October 24, 2024 • 55 mins
In 1898, two fatal poisonings horrified New Yorkers. When it emerged that both victims were connected to one person, a wealthy young chemist named Roland Molineux, the police thought they had their man. But proving their suspicions was easier said than done, and convicting Molineux would require creativity on the part of the police and the district attorney. Would their legal tricks succeed...or get their case thrown out?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Listener discretion advised. Catherine Adams woke up on the morning
of December twenty eighth, eighteen ninety eight, with a pounding headache.
It was the wine, she thought. The night before, Catherine,
(00:24):
a fifty two year old widow, her adult daughter Florence,
and their tenant, a distant relative of theirs named Harry Cornish,
had gone to the theater and then to a late
dinner at which they'd enjoyed. Catherine now thought, maybe a
little too much wine. Well, nothing to be done about it.
She got out of bed and began tidying their apartment,
(00:47):
a cozy second floor space only a block west of
Central Park on New York's Upper West Side. But an
hour later, the headache had only gotten worse. Catherine was
holding a moist washcloth to her head when her daughter
Florence emerged from her bedroom around nine a m. Florence,
seeing her mother's suffering, suggested that she take some Bromo seltzer,
(01:09):
a popular hangover remedy. Harry had brought a bottle home
only the day before. He'd received it in the mail,
along with a charming silver bottle holder. Earlier that week,
the package, addressed to Harry at his office at the
Knickerbocker Athletic Club had had no return address. Harry and
his coworkers had assumed it was a practical joke, a
(01:31):
gag gift reminding him not to drink too much over
the holidays. Katherine and Florence teased Harry that it had
come from a secret admirer, but whoever the center, Catherine
was grateful to them. Now, following the instructions on the bottle,
Catherine mixed a heaping teaspoonful of the powder into a
small glass of water and drank It. Tasted awful, so
(01:54):
bitter that she couldn't finish her water, leaving a mouthful
at the bottom of the glass. Awful, she said. Harry
teasingly took the glass and swallowed the remnants, saying, tastes
all right to me. It's supposed to be bitter. It's medicine.
But this medicine wasn't just bitter. There was something wrong
(02:15):
with it. Within minutes, Catherine was seized by a wave
of nausea. She pushed her way into the bathroom where
Florence was washing up, and began vomiting profusely, groaning in agony.
At first, Florence thought Catherine had just had a reaction
to the foul tasting medicine, but then she saw her
mother's face. It was a terrible blue color. Catherine bent
(02:40):
over the toilet, raised her hands to her daughter, and
then collapsed. Florence screamed for Harry in his bedroom. Harry
himself wasn't feeling so good. He was a strong, healthy man,
but he was suddenly feeling weak and queasy. When he
got to the bathroom, he found he couldn't lift Catherine,
(03:02):
something he should have been able to easily do. With
the help of their HouseGuest, Fred Hovey, Harry and Florence
maneuvered Catherine onto the couch and sent for a doctor.
By the time doctor Edwin Hitchcock arrived only a few
minutes later, Catherine's breathing was labored, her pulse was faint,
and her skin was clammy. Hitchcock administered stimulants and gave
(03:25):
Catherine artificial respiration. Harry Cornish's condition had worsened. Now he
was throwing up in the bathroom. Florence explained to doctor
Hitchcock that both Harry and her mother had taken some
bromo seltzer right before falling ill. The doctor examined the bottle,
then dipped a pinky finger into the powder, wiping all
(03:45):
but a single speck off. Hitchcock placed his fingertip to
his tongue and recoiled. He had tasted bitter almonds. This
was not medicine. It was cyanide. Harry Cornish, after several
days of suffering, managed to pull through. Catherine Adams was
(04:06):
not so lucky. She died shortly after doctor Hitchcock arrived.
Newspapers quickly jumped on the story. An anonymous poisoner delivering
death through the mail made for a good copy for
the city's tabloid style yellow papers, and soon enough the
story got even wilder because it turned out that Catherine
(04:28):
Adams was not the only person to die from cyanide
disguised as medicine in eighteen ninety eight. A month earlier,
a man named Henry Crossman Barnett had died after taking
a dose of Cutno's improved effervescent powder, another supposed hangover Keir.
Though Barnett's doctor had attributed his death to diphtheria, he'd
(04:50):
had the powder tested just in case and found cyanide.
And that wasn't the only connection between the two cases.
Henry Barnett had died in his room at the Knickerbocker
Athletic Club, the very club that Harry Cornish worked at.
Terror gripped New Yorkers. Was there a serial poisoner in
(05:12):
their midst The police would soon zero in on a
surprising suspect, but proving their case was easier said than done,
and their investigation would lead to a series of dramatic
courtroom confrontations whose outcomes still echo today. Welcome to History
on Trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward. This week New
(05:37):
York v. Rowland Malineux, Part one. Before the Nightmare began,
Edward Molineux was living the American dream. Born in England
in eighteen thirty three, Edward Kington New York. As a
small child, those early years were not easy, but Edward
(05:58):
was disciplined and determined. Soon enough, his hard work saw
him rise through the ranks of both the paint manufacturing
industry and the New York National Guard. His bravery and
compassionate leadership during the Civil War made him a hero
and earned him the rank of general. After the war,
he joined a new company, C. T. Reynolds and helped
(06:21):
turn it into the largest paint manufacturer in the country,
earning a fortune in the process. He and his beloved wife, Hattie,
had three handsome, intelligent sons. From the outside, everything seemed perfect,
but inside the Malnu brownstone on Fort Greene Place, something
(06:42):
dark was festering. The trouble was Roland, the Molinu's middle son,
born in eighteen sixty six. There was nothing outwardly wrong
with Roland. He was clever, well mannered, and exceptionally athletic,
A national champion in amateur gymnastics. He dressed beautifully and
was fastidious about his grooming. Roland was a talented chemist.
(07:07):
He worked first for his father's company, and then was
recruited away by Morris Herman and Co, another manufacturer, who
made him the superintendent and chief chemist of their Newark
paint factory. Roland was dedicated to his work, literally living
at his job. Herman and Co. Gave him an apartment
on the second floor of the factory, which Roland filled
(07:27):
with luxurious furnishings and stocked with dry paints and chemicals
so he could continue working after hours. Okay, so Roland
was athletic, clever, and industrious. These are all good things.
What's less appealing is constantly talking about how athletic, clever
and industrious you are, which seemed to be Roland's favorite activity. Plus,
(07:51):
Roland was a snob. He had a way of tilting
his head back and literally looking down his nose at people,
a chilly, superior way of speaking. He liked to be
the smartest person in the room, the strongest, the most powerful.
He didn't like people who got more attention than him,
So in a way, it's not surprising that Roland didn't
(08:13):
like Harry Cornish. The two men first met in early
eighteen ninety six, when Harry became athletic director of the
Knickerbocker Athletic Club. The newly opened Knickerbocker was a gym
and social club where New York's elite could play squash
and smoke cigars. To help boost the club's reputation, its owner,
(08:34):
Jay Herbert Ballentine, had recruited some of the city's best athletes,
including his friend Roland Molineu. Roland liked the club so
much that he'd taken an apartment on its second floor
and joined several of its management committees. Vallentine also recruited
a top notch staff, hiring Harry Cornish to be athletic
(08:55):
director in eighteen ninety six. Harry Cornish was one of
the most famous sportsman in America. He'd been the athletic
director of the Boston and Chicago Athletic Clubs, written a
book on physical training for Spalding, and organized the athletic
games at the eighteen ninety three Chicago World's Fair. His
appearance fit his reputation. At thirty two, Harry looked like
(09:18):
an ideal Victorian athlete, muscular and hyper masculine, with a
luxuriant handlebar mustache. His arrival at Knickerbocker made the news,
with The New York Times writing quote, as a mentor
and promoter of athletics, mister Cornish is without a peer.
Soon enough, people started calling the Knickerbockers athletes Cornish's men.
(09:44):
That rubbed Roland Molineux the wrong way. In his mind,
he should have been the star of the Knickerbocker. After all,
he was a national champion. Harry Cornish was just an employee.
Roland didn't like Harry on a personal level either. He
thought Harry was vulgar and coarse, and alleged that he
(10:05):
neglected the club's facilities. Throughout eighteen ninety six and eighteen
ninety seven, hostilities between the two men escalated. Roland got
some of Harry's powers removed. Harry spread rumors that Roland
owned a brothel. Tensions finally reached a crescendo in December
eighteen ninety seven, when a squabble between Roland and Harry
(10:27):
got escalated to the club's board. Roland issued the board
an ultimatum fire Harry Cornish or he would resign from
the club. Alas Roland had overestimated his own importance. Sure,
Harry was just an employee, but Roland was just a member.
(10:48):
There were plenty of rich, young athletes to take his place.
The board told Roland they were keeping Harry. Roland immediately
resigned his membership and moved out of his apartment, and
Harry Cornish, delighted, taunted Roland, saying, you son of a bitch.
You thought you'd get me out and I got you
(11:09):
out instead. Roland simply smiled at Harry, waved his hand
and said you win. But inside he was seething and
wrote letters to friends detailing all of Harry's flaws. Roland's
departure from the Knickerbocker wasn't the only blow he faced
(11:31):
in late eighteen ninety seven. He had also been bested
in love. That August, on a yacht in Rhode Island,
Roland had met a twenty three year old aspiring singer
named Blanche Cheesebrow. Blanche was a newcomer to Roland's elite set.
She'd had an unstable childhood, dragged around the country by
(11:53):
her father, a dreamer with an insatiable appetite for get
rich quick schemes. Blanche's siblings had all settled down. Two
of her sisters had married wealthy men, which is how
Blanche ended up on the yacht that summer. Her sisters
wanted her to meet a successful man too, but Blanche
had different dreams. A gifted singer, she wanted to pursue
(12:15):
a career on the stage. She'd had some success already,
performing at Carnegie Hall and working as a featured soloist
in a prestigious Brooklyn Church choir, but she wanted more.
She wanted to see the world have adventures. When she
met the thirty one year old Roland that summer, she
found he shared the same passion for music and traveling.
(12:39):
Roland immediately besotted with the charismatics. Stylish Blanche fed her fantasies,
describing trips they could take to see the symphony in
Paris or the opera in Milan. That autumn, Blanche and
Roland saw each other regularly in New York. Roland showered
Blanche with gifts and experiences, shows on Broadway, jewelry, from
(13:02):
Tiffany's dinner at Delmonico's. He was devoted, but Blanche was uneasy.
She enjoyed Roland's company, but something was missing. I wanted
passion and love in my life, she would write years later,
I wanted my existence to be fervid and glowing. With Roland,
(13:24):
that passion was lacking, especially physically. In early November eighteen
ninety seven, Blanche and Roland were at the Metropolitan Opera
when they ran into a friend of Roland's, Henry Crossman.
Barnett Barney, as he was known, also lived at the Knickerbocker.
