The Devil's Gentleman (45 page)

86

T
he size of the crowd that showed up at the courthouse on Monday, November 10, 1902—the penultimate day of the Molineux trial—was difficult to measure, though a conservative estimate put the number at nearly two thousand.
¹
It required fifty policemen to impose a semblance of order on the clamorous mob in the hallway. No sooner did the doors open at 9:30
A.M.
than “every seat was occupied, the reporters’ tables were overwhelmed, chairs blocked the aisles, and the passageway from the justice’s chambers to the bench behind the jury box was packed solidly with spectators.”

Unable to find seats, “a solid mass of more than two hundred people stood in the rear of the room.” When Molineux entered at ten o’clock, “smiling and unconcerned,” court officers could not find a seat for him. The problem “was settled by General Molineux, who gave up his seat to his son,” then perched on a chair beside the reporter for the
Times.
²

Nearly the entirety of the day was given over to Black’s summation. He began in a voice so low that it was “barely audible a few feet away,” though it grew in both volume and intensity as he proceeded.

He began by insisting that it was “one of the duties of society to punish the guilty, but even greater is the duty of society to protect the innocent. If there is one innocent hair on the head of the man who stands before you accused of this crime, then you must acquit him.”

Black branded as “preposterous” the notion that Molineux would buy the silver holder at a store where he was sure to be recognized, and reminded the jurors that both the Hartdegen clerk, Emma Miller, and the traveling salesman, Barton Huff, had sworn that Roland was not the purchaser. He castigated the letter box man Joseph Koch as someone who “peddled his story and his eternal soul at the same time” denounced the handwriting experts as “stupendous frauds” and insisted that, far from being a substance that only a chemist could acquire, cyanide of mercury was commonly available to anyone.

He acknowledged the scandal that had caused Roland’s banishment to the West at the age of fifteen. But he asked the jurors “as experienced men, men who have lived in the world, to consider whether in such a case it is the boy of fifteen years or the married woman who is the betrayer.” In any event, Black continued, “since that time, you have seen him as a successful businessman with not one blemish against his character until this unfortunate occurrence. He has never done anything since he was fifteen years old to make him unworthy of the affection of the worthiest and bravest, the kindest, most honorable and loyal old man that I have ever known.”

At this invocation of the sacred person of General Molineux, a number of spectators burst into applause but were quickly silenced by the court officers.

The bulk of Black’s summation dealt with the issue of motive, and here he was helped immeasurably by the exclusion of all evidence relating to the death of Henry Barnet. He was “almost ashamed,” said Black, to waste the juror’s time in reviewing “the flimsy thing which is considered to be the motive that prompted this dastardly crime.

“Mr. Molineux was a member of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club,” Black continued. “Cornish was athletic director there. Molineux had a host of friends there. And you are asked to believe that into the midst of these friends, with no way of knowing whom it would reach, he sent a poisonous drug. And on what grounds are you asked to believe this?

“Because,” said Black in an incredulous tone, “Molineux didn’t like Cornish. This is all that you have as a motive for this frightful crime.”

Here, Black shook his head, as though in amazement. “Between every man on this jury and a hundred other men,” he said, “there are greater motives than this for a crime. In every church, in every family, a more serious motive for a crime could be found than this one. Yet on this and this alone, you are asked to single out this one man and say that he is a murderer.”

Leaning so far over the jury box that his extended forefinger was within an inch of the foreman’s nose, Black declared, “When a man is bent on murdering his enemy does he shoot into a crowd? Does he wreck a train because the object of his hatred is on that train? Would Molineux, to kill Cornish, send into a club where any man might taste it, where many of his friends might be endangered, a poisonous drug? No, gentlemen. I say that Molineux never did it.”

Here, Black stepped back from the jury box and paused for a moment, as though for dramatic effect.

“But there
was
a murder here,” he continued at length. “And there was a motive. All the evidence in this case points away from Molineux and to another man. It points to that man just as surely as the needle points to the North Star. Gentlemen, I am not here to brand any man, to open any sore. But a crime has been committed here, and my plain duty is before me.”

There seemed to be a collective intake of breath at this sudden shift in Black’s speech. Everyone knew, of course, that he was referring to Harry Cornish, who—as the newspapers wrote—had been “put on the rack” during his examination by Black. Even so, there was surprise, even shock, that the ex-governor’s closing remarks would turn into an open accusation of Roland’s old foe.

In a voice heavy with disdain, Black began with a description of Cornish’s checkered past: the adulteries that had led his wife to divorce him, and his affair with the Chicago woman, Mrs. Small, which ended in her reported death from an abortion.

