Maybe Sara was different.

Maybe he shouldn’t test that irrational theory based on nothing but hope.

Yet when she went to pack her bag and he went to collect the cat accoutrements, he felt only a defiant satisfaction and anticipation for more time with Sara.

LADY KILLER!

January 10, 1850—There was more entertainment in the courtroom today in the case of accused murderer Jonathon Thiroux, as one Molly Faye took the stand. A working girl in the House of Rest for Weary Men, where Anne Donovan was murdered in her sleep, Molly Faye confessed to the room at large that she, like Miss Donovan before her, had entered into an illicit business understanding with the defendant after the death of Miss Donovan.

While this was arguably in poor taste on the part of Mr. Thiroux, it was not a CRIME to move so quickly from one lewd woman to another, but the prosecutor maintains that this illuminates unpleasant aspects of Mr. Thiroux’s character. But before one could even truly form an opinion as to any implications of Miss Faye’s ardent testimony, yet another unfortunate, Sally Swanson, took the stand. Miss Swanson likewise described HER relationship with Mr. Thiroux in such salacious detail that Judge Henry stopped the proceedings and ordered all women and children under the age of eighteen from the courtroom before allowing Miss Swanson to continue.

A dance hall enthusiast, and fond of the sound of her own voice, Miss Swanson spun a tale of devotion and tawdry pleasures of the flesh worthy of the infamous Marquess de Sade, and unfit for description in this newspaper. Yet while most in attendance were either shocked into silence, or simply silent in the raucous, immoral hope of hearing more spill forth from the cherry red lips of Miss Swanson, there was one who could not maintain quiet. Miss Faye, outraged at Miss Swanson’s timeline of her affair with Mr. Thiroux (which invariably overlapped Miss Faye’s own), interrupted most vehemently in protest of Miss Swanson’s “no-good pack o’lies!”

What followed was scarcely to be believed. Miss Swanson calmly stated that Miss Faye was in no uncertain terms a word unprintable in this paper and, frankly, one which is best left on the docks. To which Miss Faye rushed the witness stand and soundly slapped the pretty cheek of her romantic opponent. Such tussling, such pulling and slapping and tearing of hair and cheek and dress, as I have never seen in Judge Henry’s courtroom erupted, and it took three bailiffs a solid two minutes to separate the bawdy hellcats. As the women were being escorted from the bench, Miss Faye wrenched free of her captor and flung herself at the feet of Mr. Thiroux, wrapping arms around his legs and appealing for him to tell the truth, to tell everyone “that he loved her and only her!”

Mr. Jackson has maintained throughout the course of the trial that Mr. Thiroux took knife to flesh and killed Miss Donovan after the “intemperate use of spirits.”