Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis

by Alexis Coe

  Her relationship with Alice, one that long predated the murder, was clearly at the heart of the matter. Alice longed for a life outside of what the domestic sphere offered her, and could not be controlled by family or social norms. She had openly rebelled against the rules of society—and Lillie had been just mere feet away during most of it.

  The most compelling evidence against Lillie was not her proximity to the crime scene, but rather her assistance on a number of Alice’s prior spy missions, including an expedition just a week before the murder. Alice had asked Lillie to join her in confirming her suspicion that Freda was lying about her departure date, and she had obliged, accompanying Alice onboard a Golddust-bound steamer. This suggested, the prosecution argued, that Lillie knew of Alice’s machinations, and was indeed an active participant.

  But, of course, Lillie knew very little about Alice and Freda’s relationship. Yes, she had witnessed the aftermath, when the Wards suddenly and inexplicably severed ties with both Alice and Lillie, but by the time she discovered the case, it was already front page news. When she boarded that steamer, Lillie was working under the mistaken assumption that they were simply seeking answers about the sudden rupture. In a letter to Jo—which went unanswered—she sought the very information that everyone, the Wards and Alice alike, had been keeping from her.

  During her habeas corpus hearing, Attorney General Peters presented the letter as evidence and argued that it established Lillie’s motive: She was angry and hurt, he reasoned, and that was why she helped Alice, or knowingly neglected to stop her from committing her ghastly deed.

  The letter threw Lillie’s attorney for a loop, but Patterson was quick on his feet, and used the evidence to draw a distinction between Lillie’s confusion and Alice’s focus. Lillie’s behavior might appear untoward, he allowed, but even by contrast, it was hardly as odious and vile as Alice’s actions. They were all gathered in the newly expanded courtroom, after all, because of a singular lunatic named Alice Mitchell. But in order to make his case, Patterson would have to call Jo Ward, the letter’s recipient and Lillie’s old chumming partner, to the witness stand.

  JO WAS QUESTIONED TWICE by both the defense and the prosecution. They struggled to bend her testimony to fit their versions of the story, all the while trying to remain sufficiently reverent of a family in mourning. They had to be especially careful when it came to Jo, a traumatized witness to her own sister’s gruesome murder. Jo was stricken with grief, and she dressed the part, taking the stand in a heavy, head-to-toe black mourning dress. The public sympathized with her loss, and further pitied the Ward family for having to rely on public representation, while the Mitchell family could hire powerful lawyers.

  It also helped that Jo was considered quite pretty and, even under such trying circumstances, demure and charming, always exhibiting the utmost propriety. Even after she was ordered, in the gentlest of terms, to lift her veil, she hesitated, much to the approval of the courtroom. And when her handsome face was finally revealed, she kept her head bowed, and avoided eye contact with male spectators.

  Jo conceded that her old friend Lillie had always possessed a “gentle nature”—even after Ada had abruptly ordered an end to their close relationship. Jo also confirmed that, on the day her sister was murdered, she had not seen Lillie anywhere near the scene of the crime; not then, nor earlier, when she, Freda, and their friend Christina Purnell had quit Mrs. Kimbrough’s for the riverboat landing.

  Jo’s account of the murder was exactly what the courtroom had been waiting to hear—and luckily for the defense, it was a story in which Lillie made no appearance.

  What first drew my attention to the cutting was Miss Purnell’s screaming, and as she screamed I turned around . . . Miss Mitchell was right at my sister then, and was nearly cutting her. She was cutting at her, and I struck her with the umbrella. She turned to me and said: “I’m going to do just exactly what I wanted to do, and I don’t care if I do get hung.”

