Mystery on the Isles of Shoals by J. Dennis Robinson

Author:J. Dennis Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

COPS AND BLOOD

Four Boston policemen briefly described the arrest of Louis Wagner in straightforward detail at the Alfred trial. Prosecutor Yeaton wanted them to establish, beyond doubt, they had acted properly. There had been no rough stuff, no badgering, and no trickery. The items found in the prisoner’s pockets, officer William W. Currier confirmed, were laid out on a wooden shelf in the Boston police station, sealed inside a long envelope, locked in a closet, and stored. Sgt. Thomas Weir confirmed that the items had then been delivered to York county attorney Yeaton, who then emptied the contents of the same envelope onto a table in the courtroom in Alfred. The coins, button, watch ring, wick, and a piece of tobacco were entered into evidence.

James Haley Jr. and William Gallagher, the arresting officers, recounted picking up Wagner outside Brown’s boarding house in Boston’s North End around eight-thirty p.m. on the evening of the murder. Wagner did not ask why he was being arrested, Haley said, and they did not immediately tell him. The officers noted that Wagner, at first, lied about the time he had been in Boston. He said he had been in town for five days, although he later recanted the statement and admitted he had just come in from Portsmouth.

Yeaton then introduced cobbler Jacob Todtman of Fleet Street, who had sold Wagner his new boots, slippers, and two cigars for which he received most of the killer’s remaining money and a broken watch in trade. Todtman said he had allowed Wagner to change into his new clothes in the store and to leave his old clothes behind. Todtman swore that, when his boots were finished, Wagner said “he had seen a woman lay as still as that boot.” Max Fischacher made a valiant attempt to undermine the cobbler’s memory, but Todtman would not give an inch.

Portsmouth police officers William H. Jellison and Thomas Entwistle then picked up the narrative. Jellison testified to seeing large blisters on the palms of both the prisoner’s hands and blood blisters on both thumbs when he arrived from Boston. Wagner said he had blistered his hands while “sculling” and baiting trawls the night before, but trawl fisherman Judson P. Randall told the jury that baiting trawls would not cause such blisters. Where and why Wagner had time to do some serious sculling on the same day as the murders, the defense was unable to establish. He was a practiced oarsman, we can assume, with the weathered hands of a sailor, and yet Wagner’s large blisters were fresh when he was captured. While sculling currently indicates recreational or competitive rowing, Wagner was probably referring to the practice of propelling a small boat forward using the sweeping motion of a single oar from the stern or back of the craft.

Judson Randall, who had been allowed to visit Wagner in his Portsmouth cell, offered another controversial quote. When Randall asked what the prisoner thought of the horrible murders of his friends on Smuttynose, Wagner said that “he felt as bad as though he had done it.

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