Parkman–Webster murder case
George F. Hoar mentioned that Webster's lectures were "tedious", at least for a non-chemistry major, but that he "was known to the students by the sobriquet of 'Sky-rocket Jack,' owing to his great interest in having some fireworks at the illumination when President Everett, his former classmate, was inaugurated.
"[5] Many anecdotes suggest his classroom demonstrations were livened by pyrotechnic drama, and on one occasion the President of Harvard warned that some of them were dangerous if an accident occurred.
Noted mineralogist and Harvard Professor Clifford Frondel appraised the books Webster authored on chemistry as "creditable" and had praise for them.
On November 25, Webster appeared outside the college where he met Parkman's nephew James Henry Blake and police officer Trenholm.
On November 26, with a $3,000 reward settled on for finding Parkman alive, the family had 28,000 copies of a wanted notice printed up, posted, and distributed; a little later, $1,000 was offered for his body.
City Marshal Francis Tukey had the Charles River and Boston Harbor dragged for a body, and sent men to neighboring towns to check.
[citation needed] Littlefield remembered that four days prior to the murder, Webster had asked him a number of questions about the dissecting vault, and after the college had been searched, the professor had surprised him with a turkey for his Thanksgiving dinner – the first gift he had ever given him.
On November 30, Littlefield resumed chiseling and worked for some time until he managed to punch a hole into the wall, at which point he felt a strong draft that did not permit his lantern to stay lit inside.
He handed out the pelvis, the right thigh, and the lower left leg, and these were placed on a board to await the arrival of the coroner, Jabez Pratt.
Testing on the stains showed them to be copper nitrate, a substance effective for removing blood, and Jeffries Wyman arrived to identify the bone fragments.
On December 1, Harvard librarian John Langdon Sibley wrote in his journal: "The standing of Dr. Webster, his uniform tenor of conduct since the disappearance of Dr. Parkman, his artlessness & unfamiliarity with the crime of any kind have been such that the excitement, the melancholy, the aghastness of every body are indescribable.
The inquest jury, in an 84-page decision, decided that the body parts were indeed those of Parkman, that he had been killed and dismembered at the medical college, and that Webster was accountable for it.
The trial began on March 19, 1850, with Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw (Harvard class of 1800) of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court presiding.
60,000 people witnessed at least part of the trial (with tickets handed out to the waiting crowds and spectators quickly rotated through); journalists came from as far as London, Paris, and Berlin.
[11] Leading the prosecution were Massachusetts Attorney General John Clifford (later Governor), who mainly confined his role to opening and closing statements, and George Bemis, Esq., a Harvard Law School graduate and the son of a prosperous manufacturer.
On the first day, Clifford made a three-hour opening statement presenting facts and evidence; Bemis then began his examination of witnesses, who conceded that they would not have recognized the body as belonging to Parkman.
Woodbridge Strong then talked about what was needed to burn a corpse and the odor it would produce, after which anatomy professor Frederick S. Ainsworth pointed out that his department's dissection specimens differed from the body in question.
On the third day, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., the dean of Harvard Medical College, who held a post endowed by Parkman, took the stand.
He testified his belief that the body had been dismembered by someone with a knowledge of dissection and anatomy, that a wound between the ribs would not necessarily cause a large amount of blood loss, and that the corpse's build was "not dissimilar" to that of George Parkman.
After a Sunday recess, on Monday the court heard about Webster's debt problem, and doubt was cast on his claim that he had repaid Parkman.
More witnesses were brought forth to testify about Webster's unusual behavior after Parkman's disappearance, and three unsigned letters meant to throw the police off the track were shown.
[citation needed] He asserted that the prosecution had failed to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Webster was the killer, or even how Parkman had died.
Three dentists stated that an artist would recognize his own handiwork, and a physician estimated the condition of the remains to match up with the time for which Parkman had disappeared.
The defense then gave a six-hour speech on four key points that the prosecution had to prove: that the body was Parkman's, that a homicide had occurred, that Webster had perpetrated it, and that he had done so with malice aforethought.
Dropping his head, he rubbed his eyes beneath his spectacles with a trembling and convulsed motion as if to wipe away tears, and remained in that position a few moments.
As The Fall River Weekly News put it: If any delays, misgivings or symptoms of mercy are manifested, the gibbeted body of Washington Goode will be paraded before the mind's eye of his Excellency.
If he relents in this case, though the entire population of the State petition for a remission of sentence, Governor Briggs will forfeit all claim to public respect as a high minded, honorable and impartial chief magistrate.
He said that Parkman "was speaking and gesticulating in the most violent and menacing manner" about the mineral cabinet being put up to cover another loan, and that in his fury he, Webster: seized whatever thing was handiest - it was a stick of wood - and dealt him an instantaneous blow with all the force that passion could give it.
[17] The case proved enduring in its impact as the first in the United States where dental evidence, and scientific testimony were accepted in a murder trial.
"[19] Another author claimed that the prosecutors ignored evidence that did not fit the case, Judge Shaw showed bias against Webster, whose confessor, Reverend George Putnam, was helping the prosecution, and statements were edited before appearing in the Bemis and Cushing Reports, which were a whitewash and issued to counteract a spate of negative publicity.
