Murder Down on the River
Essay | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
This was a quiet moment that I sketched nearly a half-century ago, in a country courthouse, at a murder trial.
I was once a courtroom sketch artist, one of the many hats I wore during my days at The Banner, a small-town newspaper that our family owned in Brownstown, Indiana, for decades.
The courts banned photography. You wouldn’t want the lawyers playing to the cameras, the thinking goes.
So there I was, in the front row center, with my sketchbook, pencils and chalks. The sketches had to be fast. A fleeting instant, a facial expression, might come and go in no time at all. And the deadline was pronto — today. Sketching, sketching, sketching quickly. Everyone is moving.
Doing real time sketches like this requires using what some people call the “right side of the brain.” It’s shorthand for forcing your mind away from linear or logical thinking, for freeing yourself. You concentrate on dark and light values, lines and shapes, and a balanced composition. Your brain, like a computer, is constantly measuring these elements, deciding what is important and what to edit out. It requires discarding the logic that things should look a certain stereotypical way (your left brain) and focusing on how things actually appear.
You might notice that I spent my time on the light in the window, the face of the man, and the cowboy hat. Other details — the filing cabinets, the stacks of paper on the table, and really, the whole rest of the room — are merely suggestions.
While doing these sketches I really couldn’t, and didn’t even try, to keep track of what was being said in the room.
I do remember, though, that people seated behind me were watching the proceedings with interest. And for good reason.
A woman stood accused of murdering her husband. The prosecution maintained that she had arranged for an acquaintance to take him fishing on a river near their home, where he would be pushed overboard, and shot. Family testified against family. A witness on the riverbank described the moment of the killing.
The murder was committed a stone’s throw from an iron bridge that still spans the water today, if barely. The bridge overlooks a lazy, sandy stretch of river where people still enjoy launching their fishing boats to while away the time.
This is where the victim was lured.
Near the scene of the crime. Jesse happened to have this photo from a few years ago.
The courtroom sketch depicts Jay Allen, the prosecuting attorney, as he paused while questioning a policeman on the stand. It was published in The Banner in the early 1980s and hasn’t been seen much since then, until today.
I like this image of him. He has plopped his Western style hat atop a metal file cabinet. He carries a casual air that characterizes the pace of most trials. Not brisk, exciting TV events, but boringly slow, with rustling of papers, wall clocks ticking, recesses, checking of notes, consultations with the judge.
This was in the Washington County Courthouse, in Salem, Indiana. The tall arched window suggests the Romanesque style architecture of the 1886 building, which stands in the center of the town square. The courthouse, built of Indiana limestone from a quarry nearby, has a four story tower with a conical roof. From certain angles it could almost be a spooky Disney castle.
Legend has it that during construction, workers were offered lemonade as relief from the summer heat. It occurred to them to add liquor to the lemonade. Later, the men wrote their names on a piece of paper, placed the paper in the liquor bottle and buried it, along with another full bottle, somewhere on the site, where both remain today.
Recently I looked up the details of the murder trial, to refresh my memory. The accused had been convicted, and she spent years in prison. According to testimony, she had promised that she would kill her husband if it took the rest of her life. Left unanswered was the terrible question, why?
After her release, she moved to a tiny town just upriver from the fatal day on the water. She died years ago and is buried in the next town over, where as fate would have it she shares her grave with the man she was convicted of murdering.
Her obituary notes that she loved needlepoint, antiques and quilting. Left unmentioned are the events that once led to the two of us spending a short time together, in a courtroom.