The Devil's Gentleman (44 page)

84

A
fter many delays, Roland’s retrial finally got under way on Monday, October 13, 1902. By then, almost four years had elapsed since the deaths of Henry Barnet and Katherine Adams.

New York had not lacked for lurid crimes during that time. Only recently, in fact, the city had been riveted by a particularly sensational murder. Less than a month before the start of Roland’s second trial, the mutilated body of a young Manhattan woman named Anna Pulitzer had been found in a canal near Jersey City. What made the murder so newsworthy, beyond its sheer grisliness, was the pedigree of the killer: Brigham Young’s grandson, William Hooper Young, who—so the papers claimed—had committed the crime in accordance with the doctrine of “blood atonement” preached by the Mormon leader.
¹

Even with such titillating fare to distract them, the public remained fascinated by the Great Poison Mystery. The crowds who turned out for Molineux’s second trial were nearly as large as those who had flocked to the first. What they ended up seeing was a mix of the deeply familiar and the dramatically new.

The cast of characters had changed in certain notable ways. Though Bartow Weeks was present throughout the proceedings, former New York governor Frank S. Black was brought in to serve as lead counsel for the defense. And in place of Recorder Goff (whose rulings had generally favored the prosecution), a judge named John A. Lambert (who turned out to be far more sympathetic to the defense) was called in to preside.

It was largely owing to Lambert’s businesslike approach—his “insistence upon cutting out every superfluous word or gesture”
²
—that the second trial moved with such impressive speed. Jury selection, which had originally required more than two weeks, was now completed within twelve hours. James Osborne’s opening address lasted only ninety minutes instead of four and a half hours (and was mercifully free of any labored analogies to the Frankenstein monster). And on the first day of testimony, no fewer than thirteen witnesses were examined. As one headline proclaimed, it was
ALL HUSTLE, NO NONSENSE IN MOLINEUX CASE.
³

Though the prosecution witnesses were, by and large, a familiar crew, a number of key figures were missing. Elsie Gray, the bookkeeper for the Kutnow brothers who had discovered one of the bogus Cornish letters, had died shortly after the first trial. And Roland’s former child-mistress, Mamie Melando—still smarting from her virtual abduction by Detectives Carey and McCafferty three years earlier—refused to leave New Jersey.
⁴

The intervening years had not been kind to other witnesses, including Harry Cornish. Gaunt and hollow-cheeked, his few remaining strands of hair having gone prematurely gray, Cornish no longer made his living as a sportsman. His onetime employer, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club—where the lives of Roland Molineux and Henry Barnet and Cornish himself had so fatefully collided—had recently gone out of business, brought down by the financial troubles of its owner, J. Herbert Ballantine. Cornish, once a celebrity in the city’s amateur sporting world, now worked for a bakery.
⁵

Still, his manner remained as gruff and uningratiating as ever. He alternately snarled and shouted at ex-governor Black, who subjected him to a ferocious cross-examination. Over Osborne’s objections, Black was allowed to interrogate the witness about his marital infidelities, as well as his current relationship with Florence Rodgers, who—so the lawyer intimated—had become Cornish’s mistress since her mother’s death.

Black also asked pointed questions about the classes Cornish had attended at Columbia Medical College. Cornish explained that he had gone there strictly to “study anatomy,” so that he could learn more about the muscular system and improve his performance as a coach. Black, however, insisted that Cornish had “studied medicine”—thus implying that Roland Molineux wasn’t the only one with a technical background in chemistry.
⁶

When Cornish finally left the stand, he “heaved a deep sigh,” as though relieved to be done with the ordeal. At the defense table, Roland—dapper in a double-breasted black sack coat, high collar, silk four-in-hand necktie, and pearl stickpin—watched his rival’s discomfiture with a smirk.
⁷

In the aftermath of the first trial, Bartow Weeks had been roundly criticized for not putting Roland on the stand. Frank S. Black was not about to repeat that error. When the defense opened its case on Friday, October 31, Roland B. Molineux was the first witness called.

It had taken a contingent of twenty police officers to control the crowd that showed up that morning. When the courtroom doors opened at 9:30
A.M.
, more than three hundred people—many of them women—managed to fight their way inside. Within minutes, all the seats had been taken, including the two usually reserved for Roland and his father, who upon their arrival a half hour later had to stand until extra chairs could be brought in from another room.
⁸

After an opening address that lasted less than five minutes—a “record-breaker in brevity for a case of such importance and scope”
⁹
—Black launched into his direct examination of the star witness. Roland’s voice, which had not been heard in court since the coroner’s inquest three years before, was strong and steady. It had, observers felt, “the ring of sincerity in it.”
¹⁰

Indeed, everyone who saw him on the stand that day agreed that Roland turned in a remarkable performance. Calmly, clearly, courteously, with no discernible hesitation and a demeanor that struck spectators as perfectly frank and forthcoming, he gave a detailed account of his quarrels with Harry Cornish but insisted that, angry as he was at the time, he had gotten over his animosity long before his marriage.

