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Case File: Halliday, Paul (1893)
[External link to original] – Page 17, Columns 1-4
NELLIE BLY
VISITS
MRS. HALLIDAY
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Strange Story of the Triple
Murder as Told by the
Prisoner in the
Monticello Jail.
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"I WAS DRUGGED," SHE SAYS
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A Fight in the Hut, and Mrs. Hal-
liday Awakes to Conscious-
ness to Find Her
Husband Gone.
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THE M'QUILLANS MISSING, TOO.
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Cheerfully Discussing the Details of
the Tragedy, and Stolidly
Indifferent as to
Her Fate.
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I have seen and talked with Lizzie Halliday, the triple murderess. It is the first time she has talked since she has been charged with those three unaccountable murders, near Middletown, NY. The county jail, in which this strange woman is confined, stands in a straight line with the county clerk’s office and the Presbyterian Church, upon a little grassy knoll that faces and forms part of Monticello’s park.
THE LITTLE MONTICELLO JAIL
There is not much suggestion of a prison in the wide, unbarred windows and open door of the handsome gray-stone county jail. Nor does the wide corridor, with a cheery, little sitting-room at one side, an office in the rear and a cross hall, leading to the basement on the right and to the second floor by the winding stairway on the left, give any idea of bolts and bars and prisoners.
At the first turn in the stairs leading to the second floor is a very deep window, bound on either side by blind iron doors, possibly two feet in width. One door was closed when I was there. The other was open, disclosing an extremely narrow white-washed passage leading down by three very deep steps to a heavy iron gate.
FIRST GLIMPSE OF MRS. HALLIDAY
From this landing there is no view of anything beyond the gate, but going down the three steps I looked between the bars and saw –
A woman sitting in round-backed chair before a heavily-barred window. Her back was towards me, her face towards the window; her attitude, one of rigid expectation and resentment. Sheriff Beecher undid three heavy locks, pushed the grated door open, and after we entered close it lightly.
“Lizzie,” he spoke to the woman before the window, “I have brought a lady to see you.” No reply; not the faintest movement, ? I began to think the woman was ? or dead. [bottom left of the page is badly copied and a few words illegible].
“She won’t hurt you, Lizzie. Just look up and see who kind she is.” the Sheriff pleaded, but no change came in the woman’s attitude or demeanor.
“I will not hurt you. Why should I?” I said, placing my hand on her shoulder to convince myself that she actually lived. “Why don’t you speak to me?” When I spoke she made a sound in her throat as if swallowing something, and mechanically turned the pages of the journal upon her knee. It was as if the strain of her motionless attitude, had been almost too much for her.
THE PRISONER’S QUEER CELL
Yet she made no answer, nor did she lift her head, and so determined to show her that I meant to remain until she did speak, I perched myself upon the high bed, and, having nothing better to do, took a survey of the cell and its strange occupant. The cell was of generous size, with but one door and one window. The floor was bare and the walls whitewashed. Northing could possibly have looked more incongruous in a prison cell than the old-fashioned, four-posted bed that stood in the corner, with its comically fat mattress and bright patchwork quilt. The stove also seemed out of place, but as there is no other way of heating, I suppose they must take what little risk there is of a prisoner setting the place on fire, or introducing a keeper into kingdom come with the stove-lid.
Lizzie Halliday has done what she could to decorate her cell. She has pasted to the plaster a great number of colored prints from weekly periodicals. Apparently they were selected at random, for the majority deal with political subjects, of which, I should suppose, she had little knowledge.
COLORED PRINTS ON THE WALLS
But if I may judge from the prints given the most prominent position, Lizzie Halliday would occupy the bald-headed row if she went to see “1492.” Directly beside the window where she sits all day she has pasted a full-length picture of a retiring creature in extremely scant garments, who was, according to the caption, “Pauline Bradshaw, of Buffalo, and who left her wealthy husband for the glamour of the stage.” Next to it came several tinted pictures of the supposed summer female in the remarkable undress which she only wears in the colored weeklies, diving, perching on rocks and lounging in the sand.
