The Valentino Affair (26 page)

Steuer took no further part in the case, much to Uterhart’s relief. All this talk of dubious divorce settlements was deflecting attention away from Uterhart’s primary goal: swinging public sentiment in favor of his client. Her condition, he warned, was declining again, and could only be ameliorated by another visit from her son, and yet the de Saulles family was playing hardball over access. Uterhart professed himself disgusted by their intransigence and baffled by Jack Jr.’s continued absence from the jail. Caroline Degener scoffed that there was “no mystery”
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about the boy’s whereabouts. “He is with Mrs. Heckscher and a nurse.”
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August 14

The clearest demonstration yet of the public support for Blanca came from a most unexpected quarter. Out of the blue, Joan Sawyer offered herself as a sacrificial lamb for the defense. In an open letter to the press, she wrote: “I am very sorry Mrs. De Saulles is in this deep trouble, and if I can help her by having my name and reputation blasted publicly, I am at her service.”
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Such apparent selflessness probably owed more to a craving for publicity
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—since the divorce Joan’s career had nose-dived—than from a genuine desire to help her former rival. Especially as, tacked on the end of Joan’s statement, was this barbed threat: “If the counsel for the defense will look into the matter more carefully I think they will find it agreeable to save me from more unjust and unpleasant notoriety.”
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Joan seemed to be saying:
Go easy on my name during the trial. You don’t know what I might reveal about the defendant.
Understandably in the circumstances, Uterhart refused to be drawn out, continuing instead to bang the drum about his client’s frail health. According to him her pulse was now “barely discernible.”
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At long last the warring parties thrashed out an agreement over the issue of regular visitation rights for Jack Jr. In a letter from attorney George Gordon Battle to Uterhart, he stated, “I am directed by Charles A. H. De Saulles to inform you that John Longer De Saulles Jr. will call tomorrow, August 15, at Mineola Jail, at 11 a.m., for the purpose of visiting his mother, Mrs. Blanca De Saulles. I am further directed to say to you that the boy will visit his mother at any reasonable time she may desire . . . if she will manifest this desire in writing to me at least twenty-four hours before such visit.”
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This was a major victory for Blanca, and more good news followed, this time from Chile: Señora Errázuriz-Vergara, her son Guillermo, and other daughter Amalia had left Valparaíso aboard the steamship
Palena
for New York. The family had also been pulling strings on the diplomatic front, with the announcement that the Chilean Embassy had commissioned Guillermo as a special attaché, which gave him official standing in America, thereby materially aiding his efforts on behalf of his imprisoned sister.

August 15

The next day, as promised, Jack Jr. was brought to the jail. In the car with him were Caroline Degener and Mrs. Heckscher. To avoid the scrum of reporters, they pulled up at the rear entrance. Also with them was private detective Harry V. Dougherty, who carried Jack Jr. to his mother’s room while the two women remained in the car. Blanca was lying on the bed but didn’t rise to greet her son. Jack Jr. kissed her and then played for half an hour in the room, fascinated by a brass birdcage that his mother had bought. Once again, reporters viewed the meeting from a distance. Sheriff Seaman shook his head and expressed worries about Blanca’s deterioration, saying that she now ate little and spent most of her time in bed. The press lapped it up. One report claimed that since her incarceration—just eleven days—the prisoner had lost forty pounds!

But the visit from Jack Jr. obviously provided a tonic, and over the next few days Blanca’s health improved. She was sleeping better, and her demeanor became brighter, more cheerful. Under Dr. Cleghorn’s tutelage, Blanca began a course of calisthenics. For the first time in a couple of days, she was able to leave her bed and, with Suzanne’s assistance, waded through the estimated fifteen hundred letters she had received. Some came from cranks, but the vast majority was from well-wishers, offering support. The letters came in such abundance that Sheriff Seaman had to place three large boxes in Blanca’s room to accommodate them all. Never in the history of Nassau County, said Seaman, had any prisoner received so much correspondence. Nor did interest in the case limit itself to America. Across the Atlantic, the London
Daily Mirror
splashed images of the photogenic Blanca de Saulles, her late ex-husband, and son, telling readers that the prisoner was “an immensely wealthy woman.”
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Such coverage gave Uterhart palpitations. But that was nothing compared to the devastating blow he received on August 25, when his longtime partner, John J. Graham, died at his home on Jericho Road in Syosset. His health problems began while he was representing Florence Carman. The strain of that case, it was said, had played havoc with his heart. He collapsed at the Belmont racetrack and had been ill for several months, but no one suspected the seriousness of it. Uterhart must have wondered if defending Blanca de Saulles would have a similar effect on him.

ELEVEN

Indictment

A
S SUMMER FADED INTO FALL, THE CUSTODY BATTLE HEATED UP.

On September 4, Charles de Saulles obtained an order from Surrogate
¹
Robert Fowler directing that Blanca show cause why he shouldn’t be appointed general guardian. Uterhart’s disdain was palpable. “Of course the petition will be opposed,”
²
he told reporters. Moreover, he feared that serving the papers might cause his client to break down. “Mrs. De Saulles took the matter very hard, but had recovered somewhat before I left her at 6 o’clock.”
³

He explained that earlier that day Blanca had shown a greater interest in the admittedly cramped world around her, staring out from her jailhouse window at the lines of soldiers from the newly established Camp Mills being drilled on the plain. Overhead, fragile biplanes from the nearby Hazelhurst Aviation Field skittered and wheeled in the crystal clear sky, grimly heralding a new frontier in warfare. According to Uterhart, as Blanca watched all of this, her mood darkened. Then came the hammer blow of the de Saulles family’s petition.

