The Valentino Affair (34 page)

The jurors also enjoyed a welcome break from their duties. On Saturday morning the fine cold weather tempted them out for a long walk as far as Westbury, although their guards were careful not to let them get a sight of The Box. In the afternoon they had an auto ride, and after all that it was back to a roaring log fire at the Garden City Hotel.

Not everyone had an enjoyable weekend. Charles Weeks was still seething over Sheriff Seaman’s volte-face on the stand, convinced the lawman had deliberately tried to sabotage the state’s case with his fuzzy vagueness about the “will they electrocute me right away” comment. Weeks made it clear to reporters that one day after the shooting, Seaman had told him, unequivocally, that Blanca made the remark. All the press could say was that Seaman’s testimony had been a “distinct disappointment”
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to the district attorney. Off the record, Weeks cursed the sheriff’s betrayal in terms that no newspaper dared to print. And he promised not to extend any special consideration when Blanca took the stand. “She will have to undergo the same cross-examination that any other defendant would under similar circumstances. I do not intend to be unduly harsh, but murder has been done; the people must not permit such crimes, and I propose to get all the facts.”
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He then ruminated on the difficult task that confronted him: “I will not spare her. I must do my duty and try to obtain her conviction in the first degree of murder. I am as chivalrous as the next man, but I must fulfill my oath of office.”
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He intended to show that Jack’s alleged marital abuse was fictitious, a figment of Blanca’s malevolent imagination, and he also threatened to call the older Mrs. de Saulles to dash claims that she had ever mistreated her daughter-in-law.

Although unable to admit it, Weeks had been totally blind-sided by Uterhart’s assertion that Blanca’s actions on the fateful night were fueled by a long-standing medical condition. And now he was hamstrung by the defense’s refusal to allow Blanca to be examined by the state’s medical experts. All Uterhart would say—smirking as he did so—was that he had been disposed to allow it, only to be overruled by the attending physicians. Uterhart’s intransigence meant that Weeks spent most of the weekend rounding up his own team of doctors, who would have to form an opinion of Blanca’s physical state based only on an examination of the skull X-rays. Ordinarily in a criminal trial, it is the state, with its awesome reach and bottomless pockets, that holds all the big cards. But for the first time in his career, District Attorney Weeks found himself in the unusual position of being comprehensively outgunned at every turn, by an opponent with equal, if not greater, financial firepower, and his confusion was beginning to show. From the outset the state’s entire case had been predicated on a defense plea of insanity, and in Weeks’s blinkered view this was still the way the trial would pan out. Nothing else could explain his bizarre statement that weekend: “We will contend that she was sane at the time of the shooting and never was anything else but sane.”
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Over in the other camp, Uterhart was exploring the possibility of adding yet another string to his bow—a plea of self-defense. It derived from Suzanne Monteau’s testimony at the inquest, when she had said, “Oh, he [Jack de Saulles] looked terrible. I thought he was going to jump at her. Then she shot.”
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After studying all the witness statements, Uterhart decided against complication. He had enough in the medical bag to win this one, he was sure. Besides, his team of physicians was also mightily skilled in the black art of spin doctoring. Even if Blanca were acquitted, they told the press, her life was still not out of danger; it would take a “dangerous operation”
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to remedy the unhealed fracture of the skull. This would consist of removing a section of the bone said to be pressing against her brain and substituting it with a sliver of bone taken from elsewhere. Without this operation, the prognosis was gloomy. There was a danger that the condition of the skull would eventually destroy her reason completely and might cause her death.

November 25

Sunday saw a long caravan of cars pull up outside Mineola jail. Old friends, casual acquaintances, and rubberneckers whose only contact with Blanca had been via the press all attempted to gain admittance to see the state’s most illustrious inmate. Only two made it to Blanca’s room; her mother and the tennis-playing playboy Count Otto Salm,
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whose Chilean-born wife was a girlhood friend of Blanca’s. Coincidentally—or perhaps not—Count Salm was also a close friend of Rodolfo Guglielmi. The two men had met in 1914 when Salm, who was also an excellent dancer, helped Rodolfo gain admittance to the inner circle of New York nightclub society. And it’s possible that on this day Salm was acting as a courier, carrying a message from Rodolfo to Blanca, as years later Mae Murray stated that Rodolfo, utterly distraught over Blanca’s predicament, repeatedly attempted to contact her during the trial. If true, then much the most likely intermediary would have been Salm.

For now, though, Salm and Señora Errázuriz-Vergara had Blanca to themselves, as no other visitor made it past the jailhouse front gate. Most observed the proprieties of good society, leaving their cards for Blanca in the manner of someone paying a house call. There were ulterior motives at work. Tomorrow was the big day, when Blanca was expected to take the stand, and demand was heavy for tickets to the public gallery. Sheriff Seaman blocked every request. Only those who can find seats will be admitted, he said, herding the disappointed callers from his jailhouse steps.

The jurors were not the only trial participants ensconced at the Garden City Hotel. Uterhart had also made the hotel his base and the venue for his daily press briefings. When asked to comment on Weeks’s reaction to Seaman’s surprise testimony, the big lawyer affected surprise. “I cannot understand Mr. Weeks’s attitude. It would seem by this statement that he is anxious to keep out testimony that might not be favorable to the defendant. This is not the duty of a public prosecutor.”
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Then overconfidence got the better of him. “Long before I was retained in this case, Mr. Weeks secured all the telephone slips bearing the record of Mrs. De Saulles’s calls on the night of the shooting. One of these slips shows that she called D. Stewart Iglehart, which is part of our defense to show that the shooting was not premeditated. Mr. Weeks has not attempted to use these slips and when Judge Smith asked for them he refused to give them up. I shall demand them in open court tomorrow.”
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Because Uterhart was hired within twelve hours of the shooting, any comments about events “long before I was retained in this case” were frankly ridiculous.

