The White Slavery Suicide Pact

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Girls, it doesn't pay.

Tuesday, October 1st, 1912, the Evansville, Indiana Press.

In Shafer's morgue, on cold slabs side by side, are the bodies of two young women, just girls.

Soon perhaps, both will rest and unmarked graves in the potter's field.

But who were these two girls?

They both had good homes, perhaps.

But like many girls, they didn't have the fine gowns, fine feathers, flashy jewelry.

They didn't care for the little home.

They probably thought mother and father were harsh with them.

And when, as a matter of fact, the parents were pointing the right path for them to travel.

Like many girls, the scent of gasoline, the quaffing of champagne, the company of a daredevil auto driver,

the great white way appealed to them.

They left their homes to see the world, to enjoy life.

They saw the world, yes, they enjoyed life.

What was the result?

Girls, it doesn't pay.

Jesse and Katie are dead, and other girls are held behind prison bars in Evansville, suspected of knowing how these two wrecks died.

Isn't that a sad picture?

The press has tried to tell the girls of Evansville many, many times that this enjoying life idea doesn't pay.

You girls who stroll the streets of Evansville every night, looking for male companions, and there are fully a thousand such girls,

are hitting the trail to hell at a fast clip.

You are fooling your mothers and your fathers now, but girly you are fooling yourself worst of all.

It doesn't pay to put your life and honor in the care of a loafing wine-bibler in the daytime, let alone at night.

It doesn't pay to seek a resort of the kind managed by Mabel Marbury and her ilk.

It doesn't pay to place your trust in the sneaking male being who stands on the street corner and awaits your coming, grasping you as if he were a bird of prey and you his prize.

It doesn't pay to be with the dashing chap who has a pinchant for joy-riding.

One instant bowling merrily through the night and next crash and perhaps a dead woman in the debris.

The rush of the early morning wind on your flush cheek is a rare exotic.

The Texas Tommy is a gay movement.

The dash from the routine of work and petty trouble into the sweet, warm atmosphere of flattery and soft wines and pseudo-affection is a mighty temptation.

But girls, it doesn't pay.

The hall bedroom and five dollars a week beats a cold slab and shafers morgue and the disgrace.

Girls, yours is a harder lot than the man's.

You cannot pick and choose and drink the draft and then laugh and pass on.

You have the dregs in your cup if there is only your soul's voice in the night to trouble you.

The man probably squashed his little conscience so flat years ago that the bony hand of death alone will bother him.

But you have the more to gain by being carefree and glad for an hour, a day, or a week, so you have the more to lose.

The woman's feet takes a hold on hell that the man's feet never trod.

Because nature made women clean, and despite all of the rot and social decay, the natural woman is clean, morbidly, avidly clean,

and a step outside the line means more to her real self than any weak swandering from the narrow way can mean to a man.

Think of Jesse, the own known girl in the morgue.

Think of Katie, who lies in cold death beside the body of the murdered girl.

Think of those two unfortunate you girls who live on the scent of gasoline, fried chicken, foaming beer, sparkling wine, and gay men's money.

Girls, think it over.

Turn about today.

Stay with mother, with father, with brother, with sister.

Don't leave the happy home to strike the trail that means hell and death to you.

Girls, it doesn't pay.

Instead of seeking the company of the shiftless he being, whose only desire is to ruin you or complete your ruin,

seek the company of your loving mother and your kind father.

If you must be out of nights and enjoy the bracing air, go with them, and spend the evening in sunset park,

where you love to see the moons glimmer on the waters of the beautiful Ohio across from the shores of the bluegrass state.

That won't hurt you.

There is a woman in Evansville who could preach a much better sermon to you girls than any editor ever could.

That woman is Mabel Marbury, who has seen the evolution in the career of the girls,

the great transformation whereby the change is made that leads the girl to a constant hell on earth and a disgraceful death.

But she won't.

Girls, please think of Jesse and Katie.

You have seen their finish.

They left home to see the world.

Yes, they enjoyed life.

Yet, after all, girls, it doesn't pay.

True crime historian presents yesterday's news, a reading of America's historic newspapers

from the Golden Age of Yellow Journalism.

In this episode, we get an unusual glimpse into the world inside Obordello at the turn of the previous century,

when a young prostitute reigns on a suicide pact with another and allegedly kills a third girl to keep her secret safe.

One of the things I like about this story is the outrage and indignation expressed by the newspaper editors

that seems both quaint and relative to many of today's social issues.

I'm true crime historian Richard O'Jones, and I give you the White Slavery Suicide Pact,

Murder and the Marbury Resort.

