Popular Crime

by Bill James

  Jewett was, to an extent, a con woman, a young woman who acted the part of a devoted girlfriend for any man who would pay her to do so—but at the same time, all of these men knew what she did for a living. To what extent was Jewett truly conning these men, and to what extent were they merely acting out a romantic fantasy in which they all knew the rules? We do not know—and Cohen, intent on tracking down the pedigrees of the most peripheral figures—seems curiously untroubled by the gap. When Robinson strayed, Jewett took offense and demanded penance just as a girlfriend would do, even though she herself was sharing her bed and body with a different man every night. But did she do this because she truly expected Robinson to be faithful to her, or because, being a surrogate girlfriend, she was trying to do what a real girlfriend would do in the same situation? It is critical to the story to know which—and we simply don’t get a clue. Cohen seems to assume, unstated, that those were real emotions. I don’t know, but it seems to me more likely that it was part of the game.

  Cohen is 100% convinced that Robinson murdered Jewett. I am not saying she is wrong; I am suggesting that the evidence doesn’t get you to 100%. Seventy percent, maybe. Near midnight on April 9, 1836, a man knocked on the door of Helen Jewett’s brothel, announced himself as “Frank Rivers,” and asked to see Helen Jewett. It was a cold, wet Saturday night; he had his cloak pulled up around his face and his hat pulled down low. The madam of the house, Rosina Townsend, looked him over and admitted him to the house, and he went up to Jewett’s room. About an hour later she rang for service in the room, and Rosina brought champagne and two glasses. Not long after that the servant girl went into the room and tended the fire.

  Sometime well after midnight, Rosina was awakened by a man pounding on her door and demanding to be let out of the house. Rosina told him to have his woman let him out, which was the rule of the house; the women were supposed to escort men to the door, so that they didn’t pick something up on the way out. The main doors locked inside and out, and required a key from either side. Rosina went back to sleep.

  Sometime later in the night, about 3 AM, she was awakened again by a knock on the front door, a regular customer arriving for a pre-arranged late-night assignation with another prostitute. Stirring through the house, she now noticed things amiss. A back door, which could be opened without a key, was setting wide open, and a lamp that belonged on the second floor had been carried to the first. Escorting the customer to the second floor, Rosina smelled smoke, which she traced to Helen Jewett’s room. Entering the room, she found Jewett’s body, and found that a candle had been placed in the bed next to her, apparently intended to consume the body in fire and destroy the evidence.

  One of the other working girls told police that “Frank Rivers” was a pseudonym used for Richard Robinson, and told them where Robinson lived. Robinson’s cloak and the bloody hatchet were found in the alleyway behind the house, along the departure route suggested by the open door. Robinson was arrested the next morning, and over the following two days the case erupted into a huge public sensation. Robinson was put on trial in June, about two months after the murder, and, as I mentioned before, was acquitted.

  At this point, as murders will, the story becomes messy and complicated. “Frank Rivers,” it turns out, was a code name used not only by Richard Robinson, but also by William Easy, whose name wasn’t William Easy, either, it was George Marston. Marston was a co-worker of Robinson’s who was Helen Jewett’s regular Saturday night client; she had a relationship with him that was not unlike her relationship with Robinson, and the two (Robinson and Marston) apparently regarded one another as romantic rivals.

  On this particular Saturday night, however, Rosina Townsend had been instructed to admit the Frank Rivers who was not William Easy, so when the man knocked on the door with his cloak up around his face and announced himself as Frank Rivers, Rosina looked to make sure that he was not William Easy, which is to say, not George Marston. Determining that he was not, she admitted him to the house.

