ves
Crim and McDermott to Greencastle, in search of the identification of
the shoes had aroused the people at that place, especially so, the
suspicion of a Mr. A. W. Early, Manager of the Western Union, to whose
noble work, the officers owe nearly all their success and information.

The description of the body of the dead girl, especially that part,
which described her fingers as resembling those of a seamstress, and the
little wart on the finger, aroused the suspicion of Mrs. Alexander S.
Bryan, whose daughter Pearl, was, as the mother thought, visiting
friends in Indianapolis, Ind. Nothing was mentioned of these suspicions
outside the immediate family, but so strong were the suspicions with
them, that Fred Bryan a brother of Pearl telegraphed to Indianapolis to
Pearl's friends, asking if she was there. The answer came that Pearl had
not been in Indianapolis, although she had left for that city, Jan., 28.

A. W. Early, the manager for the Western Union Telegraph Company at
Greencastle, saw the telegram and answer from Indianapolis. It was then,
he knew, that he possessed positive information, not only as to the
identification of the headless body at the Morgue in Newport, but also
to the fixing of the guilt on one or more persons, one of whom at least
was Early's intimate friend. Realizing this and awe-stricken with the
horribleness of the deed in which his friend was, to say the least,
indirectly implicated, he rushed at once to the hotel and in an excited
manner called the officers out to tell them his story. After a very
hurried conference with Early the officers all left the hotel to go with
Early to his office where he gave the first real clew to the victim and
upon which information, three men Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling,
students at the Ohio Dental College, in Cincinnati, and William Wood, a
medical student who was with his uncle in South Bend, Ind., were on that
same night arrested, charged with the murder and complicity in the
murder of Pearl Bryan, whose headless body lay at Undertaker White's
Establishment in Newport, Ky.

Early's story was that he came to Greencastle Oct. 4., 1895. "Soon after
my arrival at Greencastle I made the acquaintance of Will Wood, a
student at Depauw University. This acquaintance soon ripened into a
friendship which brought us together a great deal and made us confide to
each other much more than is ordinary among young men.

"So fast did the friendship between Will Wood an