Evansville, Indiana, Monday, September 30, 1912.

Two girls, inmates of Mabel Marbury's House of Death Resort, are dead.

One, an unknown girl who was known as Jesse, who is not more than 16, was murdered.

The other, Katie Matthias, 21, died in St. Mary's Hospital Sunday afternoon from the effects of taking antiseptic tablets.

A girl, according to police, is believed to have caused both deaths.

She is Nelly Mills, and is held at the police station with Elsie Lygan, both inmates of the Marbury Women's Resort.

Every available detective and patrolman is working on the case.

Chief Covey sweated Mabel Marbury, keeper of the resort, and Elsie Lygan and Nelly Mills inmates.

They could throw no light on the mystery.

Mrs. Marbury is not under arrest.

The other two inmates are being held.

They are due for another sweating Monday afternoon.

That Nelly Mills suggested to Katie Matthias that they both commit suicide one morning last week,

after going to the Matthias girl's bed, mixing antiseptic tablets, and gave Katie Matthias a glass of the poison fluid to drink.

And herself, drank water, is one of the things that police hope to establish before dark.

And that the same girl murdered the unknown girl by choking her is the point to which the police are working.

They believe that in Nelly Mills they have a pervert.

They questioned her Monday.

They got some damaging evidence, they say.

The marks of the unknown girl's throat are apparently those of a woman's hands.

They are small, such as a man would not make, and just over the windpipe, as if that had been grabbed and pressed until the fingernails sunk in.

A man would have grabbed the whole throat, deputy corner worm, and undertaker Ed Schafer say.

The autopsy also found that the assailant had torn the girl's tongue loose from the base of the jaw.

That the Mills girl planned the death of Katie Matthias by suggesting that they both drink poison and then drink water herself,

the police say is certain.

They declare that the dying girl told this before her death at St. Mary's Hospital.

The theory of a man who might have strangled the girl after she herself put the hankerchief in her mouth, has been investigated,

and while there is some ground for this theory, the police feels sure the murder was committed by a girl.

It was Nelly Mills who found the girl in a dying condition, about 930, with the hankerchief in her mouth.

The housekeeper at the Marbury Resort, who is known only as Viola, told some things Monday night,

that through the blame toward Edward Berner, 21, who spent all night Saturday with Jesse.

Jesse died at 930 Sunday morning.

But the Mills girl, with whom Berner had stayed on previous visits to the place, denied the allegations,

and said that Berner was not the kind of young man the housekeeper had stated.

Berner was first suspected of knowing something of Jesse's death.

Berner, on learning last night from a friend that police officers were seeking him, went to headquarters and gave himself up.

Berner said, I had never seen the woman before Saturday night.

I had been intimate with another girl at the same house, like and I believe is her name.

She introduced me to Jesse, and I went to the room with Jesse.

I got up at seven o'clock in the morning and asked Jesse if I could leave.

She told me I would find the door unlatched.

When I said goodbye to the girl, she had on nothing but a gown.

The girl, when found dead, had on two skirts and a kimono.

Elsie Ligon, when asked by the press Monday morning who she thought committed to murder, said she believed Berner was responsible.

She declared she was not jealous as reported of Berner staying with Jesse.

The police believe Berner knows nothing of the murder.

Efforts to establish the identity of the murdered girl failed Monday morning.

Some woman called up the shaffer morgue and said she was the mother and would be down to claim the body at twelve o'clock.

She visited the morgue and declared the body was not that of her girl and refused to give her name.

The unknown girl and Katie Matthias lay side by side Monday in the morgue.

The Matthias girl came here five years ago from Kentucky and was an inmate for a time of Violet Baker's resort.

Her brother came Monday to claim her body.

If the body of the unknown girl is not claimed or the identity not established, she will be buried by the county in the potter's field.

However, the body will be held a week.

The unknown girl had bobbed hair, very light blue eyes and light skin.

She was no more than a child and was shy of men inmate's say.

She went to the Marbury woman's place six weeks ago and asked for work and did not fall readily into the habit of the women of the place.

She had to be forced to do some things and inmate told the press Monday.

Jessie had been with a show troupe and had come to Evansville on a boat and gave her home as Robinson Illinois, according to some of the inmates.

They said she left the company because it was to show near her home in Illinois and she did not want to go there.

The owner of a handkerchief, man's size, with a few black thread stitches in one corner, is being sought by the local police in connection with the mysterious death Sunday of the girl known only as Jessie, an inmate of the Marbury resort.

