The Devil's Gentleman

by Harold Schechter

  By this point, Roland had regained his usual sangfroid. Arms folded across his chest, his fine kid gloves clenched in one hand, he listened to this damning testimony with a half smile, half sneer on his handsome face. Only his inordinate pallor showed how rattled he really was by this unforeseen turn of events.

  Cornish, in the meanwhile, had been slower than Roland to realize what was happening. Now, as it “dawned on him that all the anxiety, all the suffering and outrage he had undergone were only a part of the plan for the confounding of his enemy,” his “cheeks grew flushed, and into his eyes there crept a look of triumph.”5

  When the last handwriting expert stepped down from the witness stand, Colonel Gardiner arose to deliver a summation. This was a highly unusual procedure at a coroner’s inquest, and the spectators sat forward in their seats, expecting something dramatic.

  They were not disappointed.

  The DA began by confirming what Roland had, by that point, already surmised. Osborne’s controversial conduct of the case—his shockingly disparate treatment of Molineux and Cornish—had all been part of a cunningly laid plot, devised to lull Roland into a false sense of security.

  Every other suspect in the case had readily agreed to provide investigators with handwriting samples, explained Gardiner. Only Roland—who alone among the suspects had immediately retained an attorney—refused. As a result the prosecution soon found itself “at a standstill.” Clearly, “it was necessary to do something—to disarm the suspect of his suspicions.” But how?

  It was Captain McCluskey who had come up with the idea. “He suggested that, whenever Molineux was on the stand, he should be treated with utmost courtesy,” said Gardiner. Assistant DA Osborne had then carried out the plan to perfection. Whenever it came time to examine Roland, Osborne was “most apologetic. He really appeared to hesitate to ask Molineux a single question.” Roland “was made to feel quite at ease.”

  By contrast, Cornish was deliberately handled harshly. He was even sometimes berated on the witness stand. “From an accusing witness, he was made a suspect himself.”

  And yet, Gardiner continued, “nobody connected with the prosecution believed for a moment that Cornish was guilty.” There were too many “elements in the case which precluded such a belief.” Cornish, for example, had taken a near-fatal dose of the lethal bromo-seltzer himself. He had also offered some to his good friend Harry King, who had been saved from death only because the gymnasium water cooler was empty that morning.

  Gardiner knew that he and his assistants would come under fire for their “different treatment of the two witnesses”—that his office “would be roundly abused in the papers for its apparent partiality.

  “But roundly as we were abused,” he continued, “we accomplished our purpose. Molineux was no longer suspicious. He became cooperative. We asked him to write and he wrote—freely and voluntarily. You know the result, gentlemen,” said Gardiner, gesturing toward the bench where Kinsley and his colleagues sat. “The experts have told you that young Mr. Molineux has written himself down as the poisoner.”

  Gardiner paused for a moment to let the weight of this comment sink in. When he resumed, his voice was tinged with sadness. To cast aspersions on members of the Molineux family gave him no pleasure. After all, he declared, “Mr. Molineux’s father was my friend in the army.” And yet, duty compelled him to make certain less-than-flattering statements about Blanche Molineux—to “show that she was the woman for whom Roland Molineux had committed murder.”

  At this remark, Roland—ever the gentleman—exclaimed, “Lady, if you please, Mr. Gardiner.”

  Gardiner gave Roland a frosty look. “In polite society now,” he said, “woman is considered a perfectly proper expression.”

  Gardiner then went on to describe in the most insinuating way the yachting party on board the Viator, during which Blanche and Roland had first become acquainted. After reminding the jurors that the only other female on board the ship was Blanche’s sister, Mrs. Stearns—who was there “without her husband”—Gardiner sniffed, “That tells you what kind of woman Blanche is. That fixes her character pretty clearly.”

  Fists clenched, Roland started to his feet, as if he meant to do physical violence to the district attorney. Weeks had to forcibly restrain him.

  Paying no attention to Roland (or to the issue that the jurors were supposed to address, the murder of Mrs. Adams), Gardiner now focused his attention on the death of Henry Barnet. What motive, he asked, lay behind Barnet’s poisoning? The same ones that had inspired such crimes “for a thousand years”: “jealousy and hate.”

