Chapter M: J. Beck, "Benedict & Co.," 225 Dearborn street (4)

An inquest was begun before Coroner Peter J. Hoffman in the Harrison Street Station on March 1, 1906. After five days an open verdict was returned, in which the jurors declared themselves unable to determine the cause of the death of Guerin.

The Coroner's jury consisted of the following named persons:

Joseph Willis, 43 Cass street; Frank O. Borhyar, 6142 Madison avenue; William Merker, 263 Seminary avenue; William C. Hollens, 6418 Rhodes avenue; David A. Smith, 3843 California avenue; George F. Cram, 4166 Drexel boulevard.

On March 16, Municipal Judge Newcomer went to the jail hospital, where Dora McDonald, still in bed, was formally arraigned and held on a charge of murder. Two weeks later she was indicted by the Grand Jury.

All of the evidence so gathered was embodied in the report of the Coroner, and the names of the witnesses were thereto attached, all of which were made public at the time. The State and the defense secured a copy of the same.

MYSTERY TOO MUCH FOR CORONER.

All the additional evidence and the preparation of the case was made by the State's attorneys, William H. Rittenhouse. Edwin S. Day, Frank Comerford, City Police Attorney, and other officers. All the names of new witnesses (some twelve or fifteen in number) and the evidence were concealed from Detective Wooldridge, and at no time was he present, or did he hear to what the witnesses would testify. Therefore, he had no knowledge of any new facts when the case was called for trial.

The mystery of Guerin's death proved too much for a Coroner's jury. More than two weeks after the artist was slain the Coroner's panel returned an open verdict. It merely found that Guerin had died from a bullet wound in a manner which the jury was unable to determine. This same verdict Colonel Lewis sought to introduce at the trial in Judge Brentano's court. Such a move was new in criminal annals, and it was some time before the court decided that it should be ruled out.

Mrs. McDonald was meantime transferred to the County Jail from the Harrison Street Station. She was broken in health and a confirmed invalid. Two persons, however, were faithful to her, Mike McDonald and Miss Amanda Beck, her nurse.

FRIENDS GET BUSY QUICKLY.

A few hours after the tragedy of Webster Guerin all the influences and machinery at the command of Mike McDonald were brought to bear to save the life of Dora McDonald. A. S. Trude, one of the greatest criminal attorneys in Chicago, was employed, besides several other noted lawyers, to defend Dora McDonald. Mike McDonald's political friends soon became active. Everything was done to gather evidence in Dora McDonald's case, and everything was done that could be done to suppress any evidence that was injurious to her.

There was one witness who was greatly feared, and that was Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge, who made the arrest.

Several days after the shooting A. S. Trude, Mike McDonald's attorney, met Wooldridge in the Criminal Court and shook hands with him. He said that he was very glad that Wooldridge was interested in the case for one reason, for he knew he would get a square deal. He also stated that there was another reason why he was sorry that Wooldridge was in the case, because he had too many eyes and too many feet to be on the opposite side of any case in which he (Trude) was interested. This view was shared by Mike McDonald and his friends, who became active to get Wooldridge out of the way.

Mike McDonald first paid a visit to John M. Collins, then General Superintendent of Police, and one of his warm personal friends, and Frank Comerford, City Police Attorney. What occurred in that office will never be known, unless Collins chooses to make a statement, as McDonald has since died.

Detective Wooldridge was called to the office of John M. Collins, General Superintendent of Police, and told not to talk to any newspaper men or anyone else about the McDonald case. He was further told not to make himself too officious, and not to be too active in the case.

Several days later he was again called to Chief Collins' office and told that Frank Comerford, then acting as City Police Attorney, and a warm friend of Mike McDonald's, was to take charge of the case, so that he need not bother himself further with the matter.

Mr. Comerford became very active, securing the names of all the witnesses and all evidence to which they would testify, together with other facts. All this matter eventually found its way into the hands of the defense long before the trial.

Mike McDonald and his friends thought that Wooldridge would become active again in the case. Therefore Mike proceeded to get busy himself. No one seems to know the ins and outs of the case, but it is nevertheless a fact that soon after the election of April, 1907, Wooldridge was transferred from the office of the General Superintendent of Police, where he had served since 1889, to the Cottage Grove Avenue Station. No reason was assigned for this transfer.

GUERIN'S LIFE STORY.

Webster Guerin, who lived at 655 West Harrison street, was well known on the West Side, where he was born thirty years ago. He kept a haberdashery on West Madison street a few years before the murder, but left it to go to California. On his return he went into the picture business. Guerin was a tall, splendid-looking fellow more than six feet in height.

Guerin was known at the offices in the Omaha Building as Louis Fisher, and it was under that name that he operated the Harrison Art Company.

DORA MCDONALD DIVORCED WIFE OF "SAM" BARCLAY.

Dora McDonald, 35 years old, was the divorced wife of "Sam" Barclay, a former professional ball player and Chicago saloonkeeper. They had one son, Harold Barclay, who was later legally adopted by "Mike" McDonald, and who was at school in Florida at the time of the murder. He was 15 years old.

She had separated from Barclay shortly prior to her divorce and had been on the stage for a short time under the name of Mme. Alberta. She was married to Mike McDonald a week after her divorce and was taken by him to his home at Harrison street and Ashland avenue.

BEAUTY OF WEST SIDE.

