“Where was his rig?” asked Larkin.
“It was over in Rundell’s alley,” King replied. “He had a light spring buggy. I got in with him and we started up Centre Street, going toward Shelby Basin. We just got out of town and he presented a quart of whiskey and we drank quite a little. When we got near to Shelby, he said ‘I want to do a job and want you to help me, I know where this is a lot of money. I will get the money and split with you.’ And I was fool enough to go with him. I said to O’Connell: ‘Do you think that we can get this without much trouble?’”
King continued. “When we got pretty near to Shelby, he stopped in a hollow of the road and hitched the horse, but he drove on the grass for quite a ways before he stopped and hitched the horse. When I went to get out of the rig I almost fell out because I was so drunk. When we started up toward the house I said ‘Why this is Old Man Phelps!’”
King said that he could see from the window the old man sitting in the middle room. He could not see anyone else. So he circled back around to the kitchen door and went in from the back way. From inside the door, he picked up an old broom. He pulled it outside and hacked off the end with an old axe that stood there. King and O’Connell then went up to the back door and rapped on it with their fists. Their breath hung in the icy night air.
“Yes?” They heard the old man get up, his footsteps making their way to the door.
Phelps opened the door, and the men walked right in.
“You both get out of here!” Phelps yelled.
O’Connell hit Phelps with the stick. But Phelps had a hold of the doorknob, and he reeled around and fell toward the stove. He collapsed in a heap on the ground.
O’Connell started to look for the money when a woman in her nightdress fled by, leaving through the door they came in. The door swung shut, but not tightly. O’Connell shot once through the door.
“Did you hear her holler?” asked Larkin.
“I thought I heard a noise, but I did not look.”
“What did O’Connell do next?”
“He turned around and shot Phelps three times, I think,” said King. “All the shots hit him.”
“Did he groan?” asked Larkin. They needed to prove Phelps was still alive when O’Connell shot him.
“Yes,” replied King. “He made a little noise and moved his leg a little. I do not know what O’Connell did with the gun, but he went into the next room and came out with the money. I do not remember of seeing any purse, but he came out in the kitchen with the money. I thought that I heard a noise outside, so I said: ‘Let us get out of here.’ He handed me $100 and I put it in my pants pocket. It was all in bills and he had quite a wad in his hand, it was all paper money, and I did not see any silver. When we came out I said to him: ‘You go your way and I will go mine.’ He took his rig and drove away. I went up the road quite a way, pretty near to Reynold’s hotel: then I cut across to another road and went to Alabama Centre and then to Alabama Station.”
He continued. “Just as I got in front of the Dry House I met a farmer driving, and I asked him where he was going. He said he was going to Akron, and I asked him if I could get there quicker by riding with him than waiting for a train, and he said yes. I do not know who he was. He had one horse and a buggy.”
“Where did you go?” asked Larkin.
“I rode from the east side of the railroad back to Akron, to the American Hotel. The farmer tied his horse under a shed there, and I asked him if he would not go and have a cigar; but he said no, he was in a hurry to get back home, and he went up the street. I went into the hotel.”
“How long did you stay in Akron?”
“I stayed there all day, drinking a little.”
“Where did you stay?”
“I stayed in Parker’s livery stable,” King said.
Grace pulled up to King, and she read him the letter from Ethel Stielow claiming her father was innocent. The one with the drawn signature of “fifty kisses.” When Grace was finished, she stared at King. He was weeping softly.
“I’m the one that killed Phelps and Mrs. Wolcott—not Charles Stielow,” King said. He then—at Grace’s insistence—repeated it to the sheriff and then to the judge.
“King,” she said, “just raise your right hand.”
They had a full confession. They were all celebrating inside because nowhere in that story—nowhere—was Charlie Stielow’s name. Once everyone was notified, the feeling was equal parts exhaustion and elation. Even King himself seemed relieved. When asked why he had confessed, King said he wanted “to do a manly thing.” He was then taken back to the jail. After King’s confession was finalized in shorthand after midnight, the authorities mobilized. District Attorney Knickerbocker sent his car over to convey King to the jail at Albion.
The next day, Grace found out that King had retracted his entire confession.
“This is a malicious, absurd, evil lie!” Grace shouted. “King couldn’t make a declaration of that kind of his own free will!” She was fuming in her own way. “It’s amusing, really,” she said, “to think that those who are so determined to get Stielow into the chair must stoop to charges of this sort.” Grace immediately got on the phone with Knickerbocker. Grace asked to see a copy of the retraction.
“I wasn’t in the room when King made his statement,” Knickerbocker replied. “I haven’t seen a copy myself.” Grace was stunned. How could the district attorney not know if there was a copy? Was King being held as a legal prisoner? She asked if there had been a warrant sworn out against King on the murder charge. On the other end of the line, Knickerbocker hesitated.
“Wait a moment,” he said. Two minutes passed before a strange voice came on the line.
“Hello?”
“Why, I was talking to Mr. Knickerbocker,” Grace said.
“He has gone out,” the voice said. The line clicked dead.
That afternoon, Erwin King, who had done a good job of disappearing after the murders, took to the newspapers to make his case as visible as he could.
“That Little Valley story was a lie,” said King. “I wish I had never seen that gang at Little Valley. I would be all right now. This lady, Mrs. Humiston, I did not know who she was; never saw her before.
“I was not introduced to the lady,” King said, almost proud of himself. “We got out of the city and they talked about this trial of Stielow. They wanted to know what I thought of it. I told them they had the guilty man, and she told me she thought she was going to get some information from me. I told her I did not see how.”