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Pearl Michaels murder trial nearing end, started Tuesday

Steamboat Springs — The trial of Pearl Gates Michaels swung to its third day today as the sordid story of the death of John H. Austin was unveiled before a packed courtroom, halfway filled with schoolchildren.

The defense's first witness, the accused Pearl Gates Michaels, took the stand late Wednesday afternoon and underwent a grueling cross-examination by District Attorney Worth Shrimpton.

Shrimpton introduced as evidence photographs taken by Undersheriff Harold Bersche for which Pearl posed, showing the position she took when striking Austin from behind.

One of the main points Shrimpton brought out was a statement made earlier by a state's witness, Miss Grubich, a waitress at the Colorado Bar in Oak Creek.

The waitress said Pearl told her about 7 p.m., a few hours before Austin was bludgeoned with a hammer in his home, that she was going home to "cut his throat."

Pearl said she had no knowledge of either being in the bar or making the statement.

Another item of evidence introduced by the district attorney was a statement Mrs. Michaels signed several days after her arrest and giving a vivid description of the manner in which Austin met his death.

Pearl left the stand, visibly shaken at 5 p.m. There are several more defense witnesses, rebuttal witnesses and then there will be closing statements by counsel and instructions before the case goes to the jury either late today or tomorrow morning.

In his opening argument before the court, District Attorney Worth Shrimpton said he would show the murder of John Austin was a premeditated act of felonious intent committed by Mrs. Pearl Gates Michaels on Feb. 26, 1958.

"The state will show Austin had called at three bars in Oak Creek asking the owners not to serve Mrs. Michaels, that she said at one of them that she was going home to 'cut his throat' and that night she picked up a hammer, struck him from behind, and while he was crawling on all fours, struck him 32 times causing severe brain damage and death," he said.

"We will show Pearl Gates Michaels left an unbarred home, with only a bloody nose and a small cut on her right ear, and said 'I would do it again,'" he concluded.

Defense attorney Nichols Magill, court-appointed, said he did not intend to argue that Pearl Michaels was drunk and living illicitly with John Austin.

"The defense intends to prove self-defense," he told the court. "We will show she was drunk when she went into the house, and in a stupor. That she begged Austin not to hit her anymore and that she struck him to save her own life.

"We intend to show she committed the act without malice, without premeditation and as an act of necessary self-defense," Magill said. "There was a struggle, there is evidence of the beating she took, and of the desperate attempts to get help for Austin."

Dr. James W. Leslie was a state witness. He operated on Austin, who died on the operating table about 12:30 from a brain injury from a depressed skull fracture, the result of numerous blows with a blunt instrument, according to the doctor.

Testifying to Pearl Michaels' condition, the doctor said she was "intoxicated and hysterical" and a physical examination showed she "had her nose cut, small fingernail abrasions on her face and had blood in her nostrils, all minor injuries."