Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

by Tobin T. Buhk

  “We have an open and shut case against this man,” Mancuso gloated. He explained that the two days his team had spent in Grand Rapids had led to damning evidence against Waite. He added a teaser: “The case so far has been a sensation, but the biggest sensation is yet to come. Before we are through with this case we will have uncovered one of the greatest poison plots in criminal annals.”

  Mancuso paused as the reporters furiously scribbled notes. “Waite is one of the most desperate of men,” he continued. “He would stop at nothing to get his hands on money. He needed it. He was living a life in New York City that cost him $50,000 a year. He did not work.”

  The reporters stared at Mancuso in disbelief. Waite was a well-known dentist in New York. He even took Clara with him to the various hospitals where he conducted dental surgeries.

  Sensing their confusion, Mancuso said, “Where did the money come from? When this question is answered the sensation of an age will be known.”

  Mancuso then detailed the true biography of Arthur Warren Waite, the biography behind the debonair façade.

  Waite, Mancuso said, did work for a dental firm in South Africa and, despite allegations of theft, managed to squirrel away a considerable sum of money. When he returned to the United States, he presented himself as an expert in oral surgery to physicians throughout the Big Apple. “He claimed to have performed some of the most difficult feats known to oral surgery, when in fact he had never performed one.

  “This,” Mancuso continued, “was the beginning of his dual personality.”

  Mancuso detailed Waite’s double life. Waite didn’t perform surgery, didn’t tend to patients at hospitals and didn’t even maintain an office. Instead, he spent his afternoons at the Plaza Hotel, where, Mancuso said, he had “installed a Mrs. A.W. Walters there as his wife.”

  The reporters gasped.

  When Waite wasn’t busy playing with “Mrs. A.W. Walters” at the Plaza, he played tennis. His skill on court led him to a championship at Madison Square Garden and a top twenty ranking for all male tennis players in the country.61

  Mancuso also commented on Waite’s likely choice of attorney. Rumor had it that he would hire John B. Stanchfield, the celebrated defense attorney who had won an acquittal for accused murderer Harry Thaw. Mancuso had squared off against Stanchfield several times in court and knew him as a top-notch criminal attorney.

  “Waite’s defense will cost him a fortune. Stanchfield is the best criminal lawyer in New York. He never takes a case unless he has a $10,000 retainer, and he would not handle a case like this for less than $50,000.”62

  Mancuso fielded a few questions from the curious reporters.

  One reporter asked if Waite was suspected of other New York crimes, such as the mysterious death of a wealthy New York widow.

  Irritated, Mancuso refused to answer the question.

  Another reporter asked if Waite had committed bigamy. “Do you know whether Dr. Waite has a wife in South Africa?”

  “I don’t think he has. He was engaged to a girl there, but when her parents learned of his character, the engagement was broken off.”

  “Has he a wife in New York?”

  “Not that I know of, although he was living with this Mrs. Walters as his wife.” Mancuso described her as a society woman but didn’t elaborate. He said he didn’t know her exact whereabouts.

  Intrigued by Waite’s extramarital affairs, another reporter asked Mancuso about a rumor that had been floating around. “Was Waite engaged to the daughter of a New York millionaire with whom he played tennis in an indoor tournament in Madison Square Garden recently?”

  “I can’t say that he was engaged to her. His name and hers have been used together, but because of her position in society, I would not feel free to give her name.”

  “Do you think other members of the Peck family were included in the poison plot?”

  “I can’t answer that. I will say this, however, that this man would go to any extent to get money.”

  Celebrated defense attorney John B. Stanchfield, who successfully represented Harry K. Thaw and secured his release from Matteawan. Authorities originally believed that Waite would hire Stanchfield to represent him. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  When asked about the important evidence uncovered in Grand Rapids, Mancuso refused to divulge specifics. He didn’t want to give away their case.

  The reporters continued to pelt Mancuso with questions.

  “Are there any women involved in this end of the case?”

