The Devil's Tickets

by Gary M. Pomerantz

  “They were a loving couple; never had any serious trouble of any kind,” Adkins testified about Myrtle and Jack. Reed asked if once, when Myrtle had returned from a business trip with Jack, one of her eyes was discolored. “Yes,” Adkins replied, “and he apologized to her about it after they got home and said he was sorry he had struck her in the eye.”

  Reed: “Then how were they after that?”

  Adkins: “Fine and loving toward each other.”

  Once, Adkins said, Jack turned his temper on her after she had tailored his lounging pajamas. “He wanted them taken up a little in the waist—Mr. Bennett was small in the waist—and when I had them done they weren’t small enough, and they didn’t please him. I said to him, ‘Jack, I fixed them the best I could,’ and he said to me, ‘Well, I guess I’m a liar then,’ and he got mad.”

  Reed asked, “He swore at you?”

  Yes, Adkins said.

  Reed: “What about after that?”

  Adkins answered, “Oh, he was just quick-tempered. He soon got over it and was very nice to me.”

  Reed turned to the night of Jack’s death. Adkins testified to watching the bridge game before turning in. Much later, awakened by a bright light in her bedroom, she testified she heard Myrtle rummaging through her chest of drawers. She asked Myrtle what she was after. “Jack wants his gun. He is going to St. Joe,” Myrtle replied. Her daughter, Adkins testified, was sobbing when she took the pistol. Moments later Adkins heard two gunshots. She rose from her bed and, in her confusion, ran through the wrong door—into her bathroom—before turning and running down the hallway toward the bright light of the living room. Reed pulled out the diagram of the apartment and Adkins put on her tortoiseshell glasses. She traced her movements for the jurors. Once she reached the living room, she said she saw Jack step toward the open front door, put his hand against the doorjamb, then step back into the living room and sit in a chair.

  Reed: “Where was Mrs. Bennett when you saw her?”

  Adkins: “Standing right there”—she pointed to the diagram indicating near the master bedroom door—“just like she was frightened almost to death, paranoid.” Later, when the doctor arrived and pronounced Jack dead, Adkins recalled, Myrtle said, “Jack’s gone and I want to go, too.” Adkins told the others not to let Myrtle get hold of the pistol.

  Page cross-examined Adkins, his tone gentle even as she fell back on the reliable standby answer—“I don’t remember.” He asked about Jack as a son-in-law: “Mrs. Adkins, how did Mr. Bennett treat you?”

  She replied: “He was very kind to me.”

  Page: “He took good care of you in your old age, didn’t he?”

  Adkins: “Yes. He was always good.”

  Assistant prosecutor John V. Hill, working with Page, interrupted: “I want to object to Mr. O’Sullivan standing there shaking and nodding his head at the witness. Let the witness answer.”

  O’Sullivan boomed: “I resent that! I was doing nothing of the sort.”

  Latshaw waved his hand and said, “The jury will disregard it. Mr. Hill, suppose you tell me when you think you see anything like that.”

  Page asked Adkins if she told Myrtle, as she rummaged through the chest of drawers for the pistol, “Jack won’t need his gun tonight.”

  Adkins said she didn’t remember.

  When she saw Myrtle in the living room with the gun in her hand, Page asked, did Adkins say to her daughter, “Myrtle, what on earth are you doing?”

  Adkins said she didn’t remember.

  At one point, Page said, “Now, Mrs. Adkins, I’m going to ask you if it isn’t a fact that—” Adkins didn’t let him finish. “I don’t remember,” she said. The courtroom broke up in laughter. The frowning deputy sheriff waved his arms in a call to order.

  It was a stalemate.

  Finally, Latshaw said, “You can’t impeach this old woman by what she doesn’t remember.”

  As Page battled to introduce discrepancies from Adkins’s earlier sworn testimony, Reed insisted there were none. Though eager to get Myrtle on the stand as soon as possible, he suggested adjournment to give Page time to identify discrepancies to show to the court. “It’s a good suggestion,” Page said, adding defiantly, “and I’ll find the discrepancies.”