And Uterhart was not out of the woods yet. For some obscure reason in his opening address he had mentioned a letter written by Jack in which he said that Blanca “hated America and Americans,”
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and intended upon obtaining a divorce, to take Jack Jr. back to Chile, where he would be educated. Now Uterhart was forced to backtrack. Blanca had since told him that she intended to remain most of the time in America, and would have her boy educated exclusively in the United States and reared as a US citizen. Uterhart said that Blanca “liked America and Americans, and that many of her best friends were Americans.”
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Uterhart bristled when asked about reports that Weeks would halt the trial and establish a lunacy commission to decide upon Blanca’s sanity, much as had been done in Thaw’s first trial. There were several reasons why Weeks would be prevented from making such a motion, he snapped. Uterhart’s indignation was buttressed by co-counsel, Lewis J. Smith, who expressed doubts that Blanca would be able to survive her ordeal. “She may get through all right,” he said gravely. “But she is a very sick woman.”
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Despite regular visits from her doctors, he said, her unnatural weight loss had not been arrested.

Uterhart concluded what had been an uncomfortable press conference with the revelation that he was putting the finishing touches to a hypothetical question that he intended addressing to each of the defense physicians. Again, this was a strategy lifted from the first Thaw murder trial. On that occasion the question had run to some fifteen thousand words. According to rumors, Uterhart’s interrogative was expected to exceed that word count by a third, much to the displeasure of Justice Manning. This trial was taking far longer and costing the Nassau County taxpayers far more than it should, and although barred from ordering the court to sit on the upcoming Thanksgiving Day, he now raised the specter of a Saturday sitting, unless both parties speeded up their snail-like progress. Justice Manning also clarified one other matter: the vexatious issue of whether Jack Jr. would testify. Under New York law it was left to the judge’s discretion to decide whether a child under the age of seven could testify in a criminal trial, and in this instance he decided against having the child’s story go before the jury. Even the appearance of Jack Jr. in court might prejudice the state’s case, and he ruled, “That boy must not be permitted to appear in court under any circumstances.”
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The often lurid press coverage of the trial was provoking a strange backlash, with some finding in this tragedy a parable for modern times. “The De Saulles case is a product of the selfish, pleasure seeking spirit of New York,” the Rev. Dr. Christian F. Reisner told his flock at Grace Methodist Church, located at 104th Street in Upper Manhattan, on this Sunday morning. “Thousands follow it greedily, but few pay the price in the open that has been exacted here. . . . ‘Whatever a man sows that shall he reap.’ And neighboring hearts must also be torn by the thorns. Little ‘Jackie’ will never get away from the Cain mark.”
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T
HE
T
RIAL,
D
AY 6

On Monday morning, an hour before the Mineola courthouse opened, the surrounding streets were choked with fancy automobiles and idle chauffeurs, who stood around smoking while their fashionably dressed, mostly female employers—one observer put the ratio at four women for every man—jammed the narrow corridor leading from the entrance of the building to the court so tightly that attorneys and newspapermen had to squirm through cellar passageways to reach their places. When the courtroom doors finally did open, a perfumed tidal wave of warm fur surged forward, knocking some court officials off their feet as spectators jostled to gain the best vantage point. Ordinarily, many of these society matrons—spearheaded by the acknowledged queen of Long Island’s elite set, Mrs. Reginald C. Vanderbilt—would have already retreated to winter homes in Palm Beach and elsewhere, but the de Saulles trial was proving an irresistible draw.

For most, this was their first day at the trial and a hum of excitement filled the public gallery as the warring factions lined up. First came the de Saulles family, led by the stalwart major and his lawyer, Almuth C. Vandiver, together with Caroline and other relatives. They arranged themselves with quiet dignity on one side of the courtroom, to the left of the defense table. Moments later it was the turn of Señora Errázuriz-Vergara to make her grand entrance, accompanied by Amalia and Guillermo and a number of Chilean and American friends. They took up a position just behind the defense table. Some in the press had likened the two feuding families to the Montagues and Capulets. They had a point. This was intense drama and the stakes could not have been higher. But everyone was agog, waiting for the star player to make her entrance.

Blanca did not disappoint. She entered the court with head erect and staring straight ahead as, accompanied by the ever-present Mrs. Seaman, she took her seat at the defense table. Many were surprised at her relaxed composure. Certainly there was nothing in her demeanor to suggest that a nervous breakdown was on the cards, as the defense had warned the previous day.

Once Justice Manning called the court to order—fifteen minutes late because of the crush—Uterhart rose, bowed to his client without speaking, and gestured toward the witness chair. Blanca stood, disappeared along the aisle at the rear of the jury box, then reappeared to take the witness stand. She was simply dressed in a sand-colored sweater with a large collar of a darker brown and a skirt. Her hair was drawn back over her ears and fastened in a large knot behind. According to one mesmerized observer, she looked “paler and more beautiful than ever.”
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Unlike her impassive performance while listening to other witnesses, she was animated, restless even, when she first took the stand. She glanced from her lawyer to the judge, and then to the jury, before sweeping the courtroom with her huge brown eyes, as if mentally sizing up the battlefield. Uterhart began by asking her name, and then where she lived. “In the Mineola jail”
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came the barely audible reply. Justice Manning asked her to raise her voice. Blanca promised she would try. After the first few questions, she fell into a mechanical, monosyllabic routine that she maintained throughout, using as few words as possible. Her manner brightened noticeably whenever Justice Manning intervened, as he did frequently, framing questions in a manner that seemed both paternal and profoundly empathetic. On these occasions she became much more vibrant, even smiling at the judge, who seemed greatly flattered by such a reaction.