Nameless Indignities by Susan Elmore

Author:Susan Elmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kent State University Press

So, as instructed, he and Lee rounded up the horses and prepared the spring wagon. When Emma was loaded into the back, with Mrs. Pettus seated next to her, the group departed. They made a slight detour to old man Montgomery’s so they could send Charlie to keep an eye on Lee’s sisters, and then they headed for the Bond farm. After Emma’s father carried her inside, he returned to give them his daughter’s description of her assailants: “two large men dressed in dark clothes; wore white shirts; one had whiskers.”27

Clementi’s lawyer walked him through his activities of the following morning, including his hunt for the two tramps. The defendant was also quizzed about his arrest in Blue Mound and his first day in jail. His answers sounded as cut and dried as a bale of hay. As the Tribune put it: “The witness told a very nice story, but it is the general opinion that he made it too nice.”28 His answers on cross-exam raised more than a few eyebrows: “In some material points, [he] contradicted the testimony of the jail officials, who were placed on the stand to contradict the statements of the convicts brought here by the state.”29 The defense had spent considerable time trying to dismantle Burritt’s and Meyers’s remarks, only to have their own client come along and carelessly shoot off his mouth to the contrary.

Friday, December 21, 1883. It was the last day of the work week, the tenth day of the trial, and just four days before Christmas. Lee Pettus was to testify, followed by several members of his family. Behind them waited the third and final defendant—the one bearing the brunt of the suspicion. But the Bond trial was now so far behind schedule that it was obvious it would run past Christmas—quite possibly, into the New Year.

On Friday morning, Pettus was guided through a cogent thread of his whereabouts on the day of the crime. Asked when he’d first learned of the outrage, he said it had been late on Thursday night. Thornton directed him back to the beginning of the day, with the defendant explaining that he had spent all of that Thursday at home. He didn’t do much in the morning because of Wednesday night’s hard rain. First, he milked the cows, and then he noticed some of the mules and horses had jumped the fence in the pasture and broken it, so he went out and nailed it up. He took his dinner at the house, between twelve and one o’clock. John and his sister Mattie were there, as were Cora and her husband, Owen. Also present at dinner were Minnie and Ona, Clementi, and Pettus’s uncle Rob.

After eating, he fed the horses. Then he noticed some of the cattle had gotten across the branch so he got a horse, swam it across, rounded up the cattle, and brought them back. Yes, his clothes had gotten wet, but he didn’t change them. He confirmed that these were the

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