A Treasury of Great American Scandals (18 page)

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Authors: Michael Farquhar

BOOK: A Treasury of Great American Scandals
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In September 1883, Althea made the shocking public announcement that she was Sharon's lawfully wedded wife. Then she had him arrested for adultery with another woman. Sharon vehemently denied there ever was a marriage and vowed to spend as many of his millions as necessary to prove her a liar. His lawyers filed suit in federal court alleging that Althea's marriage document was a fake and asked the court to compel her to surrender it for cancellation. She answered with her own suit in the state court, asking for a divorce and property settlement.
Althea was represented by David Terry, a former chief justice of the California Supreme Court and noted duelist who would soon figure prominently in her personal life. Despite some of Althea's unsavory witnesses, including one who had hidden in Sharon's room to watch him bed another woman, the state judge ruled that a legally binding marriage existed. He granted Althea a divorce and $2,500 a month in alimony. “I am so happy,” she cooed after the ruling. “I feel just like a young kitten that has been brought into the house and set before the fire.” Sharon promptly appealed, and at the same time pressed his petition in federal court to have the marriage document judged a forgery and nullified.
Althea faced a formidable legal team assembled by Sharon, but she was uncowed. In fact, she was quite feisty—dangerously feisty. During one pretrial examination, while Sharon's lawyers were questioning one witness, Althea sat stewing as she read the unfriendly deposition of another. Suddenly she exploded, demanding that the examination be halted. “When I see this testimony,” she screeched, “I feel like taking that man [Sharon's lawyer William M.] Stewart out and cowhiding him. I will shoot him yet, that very man sitting there. To think he would put up a woman to come here and deliberately lie about me like that. I will shoot him as sure as you like.” Several attempts by a court officer to stop Althea's tirade were unsuccessful. “They shall not slander me,” she shouted. “I can hit a four-bit piece nine times out of ten.” With that she withdrew a pistol from her purse, waved it menacingly toward another of Sharon's lawyers, and assured him that she was not going to “shoot you just now, unless you would like to be shot and think you deserve it.”
Several weeks after this scene, when all the testimony was completed, circuit judge Lorenzo Sawyer and district court judge Mathew Deadly ruled that the declaration of marriage was a forgery and ordered Althea to surrender it for cancellation. Judge Deadly also gave her a little sermon. Portions of the text bear reprinting here, if only to show that pistol-packin' Althea wasn't the only one a little off the wall:
 
[As] the world goes and is, the sin of incontinence in a man is compatible with the virtue of veracity, while in the case of a woman, common opinion is otherwise. . . . And it must also be remembered that the plaintiff is a person of long-standing and commanding position in this community, of large fortune and manifold business and social relations, and is therefore so far, and by all that these imply, specially bound to speak the truth, and responsible for the correctness of his statements; and all this, over and beyond the moral obligation arising from the divine injunction not to bear false witness, or the fear of the penalty attached by human law to the crime of perjury. On the other hand, the defendant is a comparative obscure and unimportant person, without property or position in the world. Although of apparently respectable birth and lineage, she has deliberately separated herself from her people, and selected as her intimates and confidants doubtful persons from the lower walks of life. . . . And by this nothing more is meant than that, while a poor and obscure person may be naturally and at heart as truthful as a rich and prominent one, and even more so, nevertheless, other things being equal, property and position are in themselves some certain guaranty of truth in their possessor, for the reason, if no other, that he is thereby rendered more liable and vulnerable to attack on account of any public moral delinquency, and has more to lose if found or thought guilty thereof than one wholly wanting in these particulars.
 