Over the wide window-sill was spread a copy of the New York World, with his headline, “Successful Women Adventuresses,” showing above a stack of papers and a paper-covered tin can containing a generous bunch of marigolds, petunias, and phlox.
Naturally the woman was of most interest to me, this fellow-woman charged with the murder of her husband and two of her own sex, supposedly strangers to her. At the first careless glance I saw that she wore a dark-blue calico wrapper, a little soiled, and she seemed to be fat, judging from the loose appearance of her dress.
I could not get the slightest glimpse of her face, her head was bent so low, but I could see that her hair was very fine and of an exquisite red-gold tint. I don’t mean that I was a healthy red with a gold cast, or a deep gold with a red tinge. I mean that it was light in shade, decidedly not golden, and reflected a faint gold and faint red, almost like a delicate, changeable silk. Ordinary hair, I should call it, if it did not catch the light and turn to those exquisitely beautiful red-gold tints.
A WHITE NECK AND WHITE HANDS
Of course I was not so surprised then to see that her fat neck was as white as milk, but it did surprise me to see that her white hands were as spotless as if she had never done any labor. Her white hands fascinated me. They are well-shaped, ending in a perfectly round wrist, and small in size, if measured across the knuckles. But her hand is fat and very thick through. In other words, her hand is shaped like John L. Sullivan’s.
Lizzie Halliday’s hands look as if she gave them considerable care and attention. Her nails are closely trimmed, with the half-moon showing on every one, and nicely polished. As I sat looking at her she held the paper, not in the listless clasp of an imbecile, but with the grip of a person was was keenly alive to everything, and who was enduring a great strain. I leaned over; I reached forth my hand and clasped her thick white hand that is said to have sent at least four souls into eternity.
Her hand, damp with the clamminess produced a great nervous strain, lay rigidly passive under mine. Still I did not move away, but gently pressed the hand I touched. Then a solitary tear-drop fell on my wrist. Then another. A sudden shower quickly followed the first drops, and Lizzie Halliday, with the back of her hands, hastily and roughly brushed them away.
“How do I know who you are?” she asked sharply, adding in the same breath, “a man came here this morning and said I sold him pigs. It is a lie. I never did. I never saw him before. I don’t want people coming here telling lies about me.”
NOT INSANE
“He lies! I never saw him!” she burst forth angrily. “He said it was a year ago, and when you said I was in the insane asylum then he said, with a bitter snear, ‘it must have been two years ago that he bought them.’ He’s lying, and I don’t want people comin’ here lyin’ on me.”
“I won’t let any more in,” the Sheiff said soothingly. “But you needn’t be mad at this young woman. She hasn’t done anything to you.”
“How do I know who she is?” she observed, giving me a quick glance and then dropped her head again. “I don’t like people comin’ here to question me. How do I know who they are or what they want?”
She gave me another quick look of suspicion, and seemed to be debating in her mind whether she should have anything to say to me or not. There was nothing insane about her actions. They were the actions of a very shrewd person, who was thoroughly conscious of her danger, and was carefully considering all chances before venturing to commit herself in any way. As she sat thus pondering I took a good look at her face, and, as I studied it, what little liking that may have been born by the knowledge of her friendless condition, and, I might as well confess it, the tear that fell upon my hand, vanished abruptly, leaving a decided chill of aversion in its place.
No one can look in Lizzie Halliday’s face when it wears that expression of cunning speculation and like her.
One glance of her countenance can kill every spark of friendliness in the kindest heart that every throbbed. Robert Louis Stevenson made people experience a thrill of repulsion and fear at the sight of Mr. Hyde’s frightful features. How much stranger is it, then, that the sight of this woman’s face, with her gold-red hair and perfect skin of pink and white should freeze the blood in one’s veins and banish all feeling of human empathy. To appreciate what Lizzie Halliday’s face is like, it must be seen. Imagine a snout-like nose with long nostrils; coarse, full lips covering heavy teeth set far apart that aid greatly to bear out the brute likeness. The chin comes down rather sharply. The eyes keen, clear – as watchful as the eyes of a snake – are small and set under an enormous brow.
