The Murder of Anna Wiese Green Mountain

The Murder of Anna Wiese
Green Mountain, Iowa

EVENING TIMES REPUBLICAN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1894

HEADLINES

SEPTEMBER 7, 1894

ATTORNEYS AT IT

A Jury Speedily Secured to Try the Bennett Murder Case

County Attorney Carney Presents the Case to the Jury This Morning

Mr. Caswell Follows in Behalf of Defendant - Interest and Attendance

TALKING TO THE JURY

A Panel Secured Last Evening and the Bennett Case Presented Today

Contrary to all expectations when the Bennett case was called for retrial a jury was secured before court adjourned last evening. Only about half of the special venire of sixty-five jurymen drawn were examined. Both state and defense exhausted all their peremptory challenges. The personnel of the jury is as follows: E.B. Willim, John Wiley, E.B. Reed, W.L. Brown, H.M. Green, G.G. Barrett, David Inman, R.F. Graham, Henry Kobbe, W.S. Keene, Theodore Kirby and Daniel Benson. It is a good, trustworthy jury and both sides express themselves as satisfied, believing the case will be in safe and competent hands. Five of the jurors, namely E.B. Willim, W.S. Keene, W.L. Brown, E.B. Reed and Theo. Kirby are of the regular panel. The remainder of the panel and the special venire were discharged for the term as fast as excused. Two bailiffs, T.C. Smelser and S.Y. Leech, were appointed to take charge of the jury, and were ordered to remain with them day and night until a verdict is reached. The court also ordered that the jury be kept together and not allowed to disperse to their homes during the hours of adjournment, as during the former trial. This is as it should be, and it is believed there will be no complaints this time about attempted bribing of jurors or other efforts to influence the verdict.

When court was called this morning not more than thirty spectators were present. The number was slightly increased during the forenoon, but there were at no time more than fifty persons in the court room aside from officers and attacities and attorneys, the defendant and her friends. There is a marked difference between the court room scenes so far and those which characterized the opening of the former trial. The interest is in no respect so intense. There is no excitement at all. Even counsel are more good-natured and generous than before. They seem to perform their duties in a sort of perfunctory, matter-of-fact way, as if they did not really relish this threshing of old straw. It is expected, however, that the interest will increase after the introduction of testimony.

Presentation of the Case

MR. CARNEY, FOR THE STATE

County Attorney J. L. Carney began the presentation of the case to the jury, in behalf of the state, immediately after the convening of court this morning. A large diagram showing the scene of the murder was exhibited, to fix the location and relative positions of the different points that figure in the case in the minds of the jurors. Mr. Carney said the defendant had told different stories relative to the character of Anna Wiese and her conversation and connection with Arthur Sherlock, Mrs. Bennett's son. He attempted to show that the defendant harbored ill feelings toward the murdered girl and considered her immoral. The incidents immediately preceding the crime were then recited in detail, and the story of the tragic deed was gone over in detail. The discovery of the murdered girl by Henry Russie and his hired boy, Perry Griggs, the sending of the lad to Arthur Hill's for help, while Russie remained with the girl, and laid her head in a more natural position, the character of the wounds inflicted, the garb of the murdered girl, the disposition of the body, and other circumstances following the murder were all told in a closely connected, concise and clear manner, well calculated indelibly to impress upon the jury the primary facts in the case. Mr. Carney then passed to a consideration of the probable author of the crime. All the circumstances, or all that were especially significant, he argued, went to show the sex of Anna Wiese's assailant, and plainly suggested that the murderer was a woman. He informed the jury that a trail was found the morning after the murder through the grass in the slough leading down towards Mr. Bennett's corn field and that a small pearl button was discovered in this trail. The actions of the Bennett family the night of the murder, after being notified by the neighbors of what had occurred, were related and made appear significant, as being unusual under such circumstances. Passing briefly over the burial of the victim, the arrest and release of young Albert Isenhart, counsel called the particular attention of the fact of hair being found in the murdered girl's hand, and its close similarity of Mrs. Bennett's hair, its varied characteristics, etc., and showing that it was entirely different, both in color and character, from the hair of Anna Wiese. Mrs. Bennett's sudden illness, real or feigned, and the claim that her left arm was disabled were then alluded to, counsel declaring that it would be proven that she was a strong healthy woman at the time of the murder. Mr. Carney said the state did not insist that one person alone killed Anna Wiese, but if this defendant was connected with the deed she was equally guilty with the principal, if not herself the principal.