Dora McDonald was one of the beauties of the West Side in her day, and many admirers hovered about her threshold. The lights of the midnight hours charmed her then, and she dashed off to marry Sam Barclay, a professional baseball player.

Into that home came Michael Cassius McDonald. He was a gambler and a politician and a man of great wealth.

For the second time his wife had left him; run away, people said, with a man who had been a guest at their home.

Mike was lonesome. He saw the bride of Sam Barclay and loved her. He dined with her, and perhaps he paid for her divorce trial. At least she separated from Barclay and when Mike went a-wooing again he won this pretty woman.

In a west side home of some pretensions Mike established his new wife. He thought so much of her that he sent his sons away when she could not agree with them. He gave her money and finery and servants and carriages, and thought that she ought to be happy.

BOY OF 14 ENTERS.

Webster Guerin lived across the street. He was a boy of attractive manners and he won the affection of Dora McDonald.

Slander gives one reason for that affection; the woman gives another.

STOLE HIM AS A BOY, SLEW HIM AS A MAN, SAYS ARCHIE GUERIN.

Archie Guerin, Webster Guerin's brother, told how Mrs. Dora McDonald had taken a violent fancy to Webster when he was a boy of 14, and Archie 13, or thereabouts; how she would meet them on their way home from school and whisk Webster into the mansion, keeping him two, three or four hours; how she used to waylay Webster on his way home from church; how she followed him through the years until she got the notion that he was falling in love with Avis Dargan; how she put detectives on the boy's trail and sat for hours in a cab opposite the Omaha Building to see whether Miss Dargan entered; how she threatened to shoot him; how she would break out into wild and vehement declarations of her love, wailing that she "worshiped every hair of his head," and that she would kill him before she would lose him.

How she came into the studio on the day Webster was shot, asserting that she had "told that old slob everything" (meaning her husband), and said she was going to New York; how Webster had replied that he was "through with her," to which she retorted, "I am not through with you; do you think I would kill myself without first putting a bullet into your head?" How Mrs. McDonald had requested him to leave the studio, and how he had refused to do so until Webster joined his request to hers; how Archie and the two boys employed in the studio had gone away and left them to act out the tragedy by themselves behind doors that were closed and locked; how Archie had gone to the Windsor Clifton Hotel to meet Harry Feldman, with whom he had a business appointment; how Feldman had become alarmed when he heard that Mrs. McDonald and Webster were alone in the studio, urging Archie to call Webster on the telephone; how he and Archie stepped to the 'phone, called up the studio, and after a gruff "hello" from a policeman got back the staggering news: "Your brother has been murdered."

MIKE MCDONALD DELUDED BY WIFE.

"Mike" seemingly was deluded. He may have had suspicions of his wife, but his suspicions seem to have been quieted by the woman.

Even when Guerin followed her to California she dared to wire Mike: "Web Guerin is coming; fear I shall be compromised; shall I come back?"

It was such a frank admission that the gambler urged her to have mettle. "Stick," he sent back word. "Don't let anyone bluff you."

Things went on this way until the morning of February 21, 1906. Then something happened, the climax occurred and Guerin was shot.

PROVIDES FOR THE DEFENSE.

After the arrest of his wife, "Mike" McDonald announced that he believed in her integrity and declared he would spend every cent of his fortune to save her. The former gambling dictator was almost 70 years old and his health was failing rapidly. Four months after the event he was taken to the St. Anthony de Padua Hospital, where he remained until his death, August 9, 1907.

McDonald was still passing to his death when there crept into his room a little, white-haired woman who had come from Newark, N. J. There she was known as Mrs. Grashoff and a great charity worker, especially in the interest of fallen girls in the Crittenden homes. Years before Mike McDonald had called her his first wife.

DRAMATIC MEETING OF MCDONALD AND FIRST WIFE.

By the laws of the church she was still his wife, no matter what the years had brought forth. So Mike took her hand and held it and spoke softly to her in a breath of full forgiveness and passed away. Without the door sat the woman whom he had called his wife--Dora, whom he had won from a husband and to whom he had been faithful until he stepped to the brink of his grave.

This was the last straw that crushed the spirit of Dora McDonald.

The body of Webster Guerin was removed to McNally & Duffy's undertaking rooms at 516 Wabash avenue.

Detective Wooldridge took up the work of gathering the evidence and prepared the case for the Coroner and Grand Jury.

The Grand Jury indictment placed Dora McDonald seemingly beyond the pale of bail, but Mike worked assiduously and finally secured her release from prison on $50,000 bonds. Then Mike became ill and died in St. Anthony's Hospital.

Before he gave way to his broken heart McDonald drew up a will. He set aside a defense fund with which the woman might be given adequate chance for freedom in the court, and left her "such rights and only such rights as she may be entitled to as widow."

TRIAL BEGINS.

Mrs. McDonald was put on trial January 20. The jury was completed January 25 and the taking of testimony began at once. The case of the State was made as complete as possible and the defense began an exhaustive array of testimony. The defense, however, came to a surprisingly sudden end. It had been feared that Mrs. McDonald might not live through the trial and there was every desire to have a verdict before she might give way to heart trouble.

The case was heard before Judge Theodore Brentano, and it lasted twenty-one days.

