Thus, on the 10th day of September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and bloody murders known in our history." The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one hundred and twenty.
With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and proceeded to make Mormondom answer for the massacre.

And what a spectacle it must have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory, deriding them by turns, and by turns "breathing threatenings and slaughter!" An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of the occasion: "He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson; but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the U.S.troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.
"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged with a scathing rebuke from the judge.

And then, sitting as a committing magistrate, he commenced his task alone.

He examined witnesses, made arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom was born.

At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight years." Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in his work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this massacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferred gratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use them.