Click here to return to Part 1 of the Murderous Dreams of Mrs. Mather! 

Fred Fanning and Mrs. McCauley were in jail, awaiting the chemist report and a coroner’s jury. Fanning had confessed, in grisly detail, how he murdered Mrs. Mary Short, at Mrs. McCauley’s instigation. During his confession, Fanning said he took a purse containing $61.60 belonging to the woman and told the police about $45 he had left with Mrs. McCauley. The remaining $16.60 was missing.

Mrs. Fannie Mather who had insisted from the moment she arrived in Topeka that she had seen the murder in her dreams was triumphantly enjoying the press coverage.

Whenever he was questioned, Fanning added more details, none of which made sense. He described counting money, but the police noted Fanning was illiterate and didn’t know how to count.

Authorities had little evidence against Mrs. McCauley. There was no evidence she was complicit in the murder. When she learned of this development, Mrs. Mather vowed to find the evidence against Mrs. McCauley herself. Or rather, Mrs. English. Despite earlier reporting, Minnie English proved to be her proper name. Several of the papers continued to call her Mrs. McCauley but she had remarried several years earlier.

At least a seed of doubt was beginning to emerge. Do you notice subtle clues in the headlines?

The first revelation occurred when the chemist’s report was returned. Dr. F. B. Dains, of Washburn University, analyzed Mrs. Mather’s stomach for evidence of the Rough on Rats and found no trace of poison.

When the coroner’s jury convened, it became apparent at once that Fanning had not murdered Mrs. Short:

• Deputy Sheriff Judkins testified Fanning lied when he confessed to the murder. The sheriff said Mrs. Mather promised to forgive Fanning if he confessed and to “see him out of his trouble” by paying his way back to his home in Illinois. (This was long before Miranda rights!)
• Drs. Amis and Magee testified on the autopsy findings. Mrs. Short’s heart was in poor condition and was likely the cause of her death.
• Despite previous claims that Mrs. Short died very suddenly after ingesting Rough on Rats, two neighbors testified they were called to attend her on her deathbed. They said she had been short of breath and complained of her head but these were not symptoms of arsenic poison.
• Mrs. Mather testified that, despite Fanning’s rather frail appearance in court, on the day he confessed to murdering her sister he was a strong and healthy man.
• Fred Fanning was placed upon the stand but would only repeat, “I have nothing to say,” over and over. “It is believed the man is very nearly crazy and that a commission in lunacy may be more what he deserves than a trial in the district court,” the Topeka Daily Capital reported.

In the end, the coroner’s jury returned a verdict that Mrs. Short had died a natural death, as indicated on her death certificate.

Mrs. English and her husband were released from custody at once.

Fred Fanning was immediately rearrested on the charge of grand larceny regarding the missing $16.60. This was not a very clear-cut charge as the authorities only had Fanning’s word that any money was missing and they had already established he couldn’t count.

Of all the questions swirling around the case, the most important were, now that he had been exonerated by the evidence, why didn’t Fanning retract his confession? And why did he confess to a murder he didn’t commit in the first place? Officials doubted he had only confessed because Mrs. Mather had scared him and simultaneously promised him a way out of the whole mess.  This seemed unlikely and indeed, it was not the real explanation.

Go to the finale!