“And what does Cornish do then?” asked Black. “He comes to New York and immediately hunts up Mrs. Rodgers. He says in his testimony that Mrs. Rodgers was then living with her husband. But what happens? Why, Mr. Rodgers suddenly disappears and institutes divorce proceedings, and Cornish goes to live on Eighty-fourth Street, on one side of Columbus Avenue, while on the other side Mrs. Rodgers resides. After that, they moved to the flat at Sixty-sixth Street and Park Avenue, and there Mrs. Rodgers and Cornish were in the same house, the same flat. From that minute in September 1898, until last September, fifteen days before this trial was begun, Mrs. Rodgers and Cornish have always lived in the same house.”

And what about the murder victim herself, the “good, kind, honest old woman,” Mrs. Adams? “Do you believe this old mother would sit by complacent while these things were happening under her eyes?” asked Black. “That she looked upon Cornish’s relations with her daughter with favor? No! From the moment Cornish came to New York, the trail of this creature was on the track of Mrs. Adams and her daughter. Would she let that viper into her home without protest? Would she let them be together if she could prevent them?”

Here at last—in Mrs. Adams’s ostensible objection to Cornish’s affair with her daughter—Black had come to the “secret, stealthy motive for this crime—the secret, consuming fire that burned into murderous hate.”

“Remember, gentlemen,” said Black, his voice ringing with indignation, his language growing increasingly colorful, if not positively lurid. “Passion of this kind is the thing that has disrupted kingdoms. It is the greatest force in all the things of this world. Trouble with the management of a circus? Trouble with a horizontal bar? Hah!
Here
is a motive which compared with these is as the vomiting of the volcano of St. Martinique compared with the soft rising of the tide at the base of the Statue of Liberty! The passion that actuated Cornish is stronger than any other motive that could be assigned for murder. When that passion rages, it violates all vows! It burns virtue and honesty like the raging fire that destroys the grass of the prairie! Not a motive to kill this old lady? Why, it was she who sought to protect her daughter. She watched over her until this man, spotted with the slime of immorality, crept into her home. No motive, you say?
There
is your motive!”

While Cornish himself, seated up front between his elderly parents, barked out a contemptuous laugh, Black continued with his assault. Had the prosecution been allowed to introduce testimony relating to Henry Barnet’s death, of course, his argument would have seemed far less persuasive. Only one man, after all, had a motive for killing Barnet, and it wasn’t Harry Cornish. As matters stood, however, there was a superficial plausibility to Black’s accusations.

He cited Emma Miller’s claim that the man who purchased the toothpick holder had asked for one “that matched the silver toiletry articles on a lady’s dresser.” The holder, as the jurors had seen for themselves during the trial, had a “peculiar beaded pattern” that did, in fact, resemble the design on Mrs. Rodgers’s toilet articles.

“Where is the living man except Cornish who knew it would match?” thundered Black.

And why, he asked, had Cornish brought the bottle of bromo-seltzer back to the apartment at all? “He testified that he never used bromo himself. Mrs. Rodgers said on the stand that she had never tasted bromo. And yet, he was so anxious to get it home that he broke open his desk to get it. Oh, yes, he got it home just in time. He knew that Mrs. Adams was subject to headaches, and twelve hours after the bromo reached the flat, Mrs. Adams had taken it. She was gone.

“Now there was nothing to stand in the way of that unlimited passion which burns cities and destroys empires!” Black said, his lip curled in disgust.

By this point, he had been speaking for more than four hours. It was nearly 3:00
P.M.
before he brought his assault on Harry Cornish to an end.

“With all these circumstances pointing at Mr. Cornish, with every damning fact pointing at Mr. Cornish,” said Black, “he has never up to this hour felt the tap of a policeman’s hand on his shoulder, nor has he been for one single hour deprived of his liberty. Every single fact in this case points towards Cornish, and not a single fact connects Molineux with this case. It is not for you to say whether Cornish is guilty or not. I ask you only to say that Molineux is not guilty. The character and life of Roland B. Molineux must prevail against the weak and unworthy picture we have been shown of Harry S. Cornish.”
³

No sooner had Black taken his seat than prosecutor James Osborne arose and launched into his own closing statement. It would continue until adjournment and resume the following morning.

Black’s blistering attack forced Osborne to devote much of his summation to a defense of Harry Cornish. He pointed out the absurdities and distortions in Black’s accusations. Why, for example, would Cornish have concocted such an elaborate plan to do away with Mrs. Adams when “he had every day, hourly, opportunities to slip poison in her coffee?” Why, after tossing it in the wastebasket, would he have “let his friend Fineran persuade him to preserve the wrapper” with the potentially incriminating handwriting? Nothing in Cornish’s actions—from his own sampling of the poison, to his immediate summoning of a physician, to his complete cooperation with investigators—was consistent with the behavior of a guilty man.