He and Roland had bonded over their mutual dislike of
(13:46):
Harry Cornish, although Barney, who was not an athlete, was
more annoyed by Harry's lackluster supervision of the janitorial staff,
than he was by the man's athletic prowess. Thirty one
years old, Barney joviality. He had a round face, a
plump build, and twinkling blue eyes. He was a social
(14:07):
butterfly with a charming, confident attitude that won over men
and women alike. Blanche was instantly taken by him, writing
later quote, I sensed a hidden strength and a brute
force in him, and it was as natural as breathing
that I should capitulate to that. Her fascination with Barney
(14:27):
was so strong that when Roland got down on one
knee that Thanksgiving, Blanche said no. She told Roland that
she might change her mind in the future, but that
hardly softened the blow, especially once rumors spread that she
had been seen unchaperoned in Barney's apartment at the Knickerbocker.
(14:52):
Roland was distraught, but again he maintained his outward composure.
When Blanche again rejected him in January eighteen ninety eight,
he repeated the same phrase he had used with Harry
Cornish the month before, saying, quote, tell Barnett the coast
is clear. He wins and for a while the coast
(15:16):
did seem clear. Blanche and Barney kept seeing each other.
Roland drowned his sorrows in the seedy bars of Lower Manhattan.
He spent time in Europe. He grew a handlebar mustache
and then shaved it off, typical breakup activities. Then, in September,
Blanche had a sudden change of heart. She ended her
(15:38):
relationship with Barney and told Roland she would marry him.
What motivated this reversal is unknown, but Roland was thrilled. Unfortunately,
Barney proved a hard habit to quit. Soon after she
agreed to marry Roland, Blanche started reaching out to Barney again.
He put her off, but eventually agreed to see her
(15:59):
in late September. The meeting didn't go as Blanche had hoped.
Barney told her that they were finished. Any hope of
even a friendship between them had disappeared when she'd agreed
to marry Roland a month later. On October twenty eighth,
eighteen ninety eight, Barney summoned the Knickerbocker's night watchman, Joseph Moore,
(16:20):
and asked him to get a doctor. Barney told Moore
that he'd woken up with a hangover and taken a
dose from a sample tin of cutnose improved efferbescent powder
that he'd received a few months earlier, But the medicine
wasn't sitting well. He was throwing up and had diarrhea.
Doctor Wendell Phillips, a fellow club member, came to check
on Barney. After procuring him medicines to calm his stomach,
(16:42):
Phillips told Barney to get some rest. By the next day,
Barney's gastro intestinal symptoms had subsided, but his mouth and
throat were extremely sore. Another doctor, Henry Douglas, examined him
and diagnosed him with a mild case of diphtheria. Douglas,
hearing about Barney's fears that his cut nose powder had
been poisoned, sent the powder in for testing. The medicine
(17:07):
tested positive for cyanide, but that actually didn't concern Douglas,
at least not then. Cyanide was at this time a
common ingredient in medicine, albeit in small doses. Douglas was
sure that Barney's symptoms were just caused by diphtheria. Barney
took the dip furia medicine Douglas prescribed, but a week
(17:29):
later he was still feeling terrible. He was so weak
that he required round the clock supervision from nurses. Early
on the morning of November tenth, one of the nurses
called doctor Douglas. Barney was getting worse. Douglas arrived and
knew at once that Barney's heart was failing. This could
(17:49):
happen with diphtheria. Later that afternoon, Barney died, aged thirty two.
His funeral was held on Saturday, November twelve. Blanche attended.
One week later, Blanche and Roland got married. One month
after that, Harry Cornish received a bottle of Bromo seltzer
(18:13):
in the mail. Newspapers started covering Catherine Adams's death the
very day she died. It took only another twenty four
hours for reporters at Joseph Pulitzer's paper, The New York
World to draw a connection between Adams's death and Barnett's newspapers,
like the World and William Randolphurst's New York Journal, thrived
(18:37):
off publishing sensational crime stories, and the poisoning case was
especially appealing. In historian Harold Scheckter's book on the Malinu
case titled The Devil's Gentlemen, Scheckter writes of the public's
fascination with certain crimes often mirrors their larger societal concerns.
At a time when people could never be certain of
(18:58):
what they were putting into their Checkter says, when medicines
were made of strychnine and arsenic, bakers preserved their dough
with sulfur of copper, babies consumed swill milk from cows
fed on distillery waste, and soldiers received rations of embalmed beef.
(19:19):
The poisoner haunted the imagination of the American public. Reporters
did more than just cover the Great Poison Mystery. As
the case came to be known, they also investigated it.
Journalists ran parallel investigations with the police, racing to break
the case before the authorities did. On December twenty ninth,
(19:40):
the day after Catherine Adams died, Hearst's Evening Journal's front
page featured a blown up copy of the handwritten label
from the package Harry Cornish had received, with the headline
who knows this writing it was fortunate that this label
had even survived. When Harry received the package he'd thrown
the wrap in the trash, but his assistant, Patrick Finneran
(20:03):
had told him to keep the paper Harry might be
able to identify the anonymous sender through the handwriting. At
this point, they had all thought the package was a
practical joke. No one had realized how high the stakes
of this identification would turn out to be. A day
after the Journal published the label, John Adams, another Knickerbocker
employee with no relation to Catherine Adams, recognized the handwriting
(20:28):
as the Knickerbocker's secretary. Adams conducted the club's correspondence and
was thus familiar with many of the member's handwriting. To
confirm his suspicion, he pulled a number of letters from
the club's files. When he was certain that the handwriting matched,
Adams went to Harry Cornish's office. The handwriting on the label,
(20:48):
Adams showed Harry looked just like the handwriting in a
resignation letter written on December twentieth, eighteen ninety seven, a
letter written by Roland Molineux. Harry Cornish shared Adams's findings
with Captain George McCluskey, chief of the New York Police
Department's Detectives Bureau. In a long conversation on December thirty first,
(21:12):
the men discussed Harry's fraught history with Roland, as well
as Roland's relationships with Barney and Blanche. This would not
be the last time that McCluskey heard Roland Molineu's name.
Though the police denied that they were pursuing Roland after
papers published his name in January. In truth, more and
more clues were pointing his way. Addie Bates, one of
(21:36):
the nurses who had cared for Barney during his final days,
told police about a peculiar gift her patient had received.
A popular man, Barney had been sent dozens of well
wishes and presents from friends, but only one had seemed
to really affect him. Bates remembered a bouquet of chrysanthemums,
accompanied by a note of what Bates called quote an
(21:59):
affectionate nature. The note had been signed Yours Blanche. It
wasn't hard for detectives to draw a line between this
note and Blanche Molineux. But this note didn't prove anything.
It just gave the police a hint at Roland's potential motive.
They'd have to find something more concrete. Using the remnants
(22:21):
of a partially removed price tag on the silver bottleholder
that had been sent to Harry Cornish, detectives tracked the
item first to its manufacturer and then to a retail
jewelry shop called Hartigan and Co. In Newark. Hartigan's was
very close to the paint factory where Roland lived and worked.
On the day Hartigan sold the bottle holder, December twenty first,
(22:42):
Newark police detective Joseph Ferrell, who knew Roland well, had
seen Roland walking near the Hartigan store. Roland told Farrell
he had just been dining with his boss, Morris Herman,
but Hermann denied this to police. However, the clerk who
made the sale at Hartigan's, Emma Miller, could not identify
the buyer and claimed that he had a red beard,
(23:05):
which Roland did not. This pattern of tracing a lead
almost back to Roland, but failing to conclusively tie it
to the man continuously frustrated at the detectives. It happened
again with the Bromo Seltzer bottle. The police had arranged
for doctor Rudolph Whitehouse, a prominent toxicologist and forensic medicine
(23:25):
expert to examine the bottle. Though the dark blue glass
bottle looked like an authentic Emerson's Bromo Seltzer bottle, Whithouse
discovered it was a forgery. The bottle didn't have the
company's name embossed on it and was slightly smaller than
the real thing. Whithouse discovered a manufacturer's mark on the bottle.
The detectives traced to a chemical firm called Powers and
(23:47):
Weightmen in Newark. Powers and Weightmen had sold ten bottles
containing cyanide of mercury, the poison that Whitthouse identified in
the bottle, to another Newark business, the pharmaceutical supplier Ceebee
Sme and Co. In July eighteen ninety eight. After a
laborious search through thousands of their sales slips, detectives found
(24:08):
that two of those bottles had ended up at Ballboch
and Co. A metal smelting company based only two blocks
away from the Herman and Co. Paint factory. But again
detectives couldn't link these bottles to Roland Molineux. The chemist
at Ballbach claimed that he had used up all the
cyanide in experiments. The next swing and a Miss came
(24:30):
from trying to trace the poison. Henry Barnett had taken
the tin which Barney had received in the fall of
eighteen ninety eight, purported to be a sample of Cutnose
improved efferveescent powder. The tin turned out to be legitimate,
though the contents had likely been tampered with, so the
police turned to Cutnose to try to identify sample recipients.
(24:51):
The company sent samples to customers who wrote in requests.
Owner Gustav Cutno explained these request letters were saved for
future mo marketing. Cutno continued and detectives were welcome to
look through them. Fortunately, Cutnoe could narrow down the window.
The tin had been sent in to a six month
period thanks to a specific sticker. Unfortunately, during these six
(25:14):
months alone, the company had received more than one hundred
thousand letters people have always loved free samples. Three detectives,
with the assistance of Cutnoe's bookkeeper, Elsie Gray, began the tedious,
laborious search. Seven days later, Elsie Gray struck gold. She
(25:35):
found a letter one written on Robin's Egg blue stationery
emblazoned with interlocking silver crescents, with handwriting that looked much
like the handwriting on the poison package addressed to Harry Cornish.
There were just two problems. First, the letter had come
in on December twenty third, six weeks after Barney had died.
(25:57):
And secondly, the signature at the bottom of the letter
read not R. Molineux or even H. Barnett, but confusingly
H Cornish. What could this mean? Following their return address
on the letter, detectives found a private letterbox company owned
by a man named Joseph Koch. Coke told detectives he'd
(26:21):
rented box number ten to a man named Harry Cornish
in early December, but when detectives brought Harry Cornish to
Koch's offices, Coke didn't think this was the man who'd
rented the letterbox. Captain McCleskey wasn't surprised. He would later
say that the use of Harry Cornish's name only further
convinced him of Roland Molineu's guilt. In McCluskey's words, quote,
(26:45):
the next best thing to killing an enemy is to
have him accused of murder. The post office box gave
detectives another lead to go on by following up on
a package that arrived at the box shortly after they
discovered it. Police found that the box owners had using
the same Robin's Egg blue stationery as in the cutnos
(27:06):
letter written to multiple medical companies to request samples of
their cures for mail impotence. One of these companies found
a letter whose handwriting and stationary matched, but had a
different return address and purported this time to come from
an H. Barnett. Detectives followed this information to another private
(27:28):
letter box. Maybe this time they could find a real
connection to Molineux. Examining the mail in the second mailbox,
the police found correspondence with Marston's Remedy Company. When they
contacted Marston's, the owner handed them a diagnosis form that
a customer had filled out using the name Barnett. But
(27:49):
the descriptions in the diagnosis form the patient's age, height, measurements,
and medical history didn't match Henry Barnett. They matched Roland Molineux. Unfortunately,
this lead to fizzled when the box's owner, Nicholas Heckman,
said he wanted payment to make an idea of the
(28:10):
box's renter and refused to cooperate with police. Joseph Coch,
owner of the other private box also stopped cooperating, saying
he was too frightened to get involved. The police were
getting frustrated, and they weren't the only ones. Throughout January,
the newspaper's coverage of the investigation had become more and
(28:32):
more critical. In an editorial in early February, William Randolph
Hurst claimed that the Malnu family's wealth was protecting Roland.
