Nelson’s Uncle Willis testified that his nephew “showed freakish tendencies as a small child. The U.S. Navy officers were the first to officially pronounce him insane. There is no doubt about his insanity. His father died of syphilis when he was about a year old. Blood tests made in Napa State Asylum showed this same condition [in Nelson].”
A friend of the Nelson family named George Miller—who had once let Earle “live in my home with my wife and two children for a period of three weeks”—declared that “I came to realize at that time, from his way of talking about large sums of money and building contracts in such a childish manner, that he must be of unsound mind. He was also a religious fanatic, always quoting the Bible in the course of his conversations. He is, in my mind, insane and does not realize right from wrong, though he was always playful and gentle with my two little kiddies.”
Caroline Wellman, one of Mary Fuller’s co-workers at Miss Harker’s School for Girls, described the time that Nelson “entered the kitchen door without permission, chased his wife into the pantry and then into the school office, his eyes in a staring condition, looking wild and excited, without apparent reasons for his actions. It was necessary to call the police to make him leave the premises. On another occasion, I found him in the pantry, holding his wife and talking in an excited, unreasonable manner.”
A brief but vivid portrait of Nelson’s weird behavior was provided by Mrs. L. J. Casey, Jr., who had observed Nelson in the spring of 1926, when he had worked as Frank J. Arnold’s groundskeeper. According to Mrs. Casey, “I told my friends I would not have that man around. He is surely crazy. I hear him laughing and talking to himself all the time. One day while I happened to be there, he sat right outside in the drenching rain, looking at the sky, without a coat, until he was soaked through. But my friends said ‘he is only a simple fool, he likes it here and works hard,’ so we let him stay.”
Altogether, Stitt assembled affidavits from twenty individuals, all of whom swore that they were “in a position to know full well the character and mentality of the said Earle Nelson and that [they] verily believed without exaggeration or mental reservation that the said Earle Nelson has been for a long period of time a person of unsound mind and has been and is irresponsible for his conduct and that if he did commit the act of murder for which he has been convicted that such act was the act of an unfortunate man who did not know the difference between right and wrong and who was so far insane as not to know the nature and quality of his act.”
At the end of December, Stitt forwarded these documents to the Minister of Justice, Ernest Lapointe, along with his own appeal for clemency—an eloquent, even moving, document that ran nearly thirty pages. Though the appeal was filed in strict accordance with the judicial calendar, the timing—just a few days after Christmas—couldn’t have been more symbolic, since Stitt’s plea was based, not only on a scrupulous review of the facts, but on the principles of Christian mercy.
“I desire to say,” he began, “that I do not approach this issue from any sentimental basis, or from any desire to save the life of a client of mine merely because he happens to be my client, but I do feel that the taking of a human life is an act far better left to the Giver of All Life Himself, especially when the question of responsibility is in grave doubt as it must be in this case, for in the first instance the accused has been proven to have been at one time absolutely insane, and the only rebutting evidence offered by the Crown now is that he is not insane at present.”
Stitt got right to the nub of his argument, pointing out that, in response to the overwhelming evidence of insanity, all the Crown had to offer was the opinion of a single alienist, Dr. Mathers, whose testimony was, at best, equivocal. “May it not truly be said,” Stitt wrote, “that the evidence of Mary Fuller is that the accused is insane; the evidence of Mrs. Fabian, who brought up Nelson, is that he is insane; the evidence of the documents is that he is insane, was found so by a court of competent jurisdiction, and was ordered confined to an asylum; and all the Crown has to offer in rebuttal is—‘well, he is mentally inferior, a constitutional psychopath, a borderline case, not with psychosis now, but he might have psychosis of any degree at times?’ And I ask you what ought the verdict of the jury to have been, surely nothing less than ‘Not guilty on account of insanity’?”
