From the beginning both the police and the public held the opinion that these two people had not been alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive investigation failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in Cleveland, it was concluded that the prisoners had possibly been the sole active agents, but the opinion was retained that some one else must have plotted the crime. Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure little town? Why had they chosen Willie Whitla, when there were tens of thousands of boys with wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives? Who had acquainted them with the particularities of the Whitlas’ lives, the probable attitude at the school, the child’s fear of smallpox and pest houses? Was it not obvious that some one close to the family had supplied the information and laid the plans? James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth of May, faced with his accusers, and swiftly encircled with the accusing evidence, which was complete and unequivocal. He accepted it without display of emotion and offered no defense. After brief argument the case went to the jury, which reached an affirmative verdict within a few minutes. Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterward and also presented no defense. A verdict was found against her with equal expedition on May 10, and she was remanded for sentence. On the following day both defendants were called before the court. The judge imposed the life sentence on Boyle and a term of twenty-five years on his wife. A few hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper reporters to his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed them a written statement. Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895, when the body of Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lying on the sidewalk on East Federal Street, Youngstown, Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. There had been some mysterious circumstances or rumors attached to Reeble’s end. Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble, but he said in his statement that he and one Daniel Shay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper, who had died in 1907, had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs. James P. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking a number of letters from the pockets of the dead man, as his body lay on the walk. Boyle recited that not only had he and Shay found Forker in this compromising position, but they had picked up two envelopes overlooked by Forker, in which were found four letters from women, two from a girl in New York State and the other two from a Cleveland woman. The contents were intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventure that Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.