  The evidence against Robinson consisted of:

  • the hatchet, which was taken from Robinson’s workplace,

  • the cloak, which was identified as Robinson’s although it actually belonged to another man, and had been given to Robinson as collateral against a debt,

  • the eyewitness identification of Rosina Townsend, who admitted him to the house,

  • the eyewitness identification of the servant/maid, and

  • some business about a “miniature.” A miniature was a small hand-drawn or hand-painted picture, a not-inexpensive treasure in the era before photography. Jewett’s miniature was seen in Jewett’s room by the maid days before the murder, and was found in the possession of Robinson after the murder, suggesting that he took it with him at the time of the murder.

  Patricia Cohen, the author of the book, believes that the testimony of Townsend, the other working girls and the maid (who was black) was discounted because they were women and persons of low social status, and she shares with us a fair amount of feminist outrage over this injustice.

  Robinson did not testify on his own behalf. Those who testified on his behalf included

  • the owner of a cigar store, who testified that Robinson was in his store at the time that he was supposed to have been admitted to Townsend’s house, and for some time thereafter,

  • the man with whom Robinson shared a bed in the rooming house (not an unusual practice at that time), who testified that Robinson was in the room and in bed at a normal hour and through the night, and

  • the owner of the store where Robinson worked, who was a relative of Robinson’s, and who testified to his good character despite the evidence that Robinson was stealing from him.

  The most important witness was the owner of the cigar store. He was a well-known businessman, an honest man whose word was given weight, and who was personally acquainted with several members of the jury. He came forward on his own to insist that Robinson was in his store at the time in question, buying cigars and smoking them, which Robinson had never said that he was.

  The cigar-store owner was clearly mistaken about the time—probably an honest mistake—and this annoys Cohen, that this man was given credibility, whereas the women were ignored because they were prostitutes and persons of low character although Robinson was engaged in the same behavior that Jewett was engaged in, merely from the other side; you get the drift. Robinson’s very good defense attorneys implied that Townsend herself had committed the murder and set the fire in order to collect insurance money, which was a fairly silly argument, but then, that’s something defense attorneys do; they put forward whatever silly argument is helpful to their case and cannot be refuted within the confines of the trial.

  It seems to me that the case against Robinson is not all that convincing. First, despite Ms. Cohen’s objections, a prostitute is by definition a little bit of a con artist, and it seems to me not entirely unreasonable to apply some discount to the testimony of anyone who is a little bit of a con artist.

  Second, I can’t see that the testimony of Rosina Townsend or the maid is all that compelling. Both of them identified Robinson as the man that they saw there on that night, but both of them did so in an odd, backhanded way. Townsend said that she looked at “Frank Rivers” with his cloak drawn up around his face and determined that he was not William Easy (which is to say, not George Marston)—that is to say, not that she observed who it was, but merely that she determined who it was not.

  Later, she delivered champagne to Jewett’s room, and she saw Robinson again; actually the back of his head: he was propped up in bed on his elbow, reading something, with the covers drawn up around him, and she noticed that he had a big bald spot on the back of his head, which she had never noticed before. That’s a pretty unusual identification, isn’t it—to say that you noticed something that you had never noticed before? Don’t you ordinarily identify someone by saying that you saw the things that you had seen before?

  The maid came to tend
the fire, and she said the same thing; she noticed this big bald spot on Robinson’s head, which she had never noticed before.

  Robinson was 19 years old. Cohen buys into the “bald spot” theory hook, line and sinker, and attributes Robinson’s balding to his hair falling out from the stress of his deceptions and burning the candle at both ends. By the time he went to trial he had shaved his head and was wearing a wig, which Cohen thinks was done to hide his bald spot, although it was a normal practice at the time for a man who wished to appear to be a person of substance to don a wig (remember, all of the founding fathers wore wigs, and this was just one generation later).

  Two key questions: how well did Townsend know Robinson, and how dark was the house? We don’t know. Cohen says that of course Townsend knew Robinson, he was at the house all the time. This doesn’t seem to be necessarily true. Jewett had lived in this house only three months, and Robinson and Jewett were pretty much on the outs through most of that period. There were 11 women who lived in the house, and each of those had a large number of clients. Townsend did not know Robinson’s real name; he said that he was “Frank Rivers,” and she accepted that although she knew that another man also used the name Frank Rivers.

