Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

by Tobin T. Buhk

  Waite looked around the courtroom and smiled. He remembered a favorite strategy of stage actors, a pause before delivering a key line. “I only wish I had more than one body to give, and I hope that my soul may go on and serve hereafter those whom I injured. If there be any whom I have not so grievously injured, I hope that they will forgive me. I am thoroughly sorry. I thank you. That is all.”201

  Shearn ordered Waite to be held in solitary confinement in Sing Sing’s death house and set the execution date. Arthur Warren Waite would take the long walk to Sing Sing’s hot seat sometime during the week of July 10, 1916.

  15

  PRISONER NO. 67281

  SING SING DEATH HOUSE, OSSINING, NEW YORK

  Sunday, June 11, 1916-Friday, May 18, 1917

  On Sunday, June 11, 1916, Prisoner No. 67281 made a surprise appearance in print. Since his transfer to Sing Sing’s death house, Waite was off-limits to the press, but just before he left the Tombs, he became the unlikely victim of a reporter’s trick. Robert Rohde had finally finagled a meeting with the convicted slayer after duping the con man. He sent a note hinting “that the prison poet probably would be richer when we parted, once we ever met.” Rohde hoped the promise of a payday would coax Waite into agreeing to meet the reporter. “It worked like a charm,” Rohde later commented.202

  Hooked, Waite immediately replied: “Come up and we’ll talk.” The interview, conducted in Waite’s cell at the Tombs, made it into print in mid-June, almost two weeks after Waite’s transfer to the big house. The timing was strategic. Prison authorities did not allow the media access to death-row inmates, so Rohde’s interview would be the only such article published during Waite’s incarceration in Sing Sing.

  Waite had continued to fascinate and confound the public as he whiled away the days until the appeals court considered Deuel’s appeal of the case. Walter Deuel hadn’t followed Waite’s instructions; after sentencing, he immediately began the appeals process, which caused an indeterminate delay in Waite’s execution date. In the interim, Waite arrived at Sing Sing on June 1, handcuffed to fellow inmate Leo James, a thief beginning an eighteen-month sentence.

  An Evening Telegram reporter rode along in the car that transported Waite from the Ossining train station to the prison and jotted down every word the prisoner uttered on the short trip.

  Still smiling, slightly: photograph taken while Waite was Inmate 67281 of Sing Sing. Photograph of Arthur W. Waite, Crime in New York, 1850–1950 Image Collection, Lewis Lawes Collection, Special Collections, Lloyd Sealy Library, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

  “I have no sympathy for my victims, and I want no sympathy for myself. Money was my curse and was the thing which led to my crimes. I have no excuses to make,” Waite said with no inflection in his voice.

  Shocked by this apparent lack of feeling, the reporter asked Waite if he was touched that Clara fainted when the jury foreman read the verdict of “guilty.”

  “She had no reason to faint,” he said flatly, and repeated his assertion that he was ready to die for his crimes.203

  As Waite settled in his death house cell, he learned that two of the eighteen men would go to the chair the next day. “I wish I was, too,” he remarked.204

  The morning after Waite arrived at the death house, Roy Champlain and Giovanni Supe took the long walk. The double execution unhinged Oresto Shillitoni, awaiting his turn in the chair following a conviction for three counts of murder. Shillitoni ransacked his cell and caused such a ruckus that Waite yelled for the guards. “Take the man out,” he screamed. “He’s crazy!”205

  For Waite, the time couldn’t go fast enough. While Deuel did his best to keep his client from la chaise, Waite killed time by reading and writing. He was particularly fascinated by English romantics such as Keats and Shelley and jotted out his own verse on sheets of lined paper.

  Robert Rohde’s interview with Waite provided readers with a rare glimpse at the condemned prisoner’s mindset. Waite had greeted Rohde with a warm handshake and flashed what by now had become his signature grin—the same expression he wore when he confessed to poisoning John E. Peck.

