The Devil's Gentleman (39 page)

Leading Cornish to a nearby hotel, the reporter telephoned his office and asked for the city editor, who assured the athletic director that Molineux had indeed been found guilty. Cornish, who seemed very agitated, then repaired to the nearest bar, where, after downing a glass of whiskey, he asked for a pencil and paper and wrote out a statement that would be widely circulated on the following day: “I can’t see how any twelve men could hear that evidence and return any other verdict.”
¹⁰

While the General hurried out to say a final word of comfort to Roland, his older son, Leslie, remained behind to speak to the crush of reporters who were clamoring for a statement from a member of the Molineux family. An employee of the Lehigh Railway Company, the bald, bewhiskered Leslie might not have resembled his brothers, but, like them, he had been brought up to face any crisis with the fortitude befitting a son of the celebrated war hero.

“You can say for my father and myself,” he announced in a voice that rang with confidence, “that we have no fear as to the ultimate outcome of the case. My brother is innocent, and justice will eventually triumph. This is the beginning, not the ending.”
¹¹

72

T
he Molineux verdict was the talk of the town on Sunday, February 11. “All over the city, the principal topic of conversation wherever men met together was the finding of the jury declaring Roland B. Molineux guilty of murder in the first degree. On street corners and in the cars the name of Molineux went from lip to lip. Hotel lobbies buzzed with it, club gossip centered around it, and in the big poolrooms bets are already being made as to the possible reversal of judgment by the Court of Appeals.”
¹

In churches, too, ministers invoked Molineux’s name from the pulpit. After bitterly denouncing the jury for basing its decision “on intuition rather than evidence,” the Reverend Joseph A. Fisher of the Riverhead Congregational Church closed his sermon with an earnest petition for young Molineux. Dr. David Gregg of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church ended the afternoon rally at the Brooklyn YMCA Hall with a similar heartfelt prayer. “O God, help us all in such a way that we may not be put on trial for having committed a sin,” he implored. “We pray for the young man who has been on trial. We have been waiting and watching for the verdict. Now that it has come, we pray for the poor young man upon whom the verdict has been pronounced by his fellow men. We pray for the aged father—the stricken father.”

At another revival service, this one held at the First Baptist Church in Brooklyn, the Reverend John D. Wells drew a stern moral lesson from the case. “Think of that young man who has been condemned to death,” he admonished the congregation, “and who, unless there is a reversal by the Court of Appeals, must suffer the penalty. That is the condition of the unbeliever. Don’t believe there is any pardon for your sins after death, for there is not. Unless you are one with Christ, you are lost.”
²

Roland himself took an unusually active part in the Sunday religious services, as if to demonstrate to the world that—contrary to the insinuations of men such as the Reverend Wells—he was no infidel. After enjoying a perfectly untroubled night’s sleep, he awoke on Sunday morning—“his first day as a convicted murderer in the shadow of the death chair”—as “cheery and chipper as a cricket.” After consuming his usual breakfast of rolls, coffee, and two soft-boiled eggs, he took his morning constitutional in the prison yard, then attended the prayer meeting conducted by the prison chaplain, the Reverend J. J. Munroe. Reverend Munroe’s text was taken from the third chapter of John, verses eighteen and nineteen: “He who believeth in Him is not condemned, but he who believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

Molineux listened intently, then joined enthusiastically in the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.”

When the service ended, Roland was led back to his cell, where he was visited by Reverend Munroe. Reaching his hand through the grating of his door, Roland shook the chaplain’s hand and assured him, “I
am
a believer. And I have firm faith in God as to the outcome of my case.”
³

And indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the verdict, Roland behaved like a man who fully expected to be exonerated and not at all like a man who, as Warden Hagen put it, “has been convicted of one of the greatest crimes of the age, and who has only the Court of Appeals between himself and the electric chair.”