  “Barnet was on the closest terms of intimacy with Blanche Chesebrough,” said Gardiner. “He dined her and wined her. She visited his room in the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. We can only imagine,” he added, inviting the twelve male jurors to let their most prurient fantasies run wild, “the scenes that went on there.”

  In a censorious tone that left no doubt as to his opinion of her moral character, Gardiner again portrayed Blanche as a wayward young woman, who “lived by herself, first in one place, then another,” with no “natural supporter,” no one to protect or keep an eye on her. “And what were her relations with Barnet?” Gardiner paused for dramatic effect before declaring, in a voice full of scorn, “He was her man.”

  The implication of this remark—that Blanche had been Barnet’s mistress—brought a shout of protest from Roland’s father. The “gallant old soldier” (as the newspapers called him) became even more agitated when Gardiner, after reading aloud the infamous “Blanche letter,” sneered, “I ask you, gentlemen of the jury. Is that the sort of letter a woman who is about to marry one man would write to another?”

  “Yes,” shouted the General.

  “No!” came Gardiner’s retort.

  “I say, yes!” the General repeated.

  “Again I say no,” Gardiner exclaimed. He then turned to Hart and said, “Mr. Coroner, I ask you to order the removal of the persons who are interrupting me if they do so again.”

  “I shall so order, unless they desist,” Hart said.

  This time, it was Roland’s turn to play pacifier. Leaning toward his father, he took the old man’s hand and whispered something in his ear until the General calmed down.

  Proceeding with his summation, Gardiner finally said a few words about the attempted murder of Harry Cornish, which had led to the inadvertent poisoning of Katherine Adams. That Molineux was responsible for sending the cyanide-laced bromo-seltzer, said Gardiner, was clear not only from his implacable hatred of Cornish but from the very nature of the crime. No red-blooded male would stoop to such a cowardly, furtive form of murder.

  “Poisoning,” Gardiner solemnly intoned, “is not a crime that the robust, Anglo-Saxon nature turns to. Poison crimes have been committed almost invariably by women and by men who were degenerates.”

  There could be little doubt about Roland’s degeneracy. The many impotence cures he had sent for proved that he “was a man who had lost his virility.” His effeminate character was further shown by his behavior at the time of his final confrontation with Cornish.

  “You remember the remark which Cornish made to Molineux on the stairs of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club the night that Molineux resigned from the club?” said Gardiner to the jurors. “The two met on the stairs. Cornish applied that vile epithet to him. What was Molineux’s reply? He simply said, ‘You win.’ Who but a degenerate would not have shown greater resentment to a remark like that?

  “This man was also a frequenter of Chinatown,” the DA continued. “He went down there and smoked opium. He was an intimate friend of Chuck Connors and men of that character. Besides all this, you have the testimony of the experts. They have told you that all the writing on the letters was in the hand of Roland Burnham Molineux, and they have told you that no one but he could have written the address on the poison package.

  “Gentlemen,” Gardiner concluded in a thunderous voice, “the case is in your hands. If we have
given you enough evidence to create a reasonable belief that Roland B. Molineux is the man who committed this crime, we demand in the name of the People of the State that you shall put the responsibility upon him.”6

  51

  As Gardiner took his seat, a “painful silence” fell over the courtroom.1 Roland, arms still folded over his chest, betrayed no emotion, though his father, seated at his side, wore a stricken expression.

  A few moments later, Coroner Hart delivered a brief charge to the jury. It was precisely 6:15 P.M. when the twelve men filed from the room to begin their deliberations.

  Expecting a quick verdict, many of the spectators remained in their places. Roland, his father, and their attorneys, however, gathered up their coats and repaired to a nearby restaurant, Holtz’s, on Franklin Street and Broadway. They were tailed by Detectives Carey and McCafferty, who were under orders to keep Roland in sight and who took a table near the entrance.

