The Devil's Gentleman (37 page)

68

F
ollowing Tuesday’s adjournment, the members of the jury, at Goff’s orders, were taken to the Astor House, where they were put up in handsomely appointed rooms and “provided with every comfort and convenience.” It was the first time that they had been sequestered. Goff made his decision after the newspapers printed stories that one of the men, while dining with “business associates,” remarked that “he would not hang a yellow dog on the evidence that has been presented.”

As the jurors had never been separated from their families in the three months since the start of the trial, the court did its best to accommodate their relatives the following morning. When Wednesday’s session began, “a large part of the crowd that was packed into the courtroom” consisted of the wives, children, and elderly parents of the twelve jurors.
¹

Those seated in the rear had to strain to hear Roland’s attorney when he resumed his summation at approximately 10:30
A.M.
Even after a night’s rest, Weeks had not recovered the full use of his voice. Still, apart from a ninety-minute lunch recess, he managed to speak continuously until nearly five in the afternoon.

He picked up where he had left off the previous day, with a savage denunciation of the letter box men. He then proceeded to cast doubt on the testimony of Mamie Melando and to deride the entire field of handwriting analysis by invoking the Dreyfus affair—a case in which “a man spent five years on Devil’s Island because the handwriting experts were mistaken.”

Moving on to the issue of motive, he sneered at the notion that any man would commit murder for the reasons alleged by the prosecution—petty disputes over gym equipment and a nasty letter written on official club stationery. “Would the defendant imperil his life, ruin his family, drag them to dishonor and disgrace for such a trifling motive as that?”

His harshest attacks, however, were reserved for his opponent. He reminded the jurors that Osborne, during his opening speech, had promised to expose the defendant as a kind of “Frankenstein monster”—a “man sicklied o’er with the pale cast of sexual perversion.” “But has the district attorney done so?” demanded Weeks. “No! He has not introduced a syllable of evidence in support of this cruel assertion.”

But Osborne had acted in an even more deplorable manner, Weeks charged. Not content with vilifying the defendant as a moral degenerate, he had stooped to defaming Roland’s wife.

“That old father and mother you see there lost a son when he was carried off to the Tombs,” said Weeks, gesturing toward the table where Roland sat between Blanche and his parents. “All through the eleven months of his imprisonment, while their boy has been away from them, their daughter-in-law has been with them as a comfort and a solace. Was the burden of the father and mother not already heavy enough when their dear son was imprisoned?
No!
” cried Weeks, his voice quaking with indignation. “The district attorney was not satisfied with the effort to deprive the defendant of his life. He also sought to deprive the defendant’s wife of her honor!”

Turning toward the prosecution table, Weeks proceeded (as one reporter put it) to “verbally flay” the prosecutor for calling the two “colored servant girls” to testify that “Barnet had supplanted the defendant” in Blanche’s affection.

“Why did you do it?” he demanded, stabbing a finger in Osborne’s direction. “You knew the foul and scandalous accusation had nothing to do with the case. It was unnecessary. It was unworthy. It was untrue!”

“Then why didn’t you deny it?” sneered Osborne.

“Why should I have to deny such infamous lies?” Weeks exploded. “What business did you have introducing it? You knew you couldn’t connect it to the death of Mrs. Adams—yet you brought it in anyway. How dare you produce it?”

Weeks took a moment to regain his composure. Then, after offering one final dig at the state’s handwriting experts, who had failed to show any “forcible similarity” between Roland’s penmanship and the “poison package address,” he launched into his peroration.

“My task is done,” he began. “The decision of the case and the fate of the prisoner is in your hands,” he solemnly intoned. “You are to consign him to a disgraceful death or you are to restore him to his family and freedom. I ask you to consider carefully, conscientiously, and mercifully before you bring in a verdict of guilty, a verdict which is to cut asunder the ties of this married life, a verdict that will bring disgrace and dishonor to his family.”

He praised their acumen, expressing his confidence that, after considering the great mass of evidence that had been presented to them, they would “sift the chaff from the wheat” and arrive at the only reasonable verdict—“a verdict that will restore this young man to his family, restore his good name, and set him free after his long period of imprisonment.”

He urged them to listen to their conscience, and if they found themselves wavering, to “err on humanity’s side.” “The wrong you do can never be restored,” he cautioned. “Gentlemen, in a case of doubt, when the scales are oscillating, let them turn in the favor of the prisoner. It is a terrible thing to destroy the temple of an immortal soul.”

