James Zagata witnessed Molthrop's admission. Zagata was a witness to the murder and believed the wrong men had been convicted. McGuire was uncertain of the veracity of a judge having a private conversation with a convicted murderer—especially one convicted of killing a policeman. But no retrial had taken place, as Judge Molthrop died in 1935. McGuire went in search of Zagata and located him, still employed as a coal truckdriver and very cooperative. Zagata fully corroborated Majczek's account of the conversation in Molthrop's chambers. Zagata had been presented with a police lineup including Majczek but had been unable to positively identify Majczek. He restated this at the later trial. Subsequently, Zagata told the Times, he thought neither of the convicted men fit his recollection of the killers. He was certain that the true killers had been much taller than the short-statured Majczek. Zagata also said that Judge Molthrop had requestioned him a few days after the verdict—the judge was particularly interested in Zagata's issues with the identification. Zagata recalled the judge's saying he was going to get a retrial for the two men. Prohibition and politics In the following days, the Times disclosed that Vera Walush, whose testimony had been the sole evidence against Majczek and the principal evidence against Marcinkiewicz, had initially not recognised either man during the police lineup. The paper also reported that Walush had been running a speakeasy and that she had been threatened with arrest if she refused to testify against Majczek and Marcinkiewicz. They also reported that the reason Judge Molthrop had failed to grant the defendants new trials was that he had been warned by prosecutors that granting a new trial would end his career in politics. Cop killings often led to strong pressure for a conviction, especially with the spiraling murder rate of Prohibition-era Chicago. The same week Officer Lundy had been killed, there were five other unsolved murders in Chicago. Falsified records Further digging led McGuire to learn how Majczek and Marcinkiewicz had become suspects. Vera Walush had initially been unable to identify the killer, but after hours of interrogation she said one of them could have been a man she knew only as Ted. Police believed this to be a local man, Theodore Marcinkiewicz, and he became a prime suspect but could not be located. Two weeks after the crime, a bootlegger was arrested, and in exchange for not being