  Reed sneered and told the prosecutor, “You ought to wear petticoats. You always get the last word.”

  The next morning, Jim Page arrived laden with law books. He read aloud Missouri Supreme Court rulings that showed he had legal precedent to impeach the memory of the witnesses Mayme Hofman and Alice Adkins. With the jury out of the courtroom, Page and Reed sparred on this issue for two hours. “Judge, you know more criminal law than Page ever thought of,” Reed said, nearly fawning. The judge replied, “The fact is, Senator, I’m such a good friend of yours that I can hardly give you a fair trial.” Latshaw had long admired Reed, and was among the few Missouri Democrats to stand by him in 1919 during the League of Nations fight for “his courageous, forceful and honest stand.” Now Latshaw said he was inclined to rule for the state for fear of being partial to his old friend. This time, he ruled in favor of Page. Latshaw would admit witnesses’ earlier testimony, but only for the purpose of impeaching the witnesses. Their previous testimony could not be used against the defendant. (Page could only hope jurors would not compartmentalize this earlier testimony, per the judge’s ruling. At the very least his case demanded that they hear it, and decide for themselves its relevance to Myrtle Bennett.) Latshaw smiled at Page. “I’m glad to see you read a little law last night,” the judge said.

  Good news came to Page from the new pistol tests. Jack’s bloody shirt had been laid against cakes of soap in the gallows room of the county jail, and his .32 Colt fired at it from the newly prescribed distances. Back on the witness stand now, Hickman admitted to Page during cross-examination that the holes in Jack’s shirt were surrounded by not powder burns but bullet burns. By examining the bullet holes in Jack’s shirts, therefore, Hickman said he could not tell the distance from which the shots had been fired. Here was a victory for Page.

  Reed got some satisfaction, though, when Hickman admitted from the witness stand that, yes, the killing shots could have been fired from close range, as if during a struggle.

  Myrtle suffered in silence. Her private life observed and exposed, each day she gnawed at her fingernails and failed to get enough food or sleep. Her pallor grew sickly, the circles under her eyes darkened, and her outfit, which she had worn all eight days of trial, began to look as wrinkled and exhausted as she did. On Tuesday, two of Reed’s associates burst into the courtroom. They interrupted the senator, whispering into his ear. Reed sidled over to the bench and quietly spoke to Latshaw, who dismissed the jury. Reed and O’Sullivan approached Myrtle, delicately, knowing her emotional imbalance. Only a few moments ago, they told her, Alice Adkins, while waiting in a room upstairs to be recalled as a witness, had collapsed. Myrtle panicked and rushed from the courtroom, her attorneys in tow. A murmur passed through the courtroom, spectators uncertain of what was happening. Myrtle ran up the courthouse stairs calling, “Mother! Mother!” Overwhelmed by the trial’s pressures, Adkins had suffered a nervous breakdown. Myrtle found her prostrate, mumbling. Adkins was carried to a waiting ambulance and taken to the home of Mr. and Mrs. H. E. Woods.

  A train through the heartland arrived in Kansas City earlier that morning carrying a young man with a story. He proceeded directly from Union Station to the courtroom. The prosecution had telephoned him only a few days before. He told them his tale straight, as if it had happened only yesterday. The assistant prosecutor pleaded with him to come to the trial to testify, promising to pay for his train fare and lodging. The young man obliged. His story was a bombshell, the last and most important trick in Jim Page’s bag, and would be delivered from the witness stand during rebuttal. The young man, still in his twenties, small and angular, with dark veiled eyes, was Byrd Rice. He was Jack Bennett’s nephew and ha
d lived for a time with Myrtle and Jack. The family knew him as a good-time Charlie, young and carefree, and devoted to his uncle Jack, whom he admired. In the courtroom he exchanged handshakes and hugs with Bennett family members, including his mother, Annie Jane Rice. The family told him every detail about the trial, including how his mother had already testified that Myrtle had told her: “Nobody but me and my God know why I did it.”

  All of Kansas City awaited Myrtle Bennett’s testimony, and when she finally gave it, Byrd Rice would understand instantly that it was at odds with the story he knew.

  He also knew her story was at odds with the truth.

