The counsel also made much of the fact that, though it was at midday and many people were not far off, no screams were heard. A vigorous girl like Elizabeth Fales would not have submitted easily, they held, to any such assault as was charged. In the course of the trial a very moving description of the sufferings such a high-strung, ardent nature as this girl's must have undergone, because of her hopeless love, was used to show the reasons for suicide. And following the habit of the times, the lawyers turned their work to moral ends by beseeching the parents in the crowded court-room to exercise a greater vigilance over the social life of their young people, and so prevent the possibility of their forming any such attachment as had moved Elizabeth Fales to take her own life.
Yet all this eloquent pleading was in vain, for the court found Jason Fairbanks guilty of murder and sentenced him to be hanged. From the court-room he was taken to the Dedham gaol, but on the night of the seventeenth of August he was enabled to make his escape through the offices of a number of men who believed him innocent, and for some days he was at liberty. At length, however, upon a reward of one thousand dollars being offered for his apprehension, he was captured near Northampton, Massachusetts, which town he had reached on his journey to Canada.
The gallows upon which "justice" ultimately asserted itself is said to have been constructed of a tree cut from the old Fairbanks place.
The Fairbanks house is still standing, having been occupied for almost two hundred and seventy-five years by the same family, which is now in the eighth generation of the name. The house is surrounded by magnificent old elms, and was built by Jonathan Fairbanks, who came from Sowerby, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1633. The cupboards are filled with choice china, and even the Fairbanks cats, it is said, drink their milk out of ancient blue saucers that would drive a collector wild with envy.
The house is now (1902) the home of Miss Rebecca Fairbanks, an old lady of seventy-five years, who will occupy it throughout her lifetime, although the place is controlled by the Fairbanks Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution, who hold their monthly meetings there.