A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

by Ron Hansen

  The oft-married celebrity Peggy Hopkins Joyce wrote maliciously about Ruth and Judd for the New York Daily Mirror, as did Samuel Shipman, whose play Crime was still running and whose leading lady, Sylvia Sidney, joined him in the courtroom. The magician Howard Thurston was a continuing presence, as was Ben Hecht, the screenwriter and novelist who was called “the Shakespeare of Hollywood.” Actress Olga Petrova generously posed for a host of photographers in front of the Rolls-Royce that oozed her there. Evelyn Law of The Ziegfeld Follies also found attendance a fine way to get noticed, as did so many other theater people that their general seating area was called “the Actor’s Equity Section.”

  Wearing an odd Buster Brown necktie was the Reverend John Roach Straton, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, the first hellfire preacher to broadcast his Sunday sermons over the radio and the man who would campaign against the Catholic Al Smith as the presidential “candidate of rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Revivalist Billy Sunday skeptically looked in on the trial one day, and in nightly columns for the Evening Graphic, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson railed against “Sex Love,” “demon alcohol,” “red-hot cuties,” and the multiple sins and vices on exhibit in the trial.

  It was mid-April and getting hot in that third-floor room, but flashy ladies still displayed their sealskin coats and muskrat furs. They carried opera glasses. And though playwright Willard Mack would negatively review the trial—“The plot is weak. The construction is childlike. The direction is pitiful. The principals are stupid”—each performance was standing-room only.

  Justice Scudder introduced the situation and accusations for the jury on the first morning, noting that the defendants were jointly on trial for the crime of murder in the first degree, that each was presumed to be innocent, that the burden of proof could never shift from the prosecution to the accused, and if the jury entertained a reasonable doubt of guilt, both must be acquitted. And then Justice Scudder critically indicated that “if two persons with malice aforethought and with a deliberate and premeditated design join hands to kill a third person, and accomplish the act, the law does not concern itself as to how much of the act of inflicting death was done by either one; the fact that they both participated in any degree makes them equally guilty.”

  Stout, short, silver-haired Richard Newcombe calmly presented the government’s strong case against the couple in just thirty minutes, deftly organizing details and chronology and giving evidence that the murder was premeditated by noting that Henry Judd Gray initially intended to kill Ruth’s husband on March 7th. “Whether it was an act of Providence that left that poor devil, Albert Snyder, to live a few more weeks I don’t know, but the crime was not consummated that night.”

  Employment of that vaguely salacious phrase—“consummated that night”—was not accidental. Adultery and homicide were linked throughout the trial. One journalist quoted Shakespeare’s Pericles in writing, “‘One sin, I know, another doth provoke; murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.’” Judd had admitted exchanging “caresses” with Ruth before and after she strangled Albert, and because a full three hours were exhausted between the killing and Judd’s getaway, it was gossiped that they had engaged in congratulatory intercourse when Albert’s body was not yet cold. The district attorney hinted at that in his opening statement by noting the three-hour gap and saying they could only have been filled with “planning and conceiving and scheming and God knows what else—I don’t want to know.”

  Warren Schneider stated that the corpse he’d identified was that of his brother; Dr. Howard Neal of the medical examiner’s office testified about Albert Snyder’s cause of death; a toxicologist noted Albert’s extreme drunkenness; the office manager at the Waldorf-Astoria testified that over fifty registration slips were signed in the names of “Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Gray”; and Leroy Ashfield, who’d justifiably lost his job with the Prudential Life Insurance Company, wanly maintained that there was no intent to deceive Mr. Snyder in having him affix his signature to a blank form that would result in a forty-five-thousand-dollar policy with a double-indemnity clause.

  Confessions were read; Queens detectives and assistant district attorneys recollected their actions, observations, and conversations; a German waiter at Henry’s said he’d frequently seen Ruth and Judd together there; Dr. Harry Hansen, the first physician at the homicide scene, said he’d found no injuries to Ruth’s skull that would cause unconsciousness. And put into evidence were picture wire, a gold Cross mechanical pencil, Albert’s handgun, the towel and necktie used in tying him, the blue cotton handkerchief soaked in chloroform, Judd’s half-pint of poisoned rye whiskey, and the bloodstained pillowcase found hidden in the Snyders’ laundry hamper.

