by Carol Baxter
The reporters made a beeline for Chubbie during the break, keen to ask her how she felt after such a public thrashing of her reputation. She told them, ‘I am interested only in freeing old Bill. Nothing else matters to me.’
When the trial resumed, Carson discussed the testimonies of Richard Lavender and Richard Richardson, saying that they had introduced an element he would have preferred to leave out: Haden’s character. Clearly, Haden was a man with a brilliant mind, a charming personality and an interesting imagination. However, he was also emotional, unstable and erratic. He said that Haden’s enforced sobriety had made him face his many difficulties. On the night in question, he’d had to account to Bill for his treacherous conduct. And he had known that the following morning he would have to reveal to Chubbie information he had deliberately kept from her.
Carson added that the two people who knew him best—his mother and brother—were currently sitting in the courtroom. If the facts revealed to the court about Haden’s character and temperament could have been disputed by anybody, these were the people to do so. Yet neither had testified.
Turning his attention to the forensic evidence, Carson reminded the court that Haden had been buried without his body being autopsied and that the only reason the court had forensic evidence to examine was because Lancaster himself had signed the autopsy request. ‘If Bill Lancaster had known he was guilty, don’t you suppose he would have been glad to have Haden Clarke lie undisturbed in the cemetery?’
The autopsy doctors had all testified that the gun’s muzzle had been held tight against Clarke’s skull and that the entire explosion of gases had taken place inside his skull. Their report had been on file in the court since 22 June so the prosecution could have read it and called any of the doctors to the witness stand. Instead, the prosecution had relied upon the testimony of Undertaker Bess—because, without Bess’s testimony about the lack of powder marks, the state had no case against Lancaster.
The state had also claimed that a man wouldn’t lie down to shoot himself, yet two such suicide deaths had occurred within the last couple of years in their own county alone. One had occurred only the week before the trial commenced, so the state attorney’s office should have known about the case.
And there were other points that needed to be considered, including the most obvious. The state had charged Bill with premeditated murder yet surely a military man—a war veteran—would know of more efficient and successful ways to rid himself of a foe.
He offered an explanation for the forged notes. ‘I don’t think that Lancaster ever meant for those notes to be seen by anybody but Mrs Keith Miller.’ He reminded the jury that Lancaster had asked her to destroy the notes but she had refused, and that he couldn’t tell her why he wanted them destroyed because that would have defeated the purpose of the forgery in the first place. The state had tried to argue premeditation, but the fact that the notes were written after Haden was shot clearly undermined any such premeditation argument.
Finally, Carson told the jurors that it was their duty to consider the following points. ‘First: where is the state’s case? We have been over it step by step and it is gone. They have utterly and completely failed. Second: make an examination of the evidence; make an examination of the exhibits and interpret them for yourselves. Third: weigh the character of the witnesses on the one side and on the other. Compare the jailbirds of the state with the warbirds for the defence and have your verdict. Find the defendant not guilty. Send word back to old England, from whence we get our Common Law, that in American courts justice is administered in a high, fair and solemn fashion that our ancestors won on that soil by their blood.’
Chapter Forty-Eight
‘Lancaster is guilty of violating four of the ten commandments: thou shalt not kill, steal, commit adultery and bear false witness, yet Mr Carson says this man’s moral code shines like a star on a background of filth,’ jeered Hawthorne as he presented the state’s closing argument on Tuesday afternoon, 16 August.
After thirteen days of testimonies and arguments, the trial was in its home stretch. His own closing argument should finish before lunchtime on Wednesday. If they were lucky, they might have a verdict before they headed home for dinner.
He reminded the jurors of Carson’s claim that the state’s case was entirely circumstantial. ‘I say that there is a threat on every page of this diary from beginning to end,’ he thundered and threw the diary onto the table in front of Bill.
Bill stared at him tight-lipped and kept his gaze fixed firmly on him throughout his closing.