As for the scandalous insinuations about Cornish’s relationship with Mrs. Rodgers, Osborne pointed out that the two were “cousins, first cousins,” and that while they did indeed live under the same roof in a Manhattan boardinghouse, Cornish actually shared a room there with Florence Rodgers’s older brother, Howard.

His ultimate argument, however—hardly flattering to the man he sought to defend—was that Cornish simply wasn’t clever enough to be the killer. To concoct such a diabolical scheme required “a man of intellectuality, of cunning,” said Osborne. “Now I ask you, can you make a poisoner out of that material such as Cornish?”

No, Osborne said to the jurors, the accusations hurled against Cornish were simply Black’s desperate effort “to cloud your minds.” The proof was overwhelming that Molineux—here he turned and jabbed a finger in Roland’s direction—was the guilty man.

Hamstrung by his inability to refer to the Barnet murder, Osborne did his best to address the issue of motive, insisting that—far from having put his quarrels with Cornish behind him—Molineux, as the evidence proved, continued to brood about the athletic director, until his “jealousy and bitterness crystallized into action.” He refuted Black’s assertion about the easy availability of cyanide of mercury, insisting that no one but a chemist would know how to obtain, or concoct, such an uncommon poison. He dwelt on the testimony of several cashiers at Roland’s bank, who had identified the handwriting on the poison wrapper as consistent with Molineux’s signature.

“I say to you,” Osborne concluded, “that the prosecution bears no malice toward this defendant. But it asks you not to swerve from your duty. You are compelled to give the defendant the benefit of your doubt. But we ask you not to be timid, not to shrink because of your natural indisposition to cause harm to a fellow being.

“If you do,” he said, his voice rising to a thunderous level, “all through your life you will hear that still small voice of conscience taunting you: ‘Coward, coward, coward!’”
⁴

It was a few minutes past noon, Tuesday, November 11, when an exhausted Osborne sat down. Judge Lambert then called a lunch recess. When court resumed at one-fifteen, Lambert immediately launched into his charge, which lasted two hours. At 3:14
P.M.
, the jury retired.

Thirteen minutes later, they were back.

87

S
eated between his youngest and eldest sons, Cecil and Leslie, General Molineux nervously scanned the faces of the jurors as the twelve men resumed their places. For the first time, the stoic old soldier seemed overcome with anxiety. His face twitched, he tugged at his white goatee and rubbed his balding dome. He could not remain still for an instant.

To judge from their grave expressions, there was cause for concern. Not one of the jurors would meet Roland’s eyes. All kept their gazes on the floor.

The excited buzz that had filled the courtroom when the jurors reentered had subsided into a tense, protracted silence, which was finally broken by Judge Lambert.

“Upon rendition of this verdict,” he cautioned, “every person is forbidden to make any demonstration of approval or disapproval. Any person disregarding this admonition will be promptly brought to this bar and punished. When this verdict is rendered, I wish every person to disperse quietly.”

At that, the clerk addressed the jurors.

“Please rise, gentlemen,” he said, then turned to Roland. “The defendant will rise. Jurors, look upon the prisoner. Prisoner, look upon the jurors.”

Molineux shot to his feet and stood so rigidly erect that he appeared to be “almost on tiptoe.”
¹
He stared hard at the jurors, but though all twelve men had turned in his direction, they seemed to be looking past him.

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?” asked the clerk.

“We have,” replied the foreman, gazing down at the floor.

“What say you, guilty or not guilty as charged in the indictment?”

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering: “Not guilty.”

Seated beside General Molineux, his business partner, Mr. Devoe, let out an excited yelp and threw out his hands so wildly that he struck the General in the face. But the old man never noticed. Leaping from his chair, he grabbed his boy’s hand and held it tightly, while Bartow Weeks leaned forward from his seat and seized Roland’s other hand.
²

Roland—still standing as “erect as a West Point cadet on parade”—showed no reaction at first. All at once, a radiant smile “broadened his prison-pale cheeks and deepened the dimple in his chin,” and his eyes danced with happiness.

Intent upon obeying the formalities, the clerk addressed the jurors. “So say you all?” he asked.

The twelve men nodded gravely, then resumed their seats while—in defiance of Judge Lambert’s warning—the crowd went wild.

