| Breakfast was served in their room. Stephenson ate grapefruit, coffee, sausage, and buttered toast. She drank some coffee, but ate nothing. At this time, "Shorty" came in the room. He said to Stephenson that he had been delayed getting them because he could not find the hotel where they were guests in Hammond. Then she asked Stephenson to give her some money, for she had none, so that she might purchase herself a hat. Stephenson told "Shorty" to give her money, and he gave her $15 and took her out in the automobile. "Shorty" waited for her while she went into a store and purchased a hat, for which she paid $13.50. When she returned to the car, she asked "Shorty" to drive her to a drug store so that she might purchase some rouge. He then drove the car to a drug store, where she purchased a box of bichloride of mercury tablets, put them in her coat pocket, and returned with "Shorty" in the automobile to the hotel. During the morning at the hotel, the men got more liquor at Stephenson's direction. Stephenson said they were all going to drive on to Chicago, and made her write the telegram to her mother saying that they were going to Chicago. This was the telegram that Gentry took. After she and "Shorty" returned to the hotel, she said to Stephenson to let her go into room 417, which was the room assigned to Gentry, so that she might lie down and rest. Stephenson replied, "Oh no, you are not going there, you are going to lie right down here by me." She then waited awhile and until she thought Stephenson was asleep and then went into room 417 and Gentry remained in room 416 with Stephenson. There was no glass in room 417, so she procured a glass from room 416, laid out eighteen of the bichloride of mercury tablets and at once took six of them, which was about ten o'clock in the morning of Monday, March 16, 1925. She only took six of the tablets because they burnt her so. Earlier in the morning she had taken Stephenson's revolver and thought to kill herself in Stephenson's presence while he was asleep. It was then she decided to try and get poison and take it in order to save her mother from disgrace. She knew it would take longer for the mercury tablets to kill her. After she had taken the tablets, she lay down on the bed and became very ill. It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday that "Shorty" came into the room and sat down to talk to her. He said to her that she looked ill and asked her what was wrong, and she replied, "Nothing." He asked her where she had pain and she replied that pain was all over her. He then said to her that she could not have pain without cause. When she asked him, "Can you keep a secret?" He answered, "Yes." She said, "I believe you can." Then she told him she had taken poison, but that he should not tell Stephenson She had been vomiting blood all day. When she said to him that she had taken poison, "Shorty" turned pale and said that he wanted to take a walk. He left the room, and, in a few minutes, Stephenson, Gentry, and "Shorty" came into the room very much excited. Stephenson then said, "What have you done?" She answered, "I asked 'Shorty' not to tell." Stephenson then ordered a quart of milk and made her drink it, and then she said to him and to the others that she had taken six bichloride of mercury tablets, and said, "If you don't believe it, there is evidence on the floor and in the cuspidor." Stephenson then emptied the cuspidor, which was half full of clotted blood, into the bathtub and saw some of the tablets. She then asked Stephenson what he intended to do, to which he replied, "We will take you to a hospital and you can register as my wife. Your stomach will have to be pumped out." He said that she could tell them at the hospital that she had gotten mercury tablets through a mistake instead of aspirin. To Stephenson's suggestion, she refused to comply as his wife. Then it was that Stephenson said that they would take her home. She then said to Stephenson [p. 644] that she would not go home, but would stay at the hotel, and asked them to leave her and go about their own business or to permit her to register at another hotel under her own name. Stephenson then said, "We will do nothing of the kind. We will take you home," and that the best way out of it was for them to go to Crown Point and there she marry him, to which suggestion Gentry said he agreed it was the thing to do. She refused. Stephenson then snapped his fingers and instructed "Shorty" to pack the grips. They then departed from the hotel. Stephenson assisted her down the stairs. Before leaving she asked "Shorty" to telephone to her mother. Stephenson said that he had already called her. She asked what her mother said, and Stephenson answered that she said it would be all right if her daughter did not come home that night. "Shorty" checked out of the hotel for the three, and they then put her in the back seat of the automobile with Stephenson and the luggage and started for