by Greg Merritt
Back in court, the defense called Fred Fishback, who testified that Rappe was tearing at her clothes on a bed in 1219 when he returned to the party. “She was making a noise, but I don’t know whether it was moaning or screaming or what sort of noise it was,” he said. He demonstrated to the court how he lifted her to and from a cold bath, an act which may have bruised her—though it would’ve bruised the wrong arm. He also said that Rappe did not appear pained, an assertion the state challenged on cross-examination by introducing an unsigned statement from Fishback to the contrary. He claimed to have been misquoted. Dr. Olav Kaarboe supported Fishback by testifying that as the first doctor to examine Rappe, he too had found her unpained. Bladder expert Dr. Asa W. Collins stated that a spontaneous rupture was possible with a distended bladder, but under cross-examination he admitted such ruptures were very rare and he had never attended a patient suffering from one.
On Thanksgiving, Arbuckle, his wife, and his mother-in-law feasted on turkey stuffed with oysters at the house of his brother Arthur. The twelve jurors and one alternate walked in the cold rain to a restaurant. None of them saw a family member on that holiday. They were sequestered during the trial in rooms at the stately Hotel Manx, one block from the St. Francis. They were not allowed to read a newspaper, and their mail was inspected and, if necessary, censored. Their only diversion was the occasional group trip to a movie theater or restaurant, guarded always by four deputy sheriffs.
Three weeks earlier, Dr. Melville Rumwell had been arrested for the misdemeanor crime of performing an unauthorized autopsy on Rappe. (He was subsequently fined $500.) The day after Thanksgiving, he testified about his treatment of Rappe prior to her death. He said his patient did not recall what could have caused her injury.
Most of the other defense witnesses that day and the next broke into two categories: doctors who stated that distended bladders could spontaneously rupture and people who had previously seen Rappe in abdominal pain and/or tearing off clothing when intoxicated. In the latter group were:
Irene Morgan, a nurse/housekeeper employed by Rappe when she lived with Henry Lehrman, who said Rappe had frequent bouts of abdominal pain and when drunk ripped off her clothes
Minnie Neighbors, wife of a retired Los Angeles policeman, who told of seeing a pained Rappe at a hot springs spa the month before her death
Harry Barker, who stated that he dated Rappe in Chicago from 1910 to 1915 and claimed to have seen her on several occasions “all doubled up and tearing at her clothes,” but he was foggy on details*
Florence Bates, a clerk at Mandel Brothers department store in Chicago in 1913, who said that during a two-week fashion exhibit in which Rappe was a model, she appeared pained and publicly tore off costly clothes three times
Philo McCullough, a film actor, who told of Rappe bringing her own gin to a party at his Hollywood house and, after drinking, noisily removing her stockings and shirtwaist
The defense’s emphasis on Rappe’s alleged proclivity to strip in public served to tarnish her character, but other than perhaps bolstering the contention that she had a prior medical condition, it was otherwise irrelevant to Arbuckle’s guilt or innocence. The state and defense agreed that Rappe was clothed while alone with Arbuckle in 1219. Only afterward, when others were present, did she start to undress.
The defense called Edward O. Heinrich back to pummel his testimony and reputation, including a mocking jab at him for referring to himself as “Sherlock Holmes.” They highlighted that Heinrich found Rappe’s hairs between 1219’s beds. They then called Ignatius McCarthy, former investigator with the US Department of Labor. McCarthy claimed the fingerprints on the door to 1219 were forgeries, but the state successfully challenged his credentials as a fingerprint expert, invalidating his testimony.
The defense had one final witness—the only living person who could testify from firsthand knowledge about the occurrences on Labor Day behind room 1219’s locked door.
Ten to six for acquittal. Those are the odds being offered on the outcome of the Arbuckle case. Considerable sums of money are being wagered at these odds at places in San Francisco.
—”ARBTJCKLES’ [SIC] ACQUITTAL LOOKED FOR,”
PAINESVILLE TELEGRAPH (PAINESVILLE, OHIO),
NOVEMBER 28, 1921, FRONT PAGE
“Mr. Arbuckle, take the stand,” attorney Gavin McNab said at 10:35 AM Monday, November 28, 1921. After the solemn movie star was sworn in, he squeezed into the wooden witness chair, and those who had been out in the hall conversing or smoking when Ignatius McCarthy’s testimony was cut short rushed in for the feature presentation.
