Salt Lake Tribune
2 June 1914
Page 5
HILLSTROM TRIES
TO PROVE A POINT
__________
Is Conducted to a Pawnshop in
Effort to Show Revolver
Was of Small Caliber
__________
At his own request Joseph Hillstrom, accused of the murder of J. G. Morrison, was taken from the county jail yesterday to a pawnshop on West South Temple street, where he attempted to prove that he had purchased a revolver prior to the Morrison killing that was of a smaller caliber than the gun from which the fatal shot was fired.
The records at the shop showed that he had purchased a gun there last December 15, about four weeks before the murder of Morrison, but failed to show the caliber of the gun.
Hillstrom was crestfallen at his failure, but he declared he would prove that he had a gun which was of smaller caliber and that he threw it away just before his arrest following a quarrel over a woman.
Hillstrom goes to trial in the district court next Tuesday. He will contend that the bullet wound from which he was suffering at the time of his arrest was received in an “adventure” involving a woman and not from the gun fired by J. Arlin Morrison, the grocer’s son, before he too was shot down by the highwaymen. He refuses to disclose the name of the woman, declaring that he will go to his death rather than bring her name to light.