Dora McDonald was represented by Colonel James Hamilton Lewis, Chief Assistant Patrick H. O'Donnell, Attorneys Benjamin M. Shaffner, Frank R. Cain, Gabriel Norden, Clarence Shaffner and Forest G. Smith.

HARRY CORCORAN. JOSEPH KOEHLY. ARNE PETERSON. CHARLES R. JOHNSON. HERBERT R. GARN. CHARLES M'GRATH. HUGH H. FULTON. GEORGE W. MILLER. ROLAND F. GRAHAM. JAMES J. NOONAN. OTTO H. NELSON. JOHN C. ANDERSON. ]

The State was represented by Assistant State's Attorneys William A. Rittenhouse and Edward S. Day.

NAMES OF THE JURY.

Harry Corcoran, Joseph Koehy, Arne Peterson, Hugh H. Fulton, George W. Miller, Roland F. Graham, James J. Noonan, Otto H. Nelson, Charles R. Johnson, Herbert R. Garn, Charles McGrath, John C. Anderson.

PACKED COURTROOM.

With the courtroom packed to the doors and several hundred men and women struggling to gain admission, the actual trial of Mrs. Dora McDonald, widow of Mike McDonald, commenced. Assistant State's Attorney Edward S. Day made an opening statement of the case. Trembling and his eyes flashing, he pointed a finger at Mrs. Dora McDonald and in a ringing voice denounced her as the murderess of Guerin.

"Dora McDonald became acquainted with Guerin, who was about 14 years old. His parents lived a short distance from the McDonald home.

"A friendship between Mrs. McDonald and the boy began, which his mother and other relatives later tried to end. Three years later the McDonalds removed to the Drexel boulevard home, but the intimacy of Webster Guerin and Mrs. McDonald continued.

"At any event, as time passed on, dealing meantime gently with the woman and developing Web into a young man of more than six feet in height, the two were seen frequently together. Relatives of both testified that the two kissed each other; that at times Mrs. McDonald grew jealous, in all apparent intent, over him; that she wrote poems and set them to music to show what seemed to be the very depths of a despairing heart.

"The woman was insanely jealous over him." "He had wandered out from her love into the light of other women's eyes. Driven to distraction by the thought that the boy she had taught to love had grown up to love another, she murdered him."

"No," said the defense. "This woman was the victim of blackmail. First she had been hounded until she gave way to the big youth, and then she had paid him money from her hoard in the hope that she might free herself of him."

Testimony on the blackmail point was clouded by the maze of recrimination, but the State could not deny that Mrs. McDonald had on several occasions given the young man money with which to leave the city, but that each time he had returned "broke" within a few days.

Mr. Day's denunciation of Mrs. Dora McDonald was bitter, but the defendant appeared to take no notice of what the lawyer was saying.

Dora McDonald sat quietly as if in a trance; the bitterness of failure, the weariness of defeat, was expressed in every flutter of her purple-shadowed eyelids as she came before the bar to answer for the murder of Webster Guerin, January 20, 1907.

Dora McDonald presented a pathetic appearance before the jury.

She was dressed all in black. Not a single bit of lace or white relieved the somber effect of her funereal widow's garb. In arranging her hair Mrs. McDonald exhibited a novel idea. The long, deep-auburn strands were braided into one plait and this was wound over her temples in a single coil and fastened with coral pins.

In its unaffected artlessness Mrs. McDonald's entry into the courtroom and her removal of her hat as she sank into her chair was an act of almost girlish grace. Her long black cloak, satin lined, was thrown carelessly on a chair.

When she had removed her hat and cloak she looked squarely into the faces of the jury.

DRAMATIC SCENE IN COURTROOM.

The face that was turned piteously toward the jury was deeply lined with the furrows of physical and mental suffering.

The eyes drooped constantly, and there were times when she closed them for a full minute.

Every movement of the lips or eyelids, every arrangement of dress and costume, was either studiously planned or pathetically dramatic.

The weariness and bitterness were marked in the droop of her mouth, in the perplexed wrinkling of her forehead, in the stoop of her shoulders, in the relaxation of her hands, lying heavily on the table before her.

A long, long line of battles she has behind her, with her good name torn to shreds in the fight; and nobody can guess at the scars and open wounds in her soul. No matter how great may have been her fault, how untrammeled her impulses and wishes, how wild and defiant her spirit toward the law and society, now she is a tired, broken woman, who has lost the day.

BLOOM GONE FROM CHEEK.

There are many who say that the beauty of which Dora McDonald was once so proud has departed entirely. The eyes were heavy, the skin no longer showed the pink of health, but was a dead white, her figure had fallen away until she was almost emaciated, but there was a beauty in her sadness and despair that the triumphant woman never possessed.

She seldom looked at the veniremen, nor did she appear to be following the questions put to them. Occasionally she glanced at a possible juror as he stepped up to be sworn, but for the most part she sat with her head resting on her hand, or looking ahead at some mental vision. Is it the face of young Webster Guerin she sees, as he lay dead, or the face of old "Mike" McDonald as he smoothed her hair and loaded her with caresses? Is it remorse for a crime, or longing and grief for a dead admirer? Or is it despair for a wasted life, a hopeless future, a thousand lost opportunities?

NO MADNESS IN HER EYES.

If the defense expected to utilize the plea of insanity it would have had some difficulty in inducing a jury to believe that Mrs. McDonald was greatly deranged. There was no gleam of madness in her eyes. They were dark-circled and languid, but not at all staring or strange. She seemed unusually self-poised and collected.

