EXCERPT:
Though some of the above-mentioned hangings attracted considerable interest, no gallows decree for a female of the Old West so captivated the public as the death sentence given the fragile, thirty-three-year-old wife of an illiterate farmer from the mountains of Amador County, California. Unlike some of the women mentioned above, Emma LeDoux was granted a courtroom trial, and American and foreign presses' diligent coverage of the mystery-riddled story aroused interest around the globe. With their readers hungering for information, reporters feverishly scrambled to uncloud the mysteries surrounding the murder, to uncover the past secrets of both victim and defendant, and to churn out more and more articles and photographs to splash onto the front pages of a newspaper and continue inside through column after column.

After reading one such article, the district attorney directing the case sarcastically commented that the press appeared to be ahead of him in their investigation. Every day there was a startling new revelation in the newspapers. But because exhaustive investigative efforts only seemed to intensify interest, as well as deepen the mysteries of the murder of which the housewife was accused, the sheer amount of information being pumped out by the press could not satiate a curious public's thirst.

As an example of the amount of press coverage this obscure country woman received after being charged with murdering her husband in a very spectacular manner, one has only to peruse the front page of the 27 March 1906 San Francisco Chronicle. At the time, Sarah Bernhardt was touring the Western portion of the United States and making news at each performance, but Emma LeDoux upstaged the celebrated actress. The Chronicle's front page contained one item about Bernhardt's performance in a tent in Dallas. "She gave her interpretation of ‘Camille' as cleverly and realistically as if she were confronted by an audience of New Yorkers or Parisians," the Texas reporter dispatched, and over eight thousand worshipers (half of them standing) were in attendance at Bernhardt's first-ever tent appearance.

This modestly printed, unillustrated article, titled "Bernhardt In Tent In Texas," occupies only twenty-four lines, while the headlines scream, "Emma LeDoux Is Caught." Two articles–introduced by a two-column blow-up of Emma's face, and bearing larger headings than the Bernhardt article–are titled "Admits Identity When Arrested" and "Admits She Put The Body In A Trunk." These two articles spread across half the sheet and continue on to page two, where they are joined by a third LeDoux article, plus an enlarged snapshot of Emma shortly after arrest. Together, the three LeDoux articles fill the entire second sheet, occupying six columns topped with the headline "Tells Improbable Stories of the Crime."

And this is not the only instance in which editors required "The Divine Sarah" to play a poor second fiddle to the meek mountain housewife, unwillingly propelled into the limelight by a domestic tragedy so bizarre that shock waves echoed round the world. Even the disastrous 1906 earthquake in San Francisco failed to eclipse the Emma LeDoux story for more than a few days.

In the exorbitant amount of publicity generated, this early California trial was the forerunner of the state's 1994 murder case involving O. J. and Nicole Simpson. In fact, the two highly publicized California trials had much in common. In both, the accused was charged with murdering an ex-spouse, a history of previous spousal battery existed, the method of killing was unimaginably horrible, it was difficult to believe the accused capable of committing such a brutal crime, the crime would have been difficult to carry out unaided, the accused claimed to be innocent, the extremely challenging case attracted leading attorneys of the day, defense attorneys professed a belief in the innocence of the accused, a steady stream of leaks flowed from investigators to press, legal questions threatened the admittance of key evidence, the coroner botched the autopsy, and excessive pretrial publicity jeopardized the defendant's chance for a fair trial.

From beginning to end, the murder case involving Emma LeDoux brought a series of shocking discoveries. A standard news headline became "New Sensation in LeDoux Case." First, came the discovery of the corpse of Emma's alleged victim at Stockton, a transportation and agricultural center located at the mouth of the San Joaquin River. At six o'clock in the evening of 24 March 1906, a Saturday, the baggage-master at the Southern Pacific depot entered the baggage room, closed the doors and windows, and built a roaring fire in the stove. It soon became very hot and stuffy in the small, enclosed space, but he was suffering from a cough and sniffles and thought that spending a few hours seated next to the hot stove might "break up the cold."

Later in the evening, he had to move a large, roped trunk that had been left on the scales, and while rolling the heavy object to one side, he later related, he heard "a bumping in there just like a big chunk of meat." Suspecting that "some people going up in the country was taking a trunk load of meat up with them," he said, I "put my nose down to the key-hole . . . and there was a dead smell came out."

Quickly, the baggage-master called Stockton police, notifying them he thought "there was a dead person in the trunk." In response, Chief of Police Edward Baker, the district attorney, and a police captain hurried to the depot. At Chief Baker's order, his captain applied a chisel and hatchet to the trunk's lock and gradually pried it off. With others in the room hovering above him, the baggage-master related, the police captain "lifted the lid," and "I saw a man's leg fly up." The foot at the end of the extended leg was covered with a black stocking, but no shoe.