Althea seems to have taken this judicial homily in stride, perhaps because she viewed it as irrelevant. Senator Sharon had died before the court's decision, and two weeks after it was delivered, she married her attorney, David Terry. As far as the newlyweds were concerned, the judgment had died with Sharon. It was, pronounced Terry, “an ineffective, inoperative, unenforceable pronunciamento,” which he didn't bother to appeal. Yet though Sharon was dead, his interests lived on with his children who, through his lawyers, appealed the earlier divorce decree and eventually got the California Supreme Court to reduce Althea's alimony from $2,500 to $500. The court still recognized the marriage as lawful, however, and consequently Sharon's children asked for a new trial. They also filed a petition in federal court to revive the order that Althea surrender her marriage contract, having waited until her time to appeal the order had expired.
The Terrys had been outmaneuvered, but Althea still had some spit in her. One day on a train she encountered Judge Sawyer, who had ruled against her. Marching up to his seat, she started to taunt him. “I will give him a taste of what he will get bye and bye,” she said as she leaned over and yanked his hair. David Terry laughed and added, “The best thing to do with him would be to take him into the bay and drown him.” Later that summer they met Sawyer again, this time in court, when the petition by Sharon's heirs to revive the federal order to surrender the marriage license was heard. Sitting with Sawyer was Stephen J. Field, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. (In those days, Supreme Court justices were required to hear cases on circuit when the full court was not in session in Washington.) Justice Field, who had already witnessed Althea's exploits on an earlier tour of duty, soon got another taste of her volatile temper when he read the judges' unanimous decision reviving the order against her. Hearing the opinion read, Althea suddenly jumped up and barked at Justice Field: “Judge, are you going to take the responsibility of ordering me to deliver up that marriage contract?”
“Be seated, madam,” Field responded coolly.
But Althea wouldn't be silenced: “How much did Newlands [Sharon's son-in-law] pay you for this decision?”
Field had now had about enough. “Remove that woman from the courtroom,” he ordered a marshal. “The court will deal with her hereafter.”
With that, Althea slumped down in her seat and defiantly said, “I won't go and you can't put me out.” Then, as the marshal approached her, she sprung up and slapped him in the face with both hands. “You dirty scrub,” she screamed. “You dare not remove me from this courtroom.” As the marshal proceeded, Althea's husband moved in and punched him in the mouth. A small riot broke out as a swearing David Terry and a scratching Althea were subdued and removed. During the scuffle, a Bowie knife was taken from Terry's hand and a pistol from Althea's purse. Both were subsequently found guilty of contempt and ordered to prison, Terry for six months and his wife for one. After a petition to revoke the order was denied by Justice Field, the Terrys made two appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court—one on the order imprisoning them for contempt, the other on the order that Althea surrender the marriage contract. They lost both. Then the California Supreme Court decided that the lower court's earlier decision favoring Althea and granting her a divorce from Sharon with alimony was not supported by the evidence.
These reversals set the Terrys off on a furious rampage. David ranted in long letters in the San Francisco
Call,
attempting to smear Justice Field. “He has always been a corporate lawyer, and a corporate judge, and as such no man can be honest,” Terry wrote. In conversation, he called the judges “all a lot of cowardly curs,” and said he would “see some of them in their graves yet.” Terry declared that he would horsewhip Field, “and if [he] resents it, I will kill him.” All this from the former chief justice of the California Supreme Court! Althea, too, vowed she would kill both Justice Field and Judge Sawyer. As it turned out, the threats were not idle ones.
In August 1889, Field was traveling by train to San Francisco. Midway through the trip, the Terrys boarded. At a stop in Lathrop, California, Field got off the train to eat breakfast at the station there. He was accompanied by a bodyguard, David Neagle, who had been assigned to protect him after the Terrys' threats reached Washington. Soon after Field sat down to eat, the Terrys walked into the station. Seeing Field, Althea ran back to the train to get her purse. David Terry sat down, whereupon the station manager came up to him and said, “Mrs. Terry has gone out to the car for some purpose. I fear she will create a disturbance.” Terry replied, “I think it very likely. You had better watch her and prevent her coming in.” When the manager left to do so, Terry rose from his table, strode over behind Field, and viciously slapped him on both sides of his face. With that, Neagle the bodyguard sprang up and ordered him to stop. According to Neagle, Terry shot him “the most malignant expression of hate and passion I have ever seen in my life,” while reaching for his Bowie knife. Instantly, Neagle fired his gun twice, and David Terry fell dead. Just then, Althea rushed back into the room, open purse in hand. The manager grabbed her satchel and took a loaded revolver out of it as Althea hysterically screamed for vengeance.
Unfortunately for Neagle, the train station was close to David Terry's home turf of Stockton, California, where the former chief justice had lots of friends. Neagle had none. The local sheriff arrested him for murder and took him into custody. Justice Field was also arrested after Althea swore out a warrant against him, but the governor of California ordered him freed immediately lest the prosecution of a U.S. Supreme Court justice become “a burning disgrace” to the state. Neagle wasn't so lucky, and his case resulted in yet another decision by the Supreme Court arising from Senator William Sharon's broken love affair with Althea Hill Terry.
Neagle's chances of a fair trial in Terry's home county were next to nil. Many believed that he and Field had deliberately provoked Terry's assault so as to have an excuse to kill him. Neagle applied to the federal court for a writ to free him, but there was a serious question as to whether the federal court had the grounds to do that. It depended on whether Neagle had been acting “in pursuance of a law of the United States,” yet there was no specific statute calling for him to act as Field's bodyguard. Local authorities in California argued that Neagle should be tried for murder, but the federal court, with Althea's old nemesis Judge Sawyer presiding, overruled all objections and ordered Neagle released. The state's attorney appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1890, with Justice Field recused, the court ruled that Neagle had indeed been acting “in pursuance of a law of the United States,” and that a specific statute was not necessary. Neagle was a free man. The conclusion of this whole sordid episode was not as happy for Althea. Two years after the Supreme Court decision that freed Neagle, she was committed to an insane asylum. And there she lived until her death forty-five years later.
 