Without any artifices of dress or cosmetics, without any gleam of gaiety or vivacity, it was not impossible to understand why this woman wielded the great influence in the lives of three men that she did. In the first place, her features were regular and fine. Her eyebrows were delicately penciled and her eyes large and dark.

TRACES OF SIREN LEFT.

The contour of her cheeks was soft and round. But one can imagine, in happier days, that there was a captivating play of expression, an esprit, a beauté de diable, that would be particularly fascinating to a man like old "Mike" McDonald. And upon such a woman would the self-made man, the gambler, uncultivated and rough, fast approaching old age, delight to heap luxury and adoration, as there is no doubt "Mike" McDonald did.

And is it not easy to imagine that such a woman would have a powerful attraction for a young man, with her sophistication and experience matched against his ignorance? And now one of the men is dead of a broken heart, and the other struck down in the very first flush of his youth, and the instrument of pleasure and destruction stands at the end of a shattered life.

Until a jury should decide, in so far as human fallibility may decide, just whether or how Dora McDonald shot down Webster Guerin, that victim of tangled love and jealousy, a waiting city hung expectant on every incident bared since the day that the artist toppled before a pistol ball in his studio with a woman of furs and furbelows standing sobbing above him.

A "SAPPHO" AND "SALOME."

A "Sappho" in a grimy city she was called because her heart was touched by the strength of youth; a "Salome" because she planted a kiss on his dying lips, but whether she was victim or vampire, sinner or sinned against, was solely for the jury to say.

Cries of blackmail, of bribery, of frenzied jealousy, of shameless love and daring intrigue, rang around the courtroom for the long days of the trial, but for the jury it was only to look behind the locked door of the artist's studio and see whether the revolver with which Guerin was shot down was held by the woman or the young man; whether there was malice or accident or self-destruction, and what the motive for either might be.

The shot that sounded his death was the climax to an attachment--guilty or not, as the case might be--that began when Dora McDonald was a wonderfully beautiful and younger woman, the wife of a wealthy gambler, and the lady of a mansion, and Webster Guerin was a mere lad, just old enough to doff short trousers for manly attire.

Affection, money and attention were lavished on the young man by this woman. At banquet board and in the theater box they passed their hours together. Of this there was no dispute. The sole question was whether the woman gave way to the lure of a boy, or whether the boy was importuned by the woman; whether in after years that boy blackmailed that same woman, or whether she loved him to a distraction that brought the madness of jealousy and the revolver.

And what of the love attachment? the police wondered. But as they delved a little they unearthed strange and tender things, but nothing more strange than poems written by the woman and apparently dedicated to the youth.

The tragedy of a soul was bared when Assistant State's Attorney Day read to the jury poems of passion found in the reticule taken from Mrs. McDonald on her arrest.

The State regarded the declarations contained in the verse as disclosing a dual motive of murder and suicide, and introduced them as circumstantial evidence. One entitled "Mistakes" was written on the day of the Guerin love tragedy.

Here is the first one read:

TRAGEDY OF A SOUL IN POEMS OF PASSION BY DORA MCDONALD.

Put the word "finish" down by my name:
I played for high stakes, but I lost the game;
I played for life, for honor and love:
Well, I am not the first mortal who has lost all.
I have made up my mind to care not a bit;
Let honor and love sink to the bottomless pit.
Pull down the curtains, bring in the lights,
Put from my memory horrible sights
Of treachery where there should have been love,
Of red blood where should have been whiteness of dove;
The past, the present and the future are done:
How different, O God! had it been had I won.

WRITTEN AS TRAGEDY APPROACHED.

We are drifting apart,
Though from no change of heart:
But we cannot agree,
And the end we can see,
So the bonds of our love we will sever;
And I wonder if we
Will, alas! too late see
That our happiness lay in each other.
For when soul finds its mate
It is often too late
To struggle and fight against conquering fate.
And what does it mean?
This parting, I ween;
I'll leave you, but, well.
Neither heaven nor hell
Will make me forget you.
Nor save you should I find
Another holds the place that was and is mine.

POEM WRITTEN ON DATE OF THE GUERIN TRAGEDY.

This poem, entitled "Mistakes," is dated February 21, 1907. 11:20 a. m.:

Said he: "Where is my sin?
I'm only as men have ever been.
I'm not so bad, I'm not so good,
And I'd be as you'd have me if only I could.
But you are strong and good and brave.
Surely for me a road you can pave,
A road which shall be my happiness, my very soul save.
After all, it's for you and you only that I crave."
She waited a moment, then came her reply:
"To the old adage, that women are weak, you can give the lie.
Not only you, others as well,
All through life have the same tale to tell.
I didn't mean to do it--I didn't, I swear,
But you can forgive me; your loss I cannot bear.
Can I forgive you? Well, that's not so clear,
Though you certainly were to me very dear.
I think, after all, now that I am awake.
I think it was I who made the mistake.
I thought of you ever as a flower rare.
With whom other flowers could not even compare.
Alack and alas! I find, after all,
You are only a sunflower, of which there are many,
Who take all the elements have to give
And give nothing that creates or causes happiness to live."

"KILL ME IF YOU WILL," SHE SAYS IN A VERSE.

