The Devil's Gentleman

by Harold Schechter

  “Your grip is as strong as ever, my boy,” said the General, clutching his son’s hand in both his own. “There’s many a good fight left in us yet. We’ll stick it out, all right, and the next time we take a journey together, it will be back home to Brooklyn.”2

  A few minutes later, Roland, looking dapper in a black fedora and overcoat provided by the General, emerged from the gray walls of Sing Sing. Outside the gates, he climbed into the ramshackle coach with his father, lawyer, and Detective Sergeant McNaught. They had traveled only half the distance to the railway station when the rear springs gave way and the body of the coach came down with a crash between the wheels.

  Roland was the first out and helped his father to crawl through the door, followed by McNaught and Battle. After ascertaining that no one was hurt, the foursome walked the rest of the way to the station, Roland cracking jokes about his bumpy return to the real world.3

  The platform was packed with villagers when the party strolled up to the station. Roland and the others pushed their way through the gawkers to the waiting room. Inside, Roland was greeted by the stationmaster and other railroad officials, who shook his hand and congratulated him on his release. A few minutes later, the train—known as the “Croton local”—drew up and the party boarded one of the smoking cars. Settling into a forward seat, his father beside him and the two other men directly behind, Roland pushed open the window and let the autumn air wash over him all the way back to New York City.

  After arriving at Grand Central station, the four men piled into a cab and drove straight to the Tombs. By nightfall, Roland Molineux was back in his former second-tier cell, which had been whitewashed and furnished with a new bed in preparation for his return.4

  Two nights later, veterans of the 159th New York State Volunteers—about seventy-five of the grizzled old soldiers, all told—gathered at the Molineux home in Fort Greene Place for their annual reunion. It was the thirty-seventh anniversary, to the day, of the Battle of Cedar Creek, in which Edward Molineux and his brigade had acquitted themselves so heroically. Following the meal, General Horatio C. King, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, rose and delivered a speech in which he paid tribute to the “exceptional and brilliant part” General Molineux had played in that “desperate struggle”—a fight that had ended with the “complete rout” of the enemy forces.

  “But we are here not to celebrate that victory alone,” King continued, while his listeners—lawyers, judges, congressmen, and other members of the social and political elite of Brooklyn—sat raptly at their tables. “The hearts of your comrades have warmed to you even more than they did in that mighty conflict because of the terrible battle for another’s life which you have so heroically made in the past two years or more. Out of the valley of the shadow of death, the boy who is dearer to you than your own life has emerged with another and fairer opportunity to establish his innocence. We, your comrades and friends, who love you and believe in the innocence of your son, are here to congratulate you most fervently, and to pray for an early and complete sweeping away of the dark clouds which have so long hung over your beloved house.”

  An outburst of thunderous applause interrupted King at this point. He waited until the ovation subsided before bringing his address to a rousing close. “We renew to you the pledge of our friendship and our confidence. In sunshine and shadow, in weal or woe, we are your comrades now as we were when shot and shell made gruesome music in our ears; and the comradeship formed under such conditions can never weaken or fail.”5

  Backing up their vows of support with direct and practical action, the General’s old comrades joined together in offering financial help to defray his enormous and ever-mounting legal expenses. “It is well known,” read a declaration issued by the veterans, “that by reason of unfortunate circumstances involving the good name of General Molineux and his family, great sacrifices have been made in order to maintain their reputation unsullied. To a younger man, the opportunity to recuperate financially might present itself, but at the age of nearly three score and ten, it would seem almost too late for the General to retrieve his fortune.”