 
Given Althea's penchant for violence, Senator Sharon was lucky to have escaped their affair with his life. Senator Arthur Brown of Utah was not so fortunate. His affair with Anna Addison Bradley began in January 1899. Thirteen months later she gave birth to their son, Arthur Brown Bradley. At the time, Anna was still living on and off with her estranged husband, and Senator Brown with his second wife, Isabel. So desperately did he want to be with his mistress that he separated from his wife and promised to marry Anna. Isabel Brown wasn't about to be shunted aside, however. She had her husband and his lover followed by detectives, then arrested for adultery—twice.
Brown promised his wife that he would stop seeing Anna, and even hired a lawyer, Soren K. Christensen, to stay with him and help keep him faithful. But, alas, Anna's pull was irresistible. Christensen later described the terrible toll the attraction took on the senator. At times, he said, Brown would “call [Anna] vile names, and abuse her, and other times he would tell me he couldn't live without her.” Brown resolved his conflicted emotions in favor of Anna, giving Christensen the slip and meeting his lover for a secret tryst in Pocatello, Idaho. Christensen was able to track him down, though, and, accompanied by Mrs. Brown, went to Idaho to fetch him home. The lawyer later described in a deposition the messy confrontation between the senator, his wife, and his lover: “Mrs. Brown said to [Anna], ‘How do you do, Mrs. Bradley? I have wanted to talk with you!' Mrs. Bradley sort of cowed over to the wall, and Mrs. Brown walked up towards her and grabbed her by the throat and threw her down, and intended to kill her. . . . I separated them, they got up, and commenced talking in a very low tone of voice, when Mrs. Brown grabbed her again. I separated them, and Mrs. Brown says, ‘Let me alone, I will kill her,' and I says, ‘Not when I am here.' . . . Finally Mrs. Brown rapped on the door of room 11, and said, ‘Arthur, open the door or I will mash it in,' and the door opened and the two women went in. . . . Arthur called me, and said, ‘Come in, I don't want to be left alone with them.' ”
Having witnessed the force of his wife's fury, Brown provided his mistress with a revolver for her protection. It wouldn't be necessary. Isabel Brown died of cancer in August 1905. The senator was now free to marry Anna. On the very night Isabel died, he called his lover and told her to get a divorce, which she did. But now that the romance was no longer forbidden, Brown seemed to lose interest. He asked Anna to wait until the following June to wed, then left her standing at the altar. Anna was, understandably, a little peeved. Now thirty-three and divorced, with four children, she pleaded with Brown to do right by her, but the good senator said he still needed more time. Instead of a commitment, he gave Anna a ticket to Los Angeles to rest. She exchanged it for a ticket to Washington. Breaking into his hotel room, she started rifling through his letters and discovered that he was sleeping with someone else. Now Anna had a taste of how poor Isabel must have felt. Her reaction was even more violent. When Senator Brown returned to his room, Anna shot him dead. She used the same gun he had given her for protection from Isabel.

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