Another of Mrs. McDonald's poems, written on the day of the killing, is as follows:

Kill me if you will, for all is well.
I know that to Satan your soul you can't sell,
And I've saved you from everlasting hell.
I had lifted you up, when, lo! I found
Slowly but surely you were dragging me down.
Out of space thus came a warning
Soft and clear as the breath of the morning.

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE.

Have you learned the old saying of pearls before swine?
I gave every pearl that ever was mine.
I've nothing more to give.
And it's hardly worth while for me to live.
More blessed to give than receive, they say.
I followed that teaching in my poor way.
I wanted returns, I'll have to confess,
And I had to be cool, and firm and brave,
For I knew 'twas my duty your soul to save.
And I've set your feet on the path of right,
And from now till the end you shall see but the light
And turn from it to pitfalls and terrors of night.
Turn to the right, to the wrong you may sway.
From black imps' vile rottenness I've snatched you away,
And though I fall slain at your feet with a moan,
I care not, for evil from you has flown;
And, by all the glory of God above,
I've proven the strength of a weak woman's love,
And I thought my pearls would bring love that was blessed.
I did so want love that was loyal;
'Twas more to me than a diadem royal.
But I found too late that I was wrong,
That love but existed in hopes and in song.
What became of those pearls of mine?
Oh, nothing! I just threw my pearls to the swine.

ANOTHER POEM OF PASSION.

I waged a battle fierce and long,
I fought to know the right from wrong.
Did I succeed? I cannot tell,
Yet when I met sin I knew full well
That fight's not over. 'Tis scarcely begun,
And I struggle again to win, one by one,
Steps on the ladder that mounts to great deeds,
Where the path to the right unfailingly leads.
As I gazed at the battlefield, flooded with gore,
Where the path to the right unfailingly bore,
I knew that the wounds came from contact with sin.
'Twas demons let loose that float in the air;
But the fight's worth the while, for when
Misery and heartaches shall all pass away
Right has full sway.

The reading of the poems was followed intently by the big crowd in Judge Brentano's courtroom. Mrs. McDonald appeared uninterested.

From poetry the step was easy into song. Accomplished and educated as Dora McDonald was, with time hanging, sometimes, heavy on her hands, what more natural than that she should set her verses to music of her own composing?

NEVER AGAIN.

(Song written, composed and published by Mrs. Michael C. McDonald.)

'Twas only a story of a woman's love, a tale that has often been told. She gave a love that knew no bounds; the rest of the story is old. Again he had strayed, and this time had made a mistake she could never forget; In a voice that was dense with a grief intense she mournfully did say:

I gave you sweetest love, you gave me naught but pain;
Oh, I forgave you more than once but to be hurt again.
This time it means the end, for I could never forget.
I shall never see you again, although I love you yet.

With tears in his eyes the man replied: "I know that I have gone astray; Remorse will last till life is passed; forgive me, don't send me away. Oh, let me atone, live for you alone; just once more have pity on me." But, bowing her head, with its look of one dead, she softly but firmly said:

I gave you sweetest love, etc.

The mother of the woman, an aged orthodox Hebrew, never went near Dora McDonald until the trial was nearly done, though that same old woman bent her knees as she day and night raised her voice to Jehovah in lamentations.

Ill health, mental and physical, followed. All the sorrows of a shattered life befell her.

SOUGHT VINDICATION TO SPARE HER AGED MOTHER.

For Dora McDonald, life had been lived when Guerin died. It mattered not after that whether she went to the gallows or to freedom. But for one reason she would not have cared a whit whether her case was fought before a jury or not. The one reason was vindication that her mother might be spared something of shame.

The vindication, however, was sought at a costly price--the price of a life and heart and love bared to a gaping world. It was an expensive effort to wash off the stain of an indictment.

At the trial Assistant State's Attorneys Edward S. Day and William H. Rittenhouse wrangled with their own witnesses and tried one after another to have them testify to things they never saw or heard.

They attacked Inspector John Wheeler, Officer J. G. S. Peterson, Thomas F. McFarland, Detective Wooldridge, Police Matron Elizabeth Belmont, Charles Freudenberg, an old soldier 60 years old, and threatened him with an indictment; Louis Jacobs, Lorenzo Blasi, Herman Hanson and Charles B. Williams.

All of those accused except Detective Wooldridge considered the fulminations of Attorneys Day and Rittenhouse a good joke. They regarded them as the vaporings of temporarily disordered intellects, minds that had become rattled by a case which was too big for them.

Owing, however, to the peculiar position in which he was placed as the officer who made the arrest, Wooldridge was forced to take cognizance of the matter.

Wooldridge denied the statements made against him and branded them as malicious lies manufactured out of whole cloth. He asked for a hearing before the Civil Service Board, which was granted to him after the trial was over.

It was fully shown at the investigation how Wooldridge had been treated in the matter, and the motive for his transfer; it was also shown that he knew no new facts, neither did he meet or know any witnesses except those who had testified to the Coroner and Grand Jury.

The motives for his transfer and the reports were fully uncovered and exposed.

Detective Wooldridge was exonerated by the entire Board of Civil Service Commissioners.

Day and Rittenhouse simply sewed up the case in criminations and recriminations.

Assistant State's Attorneys Day and Rittenhouse were outgeneraled, outclassed and whipped, and wanted to throw the blame for the acquittal of Dora McDonald on the Police Department and failed. They did everything but try the case.

