LIAR OR ASSASSIN?

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8870, 22 July 1907, Page 4

LIAR OR ASSASSIN?

If Orchard, the principal witness for the prosecution in the trial at Boise City, Idaho, is a liar, he is an accomplished one. On the other hand, if he is speaking the truth, he has been guilty of a series of crimes almost beyond belief. In the first two days of his evidence he described some 20 murders which he said had been committed at the instigation of the Western Federation of Miners. “He is indeed a riddle of criminology, ’ ’ says an American correspondent. * ( ob* livious of any sense of shame or apprehension as to what may become of him, lie tells the Court, ‘I shot him,’ or ‘I blew him up,’ in the same tones he might use if ho were saying ‘ I gave him a glass of beer. ’ ’ ’ He confessed to having placed a bomb in a mine, which killed the superintendent and another man, and to having blown up a railway station Jwhile a train carrying nonunionists was there. A hundred pounds of powder were placed under the platform, and the explosion killed twelve people. For this Orchard received £fio. Sent to San Francisco to “locate” a man named Bradley, a former mine manager in Idaho, lie tried to poison his victim by placing strychnine in his milk can. This having failed, he made a]bomb and arranged it so that when Bradley opened his front door it would explode. “When Bradley opened the door next morning the explosion blew out the front of the house and blew him into the street. ’ ’ This transaction brought Orchard £9O. The assassination of Mr Steunenberg was attempted more than once before a bomb at his gate blew him up. Orchard carried a sawed-off shot gun under his coat, but could get no chance to use it. Mr Peabody, Governor ,of Oolarado, was tracked for three weeks by men with guns, and on one occasion owed his life to the fact that a lady was with him. Another time a bomb was hurried in a road along which it was known he would walk. The conspirators wore ready to pull the wire and blow him up, when two waggons passed over the wire and rendered it useless, Mr Peabody being actually over the bomb at the time. The idea in murdering Mr Steunenberg several years after he had vacated office was that the deed would show other enemies cf the Federation that they were not forgotten.