by Brad Ricca
The door was half open, so the men pushed their way in. They stepped into a small apartment consisting of two rooms filled with only a few sticks of furniture. In an old rocking chair beside the living room window, a man sat with his back to them. His legs were crossed and a briar pipe dangled in his right hand. The men walked around to get a better look. His chin rested on his chest. A dark line of blood ran down his forehead and onto his white shirt.
“Sonta,” the cop said.
Everyone knew that name in Kingsland, New Jersey, in 1905. Joseph Sonta was one of the small town’s first settlers and its richest citizen, though no one really knew what he did. Sonta had nine children who rolled over him like water whenever he came home from his long days spent playing cards and drinking wine in a back room somewhere. At the same time, he seemed to protect a single coal of anger burning in him at all times. He was a padron with a belly laugh that everyone recognized. Kingsland had been his domain for ten years. Now, he was dead in a rocking chair after someone had shot him twice in the head.
The policeman looked around as the doctor’s hands floated over Sonta’s body. This was not Sonta’s home; it belonged to an immigrant named Giovanni Tolla. Like many Kingsland residents, Tolla had come to America by writing to Sonta from Italy and enclosing some money. A year later, Tolla; his wife, Antoinette; and their two small daughters, Catherine and Mary, arrived in New Jersey on the promise of work. The young couple, both only twenty-four, were very poor but were well liked in the little town. Antoinette, a good mother and wife, was very religious. She had brown eyes and dark brown hair and was very beautiful.
After leaving the apartment, the men approached the small crowd gathered outside and asked them questions. The crowd smelled like cigarettes. Everyone had the same story: They had seen a woman running down the middle of the street from Tolla’s house with a gun in her hand, shouting, “Gli ho sparato!”
When the cop asked about those words, someone told him it meant, “I shot him.”
“I shot him,” Antoinette Tolla had said, as she had run down the street.
She didn’t get far. They found her with friends, collapsed and hysterical. Sheriff James Mercer, of Bergen County, took her into custody and locked her in the Hackensack jail, since Kingsland didn’t have one. It was March 4, 1905, the day of Teddy Roosevelt’s second inauguration. A few days later, as Antoinette sat in her cell, the spring term of the grand jury heard the facts of her case.
“The first case of homicide of which I will speak,” said Justice Garretson, “is that of the woman alleged to have shot a man while sitting in her home. The evidence shows that she came into the room behind him, secured a pistol and shot him in the head. If these facts be proven, you must indict for murder.”
Within three hours, the grand jury indicted Antoinette Tolla for first-degree murder. Two weeks later, she faced trial before the exact same judge. The prosecution’s job was fairly easy. Sonta’s son Rocco, age six, claimed to have been there and was brought forward as a witness. He said that his father and Mr. Tolla had been talking quietly when Mrs. Tolla crept up behind him and killed his poppa. Several of Antoinette’s neighbors testified on her behalf. Some reached the stand only to start sobbing. Others just shrugged their shoulders. None of them spoke English. A local student served as their interpreter, but many feared that the young man didn’t seem to know what he was doing. After a witness would become animated and flash their hands for several minutes, the interpreter would deliver a few sentences in dull, uninspired tones. He fumbled over words and tenses, facts and beliefs.
When it came time for Antoinette’s defense, she took the stand and faced the court. She said that she was sad that she had shot Sonta. She told the interpreter that she had only shot him because he had threatened her honor. Sonta had been hounding her for months, Antoinette said, even in front of her husband. But since Sonta had brought them here to America, her husband was afraid to defend her. Antoinette looked down at her lap. She said that she had appealed to Mrs. Sonta for help, and she told Antoinette to buy a gun.
“To frighten him,” Antoinette said.
At about 1:30 on the afternoon of March 4, Sonta had arrived at the Tolla household unannounced—as usual. Antoinette’s husband was half asleep on a trunk in the living room. At the sight of Sonta barging in, big and drunk, Mr. Tolla jumped up and left in a fit of anger. Antoinette watched her husband leave.
