The Devil's Gentleman (23 page)

43

A
s self-appointed spokesman for the oppressed masses, the multimillionaire William Randolph Hearst never missed an opportunity to attack the high and mighty on behalf of his readers. The official mismanagement of the Adams-Barnet case afforded him a perfect soapbox.

“Imagine a murder committed in a tenement house on the East Side,” he thundered in an editorial published in early February, “and the persons believed to have committed it walking about town for six weeks under the eyes of the police without an arrest! If this had happened among people without influence, every person suspected of knowing anything about it would have been locked up before morning and the ‘third degree’ would have been vigorously applied…. But when two deliberate, premeditated murders have been committed by persons with financial and political pull, the whole machinery of justice has been paralyzed.”

The time had come, Hearst cried, for the authorities to get to the bottom of the whole “loathsome affair.” “Let in the light!” he demanded.
¹

It was a call that District Attorney Asa Bird Gardiner was finally prepared to heed. Already feeling the heat from a reform movement that would soon drive him and the rest of the Tammany crowd from office, Gardiner had suddenly decided to take matters out of the hands of the police. If McCluskey and his men couldn’t uncover enough evidence to produce an arrest, there was someone else who could: the Manhattan coroner, Edward H. Hart.

The position of coroner no longer exists in New York City, having been replaced in 1915 by the medical examiner’s office. At the time of the Adams-Barnet case, however, it was a centuries-old institution, transported from England during colonial times.

Whenever a suspicious death occurred, it was the coroner’s duty to assemble a jury and hold an inquest to determine if a murder had been committed. Though he could find probable cause for an arrest, he was not, as a rule, expected to identify the killer. In almost all instances, his job was limited to establishing whether a sudden death was an accident, a suicide, or the result of foul play. In the latter event, it was left to the police to investigate the crime, track down the suspects, and take them into custody. Since Captain McCluskey’s detectives had come up short in the present case, however, it would now be up to Coroner Hart to supply the evidence that would finally bring the perpetrator to justice.

It was a responsibility that Hart took seriously. Aside from his sense of professional duty, he had strong personal feelings on the subject. “Murder by poison must stop,” he told reporters. “To me, the crime is cowardly, detestable, abominable.”
²
The inquest, he announced, would begin on the first available date on his calendar—Thursday, February 9.

So intense was public fascination with the case that Hart—who generally had trouble finding willing volunteers for his juries—was immediately deluged with applicants. Some hinted that they were in possession of secrets that would “flood with light all the darkness surrounding the case.” Others claimed to have “wonderful powers of discernment” that “would do much toward assisting the ferreting out” of the truth. One man wrote that his “great ability to fathom motives” made human psychology seem “as simple as a problem in geometry to a school mathematics teacher.” Another sought to demonstrate his qualifications by citing scripture: “Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.”
³

While Hart attended to the jury selection, his assistants were busy drawing up subpoenas. Though the coroner refused to identify all the witnesses he intended to call, the papers quickly published a partial list, which included Mrs. Adams’s daughter, Florence Rodgers; the physicians who attended the poisoned woman; the letter box men, Heckmann and Koch; Harry Cornish; and, of course, Roland Molineux, who was immediately placed under police surveillance to ensure that he didn’t skip town.
⁴

Speculation ran high about one name not immediately mentioned by Hart—the witness that both the public and the press were most eager to get a look at. It was not until February 6—just three days before the inquest was slated to begin—that the
World
trumpeted the exciting news:
MRS. ROLAND MOLINEUX TO BE CALLED IN POISON CASE.

From her girlhood days, when she first dreamed of becoming a famous singer, Blanche had always hungered for the limelight. Now, she was about to occupy it in a way that she could never have imagined.

Besides demanding an immediate inquest, District Attorney Gardiner made another decision that produced a sensation in the press. Officially, the cause of Henry Barnet’s death remained an open question. Though all the evidence pointed to the poisoned Kutnow’s Powder, Barnet’s physician, Dr. Douglass, continued to insist that the patient had died of diphtheria. With Barnet in the grave, there was only one way to settle the issue.

On Monday, February 6—after receiving a sworn affidavit from undertaker Herbert H. Jackson that no mercury had been used in preparing Barnet’s corpse for burial—Gardiner submitted an application to Justice Gildersleeve of the New York State Supreme Court. His request was granted at once.

