3

In Union There is Death

The State of California

versus

Thomas J. Mooney

Saturday, July 22, 1916, was a day that San Francisco would long remember. Its Chamber of Commerce, anticipating early American entrance into World War I, had organized a Preparedness Day parade which was scheduled to kick off at 1:30 p.m. The two-mile line of march extended from the Ferry end of Market Street to the Civic Center, and every organization in the Bay area that could muster a column of fours was to be represented. Market Street had been closed to all traffic shortly before the parade started and an enormous crowd lined both sides of the route. The various units had assembled in the Embarcadero at noon and marched westward to the music of more bands than San Francisco had ever heard at one time. At 2:06 p.m., as the Spanish-American War veterans stepped smartly out of Steuart Street to join the parade, an enormous explosion shattered the air. When the smoke cleared, the police found eight mutilated corpses lying in the street.

It was soon clear that a bomb had gone off on the westerly sidewalk of Steuart Street, some seventeen feet in from Market Street. Captain Duncan Matheson of the San Francisco Police, who was on duty nearby, ordered Lieutenant Stephen Bunner to take care of the wounded while he kept the parade moving. As soon as the dead and injured had been taken away, Bunner ordered the sidewalks washed with fire hoses. He later stated that he “was satisfied that all the evidence had been collected by the detectives and the persons around before I ordered the sidewalks washed.”

About an hour and a half later, District Attorney Charles M. Fickert, accompanied by a San Francisco banker named Frederick H. Colburn, arrived at the scene. Colburn found some “nickel flattened bullets and a ragged piece of pipe, one or two .32 cartridge shells, rim fire,” on the sidewalk. A remarkably curious man, he then asked for a sledge hammer and “broke a strip three or four inches wide around the little hole in the sidewalk where the concrete was shattered.” Some more cartridges and several jagged pieces of iron were found in the hole. Colburn then pushed in some loosened bricks in the adjoining wall and discovered a few more scraps of metal lodged behind them.

After clearing Market Street for the 42nd Division which had come over from Oakland to join the parade, Captain Matheson returned to Steuart Street, only to find that Bunner had washed the sidewalk clean. The police officer walked over the explosion area and found a bloody strip of iron, a narrow piece of metal with several nails in it, fifteen exploded .32-caliber shells, three .22-caliber bullets, and some fibre strands which he thought looked like “imitation leather.” He then returned to Market Street where he “stayed until all the parade had cleared about 4:30, and then walked back to the scene of the explosion.”

In his absence, Fickert and Colburn had arrived and the latter had enlarged the break in the sidewalk. Matheson was extremely angry that no efforts had been made to guard the explosion area and he ordered Steuart Street roped off. He also set up a police detail to keep the souvenir hunters from removing any evidence that had not yet been picked over. The detectives who had swarmed over the area minutes after the explosion had taken no measurements of the size of the hole in the sidewalk and had made no record of the positions of the victims’ bodies.

That evening, Martin Swanson, a former Pinkerton operative who was employed by the Public Utilities Protective Bureau, strolled into Fickert’s office and nonchalantly remarked that he knew who was responsible for the tragedy. He named two coast labor leaders—Warren K. Billings and Thomas J. Mooney—as the ones who had planted the bomb. They had been assisted, he said, by Israel Weinberg, a cab driver, Edward D. Nolan, the President-elect of Machinists’ Lodge 68, and Mooney’s wife, Rena. Swanson was evidently quite persuasive because Fickert immediately put him on the payroll, and picked up Billings, Weinberg and Nolan four days later. The Mooneys were on vacation in Montesano, Washington, when they read that they were being sought as suspects in the bomb case. After Mooney had wired Chief of Police White that “this attempt to incriminate me in connection with bomb outrage is one of the most dastardly pieces of work ever attempted,” the couple took the first train back to San Francisco. They were arrested on July 27th, by policemen who boarded their coach at Guerneyville.

This wasn’t the first time that Swanson had used Mooney’s name in vain. Three years earlier, when the linemen of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company in neighboring Contra Costa County had gone on strike, the detective had been hired to find out who was dynamiting the utility’s property. He had accused Mooney, who was leading the strike, of possessing explosives, and the union organizer was tried three times before he was eventually acquitted. Swanson had been more successful with Billings who was sentenced to two years at Folsom Penitentiary for carrying dynamite.

