Death of a Pinehurst Princess

by Steve Bouser

  That was Valentine’s Day. The next day, Elva voided her previous will, which had named three beneficiaries: her brother, Ellsworth Statler; her infant niece, Joan Marie Statler; and her intimate friend from her Radcliffe College days, Isabelle Stone Baer. Then, according to the paper, she “purported to make a will [it had not yet been probated] bequeathing the benefits of her own trust fund to her husband-to-be and also giving him other personal property, which included income from her share of the trust fund of the late Marian Statler, E.M.’s other adopted daughter. This sum is believed to total about $280,000, so the amount willed to Mr. Davidson apparently exceeds $500,000. Her own trust she broke up into an outright bequest to him of $100,000 and setting aside of $175,000 to provide an annuity of $12,000 for him. She died 17 days after making the purported will.”

  As Solicitor Pruette prepared to play his hole card, another reporter who managed to scoop Folliard with a relevant tidbit on his first day on the story was an unidentified correspondent who sent a two-paragraph story to The New York Times.

  Not long before her death, it said, Elva had “accepted plans for a home to be built on a seventy-five-acre tract of land near Pinehurst, on which she had obtained an option. In addition there were to be stables, swimming pool and tennis courts. The papers had been turned over to attorneys, but had not been signed at the time of her death. It is understood that if the transaction had gone through, Mrs. Davidson would have had an investment of nearly $100,000 in her estate.”

  The significance of that would not be lost on investigators and amateur sleuths. Does planning for a palatial new home sound like something a woman contemplating suicide would do? Others put a more sinister spin on it. Could Brad have had other plans for that money and the rest of Elva’s fortune? Had he resolved to find a way to keep her from squandering it?

  A Philadelphia Inquirer writer got the jump on the story of how the supposedly grieving Brad Davidson, in the midst of the investigation, had gone to the Pinehurst Country Club with a group of friends to play golf. “He was shielded from all strangers by his brother, Richard Davidson, and Herbert Vail, who was a member of Tuesday night’s drinking party,” the paper said.

  On the other hand, there was the exclusive interview that the same Philly correspondent got with Herbert Vail’s wife, Minnie, described as Elva’s confidante. He didn’t have to seek her out—she approached him, anxious to volunteer a haunting story of a disturbed young woman driven by personal demons. There was no possibility of foul play in Elva’s death, she insisted. It had to have been suicide. The Davidsons were devoted to each other, she said, and Elva had been happier since her marriage than at any time during her life.

  Minnie Vail described Elva as “a strangely moody girl” and said her young friend’s behavior at the spaghetti camp, when she kept weeping but then asked to be left alone so she could “snap out of it,” was typical. “I saw her crying and went to her,” Minnie told the reporter. “I put my arms around her and asked her what was the trouble. She went on crying and sobbed, ‘No one likes me.’ I told her to forget it, that everyone liked her, and pretty soon she quieted down and was herself again. I had seen the same scene many times, and that was what she always said. She had an inferiority complex and always believed that people disliked her.”

  Mrs. Vail, who along with her husband had sat with the Davidsons at the country club, said it pained her to hear people saying that Brad had neglected Elva and waltzed the night away with other women. “Why, he danced almost every dance with her,” she insisted. “He was always sweet and attentive. There can’t be even a chance that anyone had anything to do with Elva’s death except herself. But it must all be cleared up so that the world will understand it and no shadow of ugly suspicion will hang over anyone for life.”

  It remained for a correspondent for the United Press, a wire service never known for restraint or circumspection in its headlong rush to get the scoop on AP, to stick his or her journalistic neck out the farthest.

  “Every scrap of evidence they have been able to piece together,” the UP reporter wrote with a flourish, “indicates that Mrs. Elva Statler Davidson was the victim of a strange and scientific murder, officials said tonight. All day they labored—lawyers, physicians and the coroner—and at evening said the possibility that the beautiful heiress walked out of her white house among the pines to take her own life was growing dimmer with every passing hour. They already have eliminated the theory that she died accidentally.”