Men cheered and tossed their hats in the air, women clapped and squealed, and a small mob of both sexes surged toward Roland, who was already surrounded by his lawyers, brothers, friends, and other well-wishers. The scene, wrote one reporter, “resembled a football rush.” Everyone wanted to shake his hand or (in the case of more than one of his fashionably attired female fans) embrace him.

The heartiest congratulations, however, were reserved for the General; “the old warrior had spent all the savings of a lifetime, given all the energy of the last years of a long and honorable career to the defense of his son.” For every handshake Roland received, his father seemed to receive three or four.

The celebration went on for five full minutes before the pounding of Judge Lambert’s gavel and the shouts of the court officers restored order to the chaotic scene.

Addressing the district attorney, Lambert asked if there was “any further charge against this defendant.”

“There is not,” said the DA.

“Then,” said the judge, “I declare the defendant discharged.”

As the tumult around Roland resumed, jurors filed from the courtroom. Passing a dejected-looking James Osborne, several of them offered consoling remarks.

“We had to go against you,” said Foreman Young, “but you went down with flying colors.”
³

Harry Cornish, on learning of the verdict, bitterly declared his belief that the outcome was inevitable, given Judge Lambert’s obvious bias. “I want to congratulate the judge on his defense of the accused,” he said with heavy sarcasm.
⁴

Meanwhile, at the front of the courtroom, the General was besieged by reporters. What were his emotions when he heard the verdict? “Here, give me a pencil and a slip of paper,” said the General, “and I will write down just what I feel.”

Someone handed him the items and the old man, leaning down to the nearest table, quickly scribbled two lines. They appeared on the front pages the following day—a paraphrase of a famous hymn:

The strife is o’er, the battle done,

And Might has lost but Right has won.
⁵

As Roland, his father, and their supporters left the courtroom, they were greeted by a deafening yell. The upper floors of the building, which “looked down upon the main hall like so many balconies in the opera house,” were thronged with cheering people.

Out on the street, an even more massive crowd burst into a “tremendous wave of applause” at their first glimpse of Roland and the General. People in passing trolley cars waved handkerchiefs from the windows, while, on the fire escapes of the nearby tenements, women and children joined in the general rejoicing.

A few moments later, a closed carriage drew up before the courthouse, and Roland, his father, Bartow Weeks, and George Gordon Battle climbed aboard. Immediately, the crowd closed around it. People reached inside the open windows, attempting to grab Roland’s hand, and a few men actually tried to jump inside before the door was yanked shut and secured.

As the driver applied his whip, a squad of several dozen policemen struggled to clear a way through the crowd. Several hundred men and boys pursued the carriage, cheering all the while. At every corner, more people joined the procession. By the time the carriage reached the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, an estimated fifteen hundred people followed in its wake.

On the Brooklyn side, the carriage clattered up Fulton Street and past Borough Hall, where another five hundred people had assembled. Roland leaned out the window and waved his hat in response to the cheering mob.

By the time the carriage approached Roland’s home, the news had reached Fort Greene Place. Every stoop was lined with men, women, and children. Every open window seemed to frame an excited face. As the police cleared a path on the packed street, the carriage drew up in front of the Molineux residence. Roland was the first out, his father close behind him.

“Three cheers for Roland Molineux!” someone shouted, and the crowd let out a roar.

Roland took off his hat and bowed. Suddenly, the front door opened and his elderly mother, wearing a plain linen cap, stood in the entranceway.

Bounding up the steps, Roland took her in his arms.

“My boy!” she cried, hugging him.

A reverential silence descended on the crowd, as Roland and his mother held their embrace for a full minute. By the time they parted, the General had joined them at the top of the stairs.

“Well, Mother,” he said. “I have kept my word. I told you I would bring the boy home.”

As Roland and his mother disappeared inside the house, the General turned to the crowd.

“Three cheers for General Molineux, the best father that ever lived!” came another shout. The jubilation that erupted was “such as was never heard in quiet old-fashioned Fort Greene Place.” A street band suddenly materialized and struck up a rousing rendition of “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?”
⁶

Glowing with happiness—looking “as though he had grown twenty-five years younger in a day”—the General bowed right and left. The sheer intensity of the outpouring confirmed a belief that many commentators would assert for years to come: that “Roland Burnham Molineux was indicted and tried for murder and General Edward Leslie Molineux was acquitted.”
⁷

Little by little, the crowd dispersed, leaving the Molineuxs to enjoy their reunion in private. But at least one observer had noticed something odd. There appeared to be “one member of the family who was not there to greet Molineux upon his dramatic homecoming,” wrote the reporter for the
Brooklyn Eagle.

“It was his wife.”
⁸