A little rich coming from the guy who inspired Citizen Kane.
But anyways, if this had happened among people without influence,
every person suspected of knowing anything about it would have
(28:52):
been locked up before morning, Hurst wrote, But when two deliberate,
premeditated murders have been committed by persons with financial and
political poll the whole machinery of justice has been paralyzed.
Was there any way to set this machinery back in motion?
(29:13):
On February ninth, eighteen ninety nine, a coroner's inquest into
Catherine Adams's death began. Coroner's inquests are rare these days,
but at the time they were called when sudden deaths
occurred in order to determine if the death was natural
or not. Coroners and their juries did not typically investigate crimes,
(29:35):
but they did have the power to subpoena witnesses. In
the Adams case, the press reported the District Attorney's office
had gotten fed up with the police's failures and decided
to use the coroner's inquest to conduct their own investigation.
Some people were skeptical of the process's efficacy, especially since
the District Attorney, Asa Bird Gardiner, happened to be an
(29:57):
old friend of General Edward ma These suspicions were quickly
confirmed by the conduct of eighty A James Osborne. Osborne
had a reputation as a bulldog in the courtroom, and
he quickly dug his teeth into the inquest's first witness,
not Roland Molineu, but Harry Cornish. In a ferocious examination,
(30:22):
Osborne all but accused Harry of being the poisoner. Osborne
brought up Harry's playboy reputation and his arguments with Henry
Barnett and Roland Molineux. Cornish Da Gardner reminded the press
was the one who had actually given Catherine Adams the poison.
In contrast, when Roland Molineux appeared on the stand, Osborne
(30:45):
treated him with gentle politeness, often apologizing for the uncomfortable questions.
Duty just required him to ask. Roland, Unlike Harry, who
had been angry and flustered in court, was cool, calm
and collected. The press took Osborne's approach as proof of
the justice system's favoritism. A cartoon in the Evening Journal
(31:09):
depicted Osborne strangling Harry Cornish in one panel and cuddling
a child's size Roland Molineu in the other. But as
Osborne continued to tear Harry apart on the stand and
brought more witnesses into cast suspicion, even the skeptical press
began to question Harry. Harry published a highly defensive public
(31:30):
statement hilariously titled quote Cornish says, some things look bad,
but he can explain. Perhaps people thought they had been
too quick to jump on Roland Molineu as a suspect,
and thinking on it wasn't Harry Cornish the first one
to point the police at Roland. Had it all been
a frame? The Molinews were delighted by this turn of events.
(31:54):
The past two months had been a nightmare for the
respectability obsessed In general. He had ordered the whole family,
including Blanche, to retreat into the Fort Green Brownstone, where
the curtains were always kept drawn to keep the press
from looking in. The lawyers he hired had vigorously protected Roland,
refusing any requests from the police, such as submitting a
(32:16):
handwriting sample. But with the focus turning away from Roland
and on to Harry, Roland's lawyers thought it might be
best to change tactics and begin cooperating. On February fourteenth,
Roland produced a handwriting sample under observation in ady A
Osborne's office. The inquest ran for nearly two more weeks,
(32:38):
with evidence against Harry mounting and Roland's delight growing. Even
the testimony of Nicholas Heckman, the letter box owner, couldn't
shake Roland's assurance. On Monday, February twenty seventh, the inquest's
final day, Heckman appeared and claimed that Roland had rented
a letter box from him. Roland called Heckman a liar,
(33:01):
but seemed to laugh the whole thing off. But then
something happened that shook Roland deeply. When his lawyer, Bartow
Weeks objected to Heckman's further testimony, Dia Gardiner turned on
Weeks and harshly told him to sit down. Up until
this point, Gardiner had been unfailingly polite, even deferential to
(33:25):
Roland's lawyers. In that instant, Roland Malaneu heard the trap
spring shut. From being the shielded, protected, coddled, and stroked
friend of the prosecuting officer, reporter Charles Michaelson wrote, Molineux
suddenly found himself exposed to the full broadside of that
(33:47):
officer's artillery. The manhunters came from behind their cover of
soft words and apologies and attacked their quarry. Lulled into
a false sense of safety, Roland had lowered his defense
is a fatal mistake of overconfidence. The next witness, William Kinsley,
showed him just how badly he had aired. Kinsley was
(34:11):
a nationally recognized handwriting expert, and he testified that the
handwriting in the sample Roland had provided the ADA matched
the handwriting on the poison package sent to Harry Cornish,
as well as the letters sent to the various medical
companies from the two private letter boxes. Then, to drive
the point home, Ada Osborne introduced a further six handwriting experts,
(34:37):
all of whom agreed with Kinsley's conclusions. The final blow
was delivered by District Attorney Gardner himself, who presented a
closing summation unusual for a coroner's inquest, Gardner revealed that
the entire inquest had been a carefully plotted trap on
which the DA's Office and the police had collaborated. It
(35:00):
had been Captain McCluskey's idea, Gardener explained, to use an
inquest to get Roland, the only suspect who had refused
to provide a handwriting sample, to drop his guard. The
DA's office had made Harry Cornish their scapegoat, but had
never truly believed him guilty. It had been Roland all along.
(35:21):
Roland who had the motive, who had the opportunity, and
whose handwriting matched all of the incriminating mail. At the
end of his summation, Gardner asked the coroner's jury to
assign responsibility for Catherine Adams's death to Roland Molineux. The
jury did not take long to do just that. After
(35:41):
less than two hours of deliberation, they announced that they
believed Roland had sent the poison that killed Adams. Roland
was quickly arrested and sent to the tombs New York's
infamous jail. Four days later, a grand jury formally indicted
him on a charge of first degree murder for the
day death of Catherine J. Adams. General Molineux vowed to
(36:04):
fight his son's case till the end, but would his
good name and his wealth be enough to overcome the
case being built against Roland. Roland Molineu's journey to trial
was long and winding. In late March eighteen ninety nine,
his attorneys managed to get the first indictment against him
(36:26):
quashed on the grounds that it had been improper for
the DA's office to discuss Henry Barnett's death at the
grand jury hearing. On May third, a new grand jury
was convened, and this time they didn't bring an indictment.
The press and the DA's office thought they knew why.
Six members of the jury, including the foreman, were members
(36:48):
of the same veterans organization as General Edward Molineux. Down
but not out. The police immediately arrested Roland on the
charge of assaulting Harry Cornish. When Roland and got out
on bail for that charge, the police arrested him again
for Catherine Adams's murder in mid July, a third grand
jury was convened. These jurors, who had no connections to
(37:12):
the Molineus, returned an indictment after three days eighty eight.
James Osborne was so delighted that he telegraphed his wife
the news writing quote the people won. Inside his jail cell,
Roland Molineux seemed just as confident as Osborne. Over the
past five months. He'd maintained his exercise regimen and his
(37:34):
grooming routine, used his spending money to buy upgraded meals,
and continuously projected an aura of cool certainty. He had
faith in his father and in his lawyers, Bartow Weeks
and George Gordon Battle, both longtime friends of the family
and skilled attorneys. When Roland's trial finally began on November fourteenth,
(37:55):
eighteen ninety nine, Weeks and Battle were both by his side,
as was his father. They weren't his only supporters. Dozens
of besotted women who'd fallen in love with Roland via
newspaper coverage were gathered outside the courtroom, begging the guards
to let them in. The guards refused, the room was
(38:15):
already packed. At ten thirty am, Judge John Goff called
the court to order. The fifty one year old Gough
had made a name for himself rooting out corruption in
the New York Police Department. As a judge, he was
short tempered and action oriented, regularly cutting lawyers off to
ask witnesses questions of his own. Unconcerned with appearing impartial,
(38:39):
Gough's rulings often revealed his personal beliefs on a given case.
People had predicted that this would be a long trial,
but no one imagined quite how long. Jury selection alone
took more than two weeks. Both Bartow Weeks and A
DA Osborne claimed they wanted quote of a high order
(39:01):
of intelligence to be secured as jurors in this case.
Their method of getting such men was to ask bafflingly
phrased questions full of legalise and arcane vocabulary, such as
this one posed by Osborne to a cab driver named
Hugh Doherty. Quote, do you understand that in order to
justify legal guilt from circumstantial evidence, the inculpatory facts must
(39:24):
be absolutely incompatible with the innocence of the accused? Doherty, astounded, replied,
I never heard that while driving my cab. Despite multiple
rapprimands from goth and ridicule in the press. The attorneys
kept this up until finally, on November twenty ninth, they
managed to pull a jury together. James Osborne presented the
(39:46):
prosecution's opening statement on Monday, December fourth. He set the
stakes for the trial high, telling the jurors that the
country was currently embroiled in quote a fight between society
and poisoners. Then he walked the case against Roland Molineux.
When he got to Roland's connection with Henry Barnett, Barto
(40:07):
Weeks objected, saying that the Barnett case was separate. Judge
Goff disagreed, ruling quote, if it is apparent that the
circumstances of one crime are relevant to the other, they
are admissible. As Osborne spoke, reporters kept a close watch
on Roland, milking every last drop of drama out of
the story. Several papers had actually assigned their theater critics
(40:30):
to cover the trial. One of these critics, the Harolds
Clement Scott, found Roland fascinating. The man he saw, Scott wrote,
quote is not Roland b. Molineux. It is a false,
unnatural man Behind this actor's mask. I can see the
mind of the wretched man working. He is for the
(40:51):
moment two men, the man as he is and the
man in the mask. Throughout the trial this mask time slip.