Stitt acknowledged that Mary Fuller and Lillian Fabian might have had reason to lie. After all, they were Nelson’s closest and most loyal relations. But “I maintain there is nothing fantastic or far-fetched in their story. The first instruction I gave to these women was to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and to tell it without exaggeration. This counsel was, I believe, absolutely adhered to. What a story could they not have told had they been willing to lie, for who was there to contradict them? But such a story was not told, was never considered for a moment…. The question of the integrity of these women was never raised at the trial.”
If anything, the two women had withheld some information that would have painted an even more disturbing picture of Nelson. It was not until after the trial, for example, that a red-faced Mrs. Fuller revealed to Stitt “that the accused was an exhibitionist and … that he even masturbated in bed with his own wife. These were among the reasons she left him.”
There was one other fact relating to Mary Fuller that, as far as Stitt was concerned, proved something significant about Nelson’s mental status: “The wife of the accused is 64 years of age—66 years of age!—whereas Nelson is 30 years of age at the present moment. They were married in 1919, eight years ago, which would leave the condemned man at that time 22 years of age and his bride 58. That certainly appeals to me as being evidence of insanity.”
Stitt then addressed another question which might arise “in the mind of the reader” (and which certainly didn’t reflect well on the reputation of the U.S. legal system): “Must you not pay little attention to American court records, for does not wealth often subvert justice there?”
Stitt’s response was that—though “American court records may not be very reliable”—the “order declaring Nelson insane by the Superior Court of San Francisco was not the only or the first declaration of Nelson’s insanity.” Nelson had been declared insane by naval authorities as early as 1918, when he was confined to the Mare Island Naval Hospital.
“Now there can be no question of money or influence affecting the commitment by the naval authorities,” Stitt argued. “My experience of military life—and I had three years of it—is that precious little malingering was successful there, and I presume that what applies to the army is true of the navy in this regard. Moreover, my experience was that if a man was unfit for service, he was discharged. But not so with Nelson. He was not only unfit for service but unfit for life, and the authorities could not take a chance and discharge an insane person. Therefore, he was committed to the asylum.”
After spending about ten pages dissecting the flaws in Mathers’ testimony, Stitt advanced the same argument that had been made by the writer of “A Double Tragedy”: that the outrageously vicious nature of Nelson’s crimes was “itself evidence of insanity.”
“What other hypothesis can the mind conjure up explanatory of the facts?” Stitt asked. “You can hardly dismiss the crime and say it is simply a case of utter degradation; for it is more than that, it is disordered conduct, abnormal emotion—or the complete and utter lack of it—coupled with the annihilation of the moral faculty. And, in fact, it does seem to me that this case illustrates above all else a creature made in the image of God but lacking altogether moral consciousness.
“It is true that defenseless women have been throttled to death to cover up the traces of crime, in cases of robbery, for example,” Stitt allowed. “But what criminal rapes the body of his helpless victim at the same time, or afterward when life has vanished? Then, when the act is completed, calmly dresses in the room where his victim lies dead, without hurry, and then shows no immediate anxiety to escape detection, but wanders around from secondhand store to cloth
ing store, from barbershop to restaurant, irresponsibly garrulous, acting like a child? Whilst all the time another victim, a helpless child, lies cold in death, waiting for discovery to break the awful silence and proclaim him a double murderer.
“There’s only one explanation under Heaven—insanity, mania, madness itself shrieks its name in our ears!”
Stitt proceeded to discuss other, physiological factors—Nelson’s head injury, the evidence of syphilis, the possibility of “masked epilepsy”—before turning to the issue of prejudicial publicity. “Everybody was biased,” he exclaimed. “Do you know that over 50,000 extra papers of the Free Press were sold on the day of his capture. Fear stalked in every unprotected home in Winnipeg during the week of the manhunt, and from not a few vicinities there was a general emigration of womanhood…. At the trial, all the jurors were challenged for cause; some openly stated that they could not give him a fair trial. Those who said they could admitted they had read the papers. What man of red blood, having read the news, could go in scorn of prejudice and seek justice in a quiet way? There is not a lawyer in Winnipeg who has not said words to me of this effect: ‘The jury’s verdict was written by the newspapers for them. There could be no other verdict under the circumstances.’”
