Click2FamousTrials - John Webster: Boston's Sensational Trial - Chapter 5

<body link="0000ff" alink="ff0000" vlink="000000" bgcolor=000033> <table width="100%" bgcolor=000033> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <table width=90% bgcolor=ffffff> <tr> <td align=center valign=top> <tr> <td> <div align=center><p><b><font face="arial, helvetica" size=5 color=000000><b>JOHN WEBSTER</p> <p><font size="4">CHAPTER 5 - WEBSTER TRIED FOR MURDER</b></font></p> </font> </div> <center> <table width="90%"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <div align="justify"> <p><font face="arial, helvetica" color="000000" size="3">Initially, the police did not arrest Dr. Webster. How could a Harvard faculty member kill a colleague? Instead, police arrested an Irishman who had used a $20 bill to pay a bridge-crossing toll. No hard-working, honest Irishman would have a $20 bill, the police reasoned. The money must have come from Dr. Parkman.</p> <p align="justify">The Irishman was soon released, however, and Dr. Webster was quickly charged with killing Dr. Parkman. Not just killing him - brutalizing him. Although Webster's friends raised the money needed to hire the best lawyer around, no well-known lawyer wanted the case. The trial, Boston's most <a href="http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/ecp/10/214/pdf/0030.pdf" target="_blank"><b>sensational</b></a> (this is a PDF link) of the 19th century, attracted nearly 60,000 observers from all over the country. Bailiffs rotated people in and out of the courtroom every ten minutes.</p> <p align="justify">The trial judge was Herman Melville's father-in-law, <a target="_blank" href="images/shaw2.jpg"><b>Lemuel Shaw</b></a>, Chief Justice of Massachusetts. The judge allowed prosecutors to make <a href="http://www.masshist.org/cabinet/november2001/evidencecloseup.html" target="_blank"><b>their case</b></a> with expert witnesses who told the jury the <a href="http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/ecp/10/214/html/00010005.html" target="_blank"><b>evidence </b></a> introduced at trial (bones, fragments of bones and related items) belonged to Dr. Parkman. Although this is common procedure today, it wasn't in 1850. The judge even allowed prosecutors to introduce a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.masshist.org/cabinet/november2001/parkmanskeletonlarge.html"><b>skeleton</b></a> so the jury could understand how the recovered parts fit together.</p> <p>Ephraim Littlefield testified against Webster. Some people thought he had committed the crime. A man with an interesting past, Littlefield wasn't just a janitor. He (so the story goes) supplemented legitimate income with proceeds from less-savory work as a grave robber. (Harvard's medical students, after all, needed to <a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/10.03/23-murder.html" target="_blank"><b>learn</b></a> their profession hands-on, and cadavers weren't easily obtained in those days.)</p> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="john_webster_ch4.htm">GO TO LAST CHAPTER</a>     <a href="john_webster_ch1.htm">BACK TO FIRST CHAPTER</a>    <a href="john_webster_ch6.htm">GO TO NEXT CHAPTER</a></p><br> </tr> </table>  </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table>  </body>