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A tense moment in this sensational trial came during the testimony of Mayor Merrill, when young Louis Skaroff was suddenly produced in court and the question flashed at the cringing witness: "Do you recognize this boy standing here? Do you recognize him, Louis Skaroff?" "I think I have seen him," mumbled the mayor.
It was on Monday night about ten o'clock that the night jailer took Skaroff into a room where Mayor Merrill and a man posing as an immigration officer were seated. The fake immigration officer tried to frighten the prisoner with threats of deportation, after which the jailer beat Skaroff across the head.
Upon regaining consciousness the mutilated boy found himself in the jail corridor, crushed beneath Merrill's massive form, the mayor having grasped Skaroff by the hair in order to repeatedly hammer the lad's head against the hard cement floor. Finding that Skaroff's spirit could not be broken the cowards finally desisted. Skaroff was released at the end of eleven days.
But when one of their own witnesses went on the stand here, in rebuttal, and told you that Louis Skaroff came out of that room with his arms above his head, crying, with the blood running from his finger tips, I knew that you knew that Louis Skaroff had told the truth.
"Counsel says that Louis Skaroff lied. Now I am very frank to confess that when we produced that story on the witness stand I feared you would not believe it, not because I doubted the truthfulness of his statement but because the story itself is so brutal and inhuman that I questioned whether there could be found anywhere in the county twelve persons who would think such things could possibly happen just thirty miles away.
The insincerity of this vacillating lackey of the lumber trust was demonstrated by his brutal treatment of young Louis Skaroff, who with Chester Micklin and Osmond Jacobs, had been arrested and thrown into jail when the three, bravely taking their lives in their hands, attempted to speak on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore two hours after the tragedy.
Irving W. Ziegaus, secretary to Governor Lister, testified that the letter concerning Everett sent from the Seattle I. W. W. had been received; Steven M. Fowler identified certain telegrams sent from Everett to Seattle officials by David Clough on November 5th; after which Chester Micklin, who had been jailed in Everett following the tragedy, corroborated parts of the story of Louis Skaroff.
Louis Skaroff followed with a detailed story of the murderous attack made upon him by Mayor Merrill in the Everett jail, his story being unshaken when he was recalled and put thru a grilling cross-examination. William Roberts, who had been beaten and deported with Harry Feinberg, related his experience.
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