  Robinson and Jewett’s letters used code names for everybody they knew. They did this because their relationship was somewhat illicit, and—one suspects—because it made them feel like conspirators to use code names. She sent letters to Robinson at work. If a letter fell into someone else’s hands—which no doubt happened—it did not identify either her or him by name. Anyway, the point is that if there were two men using the code name “Frank Rivers,” there may very well have been six, and other young men who were involved with Helen Jewett and her co-workers could very probably have been aware of the name.

  We don’t know how dark the house was and how clearly Townsend could have seen the man who entered, but remember, this was before electricity; after it got dark, a house was dark. Whoever committed the murder apparently carried downstairs with him a lamp which normally stayed upstairs, which strongly suggests that the house was pitch black, and he was afraid of falling down the stairs in the dark. It also suggests that he didn’t know the layout of the house all that well, which is relevant to Robinson’s defense, for if Robinson had been a frequent visitor to the house as Cohen assumes, then he would have known the layout of the house better, and would have been less likely to go banging on Rosina Townsend’s door, asking how to get out.

  Cohen puts substantial weight on the miniature. Lovers in this era would exchange miniature portraits. Robinson and Jewett had exchanged miniatures, and when they had fights they would return the portraits, and then they would give them back and promise that they could be kept forever, etc. Robinson had Jewett’s miniature after her death, although the maid had seen it in her room just days earlier.

  But this, to me, seems like nothing, since a woman in Jewett’s position—carrying on make-believe romances with a string of men—might very probably have had several copies of the miniature made, when a normal woman would only have had one.

  The hatchet did come from Robinson’s place of work, yes, and it was his cloak, yes, but why were these items left in the street or alleyway behind the house? Robinson was an intelligent man, and the murder was obviously pre-planned, witness the bringing of the hatchet. Wouldn’t Robinson have known that leaving his cloak near the scene of the crime could help to convict him?

  Cohen believes that Robinson set the fire expecting that it would consume the house and kill everybody in the building, thus allowing the murder to go un-detected, but a) this was very far from happening, and b) it doesn’t really seem like a reasonable expectation. And c) it directs us back to the issue before: If Robinson expected the fire to destroy the evidence, why did he carry the cloak and hatchet outside the house, and drop them there? For that matter, why would he drop his cloak anyway? It was a cold, wet night. I can understand leaving your coat inside the house, in your rush to get away, but why wear it out of the house, on a cold, wet night, and drop it in the street? Doesn’t that at least suggest the possibility that Robinson was being framed?

  There were several other men who worked at the store where Robinson worked, lived in the rooming house where he lived, and were also involved with Helen Jewett or her co-workers. Those men would have had the same access that he did to the hatchet, and might very easily have taken his cloak.

  Cohen gives Robinson a motive for the murder by insisting that Robinson was involved in covert activities—theft and possibly other unknown criminal activities—and that Jewett was threatening to expose him. The letters are full of elliptical references to clandestine activities, but Cohen at times seems to be reading things into the letters that aren’t necessarily there.

  It may sound as if I am saying that Robinson was innocent, which I am not; I am saying that he was acquitted and that I understand why. At the time of Robinson’s trial the public was divided about his guilt. After his trial some letters came out that he had written while in jail, letters which reflected very badly upon his character, and which caused almost everyone to conclude that he had been guilty after all. Perhaps he was.

  Not long before her death, Helen Jewett had seen the play Norman Leslie and had read the book of the same name, which was a fictionalization of the murder of Elma Sands, a story I told early in this book. In that case the accused murderer, Levi Weeks, was also acquitted although he was certainly guilty. He left town after the murder, moved to Natchez, Mississippi, became a well-known architect, and died at the age of 43. Robinson’s fate was similar; he moved to Nacogdoches, Texas, about 200 miles from Natchez; Natchez and Nacogdoches are both just off the Louisiana border, on opposite sides of the state. He adopted the name “Parmalee,” which was his mother’s name, had a very good and successful career as a rancher, saloonkeeper, and the clerk of the local court. He died in Ohio at the age of 38, attempting to make a trip back east.