On Wednesday, February 8—one day before the scheduled start of the coroner’s inquest—the body of Henry Crossman Barnet would be exhumed from its resting place in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. The corpse would then be dissected and its organs examined for the presence of cyanide of mercury.

“Death’s secret,” as one headline put it, was “to be wrested from the grave.”
⁵

44

S
now was pelting from a leaden sky when the three carriages reached the gate of Green-Wood Cemetery late on the morning of Wednesday, February 8. The vehicles carried a party of eight officials whose solemn miens matched the grimness of the weather. Among them were Coroner Edward Hart and the coroner’s physician, Dr. A. T. Weston; the chemical expert Professor Rudolph Witthaus; Dr. Henry Beaman Douglass; and a representative from the district attorney’s office, Colonel Gardiner’s assistant, A. E. Bryan.

They were met at the entrance by Eugene Cushman, superintendent of the cemetery. Having been informed in advance of the party’s arrival, Cushman had already dispatched a crew of six gravediggers to Henry Barnet’s burial site.

Disembarking from their carriages, the men trudged through the snow, with Cushman in the lead. By the time they reached Barnet’s grave, the six workmen, wielding mattocks and spades, had already dug halfway down to the coffin. A mound of earth was heaped beside the freshly made hole, the reddish-brown dirt contrasting starkly with the surrounding whiteness.

The excavation took another hour. Coat collars pulled high, hats drawn low, shoulders hunched against the cold, the observers watched in silence. The only sounds were the grunts of the workmen, the crunching of their blades in the frozen ground, the wind whipping the snow through the naked trees.

At last, there was another sound, of metal scraping against wood. The tools were exchanged for heavy ropes and the earth-stained oak coffin was heaved to the surface. It was loaded on a wagon and transported to the premises of a local undertaker named Frank Selle. When the lid was removed, Dr. Douglass was the first to peer inside. The body, he confirmed, was that of his former patient, Barnet. After three months in the wintry earth, the dead man’s features were still perfectly recognizable.

The corpse was removed and laid out upon a table. As the rest of the party observed—Dr. Douglass taking copious notes in a little pad—Weston opened up the body and removed the stomach, liver, kidneys, brain, throat, and a portion of the lungs. These organs were placed in jars, sealed, and turned over to Professor Witthaus for chemical analysis.

Gently returned to its coffin, Barnet’s hollowed body was then driven back to the cemetery and replaced in its grave. By nightfall, it was hidden by the same spotless white blanket that covered the countless other sleepers all around.
¹

Though the snow had stopped by the following day, the city was in the grip of a brutal cold spell. Even the arctic weather, however, could not deter the curiosity seekers. Hundreds of them, male and female alike, thronged the hallways of the Criminal Court Building on Center Street, hoping to secure a seat at what the papers were already trumpeting as “the Great Inquest.”

Their efforts would prove to be futile. Coroner Hart had announced that only those “who have official business there” would be granted admission. And, in truth, the chamber reserved for the inquest offered scant space for superfluous spectators.

Located on the third floor of the building, the room measured just thirty by sixty feet. Its walls, devoid of all adornment, were of rough, naked plaster. At the front stood the coroner’s raised desk and, beside it, a little platform holding the witness chair. The jury box—a dozen bow-back chairs surrounded by a wooden railing—occupied the right side of the room beneath a row of tall, narrow windows. There was a plain oak table for the district attorney and another for the representatives of the press. The rest of the chamber was filled with several rows of pewlike benches. Altogether, as one observer put it, it “offered but a bare-looking stage for the first act of one of the most remarkable dramas of modern times.”
²

A uniformed officer stood at the doorway, admitting only those with signed passes from Coroner Hart. By 10:00
A.M.
—the hour scheduled for the start of the proceedings—the chamber was full. In addition to the lawyers, witnesses, and newsmen, a few “privileged persons” had been given permission to attend. One of these was J. Herbert Ballantine, owner of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club facilities. Another was his friend, Albert J. Morgan, heir to the Sapolio soap-making fortune.

