A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter

4. The Case Is Tried Twice More, and a Surprising Objection Is Made: 1884–1888

137  ≈ 4 ∆ the case is tried twice more, and a surprising objection is made 1884–1888 The Case Is Tried Twice More, and a Surprising Objection Is Made In 1884 Gleed and his brother Willis formed their law firm, Gleed, Ware, and Gleed. Their first partner was Eugene Ware, a former member of the Kansas Legislature. In that same year Judge David Brewer, after many years of service on the Kansas Supreme Court, was appointed to the United States Circuit Court for the Eighth Circuit. The Hillmon case was eventually assigned to Judge Brewer’s trial calendar. In 1885 the firm of Gleed, Ware, and Gleed was joined by George Barker, just in time for the retrial.1 The case of Hillmon v. Mutual Life Insurance Company et al. was called for trial the second time on June 6, 1885, at the same Leavenworth federal courthouse as before. The attorneys for the parties entered their appearances. For Mrs. Hillmon, S.A. Riggs, John Hutchings, and L.B. Wheat appeared; for the insurance companies, J.W. Green, George S. Barker, and C.S. Gleed. The jury selected included four men who were ex-members of the Kansas Legislature.2 Followers of the first trial would have found very little novelty in the evidence and testimony offered in the second. Mrs. Hillmon’s lawyers apparently decided to rest their case in chief largely on the recorded testimony of various witnesses who testified at the first trial. The tedium of the proceedings led the reporters away from their usual The Case Is Tried Twice More, and a Surprising Objection Is Made 138  minute reporting, in favor of descriptions of Mrs. Hillmon’s appearance. According to the Leavenworth Times, on the first day she was “dressed plainly in black, even to her hat and trimmings, and wore no ornaments except a wide, thin gold band on the first finger of her right hand, and a pair of very small ear-rings.” On the second day she wore a “neat plain suit of brown”; on the fourth she was “dressed in black, with a pointed broad-rimmed black [hat] on, trimmed with a flowing ‘crush’ of black crepe and wearing her front hair loose—cut short and combed down over her forehead.”3 One of the trial’s few unexpected moments arrived when Sallie ’s lawyers summoned a Dr. Patterson of Lawrence, who according to the newspaper report “identified a plaster cast of the teeth of Hillman .” (The origins of the cast went unexplained in the report, but this small mystery would be resolved in the fourth trial, when Dr. Patterson again appeared and made clear that the cast he had taken was from the corpse, not from any living man.) Patterson seems to have been a bit of a showman, for when he was handed the cast he “turned the grinning jaws toward the audience in the court room.” Mrs. Hillmon “leaned forward and looked at it intently and eagerly listened to every word that was said regarding it.”4 The insurance companies were not satisfied to rest their case on transcripts and depositions. The newspaper reports that they called fortythree witnesses, and in addition introduced numerous depositions and transcripts of prior testimony, but nearly all the testimony reiterated aspects of the case the companies had mounted in the first trial. As before, the condition of John Hillmon’s teeth received considerable attention. All the defense witnesses who had known Hillmon were united in their certainty that he had suffered from bad teeth. There was, as in the first trial, considerable variation among the witnesses as to whether the tooth/teeth were blackened, missing, or broken, whether in the upper or lower jaw, and when and how the damage first appeared. Several witnesses praised the perfect condition of the corpse’s teeth. None of this was surprising or new, but a disastrous defense witness, a Mrs. Gilmore of Lawrence, swore that she knew Walters and that the cigarmaker had bad teeth. Moreover, she identified Walters in photographs that other witnesses had said were of Hillmon, and when shown a picture of Walters said she “wouldn’t swear that it was his picture.” The Case Is Tried Twice More, and a Surprising Objection Is Made 139  Defense witness C.R. Walters, Frederick Adolph’s brother, presented his sponsors with a few more difficulties. He identified the corpse in the photographs as his younger...