The grandfatherly McNab began guiding Arbuckle through the tale of how he came to be at a booze party of his own making attended by Virginia Rappe and other women (none invited by him, it was duly noted). His wife and mother-in-law smiled, and he seemed increasingly at ease as the story of a typical Prohibition party took shape. McNab then guided him out of 1220 and into 1219. Here is Arbuckle’s version of what occurred in the room he shared with Fishback.*
“When I walked into 1219, I closed and locked the door, and I went straight to the bathroom and found Miss Rappe on the floor in front of the toilet, holding her stomach and moving around on the floor. She had been vomiting. I saw it in the bowl and there was the odor of it. When I opened the door [to the bathroom], the door struck her, and I had to slide in this way [standing briefly to illustrate], to get in, to get by her and get hold of her. Then I closed the door and picked her up. When I picked her up, I held her and she vomited again. I held her under the waist, like that [standing briefly to illustrate], and by the forehead, to keep her hair back off her face so she could vomit. When she finished, I put the seat down. Then I sat her down on it. She was gasping and had a hard time getting her breath. Later I asked her, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ She said, ‘No, just leave me lie on the bed.’ Before that I had given her two glasses of water.”
He recounted how he helped her to the single bed in 1219. He lifted her feet off the floor and left her lying there as he returned to the bathroom.
“I came back into 1219 in about, well, I was there about two or three minutes, and I found Miss Rappe between the two beds rolling about on the floor and holding her stomach and crying and moaning, and I tried to pick her up, and I couldn’t get hold of her. I couldn’t get alongside of her to pick her up, so I pulled her into a sitting position [on his double bed]. She turned over on her left side and started to groan, and I immediately went out of 1219 to find Mrs. Delmont.”
He claimed Delmont was not located right away, putting his version at odds with Prevost’s version, which had Delmont kicking at 1219’s door. When located, Delmont and Prevost went into 1219. Arbuckle followed. “[Rappe] was sitting on the bed, tearing her clothes; she pulled her dress up, tore her stockings; she had a black lace garter, and she tore the lace off the garter. And Mr. Fishback came in about that time and asked the girls to stop her tearing her clothes. And I went over to her, and she was tearing the sleeve of her dress, and she had just one sleeve hanging by a few shreds—I don’t know which one it was—and I said, ‘All right, if you want that off, I’ll take it off for you.’ And I pulled it off for her. Then I went out of the room.”
He returned to 1219 a short time later to find Rappe naked on the single bed. “I went in there, and Mrs. Delmont was rubbing [Rappe] with some ice. She had a lot of ice in a towel or a napkin or something and had it on the back of her neck, and she had another piece of ice and was rubbing Miss Rappe with it, massaging her. There was a piece of ice lying on Miss Rappe’s body. I picked it up and said, ‘What’s this doing here?’ [Delmont] says, ‘Leave it here. I know how to take care of Virginia.’ I put it back on Miss Rappe where I picked it up, and I started to cover Miss Rappe up, to pull the [bed]spread down from underneath her so I could cover her with it, and Mrs. Delmont told me to get out of the room and leave her alone, and I told Mrs. Delmont to shut up or I would throw her out of the window, and I went out of the room.�
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And thus Arbuckle dismissed the salacious business with the ice and, in confirming one of the more incriminating comments attributed to him, contended not that he was threatening to pitch Rappe out the twelfth-floor window but that his ire was directed instead at Delmont, the accuser who had not and would not be appearing at the trial to dispute Arbuckle’s testimony. That said, because Rappe was naked at the time, Delmont ordering a man out of the room seems an appropriate response, and his remark seems unwarranted.
Arbuckle continued: “Mrs. Taube came in and telephoned for the hotel manager. I told Mrs. Delmont that the manager was coming up. Mr. Boyle, the manager, then came in. Mrs. Delmont and I put a bathrobe on Miss Rappe. We then took her around to room 1227. Mr. Boyle opened the door. I carried her part of the way. She seemed to have no life in her. I asked Mr. Boyle to boost her up in the middle. He took her out of my arms and into 1227.”
McNab asked, “Was the door of 1219 [to the hallway] unlocked all day?”
“As far as I know it was,” Arbuckle said. McNab also elicited from him that the window in the room was open and that he had raised the curtain himself.
“During the time you were in 1219,” McNab then asked, “did you hear Miss Rappe say, ‘You hurt me’?”