The handkerchief was one found crammed tight in the woman's throat Sunday morning and extricated by detectives Hook and Peck, who arrived at the Marbury house just before the woman died.

The police are convinced that Jessie was murdered, the suicide theory has been abandoned.

Edward Burner, an employee of the Bach Steggy Furniture Company, who was the last person known to have been with Jessie, is still under arrest, though his straightforward manner and apparent willingness to tell all he knows, convinces the police that he is not guilty.

Burner will be held all day Monday, however, unless further developments turn up.

Jessie, the unknown girl found dead Sunday in the Marbury resort, was new in the hellish shame of life according to the inmates and was of a likable disposition.

The Ligon woman declared Monday that she knew of only one quarrel Jessie had since she's been living there. That, she declared, was several days ago with the Marbury woman over a trivial matter which soon passed.

A mystery seemed to be behind Jessie's life. She seemed sad all the time, although she generally had a smile for her lowly associates.

The girl only a few days ago was found crying. When asked by several male leeches of the underworld while she was crying, Jessie replied that it was because of her mother.

Jessie had told inmates at the resort she had never before been in a resort. She arrived in Evansville only a short time ago, claiming to have recently become stranded with a musical comedy company.

Grave mystery and her identity was always kept. She refused to tell anyone of her past life.

When she came here, she was poorly clad. The Ligon girl declared she had given Jessie some clothes.

The police Monday afternoon, after probing deeply into the death of Jessie, maintained that the woman was the victim of as cold-blooded a murder has been perpetrated since the Willie Lee murder at Boonville.

The laxity of police regulation in the Vice District of Evansville was unmasked Sunday when one girl apparently was strangled to death at Mabel Marbury's resort and another girl, Katie Matthias, an inmate of the same resort, died a few hours later at St. Mary's Hospital from the effects of poison, said to have been taken in a suicide pact.

The striking thing is that the unknown girl who was murdered was just a child. As many other inmates of Immoral Houses in Evansville are, just young girls not over sixteen.

It is bad enough that such girls should go wrong, and it is infinitely wrong that the police chief should permit them to live in resorts where women have been twice badly beaten and which is run by a woman whose reputation for cruel treatment is known to the police.

The Marbury Resort should have been stamped out long ago. On two occasions, the press printed stories of the mistreatment of inmates and the police did nothing. One of the girls almost died, she had to be taken to a hospital.

There are other places in Evansville just as bad where girls of tender age are permitted to stay. It is not the fault of the policemen and the ranks, maybe he couldn't better conditions if he wanted to, for it is noticeable that arrests in these places have been uncommon since the Hyalman administration began.

Not so long ago, there was a girl injured in a resort run by Edith DeVore. The police let her die at the hospital, and her people from Boonville had to come here and start the investigation that never came to anything.

Her body was bruised and it was declared that she, quote, fell out of bed, unquote.

The sooner there is a change in the executive head of the police force, the sooner may the vice district be either stamped out or at least regulated so that there is a register kept in which all girls must write their real names, ages, places of residence, and other facts concerning their lives.

That would have established the identity of the unknown girl. It might have prevented her going into the resort because of her tender age, and now that she is dead, her folks could be informed.

But the system here has odd regulations for houses of prostitution.

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Evansville, Indiana. Tuesday, October 1, 1912.

To the end of untangling the mystery in the murder of Jesse, the unknown inmate of the Mabel Marbury's resort, the police, the grand jury, and the prosecutor lent their utmost efforts Tuesday.

Chief Covey held every inmate at the Marbury resort and directed an attack so vigorous that out of it grew a report that he had finally secured evidence that would fasten the crime.

To establish the guilt of Nelly Mills was the point toward which the police worked Tuesday.

Chief Covey and Chief of Detective Osenberg have rejected every other theory.

Osenberg said the girl has been in the Marbury house for two years. We know that she would become jealous of other girls who came to the resort and profited better than she, and we know that is one of the rules of every immoral house, the old inmates growing jealous of the young ones.

Besides, we have proof that she framed up the suicide pact that led to the death of the Matthias girl.

She tells us that she took a medics and vomited the poison she drank. We don't believe she ever drank it, but drank water. This boy burner left that house at seven o'clock.

We found a witness who saw him leave. We have found other inmates of other houses who say he was not a pervert.

Our theory is that this girl, known as Nelly Mills, threw jealousy or for some other cause, waited until she heard burner leave and then realizing that suspicion would fall upon him, crept across the hall to the unknown girl's room, advanced upon her, seized her windpipe and choked her to death, thrusting the handkerchief into her mouth when it flew open as the windpipe was closed.

