WAS UNDER SPELL.
GIRL, CHARGED WITH THEFT,
MAKES THIS EXPLANATION.
UNABLE TO CONTROL ACTIONS.
COMPLETELY IN FORTUNETELLER'S
GRASP, SHE ASSERTS.
Maggie Paul Says Clothes She is Alleged to Have Stolen Were
Given to Her -- Mrs. Moran, Medium, Tells a Different Story.
Miss Maggie Paul, the 18-year old daughter of J. J. Paul, saloonkeeper at Eighteenth and Charlotte streets, was arraigned before Justice Miller yesterday charged by Mrs. D. J. Moran, a fortune teller at 815 East Fifteenth street, with taking $91.75 worth of wearing apparel. She pleaded not guilty and her bond was fixed at $500. She was held over night in the matron's room at police headquarters and expects to give bond today.
Miss Paul said she had lived at Mrs. Moran's and played the piano during what she terms a "spirit fortune telling stunt supposed to be presided over by a defunct Indian chief, one 'White Coon.' " She also says that, had she married John Moran, the 24-year-old son of the fortune teller, she would have had none of her present troubles.
"She has been trying for a long time to get me to marry her son," said Miss Paul last night. "I went to a dance Christmas eve at 910 Campbell street with Mrs. Moran's daughter. When I got to thinking of that marrying business it was all so repulsive to me that I ran away and went to the house of a friend at 1214 East Eight street.
"When I am around where that woman is she casts a kind of spell over me and I can't but obey her every wish. It took all my courage to make up my mind to run away from it all. I got tired of playing for a lot of fake fortune telling business anyway. Often I have seen a person with money come to the seance and heard one of the Morans say: 'Trim that sucker. Don't let him get away. Make arrangements for a private seance for he's got real money.' It was all so false and shammy to one who knew and I didn't want to marry John Moran anyway."
Mrs. J. J. Paul, Maggie's mother, and George Brown, to whose house she went when she ran away from the 'White Coon' seances, went to police headquarters last night to see her daughter.
"This is all a trumped up charge which cannot be proved," said the mother. "That woman has had a hypnotic spell over my daughter for two years. We used to live in Midland court on East Sixteenth street and Mrs. Moran lived just across the street. Maggie got to going there and right then the trouble began. Maggie was made to believe that I was killing her with slow poison and she was afraid of me. Didn't I go to Mrs. Moran's house where she had Maggie locked up in the cellar and make her give her up?
"The girl fears that woman right now. You can see it. All this has been done because she ran away when engaged to John Moran. And I don't blame her for that or leaving those Indian 'White Coon' seances, either."
Miss Paul said that a sealskin cloak, valued at $50, which she is charged with taking, was stolen from the cloak room at the dance hall at 910 Campbell three weeks ago when Miss Moran was along. A skirt, valued in the complaint at $17, she was wearing yesterday. She said it cost $3.50 and was given to her by Mrs. Moran and would fit no one else in the family. In fact, she claims that all the missing clothing but the cloak was either given her previous to or at Christmas.
Miss Paul was arrested by Detective William Bates yesterday afternoon at the home of a friend at Eight street and Forest avenue. She said she had left the Brown home because she heard Mrs. Moran had found out where she was, and she was afraid she would "look at me that way again, and then I would have to go back and do anything asked -- perhaps marry John."
The girl who is afraid of the woman who gives seances controlled by the ancient Indian spirit, "White Coon," has blue eyes, blonde hair, and is petite and pretty.
Said Mrs. Moran, when asked about Miss Paul:
"On Christmas night she wore my sealskin coat to a Yoeman's ball at 910 Campbell street. She came home without the coat, and said it had been stolen. New Year's night she put on $42.25 worth of our silk clothes, jewelry and a hat and went to another Yeoman's ball with Mamie. That time she got lost from Mamie and we just found her today living at 1214 East Eighth street with the same Mrs. Brown who had her arrested the time we paid her fine. We've heard that the sealskin jacket was thrown from the window to someone and wasn't stolen. We stuck to her, even when her mother was going to have us arrested for harboring her. We thought her parents were hard on her. They have a divorce case on trial tomorrow."
"Did Miss Paul assist in your seances?"
"Oh, she sat in them," explained Mrs. Moran's husband, "but she didn't help earn any of the clothes."