  At last Myrtle Bennett came to the witness stand in an attempt to save herself from prison. The senator wasted no time, taking no chances, diving into questions about the Fatal Hand within two minutes of her swearing in.

  Myrtle, in nearly a whisper: “He slapped me several times. I don’t recall how many.”

  Reed: “Where did he slap you?”

  Myrtle: “In the face.”

  Reed: “Were they hard or easy blows?”

  Myrtle: “Hard.”

  Clutching a large white handkerchief, she spoke softly, her eyes focused on her attorney. She trusted Jim Reed completely. She testified that she had packed Jack’s grip during that night, and said it was resting in the den on a large English lounging chair. Fighting her emotions, she told how she approached her husband after he had slapped her and after he had announced he was leaving at once for St. Joseph. She asked him to apologize to the Hofmans. “I felt that they had been embarrassed and … I thought it would be better if we would try in some way to make them feel better and I walked over and asked him not to go [to St. Joseph] and to apologize to them, too, for his conduct,” Myrtle testified. “And he told me that he was going, to go and get the gun back from my mother’s room; that he was going to go that evening.”

  With the gun in hand, Myrtle testified, she walked into the den and saw Charles Hofman. “He said something to me, as he says, ‘My God, Myrtle, what are you going to do?’ and reached for me or in some way, I don’t know just how it happened, I couldn’t tell you—but there was a chair—a large chair, one of the dining room chairs sitting there.” Her lips trembled, and the pace of her words quickened as if she were in a race to reach the finish. “It hit my arm in some way or I stumbled over it, or in some way.” Her breaths deepened. “I don’t know how it happened, and the gun discharged.” She buried her head in her white handkerchief and wept.

  Several women friends in the courtroom wept with her. Jim Reed stood beside the witness chair and waited, allowing the widow’s emotions to pour over the jurors. Then, softly, Reed asked, “Did that frighten you?”

  Myrtle answered, “Why, it nearly frightened me to death.”

  Reed: “Where did you go from there?”

  Myrtle: “I went on through the bathroom and through my bedroom—or our bedroom, rather—and when I got in there Mr. Bennett was running towards me or coming—”

  Reed: “Into where?”

  Myrtle: “Into the bedroom. Mr. Bennett was coming towards me and when he got right to me, right near the door leading from the living room into the bedroom, he caught hold of me and grabbed hold of me, and then he caught hold of my arms and twisted them and in some way in the scuffle, I don’t know how, the gun discharged, I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know in what position, or just how it happened, but that is how it happened.” She told Reed, “When he grabbed hold of me I said, ‘Oh, Jack, be careful, be careful of the gun’—because it had just discharged and I was frightened to death when he came toward me. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I was just frightened when he took hold of me and that’s all I know. I was simply frightened to death.”

  She said she saw Jack recoil from the gunshots, stagger backward, away from her, sit on a chair, and then slump to the floor. She remembered asking her mother, the Hofmans, anyone, to call a doctor, to call Jack’s aunt Nellie. She remembered putting a pillow beneath Jack’s head.

  Reed asked if she had ever handled the .32 Colt. “No,” she said.

  The senator angled toward the finish: “Now, Mrs. Bennett, did you intentionally or consciously fire that gun at your husband that night?”

  “No, indeed, I did not. I’d rather have been dead myself.”

  “You may examine,” Reed told the prosecutor.

  Reed had intentionally covered little ground, leaving few openings for Page.

  The prosecutor barreled forward. “Did you say you were so excited that you didn’t know how it occurred?”

  “I did,” Myrtle replied. “I don’t know what position we were in exactly when it happened. It was in a scuffle. It would be impossible to say.”

  “If you don’t know how it occurred,” Page said, “how do you remember that he grabbed you hard?”

  Reed objected, and Latshaw sustained.

  Page pressed on. “The only thing you know about it, is that he grabbed you hard, is that right?”

  Myrtle: “No, that isn’t all I know about it.”

  Page asked if Jack was facing her when she fired the last two bullets, or if his back was turned. “It would be impossible for me to say. I don’t know,” Myrtle said.

