Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1915 — COY PURNELL GUILTY [ARTICLE]

COY PURNELL GUILTY

SON OF HEAD OF HOUSE OF DAVID MUST PAY SIX CENTS. Mrs. Holliday, Former Member of Cult, Awarded Damages by Jury at Benton Harbor, Mich. St. Joseph, Mich., Nov. 12. —The Jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged in the $25,000 Augusta Holliday slander suit against "Prince” Coy Purnell, son of the reigning monarch of the Israel House of David, assessing damages at six cents. Under the verdict the defendant must pay the costs. Mrs. JloHMav was her own last witness. She was called to the stand for cross-examination just before the attorneys began their closing addresses. Before a crowd that jammed the courtroom to suffocation the girl told her story. It was a recital of the life of the “inner court” of Shiloh, "King” Benjamin's headquarters. Benjamin was pictured by Mrs. Holliday as a “debaucher of young girls, operating udder the cloak of religion.”. She told of her own intimate relations with the "seventh angel,” as Benjamin was styled, and asserted that she was only one of more the" a score who were forced to submit to the advances of "the king."