Hawthorne said that Carson had announced in his opening statement that he would prove that Clarke had committed suicide, that Clarke had consulted suicide experts and had told witnesses the exact position he would shoot himself if he was to commit suicide. ‘Yet the state has proved to you that the red hot bullet from St Louis hit Clarke just where he said it never would.’
It was an important point, one of the strongest pieces of evidence suggesting that Clarke had not shot himself.
Carson had also told the jury that Dr Thomas, the county physician, had seen powder burns inside the entrance wound immediately after Clarke’s death and had reported his finding to the state attorney’s office and the grand jury. This was true, the prosecutor admitted. The state attorney’s office had approved the exhumation order requested by the defence but the autopsy results had provided little more than additional front-page publicity. ‘It provided more testimony about internal explosions, which has never been in dispute, and that the gun was held at close range, which has not been disputed, but which does not preclude the theory of murder.’
Those who had sat through the entire trial listened with astonishment. At no point had Hawthorne disclosed this information to the jury. Rather than calling the county physician or any of the autopsy doctors to testify, he had instead relied on the evidence of the embalmer who had testified to not seeing any powder marks, thereby indicating that it wasn’t a close contact wound and that Clarke’s death could not have been a suicide. Yet Hawthorne was now agreeing with the defence that it was indeed a close contact wound, albeit with the disclaimer—also previously unmentioned—that such a wound was not proof in itself that the death wasn’t a murder. It was an extraordinary revelation in the dying hours of the trial.
Hawthorne then laid out much of the state’s evidence, including Bill’s purchase of the gun when Chubbie was starving and the fact that Bill had remembered to collect the gun from the plane but had forgotten his diary and other papers. After dwelling at length on his authorship of the suicide notes, Hawthorne reminded the jurors that Haden was himself a writer. Surely, if he was planning to kill himself, he would have sat down at his typewriter and penned his own farewell note.
Summarising Hamilton’s testimony about the sealed contact wound, he said that it required pressure from both directions, head and gun. ‘If Haden Clarke had his head on the pillow, pushed the gun down firmly on his head, and then pushed his head up against the gun, why you can’t do it without straining every muscle in your body. It isn’t reasonable. Why lie down and then rear up to meet the gun?’
He declared that there wasn’t a single fact or circumstance in this case that, when the rule of common sense was applied, didn’t point to Lancaster’s guilt. ‘Every page in this diary points to his guilt. Every human instinct causes a man to fight for the woman he loves.’
Just before lunch-time on Wednesday, he concluded, ‘Within a very few minutes, the fate of William Newton Lancaster will rest entirely on your shoulders. What you do is a matter that must be settled with your conscience and your oath, guided by the rules of law which his honour will give you. Be careful, cautious, prayerful in your deliberations. Do not let sympathy or emotions play a part. Decide simply if Haden Clarke committed suicide or if William Newton Lancaster killed him.’
At 11.45 am, the jury retired to consider its verdict. Reports trickled out, then and later. The men started by choosing a jury foreman who ordered
a ballot. Some of the jurors abstained from voting. They decided to order lunch—sandwiches, milk and coffee—before they hunkered down to consider the evidence.
For the next four hours, all was quiet. Then at 4.24 pm, the men came out to ask the judge two questions. At 4.44 pm, they filed into the jury box. The foreman stood as Justice Atkinson read the slip of paper handed to him. The judge asked him to announce their verdict. The courtroom was so still and silent it seemed as though its occupants had been snap-frozen.
‘Not guilty.’
Women wept and shrieked. A stout matron who had monopolised a front-row seat throughout the trial fell back in her chair gasping. Vainly, the court officials called for order.
Suddenly, as if everyone had been instantaneously gagged, the courtroom went silent again. All eyes turned towards Bill as he stepped towards the jury box, his hands clasping and unclasping nervously.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said to the twelve men staring back at him. ‘You have been very patient with my case. You have had to listen during the long trial to many things. I want to thank you, gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart for your verdict. I will never forget what you have done for me.’ Clicking his heels in a salute, he bowed and headed back towards the prosecutor’s table.
