After intensive interrogation at the Hyde Park police station, she eventually admitted that she and Kalsted had been having an affair, that she invited him to bring her wine, that they "had a jazz" (sex) on the couch, and that they got into a heated argument over the fact that he had been lying to her and everyone else about his sordid past.

[3] After wiping the fallen Kalsted's face with a damp cloth and pushing at his eyelids to see if he was alive, Annan concluded that he was dead.

Some newspapers, probably inspired by misleading statements by the police, falsely claimed that she played the record over and over and danced around the apartment, while a dying Kalsted bled out on her bedroom floor.

At her trial, probably following direct advice or at least insinuation from her attorneys, she reverted to her claim that she hardly knew Kalsted, who wheedled his way into her apartment and then tried to rape her.

Her lawyers argued that Kalsted was reaching toward her when she pulled the trigger in self-defense, which explained why the bullet traveled laterally through his torso.

[citation needed] Annan died of tuberculosis, aged 28, at the Chicago Fresh Air Sanatorium, where she was staying under the name Beulah Stephens, in 1928, four years after her acquittal on charges of murder.

[9] She was returned to her home state for burial in Mount Pleasant Cumberland Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Daviess County, Kentucky.