If Ross is innocent, the mystery of the death of Alma Tirtschke remains. It was, however, no part of Ross’s duty to solve it. In this connection it is doubtful whether sufficient attention has been ever paid to the evidence tendered by Joseph Thomas Graham. He is a cab driver by occupation, middle-aged, respectable, intelligent, and thoroughly level-headed. On Friday afternoon, December 30, at about half-past 3, he was in Little Collins Street, nearly opposite the Adam and Eve lodging-house, when his attention was arrested by a series of heartrending screams coming apparently from a young girl. They became higher in pitch as they succeeded one another, to the number of five or six, and then they died away. They were so noticeable that Graham and a man on the opposite side of the street both stopped and listened, but as the screams faded out each man went about his business. On or about Saturday, January 7, Graham saw a notice in the paper saying that, as the girl had been throttled, she was probably throttled to stop her screams, and asking anyone who had heard screams to communicate with the Detective Office. He went on the Monday to the Detective Office and reported what he had heard, but his reception does not appear to have been sympathetic. Graham was never called at the inquest. The police explanation is that he was not sure whether it was Thursday or Friday that he heard the screams, and that, in any case, he placed them as coming from higher up Little Collins Street. Neither explanation can be accepted, for Graham was absolutely definite as to his every movement on the Friday, and absolutely definite as to time and place. An absurd story was told by Detective Brophy about making inquiries in the neighbourhood, and learning of some child that had a reputation for screaming, as though an intelligent man could not tell the difference between the bad-tempered screaming of a naughty child and the agonised death screams of an adolescent girl. When Ross was condemned Graham went to his solicitor and repeated his story. That was the first the defence knew of it. The Full Court heard his evidence, but it declined to allow a jury to hear it.