hotel as “L. O. Charles.” He was given Room 437. Four days
later, the register was changed to show that 487 was now occupied by
an “F. E. Rigall, Evansville.” On January 17th, at the request of “Mr.
C. M. Fickert,” a card was issued to an “F. E. Rigall” by the Olympic
Club of San Francisco, extending to him “the privileges of the club for
a period of two weeks.” Apparently, nothing was too good for “a Extry
witness.”
But Rigall was destined never to see action in the Mooney trial for the
simple reason that he had never been in San Francisco before in his
life. On February 12, 1917, three days after Mooney’s conviction, he
sent Cunha a congratulatory wire but warned him that “my evidence will
get party new trial.” The Assistant District Attorney replied by return
telegram that he was “astonished at your suggestion that you have
testimony to help defendant,” and exhorted Rigall to “wire me collect
all details at once.” There was no answer from Grayville.
On February 13th, Charlotte La Posee gave the defense attorneys an
affidavit in which she swore that she had seen Oxman watching the
parade near the entrance to the Phelan Building, more than a mile from
Steuart and Market, at the exact time when, according to his testimony,
he had observed Mooney and Billings planting the lethal suitcase.
According to the _Examiner_, Fickert was “undisturbed” at this
revelation because “John Regal, an Oregon business man, was a companion
of Oxman the day of the Preparedness Parade and could corroborate the
testimony of the cattle man.” The reason “Regal” hadn’t been called at
the trial was “because of domestic difficulties.”
Rigall got around to putting his story in writing on April 22nd when
he signed an affidavit in which he claimed that Oxman, with Fickert’s
help, had tried to get him to say that he had seen Mooney at the corner
of Market and Steuart on Parade Day. For this, he was to receive
$250.00 from Oxman and a liberal share of the reward money. But his
conscience had gotten the better of him and he had left San Francisco
on January 26, 1917, without testifying. When he returned home to
Grayville, he had told the story to Mayor Claude O. Ellis, who had
persuaded him to return to California and prevent “the God damndest
frame-up that you ever heard of.”
Six days earlier, Estelle Smith, the dental assistant who had testified
that Billings and his famous suitcase had been on the roof of 721
Market Street on the day of the explosion, had admitted that Oxman
had tried to bribe her to identify Weinberg as well. “Wouldn’t you
testify,” he had asked her, “that you saw him for a check in four or
five figures?” To her question, “Who sent you to me, Fickert?,” he had
replied, “No, not Fickert, but men higher up than Fickert.” When she
had told the District Attorney of this offer, she was informed that the
cattleman was “a queer old duck.”
On April 30, 1917, Oxman was indicted for subornation of perjury.
One month later, Rena Mooney was brought to trial and acquitted on
July 25th. Fickert managed to keep her in jail on the other seven
indictments until March 30, 1918 when she was released in five thousand
dollars bail. On November 27th, Weinberg also was acquitted but it was
not until March 22, 1918, that he was admitted to bail. Nolan, with
Captain Matheson’s help, walked out of prison shortly after the Oxman
exposures and was never tried.
In the Weinberg trial, eighteen police officers who had been stationed
in the vicinity of Steuart and Market on July 22nd testified that they
had seen no jitney in that area between 1:30 and 2:06 p.m. Inspector
William H. Smith and Captain Walter J. Peterson of the Oakland Police
Department both said that Mrs. Edeau had first told them that she and
her daughter had seen two middle-aged men “carrying a black suitcase
with white metal trimmings at Steuart and Market Streets.” When Mrs.
Edeau was taken to City Prison to identify Mooney and Billings, she
had told Inspector Smith, “I have never seen either of these men in my
life before.” In any event, it had been her “physical” body at Steuart
and Market, she had informed the startled officer, because her “astral”
body was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Kamm Building
watching Billings leaning over the roof of 721 Market Street. Two years
later, her physical hand was to write for the rewards her astral eyes
had earned.
Although Oxman was acquitted of subornation of perjury, Woodrow Wilson
appointed a Mediation Commission to make an investigation into the
Mooney case. On January 16, 1918, the Commission informed the President
that, while it was not in a position to determine the defendant’s guilt
or innocence, it did feel that “a solid basis exists for the feeling
that an injustice was done ... and that an irreparable injustice would
be committed to allow such conviction to proceed to execution.” On the
strength of this report, Wilson persuaded Governor William D. Stephens
to commute Mooney’s sentence to life imprisonment.
Because California law did not permit the granting of a new trial on
the basis of evidence that was not in the original record, it became
impossible, notwithstanding Judge Griffin’s earnest attempts, to give
Mooney another hearing. Both the trial judge and the Supreme Court of
California were powerless to act despite that fact that, in May of
1921, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Hatcher of Woodland, California, told a Grand
Jury investigating Oxman’s possible perjury at the Mooney trial that
the cattleman did not board the San Francisco train until 2:15 p.m.,
nine minutes after the bomb had exploded some ninety miles to the
southwest. When Griffin reminded Governor Stephens that Mooney had
been condemned upon evidence “concerning the truth of which, there
had arisen a very grave doubt,” he had made the understatement of the
century.
But there were still more surprises in the offing. Alice Kidwell,
Estelle Smith’s mother, who had testified before the Grand Jury that
she saw Mooney waiting for Billings outside of 721 Market Street, had
written a letter on February 2, 1917, to her husband, who was then
serving a term for forgery in Folsom Penitentiary. In it, she told
him that “the authorities are going to let you out and maybe in a few
days. Captain Matheson and the District Attorney went to see two of the
Board this A.M. and will see the others at Sac. I know I am needed for
authorities and they are helping me by getting you out.”