On June 10, 1916, Mooney, as a representative of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America, called an organization meeting of the carmen of the United Railroads, San Francisco’s trolley lines, at Woodsman’s Hall. Early the next morning, three of the carrier’s transmission towers near San Bruno were slightly damaged by dynamite. According to Weinberg and Billings, Swanson went all out to pin this bombing on Mooney. On July 17th, he hailed Weinberg’s taxi and offered the cabbie $5000.00 to swear that he had driven Mooney to San Bruno after the meeting at Woodsman’s Hall. When he repeated the offer two days later, Weinberg told him that he had no information to sell.

On July 18th, Swanson met Billings at the office of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, where the latter had gone to pay a bill. The detective promised him a machinist’s job with the utility as well as five thousand dollars if he would help connect Mooney with the San Bruno explosion. Billings was as uncooperative as Weinberg had been, and Swanson soon gave him up as a bad job. He later admitted that he had spoken to both men about Mooney’s part in the bombing of the transmission towers, but denied that he had offered any money to either one.

When Billings, Weinberg, Nolan and the Mooneys were arrested, they were held incommunicado until the Grand Jury met on the evening of August 1. Meanwhile, San Francisco was staging mass meetings at which speaker after speaker urged that all radicals, anarchists and liberals be run out of town. The Law and Order Committee of the Chamber of Commerce raised more than $400,000 for the avowed purpose of ridding the city of its “anarchistic” elements. All of the newspapers embarked on an orgy of speculation, openly inspired by the District Attorney’s office, in which no effort was made to separate fact from fancy. As far as the Examiner, the Call, the Chronicle and the Bulletin were concerned, Fickert had an open-and-shut case against all the suspects, and it made little difference what they printed under their banner headlines.

The first witness before the Grand Jury was Henry Kneese, the City Marshal of South San Francisco, who said that he had found a suitcase containing forty sticks of dynamite on the state highway leading to San Bruno on June 10th. Apparently, Fickert wasn’t above some titillating irrelevancies to soften up a jury. Kneese was followed by Dr. David E. Stafford, the physician who had performed the autopsies on Hetta Knapp and the seven other persons killed in the July 22nd blast. Dr. Stafford stated that he had removed small pieces of .22- and .32-caliber shells and particles of iron pipe from their bodies. After Will George M. Hon, the foreman of the Cadillac Garage, testified that, when Billings was discharged from his mechanic’s job in June, he had owned a brown suitcase, Captain Matheson and Lieutenant Bunner described the scene at Steuart and Market Streets following the blast

Earl R. Moore, a policeman, was the first witness to place any of the defendants on Market Street before the explosion. He had been ordered to clear the parade route of all traffic. Shortly after one p.m., he had noticed an old Ford jitney with a broken horn and a torn rear cushion parked in front of 721 Market Street, a two-story building directly across the street from the offices of the Preparedness Day Parade Committee. While he was standing near the automobile, waiting for its owner to show up, he had observed a man loitering on the sidewalk a few feet away. When Moore asked him if he knew who owned the vehicle, the man had answered, “Oh, he’ll be here in a minute.” The policeman “went on down toward 4th Street and I came back in about ten minutes again and the machine was gone.” Four days later, he identified Billings as the man who had spoken to him that afternoon.

Herbert C. Wade, the principal of a Hawaiian school, had been in no mood to watch the Preparedness Day Parade. Bothered by a bad toothache, he had been heading for his dentist’s office in 721 Market Street. As he walked toward the entrance to the building, Billings passed him “and went up the steps into the dental office. He had a suitcase or something of the sort with him.” A few minutes later, the witness saw a man and woman but he was unable to say that they had been Mr. and Mrs. Mooney. “It was somewhere around one o’clock when I saw Billings,” he told the jurors, “ten minutes to one or ten minutes after.”

The dentist’s receptionist, Estelle G. Smith, had been waiting for the parade to start when Billings entered the office. He had a suitcase in his hand and told her that he was a motion picture cameraman for the San Francisco Chronicle. When he asked for permission to photograph the parade from the roof, she told him that he would have to wait until the dentist returned from lunch. Because she thought he was “sick from the heat,” she had decided to let him go up to the roof at once. She had asked a friend, Louis Rominger to “Please show this man to the roof” while she returned to the window to watch the parade, which had just started. When Mayor Rolph passed by in the street below, she had waved a towel at him and shouted, “Hello, Mayor Rolph!” According to photographs taken by the International Film Company, the Mayor had passed 721 Market Street at 1:50 P.M.