The victim may have been asleep when seized, or the slayer may have had an accomplice.

The most important development next to a possible confession will be the discovery of the ownership of the handkerchief. We have what we think is a pretty good lead.

Then we must either determine whether that murder was committed single handed or by more than one. It could have easily been done by one if the victim was asleep.

The Mills girl said she went into the room of the unknown girl to rest and talk. She could more easily have gone into the room of one of the other girls for they were not so far away.

Then, in murders of this sort, the murderer is usually the one to discover the body as a blind. The Marbury woman is the center of much interest. She bears a bad reputation for mistreatment of her girls.

Two have been beaten badly and she was not arrested. Her lover is a man who is employed at the city hall.

Deputy prosecutor Hardy said Tuesday that he and the police had some hot tips which would not be given for print for the reason that they would get back to the principles before they had been run down.

The grand jury might indict Nelly Mills for the murder of Katie Matthias, whom she persuaded to drink dissolved antiseptic tablets and who died Sunday at the hospital, first telling her lover a driver for the ballad transfer company that she and the Mills girl had entered into the suicide pact.

The Matthias girl's body still was at the morgue Tuesday. Her brother was said to be in the city but had not claimed the body. The inmates of the resort and witnesses were loaded into the patrol wagon at two o'clock and taken to the grand jury room for an investigation by that body.

Jessie's body was cold and when I felt it I got scared. Nelly Mills told Chief of Police Covey on Tuesday and on this her guilt or innocence may depend.

Other witnesses who reached the body afterward say it was warm. Nelly Mills told the chief she had gone into the room to rest with Jessie and that she felt her cold limbs suspected that she was dead and ran out and gave the alarm.

If that was so, Nelly Mills would have been frustrated the police say. And they find by other witnesses that she was not.

Bert McVay, an employee of the Henderson Dam, who stayed all night at the resort and who was in the county jail, told the press the following story Tuesday.

I was asleep in a room when Nelly Mills came in about 730 and called out the girl I was with. They shut the door and I did not hear what was said.

Nelly Mills had on a kimono, a red one. She did not seem excited but cool and collected. She came back into the room and told me that there was a dead girl in the room.

I got up. She led me into the room. I went to the body and discovered the handkerchief. The body was warm but between the thigh and the knee the leg had a bluish color. The Mills girl said it was awful.

There were some fingernail marks on the throat as if the windpipe had been grabbed with one hand and the forefinger on the other side and the other three on the other.

And I surmised the other hand had thrust the handkerchief into her open mouth when it was forced open by a cutoff wind.

The dead girl was very small and it did not seem to me that it would have been difficult to have choked her.

Thursday, October 3rd, 1912, the police have learned that Nelly Mills inmate suspected of the murder of Jesse, unknown girl at Maple Margarine's resort. It's a cocaine fee.

For four days Nelly has been deprived of the drug. She has placed her iron nerve in full array against the rigid cross-examination of the police and making efforts to unravel the murder mystery.

A full-breasted confession of the murder of Jesse could be smooth. Will come when Nelly can no longer do without the drug. This cannot be much longer than he said.

Charles Burner, who was arrested Sunday night on suspicion, has been released on a $200 bond.

Chief Covey of the police department is positive that Burner had no connection with the girl's death.

Police are directing a search for an unknown man who spent Sunday night with Nelly Mills and it is thought that he may be found within a few days.

The man, according to the Marbury woman, does not live in Evansville but has been at her resort on several occasions. His name is unknown, both to the Mills and Marbury women.

The inmates of the Marbury Resort and Maple Marbury were confined all day Thursday in cells at headquarters as the grand jury was not in session.

The Mills woman is locked in a cell upstairs. The police are using extreme vigilance in keeping the girls from holding secret conversations.

The Mills woman is kept away from the other women held as witnesses.

How, Jesse, the unknown murdered girl, gotten to the Marbury Resort was learned Thursday by the police.

Four weeks ago, the police say, she mad a man named Alex Smith in the red light district and asked him if he knew where she could get a place to stay.

She told him it is said that she had been an inmate of a resort at Cloverport, Kentucky.

Smith is said to have gone to the Marbury woman's resort and asked if the girl could get in there. She was admitted.

Chief of detectives Asenberg admitted Thursday that he had talked with Smith about the matter and also with a man named O'Neill, who is on friendly terms with the Marbury woman.

The grand jury did not continue the investigation Thursday because of the commencement of an incest trial in the circuit court which required the prosecutor's attention.

