Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (11 page)

Hundreds of spectators milled around outside, and accounts of their behavior varied, as always. Some of the newspapers praised the crowd for their respectful behavior: Eyes averted, hats in hand, and tones hushed. But other accounts described a rowdier scene, with gawkers so eager for a closer look that they tore the pickets off the church fence. All of the papers agreed that the overflow gathered outside of the church filled the adjacent yard to capacity, and the rest huddled outside of the houses that lined the block—including Lillie Johnson’s home. As the mourning procession moved on to nearby Elmwood Cemetery, many more joined the crowd. They watched from afar as Freda’s casket was lowered into the ground and covered with
flowers, the grief-stricken Wards and Volkmars standing nearby. After the reverend spoke for the last time, members of the choir once again struck up hymns.

In the sweet by and by
, they sang,
we shall meet on that beautiful shore
.

A
LICE
M
ITCHELL WAS EXPECTED
to make the briefest of appearances before Judge DuBose on February 1, 1892, but the Shelby County Courtroom was nonetheless bursting with bodies. Seats were quickly filled, and those who were left standing leaned against the interior walls, while others hoping to eventually wedge their way inside crowded the doorway. And though they had absolutely no chance of hearing anything of worth, and would likely get but a fleeting glimpse of the murderess as she passed by, the late arrivals lined the hallways and stairwells, and some even huddled outside, their breath visible in the cool, still air.

They all knew how Alice would answer the only question asked of her that day. They also knew that no evidence related to the crime would be seen, and that there was no chance of getting a sample of the most coveted of documents: the love letters that were being tightly guarded by both the prosecution and defense.

But this court date had little to do with facts, or even with the plea itself. This was the first real public performance, Act I, Scene I of a drama that
would unfold for months in the theater of the courtroom.

It had been exactly one week since the murder, and even though the story was plastered across most national newspapers every single day, the information had grown stale. This was not for lack of effort. The influx of out-of-town journalists from big urban dailies crowded the local inns and boarding houses where they took meals and slept but a few hours. They spent the rest of their time racing around town, attempting to drum up whatever news they could, but there had been so little to work with. The public had yet to see all the actors in this production—the Mitchells and the Wards and the Johnsons, the defense and prosecution—gathered together in one room. All who were present in court that first day in February intended to make the most out of the mere minutes Alice would stand before Judge Julius DuBose. Having repeatedly quoted statements that Alice had supposedly made, the public would finally, albeit briefly, hear her voice.

Of course, there was always the hope she would put her alleged insanity on full display. Ideally, Alice would launch into a florid and picturesque manic episode, but spectators and journalists would settle for a glint of the eye, the slightest glimmer of madness. The opposing camp wished for any visual proof that she was a cold, vile, but completely sane killer.

The audience must have been disappointed, then, with Alice’s brief appearance in the courtroom. Gantt and Wright fielded most of the questions while she sat beside them in silence, her face shrouded by a thick, black veil. Some interpreted this as an act of mourning, while others nodded in approval at the modesty of the Southern lady. Either way, the moment she lifted her veil and formally entered a plea of “present insanity,” Alice became a public figure, in the flesh.
⁴²

The
Commercial
, the Memphis-based newspaper most critical of the insanity plea, thought that Alice had “an expressionless face, with low forehead, eyes together, and blotches that robs [sic] her of any pretense to a fair complexion.”
⁴³
They quoted a “well known priest” who deemed Alice “strong but not masculine,” although her head had given him pause. This priest was quite sure, despite having only inspected her from afar, that her veiled head indeed contained a “disordered” mind.
⁴⁴

The
Appeal Avalanche
, sympathetic to the defense, painted a very different picture. Whereas the
Commercial
described her face (low forehead, close eyes, blotchy skin) in a way that was meant to make her seem unattractive, the
Appeal Avalanche
definitively concluded “Alice Mitchell is quite a pretty one.” In its estimation, she was not “expressionless,” but rather respectful and demure, her “large blue-grey eyes looked out quite complacently towards the judge.” While the
Commercial
source characterized Alice as “strong,” the
Appeal Avalanche
found its own unnamed witness to exclaim, “What delicate hands to commit such a horrible deed!” In a further effort
to portray Alice as a non-menacing young lady from a respectable family, the newspaper spent some time detailing her distinctly feminine dress, from head to toe, including “a tan and brown checked ulster with a short cape . . . black Oxford shoes with little heels.”
⁴⁵

Alice was not the only young woman submitting a plea that day. She was accompanied by Lillie Johnson, whose decision to join Alice for a buggy ride just one week earlier could now lead her to the gallows. Lillie pled not guilty, but the press hardly seemed surprised. Belief in her innocence was almost universal—with the notable exception of the attorney general. Peters’s insistence that Lillie remain in a jail cell with an admitted murderess, one who many believed to be insane and perverted, was viewed as yet another strike against the prosecution’s handling of the case.

