Franklin Affair by Jim Lehrer Page A

go on with these twelve pages or head for the river or the train station. There was no other choice.
    He started again with page one, this time for detailed content.
    With the magnifying glass, his knowledge of language patterns during the American Revolution and its spy techniques, plus some logic and educated guesswork, he painstakingly began to piece together what was being said on the twelve pages, writing out his notes in longhand with a pen on white copy paper as he went.
    He had paid no attention to the time since he left Elbow Clymer’s party. All he knew was that it was close to two in the afternoon when he entered Wally’s house.
    Now, as he laid down the magnifying glass and the pen, he knew without having to look toward the window that it was dark outside.
    Without stopping for more than a few seconds to take a deep breath and delay some even darker thoughts, he read back through his notes.
    â†’The meeting was clearly Adams’s idea. He essentially summoned the others.
    â†’Ben came. So did Washington, Hamilton, and Madison.
    â†’Adams said he wanted “extraordinary charges of heinous criminal acts” to be considered against Ben.
    â†’They met at a private location, near but apparently not in Philadelphia.
    â†’Adams functioned as a kind of prosecutor. Washington, Hamilton, and Madison served as judge and jury.
    â†’Ben, no question, was the defendant.
    â†’Adams: “Evidence of an overwhelming nature” that Ben made a deal with a man named Button Nelson to “wantonly and with inexplicable malice” murder Melissa Anne Wolcott.
    â†’Wolcott, “aged 45 or thereabouts”: widow of a Captain Wolcott of the Continental Army, daughter of Arthur
[
could be
Mac
Arthur, hard to tell for sure
]
Harrison—Quaker, merchant, Loyalist.
    â†’Adams offered a written confession. Said it was Nelson’s. Nelson was a ship loader, down on his luck. Poor. “Had killed before.” Contacted by a man about killing the Wolcott woman. Agreed to do it for fifty British pounds—ten pounds now, forty when deed done.
    â†’Nelson’s confession: Took large knife, heavy rope, and gunnysack to woman’s home on Second Street. House in ill repair and “full of filth.” Found the woman abed in a second-floor room, smelling, sweating, and moaning from some kind of distemper. He raised knife above her to stab her. She said, “Ben Franklin sent you, didn’t he?” Her weak voice and thin face reminded him of “starving mangy dog.” She said, “I am the mother of William, Dr. Franklin’s only living son. I had never once before made a demand on him, and only now do I request funds for sustenance and medical care. He sends in its stead a man with a knife to take my life.” Nelson plunged knife hard and fast down into the woman’s chest. She moaned but did not scream. He pulled the knife free and repeated the action several times, striking as many as a dozen blows. He wrapped the corpse up in her dirty and now bloody bedclothes and stuffed her and the knife in a sack, which he then tied tight with his rope. He took the sack to a boat with oars docked at the river nearby. Said the sack was “a load no heaver than a bundle of snow-flakes.” Used rope to attached a large rock to the sack. Rowed downriver for nearly half an hour “past all civilization” and dropped sack with the dead woman into the Delaware.
    â†’The next evening, Nelson said he met “the originator of the deed” at Seven Seas Tavern on South Street. Man gave him the forty pounds owed. Nelson recounted what the woman said about Ben and William Franklin. Man, “in the dress of a gentleman of means,” raged. Told Nelson he must never repeat what the woman said. Otherwise, he would join her at the bottom of the Delaware.
    â†’More Nelson: Scared, he left tavern and went straight to the home of his brother, Roger Nelson. Repeated