Wallowa County

The ______________________________________________ your correspondence to the notorious murderer.

A.          T. Waldle,  After shaking hands in rather a cordial manner the prisoner took his seat by the stove and resumed his pipe.  He seemed somewhat nervous and excited at first, but resumed his usual quiet and meditative air, when the following conversation took place:

Question:  Have you any objection to conversing in regard to the murder for which you are arraigned?

Answer:  I have nothing new to add to what has already been said.

Q.    Question: Why did you give yourself up after the shooting?

A.     Answer: Because I did not want to go away.

Q.    Question: What weapon did you use?

A.     Answer:  five shooter Winchester derringer, caliber 38.

Q.    Question: What motive had you in killing Mr. Sullivan?

A.     Answer: I did it to keep him from killing me.

Q.    Question: Which party did you shoot first, the man or his wife?

A.     Answer: The pistol went off and shot Mrs. Sullivan first.

Q.    Question: Did you aim to shoot her?

A.     Answer: No, the shot was accidental.

Q.    Question: How long previous to the moocher of Sullivan did you become acquainted with Mrs. S.?

A.     Answer: I became acquainted with her in 1886.  She and I both stayed in the same hotel for three years.

Q.    Question: Did you ever make any declarations of love to the lady?

A.     Answer: No answer.

Q.    Question: Did she reciprocate your love?

A.     Answer: I decline to talk upon this subject.  It will come out at the trial.

Q.    Question: Did you plead guilty of murder in the second degree?

A.     Answer: No: I plead not guilty.

Q.    Question: When was the crime committed?

A.     Answer: Sometime between 12 and 1 o’clock on the night of the 13^th of May.

Q.    Question: Why were you that place so late?

A.     Answer: Was employed in the office of Wells Fargo & Co. waited until after the arrival of the stage from Baker City, when I went to Chansia’s hotel; me, Sullivan, his wife, and mother-in-law; the walk being narrow, stepped off into the street to give them a chance to go by me I stepped back to the walk Sullivan turned around to me and said? Don’t you lay your hands on her, if you do I’ll cut your heart out.  At these words the pistol went off.

Q.    Question: Did you recognize the parties?

A.     Answer: Why of course I did.

     Waddle conversed freely in regard to this most cowardly and unwarranted murder.  While speaking of Sullivan’s death, and the probably recovery of Mrs. S., his face seemed to light up with a mania?? delight.  A sinister and fiendish smile played over his contracted features, and his small keen eyes seemed to dance with delight at the thought; to fact his every action betrayed but to plainly his thoughts.  He seems sanguine of being cleared on the grounds of self defense.
     It is a mystery to the legal profession in Union county—the finding of a bill for murder in the second degree, while the proof was positive that Waddle had threatened the lives of these parties, and laid in wait for them.  It was also proven that Sullivan said not one word to the murderer, but was walking peaceably home from a party, accompanied by his wife, when the report of a pistol was heard, and his wife sank to the walk exclaiming, I am shot. Not satisfied with having shot the lady, Waddle then turned his weapon upon Mr. S. and fired the bull taking effect in the abdomen.  Sullivan ran to the center of the street, stooped down as if to pick up a rock, and fell never to rise again.  He was carried to his residence where he died on the 17^th.  The murderer then ran to the jail and gave himself up.  He said to the sheriff, “Lock me up; you will know what I have done in the morning.”
     An excited crowd followed him, and but for the dexterity of the officer in placing him under lock, his body would have dangled from some lofty pine ere the sun had risen.
     The prisoner H. M. Alexander, indicted for the murder of Basil I. Perkins, is-if it were possible—guilty of a more heinous crime than Waddle, for he had done the man whom he murdered even a worse injury that death, in ____________.

Contributed by Jim Reavis