  After she said that, she jumped up and flew up the levee, running very fast . . . She had blood on her face and on her hands, with a great deal on one side.70

  Having established his client’s absence from the scene of the murder, Patterson moved on to background questions. The packed crowd in the courtroom sat in rapt silence, preparing for what they knew would come next: the highly anticipated account of the same-sex love affair between Alice and Freda.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Jo, followed by the prosecution, objected to Patterson’s line of questioning. It was distracting. It was irrelevant. It was indecent. But Judge DuBose disagreed, and permitted Patterson to continue.

  “Is it not a fact that your sister forbade your having anything to do with, or writing to Miss Johnson and Miss Mitchell, because Alice Mitchell and your sister were engaged to be married, and your sister was about to elope with her, and had gotten on the boat for that purpose?”

  “That was one reason,” Jo answered.

  “Was that not the controlling reason?”

  Judge DuBose again ignored the prosecution’s protests, but cautioned Patterson—the man who would one day be governor—to remember there were women with delicate sensibilities in the audience, and they were unaccustomed to hearing talk of such profane and worldly subjects. Though the judge disagreed with their very presence, they were in his courtroom, which made him their chivalrous protector.

  Patterson accepted the warning, and proceeded as gently as possible, with Alice and Freda’s plan to meet in Memphis.

  “And there marry? Well, now, in that arrangement to marry, Miss Ward, who was to be the man? Miss Mitchell?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “[Freda] intended to take the boat, did she not, and to come to Memphis, and then they intended to go to St. Louis?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And your sister was to be the wife, was she, and they were to arrange it in that way?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And was not Miss Mitchell to be called Alvin J. Ward after they married?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your sister was to be called Mrs. Alvin J. Ward?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That was all made up and understood, and planned, and your sister discovered it all, and after making that discovery she forbade your further correspondence with them?”

  “Yes, sir.”71

  Judge DuBose had allowed Patterson’s probe, and thus granted the prosecution permission to reexamine Jo, who had certainly noticed the defense’s approach. What was it about Lillie, Peters asked, that had so bothered Ada? What could have been so terrible about Lillie that Ada forbade Jo from ever seeing her again?

  “It was because she visited the union depot quite often, and she flirted a great deal. She flirted with men . . . . When she was visiting us last summer, my sister also forbade her waving at the boats and the men,” Jo explained. “She was just considered quite a flirt.”72

  At that, Lillie nearly fainted.

  The accusation that she had shamelessly flouted accepted gender norms, the revelation that her immodest behavior was the reason she was banned from talking to her best friend, and the fact that all of this—her disgrace—was announced in a crowded public courtroom and, within hours, in newspapers across the country, was too much for Lillie to bear. Aiding and abetting a murder was one thing, but shameless flirting was something else entirely.

  It was just one o’clock, but Judge DuBose adjourned the hearing. Lillie had become so distressed by the first day’s proceedings that he considered it unwise to continue. She would remain unsettled well into the night, until the sheriff deemed it necessary to summon a physician to the jail.

  FAIR LILLIE

  DAY TWO WOULD BE EVEN WORSE. It was Lillie’s turn to testify on her own behalf. She appeared weary and frail. Halfway through a description of her five-year friendship with Alice, she started sobbing, setting off a ripple effect through the sympathetic courtroom.73 More than one newspaper ran her story on the front page with the he
adline “Fair Lillie.”

  But soon enough, questions about her friendship with Alice receded into the background, and the attorneys turned to the central issue: Freda’s murder. Lillie recounted the more mundane events of that day in late January when she, too, had been grateful for the break in inclement weather. She remembered having been out and about, including a morning visit to the blacksmith with Alice, where her friend, unbeknownst to her, had very specific plans to have the horses shod in time for the steamer’s departure. When they parted ways for lunch, Lillie assumed it would be the last she saw of Alice on that winter day, and she would devote the rest of it to her family.

  And yet, when Lillie and her sister were walking back from a quick shopping trip downtown just a few hours later, they ran into Alice, who seemed keen on taking the buggy out.

