The Devil's Gentleman

by Harold Schechter

  “Why, if this defendant were innocent,” cried Osborne, “if the writing on that poison package and in the Barnet letters weren’t his handwriting, there would be such an army of witnesses at that door that the officer would call out: ‘Stand back! No room!’ And you would hear that crowd cry out: ‘What? The son of General Molineux accused of such a crime, and we who can clear him to be stopped at the door?’ And you would have seen that officer overpowered, and the door broken in!”

  Osborne spent several hours reviewing the particulars of the state’s case against Molineux. There was nothing flat or perfunctory about his presentation. It was a characteristically riveting performance, delivered with the zeal of a revivalist preacher. At the defense table, Blanche and her in-laws watched with taut expressions—“the air of people who have bought seats for a show and are determined to sit through it.”2 Roland, on the other hand, spent much of the time smirking. When, at one point, he burst into outright laughter, Osborne turned on him fiercely.

  Scoffing at Weeks’s attempts to incriminate Cornish, Osborne insisted that the bare-knuckled athletic director—a “rough, rugged man”—was hardly the type to “resort to poisoning” as a way of dealing with an adversary. “No,” said Osborne, in a voice heavy with scorn. “It is the furtive nature of the prisoner to which we must look—this laughing prisoner. Laughing when? Laughing here in open court while we described the death of his friend, Barnet. Laughing when we described the death agonies of Mrs. Adams. Laughing and smiling when he knows that, come what may, he has broken the heart of his father and mother. It is this attitude, gentlemen, which shows that the defendant has an entire absence of soul.”

  Roland’s ridiculing manner—his tendency to treat the trial as a lark—was, Osborne suggested, just one sign of his “warped” nature. For the first time, the assistant DA suggested that at the root of Molineux’s obsession with Cornish there lay dark, “perverted” impulses.

  “What sort of a man must we look for as the person to commit this crime?” he asked. “Truly, it is an outré, strange, abnormal crime. We must therefore look for a man who is outré, strange, abnormal. Somebody who looked on life with warped eyes. There was something psychologically queer about this man’s hatred of Cornish. It was a controlling thing in his life.” Though Osborne could not have known the term—which had only been coined a few years earlier—he was, in effect, describing Roland as a psychopath: a conscienceless killer driven by vicious compulsions.

  For sheer sensationalism, the high point of Osborne’s summation came when he turned his attention to the murder of Henry Barnet. “It is practically conceded,” he declared, “that the man who tried to poison Cornish was the same man who sent the Kutnow Powders to Barnet. How can anyone have knowledge of the two crimes and not be convinced that they were conceived by the same brain? Look at it—effervescent salts, cyanide of mercury, letters, poison sent through the mails. Can you separate them?

  “Now, what sort of man was this Barnet?” Osborne continued. “Handsome, gentlemanly, fond of the ladies. He gets sick. He receives a bouquet from a lady, accompanied by a note. The note is signed Blanche. And who is Blanche? The defendant’s wife.

  “Now, you must remember, gentlemen, that the defendant was married on November 19, 1898. Barnet died on November 10, 1898. The defendant has testified before the coroner’s jury that he had wanted to marry Blanche Chesebrough since January of that year. She refuses to marry him. The plain, cold facts are that she would not marry him while Barnet was alive. But when Barnet was cold in his grave, she marries the defendant, and marries him immediately.

  “Gentlemen,” Osborne said with great solemnity, “it is not often that a motive assumes a real, concrete personality. This one is endowed with flesh and blood. It has the form of a human being. And there,” he suddenly cried, swiveling toward the defense table and leveling an accusing finger at Blanche, who was flanked by her husband and the General—“there the motive sits!”

  Weeks was on his feet in an instant, offering a strenuous objection.

  “Let the galled jade wince,” sneered Osborne, waxing Shakespearean. “I don’t blame Mr. Weeks for not wanting to hear those remarks. God knows, I didn’t want to bring this woman’s name out in court. I have the feelings of an American gentleman. But I was duty bound to do so. If anyone should feel ashamed, it is Mr. Weeks, for bringing this lady into court while I am making this speech.”

