Moonlight Murder on Lovers' Lane (7 page)

Calling card with fingerprint

Among the experts was Joseph A. Faurot, a former New York City deputy police commissioner. He’d gained renown for the capture of Caesar Cella, a burglary suspect who’d left his fingerprint on the window of a burglarized garment shop. Faurot had studied fingerprinting at Scotland Yard and had lobbied for its adoption across Manhattan. He had enlarged the fingerprint on the calling card, as well as Willie’s fingerprint, to demonstrate for the jury how this comparison identification worked and show them how closely the two items matched.

However, news of the Pig Woman’s decline interrupted Faurot. Simpson could not have his star witness die before she testified, so he stopped the proceeding.

Gibson’s physician stated that her blood pressure and high temperature would make an appearance in court detrimental to her health. The judge visited her and thought she did not seem to be that bad, so he decided to resume the trial.

Chapter 19: More Than Meets the Eye

James Mills was the next person on the stand. He went through his story once again, carefully and methodically. It was soon clear that the defense team’s strategy was to make it appear that
he
might be the killer. James was miffed.

McCarter mentioned that after Eleanor went missing, James had made no inquiries among her relatives in town, nor to hospitals or police stations. He shrugged and said that his wife sometimes left for a day or two without saying where she was going. He didn’t bother about it. The day after the murder had seemed like nothing out of the ordinary. He again went over what Frances had said to him about them being dead.

After that, a woman named Anna Bearman testified that she had seen the coat that Frances had sent out to be dyed black and there had not been a spot on it. Thus, she negated the suspicion that it was dyed to cover bloodstains. (Frances would testify that she had not worn this coat that night, but instead had worn a gray coat. She had sent this one to be dyed so she could wear it for mourning.)

Willie, too, had sent a coat to be dyed. Because it had stains down the front, the quick-thinking delivery boy had given it to the police, who quickly misplaced it. Whatever had been on his coat could not be established. The defense said it was a gravy stain. Willie had a habit of spilling his food.

Henry Dickman was next, causing a flurry of anticipation. He described how evasive Henry Stevens had been during an interview in 1923. Then Dickman said that he’d left the state because Beekman, supported by Carpender, had paid him $2500 to get lost. However, Dickman was discredited as a deserter and a drunk.

In the meantime, the Pig Woman was still ailing, so Simpson had her moved to a hospital in Jersey City.

Gibson’s mother was busy undermining her credibility, saying that she was a known liar and that her name was not even Jane.

A young man named Robert Erling proved to be a stubborn witness, testifying that he had seen the Pig Woman on Easton Avenue that night. He had also seen a sedan and a touring car, exactly as she had described. McCarter produced a friend of Erling who claimed he had offered him money to corroborate his story. He also produced a girl who’d actually been with Erling. She denied most of his story.

It was difficult to know who was lying and who was telling the truth.

Chapter 20: Incident Reconstruction

The main piece of physical evidence, the calling card with the fingerprint, came under much fire from the defense. First. McCarter got Faurot to admit that not all of the points on the suspect fingerprint matched Willie’s and that the card could have been contaminated.

In addition, there was reason to wonder if the fingerprint had been
planted
on the card. In 1922, the fingerprint experts who carefully went over it had been unable to find any prints. No one then had taken Willie’s fingerprint, or anyone else’s for that matter. Had they found a print, they would have fingerprinted every suspect.

The defense had experts, too, who were just as certain that Willie had not made the suspect fingerprint (although they undermined their position by accepting the forgery idea as well). In addition, the card had been exposed to the elements for 36 hours and was passed from hand to hand. Could a readable print really survive all of this for absolute identification? So much for the new science.

Dr. Otto Schultz, who had performed the most recent autopsies, described what he believed had happened that night. He unveiled a manikin head to show the bullet trajectories on both victims. At this point, Frances turned her head.

Dr. Schultze demonstrating bullet path

Schultz stated that Edward had probably struggled to grab the gun when it went off, and that he’d been on the ground. Schultz also asserted that Eleanor’s tongue, larynx and windpipe had been cut out. To describe the gaping wound on her neck, Schultz gave its dimensions in gruesome detail. There was a cut in her abdomen, too, which pointed back to the undertakers who, without authority, had opened her womb to see if she’d been pregnant when murdered. She had not.

After this, other witnesses were rather tedious. They gave statements about what they had seen that night, or about being bribed, and some were discredited. Many who had seen Frances right after the murders denied seeing the supposed scratch on her face. The courtroom grew restless.

Finally, the big moment arrived. The Pig Woman was coming. In fact, she was carried in on a stretcher, too weak to walk. But she was there.