Roland would burst out in laughter at inappropriate times, or
even be seen playing Tic tac toe in the middle
of testimony. Roland's manner wasn't the only strange aspect of
(41:11):
the trial. Observers were baffled by the way that the
prosecution presented their case. The order in which Osborne called
his witnesses, and he would call more than a hundred
of them, seemed random. Notably, Osborne wouldn't actually establish that
a murder had occurred until January second, when coroner's physician
Albert T. Weston testified that Catherine Adams had been poisoned
(41:34):
with cyanide of mercury. By this point, Roland Molineu's case
had become the longest most expensive murder trial in New
York history. In the first weeks of the trial, Osborne
mainly focused on handwriting analysis, bringing in multiple experts to
testify that Roland's writing sample matched the writing on the
medicine request letters and on the poison package. This testimony
(41:58):
had been so dry and repartitive that even Osborne had
gotten sick of it, saying aloud, how long, Oh Lord,
how long. At one point there wasn't much the defense
could do to undermine these witnesses, although Bartow Weekes did
his best attacking the handwriting men on unrelated matters, Daniel
Ames's atheism, for example, or William Kinsley's passion for raising chickens,
(42:23):
the latter of which made the whole courtroom laugh. There
were several other interesting moments interspersed throughout. The first came
on Monday, December eleventh, when a young woman named Mamie
Milando took the stand. Milando was described in the press
as Roland's former housekeeper, and that was true, but maybe
not the full story. Roland had first met Milando in
(42:46):
eighteen eighty seven, when she was a thirteen year old
working in his father's New Jersey paint factory. When Roland
moved to Hermann and Co. He took Milando with him,
hiring her as a factory foreman and as housekeeper for
his factory living quarters. Harold Scheckter believes that the two
may have had a sexual relationship. Milando did not want
(43:06):
to testify. To avoid the stand, she'd refused to leave
New Jersey where the New York Police could not get
to her. She was only here now thanks to some
highly dubious maneuvering by the NYPD, who had sent two
undercover officers to take Milando and a friend of hers
out on a date. After getting the two women drunk,
(43:27):
the officers suggested a trip to Patterson, New Jersey, by train.
On the train trip, Milando fell asleep. When she awoke
and disembarked the train, the lead detectives on Roland's case
were there to greet her and reveal that she was
actually now in New York. Milando tried to fight the
detectives off, but could not. Now on the stand and
(43:52):
looking deeply uncomfortable, Milando explained that once, while visiting Roland
at his apartment at the Herman and Co. Factory, she'd
seen some paper that she liked. She'd liked it so
much that she'd taken three of the sheets and three
matching envelopes home with her. She was therefore intimately familiar
with the stationary, a distinctive set tinted Robin's Egg blue
(44:16):
with interlocking silver crescents at the top. This was the
same stationary used to write the forged medicine requests, stationary
that Roland Molineux had denied ever having seen at the inquest.
Milando's clear reluctance to testify at one point, when asked
if she was still friendly with Roland, she started to
(44:37):
sob only made her testimony more believable to onlookers. After
the brief excitement of Milando's appearance, the tedious parade of
handwriting experts resumed. Eventually, Osborne got around to introducing the
other circumstantial evidence that connected Roland to the crime. Doctor
Roland Whitthhouse, the forensic chemist, confirmed that the powder in
(44:59):
the Romo Seltzer bottle was cyanide of mercury, while Carl Tromer,
a chemical salesman, confirmed that Roland had the raw materials
to make cyanide of mercury in his lab at the
paint factory. Joseph Coke and Nicholas Heckman identified Roland as
the man they'd rented private letterboxes to the case's lead detectives,
explained how they'd trace the silver bottleholder to Hartigans. Newark
(45:24):
detective Joseph Ferrell testified to having seen Roland near Hartigan's
on the day the bottleholder was sold. The prosecution submitted
the diagnosis form sent to Marston's remedy company, signed as Barnett,
but filled out with details that matched Roland into evidence.
This was all important information, but for most observers it
(45:44):
was also boring. They had read about all of these
things in the papers months ago. By mid January, though
coverage of the trial was still robust, interest in the
trial was fading, but on January fifteenth, testimony from two
new witnesses woke the tired public right back up. The
first new witness was named Rachel Green. For several months
(46:08):
in late eighteen ninety seven and eighteen ninety eight, Green
had worked as a maid in a boarding house on
the Upper West Side. While working there, Osborne asked her,
did you know the defendant? I knew mister and missus Cheeseborough.
Green responded. Cheeseborough was Blanche Mollinew's maiden name. Do you
see this mister Cheeseborough in the courtroom, Osborne asked. Rachel
(46:31):
Green rose from the witness stand and pointed at Roland Molineux.
That's the gentleman, she said. Roland, for the first time
in the trial, seemed angry and concerned. Green went on
to explain how she believed Roland and Blanche to be
married during this time because Roland regularly spent the night
in Blanche's room. In truth, the couple wouldn't marry for
(46:52):
nearly another year. This testimony was certainly scandalous, but what
did it mean for Roland's guilt? The next witness, Many Betts,
connected the dots. Betts was also a maid. She worked
for Alice Bellinger. Bellinger was Blanche's good friend, and Blanche
had moved in with her after moving out of her
boarding house. Unlike Green, many Betts had never seen Roland
(47:16):
Molineu visit Blanche at home. She had, however, seen Henry
Barnett visit regularly. Judge Goff paused Betts's testimony here to
ask Osborne about the relevance. Osborne explained that he was
establishing Roland Molinew's motive for killing Henry Barnett jealousy. But
the defendant is not on trial for the murder of Barnett,
(47:38):
Gough reminded the prosecutor. No Osborne acknowledged, but I want
to show that the man who hated Barnett also hated Cornish.
We find letters for certain remedies in Barnett's name. We
also find letters in Cornish's name. This shows the workings
of the defendant's mind. Barnett died of cyanide of mercury,
(47:59):
just as Cornish was to have died. It's the same
sort of plot and as such should be allowed in evidence.
Goff mouled over this argument, then told Osborne, you may continue.
So Osborne did, getting more information from many Bets about
Henry Barnett's frequent visits and overnight stays. This testimony directly
(48:20):
contradicted Blanche's testimony at the coroner's inquest. On the stand there,
she had insisted that her relationship with Barnett had been
purely platonic. The flowers she'd sent him while he was
dying had been a simple gesture of friendship. She claimed,
Roland and Barney had never fought over her, despite Betts's
evidence to the contrary. Blanche would always publicly maintain that
(48:41):
she and Burnett were not romantically involved. She would only
admit to their sexual relationship in her private memoir written
decades later. Throughout the trial, the defense lawyers made a
point of bringing Blanche in to see her husband. The
apparently adoring couple would exchange emotional words and kiss and
embrace for the world to see. Betts's testimony undermined this
(49:03):
romantic image, and it bolstered James Osborne's case by establishing motive.
By the time Osborne finally rested his case, observers felt
the prosecutor had made a strong, circumstantial case against Roland,
but he had failed to answer a critical question, why
would Roland want Henry Cornish dead. Osborne had brought in
(49:25):
some Knickerbocker members to describe the two men's feud, but
it all seemed so petty, certainly not enough reason to kill,
so Osborne had injected the Barnet murder in the trial.
This strategy played to the strengths and weaknesses of each case.
In the Barnet case, the motive was obvious, but the
evidence was weaker. Barnett's death had originally been thought to
(49:48):
be from natural causes, so the police were a month
behind in investigating it. In the Adams case, on the
other hand, the motive was murkier, but the evidence was clearer. However,
Roland Malaneu hadn't been charged with Henry Barnett's murder, and
some newspapers commented on this. Would this strategy come back
(50:08):
to bite the prosecution? James Osborne would have to wait
and see. On February fifth, nearly three months after the
trial began, he rested the state's case. People eagerly anticipated
the presentation of the defense case. What witnesses would the
defense call? Would Roland Malanu testify in his own defense?
(50:30):
What about his glamorous wife Blanche. On February sixth, defense
lawyer Bartow Weeks stood to speak. He looked strangely, uneasy, pale,
and strained. He had good reason, because Bartow Weeks was
about to say something shocking, something that would change the
course of the trial and Roland Molineux's life. Just what
(50:56):
did bartow Weeks say? Well, you'll have to come back
next week to find out in Part two of New
York v. Roland Molineu. But before you go, stay with
me after the break for a surprising connection between this
trial and a famous political scandal. Although Bartow Weeks with
(51:17):
the lead defense attorney in Roland Molinu's trial, he didn't
work alone. Weeks was assisted throughout by his law partner
George Gordon. Battle. Battle, then thirty years old, was in
the early years of what would become a distinguished law career.
Born in North Carolina, Battle had come to New York
to attend Columbia Law School. After graduating, he joined the
(51:39):
District Attorney's office, where he worked for five years before
going into private practice with Bartow Weeks. A brilliant lawyer,
Battle would win a number of major cases, both civil
and criminal. Battle was also known for his civic leadership.
He chaired numerous committees, including the National Committee on Prison
Labor Reform and New York City's Parks and Playgrounds Association.
(52:03):
A devout episcopal, Battle also fought for religious freedom. His
work against anti Semitism was so important that the prominent
Jewish newspaper, the American Hebrew, awarded him a medal for
keeping the flame of religious hatred from searing American democracy.
He raised money for a variety of causes, including the
(52:23):
Salvation Army and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration
of the American Revolution. Battle's generosity extended to those around him.
In nineteen seventeen or eighteen, he hired a high school
student named Seymour as a law clerk. Seymour had had
a difficult childhood. His hot tempered father had trouble keeping
a job, particularly after he fell ill with cancer, leaving
(52:46):
young Seymour to support his parents and older sister. Seymour
got a job loading freight for a railroad, hard dangerous
work for a fifteen year old. His co workers at
the loading docks, recognizing Seymour's intelligence, incur uraged him to
apply for scholarships. Soon enough, Seymour won a place at
a preparatory school in Newark. He kept working in the
(53:07):
loading docks while at school, continuing the job even after
he was hired as a law clerk by George Gordon Battle.
Battle was so impressed by Seymour's intellect and work ethic
that he increased his pay, allowing Seymour to finally quit
the railroad job. Not long after, Battle offered to pay
for Seymour's college education. Seymour graduated from Fordham and then
(53:29):
from Fordham Law. Soon enough, just like his mentor, Seymour
was a prominent and successful lawyer. When Seymour's first child
was born, he saw an opportunity to honor all that
Battle had done for him, so he named his son,
George Gordon Battle. Battle's namesake would go by Gordon, and
(53:50):
he would one day become more famous than his father
and his namesake combined, although not necessarily for the right
reasons for this little baby would grow up to be
none other than g. Gordon Liddy, best known today for
his role in organizing the nineteen seventy two burglary of
the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Building.
(54:14):
Thank you for listening to History on Trial. If you
enjoy this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review.
It can help new listeners find the show. My main
sources for this episode were Harold Scheckter's book The Devil's Gentlemen, Privilege,
Poison and The Trial That Ushered in the twentieth century,
as well as newspaper coverage of the trial. For complete bibliography,
(54:35):
as well as a transcript of the episode with citations,
please visit our website History on Trial podcast dot com.