“I WASN’T IN MY RIGHT MIND”
That forehead is wonderful. Very full, very high and very wide, with four horizontal lines across it, the only lines anywhere on her perfect skin. After a long silence, during which she seemed to be trying to decide upon the best course for her to pursue, she looked at me and said slowly, as if weighing every word: “I did not know anything. I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“But you can recall what happened before the murder?” I suggested quietly. She looked at me and her eyes dropped and fastened themselves upon her fat, white hand. Intently she surveyed it, spread out the fingers, turned it palm upward and then palm down again.
“Everything seems sort of hazy.” she said, slowly. “My head hurst me yet. I’m not well.”
“She has been out of her mind, you know” the Sheriff added, and Lizzie Halliday looked pleased.
ANXIOUS ABOUT HER COWS.
“But you can tell her about those things that belong to you,” he added to the woman. “Maybe she can help you to get them.” A keen look of green spread over her face, that unpleasant face, with its strangely shaped nostrils and coarse, protruding lips.
“Could you get them?” she asked, eagerly. “They belonged to me. There were two cows that I might get $30 a piece for.”… “Then there is the horse,” she continued, “a good, little black horse that is worth $75 at least. And two sets of harness and ten tons of hay, and a field of corn and a field of potatoes and two little pigs. Then there was some chickens. We’d been selling chickens, but we had left four pretty good-sized ones and an old hen with – let me see (stopping to count) thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen – yes, sixteen little chickens. They must be worth something now.”
“Lizzie has no money. If she had these things, they could be sold for her benefit”, the Sheriff explained.
“I have a right to them,” Lizzie added, quickly. “They belong to me. I bought them from my husband. I paid him $200 for them all, and I have papers to prove it.”
“Where did you get so much money?”
“My husband was very good to me.” drawing back as if afraid. “He gave me money and I saved it.”
“But still, $200 is quite a sum to save”.
SAVED MONEY IN THE MADHOUSE
“Well, I was in the insane asylum, and every time he came to see me he gave me some thing, and I didn’t need to spend it.” she explained.
“How long were you in the asylum?”
“If I had stayed till last June I would have been in two years, but I left in May.”
“Cured?”
“Of course,” laughing “They won’t let you go till they can give a certificate that you’re cured.”
“Then she was arrested for horse-stealing” the Sheriff spoke up.
“How did they catch you?”
“I had stopped along the road and tied the horse to a tree. I meant to make a rope to tie to the tree, so I could climb to heaven, so they found me and arrested me for horse-stealing. But, the jury decided I was crazy. Just as they did when they tried to fasten the blame on me for burning down the house.”
“Paul Halliday’s crazy son was burned to death in the house,” Sheriff Beecker explained to me.
“It was done for the insurance,” Lizzie whispered. “I knew all about it.”
“Did you see it? Did you know the boy was inside?”
“Yes; I was there” (indifferently)
“And you did not try to save the boy?”
She glanced sharply at me and then at the Sheriff. “You don’t understand, dear; you don’t understand,” she whined.
“Understand? What do you mean?”
“I suppose she was afraid of some one,” observed the Sheriff.
IN TERROR OF HER HUSBAND
“Yes, dear,” Lizzie whined again in the tone of an old beggar asking for alms. “That was it, it would have cost me my life. I didn’t dare say a word. My husband stood over me with a club and a revolver, and if I had spoken he would have killed me.”
“I thought Mr. Halliday was away,” I observed. (The jury proved at the time that Paul Halliday was in Middletown, at least fifteen miles distant from the place where the fire occurred).
When I said this Mrs. Halliday’s keen eyes gave me a shark look, but they quickly fell on meeting mine. “He wasn’t away. He was there, and he burned down the house to get the insurance money. I didn’t dare tell, dear. It would have cost my life.”
“What reason had he for burning up his own son? Didn’t he like him?”
