The Death of an Heir

by Philip Jett

  What Wermuth didn’t realize was that in all likelihood Hoover had authorized the secret flight. If anyone relished favorable press more than Wermuth, it was the FBI director.

  The fiasco provided the opposition candidate for district attorney, Ron Hardesty, plenty of fodder during the final days of the campaign. He described O’Kane’s “ridiculous” failed trip to Canada as a “wild-goose chase at taxpayer expense” that accomplished nothing and was only taken to receive free publicity during an election. Thereafter, the junket was labeled the “Canadian Wild Goose Caper” by the press.

  Wermuth received no better treatment. Besides being part of the Canadian Wild Goose Caper, a local newspaper carried a cartoon headed, “Gee Whiz, Marshal Dillon,” lampooning Wermuth and O’Kane as gangly, Old West–style lawmen unwittingly shackled together walking up to a Colorado locksmith with a bag labeled, “Corbett or Bust.”

  * * *

  On Halloween 1960, the same day Joseph Corbett was standing in a Canadian court, Mary was seated in a Jefferson County court beside Bruce Buell, an estate attorney, and Thomas R. Walker, a banker.

  Most mothers were preparing for trick-or-treating, a scary night for the very young and a few older superstitious ones. A night of knocks on doors, candy, and plastic masks and costumes of monsters—Frankenstein, Dracula, Werewolf, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon—while Psycho and The Fall of the House of Usher played at movie theaters. But these were only fictitious monsters created to sell tickets and popcorn. They were fantasy, “just pretend,” Mary had always told her children. Mary would make certain Jim had a fun Halloween, but first she had to experience a veritable horror of her own—walking through the courthouse hallway before the probate hearing commenced.

  Mary didn’t want to be in court that day, but she was a co-executor of Ad’s estate, and the judge always required executors to affirmatively acknowledge in his presence the solemn undertaking for which they’d been named in the last will and testament. Yet it was a public place, and Mary, who once enjoyed any opportunity to go out and socialize, now wished to avoid it.

  Several people recognized her. Others had gotten word of the probate proceedings in the newspapers and came solely to catch a glimpse of her. Whether by chance or design, those who knew she was Ad Coors’s widow greeted her as she passed. A courthouse employee asked if she needed water. Another asked if there was anything she could get her. Mary was accustomed to being treated nicely, being a Grant and a Coors in Colorado. People had smiled, nodded, and held doors open for her all her life, but this was different. The awkward smiles, sad faces, and courteous gestures emanated not from respect but pity. For perhaps the first time, many were glad they weren’t Mary Grant Coors.

  The side door of the courtroom opened, and the judge, dressed in a black robe, stepped up to sit at the bench as the bailiff barked out the traditional introduction to open the court. The Honorable Roscoe Pile took his seat behind the elevated bench and below the Great Seal of the State of Colorado. The clerk handed the judge a file.

  “In the Matter of the Estate of Adolph Coors III, Deceased, Case No. 6971,” called the court clerk, W. W. Churchill.

  “Hello, Mrs. Coors,” said the bespectacled Judge Pile, straying from his typical courtroom demeanor to pay respect to the prominent petitioner. “This will only take a moment.” Her deceased husband’s probate matter had been placed at the top of the docket.

  Mary sat on a wooden pew at the front of the courtroom. The courthouse in Golden was not a modern facility. The Victorian-style, three-story building had seen better days. Built in the previous century, its wood-paneled walls and creaky floors smelled musty. (It would be razed three years later.)

  Standing before the judge, Buell requested permission to speak. “The decedent, Adolph Herman Joseph Coors III, died on or about February 9, 1960, and his remains were discovered on September 11 through 15, 1960. At the time of his death, Mr. Coors was a resident of Jefferson County. As Mr. Coors is deceased, I would like to offer his last will and testament into probate with the court. It was signed by Mr. Coors on February 19, 1959, in the presence of two witnesses, Stephen H. Hart, esquire, and Mr. W. D. Embree Jr., esquire. I have two affidavits signed by Messrs. Hart and Embree stating…”

  The estate attorney continued with the many procedural details required by courts, particularly in probate matters, carried over from old English common law when matters of death were handled by the ecclesiastical courts under the control of the Church of England.

