The Girls of Murder City (36 page)

There also was one more consideration for the attorneys: the so-called beauty-proof jury, like the one that had set free “Beautiful Beulah” Annan.

“Would you let a stylish hat make you find her ‘not guilty’?” Assistant State’s Attorney Hamilton asked a jury candidate. He asked other potential jurors similar questions about their susceptibility to high fashion and carefully rouged female faces. In the end, everyone the state accepted declared himself suitably armored against such feminine wiles.

Maurine Watkins, after the disaster of Beulah’s trial, found the whole thing a farce. She wrote that many prospective jurors, wanting to be part of the trial at any cost, struggled to come up with what they thought the attorneys wanted to hear, and “the questioning went merrily on to find a hat-proof, sex-proof, and ‘damp’ jury, who would also accept circumstantial evidence as conclusive.” Though she joked about it in the
Tribune,
Maurine worried that she’d get another “moron jury” that wasn’t capable of doing the right thing. “The essence of Christianity is to think of other people,” she later remarked. “That doesn’t mean to give an easy break. The juryman with his maudlin sentiment may think he’s practicing Christianity when he gives an acquittal and in some instances he may be, but there is just as much Christianity in having your sympathy with the man who was killed and in restraining the individual.”

After a full day, most of the jury had been selected, and the trial was scheduled to get under way the next afternoon. Matrons escorted Belva back to the women’s section of the jail, with reporters striding along behind them in the hope that the defendant would be in a talkative mood before deadline. They were disappointed. Belva smiled and said she felt fine but had nothing more than that to say.

In the morning, Maurine’s report once again made clear her sympathy for the city’s prosecutors. “Demure but with an ‘Air’ at Murder Trial,” the subhead teased. The story itself was even more direct. Like Beulah, Belva was trying to fool jurors with womanly razzmatazz.

Cabaret dancer and twice divorcee, Mrs. Gaertner was as demure as any convent girl—yesterday!—with brown eyes dreamily cast downward. Her lips were closed in a not-quite smile, the contour of her cheek was unbroken by lines, and rejuvenating rouge made her well on the dangerous side of 30.

It was another jazzy, satirical performance—and one that hit hard. Maurine described, in stark contrast to Belva’s rouged, dangerous appearance, the sad, “sweet-faced” widow in the front row, decked in mourning attire, looking younger still than the aggressively made-up Belva and not at all dangerous. Maurine claimed that, of the two women, Mrs. Law “seemed more concerned.”

If Maurine’s eviscerating story in the
Tribune
bothered Belva or her lawyers, they didn’t show it when they came into court.
¹⁴
Belva once again looked fabulous, with a new dress “that clung in soft folds to her body.” She smiled dutifully as flashbulbs popped. (“I hear Belva got a lot of compliments on how she looked when she walked into court this morning,” one inmate said to Ione Quinby when the reporter came through the jail later in the day.) With court fans once again blocking the aisle and falling over each other, Judge Lindsay kept the entrance theatrics to a minimum this time. He hurried along the questioning of more juror prospects, and the final four jurors were quickly identified and accepted. At two P.M., after a lunch break, Hamilton and Pritzker launched into their opening statement, declaring that they would prove Belva E. Gaertner had fired the bullet that killed Walter Law and had even tried to dispose of the body before deciding the dead man was too heavy to move.

Nash seemed unperturbed by this salvo. He waived an opening statement. He was counting on the fact, Maurine pointed out, that there were no witnesses: “Just a man found dead, slumped over the steering wheel of Mrs. Gaertner’s car, a bullet in his head from her pistol left lying on the sedan floor.” Maurine added with icy mockery that Belva was expected to testify on her own behalf, and that, with her defense based solely on her lack of memory of the murder, the testimony “will at least be unique.”

First, though, the state presented its evidence. Prosecutors brought out a pair of bloodstained silver dance slippers to show the jury. Belva “stared, chin in hand,” as Assistant State’s Attorney Hamilton insisted that the slippers put her up close with the victim at the time of his death. Taking the stand, Dr. William D. McNally, the coroner’s chemist, described how he did his work, gesturing mindlessly with one of Belva’s slippers, which he held in his hand while giving testimony. “Now, a small strip of fabric was removed and dissolved in a salt solution,” he said. “Then the usual chemical tests were made—placed under a spectroscope, acetic acid, crystals obtained—indicating human blood.”

The newspapers latched onto the stylish footwear. “They had been effective with the green velvet gown she had worn that fatal night. They had carried her through that last dance,” wrote the
Daily News,
attempting to mimic the humorous bent in Maurine’s stories. Maurine, of course, topped the competition, writing that it was Belva’s “twinkling feet” in those silver slippers that “had danced her into Overbeck’s [
sic
] heart, when she was Belle Brown, cabaret girl; that had carried her to—and from!—a bridle path romance with Gaertner, wealthy manufacturer; that had stolen her into a ‘palship’ with a young married man—and then to a murder trial.” For all the florid newspaper prose they inspired, however, the slippers proved only that Belva had been at the crime scene, which the defense already acknowledged.

A more promising witness for the state was the coroner’s physician, Joseph Springer, who testified that a gun “must be held within fifteen inches or so to make powder burns.”

“From the absence of these, is it your opinion that he did not shoot himself?” Hamilton asked.

Springer nodded. “He did not.”