The murdered girl's picture was taken Thursday and will be circulated for identification.

Friday, October 4, 1912.

Nellie Mills has lost her appetite. At police station, the woman has not eaten a hearty meal since her confinement. Before arrest, Nellie was a hearty eater, Mabel Marbury declares.

Mabel Marbury bought a good meal for Nellie Thursday in the hopes that she would eat. Nellie nibbled at a few vegetables and a choice cut of beef and then pushed the meal aside.

Nellie Mills' strong willpower and resisting cocaine to which habit she had been abdicating for years is another matter puzzling the police.

Sigarettes have also been smoked in large quantities by the accused woman.

Chief Covey undertook another sweating of the mill's woman in Mabel Marbury Thursday night, with no further light being shed on the mystery.

The women the police believe are concealing something.

Thursday, October 10, 1912.

By address, the girl who was murdered in Mabel Marbury's resort on September 29, was identified Thursday as Jesse McCune, 15,

daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles McCune of Lima, Ohio.

Despite the father's refusal Wednesday to claim the body and his denial that it was his daughter,

juvenile officer T.J. Falen of Lima and undertaker F.C. Whitley of the same place,

made positive identification Thursday and left with the body on the 145 for Lima, where the girl's mother is waiting.

Falen knew her by reason of having arrested her a year ago, and again early in August, each time she was charged with delinquency.

The dress he found at the Marbury Resort is the same, he says, that the girl bought from an installment house in Lima, and the one she wore when last arrested.

It was too long and had been taken up considerably.

At the jail, Elsie Ligon admitted for the first time that the girl had told her her name was Jesse McCune.

Until the officer who knew the dead girl faced her, the Ligon girl would not come through with the information to clear up the mystery.

Charles McCune, the girl's father, does not believe that it is his daughter.

The juvenile officer says that he expected the father would say this, but the juvenile officer came at the mother's behest, and on money she provided, and he is taking the body back to bury it.

The girl's mother is Jesse McCune, the same name, the dead girl bore.

juvenile officer Falon says that the girl left Lima, August 14, with a show to see the world.

She got as far as Cincinnati with the show, and then came down the Ohio River to Evansville.

When Jesse left Lima, she was under the surveillance of the Business Women's Association.

They had taken charge of her to prevent her going to the girl school at Delaware, Ohio.

.

Enjoy Add Free Listening at the Safehouse www.patrion.com slash true crime historian.

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Thursday, October 10, 1912.

The murder of a stripling of a girl, a mere child, whose soul was seared to the core in one of Evansville's vice resorts, who was literally robbed of the blood money she ill legitimately earned.

May cause a social upheaval in Evansville, such as will result in the indictment of Mabel Marbury, the keeper of the bruiser's house.

There is a law that makes it a crime to place and maintain a girl less than 18 in a resort. The penalty is two to 14 years.

Jesse McCune, the murdered child, was only 15.

More than that, she was the ward of the juvenile court of Lima, Ohio.

On the morning of her murder, the inmates of the Marbury Resort said that she was 19, said it probably because the law requires the inmates there to be 19.

But TJ Falen, juvenile officer of Lima, Ohio, went before the grand jury Thursday and testified that the records of his court showed the girl to be under 16.

On this evidence, Mabel Marbury can be indicted and sent to the penitentiary.

And Thursday, Deputy Coroner Sam Worm forced Mabel Marbury to hand over to him money the dead girl was entitled to on checks she had in her stockings when murdered.

There were 12 checks valued at $14.

Tracing down these checks in their history, Worm found that for every dollar a girl earns in the Marbury Resort and others like it.

The girl gets a check and the resort keeper takes the cash.

The girl is charged $12.50 a week board and on top of this, the resort keeper gets half of all over that amount the girl might make.

For the mere keeping of the house, the resort keepers get the big end of the blood money and the girl who sells her soul and body gets just enough to live on.

The Marbury woman told Worm Thursday that the dead girl owed her for clothes.

And that is the system that the resort keepers employ.

It is nothing more than a system of bondage by which girls are held in white slavery.

There are said to be other girls in Evansville resorts under age and, quote, in debt, unquote, to land ladies and held for these debts.

A man named Pot Smith took Jesse McCune to the house of shame where she was slain.

The police did not arrest Smith.

More than that, they let the Marbury woman out on a $200 bond to continue her house of prostitution in the self-same way.

The police have done nothing to stamp out vice.

The police failed to discover this little girl in this damnable resort before her life was taken.

And will the prosecutor be any better?