  Buell handed the sixteen-page last will and testament and affidavits to the court clerk. The clerk in turn handed the documents to the judge for his review. The judge scanned the documents and announced, “I hereby admit this as the last will and testament of Adolph Coors III and open his estate for administration. And I grant Letters Testamentary to the co-executors of the estate, Mrs. Mary Grant Coors and the First National Bank of Denver, represented here today by Mr. Thomas R. Walker, evidencing their authority to act on behalf of the deceased’s estate.”

  Most in the courtroom didn’t appreciate the true meaning of the judge’s words. Perhaps only two did—the estate attorney and Mary. Even the judge, who said basically the same thing at every probate hearing, only changing the names, probably didn’t realize the true import of what he’d just said. A Colorado court had ruled that Ad Coors was dead.

  Attorney Buell held open the swing gate leading into the gallery as Mary walked through first. Down the center aisle Mary walked, not making eye contact with all the sympathetic onlookers. Halfway to the doors, she caught herself and raised her chin, poised, showing all that she still was a Grant and a Coors. Though only a few seconds, it seemed to Mary like one of the longest walks she had taken. She stepped into the hallway, which was thankfully free of people.

  Twelve weeks later, Buell filed an inventory of Ad’s estate with the court. The value of the estate for death tax purposes was $618,657.17. A large estate for anyone in 1960 (worth $5 million today), though not commensurate with that of a chairman of a huge company like Adolph Coors Company and the heir of a multimillionaire father, in part because he was only forty-four and had not lived to inherit his share of his father’s wealth.

  The filing of a detailed inventory of Ad’s assets and their values was now a matter of public record for reporters to publish in their newspapers for all to read. Just another indignity Mary had to suffer. They seemed to be never ending—caused not by a Halloween character but by a real-life fiend who’d ruthlessly murdered her husband and dumped his body in the snow-covered mountains. And that was only the beginning. There was no plastic mask for this monster, but Corbett’s depraved face and his evildoing were no less frightening. For regardless of what judicially lay ahead of him, he would torment Mary for the rest of her life with nightmares, hatred, alcoholism, and ultimately a premature death.

  * * *

  For a person convicted of murder to be sentenced to death in Colorado in 1960, one of two conditions was required. There must be an eyewitness to the killing. No eyewitness had yet stepped forward in the Coors case, so that left the other condition, a confession to the murder. So far, Corbett wasn’t talking. Sheriff Wermuth said he would see to it that Corbett not only confessed but confessed to him, providing the sheriff with a chance to regain some respect after appearing foolish in the press.

  Wermuth’s quest to browbeat a confession out of the suspect started the minute Corbett stepped foot in the Jefferson County jail. The sheriff chatted with Corbett through the entire booking process and even while Corbett changed into his prison uniform, but Corbett was defiant, saying nothing more than what was necessary to complete his processing into the county jail.

  After Golden physician and Jefferson County deputy coroner, Dr. John Hunt, examined Joe Corbett, Wermuth led his new prisoner to a cell and sat to question him while his first meal was served on a metal tray.

  “Do any fishing while you were in Canada?” Wermuth asked, trying to break the ice with his “celebrity�
� prisoner.

  Corbett gave Wermuth a look as if to say, “You’re kidding, right?” Corbett wasn’t a typical prisoner. He wasn’t going to be tricked into some best-pal discourse with his jailer, especially about fugitive fishing. Not only was Corbett intelligent, he’d been a guest in several correctional facilities—Beverly Hills, Marin County, San Quentin, Soledad, Terminal Island, and Chino, not to mention his brief stay in Vancouver and Tacoma.

  Wermuth continued with his questions.

  “You writing a book?” replied Corbett.

  The sheriff chuckled, though Corbett’s remark angered him.

  After four and a half hours of questions, Captain George Drazich (called “the man with the keys”) unlocked the cell door from the outside and Wermuth stepped out to give his prisoner some time to reflect on how it would be wise to spill the details of the crime. The sound of Wermuth’s boot heels clicking the concrete floor told Corbett his captor was finally gone. He stretched out on his cot and closed his eyes.