The defense, almost completely mute until now, refused to accept so definitive a statement. Nash’s associate, Michael Ahern, approached the witness and, saying he would pose as Law, asked Springer to hold the pistol at the correct angle and distance from the victim. Springer agreed, placed Ahern just so, and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked violently, drawing gasps from around the room. But Ahern didn’t even flinch.

“There! You see,” the lawyer said, twisting his arm to show how he could hold the gun himself where Springer had it. He imitated a man holding a gun to his own head and leaning away in fear, eyes clenched in anticipation of impact. “He could have killed himself.”

“He could not!” Springer whined as Ahern strutted back to the defense table.

William F. Leathers, headwaiter at the Gingham Inn, was next. Belva had insisted from the beginning that she was too drunk on the night of the murder to remember what happened to Walter Law, and so the state wanted to suggest otherwise. “They ordered three bottles of ginger ale, family-size, eleven-ounce bottles. I waited on them myself,” Leathers said. “No, their steps were not unsteady. They seemed perfectly sober when they were dancing.” He added: “I wish that I had always remained as sober as they were.”

As more witnesses took turns on the witness stand—a series of policemen followed Leathers—Maurine homed in on Belva’s “virtuous calm” during the testimony. It irritated her. She ratcheted up her attack on the woman who had sat patiently and politely for numerous interviews with the young reporter over the weeks.

Her sultry eyes never lost their dreaminess as policemen described the dead body slumped over the wheel of her Nash sedan—the matted hair around the wound, the blood that dripped in pools—and her revolver and “fifth” of gin lying on the floor. Her sensuous mouth kept its soft curves as they told of finding her in her apartment—4809 Forrestville avenue—with blood on coat, blood on her dress of green velvet and silver cloth, and blood on the silver slippers.

Not all of the observers present saw only steely calm. A reporter from the
Atlanta Constitution,
sent north specifically for the trial, declared that “Mrs. Gaertner lost her composure and trembled as the prosecution exhibited bloodstained clothing she wore the night Walter Law, an automobile salesman, was shot and killed in her sedan.” The
Daily News
and the
Evening Post
also noted signs of nervousness in Belva as she listened to testimony.

Maurine refused to attribute such human emotions to the defendant. She worried that she hadn’t been hard enough on Beulah Annan, that she’d underestimated her and thus helped free the beautiful killer. She would make sure there was no doubt about Belva Gaertner’s guilt. This sense of mission, however, didn’t cause her to lose her sense of humor. In fact, it sharpened her wit. She would pepper her trial stories with sly digs at Belva and the jury, at witnesses and lawyers and court fans. Dr. Springer, she wrote, “identified the gin bottle which was found lying on the floor of the car. Belva’s jury, selected for their lack of prejudice in favor of the Volstead act, pepped up a bit at sight of this, and Belva herself leaned forward. But it was empty.” Maurine laughed openly at the testimony of the Gingham Inn’s Bert Brown, who claimed the establishment served “nothing stronger than ginger ale.”

According to his statement, the Gingham Inn is matched in dryness only by the Sahara; no liquor is sold there, no liquor is brought there, no liquor is displayed there on table, floor, or under cover.

In describing a policeman’s testimony, Maurine even managed a playful swipe at Belva’s vaunted clothes sense, skillfully insinuating along the way that the defendant was both a liar and a whore. Belva, she wrote, “couldn’t shake her head nor nod approvingly at the testimony, for she doesn’t ‘remember,’ but she could show impatience as the officer floundered in describing her clothes. But—to his relief—they were admitted in evidence; the mashed hat and rumpled coat, the ‘one more struggle and I’m free’ dress, and the flimsy slippers.”

The trial moved swiftly. Straightforward and uneventful, it was given to the jury on Thursday, having lasted less than two days in total. Belva, to the disappointment of the crowded room, did not testify.

As the state completed its closing argument, Maurine saw reasons to be optimistic. Freda Law’s brief testimony, during which she identified a bloodied hat as belonging to her late husband, was so pathetic that surely even the hardest juryman’s heart broke. Lieutenant Egan, who had interrogated Belva the night of the shooting, testified that she was only “intoxicated enough to be cunning.” And there was no cynical, fanciful defense, like the one Stewart and O’Brien had put on for Beulah Annan. In fact, there was essentially no defense at all. Nash and his colleagues “refused to present evidence and waived their closing argument.”

These reasons for hope soon suffered, however. Nash, in refusing a closing argument, declared the case purely circumstantial and asked for a dismissal. Judge Lindsay refused the request but, out of the hearing of the jury, agreed “that there was not sufficient evidence to cause the Supreme Court to uphold a verdict of guilty.” Nash had done an excellent job of playing possum, coming alive at opportune moments to punch holes in the state’s evidence. Lindsay said that he couldn’t “tell the state’s attorney what to do. But if the jury should bring in a verdict of guilty, I am confident the Supreme Court would reverse the decision, as the evidence is only circumstantial; strong enough to rouse suspicion of guilt, but not to convict.”

Pritzker and his team ignored the judge’s warning. They were willing to take their chances with the higher court. They asked for life imprisonment, not the death penalty. Lindsay gave final instructions to the jury, landing hard on the definition of reasonable doubt. He reminded jurors “not to assume that, because the defendant might have committed the crime, she necessarily did commit it.” As the judge motioned to Belva, a reporter observed, they “turned to stare at the slim, youthfully rounded creature who’d never looked prettier.” The defendant offered a small, brave smile as twelve pairs of eyes fell on her. At four P.M., the jurors left the room.