“Why does Giovanni always leave when I come in?” Sonta bellowed, jokingly upset as he collapsed into his favorite rocking chair.
“It’s on account of your coming,” Antoinette said, facing him. She told the interpreter that Sonta then seized her and pulled her into his arms. He held her against him and kissed her. But she bit his hand and managed to escape to the other side of the room.
“I’m going to have you even if I have to kill your husband,” said Sonta. His eyes were devoured by drink. “I’ve got a gun here in my pocket,” he said, “and I mean to have you this afternoon.”
“Maybe I’ll kill you,” he said.
Antoinette fled into the kitchen. Her own little gun was hidden in the pocket of her apron. She grabbed it, then waited for an opportunity to run to the door and outside. Antoinette stood, breathing heavily, waiting for the signal of Sonta’s deep snore. Once she heard it, she left in haste.
About a half hour later, Antoinette returned home to find Sonta asleep, still sitting in the rocking chair. She could see her husband asleep in the bedroom. As she tried to sneak past Sonta, he grabbed her arm, pulled his gun, and again attempted to pull her down into the chair with him. His breath and hands were on top of her. She pulled out her gun and shot him in the head.
“You have done me,” Sonta said, dying, “what I intended to have done you.”
In the courtroom, Antoinette waited patiently for the strange sounds of the translation to end. When it did, the prosecutor asked how Sonta could have said anything with a bullet in his head. Antoinette became confused. She started to cry.
On the afternoon of April 26, the case went to the jury. Two hours later, Antoinette Tolla was pronounced guilty of murder. When her sentence was translated, she collapsed in her seat, before being taken back to the Hackensack jail.
The next week, as the trees began to bloom, the judge sentenced Antoinette Tolla to be hanged the following month, on June 9, 1905. After an appeal, the Supreme Court of New Jersey sustained her conviction and resentenced her execution for January 12, 1906. There were a few personal petitions from some of Tolla’s friends, but Governor Edward C. Stokes was not swayed by any of them. As Christmastime came, fast and cold, they began building gallows in the prison yard.
* * *
The woman who was rapidly taking the stairs of the Essex County courthouse was tall, thin, and dressed almost completely in black. Those who turned to stare saw just a touch of white at her sleeves and neck. She wore a magnificent hat that swept behind her like a great black bird. From the back of her hat flowed short folds of what looked like mourning veils. As she sped by, someone thought she was a nun and called her “sister.” When her hat tilted forward, the woman’s mouth lit up with a twitch of amusement.
Inside the courtroom, all the seats were taken. So when the woman opened the back door and walked in, courteous men in the back row stood and offered their chairs. But she kept walking, straight as an arrow. Halfway down the aisle, another man stepped out to offer her his place. As she raised her head to politely refuse, people noticed that she was young and pretty, with jet-black eyes and hair. She kept walking all the way to the front of the courtroom. When she reached the first row, the confused prosecutor even offered her his seat, but she declined. She set her bag on the table and addressed the judge with a bright glance.
“Mrs. Mary Grace Quackenbos,” the woman said. “For the defense.”
* * *
Four years earlier, a man stopped talking in front of a small lecture hall on Washington Square in New York City. He was in his late forties, with a full br
own beard and soft eyes. His paisley cravat was loose under his dark wool suit coat.
“Think for yourself,” he said, his eyes searching for the ones in the room who might actually be paying attention to him. “Be an inquirer—make no assertion unless you can support it by reason.”
This was the signature lesson of William Clarence D. Ashley, dean of the New York University School of Law, and every student sitting before him who expected to graduate knew it by heart. When he moved across the front of the room, he would sometimes disappear behind the oddly placed Doric column that was stuck right in the middle of the room. Ashley would eventually reappear on the other side, his voice still going. When he lectured during the day, the rows of wooden seats were filled with stalwart, earnest young men.
But here, in the night class, the spaces between students was greater. So were the differences. There was a Chinese man, a black man, even a professional baseball player who couldn’t help yawning. There were Russians, Germans, and Jews. There were women, too, though never more than a handful. The night class was its own creature; it wasn’t easier, it was just different. And on this night, seated in the front row, was a woman in white clothing.
