Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1911 — GETS POISON STORIES MIXED [ARTICLE]

GETS POISON STORIES MIXED

Grace Hammes Can’t Explain Why She Gave Different Versions. Ontonagon, Mich., Oct. 24. Under cross-examination Grace Hammes, the state’s principal witness in the trial of Mrs. Laura Stannard on the charge of killing her husband, Charles, by strychnine poisoning, could not stick exactly to the story told before the coroner’s jury in May and could not satisfactorily tell why she told different stories after Stannard’s death. On direct examination she reiterated the story told the coroner’s jury, implicating Mrs. Stannard and claiming the defendant placed a powder in Stannard’s coffee cup as a cure for drunkenness, and that afterward Stannard said the coffee was bitter and she (Grace) and Stannard found lumpy white sediment in the cup. The state’s case largely depends on the girl’s evidence and that of Dr. Vaughan of the University of Michigan, who found traces of strychnine in the viscera.