At “half after one or so,” a tall “very repulsive looking man, long mustache,” who looked like “a Russian Jew,” burst into the dental office and attempted to push by Miss Smith who was standing in front of the stairway. When she threatened to call the police, a woman ran up the first-floor steps and persuaded the man to leave the building. Five minutes later, a “very agitated” Billings came down from the roof and, after thanking the receptionist for her kindness, hurriedly departed. She was sure that the woman had been Rena Mooney.

Alice Kidwell, Miss Smith’s mother, had been seated at the window in the dentist’s reception room when she saw the Mooneys talking to two men on the sidewalk outside the building. Mrs. Mooney left the group for a moment and, when she returned, “I saw her with her hand waving it up this way, beckoning to someone on the roof.” A few minutes later, the young man who had been taking pictures on the roof left the building. Mrs. Kidwell remembered saying, “Good gracious, he couldn’t have taken very many because he was up there just a short time.” She last saw the Mooneys walking west on Market Street.

A tramp waiter by the name of John McDonald was the only witness before the Grand Jury who testified to seeing both Mooney and Billings at Steuart and Market Streets. He had been standing on the east side of Steuart, some fifteen feet south of Market, when he noticed a “young fellow coming down carrying a grip in his hand.” Because the man appeared so nervous, McDonald kept his eye on him as he walked down Steuart Street. Just before he reached the corner, he “transferred the suitcase over to his left hand and set it down near the wall.” Then, the young man walked to a saloon at the comer of Steuart and Market where he was joined by another man who had been inside. He identified the youth who had been carrying the suitcase as Billings and the man who had emerged from the bar as Mooney.

McDonald watched the two men talk together for a few minutes and then he saw Mooney take out a pocket watch and check it with the clock in the Ferry Building tower. Seconds later, Billings “took a cut right through the parade toward the other side of Market Street as though he were going back to the Ferry Building.” After waiting a few minutes, Mooney also crossed Market Street “as though he was going across to Drum Street,” one block west of the Embarcadero. By this time, the witness had lost interest in both men and decided to walk up Market Street. He had reached the Alameda Cafe, some 150 feet from where he had been standing, when the explosion occurred.

Mrs. Mooney, who was known professionally as Rena Herman, had been teaching music in a fifth-floor studio in the Eilers Building at 975 Market Street for almost eight years. On the day of the parade, she had watched the spectacle from the roof of her building with her husband and two relatives. When they arrived on the roof, “the parade hadn’t started then. Everybody was yelling it was starting. We hurried to get up there. We didn’t leave the roof until after the parade passed.” Neither she nor Tom had been at 721 Market Street on July 22nd; in fact, they hadn’t left the Eilers Building until five o’clock that evening.

Although Mooney, Billings and Nolan refused to testify because they had not been permitted to talk to their lawyers, Weinberg stated that “I am willing to answer every question you wish to ask me.” He denied that his taxi had been parked in front of 721 Market Street on the afternoon of the explosion or that he had been in the vicinity of Steuart and Market around two o’clock. Although he swore that his jitney was in perfect working condition, he admitted that “the machine in the back is torn, the thread.” At one p.m. on the 22nd, he was driving a passenger to Fillmore and Sutter. Then he had gone to the office of the gas company and paid his bill which was two months overdue. Because the parade was disrupting all traffic, he had decided to call it a day and go home. “I went to the butcher shop,” he said, “and got some meat and went home about three or a little after three.” He had remained home until “five or a little after.”

When Mooney was arrested on the San Francisco train, the police who searched him found the key to Nolan’s basement apartment at 82 Angelica Street in his pocket. Officer Peter J. Hughes, who had been a member of the squad which ransacked the apartment, testified that he had found plaster of Paris, a box containing saltpetre and another bag that contained what “looked like black powder.” A motorcycle belonging to Mooney, twenty pounds of epsom salts, a bag of flour, and a small quantity of flashlight powder were also uncovered. According to Hughes, “We asked him [Nolan] several times before we went down in the basement if there was anything in the basement. He said ‘no.’”

On August 2nd, the Grand Jury returned a true bill, charging all five suspects with the murders of the eight people who had been killed in the explosion. Fickert, whose first act after having been elected District Attorney in 1909 had been to obtain the dismissal of graft indictments against officers of the United Railroads, looked forward to the Mooney trial with a relish that was undisguisable. However, he decided that it might be more expedient to try second offender Billings first and the latter’s trial began on September 11, 1916, in the Superior Court of San Francisco, before Judge Frank H. Dunne.