For years, the prosecutors have been taking attacks in the shape of a fine from the keepers of these unlawful hellish dumps that should be wiped out for common decency.

Wednesday, January 22, 1913.

A Vandenberg County jury for the first time in history will be asked to sentence a woman to death, Nellie Mills, former inmate of the Mabel Marbury Resort, accused of the murder of 15-year-old Jesse McCune, another inmate last October.

The trial convened in circuit court at 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon.

The session having been deferred in the morning because of the non-arrival from El Dorado, Illinois, of Josie Smith, another inmate of the Marbury Resort, relied on as an important witness.

Circumstances attending the murder of Jesse McCune are only circumstantial, but it is believed that the net will be weaved so tight as to convince the jury that Nellie Mills, jealous of the child inmate, gagged and choked the McCune girl to death on the Sunday morning that her body was discovered in the resort.

About 20 witnesses, including police officers, have been summoned.

Thursday, January 23, 1913.

Sheriff Davis drove 500 men and women out of the courthouse Thursday afternoon before the trial was resumed.

They almost broke the courtroom door down, pressing it.

Later, they were allowed to enter in a line.

Even then, coats were torn and hats lost and umbrellas broken.

When the courtroom was filled, the door was locked on several hundred.

Judge Givens is not trying to bar spectators. More people are clamoring to get in than were ever attracted to any other trial in this county.

At 145, Judge Givens said, Mr. Sheriff, the room is full. Permit no others to enter.

I gave Eunice those tablets. She's going to die. I am going to get into trouble.

Jesse knows I gave them to her. I will kill Jesse and get her out of the way.

This, Elsie Ligon told the jury in the circuit court late Thursday afternoon,

was what Nellie Mills said to her Saturday afternoon before Jesse McCune was murdered.

While the two of them were returning to the Marbury Resort from the hospital,

where they had gone to see Eunice Gray, who had carried out her part of an alleged suicide pact between herself and Nellie Mills.

The next morning I went to the closet, Jesse had been murdered. Nellie Mills followed me, continued Elsie.

I said to Nellie Mills, did you kill her?

Yes, and I'll kill you if you ever say anything about it, Nellie answered.

Where did you get the handkerchief that you put in her mouth, I asked?

Just then somebody opened the kitchen door and threw some water into the yard.

Hush, Nellie said. I'll tell you about it later.

Later we were in a room together. I asked Nellie how she killed Jesse and she said,

there you go again, you better hush.

The state touched on the motive for the suicide pact. When Elsie Ligon was asked if Nellie Mills' friend, known as Rabbit,

who hadn't gone to see Eunice while the latter was away from the Marbury resort,

attorney Whittenbreaker defending Nellie Mills objected.

We will show, said Deputy Prosecutor Hardy, that Nellie Mills had this motive for getting Eunice Gray to take the antiseptic tablets.

The Ligon girl was severely cross-examined by attorney Whittenbreaker.

Why did you tell the grand jury half a dozen times that you didn't know who killed Jesse McCoon, Whittenbreaker thundered?

Because I was afraid Nellie would kill me, the Ligon girl answered.

Once or twice, it looked as if Whittenbreaker would get to the point of asking the Ligon girl if she did the killing.

Why did you ask Rose Darnell to testify that your door was locked the night of the murder, he asked?

I never asked her to say that, the Ligon girl replied.

The girl's story was not affected until Whittenbreaker forced her to say that she could not remember whether she did or did not talk to Rose Darnell Thursday morning before the trial.

Later she remembered that she had a conversation with her.

Deputy Prosecutor Hardy tried to show that it was customary for men to leave handkerchiefs around resorts.

Judge Givens would not let him question the Ligon girl along this line.

The handkerchief that was forced into the girl's mouth when she was strangled is still unidentified.

With the termination of the strong testimony offered by the Ligon girl, the state closed its case.

Attorney Whittenbreaker began his opening statement for the defense.

LC Ligon's story, dealing with the murder of Jesse McCune, began this afternoon.

It will be the pendulum to swing the fate for Nelly Mills accused of strangling the Ohio girl to death.

The state pins confidence to all the story that the Ligon girl will tell.

All morning she sat beside attorney E.J. Crenshaw, who is assisting the prosecution.

She was clad in a neat gray suit and wore a large black beaver hat.

Her conduct was more demure than that of the other witnesses from the demomond.

Just six feet from her sat Nelly Mills, her one-time friend and confidant.

She wore the long black charcoal coat and scarf, the same clothing she wore when arrested in September.

The two girls, bearing each other's most intimate secrets, did not let their eyes meet.