Pig Woman in court

As a ploy, the defense attorneys seated her mother in the front row, very close by, to see if this might rattle her. As Gibson was brought in, her mother could not contain herself. She shouted, “She is a liar! Liar, liar, liar!”

Gibson ignored her. She had a story that she’d waited a long time to tell. This was her moment.

Gibson understood that she was the most important witness of the day. She claimed that Frances, Willie, and Henry Stevens were there on De Russey’s Lane that night. (She seemed to have forgotten that in her earlier statements, she had seen only two people with the victims, a man and a woman. She also had identified Henry Carpender, not Henry Stevens.)

“I see something glitter,” Gibson said with a dramatic flair, “and I see a man and I see another man, like they were wrestling together. One was Henry Stevens.”

She had seen someone beating up another individual, and “the wind went out of him” and “he said, ‘Ugh!’” People were yelling about letters, she added. Then there were shots.

Gibson identified Frances as the “big woman” with white hair who was crying, but the jury could plainly see that Frances was not large. In addition, photos of her from 1922 showed dark hair. Not only that, there had been no evidence at the scene of such a struggle. Gibson went on with her story, which included an account of how Frances’ private detective had warned her to keep her mouth shut.

However, despite the build-up to what Jane Gibson might reveal, her testimony proved anti-climactic. Despite her promise about new details, she had nothing more to say. The Pig Woman’s moment in the sun was over. She was carried out, insisting the entire way down the aisle that she was telling the truth.

To round out the case, Simpson had Edward’s love diary read to the court, as well as many of the couple’s love letters, but recounting the illicit affair had lost its spark. By the fourth week, the case was growing tedious.

Chapter 21: The Case Falls Apart

The defense team of McCarter and Case started with Henry Stevens. They presented enough witnesses to make his alibi credible. It appeared that he’d only been named because four years earlier the prosecutor had decided that only an expert marksman could have shot the victims. Also, he’d identified a handkerchief at the scene as his. Because Gibson had heard the name “Henry,” and Stevens was a marksman and a relative, he’d seemingly been railroaded.

With Henry fairly well cleared, Willie was next. He surprised and delighted most of the audience by holding his own with the prosecutor and keeping steadfastly to his story. Simpson could not break him and was made to look like a blustering fool.

Willie Stevens on stand

Then it came out in several news accounts that the first time Jane Gibson had seen the defendants and had been asked to identify them, she was unable to do so. A farmer, George Sipel, claimed that Gibson had offered him money to say he’d seen her that night on De Russey’s Lane, as well as two men and two women near cars parked there. Gibson’s mother’s denouncement of her lying daughter was looking better and better.

Frances was next. She took the stand with her usual dignity, and the jury could see that she fully expected to be cleared. Simpson asked about the statements she had made to James about their missing spouses being dead. She responded that this possibility had seemed obvious to her when they did not return home by that time.

Simpson also wondered why she had not mentioned her nocturnal trip to the church until after a night watchman had reported seeing her enter her house, but he was unable to turn this into an incriminating issue. He grew flustered.

The defense rested. Several rebuttal witnesses were called, but they didn’t add much.

It had been a record-breaking trial, and
The New York Times
devoted some 90 front-page articles to it, adding to the 62 the paper had published in 1922. In all, 157 people were brought to the stand, 87 for the prosecution, 70 for the defense. McCarter thought it was suspicious that the couple who’d actually discovered the bodies were never called, while Simpson was equally suspicious that McCarter had not called witnesses who would have contradicted Jane Gibson.

Chapter 22: The Jury Decides

Simpson moved for a mistrial on the grounds of jury misconduct—they had not paid attention, some had been openly hostile, a few had fallen asleep, and they had not been properly guarded against contamination by the defense. The judge denied his motion, so Simpson gave his closing remarks.

Then he listened to McCarter, who had prepared a closing that elevated the Hall-Stevens family as model citizens and cast James Mills as a more likely suspect. He also called the fingerprint on the calling card a fraud.

“It lies with you, gentlemen of the jury,” McCarter said with a closing flourish, “to put an end to this persecution, to free this family from the stigma of this heartless accusation and to let these law-abiding citizens, these defendants, realize that you, at least, are not of this motley crowd who, under the guide of ferreting out crime, are seeking and acquiring wealth.”

Case added his two cents, roundly discrediting Gibson.

Simpson returned to remind the jurors of Frances Hall’s suspicious behavior. He quoted the Bible, bowed to the jury, and returned to his seat.

Damon Runyon wrote, “No man ever faced a jury with less regard for what it thought than Simpson.”

While the jury deliberated, Simpson returned to Jersey City, leaving the Somerset prosecutor to represent the state for the decision. For him, this five-week trial was over.