The courtroom erupted again. Spectators surged forward, eager to shake his hand. Court officials and police officers struggled to hold them back. ‘Order! Order in the court!’ they cried. It was as if the courtroom had been miraculously transformed from a hall of justice into a carnival.
Pressmen tried to interview Bill over the hullabaloo. ‘I am overjoyed and delighted that I have been found not guilty,’ he told them. ‘I have been convinced all along my innocence would be sustained. I will always be grateful to Mr Carson and Mr Lathero for their splendid defence of me.’ He said that he would spend the next few days at Carson’s home and get some much-needed rest before thinking about his future.
As the bailiffs and deputies and police officers regained control of the courtroom, Bill shook hands with the judge and jurors and posed for pictures with them. Hawthorne approached him and also shook his hand, saying, ‘The performance of my duty to the best of my ability is sufficient compensation. The jury, the only agency provided by law to determine the issue, has rendered its verdict and I accept it.’
Chubbie wasn’t in the courtroom at the moment the verdict was announced. She was waiting in a nearby office when someone opened the door and called out the news. Later, questioned by the press, she said with a trace of her old smile, ‘I am delighted. I knew old Bill would come through.’ She left the building soon afterwards, her only contact with him a phone call that evening to offer her congratulations.
Chubbie had had an inkling of what the verdict would be—as they all had. When the jurors approached the judge twenty minutes before they announced their verdict, they had asked for an elaboration of his instructions regarding reasonable doubt. They also asked for permission to view the exhibits again. It wasn’t hard for the lawyers to grasp what was happening in the jury room. On one side of the scales of justice sat reasonable doubt. On the other sat the exhibits.
The scales were currently weighted towards acquittal, unless the jurors saw something in the exhibits that precluded such a verdict. Either side could refuse permission for the jurors to examine the exhibits without the jurors learning who had denied it. Carson opted for a refusal.
In the aftermath, the American press expressed more surprise at the behaviour of the female spectators than at the jury’s verdict. A syndicated article asked if the women saw Lancaster as an avenging hero who took into his own hands the law of ‘one man for one woman’. Another writer wondered if Lancaster’s behaviour in court—that he was gentlemanly and courteous, seemingly candid and courageous—had won over the female spectators so completely that they behaved like love-struck fools.
Neither mentioned the growing cult of celebrity worship. Bill had been only a minor star, a barnacle clinging to Chubbie’s ship, until his indictment for murder hit the nation’s press. Chubbie’s involvement—perhaps more so than Bill’s—acted as a drawcard for Miami’s star-struck women, who saw it as an opportunity to experience a personal connection with fame. As the trial progressed, they came to see Bill as more than just a celebrity. They saw a real man, an ordinary man in many ways, one who loved so passionately he would do anything for his woman, even kill himself. His love rival was a man without honour or nobility, a drunken, drug-addicted, diseased lecher.
Perception is everything.
Chapter Forty-Nine
‘Moral turpitude’ was the explanation offered by many of the country’s newspapers when they learnt that Chubbie and Bill were being kicked out of the country. It wasn’t true. Moral fury probably accounted for the error, a feeling that struck a chord across the nation and allowed the mistake to spread.
The facts were quite different. They were both told on 7 October, six weeks after the trial finished, that if they didn’t leave the country voluntarily within seven days they would face arrest and possible incarceration for violating immigration laws.
Chubbie’s departure was ignominious, a stark contrast to her ceremonial arrival in the country four years previously, when she and Bill had been cheered in a ticker-tape parade and welcomed by the Mayor of Oakland. Tears welled in her eyes as she stood on the dock on 14 October 1932 farewelling her friends and the country she had long called home. At last she turned and headed up the gangway of the SS American Banker. Dogging her footsteps was a female officer dressed in the austere uniform and sturdy shoes of the United States Immigration Department. The woman pursued her into her cabin and stayed there until the ship was about to depart, determined to ensure that the Land of Opportunity was rid of the likes of her forever.