The Ligon girl seemed to be frightened. The Mills girl was bolder.

When bail of Schlager asked her if she would allow a newspaper man to take her picture, she laughed, winked her eye, and shook her head decisively.

Dr. Cox, Foreman of the Grand jury, testified before Elsie was called.

He said in the Grand jury room, scratches were noticed on Nelly Mills' hands, and that she was asked how she got them.

Cox says Nelly replied that she didn't know.

Dr. Cox, Foreman of the Grand jury, which indicted the Mills girl, testified Thursday afternoon that at the time the indictment was returned,

the identity of the dead girl was not known.

James O'Neill, who visited the Marbury Resort Saturday night, said he left the house after learning of the murder.

He said he heard someone leave the house at seven o'clock, going out the Goodsall Street door.

Fanny Bilson, day made at the Marbury Place during September, said she was in Eunice's room when Nelly Mills came to her and said,

goodbye, I'm going to kill myself.

She said that Nell was laughing. Following her to a room, she saw the Mills girl drink from a bottle, but did not see her take the tablet.

She said she did not know until later that Eunice had taken some of the tablets.

The first witness Thursday morning was Edward Berner, a furniture worker, who spent the night with Jesse McCune Saturday night, September 28, who was under arrest several days suspected of being her murderer.

He testified that he had left her about six o'clock that she was in good spirits and got up and let him out.

He had not quarreled with her, he said.

Rose Darnell, who entered the resort the Monday before, said that she was with Percy McVeigh when she was awakened by quarreling in Nelly Mills' room.

I went into my room with McVeigh about three-fifteen Sunday morning. I left him with Nelly Mills downstairs. Her lover, Fullerton, was asleep in the private parlor.

I didn't hear them when they came up. I heard them quarreling later, however.

Nelly Mills knocked on my door at 6'30 and told me she believed Jesse was dead. Nelly had on a kimono, shoes, and stockings.

We went into Jesse's room, she was lying on the bed as if she had been in a struggle.

Her head was turned to the right, and there was a handkerchief in her mouth, not much of which could be seen.

Nelly Mills touched her foot and said she's been dead a long time. She explained that she had gone into the room to get in bed with Jesse because her company was annoying her.

I asked Nelly why she didn't tell Miss Mabel, and she told me she was afraid.

I went and told Miss Marbury then, when I got back to Jesse's room, all the girls in McVeigh, who was with me, and the man with Josie Smith were in the room looking at the body.

Josie and Elsie were crying. I did not see Nelly cry. McVeigh discovered the handkerchief in Nelly's mouth.

The witness said that she had been kept in jail for 28 days as a witness.

Josie Smith told the same story as covered by Rose Darnell. She entered the resort the Thursday before the murder.

She said that the Mills girl told fully at the breakfast table of how she went into the room to get into the dead girl's bed and found her dead.

Steamboat Bill Fullerton declared on the stand that he had gone to Nelly Mills' room about 2 a.m.

He said, I quarreled with her, but I went to sleep again. I woke at 5 o'clock and dressed. She also dressed. I went out to the Goodsville Street door which was unlocked.

Fullerton said he was sober when he left, but went to the place when he was drunk.

Mabel Marbury, keeper of the resort, told more fully than others of the alleged attempt of Nelly Mills to kill herself.

One of the girls told me Thursday that Nelly Mills had taken poison. I went to her room. She was on the bed. There were antiseptic tablets on the dresser and a bottle of whiskey and a dresser door.

Nelly Mills laughed. She did not appear to have taken anything deadly. I was told that the tablets belonged to Jesse McCoon and that Nelly had borrowed some of them.

Until later, I did not learn that Eunice Gray had taken some of the tablets in a suicide pact. I went to see her Saturday and was told at the hospital that she could not live until morning.

I told the girls and Nelly Mills and Elsie Ligan went out at once to see her. When I sent Eunice to the hospital, I did not know she had poisoned herself.

Mrs. Margaret Burner and Mrs. Laura Burner, mother and sister of Edward Burner, young man who spent the night with Jesse McCoon, previous to the morning she was murdered, testified that Burner had returned home about 730 on the morning of the murder.

Motorcycleman Edgar Schmidt told defining a wet kimono in Nelly Mills' room when he arrived there after 9 o'clock on the morning of the murder.

Viola Black, nightmaid at the resort, declared all the girls seemed greatly alarmed over the news that Eunice Gray could not live.

The state proved by Josie Smith and Rose Darnell that Nelly Mills had her shoes and stockings on and a red wrapper when she notified them that the McCoon girl was dead.

