FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Buffalo, November 22. – Pretty, rosy-cheeked Sadie McMullen is in jail in this city, and will soon be tried on the charge of causing the sensational death of little Nellie May Connors, whom she threw off a bridge at Akron on October 31, together with Delia Brown, aged 6, who escaped death. Sadie is 17 years old, and little does she look like a murderess. She is the first woman to commit a murder since the new law made for the disposition of murderers went into effect. The grand jury will investigate Sadie’s case the coming week, and then if she is found guilty of murder she will be the first woman to be electrocuted.
Facts have come to light which go to show that Sadie was in
love and her love was not reciprocated. A letter written by the accused girl is
an important fact in the evidence. Two hours before she hurled the children off
the bridge, Sadie wrote a letter to a friend in Buffalo, in which she said she
was going to suicide, but was afraid to die alone and was going to take someone
with her. She also said that her spirit would haunt the man she loved forever.
It is claimed by some that she was in love with Simon Brown,
father of the little girl who escaped, and that she was jealous of Mrs.
Connors, who is a widow and to whom Brown is engaged. It is reported that she
was at one time engaged to Brown and they quarreled. It is the general belief
that Sadie is insane and the defense will be insanity.
[“Caused By Jealousy. – Sadie McMullen’s Fearful Crime
Prompted by Unrequited Affection.” The Pittsburg Dispatch (Pa.), Nov. 23,
1890, p. 9]
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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Buffalo, N. Y., March 5.— With a
smile of self-possession and a merry nod to the court attaches, Sadie McMullen,
who is on trial for her life, on the charge of child murder, walked into the
Supreme Court room this morning and took her seat before white-haired, kindly
old Judge Lewis. Pale and slender as she is, and dressed in exquisite though
simple taste, her long brown air falling in thick waves around her face and
shoulders, she looks more like a child of ten than a girl of seventeen, who is
barged with a most awful crime, and whose life depends on the ability of her
lawyers and the mercy of the jury. But he either does not mind or does not
realize her position, for every once in a while she turns her face to the
sunlit windows and miles as though she were happy and contented. And then she
scans the women who throng the court-room, only to sit back in her chair with a
weary air as though the whole affair and her presence in court were bore.
Her face, while not particularly intelligent, is pretty. It
bears a chic expression which is
taking and she has a naive way of pursing up her lips which at times is, quite
fascinating. There is nothing in her manners or her features which would
indicate insanity or any other spirit than that of peace and girlish love. Yet
this pale, slim, childish looking creature is charged with taking two helpless
children of four and six and throwing them on a trestle. One of the children
was instantly killed. The other lived and testified to-day. The awful act seems
to lave been a cruel and premeditated one.
When the accused came into court she wore a cute, little
black toque tied and beribboned in a dozen mysterious ways; her hands were
covered with long, black, undressed kid gloves, and she wore a snugly-fitting,
prettily made gown of ecru henrietta, which displayed every line of her willowy
form. She showed not the slightest trace of emotion or surprise, and only once,
when her former sweetheart was testifying to-day, did her half-closed sensuous
eyes brighten, and then they gilt-colored like live coals.
The jury was completed last night, and the trial, begun
early this morning, provides to become one of the most famous and interesting
in the history of medical jurisprudence. The defense will endeavor to prove
insanity and District-Attorney Quinby will endeavor to prove premeditation. The
examining of witnesses will be merely preliminary to the struggle of medical
experts which will follow.
When the court-room doors were opened an immense crowd
pushed forward. Never in the history of this city has there been so much public
interest and morbid curiosity shown. Women were in the majority and young girls
were plentiful.