History on Trial is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer Trevor Young and executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams,
(54:57):
Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show
at History on Trial podcast dot com and follow us
on Instagram at History on Trial and on Twitter at
Underscore History on Trial. Find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by
visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(55:19):
to your favorite shows.
You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Listener discretion advised. Catherine Adams woke up on the morning
of December twenty eighth, eighteen ninety eight, with a pounding headache.
It was the wine, she thought. The night before, Catherine,
(00:24):
a fifty two year old widow, her adult daughter Florence,
and their tenant, a distant relative of theirs named Harry Cornish,
had gone to the theater and then to a late
dinner at which they'd enjoyed. Catherine now thought, maybe a
little too much wine. Well, nothing to be done about it.
She got out of bed and began tidying their apartment,
(00:47):
a cozy second floor space only a block west of
Central Park on New York's Upper West Side. But an
hour later, the headache had only gotten worse. Catherine was
holding a moist washcloth to her head when her daughter
Florence emerged from her bedroom around nine a m. Florence,
seeing her mother's suffering, suggested that she take some Bromo seltzer,
(01:09):
a popular hangover remedy. Harry had brought a bottle home
only the day before. He'd received it in the mail,
along with a charming silver bottle holder. Earlier that week,
the package, addressed to Harry at his office at the
Knickerbocker Athletic Club had had no return address. Harry and
his coworkers had assumed it was a practical joke, a
(01:31):
gag gift reminding him not to drink too much over
the holidays. Katherine and Florence teased Harry that it had
come from a secret admirer, but whoever the center, Catherine
was grateful to them. Now, following the instructions on the bottle,
Catherine mixed a heaping teaspoonful of the powder into a
small glass of water and drank It. Tasted awful, so
(01:54):
bitter that she couldn't finish her water, leaving a mouthful
at the bottom of the glass. Awful, she said. Harry
teasingly took the glass and swallowed the remnants, saying, tastes
all right to me. It's supposed to be bitter. It's medicine.
But this medicine wasn't just bitter. There was something wrong
(02:15):
with it. Within minutes, Catherine was seized by a wave
of nausea. She pushed her way into the bathroom where
Florence was washing up, and began vomiting profusely, groaning in agony.
At first, Florence thought Catherine had just had a reaction
to the foul tasting medicine, but then she saw her
mother's face. It was a terrible blue color. Catherine bent
(02:40):
over the toilet, raised her hands to her daughter, and
then collapsed. Florence screamed for Harry in his bedroom. Harry
himself wasn't feeling so good. He was a strong, healthy man,
but he was suddenly feeling weak and queasy. When he
got to the bathroom, he found he couldn't lift Catherine,
(03:02):
something he should have been able to easily do. With
the help of their HouseGuest, Fred Hovey, Harry and Florence
maneuvered Catherine onto the couch and sent for a doctor.
By the time doctor Edwin Hitchcock arrived only a few
minutes later, Catherine's breathing was labored, her pulse was faint,
and her skin was clammy. Hitchcock administered stimulants and gave
(03:25):
Catherine artificial respiration. Harry Cornish's condition had worsened. Now he
was throwing up in the bathroom. Florence explained to doctor
Hitchcock that both Harry and her mother had taken some
bromo seltzer right before falling ill. The doctor examined the bottle,
then dipped a pinky finger into the powder, wiping all
(03:45):
but a single speck off. Hitchcock placed his fingertip to
his tongue and recoiled. He had tasted bitter almonds. This
was not medicine. It was cyanide. Harry Cornish, after several
days of suffering, managed to pull through. Catherine Adams was
(04:06):
not so lucky. She died shortly after doctor Hitchcock arrived.
Newspapers quickly jumped on the story. An anonymous poisoner delivering
death through the mail made for a good copy for
the city's tabloid style yellow papers, and soon enough the
story got even wilder because it turned out that Catherine
(04:28):
Adams was not the only person to die from cyanide
disguised as medicine in eighteen ninety eight. A month earlier,
a man named Henry Crossman Barnett had died after taking
a dose of Cutno's improved effervescent powder, another supposed hangover Keir.
Though Barnett's doctor had attributed his death to diphtheria, he'd
(04:50):
had the powder tested just in case and found cyanide.
And that wasn't the only connection between the two cases.
Henry Barnett had died in his room at the Knickerbocker
Athletic Club, the very club that Harry Cornish worked at.
Terror gripped New Yorkers. Was there a serial poisoner in
(05:12):
their midst The police would soon zero in on a
surprising suspect, but proving their case was easier said than done,
and their investigation would lead to a series of dramatic
courtroom confrontations whose outcomes still echo today. Welcome to History
on Trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward. This week New
(05:37):
York v. Rowland Malineux, Part one. Before the Nightmare began,
Edward Molineux was living the American dream. Born in England
in eighteen thirty three, Edward Kington New York. As a
small child, those early years were not easy, but Edward
(05:58):
was disciplined and determined. Soon enough, his hard work saw
him rise through the ranks of both the paint manufacturing
industry and the New York National Guard. His bravery and
compassionate leadership during the Civil War made him a hero
and earned him the rank of general. After the war,
he joined a new company, C. T. Reynolds and helped
(06:21):
turn it into the largest paint manufacturer in the country,
earning a fortune in the process. He and his beloved wife, Hattie,
had three handsome, intelligent sons. From the outside, everything seemed perfect,
but inside the Malnu brownstone on Fort Greene Place, something
(06:42):
dark was festering. The trouble was Roland, the Molinu's middle son,
born in eighteen sixty six. There was nothing outwardly wrong
with Roland. He was clever, well mannered, and exceptionally athletic,
A national champion in amateur gymnastics. He dressed beautifully and
was fastidious about his grooming. Roland was a talented chemist.
(07:07):
He worked first for his father's company, and then was
recruited away by Morris Herman and Co, another manufacturer, who
made him the superintendent and chief chemist of their Newark
paint factory. Roland was dedicated to his work, literally living
at his job. Herman and Co. Gave him an apartment
on the second floor of the factory, which Roland filled
(07:27):
with luxurious furnishings and stocked with dry paints and chemicals
so he could continue working after hours. Okay, so Roland
was athletic, clever, and industrious. These are all good things.
What's less appealing is constantly talking about how athletic, clever
and industrious you are, which seemed to be Roland's favorite activity. Plus,
(07:51):
Roland was a snob. He had a way of tilting
his head back and literally looking down his nose at people,
a chilly, superior way of speaking. He liked to be
the smartest person in the room, the strongest, the most powerful.
He didn't like people who got more attention than him,
So in a way, it's not surprising that Roland didn't
(08:13):
like Harry Cornish. The two men first met in early
eighteen ninety six, when Harry became athletic director of the
Knickerbocker Athletic Club. The newly opened Knickerbocker was a gym
and social club where New York's elite could play squash
and smoke cigars. To help boost the club's reputation, its owner,
(08:34):
Jay Herbert Ballentine, had recruited some of the city's best athletes,
including his friend Roland Molineu. Roland liked the club so
much that he'd taken an apartment on its second floor
and joined several of its management committees. Vallentine also recruited
a top notch staff, hiring Harry Cornish to be athletic
(08:55):
director in eighteen ninety six. Harry Cornish was one of
the most famous sportsman in America. He'd been the athletic
director of the Boston and Chicago Athletic Clubs, written a
book on physical training for Spalding, and organized the athletic
games at the eighteen ninety three Chicago World's Fair. His
appearance fit his reputation. At thirty two, Harry looked like
(09:18):
an ideal Victorian athlete, muscular and hyper masculine, with a
luxuriant handlebar mustache. His arrival at Knickerbocker made the news,
with The New York Times writing quote, as a mentor
and promoter of athletics, mister Cornish is without a peer.
Soon enough, people started calling the Knickerbockers athletes Cornish's men.
(09:44):
That rubbed Roland Molineux the wrong way. In his mind,
he should have been the star of the Knickerbocker. After all,
he was a national champion. Harry Cornish was just an employee.
Roland didn't like Harry on a personal level either. He
thought Harry was vulgar and coarse, and alleged that he
(10:05):
neglected the club's facilities. Throughout eighteen ninety six and eighteen
ninety seven, hostilities between the two men escalated. Roland got
some of Harry's powers removed. Harry spread rumors that Roland
owned a brothel. Tensions finally reached a crescendo in December
eighteen ninety seven, when a squabble between Roland and Harry
(10:27):
got escalated to the club's board. Roland issued the board
an ultimatum fire Harry Cornish or he would resign from
the club. Alas Roland had overestimated his own importance. Sure,
Harry was just an employee, but Roland was just a member.
(10:48):
There were plenty of rich, young athletes to take his place.
The board told Roland they were keeping Harry. Roland immediately
resigned his membership and moved out of his apartment, and
Harry Cornish, delighted, taunted Roland, saying, you son of a bitch.
You thought you'd get me out and I got you
(11:09):
out instead. Roland simply smiled at Harry, waved his hand
and said you win. But inside he was seething and
wrote letters to friends detailing all of Harry's flaws. Roland's
departure from the Knickerbocker wasn't the only blow he faced
(11:31):
in late eighteen ninety seven. He had also been bested
in love. That August, on a yacht in Rhode Island,
Roland had met a twenty three year old aspiring singer
named Blanche Cheesebrow. Blanche was a newcomer to Roland's elite set.
She'd had an unstable childhood, dragged around the country by
(11:53):
her father, a dreamer with an insatiable appetite for get
rich quick schemes. Blanche's siblings had all settled down. Two
of her sisters had married wealthy men, which is how
Blanche ended up on the yacht that summer. Her sisters
wanted her to meet a successful man too, but Blanche
had different dreams. A gifted singer, she wanted to pursue
(12:15):
a career on the stage. She'd had some success already,
performing at Carnegie Hall and working as a featured soloist
in a prestigious Brooklyn Church choir, but she wanted more.
She wanted to see the world have adventures. When she
met the thirty one year old Roland that summer, she
found he shared the same passion for music and traveling.
(12:39):
Roland immediately besotted with the charismatics. Stylish Blanche fed her fantasies,
describing trips they could take to see the symphony in
Paris or the opera in Milan. That autumn, Blanche and
Roland saw each other regularly in New York. Roland showered
Blanche with gifts and experiences, shows on Broadway, jewelry, from
(13:02):
Tiffany's dinner at Delmonico's. He was devoted, but Blanche was uneasy.
She enjoyed Roland's company, but something was missing. I wanted
passion and love in my life, she would write years later,
I wanted my existence to be fervid and glowing. With Roland,
(13:24):
that passion was lacking, especially physically. In early November eighteen
ninety seven, Blanche and Roland were at the Metropolitan Opera
when they ran into a friend of Roland's, Henry Crossman.
Barnett Barney, as he was known, also lived at the Knickerbocker.