Five years to the day since she had flown from Croydon in the Red Rose, Chubbie was on her way back to England. She remained in her cabin throughout the voyage, refusing to be interviewed when the ship docked at Plymouth, keeping her blinds drawn so no one could see her. As the ship negotiated a lock on its journey up the Thames to London, a crewman threw out a rope ladder and helped her climb down to a small boat nudging the ship’s side.
Bill was waiting on the foreshore with a car. He had arrived in Liverpool on the Scythia earlier that day, and had sped to London to assist her to evade the crowds and reporters waiting at the dock. He ferried her to her aunt’s house at Hampstead, where she rested and spent time considering her options.
England in 1932 bore little resemblance to the place she had left five years earlier. It was as if, like her, it had been sucked dry of its life and colour and energy. Dull boring clothes. Dismal weather. Despair and destitution. And there seemed little prospect of any improvement in the near future.
At least she was able to find work of sorts. The Daily Express wanted to publish her life story. Its management employed a ghostwriter to work with her—an ironic and rather surreal experience under the circumstances. Finding the travelling from Hampstead too tiring, she rented a bedsit in Oxford Terrace off Edgware Road, not far from her previous accommodation in Baker Street. She was back where she had started.
Bill was struggling. Unable to find work, he was forced to live with his parents. He couldn’t even sell his story. His Red Rose ‘failure’ was half a decade ago and he hadn’t triumphed in any of his American ventures. If not for the murder trial publicity, few in Britain would have remembered his name. And while Britain was keen to hear from the famous Australian aviator—now a scarlet woman—its people remained wary about their own Bill Lancaster, as if his acquittal wasn’t enough to fully convince them of his innocence.
One day he arrived at her bedsit looking brighter than normal, having had a promising job interview for a commercial pilot position. Chubbie wasn’t surprised when he failed to get the job. Even if there hadn’t been an abundance of experienced commercial pilots looking for work, the murder trial and smuggling connection clung albatross-like around his neck. Would clients or pa
ssengers really want to know that Bill Lancaster—the man tried for murder in Miami, the man booted out of America for smuggling—was flying the plane?
Bill’s despondency returned, tinged now with desperation. ‘I will have to do something spectacular to get back in again,’ he told her. He examined world maps and considered his options. He decided to try to beat Amy (Johnson) Mollison’s recent record of four days, six hours and fifty-four minutes from Croydon to Cape Town.
His long-suffering father purchased a plane for him, an Avro Avian called the Southern Cross Minor. Its previous owner, Charles Kingsford Smith, had attempted to beat Jim Mollison’s Australia-to-England record in the plane but had been foiled because of illness.
Chubbie helped him with his preparations. As they plotted his course through Europe and Africa, she expressed great concern about his Sahara Desert crossing. They both knew that he’d had little night-flying experience and that the plane was not equipped with night-flying instruments. Any attempt to cross the Sahara at night would be foolhardy in the extreme.
The news of Bill’s attempt to break Amy Mollison’s record broke in a Daily Express exclusive on Thursday, 6 April 1933, under the headline ‘Captain Lancaster’s “Come-Back”’. It said that the man who had recently stood in the dock charged with murder—but had been honourably acquitted without a stain on his character—was about to make a flying comeback in an attempt to restore his reputation.
The following details left any aviator readers with a shiver of foreboding, however. ‘I have been warned to expect very bad weather on parts of the route,’ Bill had told the reporter, adding that he couldn’t wait around for the weather conditions to improve because it would take months. He mentioned ‘three nights of moonlight flying’ without explaining what he would do if the moonlight disappeared for any reason, and ‘one night over the inhospitable Sahara, a distance of 1500 miles in one hop’ even though night-time flying over the largely trackless desert was almost as risky as a water crossing. He expected to get only ‘five hours sleep for the first three nights; after that I will be content with an hour—if I can get that’, raising the possibility of exhaustion-induced errors on his five-day flight. He said that, if he succeeded, he would owe everything to his parents because they had beggared themselves to finance the trip. And the clincher was: ‘My machine is twenty miles per hour slower than that used by Mrs Mollison.’ Why was he even bothering?