In graphic terms, he reminded the jurors of the awful responsibility that had been imposed upon them. “I know the district attorney will tell you that it will not be you who will take this man’s life if you find him guilty. That it will not be you who will touch the button that sends the electric shock through his body, burning his nerves and disfiguring him. But it
will
be you. It will be you, gentlemen, who will have to say whether he lives or dies. You will have to say whether or not the evidence has convinced you beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty.”

By then, Weeks’s voice had almost given out. After a few final flattering remarks about their common sense and conscience, he declared his absolute confidence in their verdict. “We ask no maudlin sympathy,” he said. “We ask no favor. We ask only as a man to his fellow man—‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ In doing that, we are sure of your verdict.”
²

Throughout Weeks’s final appeal, reporters kept their eyes on Roland and his family, attempting to gauge their reactions. At no point did Roland display the slightest emotion. He maintained the indifferent demeanor he always wore when he wasn’t smirking or looking bored. His parents, too, sat there stonily, though stress and anxiety were etched on their faces.

Blanche alone put on a show. When Weeks described the horrors of the electric chair, she let out a cry of distress, buried her face in her hands, and broke into loud sobs. At least one observer found her outburst somewhat “ostentatiously done”—marked by a certain degree of “theatrical exaggeration.”
³
But apart from this cold-eyed critic, Blanche’s impersonation of a caring wife fooled everyone.

69

T
hat evening, a few hours after Bartow Weeks completed his impassioned plea, the Loyal Legion held a gala dinner in the cavernous banquet hall of Delmonico’s restaurant. Between four and five hundred people were present, having come to pay tribute to the nation’s most celebrated military figure, Admiral George Dewey.

The previous fall, Dewey—“the Hero of Manila”—had arrived back in the States to a tumultuous welcome. In New York City, a public holiday was declared in his honor. The Brooklyn Bridge was strung with several thousand electric lights spelling out his name in thirty-six-foot-high letters, a floating chorus of more than twelve hundred singers serenaded him aboard his flagship
Olympia,
a “Dewey Triumphal Arch” was erected in Madison Square Park, and—following a massive parade watched by nearly a million wildly cheering spectators—the mayor presented him with a solid gold loving cup on the steps of City Hall.
¹

The scene was the same in Washington, D.C., where he was marched to the Capitol building at the head of a grand parade, presented with a commemorative jeweled sword voted to him by Congress, and feted at the largest dinner party in the history of White House social functions.
²
The whole country appeared to be in the grip of what was dubbed a “Dewey craze”—a frenzied adulation of the sort that would not be seen again until 1927, when Charles Lindbergh returned home following his transatlantic triumph. Dozens of the admiral’s closest associates urged him to run for president, and there was little doubt, as
The New York Times
wrote, that “Dewey would be elected no matter by what party he was nominated.”
³

The hero worship remained just as intense five months later when the Loyal Legion held its dinner at Delmonico’s on Wednesday evening, February 7. Before the food was served the members conducted their regular meeting. It was still in progress when Dewey arrived to “a storm of applause.” Taking his place at the head of the banquet hall, the admiral sat and listened politely while General Horatio C. King read his paper, “The Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War.”

In the course of his speech, King made special mention of one of the notables present that evening: Brigadier General Edward Leslie Molineux, who had come to Delmonico’s straight from the courtroom where his son’s murder trial was in its final stages. As King described the “brilliant and daring work” General Molineux had performed during the Shenandoah Valley campaign, everyone present—not only the veterans in the main body of the hall but the ladies seated in the balcony—rose from their chairs and gave him an ovation that lasted five full minutes, considerably longer than the one accorded Dewey.

As the applause subsided, one of the listeners called out, “Repeat!” The cry was immediately taken up from table to table, until the entire hall was filled with the chant. Happy to comply, King reread the portion of his lecture dealing with the General’s contributions to the war. No sooner had he concluded than the crowd again burst into wild cheers, rose to its feet, and toasted “the long life and health of General Molineux.”
⁴

It was an extraordinary demonstration of the high regard in which the elder Molineux was held by his peers. Indeed, the sight of the valiant old warrior maintaining his proud demeanor in the face of his dreadful ordeal moved more than one of the attendees to tears. The question of his son’s guilt or innocence—the possibility that the General’s middle child might be a degenerate killer—had no bearing at all on the profound admiration, even reverence, felt for the father.

Perhaps because it was the public’s last chance to attend the hottest show in town, the scene outside the courtroom was especially chaotic on the morning of Thursday, February 8. A jostling horde of several hundred people—“men who had evidently played football and women trained at the department store bargain counter,” cracked one writer—tried to elbow their way inside, many insisting that they were relatives of one or another of the principals. Twenty policemen struggled with the crowd, trying to clear a path for the arriving jurors. But it was a losing battle. As fast as the officers shoved people aside, the seething mob re-formed itself. In the end, the jurors were forced to enter the chamber through the anteroom used by the defendant.

