VAN B. BAKER GETS NO COMFORT FROM THE STATE’S EVIDENCE

The Testimony for the Prosecution Drawing to a Close

Baker’s son was an attendant at court yesterday, and sat beside his father during the day. The evidence continued to bear heavily upon the prisoner. The first witness called Friday afternoon was Mrs. Gardner, who testified.

I reside about 150 feet from Mrs. McWha’s home; have been living there about fifteen years; was well acquainted with Mrs. McWha and Mrs. Baker; did not see them on Monday, May 9th; their wash day was Monday; I saw their washing put out; it was hanging on the line by noon; the clothes-line was between the kitchen and stable; Mrs. Baker had been doing the washing now of late; I saw the clothes still hanging on the line late in the evening; a storm came up between four and five o’clock; I was coming down from Brown’s store when the storm came up; I came right past the McWha house; did not see anyone about their premises; I got back about then minutes past four and the first thing I did was to go out and bring in the clothes and get up the chickens; Mrs. Baker had never been accustomed to leaving the clothes out over night; when I washed for her I always took them in myself; the clothes were still on the line Tuesday morning; they had small chickens about the yard; the little chickens were kept in a coop; I saw them running about the time of the storm; Mrs. Baker was very careful about everything; have seen her care for the chickens; did not see anyone feed them that evening; saw them the next morning running about on the common; she always housed them late in the evening between six and seven o’clock; saw the gate by the coal house open as late as dark; they were accustomed to keep their gates closed; the common was open to the public; saw the same gate open the same the next morning; did not notice any person about the Baker house after the rain; was not over there on Monday at all; we got water there frequently; the pump stood near the kitchen door; they usually kept their tubs in the cellar; the windows of the kitchen had an outside shutters; they had curtains over the upper part; they reached down about middle ways of the window; never saw any covering or blind over the lower part of the windows; I was not in the kitchen on Tuesday; did not see the kitchen windows; I went in there Tuesday; went into the little hall first, then into the sitting room; saw the bodies on the floor; I remained there about ten minutes or so. The witness described the position of the bodies on the floor and their appearance. I was in there afterwards before the funeral; saw the blood on the kitchen floor; the lower parts of the kitchen windows were covered with paper and pieces of oil cloth.

Cross examination—Most always saw one of them when I went over there after water; have five children; they frequently were over there; have seen Baker doing little chores about the house; the back yard is rather shady; the kitchen windows attracted my attention when I saw them; the water runs off the house through a spout into the cistern; I do not know of any way for the water to run into the cistern if the lid is not taken off; the well is about 8 feet from the cistern; Mr. Baker and the rest of the family seemed to get along very well; had seen Baker just a few days before the murder; he returned form the West some time in the last of April.