This goes to discredit her story the state contends that she went into the room to get in bed with the McCoon girl.

A motive for the murder of the McCoon girl was explained by Deputy Prosecutor Hardy Wednesday afternoon.

Josie McCoon gave tablets containing by Chlori to Nelly Mills, which the Mills girl later gave to Eunice Gray.

Josie was the only one who was present when the tablets were afterwards given to Eunice Gray.

The Mills girl feared she would be exposed by Josie.

We will show in our testimony that Nelly Mills told Elsie Ligon, Josie knows who gave Eunice those tablets I have got to kill her.

This was said a few hours before Eunice Gray died.

Immediately following the finding of Josie's body, Nelly admitted to Elsie that she had committed the crime.

The Mills girl gave the alarm that Josie was dead soon after Josie was strangled to death.

She told conflicting stories of why she went into the dead girl's room.

She said once she went into Josie's room to get some rest that she couldn't sleep in her own room.

Another time she said she slept soundly in her room and for that reason could not have heard an outcry.

Dr. E. C. Macer, who was corner at the time of the murder, told a finding the body on the bed with the tongue torn loose at the root, a blood-stained hankerchief in the mouth.

He said that the girl had evidently been dead about an hour when he saw her.

Dr. J. M. Herbert declared that death was caused by strangulation and that the girl had been murdered.

I was called to the Marbury House on Saturday, September 21st, to attend Eunice Gray.

She told me she had taken a by-chloride poison.

I found upon examination that this was true, I treated her for a week before she died.

Detective Fred Hook said that when he got to the house he found the body still warm and seven or eight fingerprints on the girl's throat.

The mill's girl first told me that she was a sound sleeper and had her no outcry.

Then she later said she was restless in her own room and left William Fullerton to go to Josie's room to get some rest.

It was then she said she found the lifeless body of Josie.

Petrolman Withers declared he had pulled the blood-stained hankerchief out of the girl's mouth.

As I did so, there was a plainly audible gurgling noise seemingly from the lungs.

She lay there with two pillows under her head, her right arm folded, and it lay near her face.

Her feet were sticking out of the covers. The rest of her body was under the covers.

She had on a skirt, which was bound tightly about her waist, a pair of red stockings, and a waist.

Chief of Police Covey also told of conflicting stories the mill's girl told him.

Monday, January 27, 1913.

Nelly Mills, girl convict, was tender to tearful and loyal farewell by her friends of the red light quarter Monday morning,

at the sea in E.I. Depot, while she waited by Deputy Sheriff Hobby's side to be taken aboard a train, found for the women's prison.

There were a score of her girlfriends of the old life to embrace her, until her house had her going made them feel,

and to assure her that they had confidence in her innocence.

Her friends from the five resorts she had been an inmate of since she came to Evansville,

a 13-year-old wage slave, were at the station to bid goodbye.

Tuesday, May 20, 1913.

Notorious Mabel Marbury, in whose house last year Jesse McCune was killed, and another girl committed suicide,

got leniency from Prosecutor Sappinfield in Judge Givens Tuesday, getting a fine of $25 in costs,

after pleading guilty to contributing to juvenile delinquency.

The case against Mabel Marbury grew out of the killing of the McCune girl in her resort at high and goodsel streets.

The McCune girl had entered the place under the age required, and was still under that, when she was choked to death one Sunday morning.

A great deal of indignation was expressed against the Marbury woman at the time, because she had been in affairs in which other girls had been assaulted.

It was expected that the case would be prosecuted vigorously.

Juvenile officer Phalan of Lima, Ohio, the McCune girl's hometown, said,

quote, we recently gave a woman a $500 fine in one of our courts, and sent her to jail for six months for the same thing this woman is accused of.

Prosecutor Sappinfield said that the Marbury woman had retired from a life of prostitution, and was living in the country near Evansville.

The penalty put upon Alex Smith, who took the McCune girl into the Marbury Resort after making arrangements for her to enter,

was the same as that fixed by the court against the woman, $25 and costs.

That was the White Slavery Suicide Pack, Murder and the Marbury Resort.

With the support of her local sheriff who believed in the girl's innocence, Nelly Mills was released from prison in 1921 and faded into Indiana history.

After her trial, the grand jury issued indictments on three resorts in Evansville, and the cases were tried, but the jury's found all three innocent,

and the prosecutor threw up the sponge, saying, quote, the sentiment seems to be against me, unquote.

Music by Dave Sands. This is True Crime Historian Richard O'Jones, signing off for now.