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[...]it was so dark that it was necessary to light a match to distinguish the dead man's features.  Two housewives, whose dwellings are as close to the scene as the Eckroat house, gave similar testimony.  One of these women, Mrs. Bederman, saw the flashes from the last two shots and afterward crossed the lawns and went to the steps at the base of which Saxton's body was lying.

The local weather officer, Prof. Stokey, testified that there had been a rainfall twice that day, and that the night was lowering and threatening.

This was a double advantage to the defense, as it went to show that the fields across which Mrs. George is said to have run would be damp and muddy.  One of the state's chief witnesses swore that the shoes worn by Mrs. George when arrested were dry and dusty and her skirts were clean and stiff from laundering.  The state made a vigorous fight against this testimony, Attorney Grant being especially savage in his cross-examination of Eckroat and his son-in-law.
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1899-04-19​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
I've given just a small excerpt of the newspaper article because it's quite long.  You can read an account of the case in the Wikipedia article for Ida Saxton, the wife of William McKinley.  Here's my version:

Ida Saxton McKinley had a brother named George Saxton.  He had a mistress, Annie George, who was married to another man.  George Saxton encouraged Annie to get a divorce so as to marry him.  She complied, whereupon he dumped her for another woman.  On the night of Friday, October 7, 1898, George Saxton was shot to death.  Annie was tried for his murder.

As the newspaper article says, our very own Papa Charles, the official government weatherman for the Canton area, testified for the defense.  He testified that the night of the murder was wet:
  • that there had been a rainfall twice that day, and that the night was lowering and threatening.
Therefore the path that Annie would have taken to reach the site of the murder would have been muddy.  And yet the state's witnesses testified that Annie's shoes and dress were dry when she was arrested that night.  Annie was acquitted, and nobody else was ever tried for the murder.

I haven't studied the case any further than that.  And perhaps I should, because Wikipedia says that Annie claimed self-defense, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  There's a fairly recent book on the subject.  To be continued - maybe.

2.
Later note:  Papa Charles's father had a connection to a Saxton in Canton in the 1840's - see: I don't know if it was the same family.

3.
Still later note.  (I'll organize this better later on.  Or anyway, that's the aspiration.)  I did read the book about the case, A Woman Scorned: The Murder of George Saxton -- A True Crime Melodrama by John Stark Bellamy II.  Annie didn't claim self-defense.  She just kept her mouth shut, but the actions of her lawyers suggested a self-defense-oriented approach.

Also (not relevant to this case, but sort of interesting) one of the defense attorneys, James Sterling, assisted at a political speech that Papa Charles gave the following fall:
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