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Emporia 96 subject, she claimed she couldn’t remember whether it was that visit or not! sterry couldn’t believe it: sterry: Didn’t you testify in answer to mr. Fenlon that you did arrange a correspondence with him on his first visit? minnie: i don’t remember. sterry: your memory is not bad, is it? minnie: No, not generally. sterry: you can’t even recollect back during this examination of yourself as to whether you testified that it was on Mr. Walkup’s first visit that you arranged to carry on a correspondence with him, is that correct? minnie: i don’t know. i think it was, though. minnie tripped herself up by saying that she wanted to write to Walkup because she couldn’t make up her mind whether to marry him, even though she’d only seen him a few times in her life, then telling sterry that she wasn’t very serious about the whole thing. Walkup hadn’t made any promises about caring for her family until his second visit, so her supposed motive of marrying him to make that happen couldn’t possibly have existed on this first visit. So, Sterry wondered, what other motive could she have? Her answers were vague and not responsive. Further, minnie said she had absolutely no idea of getting married before october, and she was adamant about this. yet when sterry asked her (prior to showing her the letter she had written to Walkup) if she had suggested to Walkup that she might do that, she said, “i don’t remember.” she must have suspected he would produce that letter, so she had to back down from her definitive stance. When Sterry got to the papers of calomel and snowflake, and Minnie had gone through a litany of “i don’t remember”s, she obviously felt she needed a time out. Claiming she was chilly and needed her shawl, she was allowed to go to her cell, adjacent to the courtroom, accompanied by Deputy Wooster. on direct examination, minnie had said she took both powders in for analysis, but now she told sterry that she wasn’t certain whether she had taken them both in: sterry: Didn’t you state yesterday that you took them both? minnie: i don’t remember. Starring Minnie Walkup 97 sterry: Did you take them both to Dr. moore’s drug store? minnie: i don’t remember. Sterry: You had no difficulty in answering the questions asked by Mr. Fenlon , had you? minnie: i don’t know about that, either. sterry: you don’t know about that; what would be your best guess as to whether you took them both to this place or not? minnie: i don’t remember. i don’t know that i care to guess at it. sterry went on to point out that there would have been no need to take both powders in: If she knew she had calomel and snowflake, she would only have to have one analyzed to know what the other was. yet, when Kelly said it was morphine, quinine, or strychnine, minnie never said, “it can’t be any of those. It’s either calomel or snowflake.” And when Moore told her it was quinine, she never acted surprised, never said, “That’s odd. I had only calomel and snowflake.” Another of minnie’s preposterous statements was that although she had known that both strychnine and arsenic were poisons, she had no idea they were deadly poisons. she had to say this, ridiculous as it sounds, because she had to have a reason why those purchases and the thing about signing the registers were not very memorable. For most people, purchasing poison and having to sign the register would be remarkable events, but minnie was in the middle of an “i don’t remember” litany, and it wasn’t terribly believable. sterry: Did you suppose a person could take it without killing him, in a large quantity like a teaspoonful? minnie: i don’t know that i ever thought about it. Asked about the size of the strychnine bottle she got from Bates, minnie said she didn’t remember. Was it large? Was it small? How was it in relation to the size of the bottle shown to her (the one found in Libbie’s room)? “i don’t remember.” sterry must have been ready to tear his hair out at this point: “Haven’t you memory sufficient to even form a judgment...

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