He and Roland had bonded over their mutual dislike of
(13:46):
Harry Cornish, although Barney, who was not an athlete, was
more annoyed by Harry's lackluster supervision of the janitorial staff,
than he was by the man's athletic prowess. Thirty one
years old, Barney joviality. He had a round face, a
plump build, and twinkling blue eyes. He was a social
(14:07):
butterfly with a charming, confident attitude that won over men
and women alike. Blanche was instantly taken by him, writing
later quote, I sensed a hidden strength and a brute
force in him, and it was as natural as breathing
that I should capitulate to that. Her fascination with Barney
(14:27):
was so strong that when Roland got down on one
knee that Thanksgiving, Blanche said no. She told Roland that
she might change her mind in the future, but that
hardly softened the blow, especially once rumors spread that she
had been seen unchaperoned in Barney's apartment at the Knickerbocker.
(14:52):
Roland was distraught, but again he maintained his outward composure.
When Blanche again rejected him in January eighteen ninety eight,
he repeated the same phrase he had used with Harry
Cornish the month before, saying, quote, tell Barnett the coast
is clear. He wins and for a while the coast
(15:16):
did seem clear. Blanche and Barney kept seeing each other.
Roland drowned his sorrows in the seedy bars of Lower Manhattan.
He spent time in Europe. He grew a handlebar mustache
and then shaved it off, typical breakup activities. Then, in September,
Blanche had a sudden change of heart. She ended her
(15:38):
relationship with Barney and told Roland she would marry him.
What motivated this reversal is unknown, but Roland was thrilled. Unfortunately,
Barney proved a hard habit to quit. Soon after she
agreed to marry Roland, Blanche started reaching out to Barney again.
He put her off, but eventually agreed to see her
(15:59):
in late September. The meeting didn't go as Blanche had hoped.
Barney told her that they were finished. Any hope of
even a friendship between them had disappeared when she'd agreed
to marry Roland a month later. On October twenty eighth,
eighteen ninety eight, Barney summoned the Knickerbocker's night watchman, Joseph Moore,
(16:20):
and asked him to get a doctor. Barney told Moore
that he'd woken up with a hangover and taken a
dose from a sample tin of cutnose improved efferbescent powder
that he'd received a few months earlier, But the medicine
wasn't sitting well. He was throwing up and had diarrhea.
Doctor Wendell Phillips, a fellow club member, came to check
on Barney. After procuring him medicines to calm his stomach,
(16:42):
Phillips told Barney to get some rest. By the next day,
Barney's gastro intestinal symptoms had subsided, but his mouth and
throat were extremely sore. Another doctor, Henry Douglas, examined him
and diagnosed him with a mild case of diphtheria. Douglas,
hearing about Barney's fears that his cut nose powder had
been poisoned, sent the powder in for testing. The medicine
(17:07):
tested positive for cyanide, but that actually didn't concern Douglas,
at least not then. Cyanide was at this time a
common ingredient in medicine, albeit in small doses. Douglas was
sure that Barney's symptoms were just caused by diphtheria. Barney
took the dip furia medicine Douglas prescribed, but a week
(17:29):
later he was still feeling terrible. He was so weak
that he required round the clock supervision from nurses. Early
on the morning of November tenth, one of the nurses
called doctor Douglas. Barney was getting worse. Douglas arrived and
knew at once that Barney's heart was failing. This could
(17:49):
happen with diphtheria. Later that afternoon, Barney died, aged thirty two.
His funeral was held on Saturday, November twelve. Blanche attended.
One week later, Blanche and Roland got married. One month
after that, Harry Cornish received a bottle of Bromo seltzer
(18:13):
in the mail. Newspapers started covering Catherine Adams's death the
very day she died. It took only another twenty four
hours for reporters at Joseph Pulitzer's paper, The New York
World to draw a connection between Adams's death and Barnett's newspapers,
like the World and William Randolphurst's New York Journal, thrived
(18:37):
off publishing sensational crime stories, and the poisoning case was
especially appealing. In historian Harold Scheckter's book on the Malinu
case titled The Devil's Gentlemen, Scheckter writes of the public's
fascination with certain crimes often mirrors their larger societal concerns.
At a time when people could never be certain of
(18:58):
what they were putting into their Checkter says, when medicines
were made of strychnine and arsenic, bakers preserved their dough
with sulfur of copper, babies consumed swill milk from cows
fed on distillery waste, and soldiers received rations of embalmed beef.
(19:19):
The poisoner haunted the imagination of the American public. Reporters
did more than just cover the Great Poison Mystery. As
the case came to be known, they also investigated it.
Journalists ran parallel investigations with the police, racing to break
the case before the authorities did. On December twenty ninth,
(19:40):
the day after Catherine Adams died, Hearst's Evening Journal's front
page featured a blown up copy of the handwritten label
from the package Harry Cornish had received, with the headline
who knows this writing it was fortunate that this label
had even survived. When Harry received the package he'd thrown
the wrap in the trash, but his assistant, Patrick Finneran
(20:03):
had told him to keep the paper Harry might be
able to identify the anonymous sender through the handwriting. At
this point, they had all thought the package was a
practical joke. No one had realized how high the stakes
of this identification would turn out to be. A day
after the Journal published the label, John Adams, another Knickerbocker
employee with no relation to Catherine Adams, recognized the handwriting
(20:28):
as the Knickerbocker's secretary. Adams conducted the club's correspondence and
was thus familiar with many of the member's handwriting. To
confirm his suspicion, he pulled a number of letters from
the club's files. When he was certain that the handwriting matched,
Adams went to Harry Cornish's office. The handwriting on the label,
(20:48):
Adams showed Harry looked just like the handwriting in a
resignation letter written on December twentieth, eighteen ninety seven, a
letter written by Roland Molineux. Harry Cornish shared Adams's findings
with Captain George McCluskey, chief of the New York Police
Department's Detectives Bureau. In a long conversation on December thirty first,
(21:12):
the men discussed Harry's fraught history with Roland, as well
as Roland's relationships with Barney and Blanche. This would not
be the last time that McCluskey heard Roland Molineu's name.
Though the police denied that they were pursuing Roland after
papers published his name in January. In truth, more and
more clues were pointing his way. Addie Bates, one of
(21:36):
the nurses who had cared for Barney during his final days,
told police about a peculiar gift her patient had received.
A popular man, Barney had been sent dozens of well
wishes and presents from friends, but only one had seemed
to really affect him. Bates remembered a bouquet of chrysanthemums,
accompanied by a note of what Bates called quote an
(21:59):
affectionate nature. The note had been signed Yours Blanche. It
wasn't hard for detectives to draw a line between this
note and Blanche Molineux. But this note didn't prove anything.
It just gave the police a hint at Roland's potential motive.
They'd have to find something more concrete. Using the remnants
(22:21):
of a partially removed price tag on the silver bottleholder
that had been sent to Harry Cornish, detectives tracked the
item first to its manufacturer and then to a retail
jewelry shop called Hartigan and Co. In Newark. Hartigan's was
very close to the paint factory where Roland lived and worked.
On the day Hartigan sold the bottle holder, December twenty first,
(22:42):
Newark police detective Joseph Ferrell, who knew Roland well, had
seen Roland walking near the Hartigan store. Roland told Farrell
he had just been dining with his boss, Morris Herman,
but Hermann denied this to police. However, the clerk who
made the sale at Hartigan's, Emma Miller, could not identify
the buyer and claimed that he had a red beard,
(23:05):
which Roland did not. This pattern of tracing a lead
almost back to Roland, but failing to conclusively tie it
to the man continuously frustrated at the detectives. It happened
again with the Bromo Seltzer bottle. The police had arranged
for doctor Rudolph Whitehouse, a prominent toxicologist and forensic medicine
(23:25):
expert to examine the bottle. Though the dark blue glass
bottle looked like an authentic Emerson's Bromo Seltzer bottle, Whithouse
discovered it was a forgery. The bottle didn't have the
company's name embossed on it and was slightly smaller than
the real thing. Whithouse discovered a manufacturer's mark on the bottle.
The detectives traced to a chemical firm called Powers and
(23:47):
Weightmen in Newark. Powers and Weightmen had sold ten bottles
containing cyanide of mercury, the poison that Whitthouse identified in
the bottle, to another Newark business, the pharmaceutical supplier Ceebee
Sme and Co. In July eighteen ninety eight. After a
laborious search through thousands of their sales slips, detectives found
(24:08):
that two of those bottles had ended up at Ballboch
and Co. A metal smelting company based only two blocks
away from the Herman and Co. Paint factory. But again
detectives couldn't link these bottles to Roland Molineux. The chemist
at Ballbach claimed that he had used up all the
cyanide in experiments. The next swing and a Miss came
(24:30):
from trying to trace the poison. Henry Barnett had taken
the tin which Barney had received in the fall of
eighteen ninety eight, purported to be a sample of Cutnose
improved efferveescent powder. The tin turned out to be legitimate,
though the contents had likely been tampered with, so the
police turned to Cutnose to try to identify sample recipients.
(24:51):
The company sent samples to customers who wrote in requests.
Owner Gustav Cutno explained these request letters were saved for
future mo marketing. Cutno continued and detectives were welcome to
look through them. Fortunately, Cutnoe could narrow down the window.
The tin had been sent in to a six month
period thanks to a specific sticker. Unfortunately, during these six
(25:14):
months alone, the company had received more than one hundred
thousand letters people have always loved free samples. Three detectives,
with the assistance of Cutnoe's bookkeeper, Elsie Gray, began the tedious,
laborious search. Seven days later, Elsie Gray struck gold. She
(25:35):
found a letter one written on Robin's Egg blue stationery
emblazoned with interlocking silver crescents, with handwriting that looked much
like the handwriting on the poison package addressed to Harry Cornish.
There were just two problems. First, the letter had come
in on December twenty third, six weeks after Barney had died.
(25:57):
And secondly, the signature at the bottom of the letter
read not R. Molineux or even H. Barnett, but confusingly
H Cornish. What could this mean? Following their return address
on the letter, detectives found a private letterbox company owned
by a man named Joseph Koch. Coke told detectives he'd
(26:21):
rented box number ten to a man named Harry Cornish
in early December, but when detectives brought Harry Cornish to
Koch's offices, Coke didn't think this was the man who'd
rented the letterbox. Captain McCleskey wasn't surprised. He would later
say that the use of Harry Cornish's name only further
convinced him of Roland Molineu's guilt. In McCluskey's words, quote,
(26:45):
the next best thing to killing an enemy is to
have him accused of murder. The post office box gave
detectives another lead to go on by following up on
a package that arrived at the box shortly after they
discovered it. Police found that the box owners had using
the same Robin's Egg blue stationery as in the cutnos
(27:06):
letter written to multiple medical companies to request samples of
their cures for mail impotence. One of these companies found
a letter whose handwriting and stationary matched, but had a
different return address and purported this time to come from
an H. Barnett. Detectives followed this information to another private
(27:28):
letter box. Maybe this time they could find a real
connection to Molineux. Examining the mail in the second mailbox,
the police found correspondence with Marston's Remedy Company. When they
contacted Marston's, the owner handed them a diagnosis form that
a customer had filled out using the name Barnett. But
(27:49):
the descriptions in the diagnosis form the patient's age, height, measurements,
and medical history didn't match Henry Barnett. They matched Roland Molineux. Unfortunately,
this lead to fizzled when the box's owner, Nicholas Heckman,
said he wanted payment to make an idea of the
(28:10):
box's renter and refused to cooperate with police. Joseph Coch,
owner of the other private box also stopped cooperating, saying
he was too frightened to get involved. The police were
getting frustrated, and they weren't the only ones. Throughout January,
the newspaper's coverage of the investigation had become more and
(28:32):
more critical. In an editorial in early February, William Randolph
Hurst claimed that the Malnu family's wealth was protecting Roland.