After urging that Nelson be reprieved on the grounds of “moral imbecility” and “relegated to special treatment,” Stitt (who composed both poetry and music in his spare time) concluded with a deeply impassioned plea whose soaring language stood in marked contrast to the dry, formal diction of most legal writings.
“It has been told to me that any effort to save the life of an accused such as Nelson is vain, and the reason advanced has been that his life is not worth saving in the first place; and in the second, no advisor of His Majesty would have the temerity to bring upon himself such public displeasure as would ensue from the grant of a reprieve.
“Let me conclude by saying such conceptions of justice are not mine and are, I know, utterly foreign and repugnant to the chief executives of my country. Ten years ago, I left the plains of France, where my countrymen engaged in an assault at arms to vindicate the message of the Prince of Peace to a world of men weary of injustice. Many of them now sleep among the lilies of that foreign land. But the principles for which they died are pure and eternal.
“It is therefore in the light of those principles that I pen this argument. In the light of that justice which has come by the road of the common law for upwards of a thousand years, I crave your careful consideration. May justice not be mocked by her own process in this, our beloved country, but may her healing and beneficent rays be extended unto every man—even unto the least of these my brethren.”
Clearly, Earle Leonard Nelson couldn’t have asked for a finer advocate. But all the eloquence in the world couldn’t save him. On Tuesday, January 3, 1928, the Manitoba Free Press reassured its readers that (as the headline put it) “Clemency Is Not Expected for Nelson.”
That prediction came true eight days later, when—after reviewing all the relevant material—the federal cabinet decided not to interfere. Official word reached Winnipeg on Wednesday afternoon, January 11, when Attorney General W. J. Major received a telegram from Thomas Mulvey, under secretary of state. The message read: LAW WILL TAKE ITS COURSE IN THE CAPITAL CASE OF EARLE NELSON ALIAS VIRGIL WILSON SENTENCED TO BE EXECUTED JANUARY 13.
Whether Nelson was insane, according to legal definitions, is a question that will never be conclusively resolved, but he certainly wasn’t deluded about his chances for survival.
Hearing the news in his cell shortly after Mulvey’s telegram arrived, he merely shrugged, gave a little sigh, and said, “That’s what I expected.”
52
†
Prov. 28:14
Whoso walketh uprightly shall be saved; but he that is perverse in his ways shall fall at once.
A few hours after Nelson received the bad news, a gray-haired, birdlike little man checked into a downtown hotel in Winnipeg, having just arrived from his home in Vancouver. Peering through thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, he signed the register under an assumed name—his standard practice whenever he was engaged in official business. The sixty-year-old gentleman preferred to remain anonymous, since his presence, as he had learned over the course of his long career, tended to make people extremely uneasy.
His true name was Arthur Ellis, and he was the official executioner of the Dominion of Canada.
Ellis spent part of the following day, Thursday, January 12, inspecting the scaffold that stood in the jail yard. A thoroughgoing professional, he also visited the condemned man in his cell, to size up Nelson’s stature and weight.
Afterwards, Ellis was interviewed by reporters from the city’s dailies. His precise words were never printed, but in its evening edition, the Free Press summed up the gist of his remarks. “Regarding Nelson’s crimes as the most horrible he has ever known,” the paper reported, “the hangman expressed keener anticipation at carrying out this execution than any other in his history.”
* * *
Ellis wasn’t the only one looking forward to Nelson’s execution. For weeks, the sheriff’s office had been swamped with requests from people eager to witness the hanging. The letters poured in from near and far. One particularly pressing appeal came from a woman in Minneapolis.
Regarding these applicants as little more than ghouls, the sheriff consigned all their letters to the trash bin. “Only those whose duty calls them there,” he announced on Thursday afternoon, “will be present at the hanging.”