  The UP staffer included one other explosive passage in that day’s dispatch. When Elva’s vital organs were being tested and analyzed at Duke, the story said, “it was learned that while carbon monoxide was in the lungs, there was a chance that a more subtle poison might have been the actual cause of death. Physicians and chemists at Duke have been working in the vital organs for more than 48 hours and still are not ready to report.”

  Having dropped those bombshells, the UP story concluded: “Tomorrow a coroner’s jury convenes in Pinehurst’s Community House to try to dig out all the facts of this puzzling tragedy in the midst of the winter playground of the wealthy.”

  CHAPTER 6

  No Bible to Take an Oath On

  It was standing room only in Pinehurst’s Community House for the anxiously anticipated resumption of the Elva Statler Davidson inquest on the morning of Tuesday, March 5, 1935.

  “Papers horrible,” Hemmie Tufts wrote in her diary. “Trial on at 10.” It wasn’t a trial, of course; it was an inquest. But in the minds of many, Brad Davidson was being tried for murdering his wife.

  All 125 available seats in the small, square, white-painted building were crammed with spectators drawn by what a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter called “the insinuations which have been scattered broadside since Mrs. Davidson’s death, and which have kept this society resort colony buzzing for a week.”

  Most of the insinuations had been scattered by Solicitor Rowland Pruette. All eyes were on him as he made his grand entrance, briefcase in hand, and took his place at a table alongside Coroner Carl Fry, who was still playing catch-up after being out of the county when Elva’s body was found, and Acting Coroner Hugh Kelly, who had filled in for him during the previous two closed inquest sessions on February 27 and 28.

  Pruette, talking with reporters that morning as they gathered for the big show, had stuck to his tantalizing poker metaphor, repeating: “I have a card up my sleeve which I am not going to play until well along in the inquest.” And the consensus seemed to be that the supposed card, which sounded like it might be an ace of spades, had something to do with the toxicology findings.

  The Post’s normally fastidiously accurate Eddie Folliard, uncharacteristically getting both his gases and his internal organs mixed up, wrote on that day: “Dr. Heywood Taylor of Duke University, who examined the vital organs, said Sunday night that there was sufficient carbon dioxide [sic] in Mrs. Davidson’s stomach [sic] to cause death. He added, however, that there may have been ‘other contributing causes.’” That was one of the things, Folliard wrote, that made this famous health resort think it had the first murder mystery in its history.

  The air did seem to buzz inside the low-slung frame building, whose interior amounted to one big pine-floored, rough-raftered room. One reporter called it one of the strangest courtroom scenes the country had ever witnessed. He wrote:

  Most of the witnesses and spectators alike were dressed in golf clothes, riding habits or tennis jackets. Some arrived in Rolls-Royces, others in 12-cylinder sport cars. The elite arrived first and got the best seats, for they were primarily interested. Elva Statler had lived in Pinehurst for years. She was one of the resort’s most popular girls. After the socialites had found seats, the servants and tradesmen began to crowd in the windows and doorways. When it began to rain early this afternoon, they crowded inside, the windows were shut, and the air was stifling.

  The inquest into Elva Statler Davidson’s mysterious death, which became a national sensation, took place in Pinehurst’s
modest Community House. Courtesy of the Tufts Archives, Pinehurst.

  Press flashbulbs began to pop in earnest when the door opened and an unsmiling Brad Davidson entered, accompanied by Curtis and Edna Campaigne and his brother, Richard Porter Davidson, and Richard’s wife, Betty Hanna Davidson. Brad, who stood just over six feet tall and weighed 185 pounds, wore “somber funeral garb” consisting of a dark gray suit, black tie and white shirt. He was to be the first to testify that day. The buzz grew more subdued as he worked his way across the crowded room to the witness stand, which was in fact nothing more than a cane-backed wooden rocking chair positioned at one end of the room.