“I have seen many prisoners of all kinds and stations of life in homicide cases,” Hagen told a reporter for the
Sun,
“and there has always been some change after a verdict of guilty, particularly if they were found guilty of murder in the first degree. They have grown morose or sullen or nervous. With Molineux, there is nothing of the kind. I can’t see that the verdict has made the slightest difference in him. In all my experience, I never saw a man bear himself so calmly.”
⁴

As the venerable criminal attorney William Howe had predicted, there was much second-guessing of the gamble taken by Roland’s defense team. One of the city’s most respected citizens, General Ferdinand P. Earle, spoke for many when he told the
World,
“I think Mr. Weeks made a sad mistake in letting the case rest on the evidence brought by the prosecution.” The editorial page of
The New York Times
leveled a similar charge, declaring that “it was a grave error of the counsel for the defense not to introduce expert evidence to contradict the testimony of the prosecution’s handwriting experts.”
⁵

The belief that Weeks had made a fatal miscalculation was confirmed by one of the jurors, James J. Hynes. In an interview with one of Hearst’s reporters, Hynes asserted that the outcome of the trial might have been very different had Roland’s counsel “put in a defense. If Molineux had friends, or if his lawyers had witnesses who could have testified in his behalf, why weren’t they called?” It was Hynes’s firm belief that, “had the defense introduced evidence to refute the other side, it might at least have led to a mistrial.” Like many others, Hynes was also puzzled by the defense’s decision not to put Roland himself on the stand, given his impressive performance as a witness during the coroner’s inquest.
⁶

The widespread feeling that Roland should have been allowed to testify on his own behalf was powerfully reinforced on Friday, February 16, the morning of his sentencing. Called to the bar before Recorder Goff and a judge named Foster, Roland was granted permission to deliver a brief statement. Standing before the two jurists—shoulders back, chin up, voice clear and unwavering—he declared himself “absolutely and entirely innocent.” The evidence presented by the state “did not point in the direction of guilt on my part,” he insisted, particularly the testimony of Emma Miller, who had stuck to her story that Roland was not the man who had purchased the silver toothpick holder. Nor could Roland conceive “how any honest man could believe the testimony of Nicholas Heckmann,” who had initially refused to identify Molineux without payment. “Yellow journalism put a price upon my head,” Roland proclaimed. “It was an invitation to every blackmailer, every perjurer, every rogue, every man without principle but with a price. And to that invitation, Heckmann responded.”

Roland stoutly denied that he had ever possessed “any one of the articles used in the commission of this crime. Nor did I have at any time the least motive.”

As for the handwriting analysts, he pointed out that such supposed experts had made “mistakes before”—most notoriously in the Dreyfus affair, one of the “great injustices of history”—and “they have repeated them here.”

“Your Honor,” said Roland, “the handwriting experts who have testified against me may give their opinion, they may give their reasons, what they believe, what they think. But I know,” he continued, raising his hands, palms out, as though displaying them to the judges, “that these hands never put pen to paper to address that poison package or to write the disputed letters.”

Up until then, Roland had spoken in a calm, measured tone. Now, his voice began to grow louder and angrier until it had risen to a shout. “Your Honor,” he cried, “all this is as nothing compared to what is in my heart at this moment. Above all and beyond everything else, I denounce and despise the action of the district attorney in attempting to vilify and attack the character of the pure and lovely woman who bears my name. It was the act of a blackguard! It was a damnable act! It was a dastardly and villainous lie!”

Roland paused briefly to regain his composure. When he spoke again, the fury had drained from his voice, though his words carried a distinct note of defiance. “Your Honor,” he said, “I am now ready to hear the sentence. I am not afraid—for I am not guilty.”

Watching Roland’s performance, Clement Scott, the drama critic assigned by the
Herald
to cover the trial, found it “a wonderful exhibition of nerves, the most wonderful I have ever seen. There isn’t an actor in this city who isn’t more rattled every time he has to go on in his part.”
⁷
Another commentator, reporting for
The New York Times,
believed that, “had the Court not warned the crowd against any demonstration,” the audience might have delivered a standing ovation. As it was, “a deep, long-drawn sigh came from the spectators” that “seemed almost like an inward applause.”
⁸

Recorder Goff, however, was unmoved. Addressing the defendant in even tones, he said, “All the matters which you have referred to have been thoroughly sifted. They were examined by twelve men of as high a type of intelligence and honesty as ever sat in a jury box in this County of New York. Your devoted counsel, for two days without rest, with logic and reason and acuteness of argument, presented all these points to the jury, and that jury, rendering a conscientious verdict, found you guilty on the evidence presented. So far as this court is concerned, that is the last word. The court has but a duty to perform, and that is to pronounce sentence upon you as provided by law.”

