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| Chapter 11- Relatives Old and New |
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| "Well, guess who called you today," Barbara asked. |
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| I hate "guess who?" questions, so I tend to answer them in a flippant way. |
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| "Oprah?" I replied. "Maybe she wants me to came on and talk about the book?" |
| "You wish. No, actually it was another Ellis Parker grandson. This one is the son of Lillyann." |
| "Are you serious?" I asked. "Where did he come from?" |
| "John, Ellis Parker had eight children. Do you really think there'd be only one grandson?" |
| "I guess not." |
| "Anyway, his cousin told him about you and he wants to talk to you. He's got a lot of Parker memorabilia too. In fact, he has the stuff the website was built from." |
| This was good news; another possible source of inside information. |
| "So did you talk to him long ?" |
| "Yes; he`s very nice." |
| "Did you wring him dry, or is there anything left for him to tell me?" |
| "That depends. What do you want to know?" |
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| Grandson Number 2 lived in New Jersey so I wasted no time calling him. As advertised, he had some good stuff, including a diary Parker kept from about 1901-1904. The only trouble was he didn`t know where he had left it. (I suggested the safe at the Prison Museum, but he said no.) He also had a one of a kind item that intrigued me: an Ellis Parker comic book. Well, to be more accurate, it was an Ellis Parker story in one of those crime comics that were popular in the 1940s. This one was based on actual police records and depicted one of Parker`s cases. Even more remarkable, the comic was published eight years after Parker`s death. |
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| Like Grandson Number 1, Grandson Number 2 was keeping Ellis Parker`s memory alive, but he had another goal as well. He was trying to arrange for a posthumous pardon for his grandfather. He was very interested in my book and wanted to meet, but was scheduled for a knee replacement in a few weeks, so we put it off. In the meantime, he said he had contacted some local politicos about the pardon.. I told him what I had learned so far. He was especially interested in my contact with the present owners of the house on Garden Street. |
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| (To limit the confusion, I will refer to Grandson Number 1 as Website Grandson and Grandson Number 2 as Pardon Grandson.) |
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| From my contact with Pardon Grandson, I got some more stories and some more details of Ellis Parker`s life to fill in some of the blanks. For instance, Parker once had an ex burglar, a black man, living in the basement of his home and helping with the housework as a sort of rehabilitation project. It was probably good for the burglar, but made the rest of the family uneasy. Pardon Grandson`s mother, Ellis Parker`s daughter Lillyan, was still living, but suffering from deteriorating health and even more deteriorating memory, another relative I had found too late. Still I had another family source. Who knew where it might lead? At least I`d get to see the comic book. |
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| About a week or so later, Pardon Grandson called to say he had been in touch with a reporter from the Trenton Times who had agreed to do an article on his quest for a pardon. He had also been by the house on Garden Street and introduced himself to the owners who had invited him inside. There he had recognized an old Victorian wall mirror his mother had used to comb his grandmother`s hair. In the basement he saw an old shovel that had belonged to Eddy Parker, Ellis`s only surviving son. His initials were carved in the handle. The home owner graciously made him a gift of the shovel and promised him the newspapers I had borrowed when I returned with them. I promised to bring them on my next trip. |
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| This thing with descendants could be very useful, I thought. Now who had I left out? Who could really add some good dirt to my fast growing pile? Of course; the descendents of Parker`s suspect! He had lived in Trenton and had a son and a daughter, but that was all I knew. I had tried unsuccessfully to find his obituary. (That is Barbara had, before she was attacked by the elevator at the New Jersey State Library.) I dug through my records and found something I remembered from my last trip to the state police archives; not the suspect`s obituary, but that of his son. |
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| The archives had copies of the statements of both the son and daughter telling of Ellis Parker`s attempts to get them to corroborate their father`s confession in 1936. The son`s obituary was from 1997. In my best Ellis Parker manner, I noted the married names of the son`s two daughters and where they were living. One was in New Jersey and the other was in Salt Lake City. Once again, I searched by Internet and found both of them. I decided to call the one in New Jersey first. A woman answered and agreed she was the person I was asking for. I tried to explain in a polite and friendly manner that I was an author researching a book and I would like to talk to her about her grandfather. I say tried because the woman interrupted me as soon as I mentioned her grandfather. |
| "I was in bed!" said the irate voice on the phone. "I`m a sick woman and you call me this time of night for this? Well you can just forget it!" |
| The line went dead, leaving me to wonder what she meant by "this time of night" when it was only a little past 8:30. |
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| But a dedicated researcher is undeterred by a little hostility, so I plunged ahead with my next victim, the granddaughter in Salt Lake City. I got an answering machine, but didn`t leave a message for fear of scaring her off. Finally after about a dozen tries over two weeks, I left a polite and carefully worded message on the machine. Another week went by and still no reply. Finally, calculating when it was about 7:00 PM in Salt Lake City, I called again and this time a woman answered. I identified myself and asked if she had time to tell me a little bit about her grandfather. She was polite, but definitely not interested in assisting in my literary efforts. |
| "Yes, he was my grandfather," she said, "but he`s gone now and I think it`s best to let sleeping dogs lie. It was a long time ago." |
| "Well, I can certainly understand, but isn`t there anything you`d like to tell me?" |
| "No." |
| I mailed her a letter with a self addressed stamped envelope the next day promising to respect her privacy and asking if she changed her mind or thought there was anything I should know to contact me. I still haven`t heard back. |
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| Website Grandson e-mailed me a few days later to tell me he had an old diary written by Ellis Parker and was going to scan each of its 150 pages and send them to me. Downloading and saving e-mail atachments one page at a time was tedious, but finally it was done. I started to read the document and was disappointed to see that Parker`s handwriting was somewhat "free form" in style and legibility. What`s more, his writing was not nearly as orderly as his mind, seeming to consist of random fragments of cases and events. Even so, it was an interesting first hand account of Parker`s life at the time. Although he was famous for his murder cases, the diary showed he also investigated such matters as indecent exposure, rape, incest, gambling, the theft of some cabbage, and an attempted train derailment. |
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| I mentioned the diary to Pardon Grandson. |
| "So that`s what happened to the diary. No wonder I couldn`t find it. I loaned it to him to help make up the website and never got it back." |
| "I didn`t mean to get anyone in trouble...." I said, suddenly sorry I had mentioned it. |
| He laughed. "No, it`s all right. I`m just relieved it isn`t lost." |
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