Mrs. Mary Grace Quackenbos was a mysterious figure, even for the night class. There were whispers that she was actually a rich heiress who was only slumming as a law student because she wanted to figure out how best to protect her family’s millions. She was supposedly married to some kind of doctor. There was even talk that she had once been a singer and had taken up the law only as a punishment by her father, who was some big name. And everyone knew she was often late to class because she was always out shopping. In the night session, there was always this kind of gossip. The long hours encouraged it.
Part of the truth was that Grace was at NYU because the more prestigious Columbia Law School didn’t admit women. NYU had, in fact, been admitting women to its law school since 1890, a full sixty years before Harvard. There was no better choice in the city. But that didn’t mean that NYU was without its pitfalls. Another female law student named Clarice Baright was in a property law class when a pocket of snickering classmates opened the skylight, dumping her with heaps of cold snow, even though she was already sick with fever. After that, the girls all decided to sit up front.
On this night, Grace was indeed in the front row, but not because she was afraid of a little weather. Not that anyone would have the guts to dump snow on her, anyway. She sat in the front to be closer to the source. She wanted to give Dean Ashley her full attention. He taught the law in a way that made infinite sense to her. He always started with facts. In his view, there was no correct solution, only the logic of a good defense. He valued opinions but made his bacon in the argument itself. He taught the importance of contracts and hated recitation. Famous names and cases didn’t matter to him. Ashley’s students were taught to analyze the facts of a case, select the important points, and reason correctly in order to deduce principles from such facts. It was in this crucible of ideas that not only the lawyer but the detective was born.
“Many a good street car conductor has been spoiled by a foolish idea that he could become a lawyer,” Ashley would often say. Grace heard this curious phrase many times in class and often wondered if his words were meant for her. Ashley believed that a law degree might be beneficial to society women but only so that they could know what a deed or power of attorney was. The rest of her classmates probably thought this was Grace’s interest as well.
And it might have been, at some point. But somewhere along the way, that changed. What Grace found particularly fascinating was Ashley’s view on cases. Ashley would walk in, tip his beard up, and speak on how cases could be used to illustrate a particular set of learning objectives; as in real life, rarely were there precise answers to the issue at hand. For the final decision of a case, Ashley cared nothing. It was only the process that he taught and stood by. The first principle was his shrine. In class, he built his cases on interviews, public sources, and even personal experience. He built stories out of fragments. Ashley would then lead his students to an “aha” moment, during which conventional wisdom was trumped by deeper, more seasoned insights. This great connection to life—real life—intrigued Grace deeply. Ashley began to notice this student in the front.
One night in class, students looked around and realized that Grace was missing from her familiar spot in the first row. Whispers cut through the classroom. Had she given up? Dropped out? Or was it something even worse?
She’s in the day class now, someone piped up.
With the personal aid of Dean Ashley, Grace Quackenbos had been moved to the regular program. She completed a three-year law degree in two short years, graduating in 1903, one of only twelve women in her class. She immediately received a clerkship with the Legal Aid Society of New York, which offered low-cost legal help to the poor. Grace was admitted to the bar in the state of New York in 1905, becoming one of only a thousand female lawyers in the whole United States.
* * *
Grace was going through her mail one afternoon when she opened a letter from a group of Wellesley College girls. Their letter told the sad story of a woman in New Jersey named Antoinette Tolla who was doomed to hang for defending herself against a man who had threatened her. The papers had not reported on her case. Grace had never heard of her. Mrs. Tolla was innocent, the girls said. They begged Grace to help her.
Grace felt a strange connection to the woman she was reading about, this Antoinette Tolla. Grace was twenty-six years old, just like Mrs. Tolla, and had passed the bar just as Antoinette was being shown her jail cell.
The next morning, Grace set out bright and early for New Jersey, feeling very young and inexperienced, and without the faintest notion of what she might do when she got there. Grace was a full-fledged lawyer and had been for two months, but she had never argued a case. And she had taken to dressing completely in black.