  “Not that I can tell you of.”

  “Is it a fact that you have had before you a prominent local woman who was very friendly with Waite?”

  Mancuso stared at the reporter in silence.63

  He concluded the interview by praising two gentlemen from Grand Rapids for their tenacity in exposing the plot.

  “The entire credit must go to Dr. Wishart and Dr. Schurtz. These two men conducted an investigation for two days in New York, assisted by private detectives, and when they placed the case before us, we were ready to act. When we came here, Dr. Wishart took off the lid—he uncovered one of the most startling crimes I have ever heard of.”

  Their efforts, Mancuso concluded, “will furnish a story that has not even been rivaled by the fertile imaginations of the most prolific fiction writers.”64

  6

  CONFESSION

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  Friday, March 24, 1916

  In Grand Rapids, Arthur Warren Waite had become headline news. The entire front page of the Friday, March 24 edition of the Herald was devoted to the Peck case. Under the headline “Coils of Guilt Tighten About Waite,” staff writers speculated about Waite’s dark motives.

  “Grand Rapids society is still trying to catch its breath from the shock it received with the arrest Thursday of Dr. Arthur Warren Waite, and the revelation of his double life and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence,” wrote a correspondent for the Grand Rapids Herald.65

  In New York, Edward Swann contemplated the “coils” around Arthur Warren Waite’s neck. There was one vital link missing: Swann needed proof that Waite purchased the arsenic he used to poison John E. Peck.

  The sun had barely risen on Friday morning, March 24, when Swann sent teams of investigators across Manhattan in search of the missing link.

  Waite, Swann reasoned, must have purchased it somewhere near one of his two homes: the Coliseum or the Plaza. He sent teams to both locations with orders to canvass the pharmacies closest to these two spots and work their way outward in radiating spirals.

  Swann also sent Assistant District Attorney John T. Dooling to the Fifth Avenue Bank to seize Waite’s safety deposit box.

  By midmorning, both teams would make major discoveries.

  As Swann’s investigators turned Manhattan upside down for the pharmacist who sold Waite arsenic, Warren and Sarah Waite boarded a Metropolitan train to New York. They wanted to see their son before it was too late.

  While the train began rolling out of Grand Rapids, Warren glanced at his pocket watch: it was 10:30 a.m.

  Warren unfolded the note his daughter-in-law had given to him earlier that morning. Too ill to travel, Clara wanted to send a message to Arthur.

  Warren’s eyes misted as he read the note.

  “Father, tell my darling husband that I love him with all my heart. Tell him I want to come to him, to be with him, to cheer him, to comfort him in his great trouble. Tell him I do not believe one word of all that has been said about him. Say to him that no matter what happens, I shall always be his loving wife. Tell him, please, that the happiest moments of my life have been spent with him. I love him, oh, ever so much.”

  Clara promised she would come to New York as soon as she felt well enough. She also told Arthur not to worry about the reports of his “other woman.”

  “And please say to him that I have heard what they have said about him and another woman. It makes absolutely no difference to me. And even if it were true about t
hat other woman, tell him that I forgive him, because I realize that the other woman had in her mind to destroy our happiness. She must have been a woman who simply would not give up my Arthur.”66

  Clara ended her request: “Give him my undying, eternal love. Kiss him for me.”

  Clara didn’t deserve all of this, Warren thought as he folded up the note and put it in his jacket pocket. The truth had always been a stranger to his son.

  He felt a knot in his stomach. What if everything he read in the papers was true?

  As his parents boarded a train in Grand Rapids, Arthur awoke from his thirty-six-hour, drug-induced stupor.

  “Who is that man, and what is he doing here?” Waite groaned, pointing at one of the men Swann had sent to look after his number one suspect.

  “They’re with the district attorney,” John Cunniff replied as he knelt down next to Waite’s cot.

  “Good God, man, I’ve got to get this thing off my mind! I’ve got to tell somebody something. I want my wife. Where’s Clara?”

