SENSATIONAL TRIAL.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11126, 27 July 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

SENSATIONAL TRIAL.

THE TERRIBLE CRIMES IN IDAHO.

The trial of William D. Haywood, secretary of the Western Federation of Miners, for the murder of ex-Governor Steunenberg, of Idaho, is now m progress in '.. Boise, Idaho; (writes a New _ork correspondent), and the State's principal witness, Harry Orchard, has told the jury such a tale of wholesale murder and assassination as probably no twelve men were ever before called upon to listen -to -m this country. He has confessed that he was one of a number of men hired by the federation to kill those who opposed the despotic rule of this socialistic organisation. In a calm, matter-of-fact, fashion he has testified that in. carrying out his orders he himself killed nineteen persons, and that he was only one of those engaged m the work of slaughter. He pulled the wire which exploded a bomb' under a railway station platform at Independence, Colorado, thereby killing fourteen- non-union miners; he hurled the bomb which killed two men m the Vindicator mine ; he shot down m: cold blood a detective m Denver, having followed his victim for two miles; he planted a bomb m a vacant lot m the hope of killing a judge who had incurred the enmity oi the federation by his decisions, and the explosion of it killed, not. the judge, but a person not concerned m the labor dispute; he blew ex-Governor Steunenberg to fragments by means of a bomb attached t|o his gate. Besides these crimes — which he carried -to accomplishment— he attempted to kill a Governor of Colorado, the- general who commanded the Colorado militia, m the' , *great miners' strike; and another obnoxious judge. This horrible story has been told under direct cross-examination, with practically no deviation, and m the simplest and most straightforward manner, without bravado or exaggerated expressions of penitence, although Orchard gives as his motive for confession his conversion while m prison. His - cross-examination has shown his to be a bigamist, a thief, and a traitor- to the cause of the miners; but such crimes are mere venial offences beside those wbich he, or someone, certainly committed, so that the force of his tcstirhony has been little shaken. Whatever may. be the effect of it upon the fate of' tfie indicted men, his story will become a classic m the grisly annals of clime m America— one not unworthy to be. matched, with those of the famous French and Italian poisoners.