“No (empathetically); he didn’t like him. He thought he was foolish and a trouble, so he burned him up. Why should I? I liked the boy. He used to carry water for me.”
“You couldn’t have loved old Halliday,” the Sheriff remarked. “He was at least seventy and you are only twenty-eight.”
Lizzie smiled quietly at this.
“Are you only twenty-eight?” I asked, for she looked considerably older than that to me.
“As near as I can tell, dear, I don’t know exact.”
“That makes your husband something like fifty years older than you. Now, Lizzie, you couldn’t love an old man like that,” the Sheriff said, teasingly.
“Why not?” Lizzie asked evasively, the smile still on her lips. “He was good to me, drunk or sober. He was always good to me but once, and that was that night.
“Tell about that, Lizzie; how he hit you,” the Sheriff interposed.
But Lizzie did not want to talk on that subject.
“Your husband took you with him in the daytime, when he went to burn charcoal, didn’t he, Lizzie? Never left you out of his sight,” he suggested.
“Yes,” she said in almost a whisper, “Always had me with him. Wouldn’t give me a chance to get away.”
“How long is it since you came to America, Lizzie?” I asked. She looked at me, assuming the blankest express I ever saw.
“I don’t know, dear” she answered, with careful slowness. “I disremember.”
“You are all alone in this country; you left all your friends behind, I believe?”
“No, they all came with me. My father and mother and my five sisters and two brothers,” was her reply.
“Where are they now?” I asked, in some surprise, having understood that she was friendless.
“I don’t know. I guess my father is dead an’ all my brothers and sisters married.”
“You were married before you married Paul Halliday?”
VAIN AND CUNNING
She looked at me with what was meant to be a stupid gleam of her small, pig’s eyes betrayed the workings of her remarkably shrewd brain. “Was I, dear?” (meekly)
“You should know. Were you?”
“I may have been, I disremember. This kind man” – indicating the Sheriff – “God knows, the only friend I have – will tell you.”
“The newspapers say you were, Lizzie,” the Sheriff remarked.
In spite of the delicate color, and the smoothness of Lizzie Halliday’s perfect skin, her flesh feels to the touch like iron. At the Sheriff’s request I felt her magnificently developed arm and it was firmer than John L. Sullivan’s the time he fought Kilrain. I put my hand upon her knee and found that it was like her arm, as hard as iron. As I noted the muscular development I could not help thinking what powerful strength must be locked up in that woman’s body.
By this time Lizzie Halliday had turned her chair so that she faced us as we sat upon the bed. Her side was to the window, but in this position the light fell straight upon her face, and gave me a good chance to watch its changing expression. “I wish you would tell me all that occurred in your house the time of the murder,” I said to her after a short silence.
“How can I, dear? I didn’t know anything. I was crazy,” was her answer.
“But you were not crazy before the murder. Surely you can tell me what happened then?” I urged firmly.
“I WAS DRUGGED” SHE SAYS
Her eyes shifted uneasily and she gulped as if swallowing something, a thing she does very frequently. “I didn’t know about anything,” she said sullenly.
“How could you be in the house where it was all done and not know?”
“I was drugged; I didn’t know anything.”
“Who drugged you?”
“McQuillan” was the surprising reply, delivered in tones of hate that made my heart beat a little quicker.
“Then you know McQuillan”. A long silence, her head so bent forward that her face was hidden.
“My husband knew him,” slowly.
“What brought McQuillan to your house?”
“This is all I know about it” she said with the careful deliberation that marks her speech. “One morning my husband hitched up and said he was going away. Always before this he took me everywhere he went, so I felt bad. I asked him why I wasn’t going along and he said he was going on business and couldn’t have me. I felt pretty bad, so I said no more. Then he hitched up and put four kegs of applejack in the wagon and two demijohns, and started off.”
“What was he going to do with the applejack?”