Grace went to see Sheriff Mercer at the Trenton jail, where they were now holding Mrs. Tolla. The sheriff told Grace that he had no authority to let her see the prisoner. Grace wandered about the shadows of the jail, wondering what to do next. As she tried to guess what Dean Ashley would do, she was approached by a man who suggested she call on Father Lambert, a nearby priest who ministered at the jail. The priest welcomed her in and told her everything he knew about Antoinette Tolla. Father Lambert believed strongly in Antoinette’s innocence. He advised her to go straight to the governor since there was so little time left. The priest confessed little hope for Antoinette’s earthly future, but he prayed for it anyway.
That afternoon, Grace took the train to see the governor. As Grace watched the rectangular glimpses of a gray-and-black landscape pass by her, she didn’t like her chances. When Grace arrived, she waited an hour before the governor received her. Governor Stokes listened patiently as Grace went on about a woman she had never even met. When Grace had finished, the governor took a deep breath and replied slowly.
“My dear young lady,” he said, looking down on her. “Your efforts are useless. The woman is guilty, and I can’t do anything about the sentence. The law must take its course.
“However,” he added, after a long pause. He reached for a thick book on a shelf above his desk. “Here is the Record on Appeal. If you care to take it with you and read it, you may have it.”
Grace left his office carrying the heavy book. As Grace boarded a late train bound for New York, she knew that, according to the edict of the law, there were only two days left in Antoinette Tolla’s life. But there wasn’t a ghost of a chance to save her, especially here on a train. Settling back into her seat, Grace opened the law book and paged through it until she found the appeal of Tolla’s conviction to the Supreme Court of New Jersey. There on the nighttime train, Grace read the ruling that refused Antoinette a new trial, her eyes stopping on this section:
No pistol seems to have been found other than the one used by the defendant. Her account of Sonta’s exhibiting a pistol, as well as her
statement of his remark after he was shot through the brain, is manifestly fanciful.
Grace sat upright. Why did it say “No pistol seems to have been found”? Why “seems?” If there was no pistol on Sonta, then no wonder Antoinette was convicted—there could be no argument for self-defense. But Antoinette was clear in her explanation that there was a gun. Grace hurriedly gathered her things together and left the train at Trenton, eager to follow up on the tiny lead.
By the time Grace got back, it was already midnight. She phoned Governor Stokes, asking him to let the prosecutor give her access to the case records. The governor obliged, and Grace got a room in a local hotel. She tried to fall asleep but could only stare at the small clock in her room. The hands seemed light and fast. Antoinette Tolla had less than forty-eight hours to live.
The next day was Sunday. Grace spoke with Mr. Koester, the original prosecutor of the case, but he said there was no gun in evidence. The trail was cold again. After thinking for a moment, Grace brightened up with an idea. After getting an address, she went to see the county coroner, an older man named Morgan. When she got to his house at five that afternoon, he was seated at an old-fashioned organ playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” Morgan silently offered Grace a chair. She listened politely, in the very bright room, shifting in her seat as Morgan pushed the keys and pumps. When Morgan was done playing, Grace told him who she was. He looked her up and down.
Grace decided not to waste time bluffing. She told Morgan that she was here to see the gun taken from Sonta’s dead body.
Morgan hesitated. But then, to Grace’s surprise, he nodded.
After rummaging about in another room, he laid out an envelope that held the contents of Sonta’s pockets when he died, including some money. He also clunked down what sounded to be a fully loaded pistol. It lay there, heavy on the table. Grace asked if she might use the telephone.
As she walked into the hallway, she was trembling. She called the governor to tell him that Sonta did have a gun and that the appeal had been wrongfully considered! The governor asked to speak to Morgan immediately. Grace gave him the phone and tried not to listen as they exchanged low, mumbling words. Morgan handed Grace the phone again. Governor Stokes instructed Grace to secure an affidavit from Morgan and come before the court of pardons the very next day.