The prosecution called most of the witnesses who had testified before the Grand Jury. McDonald repeated his story of seeing Billings at Steuart and Market just before the explosion. “As near as I can remember it must have been eight or ten minutes to two when I first discovered him.” After describing the meeting of Billings and Mooney in front of the saloon, the witness said that he “went down to the restaurant on the Embarcadero, 34 was the number, and got a glass of buttermilk.” It was while he was there and not, as he had told the Grand Jury, in front of the Alameda Cafe, that the explosion took place. Also, he now said that he had lost both men in the crowd after their meeting at the corner of Market and Steuart.

Fickert had found a new witness to support McDonald’s story. John M. Crowley was an automobile mechanic who worked on the corner of Steuart and Mission. He was positive that he had seen Billings at 1:55, “standing about three feet from where I was.” He saw him again at the same place immediately after the explosion and he remembered that the defendant had refused to take off his hat when the band was playing “The Colors.” But he was certain that Billings had not been carrying anything in his hands at either time.

Estelle Smith and Herbert Wade swore that they had seen Billings at 721 Market Street at approximately one p.m. on July 22nd. Peter Vidovich, an eccentric patient who had decided not to wait for the tardy dentist, was just descending the steps to the street when he saw Billings struggling up the narrow stairway with a suitcase. “I backed up and stood behind the banister on the top of the stairway and give him a chance to come up.” The suitcase was, he remembered, “kind of pale color like, rather deeper that the ordinary suitcase ... pale color of chocolate or wine color. It was a kind of funny suitcase, it was kind of different.”

Mellie Edeau and her daughter, Sadie, had come from Oakland to see the parade. Although neither woman had been called before the Grand Jury, they both swore that they had seen Billings on the roof of 721 Market Street. Shortly before one p.m., they had been standing in front of the Kamm Building which was next door to 721. Sadie Edeau testified that “when I first saw Billings he was on the roof of 721 Market, leaning over the edge of the building. He had a suitcase in his hand.” Her mother said she had noticed him “on top of the roof ... with a suitcase and he was talking to someone on the street below him.”

According to four employees of Uhl Brothers, there had been a cameraman with a suitcase on the roof of 721 Market Street on Parade Day. Alphonse De Caccia had seen a young man with “a kodak, a kodak grip—a black grip about two feet long and a foot wide” sitting in a corner. This man, he said, had been there when DeCaccia left “about 4:15.” Tracy F. Barrett had observed a “man sitting in the west corner [with a] camera very similar to a newspaper reporter’s camera,” while William B. Crump was sure that this man was still there at “about ten minutes after two” when the witness left the roof. Henry Pincus had seen a man “sitting on the firewall” when he arrived on the roof just as Crump was leaving.

On the day of the blast, Billings had left his house at 1:30 p.m. As he headed for Market and Kearney, he had noticed “a large battleship gray Hudson automobile” on Union Square Avenue. He ended up at Market and Sixth where he “bought an extra with an account of the explosion.” Then he had helped a friend of his who was running a jitney bus between the Ferry and uptown. At no time during the day had he been “at Steuart and Market or 721 Market. I didn’t see Mrs. Kidwell, Estelle Smith, or Rominger, and I had no suitcase.”

On September 23rd, the young machinist was convicted of murder in the first degree, but the jury fixed his punishment at life imprisonment. Now, with Billings on his way back to Folsom, Fickert could concentrate on the man whom he had once described as “a direct action anarchist.” On January 3, 1917, Mooney’s trial began before Judge Franklin A. Griffin and twelve Bay area citizens. Fickert, who had let one of his assistants handle the Billings prosecution, had had enough of the sidelines and showed up with Edward A. Cunha and James M. Brennan, two stalwarts from his office. Mooney was defended by W. Bourke Cockran, Maxwell McNutt and John Lawlor. It took two weeks to select a jury from the 177 talesman who were called and sworn and it was not until January 18th that Ed Cunha was able to begin the state’s campaign to convince Foreman William V. MacNevin and his eleven San Francisco County colleagues that the bombing had been the opening gambit in a Wobbly-inspired campaign to overthrow the State of California.

After six physicians had testified to the wounds and causes of death, Fickert called a whole battery of witnesses who described the cartridges, pieces of metal, ball-bearings and bits of imitation leather that were scattered all over the area after the explosion. Then Frederick H. Colburn, Captain Matheson and Lieutenant Bunner were put through their paces as to what they had seen and done after the blast. With these preliminaries behind him, Fickert finally got around to his star witness, talkative John McDonald, who had already told the Grand Jury and the Billings panel that he had seen Mooney and Billings at the corner of Market and Steuart Streets just before the bomb went off.