Barred from the big event, a bunch of rubberneckers gathered outside the jail on Thursday morning, hoping to catch one last glimpse of the “Strangler” through his cell window. Guards were posted on the street to maintain order, but aside from their unabashed prurience, the gawkers were perfectly well-behaved. For the most part, they did nothing but mill on the sidewalk and peer eagerly up at the barred window.
One or two of the bolder women cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted Nelson’s name, but their calls went unanswered. When it finally became clear that the condemned man had no intention of coming to the window, most of the crowd began drifting away, leaving only a few diehard curiosity seekers, who remained throughout the day.
There was one vantage point from which spectators could watch Nelson swing, even without an official invitation. As far back as June, right after Nelson’s arrest, officials had expressed concern about the proximity of the jail to the University of Manitoba, whose main building directly overlooked the courtyard where hangings took place. These officials believed that the mere sight of the gallows would be intensely distressing to the students.
In point of fact, the students were so excited about the hanging that a bunch of them planned to sneak into the upper-floor rooms of the building and watch the execution through the windows. Much to their disappointment, the university president got wind of this scheme and issued an immediate warning:
“Swift and stern,” he proclaimed on Thursday afternoon, “will be the end of the career of any university students who attempt to witness the execution of Earle Nelson tomorrow morning. Any students who attempt to reach rooms overlooking the jail yard at the time of the hanging will face instant expulsion.”
While the city buzzed with excitement over his impending death, Nelson himself remained remarkably calm throughout Thursday. For much of the day, he was attended by his “spiritual advisor,” a priest named J. A. Webb.
At the urging of his wife, Mary, who had written to him regularly since her return to California, Nelson had converted to Catholicism in early December, when he was baptized in his cell by Father Webb. Since then, he had continued to receive instruction in the fundamentals of his newly adopted faith.
Besides Father Webb (and, briefly, hangman Ellis), Nelson had a number of visitors throughout Thursday. In midafternoon, he agreed to see William McConnell, whose wife, Mary, was the sixteenth murder victim officially attributed to the “Dark Strangler.” Desperate
for what we now call “closure,” McConnell had made the long trip from Philadelphia in the hope of securing a confession from Nelson.
But Nelson refused to oblige. “I have no confession to make,” he insisted. “I did not do the deed.” He had never been to Philadelphia in his life; indeed, he had never travelled “east of Nevada.” The whole thing was a “frame-up,” he told McConnell. “I just hope for your sake that the real guilty party will be caught one day and pay the penalty.”
After nearly two futile hours, McConnell finally gave up. Though the Philadelphian had every reason to abominate Nelson, he somehow found it in his heart to forgive him. “I hope he’s made his peace with God,” he told reporters afterwards. “From the bottom of my heart I forgive him. I think he’s insane. I have no malice whatever against the man.”
Nelson displayed the same heartless obstinacy towards another bereaved visitor, Lola Cowan’s mother, Randy. Like William McConnell, Mrs. Cowan was seeking whatever solace could be derived from the conclusive knowledge that Nelson was the killer. But she, too, came away emptyhanded. “I never saw the child,” Nelson maintained, insisting that he had never even been in Winnipeg before his arrest.
* * *
Nelson granted one more interview that afternoon, to a reporter from the Free Press. Once again he protested his innocence. Speaking in “the most solemn tones,” he declared that “God in his own good time will disclose the guilty parties to the world.” He appealed to the reporter to “proclaim to the people of Canada and the United States” that he was “the victim of circumstances.
“Before God and man I am innocent,” he avowed. “I am ready to meet my God, who I’m sure will have pity on me for everything I’ve suffered.”
When the reporter suggested to Nelson that he was “on the brink of eternity” and ought to avail himself of this final opportunity to unburden himself, Nelson became even more emphatic. “Why should I lie?” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to hang. There’s no hope of saving my body, and I’m certainly not going to do anything to hurt my soul. I swear to you, I’m telling the truth. I never murdered anybody—never, never, never!”
Bestial Page 35