It was not idle curiosity that had brought Morgan to the inquest. In digging into the rumored love triangle involving Molineux, Blanche, and Henry Barnet, reporters for the yellow papers had learned about the party on board Morgan’s yacht, the
Viator,
during which Roland had first met his future wife. Among Morgan’s other guests on that fateful August day in 1897 was Walter Sherman Baldwin. Son of a wealthy manufacturer of paper boxes, Baldwin—a handsome, forty-three-year-old bachelor and man about town—was a longtime member of the New York Athletic Club and an old friend of Roland Molineux’s. According to rumor, Baldwin had flirted openly with Blanche on that sparkling summer day in the Portland harbor—as, reportedly, had Morgan himself.

Shortly after the
Viator
returned from its cruise along the coast of Maine, Baldwin—who had seemed to be in robust health—suddenly died. Not long afterward, Morgan himself was stricken and came dangerously close to death. The official diagnosis in both cases was typhoid.

In light of subsequent events, it now seemed extremely peculiar to many observers that of the three men on board the
Viator
who had vied for Blanche Chesebrough’s attention, only Roland Molineux had escaped the sudden, devastating illness that had struck his two friends.
³

The star attractions, Roland and Blanche, did not put in an appearance on opening day. But a stir went through the crowd when a distinguished white-haired figure made his way to the front of the room. The elderly gentleman—who still bore himself with an erect, military posture that made him seem much taller than his diminutive height—was, of course, General E. L. Molineux: the “venerable old soldier,” as the papers invariably referred to him. He took a seat beside his son’s attorneys, Bartow Weeks and George Gordon Battle.

A few minutes later, the “Great Inquest” got under way.

The day’s business proceeded so efficiently that, according to one observer, “it was as if the entire action had been carefully rehearsed and its ‘playing time’ measured with a stage manager’s accuracy.”
⁴
Jury selection took less than forty-five minutes. As soon as the twelve men were seated, District Attorney Asa Bird Gardiner rose to address them.

His speech was brief and to the point. The district attorney’s office, he explained, was “not a detective bureau. All we can do is present the evidence gathered by the police and all evidence from outside sources, including such as may be furnished by some of our enterprising newspapers.” “Anybody who can throw light” on the investigation “will be welcome.”

He pointed out that, while the inquiry would focus on the death of Mrs. Adams, it would “necessarily have much bearing on the Barnet case as well.” The two, he declared, were completely intertwined. This was a somewhat premature statement for Gardiner to make. Professor Witthaus, after all, had already made it known that he would need at least three weeks to analyze the organs removed from Barnet’s exhumed body.

Nevertheless, Gardiner now stated unequivocally that “the same poison was sent to both Cornish and Henry C. Barnet at the Knickerbocker Club, and that poison was cyanide of mercury. It is a very significant fact that this particular poison, which has practically gone out of the pharmacopeia since 1870 or 1871, should be used to kill two persons within a month. Evidently there was deep deliberation on the part of the person who prepared these poisons.”

Gardiner himself did not intend to point an accusatory finger at anyone, and he urged the jurors to banish any preconceived notions from their minds. “Nobody has been arrested,” he said, “and consequently there is no defendant before you.”

By the end of the inquest, however, he expected the “full and complete” truth to emerge. The killer of Mrs. Adams and Henry Barnet must not escape punishment, since poisoning, as Gardiner solemnly declared, was “a form of death that is abhorrent to the American mind” (a somewhat peculiar observation, which seemed to suggest that, along with its other objectionable qualities, there was something effetely European about poison-murder).

Less than ten minutes after he began, Gardiner made a little bow and excused himself, turning the proceedings over to his assistant, James Osborne.
⁵

Born and raised on a plantation in North Carolina, the forty-year-old Osborne had attended school in both his home state and Virginia before coming North to earn a law degree at Columbia. After a few years of private practice, he had joined the district attorney’s office and quickly earned a reputation as an outstanding trial attorney. As a cross-examiner, he was known to be “sly, and he could be ferocious.” He also had a flair for courtroom theatrics—a great gift in the eyes of his superior, Colonel Gardiner, for whom “melodrama was an attribute of successful prosecution.”
⁶

It was a few minutes after noon when the first witness, Harry Cornish, took the stand. By then, the room was thick with cigar smoke. With the outside temperature hovering around zero, opening a window was out of the question. The pleas of Coroner’s Clerk John Kelly—who stood up to announce that he did “not think smoking was nice or that it showed proper respect to the Court”—were unavailing. The atmosphere, lamented one reporter, “soon became positively vile.”
⁷

Apart from a brief lunch recess, Cornish remained on the stand in that stuffy little room for more than four hours. His suit was of a conservative cut, his collar stiff and high, his cravat neatly tied. In the weeks that had elapsed since he sampled the poisoned bromo-seltzer, he had regained the weight he had lost during his subsequent illness. With his prognathous jaw, bullet-headed dome, and seemingly permanent scowl, he looked as forbidding as ever.