McDonald had been found wandering around the Hall of Justice two days after the explosion, claiming that he had seen the men who planted the lethal suitcase. Prior to his sudden prominence, he had been a waiter at a number of cheap San Francisco restaurants. Just a week before the parade, he had been released from the hospital where he had spent several months recuperating from a serious stomach operation. The doctors had told him that he would not be able to work for some time and he had just about run through his meager savings when he walked into Fickert’s office with his story. By July 24th, rewards totalling more than $14,000.00 had been reported by the Chronicle “for the arrest and conviction of the criminals who perpetrated the bomb outrage on Saturday.”

It had been “about 1:40” when the witness arrived at the corner of Steuart and Market. He had gone to Steuart Street “because I thought there would not be such a crowd there.” After watching the parade for a few minutes, he had “moved up ten or fifteen feet on Steuart.” When he first saw Billings, the machinist was coming down Steuart Street from the direction of Mission Street. He had had a suitcase in his hand.

Q. Would you describe more in detail to the jury his actions when you saw him coming walking along Steuart Street with a suitcase?

A. Well, he was carrying the suitcase, and his head was working on a pivot, and he looked all excited as if he was worrying about something. That is what called my attention to him first.

Q. You at that time then noticed the cellar doors, the iron doors there?

A. Yes.

Q. Did he put the suitcase down before he got to the iron doors or afterwards?

A. No, before he got to the iron doors.

Q. He put it against the wall?

A. Let it down by the side of the wall.

Then he had watched Billings walk to the saloon at the corner of Steuart and Market where, just as he pushed the swinging door open, “right on the second, that man there, Mooney, he came out of the saloon.” As the two men were talking, Mooney kept checking his watch with the clock on the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero Plaza. When the brief conversation ended, Billings “started out in the crowd and I lost sight of him and my attention was drawn to this other man.”

Q. Thomas J. Mooney?

A. Yes.

Q. What did he do?

A. He took his watch out again and looked down toward the dock in the Ferry building and after he put his watch back in his pocket he drew his shoulders up and put his hand to his face like he was studying and looked alongside the building.

Q. What did he do?

A. He turned around and went through the crowd and I lost sight of him.

McDonald described the suitcase as being “kind of jersey, brownish color,” nineteen inches long, fourteen inches deep and seven inches thick. He was “just as positive as I am sitting in this chair” that Billings and Mooney were the men he had watched that July day. As far as the time was concerned, he thought that he had seen Billings walking up Steuart Street “about five minutes” after he himself had arrived at the corner at 1:40.

Cockran, who had been thumbing through the transcript of McDonald’s testimony at the Billings trial, could hardly wait for Cunha to finish with the witness. He didn’t waste any time getting down to bedrock.

Q. Didn’t you say at the Billings trial that when you saw Billings place that suitcase there it was about two o’clock?

A. Yes, but Mr. Cockran—

Q. Explain your answer. I understood you to say at the last trial ... it was two o’clock, and now you want to add something to your testimony. Am I right?

A. I know that is also the way I also testified in Judge—

Q. Can’t you answer that? Did you say at the last trial it was two o’clock when you saw Billings place that suitcase near those trap doors?

A. Yes, but I also said in Judge Dunne’s court it was eight or ten minutes of two when Billings came at the time with the suitcase.

Q. You repeat now it was eight to ten minutes of two and it wasn’t two o’clock when he put it down?

A. No, sir, I don’t say it was two o’clock when he put it down.

Q. You said it then, didn’t you?

A. Yes.

After Cockran had brought out that it would have been difficult for McDonald, who was standing more than one hundred feet away, to see the five-foot-four Billings through the crowd, the defense attorney came back to the all-important time element.

Q. Wasn’t the parade between you and Billings?

A. They were standing 50 feet off or more on Steuart Street.

Q. They were on the move at the time?

A. No, sir.

Q. Do you mean to say they were not moving at two?

A. I wasn’t there at two.

Q. Where were you at two?

A. Down towards the Alameda Cafe on Market Street or close to it.

Q. Then you were not there looking at him place it there at about two o’clock?

A. I mean about as near as I can tell to two o’clock.

Q. You don’t want to qualify it now?

A. I don’t change it.

In his testimony before the Grand Jury, McDonald had said that, after losing sight of Mooney, he had “started down Market Street and I got as far as the Alameda Cafe when the explosion occurred.” He had repeated this statement, almost word for word, at the Billings trial. Cockran decided to put the question to him once more.