Assistant District-Attorney-Kennepick opened the case and
outlined the crime. He told in graphic language now Sadie had on the night of
Oct. 31 last, at Akron, a short distance from here, enticed Delia Brown, aged
six, and Nellie May Connors, aged four, to the New York Central bridge over
Murder Creek; in the center of the trestle she stopped and, in a fearful
struggle, threw the babes off to the ground, fifty-two feet below the body of
the Connors girl, was found some hours after by a search party; little Della
was found a few feet away, badly bruised and unconscious: then Sadie went to a
low bridge near by and jumped off. Simon Brown, the father of the girl she had
tried to murder, saved her life; the motive would be shown in the evidence, but
Mr. Jiennepek insisted that the crime was premeditated, because Sadie had bade
good-by to a Catholic priest.
At the afternoon session little Delia Brown was the first
witness. A pretty child, with a baby face, she stood the ordeal bravely, and
with fatherly tenderness Mr. Quinby asked her questions. She described in
detail how she had been thrown off the bridge. She broke down at the mention of
her murdered playmate’s name, and sobbed pitifully.
Other witnesses told of seeing Sadie go out with the
children and return without them.
The motive for the crime was shown when Mrs. Nancy Morgan,
Sadie’s aunt, identified a letter the girl had sent from Akron th day of the
tragedy. It read as follows:
“When you got this will be far from earth. I am sick and
tired of living. My last hope has gone at last. People accuse me of things I am
not guilty of, and I can go in peace, as my heart I leave in Akron with the man
I spoke to you about. He seems to not care for me. My brain is longing for the
end. If I only had my little brother to take with me. When I am dead I will com
to you and explain. Do not fear me. The man I love will know me as a frequent
visitor. I think I will take some one with me so I will close my last letter on
earth. Please bury me in Akron, so I will be near, my loved one. So good-by.
Yours no more.
“SADIE.”
The loved one was Patrick Brown, uncle of one of the
children, and the accusation referred to was a letter received the day before
the tragedy from the family of George Dunbar, where Sadie had been working
asking about some missing articles. Sadie loved Patrick Brown, but was not
loved in return. When he testified Sadie’s eyes took on that peculiar glow
which is seen who she is interested, and she smiled at him.
The testimony for the defense, as trough out by Mr. E. A.
Hayes, Sadie’s lawyer, was poor and weak, and if the girl is acquitted it will
not be through Mr. Hayes’s efforts. His handling of his own witnesses is of
assistance to the prosecution.. He called Mrs. Morgan and attempted to prove
hereditary insanity. It was shown that Sadie’s aunt has been insane fifteen
years, a cousin two years and an uncle eighteen years.
Her grandfather, too, was queer in his actions. The
testimony will be resumed tomorrow.
The trial will increase in interest hour by hour, until the
climax comes with the testimony of the physicians. Peculiar and delicate points
of law and medicine are to be solved yet. The prisoner will probably be on the
stand to-morrow. At the end to-day she chatted gayly with her lawyer, blinked
at the red rays of the setting sun, and went back to her gloomy cell as calmly
as thong she were going to her own bed an innocent girl.
[“On Trial For Her Life. - Is Sadie M’Mullen Guilty Of Child Murder?
- So Young and So Pretty - Could She Have Done Such a Deed? – What Promises
to Be a Notable Case Now Before the Supreme Court at Buffalo – A Great Field
Open to Insanity Experts – Meanwhile, Sadie’s Indifference is Hard to
Understand.” The World (N. Y.), Mar. 6, 1891, p. 3]
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FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): At Rochester, N. Y., Saturday, the jury in the case of Sadie McMullen, charged with the murder of little Nellie May Connors, by throwing her over a bridge the New York Central railroad near Akron, N. Y., last October, after being out less than an hour, rendered a verdict of not guilty on the ground of insanity. The judge then ordered her sent to an asylum to remain until cured. It is expected she will be released in a few days.
FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): At Rochester, N. Y., Saturday, the jury in the case of Sadie McMullen, charged with the murder of little Nellie May Connors, by throwing her over a bridge the New York Central railroad near Akron, N. Y., last October, after being out less than an hour, rendered a verdict of not guilty on the ground of insanity. The judge then ordered her sent to an asylum to remain until cured. It is expected she will be released in a few days.
[Untitled, The Montrose Democrat (Pa.), Mar. 13, 1891, p. 2]
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