  Clara, Cunniff reminded Waite, was still in Grand Rapids. He asked if there was anything he could do.

  “You can’t help me! I’m the worst scoundrel on the face of the earth. The whole world is against me!”

  “We’ve all made mistakes,” Cunniff said.

  “Yes, but I’ve been found out.”67

  Realizing that Waite might be ready to talk, Cunniff telephoned Swann, but he was out of the office, so George Brothers raced to the apartment. When he arrived, however, Waite had become tight lipped.

  Frustrated, Brothers marched out of the Coliseum.

  In the vault of the Fifth Avenue Bank, Dooling fingered through the contents of Waite’s safety deposit box.

  Skimming through the dozens of documents, Dooling was able to trace what had happened to Catherine Peck’s $41,000 in cash and $100,000 in securities.68

  Waite took most of the cash and the stocks—shares in a petroleum company, the Brooklyn City Railroad, gold and silver mining companies and others—to the brokerage firm of Spaulding, McLellan & Company and opened a portfolio in his name. Waite then used the purloined stocks to begin a run at stock speculation.

  Like his tennis game, he liked to play fast and quick with Aunt Catherine’s money, buying and then selling in the hope of fast profit. Either he lacked the patience of a long-term investor or he wanted to cash in quickly. Dooling remembered hearing that Waite fantasized about purchasing a castle in Italy. Prince Charming, he mused, probably intended to finance his dream home with money from Aunt Catherine.

  One set of documents puzzled Dooling. Just a few days earlier, Waite had sold one hundred shares, raising $9,480, and used the money to open an account with the Corn Exchange. Then, suspiciously, he withdrew it.

  The box also contained correspondence with other women, most of them Broadway dancers. Dooling read through a few of the letters, but it felt like eavesdropping, so he put them aside.69

  Another set of papers piqued Dooling’s interest: dated from December 21, 1915, to March 7, 1916, they related to the acquisition of dangerous bacteria. It appeared that Waite, masquerading as a research scientist, purchased germ samples from several area laboratories.

  Dooling immediately realized the significance of these documents. In a memo to Swann, he characterized the bacteria as “sufficient to kill many persons and which could be administered in liquids, such as soup, tea, etc.” The date sequence indicated that Waite may have acquired deadly agents almost three months before John Peck’s murder and had them in hand well before the death of Hannah Peck in January 1916. The last date in the sequence was just days before John Peck’s death.70 The use of disease germs would have made for a perfect murder; an autopsy on a person who died of pneumonia or typhoid would reveal nothing more than a natural cause of death.

  Dooling slid the papers into his valise and headed back to the office.

  As soon as he arrived, he phoned Walter Drew, Catherine Peck’s attorney. If Drew acted quickly and took action to freeze Waite’s accounts, he might save his client from financial ruin.

  For two hours, investigators canvassed pharmacies closest to Waite’s apartment and the Plaza Hotel. It was midmorning when Detective Frank Gallagher struck pay dirt on Lexington Avenue.

  In a brief conversation with the proprietor, druggist Richard Timmerman, Gallagher learned that Waite had purchased arsenic from his store in early March.71 Waite, unable to acquire the drug himself, asked for the help of his physician, Dr. Richard Muller. He told Muller that he wanted to get rid of some pesky cats. Dr. Muller in turn contacted Timmerman, who agreed to make the sale.

  Timmerman called for his clerk, Richard C. Schmadel, who remembered the incident quite clearly. Timmerman had asked him to weigh out ninety grains and make out a receipt.

  Schmadel opened the poison register Timmerman used to record all purchases of dangerous substances and thumbed through the pages until he found the entry for March 9. There it was, he said, in Waite’s handwriting. He handed the open book to Gallagher, who read the entry. It contained the date of purchase, the name of the buyer, the amount of poison and the notation “To kill a sick cat.”72

  Gallagher had found Swann’s missing link. He raced to the DA’s office with the ledger under his arm.