  As he nervously glanced around the room, Davidson gave the appearance of feeling alone and isolated there in the spotlight. None of the other six witnesses to be heard that first day was anywhere in sight. To keep them from influencing one another’s testimony, Pruette had ordered that they be sequestered and called in one at a time for questioning. As the dreaded proceeding began, Davidson was described as looking “taut and harassed.” But it was noted that he “managed a smile” when a clerk discovered that there was no Bible on which he could take the oath.

  Sometimes remaining seated, sometimes rising and pacing back and forth in the close confines of the Community House, Pruette spent a full hour aggressively pursuing what was described as his “sharp” questioning of Brad Davidson. The witness, in turn, was characterized as replying to the solicitor’s many pointed questions “in a crisp, firm voice.”

  In the second part of his quizzing of Davidson, Pruette intended to get into more general questions about the couple’s relationship. First, though, he would spend considerable time on the events of the previous Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Spectators hung on every word as the actual testimony at long last began.

  “Mr. Davidson,” Pruette asked after a few introductory formalities, “did you drink any liquor on the afternoon before your wife’s death?”

  “Yes, one highball,” Davidson replied. “We had tea before dinner Tuesday night, and also the one cocktail. Then, after dinner, we left to attend a charity ball.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “We left the house for the Pinehurst Country Club between ten forty-five and eleven.”

  “Did you and Mrs. Davidson drink at the club?”

  “We had perhaps one or two drinks.”

  “Did you dance with Mrs. Davidson?”

  “Yes, twice.”

  Pruette paused and consulted his notes. “Now, Mr. Davidson,” he finally asked, his voice hardening a bit, “was there any trouble at the charity ball between you and your wife?”

  “Not really,” Davidson replied. “She bought two pictures at the ball for thirty-five dollars. She asked me how I liked one of them, and I replied, ‘Why, that’s a rotten painting.’ I was joking, but she seemed to take it very much to heart. She turned to a friend of hers and said, ‘Look, Brad is angry with me.’”

  “So you were joking,” the solicitor said skeptically.

  “Yes,” Davidson replied.

  “And where did you go then?” Pruette asked

  “About a quarter of two, we left the country club with a party of about twenty and went to Montesanti’s spaghetti house,” Davidson said. “Between Pinehurst and Southern Pines.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “Before we left the table, Nelson Hyde [publisher of The Pilot newspaper] suggested a part of us take the accordion player to Montesanti’s and have him play some more for us. He was very good.”

  “Did Mrs. Davidson drink at Montesanti’s?”

  “She had a highball in front of her, but I don’t think she drank it. I think it lasted her all evening.”

  “But there was considerable drinking there, wasn’t there?”

  “No. I was never under the influence of liquor.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Two or two and a half hours.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Listening to this chap play.”

  After the party broke up, Davidson said, they and the Campaignes started for the house on Linden Road, driving separately and arriving there about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. The Campaignes, he said, got there first.

  Moving in a little closer, Pruette wanted to know if there had been any trouble at that point. Davidson took a deep breath and sounded slightly annoyed, as if having to spend more time on a subject than it deserved.

  “When we arrived at the door of the house,” he replied, “Mrs. Davidson said, ‘I’ll put the car in the garage.’ We have to drive out of our driveway around on the main road into an adjoining driveway. So I said, ‘No, don’t do it. I’ll put it away.’ We were arguing back and forth about that when Mrs. Campaigne finally said, ‘Do you mind if we go into the house? We’re both tired and want to go to bed.’”

  Davidson said he had complied. After he had escorted his guests into the house, he said, he returned to the car, where his wife was still standing, and the seemingly pointless little debate resumed.

  “Please let me put the car away,” he recalled pleading. “You are awfully tired, and I don’t mind doing it.”

  “No, I am going to do it,” he quoted her as saying, stubbornly standing her ground.