  The proud old warrior, however, would have none of it. Conveying his heartfelt thanks to his “boys,” he graciously declined the offer. He “was not, thank God, down to that necessity. I have said that I would spend my last dollar in the defense of my son,” he declared, “and I will. That last dollar has not yet been reached.”6

  The General’s willingness to sacrifice his fortune on behalf of his son only enhanced his already lofty reputation among the public. Even his former enemies in the South rallied to his side. “I faced you in battle, but I congratulate you on the prospective release of your son,” one ex–Confederate officer wrote to him. “Your brave and generous heart deserves it. I believe in the vindication of your son.” He received sympathetic letters from other onetime foes, including a major from the Fifth Georgia Regiment, who denounced Assistant DA Osborne for insulting the General’s daughter-in-law and offered to horsewhip the scoundrel should he ever show his face down South.7

  The General, of course, had always been an object of admiration, even reverence. The outpouring of sympathy for his cause in the wake of Roland’s release from Sing Sing, however, was something new. Even the yellow papers, which had tried and convicted Roland in their pages, had lost their taste for attacking the gallant old General’s son.

  As one observer would put it, “the hostile tide against Roland had begun to ebb.”8

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  Despite public statements from both Roland and his father that they would settle for nothing less than the complete vindication of an acquittal, the Molineux defense team quickly mounted an effort to quash the murder indictment and have their client set free without a second trial.1 To argue their case, Weeks and Battle called in Frank S. Black, who had served a term as governor of New York before resuming private practice in Manhattan. Opposing him was another former New York governor, David B. Hill, who had unsuccessfully represented the state before the Court of Appeals.

  This time, Hill emerged victorious. On December 6, 1901, Judge Joseph Newburger rendered a decision denying the motion to dismiss the indictment. Roland Molineux would have to be tried again, quite as if the first trial—one of the longest and most costly criminal proceedings in the history of the state—had never taken place.2

  Roland would spend another year in the Tombs waiting for his trial to begin. Still, he had little to complain about. Despite a smallpox scare in March 1902 that necessitated the immediate vaccination of all 392 inmates,3 life in the city prison was a holiday after the hell of the Sing Sing Death House. Roland could exercise in the open air, enjoy catered meals, read newspapers to his heart’s content, and see friends and relatives on a daily basis. His parents and brothers took full advantage of the liberal visitation policy.

  The story was different with Blanche.

  The previous fall, within days of Roland’s return to the Tombs, she had gone to see him in the company of the General. The meeting took place in the warden’s office. Roland, brought down from his cell on Murderer’s Row, immediately threw his arms about his wife and kissed her. To observers, Blanche seemed “nervous at first,” though she managed a smile and was soon chatting warmly enough with her husband. They remained in each other’s company for an hour.

  Afterward, in an interview with reporters, she reiterated her belief in Roland’s innocence and angrily denied rumors that she had “grown tired of” her marriage and planned to abandon him.

  “It is all false!” she cried. “I would gladly give my life in an instant to see Roland happy.”4

  In the following months, however, her visits became less and less frequent until, by the spring of 1902, they had ceased altogether. A few weeks later, she moved out of the Molineux brownstone.

  By then, relations between Blanche and her in-laws had grown unbearably tense. With Roland’s prospects looking brighter than at any time since his arrest, the General finally agreed to
give her a bit of freedom. At first, she was allowed to make afternoon jaunts into Manhattan, where after years of social starvation she hungrily took in shows and concerts and luncheons with friends.

  The taste of these pleasures only strengthened her determination to escape the stifling household once and for all. In August 1902, she moved into an airy corner suite at a residential hotel in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. Her rent was paid by the General, who also provided her with a generous monthly allowance.

  In return, Blanche agreed to only one stipulation: during Roland’s second trial, she would be at his side in the courtroom.

  The General wasn’t taking any chances. To be sure, he had every reason to feel optimistic. Even James Osborne acknowledged that public sentiment had changed and that many people, formerly against young Molineux, now “believed he has been punished sufficiently.”5

  Still, Roland wasn’t free yet. Appearances must be maintained. The scandalous rumors about Blanche, suggesting that she had lost faith in her husband, would be put to rest. The jury would see for itself just how much she loved and believed in her husband.6

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  After many delays, Roland’s retrial finally got under way on Monday, October 13, 1902. By then, almost four years had elapsed since the deaths of Henry Barnet and Katherine Adams.