  The presence of the detectives did not appear to faze Roland. He calmly studied the menu before ordering a hearty meal, then perused the evening papers while his father and the lawyers conferred. Nor did he react when, ten or fifteen minutes later, Harry Cornish and his parents—accompanied by Colonel Gardiner and Assistant DA Osborne—entered the restaurant and seated themselves a short distance away. The two parties studiously ignored each other. Only once did Molineux and Cornish exchange a look. Roland maintained his usual blasé expression, while Cornish’s face, which had seemed fixed in a scowl for the past two weeks, was “wreathed in smiles.”2

  By 8:00 P.M., the two Molineuxs and their counsel were back in the courtroom. Roland was just finishing a cigar when the jury returned.

  “Gentlemen, have you agreed upon a verdict?” asked Coroner Hart when the twelve men had reseated themselves.

  “We have,” replied the foreman, Otto P. Amend.

  “What is the verdict?” asked Hart.

  Foreman Amend handed the written verdict to the stenographer, but Hart directed him to read it himself. In a voice that resounded in the tense silence of the little courtroom, Amend read, “We find that the said Mrs. Katherine Adams came to her death on the twenty-eighth day of December 1898 by poisoning by mercuric cyanide administered to her by Harry S. Cornish, said poison having been sent in a bottle of bromo-seltzer through the mails by Roland B. Molineux.”

  A reporter, keeping his eyes on Molineux’s face as the judgment was delivered, saw his “lips tremble.” Otherwise, Roland remained as stolid as ever.

  “The coroner’s jury having found that Katherine J. Adams came to her death by poison sent through the mails by Roland Burnham Molineux, it becomes my duty to order his arrest and direct that he be arraigned before me,” said Hart, looking and sounding far more nervous than Roland. Though the New York State Code of Criminal Procedure allowed the coroner to issue an arrest warrant, it was a power he rarely had to exercise, and Hart seemed slightly overwhelmed by the gravity of the occasion.3

  Detectives Carey and McCafferty, who had followed Roland back from the restaurant, sprang from their seats and hurried over to his side. The accused man never winced as the officers placed their hands on his shoulders and ordered him to rise. Spectators at the rear of the courtroom surged forward or stood on their seats, craning their necks for a clearer view.

  Coat and derby in hand, Roland was escorted from the courtroom. “They had to settle on someone, so they settled on me,” he said to the reporters who thronged around him. “I am innocent. They have no evidence to hold me.” In the din that had erupted in the cramped little chamber, the newsmen had to strain to make out the words.

  Men who have been charged with sensational murders rarely lack for female admirers. This is true even when the accused is significantly less handsome than Roland Burnham Molineux. As the prisoner disappeared into Coroner Hart’s office, a gaggle of young women attempted to push their way inside and had to be forcibly barred by a police officer stationed at the doorway.

  Inside the office, while Hart signed the commitment papers, Roland exchanged a few words with his father, who was visibly moved. The prisoner was then taken down one of the elevator cars to the second floor of the building. The General and his lawyers followed in the next car. At the threshold of the doorway leading to the “Bridge of Sighs”—the enclosed walkway that connected the Criminal Court Building to the Tombs—Roland shook his father’s hand and said, “Good-bye, Governor.”

  “Good-bye, boy,” said the General, tears welling in his eyes. Then, as his son was led away by the detectives, the old man turned to Bartow Weeks and said, “I wish I was going in there instead.” Weeks gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder, and the two men left the building.

  The evening papers had lost no time in rushing out special editions. Outside, on the snow-covered streets, newsboys were shouting the headlines: “Molineux arrested!” “Molineux the Poisoner!”4

  By the time the General arrived home, the news had reached Brooklyn. He found his wife in a state of near collapse. As for Blanche, she had shut herself in her upstairs room, where she lay facedown on her bed, sobbing into her pillow. Anyone overhearing those anguished sounds would have naturally (if mistakenly) assumed that she was weeping for her husband.

  After bidding farewell to his father, Roland had spent a few minutes consulting with his attorneys in the office of Warden Hagen. He seemed perfectly composed and not the least bit downhearted. Before being led away, he asked for permission to smoke in his cell, a request Hagen readily granted. Escorted by a guard, Roland was then taken up an iron staircase to “Murderers’ Row” on the second tier of the old prison, where he was locked in cell 36.