When the doors opened at ten-thirty to admit the press corps, the crowd surged forward with a roar, nearly knocking down and trampling the policemen. Infuriated, the officers formed a cordon in front of the entrance and refused to let anyone enter without official authorization. As a result, when the proceedings got under way at eleven, the spectator section was emptier than at any time since the trial began.
⁵

Unlike Bartow Weeks—who had delivered his closing remarks in a subdued, deliberate manner, standing in one spot and using few gestures—Assistant DA Osborne prowled the floor with a “tigerish mien” during his summation, gesticulating dramatically and attacking the defense in a voice that often rose to an angry shout.
⁶

He bitterly denounced the defense for attempting to shift the blame onto Harry Cornish. “Consider, gentlemen, the circumstances of the murder,” he said, leaning forward on the railing of the jury box and looking at each of the twelve men in turn. “Mrs. Adams takes the poison administered to her by Cornish. It is administered openly, in the presence of her daughter. Cornish then runs for a doctor and turns over to him all the evidence. Is such a course consistent with guilt on the part of Cornish? And yet, Mr. Weeks tries to bring a charge against him that would lead to his death. My God! Isn’t it enough that the defendant tried to poison him with cyanide of mercury? Isn’t it enough that he was made the unwitting instrument in one of the greatest crimes in history?”

At this last, hyperbolic statement, Osborne threw a savage look at Molineux, who responded with a mocking smile.

Osborne’s most scathing remarks were directed at Weeks’s failure to mount a defense. “Do you realize, gentlemen, that not one word has been said by the defendant in his own behalf? What would
you
do if you were innocent? You would say, ‘My reputation is ruined. The brand of Cain has been put on my brow. I must defend myself.’ Think of all the witnesses Mr. Weeks could have called if his client were innocent. There must be two or three hundred people in New York City who know the defendant’s handwriting. He is a prolific writer of letters. And yet, in the great city of New York, not a solitary human being could be brought down here who would testify that the defendant did not write those letters. That is the fact. That is the cold, undisguised, naked fact. Why, if he were innocent, a troop of soldiers with Gatling guns could not have kept those witnesses away from the courtroom.”

Turning toward the defense table, Osborne fairly shouted at Weeks, “If you knew of a single witness who could have aided the theory of the defendant’s innocence and did not call him, you have violated your oath as a counselor. Your action is a plea of guilty!”

His cheeks flushing, Weeks made a strenuous objection, but Goff refused to instruct the jury to disregard the remark.

Gesturing toward the General and his wife, who were watching him grimly, Osborne sneered that Weeks’s only defense was to put “that old gray-haired father and that sweet-faced mother” on display in an effort to elicit the sympathy of the jury. He acknowledged that he himself had initially been reluctant to suspect Roland “because he was General Edward Leslie Molineux’s son.” The same was true of Captain McCluskey and everyone else involved in Roland’s arrest. “We were all sorry to think that a son of General Molineux’s should have turned out bad,” Osborne said. “But what could we do?” The chain of circumstantial evidence put together by the investigators was “the strongest ever forged against one man.”
⁷

Osborne spoke until 1:00
P.M.
, at which point Goff ordered a ninety-minute lunch recess. It seemed likely that the prosecutor would complete his summation when the proceedings resumed and that the case would be in the hands of the jury by the end of the day.

When the court reconvened at two-thirty, however, something was conspicuously absent—the entire jury. Rumors quickly spread that juror number 10—Manheim Brown—had suffered a relapse during lunch and had retreated to his room in the Astor House. Since, by Goff’s order, all of the jurors had to be sequestered together, none could return until Brown was back on his feet.

At 4:30
P.M.
, with the jury still absent, the courtroom was cleared. By then, Goff had received a telephone message informing him that Brown had been stricken with an attack of sciatica. How long he might be bedridden no one could say. Given his fragile condition, it seemed conceivable that he might not recover for days, possibly longer.

The idea of another protracted delay was almost too distressing to contemplate, though it wasn’t the worst possibility. If Brown were unable to return at all, Goff would be forced to declare a mistrial. After eighty-five days and a cost to New York County of $200,000—a sum that translates into more than $4,000,000 today—the trial would have to be “started all over again as if it has never once begun.”

It was a prospect that filled the prosecution with “feelings of unmingled horror.”
⁸