  New York had not lacked for lurid crimes during that time. Only recently, in fact, the city had been riveted by a particularly sensational murder. Less than a month before the start of Roland’s second trial, the mutilated body of a young Manhattan woman named Anna Pulitzer had been found in a canal near Jersey City. What made the murder so newsworthy, beyond its sheer grisliness, was the pedigree of the killer: Brigham Young’s grandson, William Hooper Young, who—so the papers claimed—had committed the crime in accordance with the doctrine of “blood atonement” preached by the Mormon leader.1

  Even with such titillating fare to distract them, the public remained fascinated by the Great Poison Mystery. The crowds who turned out for Molineux’s second trial were nearly as large as those who had flocked to the first. What they ended up seeing was a mix of the deeply familiar and the dramatically new.

  The cast of characters had changed in certain notable ways. Though Bartow Weeks was present throughout the proceedings, former New York governor Frank S. Black was brought in to serve as lead counsel for the defense. And in place of Recorder Goff (whose rulings had generally favored the prosecution), a judge named John A. Lambert (who turned out to be far more sympathetic to the defense) was called in to preside.

  It was largely owing to Lambert’s businesslike approach—his “insistence upon cutting out every superfluous word or gesture”2—that the second trial moved with such impressive speed. Jury selection, which had originally required more than two weeks, was now completed within twelve hours. James Osborne’s opening address lasted only ninety minutes instead of four and a half hours (and was mercifully free of any labored analogies to the Frankenstein monster). And on the first day of testimony, no fewer than thirteen witnesses were examined. As one headline proclaimed, it was ALL HUSTLE, NO NONSENSE IN MOLINEUX CASE.3

  Though the prosecution witnesses were, by and large, a familiar crew, a number of key figures were missing. Elsie Gray, the bookkeeper for the Kutnow brothers who had discovered one of the bogus Cornish letters, had died shortly after the first trial. And Roland’s former child-mistress, Mamie Melando—still smarting from her virtual abduction by Detectives Carey and McCafferty three years earlier—refused to leave New Jersey.4

  The intervening years had not been kind to other witnesses, including Harry Cornish. Gaunt and hollow-cheeked, his few remaining strands of hair having gone prematurely gray, Cornish no longer made his living as a sportsman. His onetime employer, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club—where the lives of Roland Molineux and Henry Barnet and Cornish himself had so fatefully collided—had recently gone out of business, brought down by the financial troubles of its owner, J. Herbert Ballantine. Cornish, once a celebrity in the city’s amateur sporting world, now worked for a bakery.5

  Still, his manner remained as gruff and uningratiating as ever. He alternately snarled and shouted at ex-governor Black, who subjected him to a ferocious cross-examination. Over Osborne’s objections, Black was allowed to interrogate the witness about his marital infidelities, as well as his current relationship with Florence Rodgers, who—so the lawyer intimated—had become Cornish’s mistress since her mother’s death.

  Black also asked pointed questions about the classes Cornish had attended at Columbia Medical College. Cornish explained that he had gone there strictly to “study anatomy,” so that he could learn more about the muscular system and improve his performance as a coach. Black, however, insisted that Cornish had “studied medicine”—thus implying that Roland Molineux wasn’t the only one with a technical background in chemistry.6

  When Cornish finally left the stand, he “heaved a deep sigh,” as though relieved to be done with the ordeal. At the defense table, Roland—dapper in a double-breasted black sack coat, high collar, silk four-in-hand necktie, and pearl stickpin—watched his rival’s discomfiture with a smirk.7

  In the aftermath of the first trial, Bartow Weeks had been roundly criticized for not putting Roland on the stand. Frank S. Black was not about to repeat that error. When the defense opened its case on Friday, October 31, Roland B. Molineux was the first witness called.