home. Her mind was in a daze and she was in terrible agony. After they had proceeded in the automobile a short distance, Stephenson ordered "Shorty" to take the auto license plates off the car, which "Shorty" did, and Stephenson then directed him to say, if questioned, that they had parked in the last town where the auto plates had been stolen. On the journey back to Indianapolis she screamed for a doctor, and said she wanted a hypodermic to relieve the pain, but the men refused to stop. She begged Stephenson to leave her along the road some place, that some one would stop and take care of her, and said to Stephenson, that he was even then more cruel to her than he had been the night before. He promised to stop at the next town, but did not. Just before reaching a town he would say to "Shorty," "Drive fast, but don't get pinched." She vomited in the car all over the back seat and the luggage. Stephenson did nothing to make her comfortable upon the trip. He said to Gentry, "This takes guts to do this Gentry. She is dying"; and that he said to Gentry he had been in a worse mess than this before and got out of it. Stephenson and Gentry drank liquor during the entire trip. Stephenson said also that he had power and that he had made a quarter of a million dollars, and that his word was law. Upon reaching Indianapolis, they drove straight to Stephenson's house by way of Thirty-Eighth street and Emerson avenue in Indianapolis. When the car reached Stephenson's garage, Stephenson said, "There is someone at the front door of the house," and told "Shorty" to go and see who it was. "Shorty" returned and informed Stephenson that it was Miss Oberholtzer's mother. Then Stephenson said, "You will stay right here until you marry me." One of the three men then carried her upstairs into the loft above the garage. Stephenson did nothing to relieve her pain while they left her in the garage until she was carried to her home about noon Tuesday, March 17, 1925. A big man, as she says, Mr. Klinck by name, shook her and awakened her and said to her that she must go home. She asked him where Stephenson was, and he told her he did not know. She remembered here that Stephenson had told her to tell every one that she had been in an automobile accident and then said to her, "You must forget this, what is done has been done. I am the law and the power." He repeated to her several times that his word was law. On account of her agony and suffering, she begged Klinck to take her home in Stephenson's Cadillac car. He said he would order a taxi, but finally said he would take her in Stephenson's car. Klinck then dressed her and carried her downstairs from the loft and put her in the back seat of the automobile and drove to the home of her mother. She asked him to drive in the driveway, which he did, and then carried her into the house and upstairs and placed her on her bed. At the time she was returned to her home by Klinck, her mother was away from home. There was in the house, at the time she returned, Mrs. Shultz, who roomed at the Oberholtzer home with her eldest son George. When Klinck carried Miss Oberholtzer into the house, Mrs. Shultz was preparing lunch in the kitchen for her son and heard a terrible groaning at the front door and then went to the dining room and saw Miss Oberholtzer being carried in. She then went to the stairway and saw her carried upstairs by a large man, whose name she did not know. When he came downstairs alone, she asked "Is Madge hurt?" He replied, "Yes," and said she was hurt in an automobile accident. Mrs. Shultz asked him how badly, and he replied he didn't think any bones were broken. Then, she said to him, "I will get a doctor quickly," and he said, "Yes." Then Mrs. Shultz asked him who he was and he replied, "My name is Johnson from Kokomo," and said, "I must hurry," and, hurrying on, kept his face toward the door. Mrs. Shultz got a good look at his face as he came down the stairway and recognized him and identified him in the courtroom at the trial of appellant. This man, who gave his name as Johnson, was Earl Klinck. Upon Klinck's departure from the house, Mrs. Shultz went up to see Miss Oberholtzer, whom she called Madge. The door to her room was closed and Mrs. Shultz knocked and heard Madge moaning, so she opened the door and went in and saw Madge on the bed. When she went in, Madge was groaning and was pale and could hardly speak or answer. Mrs. Shultz noted the bruises on Madge. The one on her right cheek was a dented wound of [p. 645] dark color; and on the left side of her chest were similar wounds, which were deeper and darker in color. The wound on her breast and the wound Mrs. Shultz noted were similar in shape and appearance. She noted that Madge had bruises across her stomach, on her limbs and ankles, which bruises were very dark in color in some places. The skin on her left breast was open. Her clothing, a black velvet dress and black shoes, was very messed up and very dirty. |