Every person in the courtroom seemed to hold his breath as Goff spoke the next portentous words:

“The judgment of the Court,” he declared, “is that you, Roland Burnham Molineux, for murder in the first degree of Katherine J. Adams, whereof you are convicted, be, and hereby are, sentenced to the punishment of death.

“And it is ordered,” Goff continued in the absolute hush of the courtroom, “that within ten days after this day’s session of the Court, the Sheriff of the County of New York deliver you together with the warrant of this Court, to the agent and warden of the state prison of the State of New York at Sing Sing, where you shall be kept in solitary confinement until the week beginning Monday, the twenty-sixth of March 1900, and upon some day within the week so appointed, the said agent and warden of the state prison of the State of New York at Sing Sing is commanded to do execution upon you, Roland Burnham Molineux, in the manner and mode prescribed by the laws of the State of New York.”

Molineux remained perfectly still, staring straight into the eyes of the recorder, while the sentence was pronounced. He then bowed gravely, swiveled on his heels, and strode from the courtroom. His exit, declared
The New York Times,
“marked the close of the most famous criminal trial of modern times.”
⁹

Surrounded by officers, Molineux passed swiftly down the corridor to the doorway leading to the Bridge of Sighs. Before he descended the stairway, he was accosted by his old chum, Chuck Connors, who tried to shake his hand but was kept back by the guards. As Roland vanished down the stairwell, the self-appointed “mayor” of the Bowery became teary-eyed and shouted after him “broken asseverations of belief in his innocence.”
¹⁰

Inside the Tombs, Molineux was met by Sheriff Grell and his deputies, Daniel G. Kelly and Daniel J. Harris, who escorted him at once to his old cell. There, Molineux sat down on his bunk and awaited his transfer to Sing Sing.
¹¹

73

T
hough the sentence mandated that Roland’s transfer be accomplished within ten days, Sheriff Grell, in consultation with Bartow Weeks, decided not to wait. At approximately 1:00
P.M.
, just a few hours after the sentencing, a closed carriage drawn by two horses rolled into the prison yard. Inside his cell, Roland—who had just consumed a last catered luncheon of pork chops and boiled potatoes—bid a genial farewell to Warden Hagen. Then, with his right wrist cuffed to Deputy Kelly’s left, he was escorted into the waiting vehicle.

By that point, a crowd of an estimated two thousand people had congregated outside the prison. As the carriage passed through the wide-flung wagon gate, they surged forward, hoping for a glimpse of the nation’s most famous criminal. Two dozen officers under the command of Police Captain Titus fought to keep them back. Once the vehicle made its way through the mob, the driver applied his whip to the horses and the coach went clattering up Elm Street.

Forty minutes later—after slowing down at Madison Square to give Roland a chance to view the Dewey Arch he had read so much about—the vehicle arrived at Grand Central Station, where another horde had gathered at the main entrance. At Sheriff Grell’s direction, the driver pulled the coach around to the exit on Forty-second Street, where the party quickly alighted and passed through the baggage room and onto the train.

Still handcuffed to Kelly, Molineux was led to the smoking car, where his father and older brother, Leslie—who had arrived a half hour earlier—were waiting. “Hello, my boy,” said the General, reaching out his right hand. Noticing the steel bracelet shackling his son to the deputy, the old man mustered a smile and said, “Well, my boy, I suppose I will have to shake you by the left hand.”

“That’s all right, Governor,” said Roland, grasping his father’s extended hand and giving it a squeeze.