  A lobby filled with reporters greeted Wermuth as he exited the cell block. He pulled a comb from his pocket and raked it through his hair. Dispatcher Madeline Pearce handed him his Stetson.

  The journalists began asking questions all at the same time, each attempting to have their question answered first. “You drag a confession out of him yet, Sheriff?” could be heard more clearly than the others.

  “Not yet, but I will. You have to go about this kind of thing scientifically, boys. Corbett’s a smart cookie. He just won’t blurt out that he did it. That’s why I’ve been softening him up, you know, making friends with him, making small talk.”

  Wermuth didn’t mention that Corbett truculently told him, “You’re only interested in your political future.”

  Photos were snapped of Wermuth standing at his office door. Later, he led newsmen into an empty cell as Corbett was showering for more photos of Wermuth holding the cell bars and pointing out Corbett’s meal on a prison tray.

  “How much longer you plan on softening ’im up?” asked a reporter.

  “Maybe he and I will have a little powwow in the morning, and it’ll get a might hostile in that cell if he doesn’t cooperate because we’re not spending months more pussyfootin’ around,” the sheriff boasted.

  Two days later, things were indeed getting hostile. Wermuth was frustrated. Corbett wasn’t saying a word, not even looking at his interrogators. The interrogation would begin at nine o’clock each day, stop for lunch at noon, and then resume until 3:30 with spot interrogations conducted at any moment thereafter, even if they had to rouse Corbett at two or three o’clock in the morning.

  “We’re starting the interview in teams for only straight interrogation, no manhandling or abuse,” said Wermuth. “We’re trying to draw him out of his shell and put him in a receptive frame of mine. Captain Bray and Lieutenant Kechter are our first team.”

  “Has he told you anything you can use in court?”

  “Well, the prisoner talks in generalities mostly. When we ask him anything skirting on the Coors case, he merely stares at us.”

  “Is it frustrating waiting for him to break?”

  “You’re damn right it’s frustrating, but we got plenty of time. He’s not going anywhere,” continued Wermuth. “It seems to me to be a question of finding the right moment of feeling and the right personality he will respond to. But he will, and before he knows it, he’ll be strapped in the chamber waiting for ol’ Harry to pull the lever.” (Harry Tinsley was the warden at Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City charged with carrying out all state executions.)

  Wermuth would soon learn Corbett wasn’t stupid enough to confess and send himself to the gas chamber. Until then, Wermuth played up his interrogation in front of reporters as if to portray that Colorado justice rested entirely on his broad shoulders. His chats with reporters would continue up to and throughout Corbett’s trial.

  If that publicity seeking wasn’t bad enough, Wermuth and his collaborator District Attorney O’Kane had their photographs taken by newspapers reading the FBI investigation report (O’Kane was photographed holding the full report), which was supplied to The Denver Post and touted as an “exclusive,” even though Special Agent Werner had supplied the FBI report to the district attorney “confidentially for your official use at the time it is determined that prosecution is to be had by your office.” The Post printed its exclusive on September 22, detailing key points in the report.

  Six years later, long after Wermuth and O’Kane were ousted from office, a Colorado Supreme Court justice would have an opportunity in a legal opinion to address Wermuth and O’Kane’s propensity for leaking information during the Coors investigation:

  We do not sanction improper publicity, nor the activities of those who caused it in the present case.… Certainly not all the blame for the harmful publicity can be laid at the feet of the press. Most of the information which they published would never have been available had it not been for the overzealous release of material by the law enforcement and prosecution officials. These officials have the very important responsibility of protecting the rights of the accused.

  The Colorado Supreme Court justice was gracious enough not to name the two foremost offenders.

  CHAPTER 19

  On Election Day, November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon. The race was so close that Nixon did not concede until the following afternoon. The election of the district attorney for the First Judicial District that included Jefferson County wasn’t as close. Incumbent Barney O’Kane, who had been part of the Canadian Wild Goose Caper, was out. The baby-faced thirty-six-year-old Ronald J. Hardesty would be the new district attorney beginning January 10. His first big case would be the Coors murder trial.