But for the sake of news copy, Lillie proved to be a valuable courtroom counterpoint to Alice. Just as Freda had been described as far more girlish, Lillie displayed the kind of fragile grace that perfectly suited Victorian conceptions of femininity: “[Miss Mitchell] stood as rigid as a statue . . . Miss Johnson would have sunk to the floor but for the support of her father’s arm.”

T
HE
M
ITCHELLS
, W
ARDS
,
AND
J
OHNSONS
were not exempt from such intense scrutiny. The public often rendered its judgments along gender lines that ignored, or even erased, the distinction between the defense and prosecution.

In this story, the fathers were stalwart characters, valiant protectors of women who faltered without their guidance, and flourished at their behest. Even when men from the Mitchell, Ward, or Johnson families were driven to rare displays of emotion—breaking societal expectations of the stouthearted, gallant Southern man—they still received positive reviews. The
men, after all, had not failed to perform their duties. The home was the haven fathers returned to after a day out in the world doing men’s work, while women remained near the hearth. It was the guardian women, the mothers and older sisters, whose responsibilities began and ended in the domestic sphere; they were the ones who had fallen short. After the failure of their wives and daughters, the men had no choice but to hold strong as lionhearted fathers and husbands, shoring up their families during exceptionally trying times.

These men—George Mitchell, Thomas Ward, and J.M. Johnson—were presented as not merely blameless, but almost victims themselves, sympathetically called the “three sorrowing fathers.”
⁴⁶

George Mitchell—father of the confessed murderess, husband to a purportedly unstable wife—was a retired businessman described as being “well suited to leisure.” Before the trial interrupted his life of ease and recreation, Uncle George had a reputation for being a gamesman with a particular fondness for guns. From the moment he turned Alice over to the warden’s care, George had captured the sympathy of the nation, and most certainly of his fellow Memphians. They saw him as a fine man who was doing all he could, having hired the best lawyers around—which may have also meant the most expensive. George was risking the entire Mitchell family’s financial future to care for his youngest child, tainted as she was through the matrilineal line. The Mitchells were all beleaguered, but it was only George who was described as having worn the stress on his face. He had aged so rapidly, reporters observed, that he now appeared but a “poor old man.”

Thomas Ward, whose wife and, as of a week prior, youngest daughter, had predeceased him—both dead well before their time—was regarded with the kind of respect naturally granted to the bereaved. Even so, the papers could not resist painting his grief in shades of gender. Upon hearing of Freda’s death, it was reported that Thomas was “almost unmanned” by the loss.
⁴⁷
But like all displays of emotion by men, the moment passed decorously, as it must, and it was his background of consummate manly efforts that defined his public persona: his attempts to better his family’s fortune in Golddust, to leave behind his job as a machinist at the Memphis Fertilizing Company and try his luck as a merchant and planter, all while making sure his daughters were tended to by his eldest, were regularly lauded.

Even Lillie’s father, J.M. Johnson, whose name was rarely mentioned in the press, was given his due. Reporters spoke of him with admiration and reverence for the way in which he doted on his daughter, and consistently praised him for the nights he spent at the jail, keeping an eye on his Lillie. Much like the rest of the historical actors involved in the case, few personal details were offered about J.M. Johnson, including his profession; it was never named by the press, though a Memphis city directory listed his occupation as painter.
⁴⁸

In newspaper articles, however, the maternal figures were treated with little regard, or worse: they were often depicted as teetering on the edge of insanity. Though their supposed instability was sometimes explained by the stress of the murder, more often than not, the women were portrayed as being plagued by long-term “hysterical” tendencies. Which is to say, the murder itself was tacitly blamed on the folly and feminine ineptitude of the women who should have been responsible.