Reaching into the inside pocket of his coat, the General then extracted a leather case and offered cigars to Roland and his guards, all of whom gratefully accepted.

Outside on the platform, as a squad of policemen struggled to maintain order, an enormous throng pressed close to the train, straining to peer through the windows. Reaching up his free left hand, Roland pulled down the curtain, then settled back to read the newspapers his father had brought him. He was much amused by a front-page illustration in the
Evening World,
showing him with his nose stuck in the air as he denounced James Osborne. “Look at this,” he chuckled. “They always make me look as if I were trying to balance a broomstick on my chin.”

In the meantime, a steady parade of railroad employees—clerks, conductors, engineers, brakemen, ticket takers—began to troop through the car “like the stream of humanity that winds itself around the bier of a dead hero.”
¹
The car became so crammed with these curiosity seekers that Captain Price, in charge of the station house in the depot, posted guards at either end with orders not to admit anyone without a ticket.

Moments before the train started, Roland’s attorney George Gordon Battle hurried on board. The car being full, General Molineux gave up his seat and perched himself on the lap of his oldest son, Leslie, where he remained until the train reached Tarrytown.

At every stop along the way, dozens of men and women—many of whom had purchased tickets just so they could get a look at Roland—marched down the aisle. Some paused to bid him good luck. Roland was unfailingly polite to these well-wishers. For the most part, however, he did his best to ignore the gawking procession. He chatted easily with his father, brother, and lawyer, or peered out the window, commenting on the beauty of the Hudson River landscape. When the walls of Sing Sing finally came into sight just after 3:00
P.M.
, he “looked at it unconcernedly and yawned.”
²

So many people had gathered at the station to see the prisoner disembark from the train that it seemed to one observer “as though the entire town had turned out.”
³
Three coaches were waiting to transport the party to the prison. A half dozen reporters from the New York City press made a rush for the first, while the General, Leslie, and lawyer Battle climbed into the second. As they sped off, Sheriff Grell and his deputies led Roland to the rear car of the train and hurried him into the third carriage, which followed at some distance behind the others.

Another horde of locals, many armed with cameras, was milling around the entrance of the prison when the first two vehicles arrived. Principal Keeper James Connaughton was there, too, waiting to escort the prisoner inside.

Stepping down from his carriage with Leslie Molineux close behind him, George Gordon Battle introduced himself to the keeper, then, gesturing at Roland’s older brother, said, “This is Mr. Molineux.”

“All right, Molineux,” said Connaughton, “come along with me.” Grabbing Leslie by the arm, the burly keeper hurried him through the crowd and down the big stone stairway, where a sentry swung open a barred iron gate. In another instant, Leslie was hustled inside the prison and the gate clanged shut behind him.

Connaughton marched the baffled man into the reception room, where a state detective named Jackson was seated at his desk.

“Here’s Molineux,” said the keeper, releasing his hold on Leslie.

“That’s not Molineux,” said Jackson, who had seen Roland on several occasions. “Molineux’s a slim fellow, without a beard.”

“I’m his brother,” said Leslie to Connaughton, whose face had gone instantly red.

“Oh hell,” said the keeper, grabbing Leslie again and ushering him unceremoniously out of the room. Just as they approached the barred iron gate, Roland and his escort appeared on the opposite side. The gate was opened again, Roland and his warders were admitted, and the brothers enjoyed a laugh over the comedy of errors before Leslie was let outside.

The gate had just banged to again when the General appeared. Peering through the bars, he called out, “Roland!”

Roland, who had been freed from his handcuffs, stepped up to the gate and extended his right hand between the bars.

“Good-bye, Governor,” he said, giving his father’s hand a hearty shake.

“Good-bye, my boy,” said the General, his voice husky. “God bless you.”

As Roland was led away, the old man turned and mounted the stone steps, shaking his head and saying softly, “Well, well, well.” With Leslie and Battle beside him, he returned to his coach and was driven back to the station, where he and his companions took the 4:41 train back to the city.

By then, Roland Molineux—freshly bathed and dressed in his prison suit of black sackcloth—was already in his cell in the Death House.
⁴