  The “rhyming dentist” had impressed Rohde: “Waite looked as if he had stepped from under a shower five minutes before. He was clean-shaved and immaculate of linen; his shoes were shined and his trousers pressed.”

  “I managed to keep fairly fresh,” Waite explained. “That’s because, half the time, I’m wandering in fields and woods. They can keep my body here in prison, but my spirit slips through the bars at will. When I’m writing my poetry I’m no more among these criminals…” Waite paused.

  “About the poetry?” Rohde asked.

  “Oh yes. I’m awfully glad you’re interested in it. That’s what I want to do—leave something behind so that people won’t remember me just by the bad things I’ve done. I don’t think of any better way to spend what’s left of my life than in writing little poems.”

  Waite characterized his poetry as “mystical,” as how he could be “here in body and roaming in the fields at the same time; why, I don’t worry any more about the electric chair than I did before I had any thought of sitting in it.”

  When Rohde asked to see some of Waite’s “mystical” text, Waite said that he didn’t have any of it with him. Waite, the consummate con man, had pulled a fast one on Rohde. “My brother,” he explained, “has every last bit of it.”206

  Waite shocked Rohde when he said he wasn’t “money mad.”

  “I’m not,” Waite insisted, “and it isn’t fair to infer it. Money doesn’t mean a thing to me, now. Those days have passed. Once I wanted all the dollars I could get my hands on. I gambled for them and I lost. Now I’m just waiting to pay the score. But I don’t see any reason—do you?—why I shouldn’t be earning something as I wait.”

  Waite explained his motive for murdering the Pecks. “They were getting old and had a fortune. I was young, but getting older, and there was danger I should be too old to enjoy the money to the full when it came into my hands. A few years of life, more or less, would mean nothing to them, yet those few years might be made into the happiest of my life. So I did what I did.”

  [O, let my lesson hearts instruct]

  Arthur Warren Waite, 1916

  O, let my lesson hearts instruct,

  That mild and sweet their days may wrap them round;

  That from my failure God may now construct

  Those vessels shapelier than they’d else be found.

  I wait the close of day with outstretched arms,

  I long to turn again into the dark;

  While here my actions others’ progress harms.

  But footprints left are seen and men will mark.

  As gently down into the lake’s calm blue

  One steps and pauses at the little chill,

  And then moves on and only leaves a few

  Small ripples circling far and further still.

  So gently moves the image into death.

  Its passing scarce of note grows less and less.

  And all is Dark—except the Living Breath

  Unseen to eyes is freed from its distress.

  Perhaps the Breath lent me has served God well,

  For some must show the false compared to true,

  And, too, perhaps that’s why I heard Him tell

  That in that Breath I found my own life too.

  My own life found—and may it live through Death

  To fall in humble servitude before

  Those souls whose wrongs are righted by that Breath

  Which gives and takes—and bolts the little door.

  This selection of Waite’s prison poetry is supposedly biographical and was one of two pieces published in the June 12, 1916 edition of the Sun. The “little door” may represent the “little green door” of Sing Sing’s death house.

  After briefly discussing his crimes, Waite returned to his literary musings and suggested Rohde contact Frank Waite to see the poems. Rohde asked Waite if he h
ad any desire to write a memoir, but Waite said it would be a laborious undertaking.

  Waite thought for a moment about the possibility of a prison memoir and asked Rohde what newspapers paid fellows like him.

  Rohde shrugged and said he made just enough to pay “the rent of five rooms in Flatbush.”

  Waite frowned. He thought for a few seconds. “Yes, but you haven’t killed a couple of people. That’s probably all you’re worth to the man who’s paying you. If you ever get where I am, then, probably, you’ll be able to command as much as I’ll get, or even more.”207

  After haggling over the potential price of a nonexistent work, Rohde left without the poems he wanted, but he didn’t leave empty-handed either. The interview appeared as a feature article in the Sunday, June 11, 1916 edition of the New York Tribune entitled “Peddling Poems from the Death House.”