“No, sir, I heard nothing that could be understood.”
“The next day or at any other time, did you talk with Mr. Semnacher regarding a piece of ice?”
“No, sir.”
“While in 1219 with Miss Rappe, did you ever at any time place your hand over Miss Rappe’s on the bedroom door?” “No, sir.”
“At any time of that day did your hand come in contact with her hand on the door?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you ever had a conversation with Jesse Norgaard at a Culver City studio regarding the key to Miss Rappe’s dressing room at the studio?”
“No, sir.”
Then, after establishing that his client had nothing more to add, McNab, with a flourish of his hand, defiantly told the prosecution, “Cross-examine the witness.”
Assistant DA Leo Friedman stood. Seated at the counsel’s table, DA Brady frequently whispered strategy to Friedman as the cross-examination progressed. In answering Friedman’s questions, Arbuckle again recounted early events at the party. Alcohol consumption was highlighted, including a boozy noon meal that Arbuckle called “breakfast for some, lunch for others.” Then Friedman steered the accused into room 1219: “At 3:00 PM you decided to go into 1219 and get dressed. What was the first thing you did?”
“I locked the door,” Arbuckle answered.
And on that cliffhanger, Judge Louderback halted the testimony for the noon recess. Dramatically, a female deputy coroner carried in a specimen jar that contained a prosecution exhibit: the ruptured bladder of Virginia Rappe.
After lunch, an animated Friedman hounded Arbuckle on the timeline of occurrences in 1219, trying to shake the defendant free of his contention that he was alone with Rappe for no more than ten minutes. Arbuckle stayed firm, eliciting his biggest laugh from observers when he answered how he knew the clock on the mantelpiece in 1220 was accurate: “Well, everything else in the hotel is pretty good. I suppose their clocks ought to be all right.”
Having poked few holes in Arbuckle’s tale, Friedman finished by attempting to dismantle the defense’s characterization of Arbuckle as a Good Samaritan assisting the ailing Rappe: “Did you tell the hotel manager what had caused Miss Rappe’s sickness?”
“No,” Arbuckle replied. “How should I know what caused her sickness?”
“You didn’t tell anybody you found her in the bathroom?”
“Nobody asked me,” Arbuckle said.
“You didn’t tell anybody you found her between the beds.”
“Nobody asked me, I’m telling you.”
“You never said anything to anybody except that Miss Rappe was sick?”
“Nope.”
“Did you tell the doctor what caused Miss Rappe’s illness?”
Arbuckle nearly rose from his seat. “No! How could I tell him what I didn’t know!”
Friedman then established that Arbuckle had conveniently only told his version of what occurred in room 1219 to two people prior to that day—his lead attorneys, past and present.
The defendant spent four hours in the witness box before being excused. Some of his answers seemed false (he claimed to be unaware that Rappe, Blake, or Prevost were coming to the party), some seemed too convenient (he passed all the blame for procuring alcohol to Fish-back), and some painted him as coarse or brazen (his cavalier attitude toward Rappe’s nudity). But he had reframed the events in 1219 not as an assault but as an assist. Helping a sick person—and someone who was neither a relative nor a close friend—to vomit without soiling her hair would seem a grand act of altruism. There was thus a new image of Roscoe Arbuckle to compete with that of a savage beast and spoiled Hollywood playboy raping and fatally wounding an innocent beauty. It was the image of a man alone in a bathroom aiding and comforting a pained woman at her lowest.
After Arbuckle’s testimony and over the prosecution’s objection, the deposition of Dr. Maurice Rosenberg was read into the record. (He had been interviewed by defense attorney Brennan in Chicago.) Rosenberg stated that he treated Rappe in Chicago in 1913 for cystitis, a chronic inflamation of the bladder. After the deposition was read, the defense rested.
The next day, the state began calling rebuttal witnesses. Tellingly, they did not attempt to impeach Arbuckle’s testimony. (The obvious witness to do so was Delmont, for the avenger had a very different version of what occurred in and about 1219.) Instead, they refocused on Rappe’s health. Catherine Fox* of Chicago claimed to have known Rappe for twenty-two years but never knew her to be in pain or tearing her clothes or consuming alcohol. After Assistant DA U’Ren queried Fox for two hours, the defense posed but one question.
“Were you with Maude Bambina Delmont yesterday?” McNab asked her.
