The Valentino Affair (21 page)

Then Uterhart dropped a bombshell: The “Richest Girl in South America” was nearly broke!

Reporters gasped. After all, just one day beforehand, a paper had declared Blanca to be “probably the wealthiest woman ever accused of such a crime in America.”
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What the hell had happened? All Uterhart would say at the moment was that thanks to de Saulles’s wretched profligacy, Blanca’s inheritance had been whittled down to a mere fifty-three thousand dollars, forcing her to scrape by on a paltry income of four thousand dollars per annum, plus the three hundred dollars in monthly alimony. Uterhart was playing on the biggest stage of his life, and no one needed to tell him the importance of getting the press on board. Massaging the flow of news was vital. Hence his visible annoyance when a pressman asked for a comment on reports that Blanca’s mother had cabled friends in Washington to say that she was leaving on the first available ship from Santiago and that Blanca would be “amply supplied”
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with funds to defend herself. Uterhart bristled and blustered as he attempted to downplay Blanca’s wealth. He didn’t want the world to hear about a spoiled society princess with a penchant for dancing, endless shopping sprees, and glittering society parties, who barely a year beforehand had offered to charter an entire steamship to transport her boy from America to Chile. No, he needed the public to get behind a poor, frightened young
girl
—Uterhart’s preferred terminology—cowering in the face of a tyrannical husband.

Someone else wrestling with the problem of Blanca’s public image was Charles R. Weeks, the fifty-one-year-old district attorney of Nassau County. A Republican known for his dry wit, Charlie Weeks had been elected the previous year, before which he had served seven years as a justice of the peace in North Hempstead. He knew the Long Island politico-legal machine inside out—the horse trading, the backroom deals, the egos, the vast wealth—and he knew that convicting Blanca de Saulles would take every ounce of his legal acumen, and probably a hefty slice of luck, as well. Having been the assistant prosecutor in the Carman trial, he harbored no illusions about the size of the task confronting him.

Weeks made his first visit to The Box one day after the shooting with Seaman as his guide. A horde of reporters trailed in their wake. The approaches to the house were full of somber-faced friends and family acquaintances who had called to give their condolences and learn about the funeral arrangements. Seaman frowned. Not because of the sympathizers, but rather the hundreds of jostling sightseers, who were pouring in on foot, by horse, and by automobile, and treating this murder scene like it was some Coney Island attraction. As the crush along Valentines Road reached suffocating levels, Seaman shouted for guards to be posted in the grounds.

Inside the estate, reporters ran rampant, trampling heedlessly across the billiard table lawns, notebooks poised, cameras snapping, ready to record every incident, every emotion, no matter how trivial or private. There was one scene of heartbreaking poignancy, Major de Saulles slumped over a table on the porch, snowy white head between his hands. Alongside him, Caroline attempted to comfort her almost comatose father, but he seemed beyond assistance. Halfway down the lawn, at a garden table with a great umbrella shading it from the bright sun, sat three friends of the dead man: the unfortunately named Captain Coffin, who was attached to the United States Army Aviation School at Mineola; Louis Stoddard, a polo-playing companion of Jack; and Charles Pettinus, who had been designated the family spokesman.

Pettinus said that the dead man’s brother, Charles, who was working in Denver, was rushing back east as fast as the train would carry him. He also stated that Jack had been fully entitled to custody of the child—“the little chap was to stay with his father during this month”
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—and he emphasized how Jack had provided healthy outdoor activities for the growing lad. Every so often, whenever a particularly tricky question came his way, Pettinus would retreat to the house to seek clarification before proceeding. The veteran press pack soon realized that they were being played. The battle for the hearts and minds of the public—vital in any criminal case but absolutely critical when high-profile protagonists are involved—was in full swing.

Prosecutor Charles Weeks (right), with co-counsel Lewis J. Smith at the time of the Florence Carman trial

The next day impatient reporters who had been badgering Seaman for an interview with Blanca finally got their wish. She proved to be a natural. With her slender figure and chalky white face set off by a gingham dress with a large white collar that had more than a whiff of school uniform about it, she gave off the contrite appearance of a young student being summoned to the principal’s office. Jack had married her, she said, purely for her money, believing that she had millions, only to cast her aside when he discovered the true level of her wealth. The Errázuriz-Vergara fortune had already been greatly dissipated by the time that Jack met her, so that the family possessed “but a shell of its former wealth.”
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Even so, immediately after the honeymoon he had started milking her depleted fortune, obtaining forty-seven thousand dollars from her by “stealth and false pretenses.”
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She described her ex-husband as a Jekyll and Hyde character, someone who kept all his good qualities for the general public and reserved his evil traits for the family home, where he brutalized her repeatedly in front of their son and the servants.