He emphatically denied that he had bought the silver toothpick holder, rented a private letter box, written the bogus letters, or mailed the poison package. He claimed that he did not know how to make cyanide of mercury and, indeed, had never even heard of the poison until charges were brought against him. He acknowledged that he had sent away for Dr. Burns’s Marvelous Giant Indian Salve but insisted that he had used the ointment not for impotence, but for a knee injury sustained in a bicycling accident. He described his relationship with Mamie Melando as that of “employer and employee, solely.” He swore that he was “absolutely innocent of any part in or knowledge of” Mrs. Adams’s murder.

Black ended his direct examination at 11:55
A.M.
It had lasted just sixty-five minutes. By contrast, James Osborne would grill the witness for five hours. In the end, the cross-examination would be a “complete victory” for Roland.
¹¹

“A marvel of alertness and skill,” he calmly parried every attack the prosecutor aimed at him, never seemed rattled or evasive, projected an air of absolute confidence and candor. “To every question he had an easy, ready answer. He smiled and waved his hand, and exhibited complete suavity and ease.”
¹²

At four-thirty, having utterly failed to extract any damaging admissions from the witness, an exhausted James Osborne begged the judge for an adjournment. “If Your Honor please. I believe I am tired to death, and I would like to say, this being rather, you know, an important matter to both Mr. Molineux and myself, and he is probably tired, too—”

“I am not tired,” Roland broke in. “I would just as soon stay here.”

Judge Lambert ordered Osborne to continue. He managed to go on for another hour before he “gave out entirely” and collapsed into his chair. Roland, looking as fresh and chipper as ever, left the stand with a smile and returned to his seat, where his father patted him on the back and said, “Good boy.”
¹³

Speaking to reporters when the day’s session was over, Osborne tried to put the best face on the matter, insisting that he “was perfectly satisfied with the cross-examination of Molineux.” Nevertheless, even he was forced to concede that Roland was “one of the most wonderful men I ever examined—of more than ordinary intellectual power, quick, resourceful, alert, with an able and flexible mind.”

The General gave Roland the ultimate accolade: his son, he proudly told reporters, had borne “himself under fire like a true Molineux.”
¹⁴

One person was not there to witness Roland’s triumph: his ostensibly devoted wife, Blanche.

When the trial had opened on October 13, the General, in response to a query from reporters, had explained that, while his daughter-in-law would undoubtedly not sit through the entire proceedings, he expected her to be there for the start of each day’s session.
¹⁵
Since he made that remark, the trial had been going on for more than two weeks. And Blanche had yet to put in a single appearance.

85

I
t is a cliché of courtroom melodramas: the surprise witness, appearing at the eleventh hour, who offers a startling revelation that settles the defendant’s fate. In real life, of course (as opposed to the typical Perry Mason mystery), such a thing rarely occurs. But it did at the second trial of Roland Molineux.

Just a few days after Roland took the stand, stories began to circulate that the defense was planning to call “an entirely new witness,” someone whose very existence had never been mentioned in the four years since the story broke, and whose testimony would provide a “sensationally dramatic ending” to the trial. The yellow papers even revealed her identity: Mrs. Anna C. Stephenson, the fifty-five-year-old wife of a veteran Brooklyn police officer, John Stephenson.

Asked about these reports, Black initially waved them off as idle gossip—the “creation of newspapers.”
¹
When court opened on Thursday, November 6, however, all eyes were immediately drawn to a gaunt, gray-haired woman seated in the section reserved for witnesses. An excited buzz ran through the spectator section: it was Mrs. Stephenson!

For hours, the spectators—some of whom had brought along picnic baskets—waited eagerly for the promised sensation. Her testimony, when she was finally called to the stand at 4:00
P.M.
, did not disappoint.

Though clearly nervous under the gaze of the crowd, the soft-spoken, self-declared “good Christian woman” explained, with all apparent sincerity, that on December 23, 1898—the day the poison package had been mailed to Harry Cornish—she had traveled to Manhattan from her home in Brooklyn to shop at the Washington Market. She had brought along a Christmas package to mail to her sister in Illinois.

At approximately 4:15
P.M.
, on her way to the general post office, she paused at the corner of Vesey Street and Broadway, waiting to cross the traffic-clogged thoroughfare. As she stood there, she felt “something pressing against me.”

“Looking around,” Mrs. Stephenson recalled, “I saw a man very close to me with a package in his overcoat pocket. He seemed very nervous, and I wondered what was the matter with him. He took the package out of his pocket, and just out of curiosity, I glanced at it. I saw the words ‘Mr. Harry Cornish, Knickerbocker—’ That is all I remember.

“In a moment, the man crossed the street,” she continued. “As I had a package to mail, I thought that I would follow him and mail my package where he mailed his. I did follow him and saw him mail his package, and I mailed mine immediately afterwards. The man then went out of the general post office, and I did not see him again.”