  It was ascertained that Judd was seen waiting for a bus in Queens Village on Sunday, March 20th, that a taxi took him from Jamaica Station to Manhattan, and that he was seen on the New York Central run to Syracuse that Sunday morning. Then Haddon Jones and Harry Platt were called to testify about Judd’s prevarications that night. And suddenly, just after noon on April 28th, Richard Newcombe stood to announce, “The people rest their case.”

  Attorneys for the accused were so surprised that the state had halted its prosecution at that juncture that they sought, and were granted by Justice Scudder, time to stall, prepare motions, and organize their defense.

  And then the fifteen hundred in the jammed courtroom, the vast majority of them women, finally were rewarded with the chilly testimony of Mrs. Ruth Snyder, the fiend they already loathed. Writing of her courtroom demeanor up until then, Damon Runyon noted, “Whatever else she may lack, which seems to be plenty, the woman appears to have nerve. She has never for a moment cowered like her once little pal of those loving days before the black early morning of March 20th. She has been cold, calm, contemptuous, gusty, angry, but never shrinking, save perhaps in that little walk to and from the court between the recesses. She then passes before the hungry eyes of the spectators. That seems to be her most severe ordeal.”

  She was called as a witness on the afternoon of Friday, April 29th, hastening to the stand with both hands clutching the front of her jet-black coat, a felt, brimmed helmet hat hiding much of her straw hair, and her frosty eyes avoiding all others.

  Those hundreds who’d just been listening over the hallway loudspeakers outside all but rioted in trying to jam into the courtroom, and policemen got out their nightsticks to force the onrush back.

  When there was a little peace, Justice Scudder tilted left toward Ruth and in his rich, theatrical voice cautioned, “Now, madam, you are not required to take the chair as witness. The law privileges you, and you can testify only of your own free will and accord. If you do take the stand, you are subject to the state’s cross-examination as is any other witness. The court now affords you an opportunity to decide whether you would prefer to avail yourself of your privilege.”

  “I’ll take the stand, please,” she said in that soft, velvety, affectionate soprano that few there had ever heard. Half the thousand in the room stood to see more of her and realized that she was in fact prettier than the venomous depictions of her in the press, with a face of luminous, ivory skin and riveting, starry, Delft-blue eyes. Some writers even compared Ruth to the shy, stately, tranquil women in paintings by Alessandro Botticelli or Jan Vermeer.

  Edgar Hazelton began the questioning with some background on Mrs. Snyder’s relationship with her husband, extracting from her that she and Albert were continually arguing within three months of their marriage and that whenever Albert got irritated with his wife, he contrasted Ruth with the late Jessie Guischard, “the finest woman he had ever met.” His motorboat was even named the Jessie G until Ruth forced him to change it. She admitted she’d secretly undergone surgery in order to conceive a child, and that just angered Albert more, and he was nettled further that Lorraine wasn’t a boy.

  Ruth’s mouth quivered as she mentioned Lorraine and she cried into her handkerchief, only recovering composure when Justice Scudder handed her a glass
of water.

  Hazelton established that she’d been a good wife and mother, teaching Lorraine prayers and hymns, sewing curtains and the baby’s clothes, stocking the cellar with fruit preserves. And then he asked, “You were unfaithful to your marriage vows with Henry Judd Gray, were you not?”

  She shied from his stare. “Yes.”

  “Was this the only man except your husband who ever knew you carnally?”

  “Yes.”

  She said she did not drink much, she never smoked, she insisted on extra insurance only because Albert seemed so accident-prone: there had been incidents in the garage when the jack gave way and the Buick fell on him, or when the motor was running and the garage door swung shut. And he was sleeping on the sofa and she’d reached to switch the radio off and she’d accidentally kicked the gas pipe off its floor cock, then gone on an errand. She returned to find Albert was almost asphyxiated. She’d mentioned that in a letter to Mr. Gray, who shocked Ruth with his wish that Albert had died.