He had been a reckless father, taking Jack Jr. into barrooms and parading him in front of his numerous lady friends, especially Joan Sawyer. She recalled other incidents. Once, in South Bethlehem, Blanca found tailors’ and milliners’ bills in Jack’s pockets for articles of women’s apparel that she had not purchased. Jack had laughed off her concerns, saying a friend had asked him to pay the bills, but she hadn’t believed him. She recalled telling the press when she first arrived in New York that “Americans are the finest men in the world. The Latins and French may have better manners and more polish, but the Americans are big, generous, and trustworthy.”
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But life with Jack de Saulles had destroyed that rose-tinged notion. She had tried to settle the dispute amicably, only to be badly let down by the judicial system.

So was that why you took a gun with you? asked one reporter.

No, said Blanca, it had been a reflex action because she feared traveling over “one of the loneliest roads on Long Island.”
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She delivered her monologue in a flat, unemotional voice without any apparent rancor toward the deceased. Then Blanca made her excuses and retired to her cell. It had been an outstanding performance.

That same day the autopsy on the body of Jack de Saulles was performed by two Hempstead doctors, Henry M. Warner and Smith A. Coombs. They found four bullet wounds and possibly a fifth. The doubtful injury was a nick on the skin covering the knuckle of the index finger of the left hand. One bullet went through the little finger of the left hand and hit the ring finger, fracturing the knuckle; another entered the left arm below the elbow; another hit the upper arm. The fourth and lethal bullet entered the back on an upward trajectory, an inch and a half to the left of the spine, tearing the renal artery and lodging in the left lobe of the liver. The resulting massive hemorrhage led to death. Both doctors were of the opinion that all the shots had been fired either at the side or the back of the victim, who had probably raised his left arm to shield himself.

Later that day Uterhart was back at the jailhouse. He told Blanca that the Chilean Embassy in Washington had declined to offer assistance at the current time because when she married Jack she had renounced her Chilean nationality. However, since the divorce her situation was less clear, and lawyers were still seeking clarification. Blanca took the news in stride, along with everything else that had happened. And her appetite certainly wasn’t affected. If press reports were to be believed, she had wolfed down the three hearty meals that Estella Seaman had cooked for her. Uterhart again spent considerable time cloistered with Blanca, mapping out tactics and promising that he would do everything in his power to arrange a visit from Jack Jr. as soon as possible. Blanca didn’t look convinced. Uterhart soothed his client’s concerns, promising that everything would be all right both in the short term and the long. As he later told the assembled pressmen: “If Mrs. De Saulles is acquitted the child must go to her; she is the only living parent and the only one who will have any right to him. And this afternoon I told her that, and I told her too that no jury of American citizens would convict any mother who was trying to save her child.”
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Uterhart’s efforts to generate support for Blanca were bearing fruit. That day she was visited by Miss Helene White, a daughter of banker Archibald S. White, who had been a business partner of Bleekman’s on the Cincinnati railroad project. She arrived in a large, shiny red Rolls Royce. Two other women, obviously Latin American but annoyingly anonymous and determined to remain that way, also called to offer moral support for Blanca in her time of need. Frustrated by their inability to ferret out the names of these two visitors, reporters shifted their attention to Crossways, where Noe Tagliabue remained a steadfast model of loyalty. He told the press that Blanca was a devoted mother who spent all her waking hours playing with the boy and always taking her meals with him.

Tracking down Jack Jr. was proving to be a real headache. Following the trauma of the shooting—which he had not witnessed, contrary to some early newspaper reports, but undoubtedly overheard—he was cared for by Caroline Degener and his grandfather at The Box. However, after a visit from the family attorney, Lyttleton Fox, it was decided to spirit the lad away to some hiding place. After arranging this, Fox drove the short distance to Maurice Heckscher’s summer home at Westbury to discuss various matters. Also present was Marshall Ward. They made arrangements for Jack’s body to be removed to the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Church, undertakers to the rich and famous,
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at 1970 Broadway.

More important, Fox told the others, round one in the PR battle had plainly gone to the defense. That day’s newspapers had resurrected every detail of the divorce and in the process Jack had been painted blacker than pitch. The de Saulles family needed to fight back—and quickly. At Fox’s urging it was decided to release a letter sent by Jack to Blanca just a few weeks earlier to demonstrate the dead man’s kindness and thoughtfulness for his son.