Why Thomas Bram Was Found Guilty. At daybreak on Tuesday they got a pilot. As soon as he came on board the young passenger went below to try to go to sleep. It was then more than seven days since he was waked by the shriek of the murdered voman. Terrified, sleepless and exhausted, they arrived at Halifax towing the boat with the three dead bodies. They landed in charge of the police. They were examined about the murders by the local magistrate of the country and by the consul of the United States. A detective in Halifax told Bram that Charley saw him strike the captain. Bram asked where Charley was, and when told, at the wheel, said : " He could not see me from there." When accomplices were suggested, Bram said : " I think there are many others on board the ship that think Charley is the murderer, but I don't know anything about it." The bodies were ex amined by the local medical examiner. Then all the persons from the " Herbert Fuller," with the bodies, were sent in another vessel to Boston where they were taken in charge by officers of the United States, assisted by the police of the City of Boston. Bram and Charley Brown were imprisoned in the Charles Street jail in Boston, and the others, excepting the passenger and the steward, were kept there also to make sure that they would be present as witnesses at the trial. The steward was bailed out, and the pass enger released on his personal recogniz ance. Afterwards the grand jury met. They found no indictment against Charley Brown. He was accordingly released from his former imprisonment, but was detained with his ship mates who were kept as witnesses. An in dictment was found against the first mate, Bram, for the murder of the captain. His trial began on the morning of the fourteenth of December, 1896, and continued daily, excepting Sundays and Christmas, until the afternoon of the first of January', 1897, when the case was given to the jury.
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After being out for more than twenty-six hours they brought in a verdict of guilty. Apparently the jury did not believe the denials or the assertions of Bram. His testi mony seemed to be directed towards raising a probability that Charley committed the murders. The theory of the defence was that Charley was seized with a sudden attack of homicidal mania and, after lashing the wheel, went down and quickly killed the three people and returned to the deck, hid the axe under the lashing plank, and returned to the wheel. Bram's testimony that he saw Charley at the mizzen-peak jig, away from the wheel, was used to support this theory. Bram testified that he himself during most of the hour between one and two o'clock on the morning of the murders sat on the lee rail forward of themizzenmast and aft of the main mast, looking out for vessels which might pass. He admitted that the two lookouts were forward on deck. He claimed that the steward as well as the passenger consented to his throwing the axe overboard. He claimed that he said to the passenger, after the murders, " If the second mate ain't in his cabin he is forward with the men," but he admitted that he did not look into the second mate's room for him, although he passed its door twice within a few minutes after the passenger called him, and although its window was on deck next to the forward companion way. He said he started on deck to call the second mate, but the passenger called him back — him, the commanding officer! He admitted that although he found his own trunk broken open, he merely asked the steward about it, and " said no more about it." He claimed that he had a lot of nicked cartridges because his revolver was not properly made. He said he did not go home to see his family because he had not money enough. He claimed that he asked the passenger while in the passenger's room to go into Mrs. Nash's room, and that he gave up the plan because the passenger said she was dead. He denied jumping when his
