She had been born Rachel Andrews, the by-product of an encounter between a Yankee farmer’s daughter and an itinerant Italian. A tow-path child brought up in a shanty settlement on the outskirts of the trim Kennebec town, she had scarcely passed adolescence when she married an ex-soldier returned from the Philippines, Mayhew Hassam, an alcoholic who used her cruelly. She had borne him one son. After the marriage ended she had stayed on in Gardiner across the street from the Soldiers’ Home, available and accommodating. In Augusta she had been convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct. Moving on to Massachusetts, she had left her son behind, sending money back for his board. At the time she testified in Dedham he was eighteen years old. What her life had been she did not ever want him to know. The boy was her weak spot—a spot Moore did not hesitate to exploit. He had been hard on Pelser, hard on Goodridge, he would be hard on her. A lawyer, to his mind, could not be delicate when men’s lives were at stake. Lola Darroch brought young Hassam from Maine, hired a room for him in the seedy Hotel Essex opposite the South Station, and sent for the mother. The boy, though an unkempt rustic, had proved tractable and intelligent, accepting Moore’s version of the case and agreeing to try to persuade his mother to repudiate her courtroom testimony. Lola Andrews, brought in from Quincy, confronted her son while Moore told her that she had lied in Dedham and that it was now up to her to tell the truth. She wilted at once and began to cry. Moore spent the evening drafting an affidavit. When it was handed to her, her son begged her to sign. Moore showed her certain affidavits that Carpenter had collected in Gardiner, without, however, allowing her to read them. She signed. Moore could indeed browbeat such witnesses as Pelser, Goodridge, and Lola Andrews. The difficulty was that when they were alone again they had second thoughts that generally took the form of a disclaiming letter to the district attorney. On January 9, 1923, Lola signed a counteraffidavit for District Attorney Katzmann and Assistant District Attorney Williams in which she claimed that Moore had used her boy to trap her and that she had not read the nine pages of the affidavit. She had not wanted to sign it.