  Rohde didn’t acquire any of Waite’s poetry, but the world would not be robbed. Of the fifty poems Waite penned in prison, which he sent to Frank in a sealed envelope, a few leaked to the press. Warden Kirchwey, however, was not amused. Believing it was an attempt to drum up support for the condemned man, he jailed Waite’s “poetic muse” when he forbade any more poems from leaving the death house.

  It was a crisp fall morning on October 16, 1916, when former Sing Sing warden Thomas Mott Osborne greeted the Daily Standard Union reporter with a firm handshake. Osborne was as close as the reporter—or any reporter—was going to get to Arthur Warren Waite.

  Osborne had become warden in 1914, and in his desire to reform the prison, he lived among the population for a week. He became a tireless advocate of prison reform, but weary of the battle with state officials, he resigned in late 1916. During his last few months in charge of the prison, Osborne—considered a keen penologist with a sharp eye—came to know Arthur Warren Waite.208

  Warden Thomas Mott Osborne among prisoners, circa 1915. A notable prison reformer and “penologist,” Osborne famously spent time among the general population in order to identify areas in need of improvement. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  Warden Osborne poses by a Sing Sing cell block, circa 1915. Osborne came to know Waite well during their brief association. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  “Do you think that Dr. Arthur Warren Waite, who confessed to murdering his wife’s parents, is a good man? Or is he bad; inherently criminal and vicious?” the Daily Standard Union correspondent asked.

  “I think Dr. Waite is insane, not violently insane, but excessively abnormal. He has control over his mental processes, but his mind is so warped and distorted that his murdering his father-and mother-in-law by poison is not surprising.”

  Osborne paused as he waited for the reporter to take notes. After a few minutes, he continued. “I have studied Waite in the death house at Sing Sing. His predominant characteristics are excessive self-centering, utter selfishness and extreme sensuousness.” Although Osborne—a death penalty opponent—felt Waite deserved life in prison, he did not believe he should go to the chair.

  “What does he say about himself now that he has been in the death house for several months?” the journalist asked.

  “He says what I very seriously doubt—that he has had a change of heart. He writes poetry. Oh, awful poetry. And he reads the Bible. Poor fellow. I think he is having a fine time. Just as he had them when he was racing up and down Broadway in an automobile and pretending to perform delicate operations at hospitals, he still has his feminine admirers and he revels in them just as much as ever.” Osborne scratched his head. “You would be astounded at the number and sort of women who write to him. You should see the line of gush that some of them send him, to which he replies in kind. One woman has discovered that she is his soul mate!”

  The reporter chuckled. Osborne leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands into his vest pockets.209

  Waite looked down at a blank sheet of paper and scratched the date—Friday, May 18, 1917—at the top of the page. He sighed. Ten months had passed since the original scheduled date of his execution. Yet the question of his execution was no longer “if” but “when.” Six weeks earlier, on April 3, the court had rejected his final appeal and ruled that his execution would take place sometime during the week of May 21. Impatient, Waite decided to ink a letter to Warden Moyer, requesting his execution take place on the earliest possible date in the allotted time frame, Monday, May 21.

  He thought about his father, who couldn’t stomach the idea of his son going to the chair. While awaiting Arthur’s execution, Warren Waite’s health went into decline. The fifty-nine-year-old died on March 23, 1917—exactly one year after news of John E. Peck’s murder hit the front pages in Grand Rapids. The cause of death was recorded as pneumonia, but some speculated that he died of a broken heart.210

  Convicted slayer and former cop Charles Becker (center with “x” over his head) being escorted to Sing Sing. Jailers praised Becker for his iron nerve, but he broke down on the way to the chair in July 1915. Waite, according to Tombs warden John Hanley, displayed more nerve than Becker. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  Waite returned to the blank sheet of paper and began his note.