STRONG DEFENSE BY LEWIS.

Colonel Lewis said that the State had not denied that the revolver with which Guerin was shot was his own. He called for the weapon and showed the jury how Guerin might have shot himself if Mrs. McDonald, in her struggle with him, had merely pushed the revolver around in the palm of his hand.

Again he called for the blood-stained coat that Guerin wore when he was killed. It was too good an opportunity to be overlooked by the fine dramatic eye of the Colonel.

"You remember the speech of Mark Anthony," he said; "how he produced a tremendous effect with the robe of the great Cæsar? I will not ask for more than the robe that this Cæsar wore."

Thereupon he spread out the grewsome relic on the railing on the jury box to show what he said were powder marks. In his mind, there was no doubt about how the tragedy worked out. Guerin, enraged and terrified when Mrs. McDonald told him that she had told her rich and influential husband everything, attacked her. He got the revolver out of his drawer, probably to frighten her. Mrs. McDonald, half choked, saw it gleam and pushed it away from her.

STRIKES HARD AT ARCHIE GUERIN.

More striking than the beautiful imageries and the wealth of quotation from ancient and modern authors with which the Colonel embellished his speech was his strong play upon "that fifteen minutes," which, according to his interpretation of the evidence, elapsed between the time the boys in Guerin's studio were ejected and the time when Archie came out, leaving his brother and Mrs. McDonald alone, behind locked doors.

"There need be nothing else in this case for you," exclaimed the speaker, "than this fifteen minutes unaccounted for. Archie Guerin knew what was going on there, and before God he should tell, but he did not. He hurried away and cleared the corridors. Nervous and confused, he hunted up Harry Feldman in the Windsor-Clifton Hotel, so that if anything happened, he could say:

"'I didn't do it. You know I didn't, Feldman. I was right here with you.'"

O'DONNELL MOVES TO TEARS.

There were wet eyes in the courtroom as the real Dora McDonald was brought to life in the closing address of Mr. O'Donnell. The bickerings and the charges and the abuse that had made the courtroom like a pothouse brawl all day were forgotten. The woman's black clad figure and her white, despairing face became the living picture of the world-old tragedy of the judgment and the problem of pardon.

"The tragedy was in that room," said Mr. O'Donnell, pointing to a plat of room 703 of the Omaha building, "and no one knows how the life of Guerin was ended.

"I am not going to place a wreath upon the brow of this woman. She is not all that a man would wish his wife to be. She has traveled the devious pathways and her eyes have fallen upon the shifting scenes of life.

"The Sabbath is coming on. Her ancestral people lit the candles at sundown last night. Somewhere in this city a light is burning where a Jewish mother is praying and hoping for her erring daughter. You are approaching the moment when you must do your great duty. You are here only to say whether she killed Guerin with a criminal intent in her heart.

QUOTES THE GOSPEL.

"A daughter of Israel coming to judgment. She may have been wayward, but we are not here to judge her past life. In a temple of Jerusalem many years ago the Saviour of us all stood before the multitude and they brought him a woman and said:

"'She has been taken in sin and she must die.' And he said:

"'Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.' And they walked away and left him with the woman. Then the Master said to the woman:

"'Go and sin no more.'

"Let us pass judgment upon this woman as the Son of Man passed it upon the woman of old that we may expect mercy when we stand at last where the fallen woman of Jerusalem stood."

Mr. O'Donnell created a scene of profound dramatic features when he based his contention that Guerin blackmailed Mrs. McDonald upon a letter written by Guerin. He called the ghost of Guerin to take the witness stand and testify against the state's attorneys.

ACQUITTAL CREATES THRILLING SCENES.

These were the scenes which attended the rendition of the Dora McDonald verdict:

"Bring in the jury," said Judge Brentano, as he dropped into the big leather-upholstered chair behind the bench.

Bradley was waiting for the word at the door to the Judge's right. Looking very solemn and sphinx-like, the twelve men filed in and took their usual places.

At the same time Mrs. McDonald came through the corridor from the custodian's room, accompanied by her nurse, Miss A. K. Beck. Miss Beck was trembling, but there was not a tremor in Mrs. McDonald's hands or a movement of the facial muscles to indicate that she felt the least excitement.

Attorney Norden pulled out her armchair for her and pushed it under her again as she sat down. Every man in the courtroom felt a choke in his throat, but if Mrs. McDonald felt it she gave no evidence of it.

"Gentlemen," said the judge, turning toward the jury, "have you agreed upon a verdict?"

At first there was no answer, and the judge had to repeat the question. That interval was like a lapse of a week or a month.

Mrs. McDonald, who had not been asked to rise, sat facing the jury and looking straight at them. She considered it only polite to keep awake and to forego those beloved "dreams" of hers in honor of the verdict, whatever it might be.

SUSPENSE FRIGHTFUL.

"Have you agreed upon a verdict?" repeated Judge Brentano, a little impatiently.

"We have," replied the foreman, Hugh H. Fulton, rising and displaying a paper which he held in his right hand.

"Let the Clerk of the Court read it."

A. J. Harris, the Clerk, was already in front of the railing to receive the paper. He took it to his desk, and holding it under an incandescent lamp, for the courtroom was dark, he read, in a loud voice:

"We, the jury, find the defendant, Dora McDonald, not guilty."