“My client will insist that I oppose this application,” he announced, “and I shall do so on the ground that a proceeding is unnecessary at this time. . . . There is less reason for changing the guardianship of the boy at this time, as he is being well cared for by his father’s other relatives.”
⁴
The dry legalese frustrated the press pack, who drifted away, wondering how best to placate impatient editors who demanded personality-driven pieces in order to maintain public interest. It turned out they had just twenty-four hours to kill before the next big development.

The following day, after weeks at sea, Señora Errázuriz-Vergara disembarked in Havana and made immediate preparations for the second leg of her journey, from Key West to Washington, on Henry Flagler’s recently completed Overseas Railroad. Once in Washington, she was expected to confer with the Chilean ambassador and other friends. The family’s millions were already being put to good use, as Uterhart announced that another Long Island legal heavyweight, former Nassau County judge Lewis J. Smith, had joined the defense team. Significantly, Smith had been the prosecutor in the Carman case, a chastening experience that gave him invaluable insight into the difficulties of convicting a wealthy defendant. Uterhart also told the press that he intended to greet Señora Errázuriz-Vergara in New York when she arrived.

The lawyer held true to his word. At 3:55 p.m. on September 10, he was standing on the platform at Penn Station when the train carrying the party from Chile wheezed to a halt. The señora—two days behind schedule, owing to a busy round of arm-twisting in Washington—looked elegant as always. Clean-cut Guillermo, in his gray lounge suit and tennis shoes, could have been on his way to the club for a game of squash. Only Amalia, her light brown suit badly wrinkled by travel, showed any ill-effects from the three-week journey. Comparisons to her younger sister inevitably followed, and the best that anyone could manage to describe her appearance was “wholesome.”
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Uterhart guided the family to his vehicle and then chauffeured them to Crossways, where they would remain for the duration of the ordeal. An unruly caravan of reporters chased them every yard of the way. At Crossways, the señora refused interview requests but, after some hesitation, turned to Uterhart. “Tell them this,” she said in a flawless English accent, “that I am here to do for my daughter all that a mother can do. That is all I will or can say at this time.”
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Shortly afterward, Señora Errázuriz-Vergara and Guillermo were driven to the jail. Amalia motored instead to the East Williston home of the Igleharts, who had visited Blanca regularly since her incarceration. At 5:30 p.m. the auto carrying the señora and her son drew up at the rear of the jail, and they hurried in. The señora, dressed in black and wearing a heavy black veil, was said to be in mourning for a relative who had died recently. She seemed frail. On the steps she required assistance from her son as she stumbled and nearly fell.

Inside, Sheriff Seaman bowed and scraped and led the way to Blanca’s second-floor room. Curiously, before the reunion, the señora, overcome again, had to rest to compose herself before seeing her daughter. Accounts of their meeting are sketchy, but it doesn’t appear to have been excessively warm. Señora Errázuriz-Vergara had never forgiven Jack for that frightful scene in Paris, which she blamed on Blanca’s reckless liaison with such an obvious fortune hunter. Today, though, was all about pragmatism: getting the full details of the crime and determining how best to clean up this humiliating mess. She and Blanca huddled together for more than two hours. The relationship must have thawed a little because, as she left, the señora pointed to four doves on the coping over Blanca’s cell window and radiated delight, taking them as a good omen.

Two days later the matriarch returned to the jailhouse, this time with Amalia. Blanca hugged the sister she hadn’t seen since her seclusion at the Hotel Majestic during the divorce hearing. The meeting lasted several hours, and at its conclusion Blanca was said to be in much better spirits, despite not having seen her son for two weeks. Once again the de Saulles family was quibbling over the contentious visitation rights. Their grievance harked back to August 15, when Battle had laid out the stipulation of a twenty-four-hour notice for each visit. At the time Blanca stated that she wished to see her son every day from ten o’clock to noon. Battle sniffed that daily visits were not “reasonable,”
⁷
countering that the family felt that twice a week would be appropriate. The two sides met at the Bar Association to hammer out a compromise, but the meeting ended in discord. Blanca’s refusal to comply with their condition of a written request for each visit meant that she hadn’t seen her son since August 28.

More frustration came with the agonizing slowness of the judicial process. Because of a shortage of available Supreme Court justices, no grand jury could be called in September. Therefore an indictment would not be returned until October at the earliest. A further delay would follow until a trial date was set.

But until then, Blanca had other battles to fight. To no one’s surprise, Uterhart went to court to oppose Charles de Saulles’s guardianship application. When the date of Blanca’s trial was set, he declared that he wouldn’t oppose the appointment of Mrs. G. Maurice Heckscher as temporary guardian—but until such time Blanca was the child’s legal guardian and entitled to regular visits.

Former US senator James A. Gorman contended, for the petitioner, that Blanca had “incapacitated herself”
⁸
from acting as her son’s guardian. Because her relatives were aliens, the boy’s relatives on his father’s side should be appointed. Furthermore, upon the death of his father, Jack Jr. had inherited a house and nine acres in Nassau County, reason enough, said Gorman, for a guardian to be appointed.

Uterhart countered, quite reasonably, that Blanca must be considered innocent until found guilty, but he worried about the adverse impact of all this bickering on his client.

I do not think the case of Mrs. De Saulles should be prejudiced in the eyes of the community and of persons likely to be called on the jury, through having newspaper headlines state that the Surrogate has taken this mother’s boy away from her. . . . I do not believe it fair for the court to exercise discretion by appointing as guardian the bitterest enemy of the mother. If the court insists on appointing a guardian, we would not object to Mrs. G. Maurice Heckscher.
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