  Refusing to cower under Osborne’s assault, Blanche raised a hand to her mouth and pretended to stifle a yawn. The gesture, so fraught with contempt, unleashed “a flood of passion” in Osborne, who ended his peroration on a particularly lurid note, invoking an image straight out of a Gothic potboiler.

  “Like a bloated spider in his web,” he thundered, “the poisoner spun out his filaments to the outer world. We must trace from the end of these filaments back to the center. Here’s a line running out to Barnet; we trace it back, and at the other end is the mind of Molineux. A line running out to Cornish, and tracing it back to the web’s center, we find the mind of Molineux. At the end of another line, we find the blue crested paper, and in the center connected with it, the mind of Molineux. A line terminating in the remedy for impotence, the mind of Molineux at the other end. A line stretching to 1620 Broadway, a line stretching to Heckmann’s letter box, a line stretching to the diagnosis blank’s description, and at the center of the web to which all these lines extend we find, spinning its deadly plots, the mind of Molineux.

  “Gentlemen of the jury,” he continued in the same melodramatic vein, “in your hands are the lives of our wives and children, of the people of this community. It is your duty and mine to protect them. Suppose that on this evidence you refuse to convict. You thereby say to the defendant: ‘Go forth and do it again as often as you please. Kill! Kill! Kill!’”

  By this point Osborne’s voice had risen to a shout. “I say that this defendant has degraded his race. I say that he is chargeable with the death of Mrs. Adams and the death of Barnet. I say that the evidence from every direction points to that conclusion, and I leave this case in your hands, knowing that you will find your verdict in the sight of God, in the sight of man, without fear and without favor.”

  Altogether—excluding a ninety-minute lunch recess and a midafternoon break—the day’s session had lasted nearly six hours. It was almost seven-thirty by the time Osborne finished, at which point Goff ordered an adjournment.

  At ten-thirty the next morning, when the proceedings resumed, the recorder would deliver his charge, and the fate of Roland Burnham Molineux would be placed in the hands of the jury.3

  71

  Though the police guards were under strict orders to keep out all curiosity seekers on Saturday morning, February 10, at least one unauthorized person—Anna Held, the city’s brightest musical star and the wife of impresario Florenz Ziegfeld—wangled her way into the courtroom on the strength of her celebrity. When the General, his wife, and Blanche arrived a short time later, the officers cleared a path for them through the crowd and helped them to their seats. Roland was the next to arrive. Wearing a carefree smile, he stepped jauntily to the front of the chamber, where he embraced his wife and mother and gave his father’s hand a hearty shake. If he was at all concerned that, before the day was through, “the twelve men of the jury might doom him to death,” he gave no sign of it.1

  It was eleven—a half hour later than usual—before Recorder Goff arrived. In the moments before he began to speak, the courtroom was so hushed that, when a wagon rattled by on the street three stories below, “it sounded as loud as the rumble of artillery.”2

  Upon convening the court, Goff immediately launched into his charge. He instructed the jurors that they were to base their verdict on “four main propositions”: “first, that the defendant directed and sent to Harry Cornish a package which Molineux knew to contain a deadly poison; second, that the defendant sent the package with the premeditated intent to kill Cornish; third, that Cornish received the package and
gave a portion of it to Mrs. Katherine J. Adams; and fourth, that Mrs. Adams drank a portion of the poison contained in the package and died from the effects of it.

  “If you are satisfied that these four facts are sufficiently proven,” said Goff, speaking in such a soft voice that those in the rear of the chamber could barely hear him, “then you may bring in a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. But if you believe that they are not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, then you are to bring in a verdict of not guilty.”

  Given the enormous mass of testimony that had been presented during the foregoing three months, Goff proposed to “briefly sum up some of the most prominent features of the case.” He then proceeded to review the evidence in such elaborate detail that his remarks lasted more than four hours.

