Steve Adams (miner)
Adams played a role in events surrounding the murder trials of Western Federation of Miners (WFM) leaders Bill Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone, all charged with conspiring to murder former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, allegedly in retaliation of the governor's role in the miner uprising in Coeur d'Alene.
Pinkerton detective James McParland had WFM member Harry Orchard in custody, and had obtained an elaborate confession.
[1] Steve Adams was "a thirty-nine-year-old former Kansas City butcher and Cripple Creek miner with heavy, drooping eyelids and a booze-blotched complexion.
As in the cases of Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone, McParland relied upon a perjured warrant to cross state lines and grab Adams.
To prime a man for confessing, McParland required solitary confinement, a penetrating silence, the watchful presence of a stony guard, and as few contacts as possible.
"[5] However, Haywood defense attorney Clarence Darrow passed the word that he would defend Adams, and the prisoner immediately recanted.
The note announcing that Adams recanted that confession was passed secretly from his jail cell via his wife, Annie, during a visit.
[9] It declared, This is to certify that the statement that I signed was made up by James McParland, detective, and Harry Orchard, alias Tom Hogan.
I signed it because I was threatened by Governor Gooding, saying I would be hanged if I did not corroborate Orchard's story against the officers of the federation union of miners.
Adams' renunciation of his confession greatly weakened the prosecution's case against Haywood, who was found not guilty of the Steunenberg assassination.
Another prospective witness in the Adams trial, Archie Phillips, found ten pounds of dynamite behind his house, and fled to Canada to avoid testifying.
[10] Adams took the witness stand in his own murder trial and testified, in part, I was taken to the office of the penitentiary and introduced to detective McParland.
He told me about "Kelly the Bum" [from McParland's Molly Maguires case] and other men who had turned state's evidence and had been set free.
... McParland told me he wanted to convict [WFM leaders] Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone, St. John, and Simpkins, whom he called 'cut-throats.'
Adams described how information from the question and answer session with McParland, with the Pinkerton detective guiding him from "notes in his pocket," had been typed and returned to him in the form of a narrative document which he was required to sign.
In Wood's experience, no one could have fabricated such a convoluted story, covering many years, in many locations, and including so many different people, and withstand such thorough cross-examination without materially contradicting himself.
The mine owners, the local sheriff, and James McParland of the Pinkerton Agency used the accusations of murder to publicize an alleged "reign of terror" as a means of destroying the union.
Even so, it wasn't long before the jury decided that testimony by Bulkeley Wells, manager of the Smuggler-Union Mining Company, who had sought the conviction and execution of Western Federation of Miners leaders for years, was not credible.
