IDAHO MURDER TRIAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13941, 28 June 1907, Page 5

IDAHO MURDER TRIAL

STIUNENBERG'S assassination. EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENCE. Press Association—By Telegranh—Copyright. NEW YORK, June 27. (Received June 27, at 10.37 p.m.) The evidence for the defence in the Idaho murder trial is, proceeding. Mrs Day testified that Orchard told hev that Steunenberg was responsible for his poverty, adding that he would get even with him. John Elliot, an inmate of the Soldiers'. Home, deposed that Orchard told him he had been employed by the Mine-owners' Association, and the Western Federation of "Miners was about to be crushed: also that something would happen within a month to startle the world. This was five weeks before Sleunenberg's assassination. Router describes how James M'Parlan, a famous Pinkerton detective, got the confession from Harry Orchard, who says that he murdered Mr Steunenberg'at the instigation of tlie miners' leaders. Ho had Orchard put into a solitary cell, and forbade I he guards to utter one word to him or in his presence., In due course the prisoner grew nervous, then sleepless, and finally his health broke. Then M'Parlan, who had learned all about his antecedents, walked into his cell -with the remark, "I wonder what your old mother at •— will say when she rends of the fix you are in." Orchard sprang from his chair. "What do you know about my mother?" he demanded. A day or two later, after a talk aliout his childhood's home, Orchard made a concession which took M'Parlan three days to write. Three thousand dollars, he says, were promised him if he would kill Mr Steunenberg. He and n man Adams spent weeks studying the habits of their victim, who used to return home to Caldwell at 6 in the evening. They resolved to shoot him with suwed-otf shot guns on Christinas Eve, but, as he was in company with his brother and son, they were afraid of making a mistake. Then a- liomb was planted at the gate. The explosive apparatus consisled of a wire attached Iq the gaie in such a way that the least movement of the gate would tighten it, withdrawing a cork from a bottle of sulphuric aeid. spilling the acid upon some sugar, which ignited a dynamite cartridge, which in turn exploded the bomb. Orchard eonte<v-cd that he made the connection on the night of the tragedy a few minutes before Mr Steunenberg was expelled to enter. Any other person who had chanced to touch the gaie in ihe inierval would have been blown inio eternity. As a matter of fact, Orchard did kill one man bv accident. He had lixed up an infernal machine attached to a nmve in an open field through which one of the chief jusliccs of Colorado had io pass on liis way home. > A wandering bicyclist saw ihe purse, and, dismounting, picked it up. A tine wire connected it with a bottle of sulphuric acid, and the bicyclist was torn to pieces.