  Since finishing at Miss Higbee’s, afternoon rides were often the most exciting part of their day, but the outings had never been terribly consistent. This was an important point for the defense, and Patterson labored over it, lest there be any suspicion that Lillie knew what her old friend really had in mind for that afternoon. When Alice eventually materialized at the Johnson family’s front door around two o’clock, Lillie was caring for her young nephew, and thought the ride suitable for him as well.

  If Lillie had known that they were headed into a murder scene, Patterson repeatedly asked, would she have brought him along?

  With two members of the Johnson family in tow, Alice drove past Mrs. Kimbrough’s house where, indeed, Freda was spotted; she then proceeded toward Madison Street, as Lillie wished to stop by her brother’s work for a brief visit. Lillie admitted she had noticed the Ward sisters and Christina Purnell walking on the street, but since Jo was no longer speaking to her, she had specifically asked Alice not steer the buggy in their direction.

  Alice held the reins, but assured her that they were only going to the post office, and Lillie had no reason to doubt her. In light of the scandal made in court of her correspondence with young men, it no doubt pained Lillie to sit on the stand and admit she thought nothing of stopping at the post office; the business of sending and receiving mail was an exciting part of their lives.

  “Oh, Lillie,” she recalled Alice saying. “Fred winked at me. I am going to take one more look at Fred and say good-bye!”

  At the post office, Lillie preferred to stay with the horses. She was still sitting in the buggy when she saw Alice running up the hill. Between the obscured view and caring for her nephew, she had no idea what had just transpired, nor any reason to suspect foul play. To her knowledge, Alice had never threatened Freda, or said anything to indicate she had a capacity for violence. Lillie knew that Alice was far more hurt by their estrangement from the Wards, but assumed Alice’s experience with Freda mirrored her own with Jo. The dissolution of their friendship had been an unfortunate and confusing loss, but not a totally devastating one.

  It was the blood that opened her eyes. Alice was covered in it. Lillie knew something had gone terribly wrong, but Alice ignored her questions until the horses were in motion again, trotting down Court Street. Having had little worldly experience, and coming from a particularly tight-knit family, Lillie could think of only one piece of advice for Alice in the heat of the moment: Go home and tell your mother. It was a sad irony that this suggestion was the very thing that was used to incriminate Lillie, since it could clearly be traced back to her upbringing as a proper young woman, instructed to obey her mother’s dictates.

  The courtroom could have handled more from Lillie, but she was unable to offer it. Her physician, Dr. Z.B. Henning, and her family priest, Father Hale, had already testified to her “delicate health.” Her father and brother spoke to “a sick headache” that had long plagued her. Lillie’s condition had forced her to withdraw from a covenant school near their former home in Indiana, and then again from Miss Higbee’s in Memphis.

  Judge DuBose once again softened upon seeing her fragile state, and excused her from further testimony. It was clear that Lillie was delicate, someone to protect from the conditions of jail and the kind of women it housed—especially Alice Mitchell. The audience, though disappointed, approved of his paternalistic compassion as much as Lillie’s display of weakness.

  PETERS WAS EVENTUALLY ALLOWED to cross-examine Lillie, which he did very carefully so as not to draw the ire of those who sympathized with the young woman. While Lillie’s obedience was understood as a desirable trait in the Victorian era, Peters wanted to portray it as feckless and shifty. To link her behavior to the ugly traits of a criminal, he needed only ask Lillie why she accompanied Alice home after the slaying.

  “[Alice] asked me to stay, and I would do anything for her,” Lillie replied.74

  The attorney general savored her answer. Lillie would do anything for Alice. Even after Alice admitted to murdering their friend, Lillie would still do anything Alice asked of her.

  After that, Peters moved away from the murder entirely. His focus shifted to the letters Lillie sent under the name Jessie Rita James, reminding the judge that she was not only “fast,” but untrustworthy. In those letters, she had lied about her identity, and she had also lied to her mother by concealing them. Would it not be logical, then, to assume that she was also lying about her involvement in the murder? Lillie, Peters argued, had a motive (anger at the Wards for ending their friendship), a secondary motive (she would do anything for Alice), and a critical skill (she was a known liar) that was essential to any murder plot. She was, Peters argued, a moral threat to other respectable girls—just as Alice had been to Freda.

