Killer Colt (25 page)

“In the proceedings in this case,” said the judge, “it has been the effort of the court, and I believe one which has been attended with perfect success, to keep the jury beyond the reach of all external effect. Since empanelled they have been strictly prohibited from conversing with others or of being placed in a situation where their minds could be likely to receive any outside bias.”

Just the previous day, Kent continued, “one of the jurors asked permission to read a newspaper, but I thought it my duty to deny his request, and I have reason to believe, and do believe, that the jurors have been kept perfectly safe from everything that could operate from abroad in relation to the trial.”

Concluding that “the jury has been kept pure and unaffected and can present a fair and impartial decision,” Kent denied Selden’s motion—a decision that drew effusive, if not sycophantic, praise from James Gordon Bennett. In an editorial that ran the following day, he extolled the judge for “surrounding the bench with that high-toned, moral, holy, and intellectual atmosphere that commands the admiration of society and advances the cause of civilization.”
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Proceeding with his methodical reconstruction of the case, Whiting called Law Octon, superintendent of the Granite Building and the only witness whose racial characteristics—“light yellow skin colored man”—the newspapers found it necessary to specify. Substantiating Wheeler’s account, Octon described the peculiar events of September 17 and his own firsthand observation, on the following day, of John Colt’s struggles to move the heavy pine box downstairs.

Selden’s cross-examination seemed designed to suggest that someone other than Colt might have committed the murder. He had Octon identify all the other tenants of the building, explain who had keys to the rear door, and describe the layout of the backyard. Since there was no doubt that Samuel Adams had died at Colt’s hands, this line of questioning left some observers nonplussed, especially James Gordon Bennett, who—still smarting from Selden’s attack on his integrity—derided it as “foolish and unnecessary.”
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Richard Barstow, the cartman who conveyed the pine box to the
Kalamazoo
,
was the next to take the stand. His testimony added nothing new to the already familiar tale, though he did lighten up the proceedings with some inadvertent humor when Whiting asked how much he had been paid for the job. “The gentleman gave me two shillings and sixpence in change,” said Barstow, then added with a grumble: “I should have charged him three shillings, but I thought I’d have more trouble getting the other sixpence out of him than it was worth.” Barstow’s querulous tone—which suggested that he still felt aggrieved at having been underpaid—elicited chuckles from the spectator section and even a rare smile from Colt himself.

All traces of merriment vanished with the testimony of William Godfrey, the superintendent of carts, who had helped the authorities track down Barstow and assisted in removing the crate that contained Samuel Adams’s moldering corpse. For the first time in the trial, the morbid curiosity seekers who had flocked to the courtroom in quest of ghoulish thrills had their expectations fully satisfied.

Under close questioning by Whiting—who clearly meant to horrify the jurors with the sheer ghastliness of the crime—Godfrey recounted his descent into the bowels of the
Kalamazoo;
the hoisting of the box between decks; and the removal of its lid by the ship’s carpenter, who had pried it off with chisel and hammer, releasing a loathsome stench.

Inside the box, wrapped in some old awning, was “the dead body of a man,” Godfrey explained. “The face was up towards the lid of the box. There was a rope around the neck and drawn round the legs so as to draw the head between the knees.” The corpse was naked except for a shirt which was “torn halfway down” to the navel, leaving the breast exposed. There appeared to be a quantity of common table salt “scattered all over the breast,” perhaps as much as “two quarts’ worth.” Maggots squirmed among the salt.

“The breast was green, mortified,” Godfrey continued. “I’ve seen salt of beef when nearly dissolved, and this looked just like that. I could see the ribs. I’ve seen several bodies that had been mortified, and this looked like them, only a little more of a greenish cast.”

By the time Godfrey was finished, a shocked silence had descended on the courtroom. In Selden’s cross-examination, he did his best to impeach the character of the witness. Even Godfrey’s admission, however, that he had wagered on the outcome of the trial with Malachi Fallon—deputy
keeper of the Tombs and a notorious “sporting man who kept fighting cocks and bred pit dogs in the prison yard”—did nothing to mitigate the impact of his testimony.
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Assistant Coroner Abner Milligan, who followed Godfrey to the stand, described the other items found inside the crate. Stuffed beneath the trussed-up corpse were various articles of the victim’s clothing: “a dress coat much cut to pieces and a black stock cut in front, smeared with blood and buckled behind.”

Asked what had become of these garments, Milligan explained that, along with the crate, they had been taken to the Tombs and stored in an empty cell. A few days later, the clothing was disinfected by a young apothecary named E. D. Warner, who doused them with a solution of chloride of lime and vitriol water and allowed them to dry before returning them to the box. “After two or three days,” said Milligan, “the smell became less offensive, but it’s still pretty bad now.”

Before Milligan was dismissed, District Attorney Whiting—intent on making the full horror of Colt’s deed palpable to the jury—asked that the box be brought into the courtroom and admitted as evidence.

“If the whole box is brought in,” Milligan responded, “it will make everybody sick.”

Judge Kent reflected for a moment before making his ruling. Milligan was directed to bring only the lid of the box, along with the coat and the stock. “And as they are bound to be very offensive,” Kent added, “we will have them examined the last thing. We will then adjourn immediately afterwards so the room can be ventilated.”
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O
n Saturday, January 22, New Yorkers learned of another “horrid murder” that had occurred in their city. This one also involved a victim named Adams: Mrs. Ann Adams of 28 Amity Lane.

