Medical expert testimony in the Kelley murder trial / by Walter Channing.

  • Channing, Walter, 1786-1876.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical expert testimony in the Kelley murder trial / by Walter Channing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    1898] Seventh, the way he committed the crime, and his relation to it, was most strange and unusual, and became more unnatural each time that he talked of it. He seemed to actually delight in tell- ing about the murder, and was never happier than when he was narrating its most terrible details. He no doubt had long thought of robbing the bank, and had taken a room opposite for the purpose of watching what went on. Not long before the murder he had stolen a pistol which had been found in his room, and he was in trouble about it, but such details did not upset him. A few days before the murder he went to Boston and bought a false moustache, black-jack, chloroform and straps. While he told no one of what he intended to do, it cannot be said that he took extreme care to conceal his movements. The things that had almost always diverted suspicion from him were his reputa- tion of being good-natured and inoffensive, and his having had no intimate friends or pals to betray his wrongdoing, and had he had the shrewdness to realize his advantage in these respects and exercised ordinary self-control and judgment, the crime might never have been discovered. That he was lacking in these qualities the evidence later to be referred to makes especially clear. With the greatest gusto he related how he watched the bank at the noon hour on the first day he made the attempt to rob it, to see the female assistant cashier go out, leaving the cashier alone. How he then went to the bank in a partial disguise, intending to pass himself off as a detective, his plan being to tell the cashier that a gang of crooks intended to crack the safe, having already connected wires with it, which he would locate if the cashier would take him to the safe. By this means he would gain access to the safe, and have a chance to assault the old man at the same time. He failed in the accompHshment of this plan, because the assistant cashier had not gone out to dinner, and he went away so hurriedly that he left a bundle on a window seat in the bank entrance containing some of his outfit for the robbery. Later, when he was in an oyster saloon, he remembered that he had left his bundle and went back for it. The murder was committed on Friday. During our exam- inations he insisted on it that his first visit to the bank was made on the previous Wednesday, and that all the time between Wed-