  By the feeble light entering through a narrow barred window set high in one stone wall, Roland inspected his surroundings. This did not require much time. Measuring six feet wide by eight feet long, the cell was just large enough to accommodate a steel-framed bunk bed, a small wooden bench holding a washbasin, and a chamber pot. In the remaining space, a standing man had barely enough room to dress and undress himself.

  Extracting a big Havana from the inside pocket of his double-breasted coat, he bit off one end and lit the other with a phosphorous match. But after only a few puffs, he plucked the cigar from his mouth and hurled it onto the cold stone floor.

  Then, seating himself on the edge of the bottom cot, he leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands.5

  52

  At 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, March 1, 1899, a grand jury indicted Roland Burnham Molineux on the charge of murder in the first degree for killing Mrs. Katherine J. Adams with twenty grains of cyanide of mercury. Roland learned the news from the evening papers, which he read while standing near the door of his cell, where the gaslight filtering in from the corridor was strongest.

  If he had succumbed to a moment of despair two nights earlier when the iron-grated door first clanged shut behind him, he had quickly recovered his composure. By the following morning, he seemed his usual unruffled self. He rose early, performed his ablutions, then dressed in the clothing he had neatly laid out on the unused upper bunk. Inmates of the Tombs were allowed to hold on to their money and purchase special meals from the prison restaurant. For thirty cents, Roland was able to breakfast on a chop, bread, butter, and coffee.

  Afterward, he took an hour’s exercise with the other prisoners, who strode around and around the second tier of the jail in single file. If Roland—the champion athlete accustomed to working out in the city’s most exclusive gymnasiums—felt uncomfortable among the “shambling, shuffling, heel-dragging” crew of pickpockets, thieves, and murderers, he showed no sign of it.1 By the time Bartow Weeks arrived later that day for a brief consultation, Roland seemed positively chipper. “Brace up, old fellow,” he told his worried-looking lawyer, giving Weeks a companionable slap on the back. “Don’t look so down in the mouth.”2

  Now, as he stood reading the evening papers, Roland’s expression remained impassive, though every now and then his finely
molded upper lip would curl into a sneer and a soft, derisive snort would issue from his nostrils. There were dozens of articles about him, ranging from hour-by-hour descriptions of his prison routine to accounts of his courtroom appearances. Many were illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings, depicting him pacing his cell, making up his cot, or taking his daily exercise under the watchful gaze of his jailers. Some were reported with scrupulous accuracy, down to the precise ingredients of his meals. Others were pure fabrications, such as the sensational (and wholly fictitious) report that “extraordinary precautions” were “being taken by the Warden of the Tombs to prevent Roland Molineux from committing suicide in order to escape the threatened ignominy of death in the electric chair.”3

  Editorial opinion was divided along strict class lines on the issue of his arrest and indictment. The yellow papers—each one of which claimed exclusive credit for having fingered Roland from the start—expressed unalloyed satisfaction that this son of wealth and privilege, protected for so long by his father’s political influence and the best legal advice money could buy, was finally behind bars. Papers like the Times, the Tribune, and the Telegraph, on the other hand—whose readership belonged to the same social class as the Molineuxs—attacked the district attorney for failing to pursue “other theories of guilt” and, in particular, for not demanding the arrest of Harry Cornish, who was, after all, the person who gave Mrs. Adams the poison.4

  As Roland continued to leaf through the evening papers, he was astonished by some of the stories. There were several articles about young people who had become so “crazed” by all the publicity surrounding his case that they had been driven to commit horrible crimes themselves. On the last day of February, for example, Frederick Norton of Torrington, Connecticut—a twenty-five-year-old employee of the Excelsior Needle Works, married just eight months—delivered a fatal head blow to his young wife with the butt of his rifle before turning the firearm on himself. He was found dead on his bedroom floor, surrounded by “New York newspapers opened at the pages containing accounts of the inquest into Mrs. Adams’s death.” According to his grieving mother, Frederick had “never showed any symptoms of insanity until he began reading about the murder of Kate Adams and Henry Barnet.”5