A little rich coming from the guy who inspired Citizen Kane.
But anyways, if this had happened among people without influence,
every person suspected of knowing anything about it would have
(28:52):
been locked up before morning, Hurst wrote, But when two deliberate,
premeditated murders have been committed by persons with financial and
political poll the whole machinery of justice has been paralyzed.
Was there any way to set this machinery back in motion?
(29:13):
On February ninth, eighteen ninety nine, a coroner's inquest into
Catherine Adams's death began. Coroner's inquests are rare these days,
but at the time they were called when sudden deaths
occurred in order to determine if the death was natural
or not. Coroners and their juries did not typically investigate crimes,
(29:35):
but they did have the power to subpoena witnesses. In
the Adams case, the press reported the District Attorney's office
had gotten fed up with the police's failures and decided
to use the coroner's inquest to conduct their own investigation.
Some people were skeptical of the process's efficacy, especially since
the District Attorney, Asa Bird Gardiner, happened to be an
(29:57):
old friend of General Edward ma These suspicions were quickly
confirmed by the conduct of eighty A James Osborne. Osborne
had a reputation as a bulldog in the courtroom, and
he quickly dug his teeth into the inquest's first witness,
not Roland Molineu, but Harry Cornish. In a ferocious examination,
(30:22):
Osborne all but accused Harry of being the poisoner. Osborne
brought up Harry's playboy reputation and his arguments with Henry
Barnett and Roland Molineux. Cornish Da Gardner reminded the press
was the one who had actually given Catherine Adams the poison.
In contrast, when Roland Molineux appeared on the stand, Osborne
(30:45):
treated him with gentle politeness, often apologizing for the uncomfortable questions.
Duty just required him to ask. Roland, Unlike Harry, who
had been angry and flustered in court, was cool, calm
and collected. The press took Osborne's approach as proof of
the justice system's favoritism. A cartoon in the Evening Journal
(31:09):
depicted Osborne strangling Harry Cornish in one panel and cuddling
a child's size Roland Molineu in the other. But as
Osborne continued to tear Harry apart on the stand and
brought more witnesses into cast suspicion, even the skeptical press
began to question Harry. Harry published a highly defensive public
(31:30):
statement hilariously titled quote Cornish says, some things look bad,
but he can explain. Perhaps people thought they had been
too quick to jump on Roland Molineu as a suspect,
and thinking on it wasn't Harry Cornish the first one
to point the police at Roland. Had it all been
a frame? The Molinews were delighted by this turn of events.
(31:54):
The past two months had been a nightmare for the
respectability obsessed In general. He had ordered the whole family,
including Blanche, to retreat into the Fort Green Brownstone, where
the curtains were always kept drawn to keep the press
from looking in. The lawyers he hired had vigorously protected Roland,
refusing any requests from the police, such as submitting a
(32:16):
handwriting sample. But with the focus turning away from Roland
and on to Harry, Roland's lawyers thought it might be
best to change tactics and begin cooperating. On February fourteenth,
Roland produced a handwriting sample under observation in ady A
Osborne's office. The inquest ran for nearly two more weeks,
(32:38):
with evidence against Harry mounting and Roland's delight growing. Even
the testimony of Nicholas Heckman, the letter box owner, couldn't
shake Roland's assurance. On Monday, February twenty seventh, the inquest's
final day, Heckman appeared and claimed that Roland had rented
a letter box from him. Roland called Heckman a liar,
(33:01):
but seemed to laugh the whole thing off. But then
something happened that shook Roland deeply. When his lawyer, Bartow
Weeks objected to Heckman's further testimony, Dia Gardiner turned on
Weeks and harshly told him to sit down. Up until
this point, Gardiner had been unfailingly polite, even deferential to
(33:25):
Roland's lawyers. In that instant, Roland Malaneu heard the trap
spring shut. From being the shielded, protected, coddled, and stroked
friend of the prosecuting officer, reporter Charles Michaelson wrote, Molineux
suddenly found himself exposed to the full broadside of that
(33:47):
officer's artillery. The manhunters came from behind their cover of
soft words and apologies and attacked their quarry. Lulled into
a false sense of safety, Roland had lowered his defense
is a fatal mistake of overconfidence. The next witness, William Kinsley,
showed him just how badly he had aired. Kinsley was
(34:11):
a nationally recognized handwriting expert, and he testified that the
handwriting in the sample Roland had provided the ADA matched
the handwriting on the poison package sent to Harry Cornish,
as well as the letters sent to the various medical
companies from the two private letter boxes. Then, to drive
the point home, Ada Osborne introduced a further six handwriting experts,
(34:37):
all of whom agreed with Kinsley's conclusions. The final blow
was delivered by District Attorney Gardner himself, who presented a
closing summation unusual for a coroner's inquest, Gardner revealed that
the entire inquest had been a carefully plotted trap on
which the DA's Office and the police had collaborated. It
(35:00):
had been Captain McCluskey's idea, Gardener explained, to use an
inquest to get Roland, the only suspect who had refused
to provide a handwriting sample, to drop his guard. The
DA's office had made Harry Cornish their scapegoat, but had
never truly believed him guilty. It had been Roland all along.
(35:21):
Roland who had the motive, who had the opportunity, and
whose handwriting matched all of the incriminating mail. At the
end of his summation, Gardner asked the coroner's jury to
assign responsibility for Catherine Adams's death to Roland Molineux. The
jury did not take long to do just that. After
(35:41):
less than two hours of deliberation, they announced that they
believed Roland had sent the poison that killed Adams. Roland
was quickly arrested and sent to the tombs New York's
infamous jail. Four days later, a grand jury formally indicted
him on a charge of first degree murder for the
day death of Catherine J. Adams. General Molineux vowed to
(36:04):
fight his son's case till the end, but would his
good name and his wealth be enough to overcome the
case being built against Roland. Roland Molineu's journey to trial
was long and winding. In late March eighteen ninety nine,
his attorneys managed to get the first indictment against him
(36:26):
quashed on the grounds that it had been improper for
the DA's office to discuss Henry Barnett's death at the
grand jury hearing. On May third, a new grand jury
was convened, and this time they didn't bring an indictment.
The press and the DA's office thought they knew why.
Six members of the jury, including the foreman, were members
(36:48):
of the same veterans organization as General Edward Molineux. Down
but not out. The police immediately arrested Roland on the
charge of assaulting Harry Cornish. When Roland and got out
on bail for that charge, the police arrested him again
for Catherine Adams's murder in mid July, a third grand
jury was convened. These jurors, who had no connections to
(37:12):
the Molineus, returned an indictment after three days eighty eight.
James Osborne was so delighted that he telegraphed his wife
the news writing quote the people won. Inside his jail cell,
Roland Molineux seemed just as confident as Osborne. Over the
past five months. He'd maintained his exercise regimen and his
(37:34):
grooming routine, used his spending money to buy upgraded meals,
and continuously projected an aura of cool certainty. He had
faith in his father and in his lawyers, Bartow Weeks
and George Gordon Battle, both longtime friends of the family
and skilled attorneys. When Roland's trial finally began on November fourteenth,
(37:55):
eighteen ninety nine, Weeks and Battle were both by his side,
as was his father. They weren't his only supporters. Dozens
of besotted women who'd fallen in love with Roland via
newspaper coverage were gathered outside the courtroom, begging the guards
to let them in. The guards refused, the room was
(38:15):
already packed. At ten thirty am, Judge John Goff called
the court to order. The fifty one year old Gough
had made a name for himself rooting out corruption in
the New York Police Department. As a judge, he was
short tempered and action oriented, regularly cutting lawyers off to
ask witnesses questions of his own. Unconcerned with appearing impartial,
(38:39):
Gough's rulings often revealed his personal beliefs on a given case.
People had predicted that this would be a long trial,
but no one imagined quite how long. Jury selection alone
took more than two weeks. Both Bartow Weeks and A
DA Osborne claimed they wanted quote of a high order
(39:01):
of intelligence to be secured as jurors in this case.
Their method of getting such men was to ask bafflingly
phrased questions full of legalise and arcane vocabulary, such as
this one posed by Osborne to a cab driver named
Hugh Doherty. Quote, do you understand that in order to
justify legal guilt from circumstantial evidence, the inculpatory facts must
(39:24):
be absolutely incompatible with the innocence of the accused? Doherty, astounded, replied,
I never heard that while driving my cab. Despite multiple
rapprimands from goth and ridicule in the press. The attorneys
kept this up until finally, on November twenty ninth, they
managed to pull a jury together. James Osborne presented the
(39:46):
prosecution's opening statement on Monday, December fourth. He set the
stakes for the trial high, telling the jurors that the
country was currently embroiled in quote a fight between society
and poisoners. Then he walked the case against Roland Molineux.
When he got to Roland's connection with Henry Barnett, Barto
(40:07):
Weeks objected, saying that the Barnett case was separate. Judge
Goff disagreed, ruling quote, if it is apparent that the
circumstances of one crime are relevant to the other, they
are admissible. As Osborne spoke, reporters kept a close watch
on Roland, milking every last drop of drama out of
the story. Several papers had actually assigned their theater critics
(40:30):
to cover the trial. One of these critics, the Harolds
Clement Scott, found Roland fascinating. The man he saw, Scott wrote,
quote is not Roland b. Molineux. It is a false,
unnatural man Behind this actor's mask. I can see the
mind of the wretched man working. He is for the
(40:51):
moment two men, the man as he is and the
man in the mask. Throughout the trial this mask time slip.
