Cleveland Past and Present: Its Representative Men: Comprising Biographical Sketches of Pioneer Settlers and Prominent Citizens
History
Cleveland Past and Present: Its Representative Men: Comprising Biographical Sketches of Pioneer Settlers and Prominent Citizens
Cleveland (Ohio) -- Biography; Cleveland (Ohio) -- History
He was appointed Attorney for the Western Union Telegraph Company, one of
the largest corporations in the United States, in the year 1865, and has
ever since continued, as such attorney, to have charge and supervision of
a large and peculiar legal business for the company, extending over the
various States and Territories embraced in what is known as the Central
Division of the territory covered by its lines. He has made telegraph law
a speciality for several years, and has probably had as large and extended
experience in that comparatively new and peculiar branch of the law as any
other attorney in the country.
He was elected Prosecuting Attorney for the county of Cuyahoga, in the
Fall of 1867, and was distinguished during his term for the zeal,
fidelity, and ability with which he discharged his officiai duties. It
fell to his lot to prosecute many important and difficult criminal cases;
prominent among them was the trial of Sarah M. Victor, for the murder, by
poison, of her brother, William Parquette. The case was peculiar and
remarkable; the murdered man had lain in his grave a whole year before
suspicions were aroused that his death was caused by foul play; slight
circumstances directed attention to suspicious appearances in the case,
which a quiet investigation did not diminish. The prosecutor, therefore,
caused the body to be secretly disinterred, and engaged J. L. Cassells, an
accomplished chemist, to subject the body to a chemical analysis, which on
being done, arsenic in sufficient quantity to produce death was found in
the stomach and other internal organs. Her arrest for murder, therefore,
immediately took place. The circumstances of the case were well calculated
to arouse an intense interest in the public mind as to the result of the
trial. The facts that the alleged poisoner was a woman, that the murdered
man was her own brother, that her own sister was supposed to be an
important witness against her, that the murder, if murder it was, was in
the highest degree cruel, mercenary, and devilish, that at the time of her
arrest she was prominently connected with religious and benevolent
institutions of the city, though it was well known she had previously led
an irregular life, and the profound secrecy in which the dark deed had
slumbered for a whole year, all seemed to concur in riveting public
attention upon it; and yet, previous to the trial, the belief was
prevalent in the community generally, as well as among the members of the
Bar, that however guilty the prisoner might be, she would not be
convicted. In this belief the prosecutor did not share, but at once went
to work with his accustomed energy to unravel the evidences of the great
crime; and for many weeks, with an energy that never flagged, himself and
his assistant, H. B. DeWolf, Esq., patiently and persistently explored the
dark secrets of her life, examined hundreds of witnesses, and inextricably
wound the coils of evidence around her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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