  Moving ahead now four score and six years.

  What must be said about William Desmond Taylor is that he made an exceptionally good impression on those he met. He was handsome, articulate, composed, considerate, and had great dignity. He was able to walk away from extremely good jobs, and walk into better jobs in unrelated fields. Beautiful movie stars half his age fell madly in love with him and wanted to marry him, not once but at least three times. In the early days of Hollywood, when most everybody was a poseur and bullshit was the main credential, he was able to move easily from bit player to movie star to director. He was always able to get the jobs, and the girls, that everybody wanted. At the time of his murder the newspapers said that he had been the world’s greatest director.

  He was murdered about 7:50 PM on February 1, 1922, in what is called his bungalow. We think of a bungalow as a one-story starter house; this was a nice place. I’m not sure why it is called a bungalow. Anyway, his body was found the next morning by his house servant, Henry Peavey, arriving for work a little less than twelve hours after the killing. The murder was never solved. One newspaper suggested it was called a bungalow because the police had bungled it so badly.

  King Vidor was a part of old Hollywood, another director. King was his given name. He had known Taylor, and had worked with him. Not quite a half-century later Vidor decided to figure out who had killed Taylor and to make a movie about it. Vidor was an old man by then; perhaps that would have gone without saying. He had directed the black-and-white scenes in The Wizard of Oz. Hollywood had left him behind after a 40-year career, and he was trying to get back in the game. He thought the Taylor story might be his ticket. He worked on it for a year, but the movie never went anywhere and he put it away.

  After Vidor’s death in 1982, a young writer/director/film student named Sidney Kirkpatrick was working on a biography of him. Fitzpatrick discovered Vidor’s cache of notes and tapes about the Taylor case, and decided to turn that into a book. “The Sensational True Story of Hollywood’s Most Scandalous Murder,” says the cover of A Cast of
Killers, “Covered Up for Sixty Years and Solved at Last by the Great Film Director King Vidor.” (E. P. Dutton, 1986.)

  Nathaniel Hawthorne loved the concept of a story within a story. Hawthorne was fond of pretending that his stories were based on some old, dusty manuscript that he had found in the back room of a warehouse. This gave his stories two levels, the first told with the concrete, present-day clarity of events well understood, and the second told through a haze of time and memory, hanging in the air as an ancient myth. This is a story within a story; Kirkpatrick is telling the story of the murder of William Desmond Taylor through the story of King Vidor.

  Kirkpatrick is not a bad story teller; he’s pretty good. There is a serious problem with the concept of telescoping a crime story inside of another story. A crime story by its nature is particular, specific, tied to its details. The precise sequence of events and observations is the critical essence of the narrative. Relating those events in a jumbled, non-linear sequence, as they are seen through the eyes of the second principal character, is rather like turning the Mona Lisa into a kaleidoscope. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure that’s what Da Vinci intended us to see.

  Mary Miles Minter was a silent screen movie star. In 1919, at the age of 16, she was making more than $2,000 a week, perhaps the highest-paid star on the screen for a while there. After the Taylor murder, the Des Moines Tribune commented that the great advantage of a murder in Hollywood was that “it was not a difficult matter to get hold of pictures of the various persons involved.” By 1922 Minter was 19 years old, and a beautiful, beautiful young woman; Taylor was 49. They weren’t exactly engaged, but lingerie was found in his bedroom, embroidered “MMM,” and love letters from her. (The Seattle Star remarked that every time there was a shooting in Hollywood, “some screen star finds out where the rest of her clothes are.”) Minter insisted as long as she lived that she would have married Taylor, had it not been for the tragedy.