“Yes, I was with her all afternoon.”
“That’s all.”
Others testified to Rappe’s good physical health: the former assistant manager of the Hollywood Hotel, where Rappe had lived; a psychiatrist who had treated her; a chauffeur, a nurse, a director, a cameraman. A magazine publisher testified to hallway lurker R. C. Harper’s bad reputation, though it would seem Harper’s improbable testimony had accomplished as much. Harry Boyle stated that 1219 had not been occupied since Arbuckle checked out, and Edward Heinrich returned to detail all the dust and hairs he found in 1219, thus arguing against Kate Brennan’s contention that she had thoroughly cleaned the room before he entered it.
In what branched off into its own sideplot, a clerk at the hot springs where Minnie Neighbors told of seeing a pained Rappe said she did not remember Rappe, and she produced the spa’s register, which lacked Rappe’s name. Likewise, Kate Hardebeck returned to say her “niece” had not been away in August. Before the day was over, Brady had Neighbors arrested for felony perjury. The next day, the defense called a hot springs attendant who remembered renting a bathing cap to Rappe and speaking to Neighbors about her; they then recalled the hot springs’ clerk to demonstrate that her memory of guests was fallible. Countering, the state introduced the hot springs’ swimwear rental book, which lacked Rappe’s name. Around and around they went.
The final witnesses in the trial were three MDs who had been appointed by the court nine days prior to microscopically examine Rappe’s bladder. The panel’s findings: Rappe had suffered from a lingering case of cystitis. It was a rather ambiguous diagnosis, for it failed to determine how long she had suffered or the severity of the symptoms (which can vary greatly), and none of the doctors could say with certainty that cystitis predisposed her bladder to rupture. They did dispense with a defense theory that she may have had a partial tear prior to the deadly rupture. However, the defense interpreted Rappe’s prior medical condition as confirmation of the testimony about her abdominal pains and of a bladder disease that
dated back, at least, to Dr. Rosenberg’s diagnosis in 1913. The defense offered to go to the jury without either side giving closing arguments. The prosecution refused.
Even odder than the subplot of Minnie Neighbors is the one centered on Irene Morgan, who testified to Rappe’s frequent fits of agony and proclivity for public stripping. The state had attempted to impeach her by proving she lied under oath when she claimed to have served as a Canadian military nurse in World War I. After she was recalled to the stand and grilled by the prosecution, U’Ren promised to further investigate with the threat that she faced a potential perjury charge. “If there is a case against Miss Morgan and it is no stronger than their case against Mrs. Neighbors, then they are welcome to go ahead,” McNab quipped.
During closing statements, Cohen would break the shocking news that Morgan had been poisoned by “a tall, gray-haired official-looking man” she claimed to have seen in the courtroom the day before and who subsequently hounded her at a dance hall. Incredibly, she had agreed to walk about the city with him, and during that time he gave her two pieces of candy. After she ate them, she grew dizzy, and the man allegedly said, “Go to hell. You’re done for. You’ve made others suffer; now suffer yourself.” She was found unconscious in her hotel room, and the hotel physician deduced she had been poisoned with opiates. It all seemed ludicrous and suspiciously timed to avoid a perjury charge. In his closing statement, McNab would call her “a heroine, wounded in battle.” Brady promised, facetiously, the entire police force would be enlisted to find the perpetrator of the alleged crime. The poisoning of Irene Morgan remains unsolved. Moral of the story: don’t take candy from strangers.
“At the expiration of thirteen days, it devolves upon the people to present facts against Arbuckle. We are here to try Roscoe Arbuckle—not Roscoe Arbuckle the comedian, not Roscoe Arbuckle the hero of a thousand laughs, nor Roscoe Arbuckle the nationally known figure, but Roscoe Arbuckle the man.” So began the state’s closing argument, as delivered by Leo Friedman. He contrasted the story of what occurred in the twelfth-floor suite as told by prosecution witnesses—especially Prevost, who saw Arbuckle follow Rappe into 1219 and Delmont kicking at the door—with the benign story told by Arbuckle. He explained that none of the physicians who testified had ever seen a case in which injuries similar to Rappe’s developed without the application of external force. He pointed to the physical evidence: Rappe’s bruises and, most especially, Arbuckle’s fingerprints over Rappe’s on the door (“That fact alone is sufficient to say Arbuckle is guilty”). He challenged the veracity of defense witnesses.