It was as though you had touched a match to a pile of gunpowder. The people in the courtroom seemed to explode. They did not cheer, or applaud, or shout, and yet they appeared to be doing all of them. The tension was broken and a sort of bubbling effervescence took its place.

MCDONALD JURORS TELL OF THE VERDICT.

"The jury found Mrs. McDonald innocent because they could not feel sure that she did not act in self-defense, and, following the instructions of the court, gave her the benefit of the doubt."

This was the opinion voiced by Juror Charles McGrath. Mr. McGrath said that the jury presumed the defendant sane, and that the matter of possible insanity was not considered at any time.

"I think that the jury attached a great deal of importance to the testimony of Dr. McNamara," continued Mr. McGrath.

"He was the only physician that had made a thorough physical examination of the defendant subsequent to Guerin's death. We especially paid a great deal of attention to that portion of his testimony that told of the marks found on Mrs. McDonald's neck, indicating that she had been choked. This evidence, taken with that relative to the finding of the hairpins on the floor, showed that there had been a struggle, and the court had instructed us that if we found that there had been a struggle we would be justified in finding a verdict of acquittal.

"Although I, perhaps, ought to speak only for myself, I will say that I do not think that the members of the jury were much impressed with the expert testimony."

Another juror said that those favoring an acquittal based their arguments largely on the fact that most of the evidence in the case was circumstantial, and that there was no absolute proof that Mrs. McDonald fired the fatal shot at all, and that if she did it was not shown that it was not in self-defense.

"It was mostly by argument along these lines that the conviction men were won over, one by one," said this juror. "The subject of the unwritten law was not gone into at all."

WOMAN SERENE AS VERDICT IS READ.

Dora McDonald, in a state of serenity and composure that is baffling even to those who are nearest her, was surrounded after her acquittal by friends and relatives, who were weeping for very joy at her acquittal.

She seemed quite unconcerned about it all, but when they took her to one side and asked her how she felt about it, she said, in the amazingly simple way she has:

"I am pleased. Do you want me to tell you the five reasons why?"

They said yes, and though she lost herself several times in the attempt, for she was very tired--these were the reasons she gave:

1--Because no Jewish woman could ever do a deed like that
of which I had been accused.

2--Because it removes the stigma from dad's (Michael C.
McDonald's) name.

3--Because of my boy.

4--Because of my darling old mother.

5--Please believe it, last and least--absolutely least of
these--because of myself.

"The only real disappointment to me is that dad did not live to hear that verdict, and that is my bitterest disappointment."

It had been the belief generally among those who followed the case that the woman would not outlive the verdict long, no matter what it might be. The original plans were that she would be sent to a sanitarium in case of acquittal. She herself is said to have planned that if let go she would make a journey to Jerusalem, and there end her days in prayer with her chosen people, in an effort to blot out her past. "Life can never have any more meaning for her," Colonel Lewis said when the jury first retired. "No matter what the verdict, it is of little consequence to her, though she will die happier, maybe, if she is acquitted."

In Jerusalem there is what is known as the "Wall of the Wailing of the Jews." In the Valley of Tyron, at the foot of Mount Moriah, on which now stands the Mosque of Omar, but where formerly the Temple of Solomon stood, there are five enormous stones built into the foot of the hill. A little courtyard beside these stones, which Solomon laid as the foundations of his Temple, is set aside for the Jewish race. Each Friday this courtyard is filled with Jews wailing for the sorrows of Israel. Every type of Jew, from the hunted Russian to the wealthy American, may be found there, reading from the Book of Lamentations, and sending the cry of sorrow to the skies. It was here that Dora McDonald proposed to weep out her ruined life.

But no, it is not the Place of Wailing in Jerusalem to which Dora McDonald has gone. Hard as it is to believe of the woman who so bravely passed through this tremendous ordeal, she has stooped, stooped lower than one would believe humanly possible. She has returned to the stage. She is now engaged in attempting to have a play based upon the tremendous tragedy of her life placed on the boards in New York.

She is attempting to lay bare to the gaping audiences of cheap theatres the sores upon her soul. She has been calloused to publicity to such an extent that she now hungers for the public eye. She has placed herself in the same class with the lepers outside the walls of Jerusalem who display their horrid sutures and demand a penny before they replace the bandages. To this petty end has come this greatest and most spectacular of modern trials, this heart-shaking romance of love and life.

FROM THE PAINTING BY BURNE-JONES]

The Vampire.

After Painting by SIR ED. BURNE-JONES

Verses by RUDYARD KIPLING.

A fool there was and he made his prayer--
(Even as you and I.)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair--
(We called her the woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair--
(Even as you and I.)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste--
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know--
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent--
(Even as you and I.)
Honor and faith and a sure intent--
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant)
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you and I.)

Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost--
And the excellent things we planned
Belong to the woman who didn't know why--
(And now we know she never knew why)
And did not understand.

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide--
(Even as you and I.)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside--
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died--
(Even as you and I.)

But it isn't the shame, and it isn't the blame
That sting like a white hot brand--
It's coming to know that she never knew why--
(Seeing at last she could never know why)
And could never understand.

MIKE McDONALD.

"King of Gamblers," Supreme in His Day, Relentless Nemesis of Old "Clark Street Gang," Brings His Gray Hairs to Grave With Broken Heart.

Rises From Newsboy to Gambling King and Becomes Millionaire.

