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Steve Adams, sometimes known as Stephen Adams, played a minor, but particularly revealing, role in events surrounding the murder trial of Harry Orchard, and the 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 relating to a miner uprising in Coeur d'Alene, and in the aftermath of the Colorado Labor Wars. The investigations were led by famed Pinkerton agent James McParland. As a witness for the state who recanted, Adams is particularly notable for his comments about the methods used by agent McParland to turn defendants against each other. ==The Haywood trial== McParland had WFM member Harry Orchard in custody, and had obtained an elaborate confession. However, McParland knew that he needed more than the confession of one man to convict Bill Haywood, who was being tried first among the trio of WFM leaders.〔Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 101.〕 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."〔Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 102.〕 Harry Orchard had described Adams as an accomplice in several crimes. As in the cases of Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone, McParland relied upon a perjured warrant to cross state lines and grab Adams. The prisoner wasn't charged with any crime, but was held at the penitentiary in Idaho with Orchard. This was not according to McParland's plans:
Together in the cell, Orchard described his own confession to Adams, and urged Adams to also confess. In spite of the missed instruction about isolation, McParland reportedly later obtained such a confession from Adams.〔 Although Steve Adams wasn't allowed to know anything about his wife and children, they weren't far away:
Adams' family was brought to the prison "as a means to 'sweat' him."〔The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, page 275.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Steve Adams (Western Federation of Miners)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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