Osborne, however, was not the least bit intimidated. He began by asking Cornish to “tell what you know of the death of Mrs. Kate J. Adams and so much of the facts concerning your own life as is connected with the subject.” When Cornish hesitated, staring down at the floor as if collecting his thoughts, Osborne repeated the question so sharply that Cornish seemed taken aback.

“I don’t know just where to begin,” he said.

“Begin at the receipt of the poison,” Osborne replied, as if speaking to a child.

Leaning back in his chair, the athletic director launched into the now familiar story. He had told it so many times before—to the police, to Gardiner and his assistants, to reporters from a half dozen different papers—that he could recite it by rote.

He told of receiving the anonymous gift and assuming it was meant as a gag; of scissoring out and saving the address; of the close call experienced by his friend Harry King, who would have fixed himself a glass of the lethal bromo-seltzer if the water cooler hadn’t been empty; of bringing home the items to the flat he shared with Mrs. Adams and Florence Rodgers; of the older woman’s terrible death and his own devastating sickness, during which he had lost fifteen pounds in less than forty-eight hours.

At that point, Osborne interrupted and, speaking in an impatient tone, told Cornish not simply to repeat statements he had already made but to “tell the facts as you recall them now.”

Again, Cornish seemed nonplussed. He was having trouble responding to such open-ended instructions. He would rather answer specific questions.

Osborne, however, ignored him. “Now, Cornish,” he said, “can you suggest anything as a motive in this case?”

Cornish insisted that he had never done anything in his life that would “warrant a thing like this being done.”

Osborne seemed skeptical. “Tell me so much of your private affairs as would throw light on this case,” he said.

“I can say this much,” Cornish answered. “There is absolutely no possibility of there being any reason for a thing of this kind being done on account of my personal affairs, or on account of any woman, or on account of anyone having a reason to be jealous of me, or anything of that kind. If anybody has done anything, it is for some motive I can’t understand. I have told the police everything.”

“That is what you had better do here,” Osborne said in a warning tone.

For a moment, the two men glared at each other while Cornish played with one waxed tip of his mustache.

“Tell me, Cornish,” Osborne said, shifting tacks. “Did you know when Barnet died?”

“Why, yes,” said the other. “I knew he was dead. I was told he died of typhoid fever.”

“While you were superintendent of the club,” Osborne asked, “didn’t you and Barnet have a little trouble?”

Cornish shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

Osborne raised his eyebrows in an expression of mock surprise. “Do you mean to say that you don’t remember the time that Barnet complained because he had to walk from his room to the bathroom and the floor wasn’t being kept clean?”

“I never heard of that before,” Cornish growled.

Abruptly, as if deliberately trying to keep the witness off balance, Osborne reverted to a question about the poison package. “Now, Cornish,” he demanded, “tell me any evidence you have that would suggest a motive for sending you that bottle of powder.”

“I can’t think of anybody who would have a motive to do a thing of that kind,” responded Cornish, who seemed intent on establishing that he had led an utterly blameless life.

His voice rising to a near-shout, Osborne said, “I ask you, Cornish, to tell all the facts that may throw light on the case. Tell the jury without any more hemming and hawing about it.”

Cornish did not immediately reply. After studying the floor for several moments, he conceded that “charges had twice been preferred against him” by two members of the club.

“What were the names of the two men involved?” demanded Osborne.

“Mr. Molineux,” said Cornish, “and Mr. Barnet.”

After further prodding by Osborne, he described the incident in which Roland had demanded his resignation after learning that Cornish had been spreading “disparaging” rumors—namely, that Molineux owned buildings in Newark that were used as gambling dens and whorehouses.