The Valentino Affair (32 page)

On cross-examination Uterhart attempted to trip up Caroline over the exact time of the shooting. To every question she replied, “I cannot tell you.”
³¹
But Uterhart was like a dog with a bone, constantly chewing away at the timeline. Caroline’s patience finally snapped. Fixing Uterhart with a fearsome glare, she snapped that she was unable to say exactly what happened at what time as she was
too busy
trying to soothe Jack Jr.,
too busy
arranging for the ambulance, and
too busy
telephoning the police! Uterhart reeled back, startled by such vehemence, and, realizing that there was no more to be gained, released her.

Contrary to pretrial rumors, Arthur Brice de Saulles was well enough to testify. Since the shooting, the seventy-six-year-old’s health had deteriorated badly, and he looked broken in body and spirit as a valet assisted him to the stand. With his snowy white hair and a mustache to match, he evinced an air of patrician stolidity and Victorian integrity. But even this old soldier wasn’t expecting Weeks’s first question: “Do you know Mrs. De Saulles?”
³²
He looked first at the prosecutor and then at his former daughter-in-law. “You mean Mrs. De Saulles, John’s wife?”

“Yes; do you know her?” Weeks asked again for the sake of legal formality.

“Well, I think I ought to,”
³³
the major replied in a quavering voice that shook with emotion. Under gentle prompting, he gave his account of Blanca entering the room and then opening fire. He asserted that as she shot Jack she exclaimed, “If I can’t have my boy, take that.”
³⁴

“What was your son’s position at the time she shot him?”

“He had turned so he was facing the windows.”

“Was his back toward her?”

“Completely toward her.”
³⁵

This was the response that Weeks had been after and he stressed it for the jury’s sake.

“What did your son do after the shots were fired?”

“I saw him stagger and ran to his side as he fell. I began to search for the wounds, but I couldn’t find any, though I saw that the arm was broken. Then the valet came, and he and I carried the poor boy to the couch.”
³⁶

It was powerful stuff, made more so by the major’s tightly controlled delivery. The patriarch of the de Saulles clan, although struggling with his emotions and his health, was determined to do right by his son. Inadvertently, however, his testimony proved a boon to the defense. Singularly lacking from Major de Saulles’s version of events was any mention of Marshall Ward being present at the time of the shooting, dealing another hammer blow to Ward’s credibility. In the circumstances, Uterhart wisely decided not to cross-examine, and the major, in a state of near collapse, was escorted from the court. Relatives and family friends rushed to his side as he was taken into an adjoining room where a doctor administered medical treatment.

The prosecution moved at a fast pace. Next came Constable Leonard Thorne. He told how he and Sheriff Seaman had placed the defendant under arrest and had asked her where the revolver was. She had directed them to a stand in the hall. Thorne said he had recovered the weapon from the hall, and he held the .32 Smith & Wesson aloft for the jury to see. Weeks did his best to milk the moment, but it was noticeable that when he showed the misshapen bullets to the jurymen, most averted their eyes, with some preferring to look at the ground. Blanca did neither. Not a flicker of emotion clouded her face when the gun or bullets were produced. Thorne told how, when they were driving Blanca to be committed, he had asked, “Why did you shoot your husband?”

“Because he wouldn’t give me my child; I hope he dies.”
³⁷

Once inside the jail, he said, Blanca had asked to make a phone call to the Ritz-Carlton hotel. She had spoken to Captain Lydig, in an attempt to get bail for her maid, but his incredulous response had infuriated her. She snapped peevishly, “All this, my God, my God, that makes me tired.”
³⁸
(The state had wanted to add Captain Lydig to its list of witnesses, but his duties with the army made him unavailable to testify.)

Uterhart kept his cross-examination brief. He needed the jury to gain some sense of Blanca’s physical condition on the night of the shooting and Thorne readily obliged. “She hadn’t any color.”
³⁹

Sheriff Seaman took the witness stand next. Before the trial, showing scant regard either for the law or his official duties, he had professed astonishment that the state intended to call him as a witness. This was scarcely surprising, as since Blanca’s incarceration he had acted more like a considerate uncle than an officer of the law. As his testimony unfolded, it became clear to everyone in court that the sheriff seemed more of an accomplice than a witness. The low point came when Weeks said, “Did you hear Mrs. De Saulles ask while coming from Hempstead to the Mineola jail: ‘Will they electrocute me right away?’ ” All he got from the sheriff was a long, noncommittal pause.

Weeks waited.

No answer.

He asked the question a second time. This time Seaman did respond, “Somebody said that while we were in the car, but I don’t know if she said it.”
⁴⁰
Weeks was almost speechless. The sheriff’s treachery—there could be no other word for it—had stunned him. Rather than let this debacle slide further out of hand, Weeks whispered that he had no further questions.