SOLD MOONSHINERS APPLEJACK
“He sold it for a man who made it near our place; a moonshiner. My husband would take it in his wagon down the road and people that drove along would but it. He took the demijohns and a tin cup always so he could sell by the drink, too.” She stopped and gulped that something down her throat. “He came back that night,” she continued, “and had in the wagon with him two men and two women. I seen, they had been drinking more’n was good for them, and you can know how I felt. They brought back two demijohns with them and both the women and the men drank. They had some lunch with them, too; some pie and bread and a bucket of fresh butter. I was so mad I wouldn’t get them supper. I just sat beside the stove, so they began to eat what they had and McQuillan swore at Mrs. McQuillan, saying: “D— you, you — — —, you didn’t put any salt in this butter!.”
EXPLAINTS ABOUT THE BUTTER
“How did you know it was Mrs. McQuillan?” A quick look, a heavy gulp and a sudden stiffening of her thick, white fingers. “Didn’t he tell me? (crossly) How should I know? He said: ‘This is my wife.’ and then of the other woman, ‘This is my daughter,’ That’s all I knew”.
“All right (to pacify her)! What happened after that?”
“He put the butter in a bowl and put salt in it an’ worked it into a roll. I seen him myself put crosses on it after it was done.”
“How crosses?” I inquired
“Don’t you know (impatiently) the way they put marks on butter when they make it into a print? This way!” and with the right hand she drew imaginary crosses on her left hand.
“Oh, yes. I understand,” I assured her.
“Then they said I churned and made butter after the thing happened.” she blurted out angrily.
“Indeed! How did you know?”
She looked cornered for just a second. Then, assuming that look of stupidity, she raised her eyes to the Sheriff, saying in wheedling tones: “I guess you told me, dear”
“What happened after the butter episode?” I asked, knowing it was useless to press her further upon that point.
“They all got to dancing around, drinking and swearing. I went in to bed, and my husband came in and said I’d got to get out an’ let the McQuillan woman get into bed. I said I would not, so he took his shoe and hit me over the head. Then I hollered, and he put me out”
“Out of bed?”
“No; out-of-doors in the dark. I hollered out there and old McQuillan came and took me in. ‘This is my dear,’ he said to the rest, meaning me. Then all the men pulled out revolvers; there were three men and three revolvers. I screamed again and McQuillan dragged me into the other room, pushed me down and taking a bottle out of his pocket threw a lot of stuff over my face – chloroform it was, I guess. Then I did not know any more.”
“Why didn’t your husband interfere?”
“Oh, he was lying on the floor near the lounge.”
LAST I EVER SAW OF MY HUSBAND
“Dead?”
“No; hollering and moaning – snakes, I guess. He’d been drinking; was always drinking all day and all night, so I guess he had snakes. That’s the last I ever saw of my husband, lying there flat on the floor besides the sofa, yelling and moaning.”
“How did you know McQuillan? Had you ever seen him before?”
“Yes; he was at our house about a month before this. He came there to buy some applejack. He was a bad man,” she added. Called me his dear, Said he would have me if he had to kill them all. He fought awful with Mrs. McQuillan that night. She said: You lazy old loafer! I’ve got to work and keep you.’ He fought with his daughter, too. He asked her where she got her watch and rings. But that’s all I know. What happened afterwards I don’t know, for I was drugged.”
“What was the first thing you knew after your senses returned?”
[several parts of this next paragraph are blotted in the copy I’m reading from, very difficult to read or illegible]
“I seemed to get awake and no one was there but old McQuillan. ‘Where is my husband?’ said I. ‘He’s gone away to work,’ said he. ‘I looked around and ? his good suit ? …. and … boots. I believed him. Then … McQuillan said … ..ot to home … live with me… cunning lie, wanted … for his wife. You’re mine now and you’ve got to come and live in my house.’ But I said I was goin’ to stay there until my husband came back. Then McQuillan ? me something done up in a cloth? and told me to throw it away. ‘If you don’t …. [the rest of this paragraph is completely illegible]
She stopped and gulped again.