  When Gallagher arrived, Swann was poring over a letter he had received from E.H. Williams, a New York tailor John Peck often employed to custom-make his suits. According to Williams, when Peck visited his store on February 23, he complained of stomach cramps after eating pistachio ice cream at his son-in-law’s apartment the night before. Peck thought he was suffering from food poisoning. “I advised Mr. Peck to see a physician,” Williams said, “but he said he had no great confidence in medicine, that his son-in-law had given him some medicine but no relief from pain had followed.”73

  Swann read the ledger entry and smiled. His detectives had just found Waite’s “medicine.” He shook Gallagher’s hand and reached for the telephone. He needed to speak with John Cunniff.

  Detective John Cunniff had just dozed off in a chair when the apartment telephone rang. It had been a long shift. Since he had entered the Waite apartment the day before, he had kept a constant vigil over the suspect.

  Swann told Cunniff about Gallagher’s discovery and ordered him to confront Waite with this new evidence. “Let Waite know about this,” Swann said. “Tell him all we’ve learned. Let him think it over. I shall be up presently.”

  Cunniff walked to the back room where Waite lay in bed. He folded his arms across his chest and eyed the suspect. “Well, doctor, they’ve got some pretty strong stuff on you. The doctor and the druggist through and from whom you got the arsenic have told the district attorney all about it. Now, hadn’t you better make a clean breast of the whole business? The judge even has the receipt you signed when you got the arsenic.”

  “Not true!” Waite howled. “Not true! It’s a lie.”

  “All right. If you don’t want to talk to me will you talk to the district attorney?”

  Waite nodded. “Yes. I’ll see him. He’s been very decent to me.”74

  Waite lay in bed with a blue comforter drawn up to his chin and watched as District Attorney Swann, followed by Assistant District Attorney George N. Brothers and a stenographer, walked into the room at about 3:00 p.m. Waite held out his hand, and Swann briefly grasped it as he studied the pathetic figure. Waite’s handshake was limp, his hand cold and clammy.

  Swann was shocked at Waite’s appearance; haggard, pale and with black bags under his eyes, Waite looked like a shadow of the confident, grinning man about town whom he had first met in his office just two days earlier. That man, who chuckled when the DA told him he was a suspect in a possible murder plot, looked nothing like the pathetic figure lying on the cot in front of him.

  New York detectives Bernard Flood and Cunniff, along with Ray Schindler and a nurse, stood by Arthur as Swann began his questioning.

  “Doctor,” Swann began, “did you buy arsenic in
a drugstore in the early part of this month?”

  In a weak, trembling voice, Waite answered. “Yes, I did—powdered arsenic in a paper.”

  “Is this your signature to the receipt for that arsenic?” He held out the receipt so Waite could see it.

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “What did you buy it for?”

  Waite managed a slight smile. He wondered what Aunt Catherine would say if she knew she had unwittingly supplied him with an alternative explanation for Peck’s death when he visited her on Monday.

  “I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me. My father-in-law was an old man and very despondent since the death of his wife. He told me that with her gone he did not want to live any longer and wanted me to get him some poison that would kill him. I am not sure that he said what kind of poison he wanted, but he must have mentioned arsenic, because I bought arsenic. This was about three days before he died.”

  Swann nodded in agreement. At least Waite’s timeline matched the documents. “Our receipt bears the date of March 9, and it was on March 12 that Mr. Peck died.”

  Waite continued. “I went to this doctor and told him that I wanted arsenic. I asked him to tell his druggist to give it to me, and he telephoned him. I went around to the druggist, gave him my name and after some little conversation I got the arsenic in powdered form. I brought the arsenic home with me and gave it to Mr. Peck. I didn’t ask him if he had, but if you found arsenic in his stomach he must have taken it. I’m sorry I didn’t die myself; you’ve got the law on me, and I expect I’ll go to the electric chair because I can’t prove what I say. I’m sorry I didn’t die when I took that stuff. How much of it did I take?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Swann replied flatly.