Q. How far did you get when the explosion occurred?

A. Well, I had been standing down in front of the Alameda Cafe looking at the parade go by, and the parade had gone by, and I still stood there awhile and I seen the people pushing up toward Steuart and Market and I thought they were, that it was the units coming out of Steuart Street, and I was standing in front of the Alameda Cafe when the explosion occurred. When I did hear the report, I thought it was a signal for the units to come out of Steuart Street.

If McDonald could be believed (and it was obvious that Cockran was not prepared to accept this thesis), he had walked some 150 feet up Market Street after watching the Mooney-Billings tableau before he heard the blast. Since he had testified that he had first seen Billings at “eight or ten minutes to two,” some “25 to 50 feet” away from the corner, that the machinist had placed the suitcase against the building wall “about two o’clock,” and that he himself had started up Market Street in the direction of the cafe before two, it had taken him more than six minutes to cover the half-block. But the witness had an answer for this: “... when I started down Market I just took my time and walked along slowly. I didn’t walk any faster than a snail crawls almost. It took me a little time to get down to the coffee house.” Didn’t Mr. Cockran realize that he was still a very weak man?

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.

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.”

Fickert’s largesse was impressive. Before Estelle Smith had retired to the safety of a dentist’s office, she had been a San Francisco prostitute with a long arrest record. In addition, she and James L. Murphy, an uncle, had been indicted in 1913 for the murder of a boarder at the rooming house in which they were then living. Estelle was never tried but her uncle was convicted and sentenced to twelve years in the penitentiary. Coincidentally, Uncle Jim was released on April 10, 1917, forty-five days after Mooney’s sentence. In 1929, Miss Smith gave Fremont Older, then the editor of the San Francisco Call, a sworn statement in which she admitted she and the Edeaus had been carefully coached by Fickert’s men.

On February 7, 1921, John McDonald, the only key witness besides the Edeaus to testify in all four trials, executed a startling affidavit in New York City. In it, he stated that, while he had seen a man “lay down a suitcase” on Steuart Street, he had never seen that man again. But the District Attorney had wanted more out of him than this. “I think I talked to Fickert every day for weeks about the case. He kept saying to me every time I came, always using hard names against Mooney and Billings, ‘Those are the men you saw there that day.’ Up to this time I had never told Fickert that I could not have identified these men if they had not been pointed out to me, and I could not do so.” Just before the trial, Fickert told him that “there is a reward of $17,500 for the conviction of these people, and when I put them away, I will see that you get the biggest slice of the reward.” For a man who hadn’t worked in months, the temptation was just too much.

For some weeks prior to July 22nd, more than two hundred hand-printed post cards had been mailed to various sponsors of the parade. These cards warned their recipients that, because of their “extreme activity in promoting and glorifying militarism ... the extermination of you and your evil class, is going to be the sole and patriotic duty of the Employees Liberty League.” Although many detectives thought that there was a connection between the cards and the explosion, Fickert had dropped any further investigation along this line when handwriting experts advised him that neither Mooney nor Billings could have written them. But in 1930, Alonzo A. Smith swore that his brother, Louis, had told him before he died that he had been hired to throw a time bomb from the top of Market Street building during the Preparedness Day Parade. Dora E. Monroe said that Louis had once stated that “it was me that threw the bomb ... which Tom Mooney was convicted for.” It was to be dropped into a certain car in the parade and Smith had received a two-thousand-dollar advance with eight thousand more promised for results. But he had lost his nerve and thrown the bomb too early.

The rest of the story consisted of one application after another by Mooney for a pardon. Although his petitions were supported, at one time or another, by Captain Matheson, Detective Hand, Matthew Brady, Fickert’s successor, Judge Griffin, and nine of the ten living Mooney jurors, four California governors in a row—Richardson, Young, Merriam and Rolph—refused to free him. Even a daring attempt by the defendant in 1933 “to risk my neck” by insisting on being tried on one of the other murder indictments, came a cropper when the district attorney informed Judge Louis H. Ward that “the evidence in this case is insufficient ... the State asks for an instructed verdict and rests.”

It was not until January of 1939 that Governor Culbert L. Olson ended more than twenty-three years of imprisonment by granting Mooney an unconditional pardon. But for San Quentin Convict Number 31921, it all came much too late. The fifty-six-year-old man, who returned to San Francisco to find his countrymen on the brink of another war, had only three more years to live. The spirit that, as late as 1932, had been “aflame with furious indignation,” had burned itself out in a dungeon.