One of the most amazing jury cases in the history of Comanche county was tried in district court in Coldwater this week and resulted in the jury finding "Not Guilty," a woman charged with obtaining property under false pretenses.As Agnes McMillan, the woman on trial, left the court room she admitted that she was guilty but was glad to have a verdict freeing her of the charge.
On Tuesday of this week while in jail here, Mrs. McMillan, who seems to be the guiding force of the McMillan gang, paid off more than $100 in cash to the sheriff from Ponca City, Okla., to settle with merchants whom she fleeced there.
On the same day three more warrants, now totaling four, came from Beloit, Kans., where Mrs. McMillan will be taken soon by the sheriff at Beloit to stand trial for forgery and fraud. The officers at Concordia are asking for her next as is the sheriff from Newkirk, Okla., where the Coldwater episode was practically duplicated. She is wanted by other officers who will issue warrants against her later.
The situation as it appears to the F. B. I., the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Comanche county officials is substantially as follows:
In the McMillans' strong box in one of their trailers brought here was a picture of the man and woman who worked the punch board racket in this and other counties and of the woman who worked a fraud racket last week on Dodge City merchants.
If some of them get caught they try to pay off. If that doesn't work, they will stand trial, meanwhile working the sympathy game to the limit in various cities - as was done in Coldwater, the woman screaming for medical attention, which was given, working the religious racket, having the two children taken to Sunday school the Sunday preceding trial, ostensibly for the moral influence, then prominently displayed in court during the trial while the mother shows great emotional anguish. The ace card of the set-up is having the children along as they go from town to town. Then if a woman is caught and stands trial, the tearing of a mother from her children is calculated to melt the heart of most any juror.
But the pay-off was when the 11 year old girl, only in the third grade while she was enrolled in school here, attempted to rifle the pocketbook of a defense attorney's mother, working with her deft fingers behind her back in a room full of people.
Thanks to Shirley Brier for finding, transcribing and contributing the above news article to this web site!
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