Stolen by Richard Bell

Author:Richard Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

The boys’ powerful testimony that morning revived Watson’s stalled efforts to bring their kidnappers to justice. His courtroom was occupied by dozens of black constituents horrified by what they had heard, and the mayor really had no choice but to publicly vow that “no further effort on my part shall be wanting to procure the arrest and punishment of these men.” He assured everyone present that he had already secured grand jury indictments against four of the boys’ captors and had sent copies of those indictments to justice officials in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the five states in which he knew the gang operated.10

Privately, Watson doubted that there was anything more to be done. The kidnappers were professionals, wilier than wolves, and had already slipped through his fingers once. Back in March, two Delmarva residents had given him a tip that Ebenezer and Sally Johnson had returned to the peninsula from Rocky Springs, Mississippi, but by the time Watson had sent his high constable, Samuel Garrigues, to their Nanticoke neighborhood to look for them, they had gone again. They had returned to their hideout only long enough to grab their valuables and warn their partners and families that the sale to John Hamilton had gone wrong and that everyone should lie low.11

Watson would also fumble his next lead. It arrived on July 8, little more than a week after the boys’ depositions, in a letter to the mayor from a magistrate in Woodbury, New Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia. The magistrate, Job Brown, had seen press coverage of Sam’s extraordinary witness testimony and had urgent news to share about John Purnell. Brown had heard from a free black farmhand that Purnell “is now and has been for some months past employed by a Farmer near this place.” Purnell had even been overheard bragging about the money he had made the previous summer decoying city kids like Cornelius, Enos, and Alex into slavery.12

Watson surely knew that Purnell was a flight risk, but he still failed to respond decisively to this new tip-off. Rather than dispatch High Constable Garrigues to New Jersey immediately, Watson chose to write back to Brown for more information. Exchanging more letters back and forth took time, and almost two weeks passed before Garrigues met Brown at a tavern in Woodbury to assemble a posse to confront Purnell at his place of work. By then, Purnell had taken off, perhaps having guessed that one of his coworkers had turned him in.13

All summer the gang remained at large. Alex and Enos spent those weeks at home, while Sam remained in the debtors apartment at Arch Street Prison, a massive four-story hulk that also housed vagrants and suspects awaiting trial. Expecting to need him again, Mayor Watson had refused to turn over his star witness to his New Jersey owner, David Hill. He was concerned that Hill would beat the boy—or even sell Sam south—to punish him for his original escape. “Until I can make some arrangements with Mr.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.