in the Dead House), the wily prosecutor alleged that Pearl had once again become paramour to the comely Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl. That Tommy had discovered their reentanglement, finding them in the back of the loathsome Cow Bay alley spooning and kissing there, and that he had grown vicious mad, lost all control, and had made short shrift of them both, and then, as afterthought, laid waste as well to his young daughter, the Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn Girl, learning or suspecting or having fallen prey to either poison notion or malicious rumor that the Daughter of the Sister of the Pretty Hot Corn girl was not the fruit of his loins at all, but the child of Pearl.
Tommy denied all this in court.
“Lies!” his defending lawyer, young Hummel of Centre Street, pronounced in his high-pitched Bavarian immigrant’s mutilation of the English language. “Scurrilous lies!”
Tommy testified in his own defense. “Now this is what happened that fateful night. Nothing more, nothing less. My wife and daughter was out working, but they was late and I grew worried. I went out looking for ’em and come acrost that native rat, Ruby Pearl, in the back of Cow Bay alley, my wife dead at his feet, my daughter tossed off in the corner, like a rag waiting for the picker.”
Tommy’s eyes gleamed in what purported to be memory. He went on with his blithe recollection: “The redheaded bastard was standing over them he was, they no longer of this eart’. I challenged him. I said, ‘Whatsamatta, boyo? Why you do this?’ He says, I swear, ‘Whaddya care? I did it. What you gonna do about it?’ Right there and then I took him out, and mark me if I don’t feel good about it.”
Now, ignoring his lawyer, rising to face Ruby’s supporters, who were in attendance that afternoon at the proceedings, challenging, shouting, “You hear me you low-life butcher apprentices!” Tommy’s gaze flitting back across the curiosity seekers, to the box, swiveling back to catch the black-robed judge, looking him square in the eye, the jury, “Now which one among you would not do the same?”
But unfortunately for Tommy, his twelve peers did not buy his story. With High Constable Jacob Hays looking steadily on from the gallery, he was condemned to be hanged, and remanded to the Tombs to meet his fate forthwith.
During his time in the Tombs, John Colt never suffered. Rarely did he seem rattled, bothered, or unsure.
The Colt family never dreamt John would be found guilty of the capital act of homicide, much less condemned. When he finally went to trial in the winter of 1842, they hoped for a verdict of self-defense or, at worst, manslaughter. Justice in the city had traditionally been available to the wealthiest for a price. It was John’s misfortune, however, to have committed what his lawyers called “this lamentable act” in the midst of a reform movement.
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