Utah Episode

When the clerk of the U. S. District Court in Salt Lake City, Utah, began to read the court minutes one morning last week, no one took much notice of a plain middle-fortyish woman who sat on the front bench, apparently listening. Most eyes were engaged in watching Judge Tillman Davis Johnson settle himself behind his bench for a morning's work. Judge Johnson is 69 and not undistinguished in appearance. Few of the people in the courtroom even noticed the plain lady when she rose from her seat and approached the bench with a folded magazine in her hand.

The lady gained everyone's attention, in another two seconds, however, by whisking an automatic pistol from her magazine and firing two peremptory shots at Judge Johnson. The courtroom banged with noise. Splinters flew from the woodwork and a blackboard behind Judge Johnson, whose reflexes made him huddle down into his chair so suddenly that the next moment he tumbled down the bench step, though as yet unhurt.

Muttering hoarsely, the gun-woman scurried around the bench and let four more shots fly at the terrified old jurist. A bullet in the right hip knocked him down a second time. A bullet in the left thigh knocked him down a third time. A bullet grazed his knee just before bailiffs over-powered his would-be murderess.

Who would want to kill Judge Tillman Davis Johnson? Mrs. Eliza Simmons, widow, was one person. "I'll show you how to get justice!" was what she had screamed as she shot. At her home, Widow Simmons produced a rambling document penned by her, in which she declared war on the Utah Copper Co., for whom her husband had been a brakeman until his accidental death in 1910, and on "hardboiled" Judge Johnson.

Mrs. Simmons sued the Utah Copper Co. for $10,500 for herself and four children. State courts awarded her $850. In 1924, it occurred to her to ask a new judgment, for $25,000. Judge Johnson dismissed the case in his court.

Convalescent in hospital, Judge Johnson, a public servant whose experience includes school teaching among Indians, declared Widow Simmons irresponsible, crazy, hallucinated. So did U. S. Senator William H. King of Utah, who was surprised to hear that Mrs. Simmons, whom he had never met, would rather have "gotten" him than Judge Johnson for assistance she fancied he had rendered the Utah Copper Co.