  To Warden Moyer:

  Dear Sir: In one of the newspapers today is the statement (which you can verify) that “A.W. Waite is to die next week,” and on inquiry I learn that you have the power to name the day of that week.

  I am sure you would not be averse to obliging me if you found it possible and reasonable to do so, and I wonder if we could not arrange for the Monday of next week.

  There really is a reason for asking this, although I will not trouble you with explanations.

  I would be very grateful indeed for this favor. Yours respectfully,

  Arthur Warren Waite211

  Waite put down the pen and thought about Charles Becker, who went to the chair on the morning of July 30, 1915. Tombs warden John Hanley once praised Waite for having more nerve than Becker. Waite hoped his former jailer was right.

  Known as a man of iron will, Becker broke down as two priests escorted him to the chair. He trembled as the executioners strapped him to the chair. His voice cracking, he uttered a final prayer: “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” As he said the word “spirit,” the executioner threw the lever, and the force of 1,850 volts caused his body to jerk against the leather straps. It took three shocks to kill him.212

  Moyer received Waite’s sealed envelope that evening. He read the letter but didn’t oblige Waite’s request. He scheduled the execution for Thursday, May 24. Waite would have to wait almost another week.

  16

  THE LONG WALK

  SING SING DEATH HOUSE, OSSINING, NEW YORK

  Thursday, May 24, 1917

  The day had finally come for Waite to give his “body in expiation” for the murder of John E. Peck. In the interim, reporters had chased other stories, but on the eve of Arthur’s execution, Waite once again became front-page news. Most of the characters in the drama stayed away from Sing Sing, but they couldn’t avoid Arthur Warren Waite altogether, as reporters hounded them for their thoughts.

  Percy Peck planned to visit Waite before the execution but changed his mind and remained in Grand Rapids. He did not have mercy on his mind when he described his thought process to a reporter. “I wanted to see him and thought it would make his punishment all the more bitter. But I decided not to. I guess he will suffer enough as it is.”213

  Clara Peck also remained in Grand Rapids. She told a friend, who in turn relayed the conversation to a reporter, that she hoped Arthur’s sentence would be commuted. Regardless, she said, “I will feel freer when it is all over.”214

  Friends and family shooed nosy reporters away from the Waite residence in Grand Rapids, where Sarah Waite devoted the afternoon of Thursday, May 24, to reading the Bible. In the months between Warren’s death and her son’s execution, her health had rapidly deteriorated. Many of her closest friends and relatives
doubted she would recover and predicted she wouldn’t outlive her son by long.

  A Syracuse Daily Journal writer characterized Warren and Sarah Waite as unintentional victims of their son’s poison plot. “His mother is dying from grief at her home in Grand Rapids. His father died of a broken heart a month ago. His brother, Frank, his only loyal friend throughout, has turned snowy haired in less than a year over his brother’s conduct.”215

  Margaret Horton was newsworthy only in her conspicuous absence. The woman who had remained loyal to Waite had simply dropped out of the limelight, apparently abandoning her Romeo to his fate. She refused to visit Waite in Sing Sing and avoided newspapermen as if they had a virulent disease.

  On the morning of Waite’s execution, guards roused him out of a deep slumber at 8:00 a.m. They moved him to one of the older death-row cells, just a few strides away from the green door. The prison barber gave him a quick trim, and a guard hung a new set of clothes by the prison bars.

  As Waite consumed a light breakfast of bacon and eggs, a bowl of cereal, some fruit and a strong cup of coffee, the electrician walked past and disappeared through the green door. A few seconds later, the lights dimmed as the electrician tested the current.

  Just after noon, the prison physician, Dr. Amos O. Squire, visited Waite. Squire checked his pulse and was astonished to learn that it was completely normal. He had followed this routine physical for dozens of men who had died in the electric chair, and in every case, they displayed elevated blood pressure. But Waite appeared as calm as a man about to take a leisurely walk in the park.