  “Was that a typical response from him?”

  “Uh-huh. Getting rid of my husband was a regular subject with him.” She then said that was the reason she intended to end the relationship, but that Judd had warned that if she “ever stopped going with him he was going to tell the world what kind of shameless woman I was.”

  Hazelton then invited Ruth to say how she’d acquired the sash weight, and she told him that it was in a package Mr. Gray had given her at Henry’s Restaurant. She’d thought the package contained just a rolling pin that Benjamin & Johnes was marketing as a flesh reducer, but she later found in it the sash weight and a note in his handwriting that read: I’ll be there Monday night to do the job.

  She’d hidden the sash weight in the cellar. When Judd arrived on the 7th, he’d said he was there “to finish off The Governor,” but she’d objected, “Judd, you’ll do no such thing!”

  She said he’d then decided to return on Thursday, Albert’s bowling night, “and get him in the garage,” but Judd got cold feet and instead left on his sales route, heading first to Buffalo. She received a bulky letter from him with instructions to give Albert the enclosed sleeping powders before the Snyders left for the March 19th party at Milton Fidgeon’s house. She washed the powders down the kitchen sink. But her worst fears were realized when she got home from the Saturday-night party and found Judd in Mama’s room. She whispered that she’d see him later because she wanted to tell him their love affair was over. Waiting twenty minutes, until she was certain her husband was sleeping, she went back to Judd, who kissed her.

  “I immediately felt the rubber gloves on his hands, and I said, ‘Judd, what are you going to do?’ And he became semi-mad to think that things hadn’t gone as he’d planned.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He said, ‘If you don’t let me go through with it tonight, I’m going to get the pair of us.’ And he then had my husband’s revolver, and he said, ‘It’s either he or it’s us.’ I grabbed him by the hand and took him downstairs to the living room.”

  She claimed they’d talked there for quite a while as she pleaded with him to get thoughts of murder out of his mind, “and in my excitement I said things that probably enraged him.” She excused herself to go upstairs to the bathroom and then “I heard this terrific thud.” She ran down the hallway and found Judd straddling Albert, hitting him with the sash weight.

  Hazelton seemed honestly in suspense as he asked, “What did you do?”

  “I ran in and grabbed Mr. Gray by the neck, pulled him off, and in wrestling with him he slugged me to the floor, and I fainted. I remember nothing else until I came to again and saw my husband lying there under a pile of blankets. I was hauling them off and—”

  She stooped forward, shaking, and wept for a minute.

  The courtroom went silent.

  Judd fleetingly glanced up at her, then gazed at his shoes. A heavy old jailhouse matron walked up to hug Ruth into calm.

  Justice Scudder watched Ruth and finally told Hazelton, “You may proceed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ruth’s attorney said, and asked, “When you came to, was Gray in the room?”

  She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief as she answered no. She was trying to pull the blankets off her poor husband’s head when Judd came running into the room, shouting, “Are you trying to undo what I’ve done?” She was roughly hauled by him into Josephine’s room and there he said, “I have gone through with it, and you have to stand just as much of the blame as I have.” And then he told her, “We can frame up a burglary. We will both get out of it.”

  “I had no hand in that murder at all,” Ruth told her attorney, “but I knew then I was in the mix-up, and I just had to sit and listen as he made up the lies I told the detectives all that Sunday.”

  “Were you afraid at that time?” Hazelton asked.

  “I was heartily afraid. I saw what a terrible mess he had made of things and I couldn’t see my way out other than doing what he asked me to do.” She helped him to ransack the house and she let him gag her and tie her hands and feet with rope.

  “Why did you let him do that?”

  “Because I was afraid if I did not go in with what he asked me to do that he would finish me that night.” The court adjourned.

