LIAR OR ASSASSIN.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11123, 24 July 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

LIAR OR ASSASSIN.

If Orchard j the principal witness for the prosecution in the trial at' Boise City, Idaho, is a liar, he is an "accomplished one. On the oilier hand; if he is speaking the truth, he has been guilty of a series of crimes almost beyond belief. In the .first two days^ of his^eviderice he described some twenty iriurders which he said had been committed at the instigation of ihe_ Western Federation Vof Miners. /*He is indeed a riddle of .criminology," says an American (rorrespondent. "Seemingly oblivious of any sense of shame or apprehension as to what may become of him, he tells the court .'I shot him,' pr 'I blew him up,' in the same tones he might use if he were saying 'I gave him a glass of beer.' "He; confessed to having placed a bomb in a mine, Which killed the superintendent' and another man,. arid* to having' blown up a railway station while a train carrying non-unionists Vtes there. A hundred pounds of powder were placed under the platform, and the explosion killed twelve people. . For this Orchard received £60. Sent to San 'Francisco to "locate" a iriari named Bradley, a foririer mine manager in' Idaho, he tried to poison his victim by placing strychnine in his milk cart. . This having failed he madeja bomb and arranged it so that when Bradley opened his front door it would explode. ' 'When Bradley opened the door next morning the explosion blew out the front of the house and blew him into, the street." This transaction brought Orchard £90. The assassination of Mr Steunenberg was attempted more than once before a bomb at his gate blew him up. Orchard carried a sawed-off shot gun under his coat, but could get no chance to use it. Mr Peabody, Governor of Colorado, was tracked for three weeks by men with guns, and on one occasion owned his life to the fact that a lady, was with him. Another time a bomb was buried in a road along which it/was known he would walk. The conspirators were ready to pull the wire arid, blow him. up, when two, waggons passed over the wire and rendered it useless, Mr Peabody. being actually over the bomb at the time. The idea of mur-. dering Mr Steunenberg several years after he had vacated office was that the deed would show other enemies of the Federation that they were not forgotten. It was claimed that to consign these people to a living death: would be better than killing them;