  By the time Peters was done, Lillie seemed wholly unsteady on her feet.75

  THE AUDIENCE AT LILLIE’S habeas corpus hearing had noticeably dwindled after the first day, but Alice’s absence was not the only reason. Lillie’s fits of “female hysteria” were convincing enough that even the Commercial, the newspaper typically suspicious of the defense, concluded that “few of those who heard the words of this unfortunate girl and the testimony of others yesterday morning, believe that she is guilty of murder as an accessory.”76 The sharp decline in attendance suggested that the public agreed.

  No doubt disappointed that his spectators believed this part of the show could be missed—after he had expanded his own courtroom to accommodate them—Judge DuBose injected a dose of drama back into the hearing. He took two full days to deliberate over Lillie’s fate, which elicited the intended response; the public took notice, wildly speculating as to the cause of the delay. Was there a surprise element that had given the judge pause? Did Lillie belong in jail? Was she actually a threat to the daughters of Memphis?

  By the time Judge Dubose read his statement, every seat in the courtroom was once again filled.

  “The proof is evident that the defendant aided and abetted in the commission of the crime, a crime that [is] most atrocious and malignant ever perpetrated by woman,” he read, ever so carefully, from a prepared statement.77 Despite the dramatic, seemingly ominous beginning, Judge DuBose acknowledged Lillie’s fragile condition and awarded her temporary freedom, should the Johnson family meet bail, set at $10,000.

  The Johnsons were not wealthy, but the monies were somehow arranged, and Lillie was freed to everyone’s momentary delight. It was the Public Ledger, and not the Commercial, that cast a shadow of doubt on the ruling, observing that Lillie “moved with a sprightly step for one so ill.”78

  To the public, Lillie’s habeas corpus hearing was only a rehearsal for the real production, but it would be summer before Alice’s inquisition of lunacy brought all of the actors back into the theater. And for that event, Judge DuBose’s manufactured drama would prove unnecessary.

  THE OLD THREAD-BARE LIE

  BEFORE LILLIE WAS ARRESTED, Alice had spent just one night—the night of the murder—alone in jail. But now that Lillie was back at home with her family, Alice was all alone again, with an extremely short list of permittable visitors, and a relatively long wait before her case would be heard in court.r />
  If Alice kept any records of the six months she spent in jail, they have been lost, but it seems unlikely that she would ever again commit her feelings to the page. Her letters from the last few years, especially those precious ones she and Freda had exchanged, were now being bandied about by men as power plays. They wanted to define who she was, to appropriate her personal story—her love—by controlling documents that contained her most intimate concerns. And the worst humiliation was yet to come. It was only a matter of time until those love letters were presented in court, and then reprinted in newspapers across the nation. If Alice had written letters or kept a journal while she was behind bars, she probably disposed of it herself, rather than relying on someone else. At that point, who could she trust? She had asked Freda, her love, to destroy her letters—and that request had obviously been ignored.

  Like so much about Alice, we will never know exactly what it was like for her to be alone in jail during those long months before the lunacy inquisition. At best, we can surmise that the many weeks and months were plagued by loneliness and gloom and monotony.79 At worst, life in jail was downright frightening.

  IN THE EARLY HOURS OF MARCH 9, 1892, Alice may have been asleep in her cell, but it was unlikely she slept through the night. A mob of angry white men descended on the jail between two and three in the morning, demanding that three African American men be released into their custody. Had Alice not committed murder, she would have never resided in a cell near the men they were after, and had the jail they all occupied not been in turn-of-the-century Memphis, those men may not have been incarcerated at all. But she was in jail, and that meant she might have seen what justice looked like from the other side.