“I was afraid of my life,” she continued, “so what could I do but take it. Then I went searching around everywhere for my husband. Everybody kept lyin’ to me. Paul Halliday said he’d gone away to work and Charlie Canfield said he’d gone on a visit. They told me he’d come back all right. Then I went to a woman’s house near by to ask for my husband, and she gave me something in a cup to drink. I didn’t know what it was. It drugged me like. Then she said I mustn’t speak anything about blood being around, and that my husband would come back.”
“Did you not in your search for your husband find blood stains and see the marks of bullets around the bed?”
She looked at my sharply.
“I didn’t see anything. Everything was all right,” was the slow reply.
“Wasn’t the carpet disturbed where it had been raised to bury your husband beneath the floor?”
“I didn’t see anything. Everything looked as it always did to me.”
“No blood on the bed?”
“I didn’t see any” slowly
“Nor the great big spot upon the floor?”
She looked at me and, gulping, dropped her eyes. “I didn’t see anything”, she insisted stubbornly.
“What became of McQuillan?”
“He went away. Then Paul Halliday and Charlie Canfield came. They asked me to go into the house. I did so. When I went out of the shanty again they followed me out and I hard them whisper: “We’d better fix her like we did the other or she’ll tell on us.’ I did not know what they meant then by ‘fix her as we did they others’ so I said ‘I’ll tell my husband when he comes back.’ They laughed and said, ‘He’ll not come back. You’ve got all the help you’ll ever get from him.’ Still I didn’t understand. ‘How .. much did you get for the job?’ ‘I got $50,’ whispered one. ‘So did I; I got fifty’ whispered the other, an’ still I didn’t think anything. Then they said: ‘You’d better throw that away he gave you,’ meaning McQuillan, ‘or you’ll get into trouble.’ After that they went away”
“Did you know what was in the cloth?”
“How could I?” evasively. “McQuillan gave it to me and I didn’t open it. I was afraid.”
“Why did you throw it away when they arrested you?”
“Because I could tell by the feel there was a revolver in it” slowly
“And also a watch,” I added
“How could I know?” cunningly.
“You had Sarah McQuillan’s rings?”
HALLIDAY GAVE HER THE RINGS
“I don’t know. My husband put them on this finger,” holding upright the little finger of her left hand. ‘Keep them’ he says, and that was all I knew about them.”
“Do you think one person alone and unaided could have killed those three people and disposed of their bodies?”
“I don’t know,” slowly.
“What do you think?”
She looked steadily at her left hand. “How can I tell; I don’t know anything. There were two men, McQuillan and a man I didn’t know.”
“Do you think they dragged the bodies to the barn?”
“I don’t know, dear. It’s steep to the barn, up a little hill like, and stony.”
“Consequently there would have been some blood left on the trail if the body had been dragged?”
She would not answer.
“Some people think the bodies were hauled up in the wagon.” I suggested.
“I can’t hitch up a team to save my life,” she observed quickly.
“Do you think McQuillan could have done this and put the bodies unaided into the wagon?”
“I can’t say,” with downcast head.
“Was Mrs. McQuillan large?”
“She was fatter than I am. The daughter was small.”
“They say,” I remarked slowly, “that the murders happened when it was bright, moonlight and that if any one had tried to carry the bodies from the house to the barn they stood in chance of being seen by any one passing along the road. Do you think so?”
“They had to carry a lantern to get to the barn at night,” she said and then drew back with a look of positive fear upon her face.
“What did they go to the barn for?”
She shut her mouth into a hard, straight line, and, trying to put on a look of insanity, remained in stubborn silence. All my questions and those of the Sheriff were alike unanswered, so I dropped the subject and took up another.
“In what sort of cloth was the watch and revolver done up?”
“In a kind of a brown cloth,” taking hold of my dress. “It was the same cloth Mrs. Quillan wore tied over her head when she was going around that night.” She remembered this cloth distinctly, and yet when I asked her how Mrs. McQuillan and Sarah were dressed she professed not to have noticed.
“Do you mean to say that you did not bring the McQuillans to your house yourself?”