  It was 3:04 P.M. when Goff concluded by reminding the jurors “that they must not permit their feelings for the defendant’s family to affect their verdict,” particularly “their sympathies for the defendant’s distinguished father, who bears such an honored name and position. His honored father,” Goff stressed, “is not on trial.”

  In the company of seven officers assigned to guard them, the jurors then made their way out of the courtroom, with Manheim Brown—moving slowly with the aid of a cane—bringing up the rear.

  As soon as the anteroom door closed behind the jurors, Roland rose, bid farewell to his family, and was led back to his cell. Blanche and her mother-in-law retired for a while to a judge’s chamber. In the unheated room, the two women sat shivering in their furs. Eventually, the General came in and urged them to go back home to Brooklyn. He would follow “as soon as it was all over.” He then escorted them to their carriage and watched as the two women drove away from the shadow of the Tombs.

  Blanche was only too happy to escape from the nerve-racking courthouse and the morbid throng cramming its hallways. Back in Fort Greene Place, she and the elder Mrs. Molineux settled themselves in the parlor, where a maid brought them a silver tray holding a decanter of sherry and a plateful of sandwiches that they left untouched. Face cupped in the palm of one hand, Roland’s mother stared at the flaming logs in the hearth, while Blanche silently wondered “what pictures she saw in the fire.”

  Leaning her head back on the pillows of her chair, Blanche soon lost track of the time. All at once, she was startled from her reveries by the chiming of the mantelpiece clock. Two hours had passed since they had returned from the courthouse. It suddenly occurred to her that, at any moment, the front door might open and in walk “the General, perhaps a friend or two, possibly the lawyers, and—Roland!”

  After a nightmarish, yearlong separation, she might, that very evening, be reunited with her husband. Given her feelings about Roland—a man she had come to regard with a distaste that bordered on revulsion—it was a prospect that made her heart sink.3

  After seeing his wife and daughter-in-law off, the General had gone back upstairs to the courtroom. Outside the door, several elderly gentlemen greeted him warmly. They were fellow members of the Loyal Legion, there to lend their moral support.

  “It’s a pretty nervous time, eh, General?” said one of the men in a commiserating tone.

  “No, no, I’m not nervous,” Molineux said heartily. “It’ll come out all right.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said another of the white-bearded veterans. “We’ll wait here with you, Molineux, and shout hurrah when it’s all over.”4

  The General’s friends weren’t the only ones convinced that the jury would come back with an acquittal. The consensus among the crowd in the corridor was that—whether Roland was guilty or not—“the evidence hardly justified a verdict against him.”5 The same opinion prevailed in the city’s big poolrooms, where there was more betting on the outcome of the Molineux trial than on the horse races. The average odds offered by bookmakers were two to one on conviction, even money on a hung jury, and seven to ten on acquittal.6

  Back in the courtroom, the General sat at the defense table with his oldest son, Leslie—a balding, red-bearded man who bore little resemblance to the rest of the clan—and Cecil, the youngest son, an even handsomer version of Roland. Puffing incessantly on cigars, the old soldier cast occasional glances at the wall clock but otherwise showed few signs of nervousness.

  In the spectator section—where the people lucky enough to get seats stayed put for fear of losing their places—rumors buzzed throughout the afternoon. At around four-thirty, the opening of the door to the jury room created an excited stir in the chamber: the twelve men had reached a verdict! But the excitement quickly died away. The famished jurors were just sending out for sandwiches and seltzer water.

  Like the jurors, General Molineux hadn’t eaten since breakfast. At around seven-thirty, he and his sons stepped out for a quick bite. As they left the room, Captain McCluskey—watching the General march down the aisle—remarked to James Osborne that the elder Molineux was “the grandest man I ever saw.” Osborne agreed. “For his sake,” confessed the man who had so fiercely prosecuted Roland, “I could almost wish for an acquittal.”7

  Throughout the evening, suspense continued to build, until “every man and woman was reduced to a bundle of nerves.”8 The tension was made even more unbearable by several false alarms.