  Page asked about the dining room chair that struck her arm. Where was it positioned in the den? How tall was it?

  “One of those large, heavy upholstered chairs,” Myrtle said.

  Page: “Did you fall down before you fired the first two shots?”

  Myrtle: “I don’t know what you mean ‘fall down.’ I had stumbled over this chair. I was not down on the floor, no.” She said the first two shots discharged from the den, before she reached the bathroom.

  Page asked if the bathroom door was closed.

  Reed objected, saying, “I didn’t ask any questions about that.”

  Latshaw: “Objection sustained.”

  The legal wrangling intensified, prompting Latshaw to send the jury from the room.

  Page’s eyes grew tight at the corners. “You said in your answers to Senator Reed that you did not intend to fire the shots.”

  Yes, Myrtle said, that is true.

  Page asked if she had had a talk with Jack’s brother Tom Bennett soon after the shooting.

  “Yes,” Myrtle replied, “at the county jail.”

  Page said, “Did you mention to him how you happened to shoot your husband?”

  Reed’s protest prevented her answer.

  Then Page asked if she knew Byrd Rice, and despite Reed’s loud objection, Myrtle was permitted to answer.

  Yes, she said, Byrd Rice is Jack’s nephew.

  “Did you have a conversation with Mr. Rice after the shooting?”

  But Reed intervened, with another objection that Latshaw sustained.

  Page erupted. “If Mrs. Bennett told other persons that she did shoot him and that she intended to shoot him, the state has a right to show that.”

  But Reed countered: “If the state had any such evidence it should have been shown in its case.”

  Latshaw ruled without delay: “The defendant can be cross-examined only on those points brought out in the interrogation in chief. The law throws special protection around defendants in criminal cases and there is a specific way in which they must be examined. We recognize that intent is a necessary ingredient of a crime. Yet it must be proven by the state in its case in chief. The defense objection is sustained. Bring in the jury.”

  Even before jurors returned, Page cited case law supporting his position.

  “I’m not going to be subjected to argument every time I rule on a matter, Mr. Page,” Latshaw thundered. The jurors reappeared and took their seats. “Proceed, Mr. Page,” the judge said.

  “Under the ruling of the court,” Page said, “I can’t ask any more questions of this witness.”

  Reed bounded to the witness stand. “That is all, Mrs. Bennett,
” the senator said to his client, solicitously. He extended his hand to her and escorted her to the defendant’s chair. Myrtle sipped from a glass of water, her hands trembling. Her testimony, including cross-examination, had lasted only forty minutes.

  An agitated Page announced that he would bring courtroom observers to the witness stand to testify how Latshaw had thwarted the prosecutor’s pursuit of justice: “I’ll call bystanders to show that I tried to read the law into the record.”

  “Bystanders, bah!” Latshaw said. “I’ll rule it out!”

  On opening night of the ballyhooed Bridge Battle of the Century in December 1931 in the Culbertson suite at The Hotel Chatham in New York, the press gathers around Ely and Jo as they challenge Sidney Lenz (seated right) and Oswald Jacoby (left). The Bridge World

  TWELVE

  Bridge Battle of the Century

  The practical attitude toward all partners should be that of a philosophical sincere and sympathetic friend. Partner must never be allowed to feel that his loss is taken too hard by you. During bidding and play, partner, however weak, must feel that you sincerely respect his intelligence and efforts.

  —ELY CULBERTSON,

  in Contract Bridge Blue Book

  The Culbertsons returned home on September 18, 1931, on the RMS Mauretania. A newspaperman asked Ely his view of the new Official System. “Their so-called system,” Ely replied, “is eighty percent Culbertson, twelve percent Work and Lenz, and eight percent rubbish.”

  Not coincidentally, upon his return, Ely taught a weekly bridge class with key members of the New York media: the president of NBC Radio, the president of the Bell Newspaper Syndicate, the general manager of the Associated Press, the syndicated sports columnist Grantland Rice, the editor of Vanity Fair magazine, the editor of The American Magazine, and Bruce Barton, the celebrated adman from Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn. Ely nurtured these relationships, and they would serve him well.