  He said he finally settled the argument by saying: “Let’s leave the car right here. You come along and go to bed.” And that’s what he said they did, leaving the car parked in front of the house. Once they had gone up to their rooms, Davidson said, he helped his wife off with her coat, kissed her goodnight and told her to let him know if she wanted anything. And they went to their separate bedrooms.

  Pruette’s ears perked up. “Had you been using separate rooms?” he asked.

  “I would say about half and half,” Davidson said, clearly uncomfortable having the subject discussed publicly. “Sometimes I would go to her room and sometimes she would use mine. They were directly across from each other.” Davidson explained that there were twin beds in his wife’s room and a single bed in his.

  “Do you remember the last thing she said that night?” Pruette asked.

  “Yes,” Davidson replied. “She called from her room, ‘Goodnight, darling.’” The last time he saw his wife alive, he said, she was removing some clips from the green evening dress she had worn to the ball. “I could hear her fussing about in her room, undressing,” he testified, “but I didn’t pay any attention to it.”

  “Were both doors open?”

  “Yes, both doors were open.”

  Exhausted from being up all day and most of the night, he said, he fell asleep within five minutes. And the next thing he knew, the butler was banging on his door.

  One journalist described Davidson as looking “grave and self-possessed” as the questioning moved on to the traumatic events of the next morning.

  “What time were you awakened?” Pruette asked.

  “About 9:00 a.m.,” Davidson said. “Birch, the butler, came into my room and said, ‘My God, Mr. Davidson, Mrs. Davidson is dead!’”

  “Had you heard any sound during the night?

  “No.”

  Davidson described how he pulled some trousers on over his pajamas and hurried down the stairs, out the back door and out to the garage.

  “What did you see when you went to the garage?” Pruette asked.

  “Well, the door was up,” Davidson said.

  “Did you detect any odor or see any smoke?”

  “Well, I was so upset when I went in I didn’t notice anything at all. I had only one thought.”

  “Where did you find her?”

  “Left-hand side. She appeared to have been trying to get out.”

  Pruette asked about the position in which he found his wife’s body.

  “One knee on the running board,” Davidson said, “one in the car or almost in, one arm on the seat, one on the floor, her head on the floor.”

  “Did you examine the car itself then or later?”

  “No. The
only thing I noticed was when I started the car to drive to the hospital, the switch was on. I made no other examination.” At this point in his testimony, one journalistic observer said that “his face muscles were rigid and his lips were a thin line as he spoke.”

  Pruette asked Davidson whether he had checked to see if the motor was hot, and he replied that it had never entered his mind to do so. “I was leaning over Elva,” he said, “trying to find out what it was all about. I took my hand and felt her head, and it was warm. I felt her wrist, and it was warm. But I felt no pulse.”

  He made no attempt to carry her into the house, he said, and he did not know whether she was alive or dead. That was the point, he said, at which Campaigne, who had entered the garage shortly after he did, warned him not to touch the body.

  “But I picked her up and held her on my lap on the running board and told Mr. Campaigne to call a doctor,” he said. “Dr. M.W. Marr got there and said we must get her to the hospital. I wrapped a coat around her and placed her on the back seat. Dr. Marr said, ‘I think I know what’s wrong.’”

  Davidson said he chose to drive because Campaigne didn’t know the way.

  At that dramatic point in the testimony, with the dead body of a young woman jostling in the back seat of a 1934 Packard racing toward the Moore County Hospital, Pruette left spectators hanging by shifting abruptly into back-story mode.

  “Where have you made your home in the past twenty years?” he asked.

  “Well, in 1915 I lived in Berryville, Virginia,” Davidson replied. “Then, when the war started, I went to Fort Myer and after the war returned to Baltimore. In 1929, I went to Waukegan, Illinois, on business and two years later to the Milwaukee lock manufacturing plant, where I remained three years. Then I went to Washington after my father’s death, then Baltimore, and then Annapolis, and finally Pinehurst.” (Either Davidson or the newspaper reporter got that wrong. He went west in 1928 and stayed in Waukegan and Milwaukee for a total of three years, not five.)