  At around 9:00 P.M., word flew around the courthouse that the jury was about to come in. Roland, looking “jaunty as ever,” arrived a few minutes later. He shook hands with his brothers and patted his father on the back before seating himself between his two lawyers. The twelve jurors then filed into the courtroom and took their usual places.

  It quickly became apparent, however, that the long-awaited climax was not yet at hand. Rising from his seat, Foreman Matthias Martin explained to Recorder Goff that the jury members wished to examine all the handwriting specimens, particularly the fake Cornish and Barnet letters and the poison package address. The request was granted and the twelve men soon returned to their deliberations.

  At precisely 10:27 P.M., another stir from the direction of the jury room sent a wave of excitement through the courthouse. Once again, word quickly spread that a verdict had been reached—and once again, the information proved to be wrong. The jurors had not yet come to agreement; they were merely sending out another request for several additional pieces of evidence, including a photograph of Roland’s private chemical lab in the Morris Herrmann factory.

  Just ten minutes later, however, news swept through the courtroom that the jury had arrived at a verdict. And this time, it was true.

  As the jury filed into the courtroom—with Manheim Brown limping painfully and leaning on the arm of a court officer—the atmosphere in the courtroom was “vibrant with suspense.” In the spectator section, men plucked nervously at their mustaches, while the women sat wringing their handkerchiefs. At the defense table, Roland’s lawyers studied the faces of the jurors, their own faces wrought into expressions of intense concern.

  They had reason to be worried. To a man, the twelve jurors—haggard and ashen—refused to so much as glance at the defendant. They all kept their heads bowed or stared fixedly ahead.

  Five excruciating minutes passed before Goff appeared and took his seat. During that time, the grim-faced jurors looked up at the ceiling or over at the recorder’s vacant chair or down at their own hands clasped tightly in their laps—anywhere but at Roland.

  General Molineux, seated next to Roland, pressed even closer to his son. Though neither man showed a trace of fear, their somber looks made it clear that they knew what was coming.

  After a few preliminaries, the court clerk, James Brophy—a portly fellow with a voice as sonorous as a pipe organ—said, “Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

  “We have,” said Foreman Martin, rising slowly from his seat. His expression was pained, his complexion drained of color.

  “Defendant, please rise,” said Brophy. It was a command he had delivered countless times before. On this occasion, however, his rich voice shook slightly as he spoke it.


  Roland sprang to his feet. He stood very erect, his shoulders squared, his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets.

  “Jurors, look upon the defendant,” said Brophy. “Defendant, look upon the jurors.”

  Roland gazed steadily at the jury. Some of the men managed to meet his eyes. Others, however, looked away. At least one of them, William Post, was clearly fighting to hold back his tears.

  “How say you, gentlemen of the jury?” said Brophy. “Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”

  Martin’s voice was low but—in the absolute hush of the courtroom—perfectly distinct. “Guilty of murder in the first degree,” he said.

  Roland’s only response was to hold his head higher. Nor did his father flinch when the foreman pronounced Roland’s doom.

  Slipping over to the chair beside his son, the General looked up at him and whispered, “Never mind, my boy. You’ll be all right.”

  “I know,” said Roland. “I’ll stand it, all right. Keep your courage up, Father.”

  The date for the sentencing was set for the following Friday, February 16. Goff then ordered that the defendant be removed to his cell. Grasping each other’s hands, Roland and his father exchanged words of comfort. Before being led away by the jailer, Roland paused to say a consoling word to Bartow Weeks, who looked far more devastated than either of the Molineuxs. Patting him on the back, Roland assured his lawyer that he knew Weeks had done the best he could.

  Goff then thanked the jury for the “commendable manner” in which they had attended to their “arduous duties.” By that point, William Post had lost his struggle to subdue his emotions and was weeping openly, while his fellow juror William Thompson seemed on the verge of collapse. Others, too, were wiping their eyes. Manheim Brown was in such a sorry condition that he had to be carried from the jury box by two court officials.