Mike McDonald's career in Chicago has been spectacular and sensational to a degree.

The present-day generation in Chicago cannot appreciate what the name Michael C. McDonald meant twenty years ago in Chicago. There is not a single man today in Chicago, or in any city in America who occupies relatively the position that Mike McDonald did in the old days in Chicago.

He never held office, but he ruled the city with an iron hand. He named the men who were to be candidates for election; he elected them; and then, after they were in office, they were merely his puppets.

While in recent years Michael C. McDonald has shown little activity in Chicago political and sporting circles, living quietly at Drexel boulevard and Forty-fifth street, in a costly mansion, his name twenty years ago was a power in both.

Born in 1840 in Niagara county, New York, he came to Chicago in 1854 and was a newsboy with John R. Walsh and other pioneers, in the city's infancy. Before the war a business venture took him to New Orleans, and when the south began to become inflamed he returned to Chicago with enough money to purchase the sample room of the Richmond House, Michigan avenue and South Water street.

Here a spectacular career began. McDonald became the big gambler of all the host of gamblers that were then growing rich in Chicago. He also became one of the leaders in the democratic organization. He made money hand over fist.

BEGINS LIFE AS "CANDY BUTCHER."

Mike McDonald began life as a "candy butcher" on railroad trains before the war. He sold peanuts and popcorn and mysterious packages not to be opened on the train, and fine gold watches at $3.75 apiece.

Mike ran on many different railroads, although it must be said for the sake of truth that his customers were often very sorry to board a train and find that the energetic little candy butcher who had sold them jewelry on the last trip they had made had left and gone over to some other railroad. Mike's old customers used to beg him to return to them. They even dared him to come back.

PATRIOTIC FOR A PRICE.

The candy butcher made money and saved it, and during the war he settled down in Chicago. Mike was very patriotic. He sent many men around to the enlistment offices, especially when big bounties were offered for volunteers. The trouble with the gallant soldiers that Mike put into the service was that after they got their bounty money they lost their enthusiasm and faded from view, like an evanescent mist.

Mike made much money out of his bounty-jumpers, but lost a good deal of it gambling. At this time he trained with "Tip" Farrell, Charley Miller, John Sutton and Matt Duffy, who figured more or less in the police records of that time. Sutton was shot and killed in front of Pete Page's saloon, on Clark street, in 1864.

Toward the close of the war McDonald and a notorious St. Paul crook lost $600 in the famous game that Colonel Cameron was running in Chicago. McDonald found out that the cards were stocked against him, and it discouraged him with having anything more to do with poker playing from the front of the table. Colonel Cameron had taught him, at the expense of $600, that the money in gambling was in running the game, not playing it. From that day Mike McDonald never gambled. He straightway opened his own game.

With Dave Oaks he started a game of faro at 89 Dearborn street. It was a nice, little, modest game, with only those two as the entire crew of the place. They took turn alternate days as dealer and roper in. The suckers who played the game used to complain frequently that the firm of Oaks & McDonald worked sleight-of-hand tricks with the faro deck, and the unkind police used to raid the game every day.

SOLVED GAMBLING PROBLEM.

This frequent raiding cut frightfully into the profits of the enterprising firm of Oaks & McDonald, and set the junior member thinking again. He had already solved the great problem that it is better to run a brace game than to play one, but he found there were thorns even in running a game. Therefore he set to work to discover how these thorns could be removed.

The thorns that beset his career as a gambler were the police. But the police acted under instructions from the chief of police. The chief of police acted under instructions from the administration. Therefore, McDonald figured out that he would have to control the administration. So he straightway blossomed out as a politician, and grew in importance until finally he ruled Chicago, and realized the great ambition of his life, to make and unmake things like chiefs of police, with a curt nod of his head.

ONCE RULED ALL CHICAGO.

Mike McDonald never got over his hatred for the police that was born in the days when they used to raid his little game at 89 Dearborn street. He probably would have abolished the police department entirely when he finally found himself on the throne of Chicago, had it not been that he found the police useful in making the other fellows behave, while he could do as he pleased. And then, it was such a joy to make the police bend the knee and acknowledge him as Lord and Master.

Generally the superintendents of police knew what was expected of them before they accepted the office, but once in a while one of them had foolish notions about duty and law, and had to be taught his place. Poor old Simon O'Donnell, when he became superintendent of police, in the days when Mike McDonald ran "The Store" and ruled Chicago, got the idea, because of numerous complaints of many patrons of the gambling games in "The Store," that the place should be raided. So he raided it.

It was a most impious act. It was like laying hands on the Ark of the Covenant. Superintendent Simon O'Donnell lost his job so quickly it made his head ache, and William J. McGarigle, whom McDonald afterward made warden of the county hospital, and who was indicted and convicted of boodling, was installed as superintendent of police in place of the simple-minded Mr. O'Donnell.

Mike McDonald's hatred and contempt for the police is preserved in a joke that the few minstrel companies still left on earth continue to cherish as one of their best beloved jests. It originated with McDonald. One day, when he was in the zenith of his power, a man came into "The Store" with a subscription list.

"The boys are raising a little money, Mike," said the man. "We'd like to have you give something. We are putting our names down for $2 a piece."

"What's it for?" asked Mike, suspiciously.

"Why," answered the man, considerably confused, "We're burying a policeman."