He spoke particularly of the defendant's manifestation of excitement and trepidation when Barney Shultz asked her for a sample of her hair, and her actions at other times and places. The blood marks in various places on the door knob of Bennett's house and about the premises were described and their significance of guilt dwelt upon, as was the finding of the blood stained waist, with a button missing, in the bottom of a trunk in Mrs. Bennett's house. Counsel passed to the motive for the murder. The fact that defendant's son, Arthur Sherlock, was keeping company with a young girl of the neighborhood, which met the mother's approval and that she feared the growing intimacy between Arthur and Anna Wiese would lead to a breach between the lovers may have been an incentive for Mrs. Bennett to put Anna out of the way. Stained overalls, found in the house of the defendant, the discovery of a broken bladed knife, the fibers under the dead girl's fingernails, etc., were touched upon as tending to establish guilt of the accused.

As a new point to be brought out in evidence, Mr. Carney stated that some hair pins had been found at the place of murder, and that these were unlike hair pins used by the murdered girl, and would assist in strengthening the theory of the state. Mr. Carney said in conclusion that the would not attempt to allude to all the features connected therewith, but only desired to present a general outline of the case. He finished speaking shortly after 10 o'clock. His statement was dispassionate and deliberate, succinct and methodical and was entirely free from aspersion or prejudice, and well calculated to make a favorable impression.

MR. CASWELL'S STATEMENT

In presenting the case in behalf of the defense Mr. Caswell went over the ground in much the same manner as in the previous trial. He started out by saying that the only thing new brought out or sought to be brought forth in the retrial of this case by the state was the fact that a few hair pins had been found in the vicinity of the crime. These, as other circumstance, would be satisfactorily accounted for he said. Counsel then narrated the history of the Bennett family, especially of the defendant and recounted various incidents in her career, and the fact that the family had toiled and struggled to get on in the world, that they were always peaceable, being neither quarrelsome nor meddlesome with their neighbors, and sought to refuse the claim of opposing counsel that this defendant was capable of committing this heinous crime, or that it was necessarily the deed of a woman. It would be proven, he said, that the defendant's left arm was disabled and that it was sometimes thrown out of joint by her attempting to lift heavy articles or to raise her hand up even with her head. Mr. Caswell stated that the sheriff had sworn to an information charging Isenhart with the murder, after the officer had seen all the bloodstains and other alleged evidences of guilt of Mrs. Bennett, and he thought the officials should not attempt to screen anybody nor conceal anything in fixing this crime upon the guilty party. Boardman at this juncture interposed an objection to this manner of procedure and began speaking as he rose to his feet. But when he turned round to address the court the latter was "out of sight." A bailiff was dispatched to find the judge, who had only stepped into the ante-room. Mr. Caswell called attention to the fact that public opinion was very unreliable in times of such excitement, for, even after the discovery of the circumstances that led the state to accuse Mrs. Bennett of this crime, everybody was declaring that Isenhart had killed the girl. The finding of the button, he claimed occurred after dozens had passed through the slough after the murder, and, furthermore, that it was a new button, and wholly unlike the other buttons on the waist or upon any of the clothing of the defendant, and that the metal pants button on the waist, in lieu of one of the pearl buttons, was rusted and showed that it had been sewn on months before. Counsel recurred to the finding of the old stained waist in the trunk or box, by Deputy Sheriff Yeager, and said it would be proven that the stains were made by a decoction of blackberry roots Mrs. Bennett had applied to her arms the previous year to allay the soreness caused by poison. He asserted that there was no blood upon it, and called in question the results of expert tests by witnesses for the state. Their best experts, he said, will not come here and swear that there had ever been one drop of blood on that old waist. They will concede that the griacum test is infallible. Mr. Caswell had not finished speaking at the noon adjournment.

Mr. Caswell continued this afternoon, describing the murder in close and graphic detail, enlarging upon improbability of a woman of Mrs. Bennett's physique and condition being able to accomplish the murder, (in the way which it was done) of such a strong girl as the victim was, the evidence all tending to show that she fought for her life with desperate energy. The assassin must have dealt the girl, counsel said, with a swinging, violent blow, such as only a man could strike. Mr. Caswell said that his opinion on the former trial was that Anna's throat was cut while standing, but that he had since changed his mind on that point, and that he would submit testimony to show that the murderer was not lying in wait at all, but either met or followed the girl, made an indecent proposal, which she resented; that then he threatened to strike her with the club unless she would promise not to tell on him, that she refused to make any such promise, and that he then struck her with the club, knocked her down, and afterward used a knife to forever silence her. The primary object of the man who followed or met the girl in the slough, counsel contended, was not to murder but to have improper relations with her. The club was doubtless used as a walking stick. Mr. Caswell was still speaking at a late hour this afternoon.