Roland would burst out in laughter at inappropriate times, or
even be seen playing Tic tac toe in the middle
of testimony. Roland's manner wasn't the only strange aspect of
(41:11):
the trial. Observers were baffled by the way that the
prosecution presented their case. The order in which Osborne called
his witnesses, and he would call more than a hundred
of them, seemed random. Notably, Osborne wouldn't actually establish that
a murder had occurred until January second, when coroner's physician
Albert T. Weston testified that Catherine Adams had been poisoned
(41:34):
with cyanide of mercury. By this point, Roland Molineu's case
had become the longest most expensive murder trial in New
York history. In the first weeks of the trial, Osborne
mainly focused on handwriting analysis, bringing in multiple experts to
testify that Roland's writing sample matched the writing on the
medicine request letters and on the poison package. This testimony
(41:58):
had been so dry and repartitive that even Osborne had
gotten sick of it, saying aloud, how long, Oh Lord,
how long. At one point there wasn't much the defense
could do to undermine these witnesses, although Bartow Weekes did
his best attacking the handwriting men on unrelated matters, Daniel
Ames's atheism, for example, or William Kinsley's passion for raising chickens,
(42:23):
the latter of which made the whole courtroom laugh. There
were several other interesting moments interspersed throughout. The first came
on Monday, December eleventh, when a young woman named Mamie
Milando took the stand. Milando was described in the press
as Roland's former housekeeper, and that was true, but maybe
not the full story. Roland had first met Milando in
(42:46):
eighteen eighty seven, when she was a thirteen year old
working in his father's New Jersey paint factory. When Roland
moved to Hermann and Co. He took Milando with him,
hiring her as a factory foreman and as housekeeper for
his factory living quarters. Harold Scheckter believes that the two
may have had a sexual relationship. Milando did not want
(43:06):
to testify. To avoid the stand, she'd refused to leave
New Jersey where the New York Police could not get
to her. She was only here now thanks to some
highly dubious maneuvering by the NYPD, who had sent two
undercover officers to take Milando and a friend of hers
out on a date. After getting the two women drunk,
(43:27):
the officers suggested a trip to Patterson, New Jersey, by train.
On the train trip, Milando fell asleep. When she awoke
and disembarked the train, the lead detectives on Roland's case
were there to greet her and reveal that she was
actually now in New York. Milando tried to fight the
detectives off, but could not. Now on the stand and
(43:52):
looking deeply uncomfortable, Milando explained that once, while visiting Roland
at his apartment at the Herman and Co. Factory, she'd
seen some paper that she liked. She'd liked it so
much that she'd taken three of the sheets and three
matching envelopes home with her. She was therefore intimately familiar
with the stationary, a distinctive set tinted Robin's Egg blue
(44:16):
with interlocking silver crescents at the top. This was the
same stationary used to write the forged medicine requests, stationary
that Roland Molineux had denied ever having seen at the inquest.
Milando's clear reluctance to testify at one point, when asked
if she was still friendly with Roland, she started to
(44:37):
sob only made her testimony more believable to onlookers. After
the brief excitement of Milando's appearance, the tedious parade of
handwriting experts resumed. Eventually, Osborne got around to introducing the
other circumstantial evidence that connected Roland to the crime. Doctor
Roland Whitthhouse, the forensic chemist, confirmed that the powder in
(44:59):
the Romo Seltzer bottle was cyanide of mercury, while Carl Tromer,
a chemical salesman, confirmed that Roland had the raw materials
to make cyanide of mercury in his lab at the
paint factory. Joseph Coke and Nicholas Heckman identified Roland as
the man they'd rented private letterboxes to the case's lead detectives,
explained how they'd trace the silver bottleholder to Hartigans. Newark
(45:24):
detective Joseph Ferrell testified to having seen Roland near Hartigan's
on the day the bottleholder was sold. The prosecution submitted
the diagnosis form sent to Marston's remedy company, signed as Barnett,
but filled out with details that matched Roland into evidence.
This was all important information, but for most observers it
(45:44):
was also boring. They had read about all of these
things in the papers months ago. By mid January, though
coverage of the trial was still robust, interest in the
trial was fading, but on January fifteenth, testimony from two
new witnesses woke the tired public right back up. The
first new witness was named Rachel Green. For several months
(46:08):
in late eighteen ninety seven and eighteen ninety eight, Green
had worked as a maid in a boarding house on
the Upper West Side. While working there, Osborne asked her,
did you know the defendant? I knew mister and missus Cheeseborough.
Green responded. Cheeseborough was Blanche Mollinew's maiden name. Do you
see this mister Cheeseborough in the courtroom, Osborne asked. Rachel
(46:31):
Green rose from the witness stand and pointed at Roland Molineux.
That's the gentleman, she said. Roland, for the first time
in the trial, seemed angry and concerned. Green went on
to explain how she believed Roland and Blanche to be
married during this time because Roland regularly spent the night
in Blanche's room. In truth, the couple wouldn't marry for
(46:52):
nearly another year. This testimony was certainly scandalous, but what
did it mean for Roland's guilt? The next witness, Many Betts,
connected the dots. Betts was also a maid. She worked
for Alice Bellinger. Bellinger was Blanche's good friend, and Blanche
had moved in with her after moving out of her
boarding house. Unlike Green, many Betts had never seen Roland
(47:16):
Molineu visit Blanche at home. She had, however, seen Henry
Barnett visit regularly. Judge Goff paused Betts's testimony here to
ask Osborne about the relevance. Osborne explained that he was
establishing Roland Molinew's motive for killing Henry Barnett jealousy. But
the defendant is not on trial for the murder of Barnett,
(47:38):
Gough reminded the prosecutor. No Osborne acknowledged, but I want
to show that the man who hated Barnett also hated Cornish.
We find letters for certain remedies in Barnett's name. We
also find letters in Cornish's name. This shows the workings
of the defendant's mind. Barnett died of cyanide of mercury,
(47:59):
just as Cornish was to have died. It's the same
sort of plot and as such should be allowed in evidence.
Goff mouled over this argument, then told Osborne, you may continue.
So Osborne did, getting more information from many Bets about
Henry Barnett's frequent visits and overnight stays. This testimony directly
(48:20):
contradicted Blanche's testimony at the coroner's inquest. On the stand there,
she had insisted that her relationship with Barnett had been
purely platonic. The flowers she'd sent him while he was
dying had been a simple gesture of friendship. She claimed,
Roland and Barney had never fought over her, despite Betts's
evidence to the contrary. Blanche would always publicly maintain that
(48:41):
she and Burnett were not romantically involved. She would only
admit to their sexual relationship in her private memoir written
decades later. Throughout the trial, the defense lawyers made a
point of bringing Blanche in to see her husband. The
apparently adoring couple would exchange emotional words and kiss and
embrace for the world to see. Betts's testimony undermined this
(49:03):
romantic image, and it bolstered James Osborne's case by establishing motive.
By the time Osborne finally rested his case, observers felt
the prosecutor had made a strong, circumstantial case against Roland,
but he had failed to answer a critical question, why
would Roland want Henry Cornish dead. Osborne had brought in
(49:25):
some Knickerbocker members to describe the two men's feud, but
it all seemed so petty, certainly not enough reason to kill,
so Osborne had injected the Barnet murder in the trial.
This strategy played to the strengths and weaknesses of each case.
In the Barnet case, the motive was obvious, but the
evidence was weaker. Barnett's death had originally been thought to
(49:48):
be from natural causes, so the police were a month
behind in investigating it. In the Adams case, on the
other hand, the motive was murkier, but the evidence was clearer. However,
Roland Malaneu hadn't been charged with Henry Barnett's murder, and
some newspapers commented on this. Would this strategy come back
(50:08):
to bite the prosecution? James Osborne would have to wait
and see. On February fifth, nearly three months after the
trial began, he rested the state's case. People eagerly anticipated
the presentation of the defense case. What witnesses would the
defense call? Would Roland Malanu testify in his own defense?
(50:30):
What about his glamorous wife Blanche. On February sixth, defense
lawyer Bartow Weeks stood to speak. He looked strangely, uneasy, pale,
and strained. He had good reason, because Bartow Weeks was
about to say something shocking, something that would change the
course of the trial and Roland Molineux's life. Just what
(50:56):
did bartow Weeks say? Well, you'll have to come back
next week to find out in Part two of New
York v. Roland Molineu. But before you go, stay with
me after the break for a surprising connection between this
trial and a famous political scandal. Although Bartow Weeks with
(51:17):
the lead defense attorney in Roland Molinu's trial, he didn't
work alone. Weeks was assisted throughout by his law partner
George Gordon. Battle. Battle, then thirty years old, was in
the early years of what would become a distinguished law career.
Born in North Carolina, Battle had come to New York
to attend Columbia Law School. After graduating, he joined the
(51:39):
District Attorney's office, where he worked for five years before
going into private practice with Bartow Weeks. A brilliant lawyer,
Battle would win a number of major cases, both civil
and criminal. Battle was also known for his civic leadership.
He chaired numerous committees, including the National Committee on Prison
Labor Reform and New York City's Parks and Playgrounds Association.
(52:03):
A devout episcopal, Battle also fought for religious freedom. His
work against anti Semitism was so important that the prominent
Jewish newspaper, the American Hebrew, awarded him a medal for
keeping the flame of religious hatred from searing American democracy.
He raised money for a variety of causes, including the
(52:23):
Salvation Army and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration
of the American Revolution. Battle's generosity extended to those around him.
In nineteen seventeen or eighteen, he hired a high school
student named Seymour as a law clerk. Seymour had had
a difficult childhood. His hot tempered father had trouble keeping
a job, particularly after he fell ill with cancer, leaving
(52:46):
young Seymour to support his parents and older sister. Seymour
got a job loading freight for a railroad, hard dangerous
work for a fifteen year old. His co workers at
the loading docks, recognizing Seymour's intelligence, incur uraged him to
apply for scholarships. Soon enough, Seymour won a place at
a preparatory school in Newark. He kept working in the
(53:07):
loading docks while at school, continuing the job even after
he was hired as a law clerk by George Gordon Battle.
Battle was so impressed by Seymour's intellect and work ethic
that he increased his pay, allowing Seymour to finally quit
the railroad job. Not long after, Battle offered to pay
for Seymour's college education. Seymour graduated from Fordham and then
(53:29):
from Fordham Law. Soon enough, just like his mentor, Seymour
was a prominent and successful lawyer. When Seymour's first child
was born, he saw an opportunity to honor all that
Battle had done for him, so he named his son,
George Gordon Battle. Battle's namesake would go by Gordon, and
(53:50):
he would one day become more famous than his father
and his namesake combined, although not necessarily for the right
reasons for this little baby would grow up to be
none other than g. Gordon Liddy, best known today for
his role in organizing the nineteen seventy two burglary of
the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Building.
(54:14):
Thank you for listening to History on Trial. If you
enjoy this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review.
It can help new listeners find the show. My main
sources for this episode were Harold Scheckter's book The Devil's Gentlemen, Privilege,
Poison and The Trial That Ushered in the twentieth century,
as well as newspaper coverage of the trial. For complete bibliography,
(54:35):
as well as a transcript of the episode with citations,
please visit our website History on Trial podcast dot com.
History on Trial is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward.
The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
supervising producer Trevor Young and executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams,
(54:57):
Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show
at History on Trial podcast dot com and follow us
on Instagram at History on Trial and on Twitter at
Underscore History on Trial. Find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by
visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(55:19):
to your favorite shows.
Host
Mira Hayward
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.