Udderzook v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 02 July 1874 |
| Citation | 76 Pa. 340 |
| Parties | Udderzook <I>versus</I> The Commonwealth. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, WILLIAMS, MERCUR and GORDON, JJ.
Error to the Court of Oyer and Terminer of Chester county: Of January Term 1874, No. 230.
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J. F. Perdue and W. Mac Veagh, for plaintiff in error.
A. Wanger, District Attorney, and W. M. Hayes, for Commonwealth.
This is indeed a strange case, a combination by two to cheat insurance companies, and a murder of one by the other to reap the fruit of the fraud. Winfield Scott Goss, an inhabitant of Baltimore, had insured his life to the amount of $25,000. He was last seen at his shop, on the York road, a short distance from Baltimore, on the evening of the 2d of February 1872, in company with William E. Udderzook, his brother-in-law, the prisoner, and a young man living near. They left him to go to the house of the young man's father.
In a short time the shop was discovered to be on fire. After it had burned down, a body was drawn out of the fire, supposed to be that of Goss. Claims were made upon the insurance companies, the prisoner being active in prosecuting them. On the 30th of June 1873, the prisoner and a stranger, a man identified as Alexander C. Wilson, appeared at Jennerville, in Chester county, this state, and remained over night and the next day. In the evening, July 1st, the prisoner and this stranger left Jennerville together in a buggy. Next day, on being met and asked what had become of his companion, the prisoner said he had left him at Parkesburg. On the 11th of July, the body of a man, identified on the trial as W. S. Goss, or A. C. Wilson, was found in Baer's woods, about ten miles from Jennerville; the head and trunk buried in a shallow hole in one place and the arms and legs in another. The stranger who was with the prisoner at Jennerville, identified as A. C. Wilson, was traced from place to place, living in retirement, from June 22d 1872, until within a day or two of the time when he appeared with the prisoner at Jennerville. During this interval this prisoner and Wilson were seen together several times, under circumstances indicating great intimacy and privacy. Wilson has not been seen or heard of since the evening of July 1st 1873, when he left Jennerville in company with the prisoner. The great question in the case was the identity of A. C. Wilson as W. S. Goss. This was established by a variety of circumstances and many witnesses, leaving no doubt that Goss and Wilson were the same person, and that the body found in Baer's woods was that of Goss.
All the bills of exceptions, except one, relate to this question of identity, the most material being those relating to the use of a photograph of Goss. This photograph, taken in Baltimore on the same plate with a gentleman named Langley, was clearly proved by him, and also by the artist who took it. Many objections were made to the use of this photograph, the chief being to the admission of it to identify Wilson as Goss; the prisoner's counsel regarding this use of it as certainly incompetent. That a portrait or a miniature, painted from life and proved to resemble the person, may be used to identify him cannot be doubted, though, like all other evidences of identity, it is open to disproof or doubt, and must be determined by the jury. There seems to be no reason why a photograph, proved to be taken from life and to resemble the person photographed, should not fill the same measure of evidence. It is true the photographs we see are not the original likenesses; their lines are not traced by the hand of the artist, nor can the artist be called to testify that he faithfully limned the portrait. They are but paper copies taken from the original plate, called the negative, made sensitive by chemicals, and printed by the sunlight through the camera. It is the result of art, guided by certain principles of science.
In the case before us, such a...
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