“How could I? I did not know where they lived,” was all that she would say, but she did add later, with a dry laugh, “They say I took them there to clean house. I had no house to clean. I lived in a shanty.”
“How did the McQuillans live?” I asked, quietly.
IT MAY HAVE BEEN BOB HALLIDAY
“In a pretty little white house with green blinds,” she answered, readily falling into my trap.
“But how do you know? You never saw it you have said.”
She gulped heavily. “My husband told me”, was her reply. “That is all I know about it.”
“Have you any idea that any one else may have been connected with the murder?”
“Bob Halliday might. I heard my husband ask, the McQuillan girl that night when she was going to marry Bob, that was his son. She said it was all broke off because she had heard that he had killed his wife and two other women, and so she gave back his ring and broke with him. ‘Well,’ said my husband, ‘I wouldn’t give much for any one’s life that’s broke with Bob.’ That’s all I heard and all I know about it.”
“Do you know there was blood found in the bottom of the wagon?” I asked abruptly. For a moment she looked startled, then she smiled.
“That must have been made by two chickens my husband bought and brought home”
It was dinner-time, and the Sheriff and I had spent the entire afternoon in Lizzie Halliday’s cell. We were tired if the woman was not. Upstairs the Sheriff showed me the watch and rings that belonged to the murdered girl. Poor little gold plated… [last words of this page illegible]… things and yet I firmly believe they had a large influence in the triple murder. The gold-plated watch, with the initials “S.J.M.” engraved on the case has a small, plated chain with a gold ball pendant. The rings are cheap, gold-plated. One has a garnet set in it and the other is a plain carved circlet. Each has “S. J. M.” engraved on the inside.
BLOOD ON THE CARVED RING
The carved ring has blood on the inside of it. Another thing in Sheriff Beecher’s possession is a plain open-faced silver watch that belonged to the murdered man, Paul Halliday. Lizzie Halliday handed it to the Sheriff a few days after her arrival in Monticello, and asked him to keep it for her until she was free. She said it was her husband’s but offered no further explanation.
In all my talk with her, Lizzie Halliday never showed the least sign of grief over her husband’s death. Nor has she expressed any sorrow for the fate of the McQuillan women. Her only concern is to get all the things she thinks belong to her. She is, in short, the most avaricious woman I ever met. She sleeps well and cares to eat nothing but meat and fruit. Meat, and plenty of it, she demands for every meal. She keeps her own cell clean, and is very particular about it, scrubbing the floor daily and fretting because there are stains she cannot get out of the old boards.
Not that it can have any bearing on the time of the murder, but just through curiosity, I noticed the hour the watches stopped. Sarah McQuillan’s was at 10.52 and Paul Halliday’s was exactly at 1:30. There is but one other prisoner in the Monticello jail, and that is George Gregory, of Livingston Manor, a young man who is indicted for grand larceny.
I spent one entire evening in Lizzie Halliday’s cell. I shall never forget it. She greeted me quite warmly and begged that I sit in her chair, but I took my old place on the bed, where the Sheriff sat holding the lantern. I read the list I had made of her belongings – Ten tons of hay, two sets of harness, one horse, worth $75; two cows, worth $26 each, one field of corn, one of potatoes, four growing chickens, and old hen and sixteen chickens.
“You should put that” Lizzie corrected after I had finished reading the list, “two sets of single harness and one of double harness. And better write down that one cow is black and one is red. Instead of a field of corn, say an acre of corn and another of potatoes. There is a new mowing-machine that you might get. It isn’t paid for yet. Maybe you’d better not touch it; it might get me into trouble. I suppose the agent will claim it; though, if you could take it, it would bring quite a lot of money.”
“Do you think,” she went on greedily, “you could get the other things down? I had two calico dresses, one skirt and waist of cloth, a brand-new parasol, with a black-and-white handle, the white twisted-like around the black. Then, I had eight yards of wine-colored cashmere for a dress that had never been touched yet, because I didn’t want to make it myself. I was afraid I would spoil it. I had two pair of button shoes, one a new pair and the other a little worn. I had a new pair of corsets that my husband bought me. I had only worn them twice. I had a brown ulster, too – a very good one, although I had it when I was married. I had another cloth dress. It was cheap goods – a dark brown, with a kind of yellow stripe. A nurse made it for me in the asylum.
