Trial of Crenshaw for Lynching

[Summarized] Second Day’s Examination.

Examination for prosecution continued. Richard Rivers, sworn: I know of a riot in Los Angeles on the 24th of Oct.; it commenced in front of Caswell’s store; know where Coroner Hook is; the riot was against the Chinese; they occupied the Coronel building; saw some 2 or 3 hundred come between 8 and 10 o’clock; saw shouting, shooting, shooting; at the Chinese’s head; saw the mob make threatening expressions; the mob was threatening in appearance; did not see Chinamen taken from the building; saw a Chinaman hanged; on the gateway of the place now occupied by Mr. Heber; do not know who he was hanged by; Harris and myself and another man had a Chinaman in custody; he was taken away from us and hanged; arrested the Chinaman opposite Meyer’s store on Los Angeles Street; the Chinaman was taken from us in front of Burdick’s store; arrested him in front of Coronel building; a crowd in front of the building followed us; heard them shout “hang him, shoot him;” there were many of those who followed who assisted in taking him away; saw them taking the Chinaman to jail; am an officer; they took the Chinaman up Temple Street and hanged him; remained there about two minutes; it was about half past seven; returned to the corner of Caswell’s store; heard shooting; saw them throwing fire-balls into the house.

When asked whether he saw any violence demonstrated against the buildings opposite the Coronel, Rivers conceded only that he witnessed shots fired, fire-balls tossed, and the two-minute lynching itself—no grand conflagration, no other Chinese seized.

Emile Harris, sworn in the afternoon session, knew Gene Tong “both alive at the Coroner’s office about six o’clock that evening and dead in the jail yard the next morning.” “I saw him alive at the Coroner’s … next time I saw him he was in the jail yard, dead; Coroner was holding inquest; he saw him first in the wagon that brought him to town; he died from his injuries; know where the remains are; was examined by Dr. Mason, Coroner’s physician.” On cross-examination, Harris admitted he did not witness the hanging itself and could not say who removed the body from the scaffold before nine o’clock.

James Reed, another bystander, testified that he “was at Caswell’s corner when the mob broke for the jail; saw men throwing fire-balls; saw them tearing up paving flags; knew the Coroner; heard Gene Tong called out by name; saw only one Chinaman; saw him hanging from a scaffold in front of Scovel’s; was there in the evening; saw the body until about nine o’clock, when it was removed.” Under cross-examination Reed likewise could offer no account of the body’s final disposition.

Defense counsel strove to undermine each recollection—questioning precise times, distances to distant corners (Dr. Gehlo’s, Laventhal’s, Tombstone’s corral), and whether any building was actually set aflame. Yet even under rigorous scrutiny, every witness agreed on the mob’s size (200–300 men), its armaments (clubs, pistols, fire-balls), and the central fact that Gene Tong was snatched from the Coronel corral, dragged up Temple Street, strung to a rope, and left hanging in full view of the crowd for nearly two minutes.

By day’s end, the courtroom had mapped out the chronology of horror: rioters assembling near Caswell’s at about eight o’clock, the captive laborer hauled through the streets, his death-sentence carried out at half-past seven, and his remains held aloft until after dark. As the judge adjourned until ten the next morning, the district attorney announced his intention to call officers, bystanders, and perhaps even confessed participants to fill in the hours between the lynching and the body’s final disappearance—and to secure convictions for murder.