Dr. Morris was the next witness. I live at Holiday’s Cove; have been practicing medicine thirty-five years; have known Mrs. McWha and Mrs. Baker for fifteen years; was to her house on the 16 of May last; got there about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I examined the bodies of the murdered women; commenced the examination about 3 o’clock; found Mrs. McWha and Mrs. Baker lying on the floor; the room was dark; found no wounds on their bodies or limbs; touched their heads and found a little corrugated blood; removed the caps and saw the wounds on their heads; I found a wound on the muscle of the neck made by a blunt instrument. The clothing and implements of the murder were here produced. The witness identified the bolt; the bruise on the neck corresponded with the bolt; the wound was about midway the sterno mastoid muscle; there were three wounds just back of the external ear; the bolt at all three; the wounds on the neck and on the head were simple abrasions of the skin. I found another wound on the left temporal bone; it crushed through the muscle, cutting off the temporal artery; the wound was made with this bolt; found on back of the head two wounds made with a sharp instrument; I inserted my finger in them to the second joint; they were about an inch and a half in length; that wound had been made after the person was dead; there was only venous blood about the edges; the wound was horizontal across the base of the skull; it was blunt on one edge; the other incised and was on the right temporal bone; it was a clean cut incisive wound throughout and penetrated the skull; I think the wound was made after the death of the person. The edges of the wound gaped and no arterial blood was on the edges; the wound in the left temple of Mrs. McWha produced her death; it was made with the bolt; Mrs. McWha was about medium height, and rather slender; she weighed probably from one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and twenty pounds; the corpse was rigid when examined; the blood about the wounds and upon her hair was dry; my judgment is that she had been dead about twenty-four hours; I base my judgment on the condition of the bodies, blood and general surrounding. The witness identified the dress worn by Mrs. Baker; saw blood on both the dresses, on the waist and different places. The caps were shown and recognized by the witness. Found no rents in the cap corresponding to the wounds in the head; the wounds on Mrs. McWha were all beneath the cap, except the one on the back of the head; there was no evidence of blood having run through the cap; the caps were put on wrong-side before and wrong side out. I examined the body of Mrs. Baker and found one wound in the left temporal region, a clean cut incisive wound through the skull, and three on the right, one of which was a flesh wound only. The wound in the back of the head was a long penetrating wound, crushed the skull and broke off a whole part of the occipital bone. I found no blood in the room where Mrs. Baker lay that I thought came from her. I found in the hair of Mrs. Baker a tooth of a comb; in the kitchen found teeth of like material in a pool of blood, the stain of which represented the head and shoulders of a person; the wound on Mrs. Baker’s head had bled freely; the wounds could have been made with an axe; there were no wounds upon Mrs. Baker made with a blunt instrument; found no wounds on the bodies of either women that could have been made with the coupling pin; found the parts of the comb just where the impression of the head was in the pool of blood. Mrs. Baker had a medium good head of hair; the blood upon it coagulated when I saw it. I think the blood had been effused twenty-four hours or more. I made a careful examination of all the blood about the place, and it was very dry and bore marks of being effused early on the evening before; other things about the house indicated that the murder had been committed before night; blood undergoes coagulation when exposed to the air, and the parts of it separate. I did not see anything on the floor to indicate dragging a body from one room to another, it is not probable that a person would be capable of any movement after such a blow as Mrs. Baker received. The loss of blood and shock from the blow would have been sufficient to keep her from dragging herself into the other room. The body that fell in the kitchen remained where it fell. There did not seem to be any great amount of blood on the floor of the sitting room. Mrs. McWha’s body was a little more flushed than Mrs. Baker’s . I noticed a blood spot on the window, also some on sides of the wall and on the shade of the window. I saw the windows in the kitchen; they were obscured by blinds, pieced out with paper and a shawl. The cap was tied over the head of Mrs. Baker as tightly as it was possible, so tight that if she had been living, it would have thrown her mouth open.

Cross-examination—I served in the war as a private soldier for about a year; afterwards I was a clerk in the Quartermaster’s department for four years; I went West then and engaged in speculation until the fall of 1867. I then bought an interest in a patent right of feather renovator; during that time I practiced medicine at Mechanicsburg, Pa.; I remained there four years; I came to Holliday’s Cove in 1877, and commenced practicing medicine; I then went to Wheeling and practiced for four years; at the close of that period I returned to Holliday’s Cove; Since 1884 I have been practicing my profession at that place; I have an interest in a farm there as a member of a stock company; the practice of medicine has been my main business; there was no law requiring registration of a physician in Pennsylvania and Illinois when I practiced there; I regularly registered in West Virginia; I was the physician of the McWha family for eight years; during my residence in Wheeling I was not their regular physician, but in that time I waited on both Mrs. Baker and Mrs. McWha; Dr. Owens and myself were called before the coroner’s jury; I made no post mortem examination of the bodies, none was made so far as I know; I arrived there on Tuesday about two o’clock; saw some slats lying by the window; was at both sittings of the coroner’s jury and gave substantially the same testimony in both cases; I saw no profile of the lower extremities in the dried pool of blood in the kitchen; I could not tell from the outline in the blood which of the bodies had lain there. The witness showed the position of Mrs. Wha’s wounds, upon Col. Morris’s neck and head. In addition to the wounds before described, I discovered a slight bruise below the left knee; I think that the bruise was the result of the first blow, the next was immediately above it; the third was the blow upon the ear; the fourth was the fatal blow. I believe it would have been possible for Mrs. McWha to scream between the blows. I think that the first blow killed Mrs. Baker; the blow was struck from the right side. The murder was certainly done before dark on Monday.

Court adjourned.

(Abstracted from the July 30, 1887, "The Saturday Review", Vol, 8, No. 42, Page 7 newspaper,East Liverpool & Wellsville, Ohio)