Unusually for a prosecution witness, Seaman appeared far more comfortable during cross-examination. Like Thorne, he stressed Blanca’s extreme pallor and cool attitude, and the jury was visibly fascinated by the sheriff’s description of Blanca’s mental state. “In my judgment she was far from being a well woman,” he said. “She walked into the jail with her hands in the pockets of her sweater and said that the place looked like a zoo. She gave a funny little laugh every once in a while. There was a clothesline in her cell and I took it out. I was afraid she might make away with herself.”
⁴¹

Under Uterhart’s gentle coaxing, Seaman continued: “I didn’t think she was quite right and phoned for Dr. Guy Cleghorn, the jail physician. After he had examined her he advised me to have her removed from the cell to a room. I got a certificate from the doctor which said that the removal should be made on account of her extreme nervousness and mental condition.”
⁴²
At this juncture, Uterhart asked for the certificate to be entered into evidence. Over an objection from Weeks, Justice Manning allowed it.

“Since she’s been in jail,” said Uterhart, “has Mrs. De Saulles ever asked for her boy?”

“Many times,”
⁴³
said Seaman. After this, Seaman was excused.

The next witness, Justice of the Peace Walter R. Jones, also took particular note of Blanca’s unusual self-control when he questioned her after the shooting. “She told me she was sorry to make so much trouble, and I said she was not half so much sorry for me as I was for her.”

“What was her physical appearance?” asked Uterhart.

“She was very white and so calm that she amazed me.”
⁴⁴

On this note, Justice Manning called a halt to the morning’s proceedings.

After the resumption, the state called Captain William A. Jones of the New York Police Department. The studious-looking Jones had helped pioneer the study of firearms identification and ballistics. Just recently he had played a part in the sensational case of convicted killer Charles Stielow, who once came within minutes of the electric chair before a temporary stay averted what would have been a grotesque miscarriage of justice. Thanks in large part to Jones’s evidence that Stielow’s .22 pistol couldn’t have been the murder weapon, the German-born farmhand saw his death sentence commuted and later quashed.
⁴⁵

It had already been a busy day for the fifty-four-year-old Jones. That morning in a Brooklyn courtroom for the trial of Charles Lynch, charged with murdering Patrick L. Shields, Jones had thrilled spectators by firing several bullets into a bucket of wadded cotton to demonstrate that rounds fired from this particular automatic—found in Lynch’s possession—matched bullets recovered from the body. The clinching evidence, Jones explained to the jury, was that the automatic had a defective barrel that left distinctive marks on each bullet.

After leaving Brooklyn, Jones had driven up the Motor Parkway to Mineola. He took the stand with a confidence born out of many years of courtroom experience. An excellent witness, he coolly and professionally explained how the .32 caliber hammerless Smith & Wesson worked. “It has a safety lock and requires pressure of the hand to be discharged,” he said. “At the same time you have to grip the case with the hand and press the trigger with the fingers to fire it. Pressure must be exerted for each shot.”
⁴⁶

Justice Manning interjected. “Do you mean . . . it requires two distinct motions of the hand to discharge it each time?”

“Yes,”
⁴⁷
said the witness. Despite Uterhart’s best efforts, he couldn’t make any headway with the gun expert and soon released him from the stand.

Next came Dr. Bryan C. Sword, the ambulance surgeon, who testified that he was called by phone to The Box, where he found Mr. de Saulles dying. Sword accompanied the victim to the hospital, but nothing could be done to save him.

The final witness was James Garriety, an orderly at Nassau Hospital, who testified that he helped carry de Saulles into a ward, where he undressed the wounded man. After de Saulles died at 10:20 that night, Garriety moved the body to the morgue adjoining the hospital.

As promised, Weeks had taken fewer than forty-eight hours to present the state’s witnesses. But he still had one final piece of evidence to present, a lengthy letter written by Jack to Blanca on May 2, 1917. This letter, said Weeks, demolished Blanca’s claim that custody of the boy on the night of the shooting was rightfully hers.

Our one thought in life must always be for Jack’s welfare, for we have made his start bad enough as it is. Therefore, in order to give you an opportunity to take a trip or trips to Chile with our boy, I agree that, so long as you obey the terms of the final decree, in spirit and letter (as I have no doubt you will), I will waive certain of my rights under it, and under our stipulations. In order that there may be no misunderstanding now or in the future as to what rights I waive, I now set the matter out in detail as follows . . .
⁴⁸

Over several densely worded paragraphs, Jack outlined his willingness to set aside the court’s ruling and allow Blanca to take their son to Chile from November through May if she so desired. Until that time he proposed that they split custody, with Blanca having the boy during the months of May, July, and September 1917, while he retained custody during the months of June, August, and October 1917. He ended by saying, “If you will write to me assenting to this and promising that you will abide by it, then we will consider the arrangement in effect.”
⁴⁹
Under the circumstances, it seemed a generous offer, and Weeks told the jury that in a reply, dated May 3, Blanca described this arrangement as “entirely satisfactory,” promising to carry out “the entire agreement”
⁵⁰
and to return the boy from Chile at the proper time.
⁵¹
Such an agreement on Blanca’s part, said Weeks, not only confirmed that on August 3 Jack Jr. was legally in the custody of his father but demonstrated that the defendant’s main aim on the night in question was not the recovery of her son but the cold-blooded murder of her ex-husband.

At 1:50 p.m., the state rested its case.