Daniel McFarland Trial: 1870

Defense attorney Graham's summation took two full days. He cited trials in which aggrieved husbands had been acquitted of murdering their wives' lovers. He alluded to implications of the philosophy of free love—a topic then current in popular magazines—raised by the trial's circumstantial evidence. He quoted the Bible (Proverbs, Chapter VI):

Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding; he that doeth it destoyeth his own soul. A wound and dishonor shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away. For jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.

Prosecutor Garvin's brief summation included appealing questions: "Gentlemen of the jury, did it occur to you that it might be a fact in this case, whether proved or unproved, that Albert Richardson and Mrs. McFarland were entirely innocent of those charges? I put it to you as sensible men, would Albert Richardson have sought to marry Mrs. McFarland, would he have aided her in getting a divorce to marry her, if he had seduced her?"

The jury deliberated for one hour and 55 minutes before pronouncing the defendant "Not guilty."

McFarland moved to Leadville, Colorado, where he was last seen living among laborers in a boarding house in 1880.

Abby Sage Richardson became a successful author and play-wright well known in New York society and literary circles. In 1890, she again dominated headlines when she and theatrical producer Daniel Frohman (the very same Dan Frohman who had witnessed the murder two decades earlier) lost a court case when they were enjoined from producing her theatrical adaptation of Mark Twain's novel The Prince and the Pauper. The contender proved that Twain had previously authorized him to adapt it.

Abby Richardson died in 1900.