  Reporter Damon Runyon wrote of Ruth that night: “In the main she was as cold and calm sitting there with a thousand people staring at her as if she were at her dinner table discoursing to some guests. She kept her hands folded in her lap. She occasionally glanced at the jury, but mostly kept her eyes on Edgar Hazelton. If she is the cruel and cunning blonde fury that Gray’s story would cause you to believe, you would expect her to be calm. But if she is the wronged, home-loving, horror-stricken woman that her own tale would imply, her poise is most surprising.”

  Ruth’s testimony took three days to complete and filled 345 pages of stenographic transcript as she was cross-examined both by Judd’s attorneys and the attorneys representing the people of the state of New York. She stayed still and seemed relaxed, only toying with her rosary necklace or shaking her head when she answered “no,” but otherwise seeming self-possessed and even graceful as she responded to the heated objections and hectoring of the lawyers.

  She formally recanted whole pages of her March 21st confession. She said she’d kept the sash weight in the cellar because “I didn’t want to have it anywheres around.” She didn’t throw it away “because I felt it should go back to Mr. Gray, inasmuch as he gave it to me.” She didn’t warn her husband of danger because, “I thought I could talk Judd Gray out of it.” She left the kitchen door open that Saturday night because “I was going to have it out with Judd that I did not want to have him around me anymore.”

  She was fuddled or evasive about the insurance policies she’d taken out, but she smiled when it was determined she paid the premiums from a joint checking account that Albert could have examined at any time. She denied ever attempting to poison or asphyxiate her husband. She denied scheming to murder him. She went into her mother’s room that Saturday night to simply reason with Judd Gray.

  An attorney for the prosecution inquired, “And the first thing he did was to kiss you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you kissed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Knowing or believing, whatever you want to say, that he was there to kill your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “And knowing or believing that he had come to your house to kill your husband, you sat downstairs with him on a settee and you talked?”

  “Yes.”

  She claimed she left Gray, with her husband’s handgun on the piano, when she went upstairs to the bathroom. And even at the far end of the hallway, with the bathroom door closed, she heard “a terrific thud” as Judd hit, but did not fracture, Albert’s skull. She herself did not strike her husband with the sash weight or pour chloroform on his pillow or strangle him with picture wire that she tightened with Judd’s mechanical pencil. When she revived fr
om her faint and saw what had happened, “I was too frightened to cry out.”

  “Did you administer any aid to your husband?”

  “No.”

  “You did not know from any examination of your husband whether or not he was then dead or alive?”

  She sizzled with contempt for the prosecutor but coolly answered, “No, I did not.”

  “And you remained with Gray in the adjoining room for how long?”

  “For a couple of hours.”

  “And you gave him your nightgown and robe to burn?”

  “Yes.”

  “You took your nightgown off in his presence?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got some other clothing, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went into the room where your husband lay dying or dead to get that other clothing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And still you did not look at him?”

  “No.”

  “You did not touch him?”

  “No.”

  “But you could have?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt she was no longer playing or impersonating; she just was. Looking past the lawyers and jury to that huge crowd of excited strangers, she felt like a grande dame of theater bestowing a few hours of her celebrity on a grateful audience. There was petulance in her voice at times, she often glared, and she was forced to admit that she’d lied to whomever she spoke to on Sunday, March 20th. But Ruth guessed rightly that the examiners sought to stir up some vestiges of the fury and ferocity she’d used against Albert, so in the main she countered their attacks with stateliness and restraint. She recognized that she was telling of a night as it ought to have been, not as it was, but for Lorraine’s sake she was clinging to that tenet of justice called “beyond a reasonable doubt.” She was therefore as careless in her testimony as she was also honest and shameless, flaunting her disregard for her husband, serenely contradicting herself or insisting falsehoods were true, seldom reversing a statement when she was caught in a lie, letting inconsistencies grow wings and fly. She innocently communicated an outrageous version of events as though a jury of men would have to believe her. It seemed to outsiders that she did not recognize the jeopardy she was in.