Williams accused Hamilton of working the substitution with the idea of later making the discovery himself so that he could then demand a new trial. Repetitious and acrimonious, the arguments went on each day until five o’clock, but no one in the closed chambers had any real doubt as to who had switched the barrels. Even Moore, arguing bravely that this was more dirty work on the part of the district attorney’s staff, knew that Hamilton’s deft fingers had done it. At the conclusion of the hearings Thayer reserved judgment as to who had made the substitution and whether or not it had been accidental. He ruled merely that the barrel in the new pistol had come from Sacco’s Colt and he ordered the fouled barrel replaced and the three pistols delivered into the clerk’s custody “without prejudice to either side.” The prejudice, however, was not so easily obliterated. Hamilton’s chicanery had undermined his value as a witness, past or future. Although he was to continue his association with the defense almost to the end, he would prove only a detriment—expensive, untrustworthy, and untrusted. * * * * * Almost at the very time Hamilton was discrediting himself in Dedham, Van Amburgh, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was demolishing his own ethical and technical reputation in the Harold Israel case. Israel was a young ex-soldier of small intelligence who had been charged with the murder of Father Hubert Dahme, pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. On the evening of February 4, 1924, Father Dahme was strolling along Bridgeport’s Main Street when a man approached him from the rear, placed the muzzle of a revolver close to his head, and fired. Several witnesses saw the murderer run from the scene. A week later the police of Norwalk, a dozen miles away, picked up a man who was wandering the streets at midnight in a suspicious manner. He was found to have a 32-caliber revolver in his pocket with four of the five chambers loaded and the other empty. He said his name was Harold Israel, that he had just come from Bridgeport, and that he was on his way to see his father in Philadelphia. Next morning he was given thirty days in the Bridgeport county jail for carrying a concealed weapon. Once there he was interrogated about the priest’s death, and several witnesses of the shooting were brought in to look him over. The crucial evidence against Israel was the 32-caliber bullet removed from Father Dahme’s brain. Captain Van Amburgh, called in from the Remington Company, compared it with a test bullet fired through Israel’s gun and announced that both had been fired from the same weapon. This he said he had determined not only by his measurements but by the similarity of the bullets after he had made a strip photograph of each and superimposed one upon the other.