  Hardesty had worked as an FBI agent, a former position that would serve him well working with the tight-lipped FBI on the Coors case. He’d also practiced law for the previous eight years while serving as assistant Colorado attorney general and as Jefferson County attorney after losing the election for the district attorney’s office to O’Kane in ’56. He was easygoing and amiable, but effective.

  The young prosecutor also had an impressive war record, though he didn’t tout his like the county sheriff. He had been a Hellcat fighter pilot in the Pacific during World War II, assigned to the carrier USS Yorktown. He flew numerous missions and several times returned in a plane ripped by enemy bullets. Once, his plane was so riddled that sailors shoved the assemblage of holes and dangling metal parts off the deck into the ocean.

  Hardesty would be aided by Assistant District Attorney Edward Juhan and a well-respected friend of Hardesty’s, Richard Hite, as well as a friend of Juhan’s, Tony Zarlengo. Sitting with the prosecution to assist with the FBI’s evidence (over the objection of defense counsel) would be FBI special agent Jesse Orr.

  H. Malcolm Mackay, a thirty-six-year-old nondescript Denver attorney, was appointed by the court to defend Corbett. One of his first acts was to stand in court beside his infamous client on November 15 when the official charge was read.

  “Mr. Corbett, that’s a charge of murder,” said the judge. “How do you plead?”

  Corbett was dressed in a new brown suit, white shirt, and olive-gold tie mailed by his father. Without hesitation and in a loud, clear voice, he answered, “I plead not guilty.”

  A few days later, Mackay realized he couldn’t handle the case alone. After talking it over with his client, Mackay requested, and the court appointed, an intelligent and meticulous attorney, William H. Erickson, to serve as cocounsel. Like Hardesty and Mackay, Erickson was also thirty-six-years-old. He was a well-respected trial lawyer in Denver who graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden with a degree in petroleum engineering and received his law degree from the University of Virginia. He was more than capable of handling the case alone; however, since Mackay had already been appointed, Erickson would technically serve as Mackay’s assistant without pay from the county. Macka
y would have to split his county fee with Erickson, a fee much lower than Erickson was accustomed to receiving. Despite the low pay, Erickson believed Corbett was entitled to receive the best representation possible and, of course, understood what the publicity and prominence of the case could bring to his career. (Erickson would become a Colorado Supreme Court justice in 1971, and would chair the Columbine Review Commission in 2000.) He brought with him the services of a smart, young legal associate, Charles Brega.

  As their first order of business, Erickson and Mackay addressed the constant barrage of interrogation hurled at their client in the county jail by the overzealous sheriff and his deputies.

  Corbett couldn’t even talk with his lawyers without the sheriff or his deputies interrupting or strolling past. Wermuth had hoped to cajole a confession out of him, but now with Mackay and Erickson on board, that wasn’t going to happen. The best Wermuth could hope for was to “overhear” something of importance or uncover it in Corbett’s mail.

  The sheriff also paraded Corbett in front of newsmen—cell transfers, bed checks, searches, and seemingly choreographed shackled marches to and from the county jail and courthouse.

  Incensed, Erickson filed a motion requesting Corbett be moved to another jail because Sheriff Wermuth, his deputies, and agents were “assaulting, battering, beating, cursing, or otherwise mistreating Joe Corbett.… They question him for long periods and the interrogation has been accompanied by threats of great bodily harm and treatment designed to destroy the mind of Corbett and compel a confession.” The motion also accused the sheriff of brainwashing in an attempt to force a confession of murder in violation of Corbett’s rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

  Wermuth took the stand to answer the charges in Erickson’s motion. The sheriff swore, under oath, he had never abused or mistreated a prisoner in his four years as sheriff. “I don’t interrogate them. I simply talk to them.… Any accusation that Joe Corbett is being mistreated in my jail is completely untrue,” said the sheriff. “He has been treated properly, the same as any other prisoner.… As for interrogations, he has never been subjected to harsh questioning. It’s always more of a discussion. We have never made any flat accusations. And the discussions are not prolonged.”