  It had taken a contingent of twenty police officers to control the crowd that showed up that morning. When the courtroom doors opened at 9:30 A.M., more than three hundred people—many of them women—managed to fight their way inside. Within minutes, all the seats had been taken, including the two usually reserved for Roland and his father, who upon their arrival a half hour later had to stand until extra chairs could be brought in from another room.8

  After an opening address that lasted less than five minutes—a “record-breaker in brevity for a case of such importance and scope”9—Black launched into his direct examination of the star witness. Roland’s voice, which had not been heard in court since the coroner’s inquest three years before, was strong and steady. It had, observers felt, “the ring of sincerity in it.”10

  Indeed, everyone who saw him on the stand that day agreed that Roland turned in a remarkable performance. Calmly, clearly, courteously, with no discernible hesitation and a demeanor that struck spectators as perfectly frank and forthcoming, he gave a detailed account of his quarrels with Harry Cornish but insisted that, angry as he was at the time, he had gotten over his animosity long before his marriage.

  He emphatically denied that he had bought the silver toothpick holder, rented a private letter box, written the bogus letters, or mailed the poison package. He claimed that he did not know how to make cyanide of mercury and, indeed, had never even heard of the poison until charges were brought against him. He acknowledged that he had sent away for Dr. Burns’s Marvelous Giant Indian Salve but insisted that he had used the ointment not for impotence, but for a knee injury sustained in a bicycling accident. He described his relationship with Mamie Melando as that of “employer and employee, solely.” He swore that he was “absolutely innocent of any part in or knowledge of” Mrs. Adams’s murder.

  Black ended his direct examination at 11:55 A.M. It had lasted just sixty-five minutes. By contrast, James Osborne would grill the witness for five hours. In the end, the cross-examination would be a “complete victory” for Roland.11

  “A marvel of alertness and skill,” he calmly parried every attack the prosecutor aimed at him, never seemed rattled or evasive, projected an air of absolute confidence and candor. “To every question he had an easy, ready answer. He smiled and waved his hand, and exhibited complete suavity and ease.”12

  At four-thirty, having utterly failed to extract any damaging admissions from the witness, an exhausted James Osborne begged the judge for an adjournment. “If Your Honor please. I believe I am tired to death, and I would like to say, this being rather, yo
u know, an important matter to both Mr. Molineux and myself, and he is probably tired, too—”

  “I am not tired,” Roland broke in. “I would just as soon stay here.”

  Judge Lambert ordered Osborne to continue. He managed to go on for another hour before he “gave out entirely” and collapsed into his chair. Roland, looking as fresh and chipper as ever, left the stand with a smile and returned to his seat, where his father patted him on the back and said, “Good boy.”13

  Speaking to reporters when the day’s session was over, Osborne tried to put the best face on the matter, insisting that he “was perfectly satisfied with the cross-examination of Molineux.” Nevertheless, even he was forced to concede that Roland was “one of the most wonderful men I ever examined—of more than ordinary intellectual power, quick, resourceful, alert, with an able and flexible mind.”

  The General gave Roland the ultimate accolade: his son, he proudly told reporters, had borne “himself under fire like a true Molineux.”14

  One person was not there to witness Roland’s triumph: his ostensibly devoted wife, Blanche.

  When the trial had opened on October 13, the General, in response to a query from reporters, had explained that, while his daughter-in-law would undoubtedly not sit through the entire proceedings, he expected her to be there for the start of each day’s session.15 Since he made that remark, the trial had been going on for more than two weeks. And Blanche had yet to put in a single appearance.

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  It is a cliché of courtroom melodramas: the surprise witness, appearing at the eleventh hour, who offers a startling revelation that settles the defendant’s fate. In real life, of course (as opposed to the typical Perry Mason mystery), such a thing rarely occurs. But it did at the second trial of Roland Molineux.