Part 6

McDonald was followed on the stand by Frank C. Oxman, a cattle dealer from Durkee, Oregon, who had replaced the syphilitic, wife-beating Crowley as a corroborative witness. It seems that he, too, had been on the corner of Market and Steuart Streets just before the explosion. He had pulled into town from Portland “between 12 and 1 o’clock,” and checked into the Terminal Hotel which was directly across Market Street from the Alameda Cafe. Then “I went to two or three restaurants and they were crowded and I couldn’t get a seat and I went over and bought some fruit and was at the corner of the street and was expecting to cross the street when the automobile drove up.”

Q. Where did it come from?

A. I call it down Market Street. It was going toward the Ferry Building.

Q. What was it attracted your attention to that machine?

A. This defendant was in the front seat holding a suitcase on the outside with his hands, on the running board.

Q. The defendant on trial, Thomas J. Mooney?

A. Yes.

He described the car as “an old Ford” and identified Israel Weinberg as its driver. He had seen Mrs. Mooney and Billings, whom he depicted as “the little auburn-haired boy,” in the vehicle’s rear seat. When Weinberg stopped the car near the saloon at the corner of Market and Steuart, “the little auburn-haired boy jumped out of the hind seat, very excitedly and very rapidly, and took the suitcase from the other gentleman that was holding it on the front of the machine.” Another man, who had been sitting in the Ford’s back seat, a man who “had a stubby mustache and looked like a working man,” got out of the car and relieved Billings of the suitcase. Then the two men had walked rapidly down Steuart Street just beyond some metal cellar stairs where Billings “took the suitcase from the other man and ... set it down by some doors.”

While all this was going on, Mooney had left the car and was standing on the curb, “right out near where I was,” watching Billings and his mustached companion walk down Steuart Street.

Q. Then what happened?

A. Then they came on back where Mr. Mooney was standing near the post and seemed to be looking for somebody, I don’t know--I think they went in the door of the building there, I won’t be sure whether all of them or not, and directly came out.

Oxman was near enough to hear Mooney tell Billings, “Give it to him and let him go; we must get away from here; the bulls will be after us.” The latter then handed something “to the other gentleman that carried the suitcase part of the way.”

Q. What happened?

A. He went across the street ... the other gentleman, I don’t know who he was.

After another brief conversation between Mooney and Billings, the machinist “went first toward the car and Mr. Mooney looked at his watch and looked at his watch and looked at the tower clock also at the same time. He glanced over to where the suitcase was after Mr. Billings left him and then he proceeded to go to the car also.” When he last saw the Ford, it had “turned into Steuart and went up Steuart.”

Oxman was certain that all of this had taken place at least twenty minutes before the explosion because he had returned to the hotel to wait for a telephone call.

Q. Now, when you got over to the hotel, did you notice anything about the time?

A. Yes.

Q. What would you say the time was when you arrived there?

A. It was 15 minutes to two o’clock.

Q. Around fifteen minutes to two?

A. Yes, because my telephone call was at two o’clock.

When Cockran took over, he wanted to know why Oxman had been so intensely interested in three men and a suitcase with a mammoth parade going by right under his nose. The witness had a ready answer to this oblique reflection on his credibility. “I thought these people were a set of thieves,” he said. “I took more than one glance at them. I thought they had stolen this suitcase and were caching it out, that was the reason I took close observation of them.” Besides, despite the fact that the cattleman weighed two hundred pounds, “Billings pushed me out of the way so he could go past.” A fat man would remember a thing like that.

Why hadn’t he reported the incident to the police when “he had noticed 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.