When, in the days following Katherine Adams’s death, the newspapers published a facsimile of the poison package address, Mrs. Stephenson (so she claimed) had immediately realized the significance of what she had seen. She “discussed the matter with her husband,” but he advised her “not to get mixed in the case.”

Black then turned to the defense table. “Molineux, stand up,” he commanded.

Roland sprang to his feet and looked squarely at the witness.

“Now, look at this defendant,” Black said to Mrs. Stephenson, “and tell me if he is the man who mailed the poison package.”

“He is not,” came the unhesitating reply.

“Are you sure?” asked Black.

“Perfectly sure,” said Mrs. Stephenson.
²

As Black took his seat with a smile, James Osborne rose. He, too, was smiling, though far more grimly. Asking Harry Cornish to stand, he turned to Mrs. Stephenson and asked, “Is
this
the man who had the package?”

Osborne’s move was clearly meant to confound the witness. But (as another young prosecutor would discover during the last great murder trial of the twentieth century, when he asked the defendant to try on the killer’s gloves in full view of the jury) such dramatic courtroom demonstrations sometimes backfire.

“It looks very much like him,” said Mrs. Stephenson.

Osborne, reddening, said, “Are you sure of that?”

“Well, I am pretty sure he’s the man,” answered the witness.

Osborne did his best to recover from this blunder. Under his polite but insistent cross-examination, Mrs. Stephenson revealed that she was unable to read without glasses, which by her own admission she hadn’t been wearing on the day in question; that she suffered from “nervous prostration” and that her decision to testify on Molineux’s behalf had been influenced by “divine guidance.” Osborne also called her policeman-husband to the stand, who testified that he “did not put much stock” in her story.
³

Afterward, when reporters asked for his opinion on Mrs. Stephenson, Osborne snorted and said, “I believe the woman thought she was telling the truth. But she is laboring under a delusion such as is common to women of her time of life. She says that she could read the poison address at about 4:30 o’clock on that day. Well, as a matter of fact, the sun set at around 4:30 that day. The street was already dark. It scarcely seems credible that this woman could have read the address at that time with her bad eyesight.”

“Do you think the jury will agree with you?” someone asked.

“Oh, I don’t believe she made much of an impression on the jury,” replied Osborne—a remark that struck more than one observer as a case of wishful thinking.
⁴

Mrs. Stephenson wasn’t Black’s only surprise witness. Barton Huff, a traveling salesman from Battle Creek, Michigan, swore that, a few days before Christmas 1898, he had gone into Hartdegen’s jewelry store to inquire about a watch fob he had seen in the window. As he approached the counter, a man rushed into the shop, pushed his way to the front, and told the saleswoman that “he wanted to buy a silver bottle holder to match some dresser articles that a woman friend of his had.” The man was about five feet ten inches tall, weighed approximately 175 pounds, and wore “a pointed sandy beard.” He bore no resemblance at all, said Huff, to Roland Molineux.
⁵

Professor Herman Vulte of Columbia Medical College, another defense witness never heard from before, testified that on the afternoon of December 23, 1898—the time when the poison package was mailed from the general post office in lower Manhattan—Roland had been in his company the entire afternoon. They did not part until 4:45
P.M.
Even if Roland had caught the nearest trolley, then transferred to an elevated car and proceeded directly downtown, he could not possibly have arrived at the general post office before it closed.
⁶
Vulte was one of nineteen witnesses to take the stand on Friday, November 7. Their testimony marked the end of the defense case. Final arguments would begin the following Monday, after which Roland’s fate would be in the hands of the jury.

On the following afternoon, Saturday, November 8, a reporter for Pulitzer’s
World
wangled an interview with Blanche at her suite in the Murray Hill Hotel. Why, he wondered, had she not attended a single minute of the trial?

Blanche would only say that she didn’t “think a courtroom is the proper place for a woman.” Of course, things would have been different if her husband—“Mr. Molineux,” as she referred to him—had “nobody else in the world to cheer him up.” But with his “dear old father at his side,” she didn’t see any pressing reason to be there.

Asked her opinion of the trial, she declared that “Mr. Molineux” was bound to be acquitted. But the prospect seemed to fill her with little joy. It was her own long ordeal that she harped on. “You cannot know what a woman suffers when she sees her good name dragged into the gutter by cruel heartless creatures who do not care what lies they tell about a defenseless person,” she said bitterly. “I often wonder how I have borne it all.”

When the reporter asked about her future with her husband, Blanche gave a strikingly evasive reply. “The future? No matter what the future may be, nothing can repay me for all that I, an innocent woman, have suffered.”

It was, of course, a disingenuous reply. Blanche knew very clearly what her future held. She hinted at it in her next remark.

“For four long years,” she said, “I have felt like an inhabitant of the infernal regions. At last, I feel as though I can see the first gleam of light—as though the gates of the inferno were about to open, permitting me to escape.”
⁷