On the previous evening, at around 5:50 p.m., Mrs. Adams’s husband, James, “a man of very intemperate habits and in the habit of beating and abusing his wife,” returned home drunk and began berating the servant girl, Annie Gorman, “who was setting the table for tea.” Seizing a plate and throwing it at her, Adams “said he would have her life, at the same time snatching up a large carving knife from the table.”

Just then, Mrs. Adams, who had been out in the yard hanging laundry, rushed in and, seeing her husband brandishing the knife at the terrified girl, threatened to have him arrested. With an enraged roar,

Savage as it was, the slaying of Mrs. Adams made little impact on the public. Within days, the story had vanished from the news, confirming James Gordon Bennett’s observation that, when it came to selling papers, “such everyday matters” as mere wife murder could not hope to compete with a “sublime” horror like the Colt-Adams case.

•   •   •

As one commentator on the Colt affair has written, though the “trial began slowly and calmly,” it “soon developed into one of the rowdiest, most startling, and most bizarre the city had yet seen.”
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The turning point in that transformation took place on Saturday the twenty-second.

Before the proceedings got under way, Abner Milligan arose with a surprising announcement about the box lid he had been ordered to bring in. While the crate itself was still in the empty jail cell where it had been stored for the past few months, the lid was nowhere to be found. “I have made a thorough search for it,” said Milligan, “but it is lost.”

Grilled by Whiting, Milligan explained that “almost everyone on the debtor’s side of the prison had access to that cell.” Though the door was padlocked, he had “no doubt that there are a great many keys that fit that padlock among the police officers and watch. It is a very common lock.”

Furious over the loss of what he regarded as a key piece of evidence, Whiting summoned various employees of the Tombs, including Warden James Hyde, a turnkey named Swain, a “prison engineer” named Lummere, and Deputy Keeper Malachi Fallon. All denied knowing anything about the missing lid.

John David, a police officer, offered a possible clue as to what had become of it. While making the rounds of the Tombs several weeks earlier, David had detected “a powerful smell coming from one of the cells” and “was asked by the watchman, H. Patrick, if I’d like to see the box Mr. Adams was found in, the one that made the smell.” David had declined the offer, but his testimony suggested that at least one man with access to the lid—Watchman Patrick—understood its potential value as a curio. David’s
tale lent credence to speculations that someone—if not Patrick, then another enterprising Tombs employee—had sold the lid, perhaps to the proprietor of one of the city’s dime museums, where such grisly relics of notorious crimes always proved to be a big draw.

Since the cover was gone, Whiting—still determined to present the physical evidence of Colt’s elaborate efforts at concealment—asked that the crate itself be shown to the jury. Milligan warned that even now, three months after its fetid contents had been removed, the box “was still very offensive.” Nevertheless, bowing to Whiting’s request, Judge Kent ordered the young assistant coroner to repair directly to the Tombs and “bring the item at once to court.”
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•   •   •

For the first three days of the trial, John Colt had displayed little emotion, observing the proceedings with a kind of aloof interest. Apart from an occasional frown or a fleeting smile, his expression remained neutral. His brother Sam, seated beside him, seemed far more anxious than the defendant himself. As for their father, Christopher, the strain of the occasion had proved too much for the sixty-two-year-old gentleman, who had fallen ill and retreated to Hartford. To the spectators and newspapermen keeping a close eye on John’s reactions, his impassive demeanor seemed the mark of a cold and even remorseless nature.

On Saturday morning, however, the court finally got to witness another side of John Colt. It occurred during the testimony of the first witness of the day, Mayor Robert Morris. Describing the visit he had paid to the boardinghouse room that Colt shared with his mistress, Morris identified the items he had found in the small locked trunk that Caroline Henshaw had shown him. In addition to some printed advertisements for John’s accounting text, a few letters and other personal documents, and the gold pocket watch owned by Samuel Adams, there was a folded piece of paper containing several locks of hair. The outside of the paper was inscribed: “Hair of Sarah Colt, my mother; Margaret Colt and Sarah Ann Colt, deceased.”

At this point, John—who had grown visibly agitated as Morris described the cherished keepsakes—“burst into tears, covered his face and wept bitterly for some time.”
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Colt’s outburst was in marked contrast to the deportment of Emeline
Adams, widow of the victim. Though dressed, according to custom, in deep mourning, she evinced little emotion as she recalled her last meal with her husband, described the clothing he was wearing when he left home, and positively identified both his gold pocket watch and wedding ring. Even the sight of his “sadly torn and mutilated” coat, admitted as evidence and displayed to the jury, did nothing to shake her self-possession.

While some observers admired her calmness and composure under such trying circumstances, James Gordon Bennett remained irked by her refusal to become “a shattered wreck” and join her husband in the grave. Reporting on her testimony in the late edition of his paper, he made no effort to conceal his disapproval, deriding her performance as “cold, unfeeling and flippant.”
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It was not until Dr. C. R. Gilman began to testify that Mrs. Adams appeared to grow unsettled. Gilman, who had performed the autopsy on Samuel Adams, offered the most detailed and graphic description to date of the flyblown thing that had once been Mrs. Adams’s husband.

Along with a colleague, Dr. Richard Kissam, Gilman had been summoned to the Dead House, where he’d “found on the table the body of a man much decayed. Alongside the table was the box from which they told me the body had been taken. The body was excessively offensive and covered with worms.”