Today in Salem: Prominent ministers have arrived from Boston, an unusually large number of witnesses are ready to testify, and the crowd is nearly overflowing the courtroom. This is the trial they’ve been waiting for. George Burroughs is no ordinary citizen. He’s a minister, pretending to lead his own church while scheming with the Devil to destroy them throughout New England. Burroughs doesn’t work for Satan. He works with him.
The afflicted girls lead off with sensational convulsions and seizures, more dramatic than ever before. They choke and cry and show bite marks on their wrists. They tell how Burroughs’ specter murdered his first two wives. And not just that! They point to a prominent minister at the front of the crowd. “His, too!” they shriek in unison. “Burroughs killed his wife and child, too!”
Eight people, each one of them a confessed witch, testify that Burroughs led large meetings of witches, that he forced them to torment people with thorns and poppets.
Nine more people testify that Burroughs is also suspiciously evil in person, in the real world. For one thing, he’s extraordinarily strong for such a short man. They repeat the stories from his hearing three months ago, that he held a 7-foot rifle with nothing but his forefinger stuck in the barrel; that he single-handedly lifted a barrel full of molasses from a wobbling canoe. And not just that: He was so barbarous with his wives that he nearly killed them, then made the people who saw it promise not to tell.
Finally the judges turn toward Burroughs, who reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper that he hands to them. There is no such thing as a witch, it says. It’s impossible to make a pact with the Devil, or to make the Devil follow orders. But the judges recognize what he’s written. He’s plagiarized it, from a highly controversial book no less.
At first Burroughs denies it. He would never copy someone else’s work, he says. Cornered though, he finally admits to it, and the judges wonder: has he been lying throughout his entire trial? The jury agrees. Guilty.
Burroughs will not go quietly, though, and he continues to expound on his innocence. He can see why the court has declared him guilty, he says, especially given the mountain of evidence before them.
“But they’re lying,” he says. “The witnesses are lying, and I will die because of it. I will die because of their lies.”
The court will have none of it. The minister George Burroughs will hang.
Tomorrow in Salem: GUILTY: the incredulous farmer and the flawed former deputy