The Murray girl had lived long enough to make a statement to the police, although Mr. Holcombe only learned this later.  On the statement being shown to Ladley in the jail, and his learning of the girl’s death, he collapsed.  He confessed before he was hanged, and his confession, briefly, was like this: 

He had met the Murray girl in connection with the typing of his play, and had fallen in love with her.  He had never cared for his wife, and would have been glad to get rid of her in any way possible.  He had not intended to kill her, however.  He had planned to elope with the Murray girl, and awaiting an opportunity, had persuaded her to leave home and to take a room near my house.

Here he had visited her daily, while his wife was at the theater.

They had planned to go to New York together on Monday, March the fifth.  On Sunday, the fourth, however, Mr. Bronson and Mr. Howell had made their curious proposition.  When he accepted, Philip Ladley maintained that he meant only to carry out the plan as suggested.  But the temptation was too strong for him.  That night, while his wife slept, he had strangled her.

I believe he was frantic with fear, after he had done it.  Then it occurred to him that if he made the body unrecognizable, he would be safe enough.  On that quiet Sunday night, when Mr. Reynolds reported all peaceful in the Ladley room, he had cut off the poor wretch’s head and had tied it up in a pillow-slip weighted with my onyx clock!

It is a curious fact about the case that the scar which his wife incurred to enable her to marry him was the means of his undoing.  He insisted, and I believe he was telling the truth, that he did not know of the scar:  that is, his wife had never told him of it, and had been able to conceal it.  He thought she had probably used paraffin in some way.

In his final statement, written with great care and no little literary finish, he told the story in detail:  of arranging the clues as Mr. Howell and Mr. Bronson had suggested; of going out in the boat, with the body, covered with a fur coat, in the bottom of the skiff:  of throwing it into the current above the Ninth Street bridge, and of seeing the fur coat fall from the boat and carried beyond his reach; of disposing of the head near the Seventh Street bridge:  of going to a drug store, as per the Howell instructions, and of coming home at four o’clock, to find me at the head of the stairs.

[Illustration:  While his wife slept.]

Several points of confusion remained.  One had been caused by Temple Hope’s refusal to admit that the dress and hat that figured in the case were to be used by her the next week at the theater.  Mr. Ladley insisted that this was the case, and that on that Sunday afternoon his wife had requested him to take them to Miss Hope; that they had quarreled as to whether they should be packed in a box or in the brown valise, and that he had visited Alice Murray instead.  It was on the way there that the idea of finally getting rid of Jennie Brice came to him.  And a way—­using the black and white striped dress of the dispute.