NO LACK OF MEMORY HERE
“Then I had eight yards of black and white plaid flannel that I had bought to make shirts for my husband. It cost 50 cents a yard, and I want it. I had a pound of red yarn, too, that I had just begun to knit. The needles were sticking in it, and it was lying on top of the flannel and the cashmere on a chair. I had lots of lace at home, too. I had pretty close to three yards in one pretty piece that I began in the asylum.”
In order to test her memory, I said:
“What was it, Lizzie, you told me today? That you had five brothers and how many sisters?”
“Is your memory no better than that?” she inquired scornfully. “If it isn’t, you can’t do much. I said five sisters and two brothers.”
And yet she pretends she can’t tell the day of the week the McQuillan women were brought to her house.
“I wish you could find my sister for me” she said. “She would help me. I want her to come here and take charge of things”
“What is her name?”
LIZZIE HALLIDAY’S FAMILY
“Her name is Mrs. Jane Duey or Dewey, wife of Pat Duey, of North Greenwich, Washington County, NY. Pat Duey owns a farm there, so does Duff Allen, who married another sister of mine. He is a slater by trade, but he owns a farm, too, just between Greenwich and North Greenwich.”
“What was your maiden name? That may help me to find her,” I observed.
“My name was Lizzie Margaret MacAnally.” she answered, giving her maiden name for the first time.
“How do you spell it?” asked the Sheriff, for Lizzie had said that she could not read nor write, and naturally I concluded she could not spell.
“McNelly?” the Sheriff hazarded.
“I think it must be N-a-l” I corrected, when, to my amazement, Lizzie said:
“We used to spell it M-a-c-a-n-a-l-l-y, Macanally. I come from North of Ireland.”
The story she had told before was gone over repeatedly, but with little better result. My patience gave way at last, and quite abruptly I said to her:
“Lizzie Halliday, do you know what I believe? I believe that you alone unaided killed your husband and the McQuillan women and buried them. I don’t believe you were ever insane one moment in your life, and that you are the shrewdest and most wonderful woman criminal the world has ever known.” When I finished I waited for one moment, she still looking at me with that smile that had some pride in it, too, and then I asked: “Did you or did you not kill those people?”
She looked up. There was real alarm in her face. “I have been crazy; I was drugged,” she ejaculated, defiantly.
“They will prove that you murdered the McQuillan women, ” I reminded her.
“Didn’t some one help you, Lizzie?” the Sheriff asked. “If they did, don’t shield them; tell who they are. I don’t believe you cold do it all yourself.”
“I don’t dare speak,” she whispered, catching the eye and beginning to act a part.
“Why not?” I demanded
“They would destroy me if I told” she said, whispering still.
“You can’t be destroyed any more than you are at present” I said to her.
“They have promised to help me” she answered.
“Are they doing so?” Sheriff Beecher asked.
“I don’t know” – meekly.
“I don’t believe any one helped you” I said to her. “I believe you did it all yourself. Didn’t you?”
Again she was silent.
“Tell me” I urged, “you did it yourself?”
“What shall I say, dear?” she said, turning to the Sheriff.
“I said to you when the District Attorney came not to say anything to injure yourself. I say the same thing now. If any one else helped you, though, he should be here as well as you, and you should tell who it was.” the Sheriff said, kindly.
“Are you guilty or innocent? Tell me now. I may be able to help you. Anyway, I am going away, and you will never see me again” I said to her, at last, when it was drawing close to the hour of midnight.
“Some other time. My head feels bad now. Some other time” was her answer.
“Do you repent?” I asked, looking back at the prisoner.
She smiled at me through the bars, and, for some reason unknown to me, a little chill went sweeping through my body. “God will send you back to me” she said, slowly, and I went away and left her standing there. – NELLIE BLY
