An American Tragedy (109 page)

And then the identification of Roberta’s trunk as having been left in the baggage room at the station at Utica for a number of days. And after that the guest page of the Renfrew House, of Utica, for July sixth last, identified by Jerry K. Kernocian, general manager of said hotel, which showed an entry—“Clifford Golden and wife.” And the same then and there compared by handwriting experts with two other registration pages from the Grass Lake and Big Bittern inns and sworn to as being identically the same handwriting. And these compared with the card in Roberta’s suit-case, and all received in evidence and carefully examined by each juror in turn and by Belknap and Jephson, who, however, had seen all but the card before. And once more a protest on the part of Belknap as to the unwarranted and illegal and shameful withholding of evidence on the part of the district attorney. And a long and bitter wrangle as to that, serving, in fact, to bring to a close the tenth day of the trial.

AND then, on the eleventh day, Frank W. Schaefer, clerk of the Renfrew House in Utica, recalling the actual arrival of Clyde and Roberta and their actions; also Clyde’s registration for both as Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Golden, of Syracuse. And then Wallace Vanderhoff, one of the clerks of the Star Haberdashery in Utica, with a story of Clyde’s actions and general appearance at the time of his buying a straw hat. And then the conductor of the train running between Utica and Grass Lake. And the proprietor of the Grass Lake House. And Blanche Pettingill, a waitress, who swore that at dinner she overheard Clyde arguing with Roberta as to the impossibility of getting a marriage license there—that it would be better to wait until they reached some other place the next day—a bit of particularly damaging testimony, since it pre-dated by a day the proposed confession which Clyde was supposed to have made to Roberta, but which Jephson and Belknap afterward agreed between themselves might easily have had some preliminary phases. And after her the conductor of the train that carried them to Gun Lodge. And after him the guide and the driver of the bus, with his story of Clyde’s queer talk about many people being over there and leaving Roberta’s bag while he took his own, and saying they would be back.

And then, the proprietor of the Inn at Big Bittern; the boatkeeper; the three men in the woods—their testimony very damaging to Clyde’s case, since they pictured his terror on encountering them. And then the story of the finding of the boat and Roberta’s body, and the eventual arrival of Heit and his finding of the letter in Roberta’s coat. A score of witnesses testifying as to all this. And next the boat captain, the farm girl, the Cranston chauffeur, the arrival of Clyde at the Cranstons’, and at last (ever step accounted for and sworn to) his arrival at Bear Lake, the pursuit and his capture—to say nothing of the various phases of his arrest—what he said—this being most damaging indeed, since it painted Clyde as false, evasive, and terrified.

But unquestionably, the severest and most damaging testimony related to the camera and the tripod—the circumstances surrounding the finding of them—and on the weight of this Mason was counting for a conviction. His one aim first was to convict Clyde of lying as to his possession of either a tripod or a camera. And in order to do that he first introduced Earl Newcomb, who swore that on a certain day, when he, Mason and Heit and all the others connected with the case were taking Clyde over the area in which the crime had been committed, he and a certain native, one Bill Swartz, who was afterwards put on the stand, while poking about under some fallen logs and bushes, had come across the tripod, hidden under a log. Also (under the leadership of Mason, although over the objections of both Belknap and Jephson, which were invariably overruled), he proceeded to add that Clyde, on being asked whether he had a camera or this tripod, had denied any knowledge of it, on hearing which Belknap and Jephson actually shouted their disapproval.

Immediately following, though eventually ordered stricken from records by Justice Oberwaltzer, there was introduced a paper signed by Heit, Burleigh, Slack, Kraut, Swenk, Sissel, Bill Swartz, Rufus Forster, county surveyor, and Newcomb, which set forth that Clyde, on being shown the tripod and asked whether he had one, “vehemently and repeatedly denied that he had.” But in order to drive the import of this home, Mason immediately adding: “Very well, your Honor, but I have other witnesses who will swear to everything that is in that paper and more,” and at once calling “Joseph Frazer! Joseph Frazer!” and then placing on the stand a dealer in sporting goods, cameras, etc., who proceeded to swear that some time between May fifteenth and June first, the defendant, Clyde Griffiths, whom he knew by sight and name, had applied to him for a camera of a certain size, with tripod attached, and that the defendant had finally selected a Sank, 3½ by 5½, for which he had made arrangements to pay in installments. And after due examination and consulting certain stock numbers with which the camera and the tripod and his own book were marked, Mr. Frazer identifying first the camera now shown him, and immediately after that the yellow tripod as the one he had sold Clyde.

And Clyde sitting up aghast. Then they had found the camera, as well as the tripod, after all. And after he had protested so that he had no camera with him. What would that jury and the judge and this audience think of his lying about that? Would they be likely to believe his story of a change of heart after this proof that he had lied about a meaningless camera? Better to have confessed in the first place.

But even as he was so thinking Mason calling Simeon Dodge, a young woodsman and driver, who testified that on Saturday, the sixteenth of July, accompanied by John Pole, who had lifted Roberta’s body out of the water, he had at the request of the district attorney, repeatedly dived into the exact spot where her body was found, and finally succeeded in bringing up the camera. And then the camera itself identified by Dodge.

Immediately after this all the testimony in regard to the hitherto as yet unmentioned films found in the camera at the time of its recovery, since developed, and now received in evidence, four views which showed a person looking more like Roberta than any one else, together with two, which clearly enough represented Clyde. Belknap was not able to refute or exclude them.

Then Floyd Thurston, one of the guests at the Cranston lodge at Sharon on June eighteenth—the occasion of Clyde’s first visit there—placed on the stand to testify that on that occasion Clyde had made a number of pictures with a camera about the size and description of the one shown him, but failing to identify it as the particular one, his testimony being stricken out.

After him again, Edna Patterson, a chambermaid in the Grass Lake Inn, who, as she swore, on entering the room which Clyde and Roberta occupied on the night of July seventh, had seen Clyde with a camera in his hand, which was the size and color, as far as she could recall, of the one then and there before her. She had also at the same time seen a tripod. And Clyde, in his curious and meditative and half-hypnotized state, recalling well enough the entrance of this girl into that room and marveling and suffering because of the unbreakable chain of facts that could thus be built up by witnesses from such varying and unconnected and unexpected places, and so long after, too.

After her, but on different days, and with Belknap and Jephson contending every inch of the way as to the admissibility of all this, the testimony of the five doctors whom Mason had called in at the time Roberta’s body was first brought to Bridgeburg, and who in turn swore that the wounds, both on the face and head, were sufficient, considering Roberta’s physical condition, to stun her. And because of the condition of the dead girl’s lungs, which had been tested by attempting to float them in water, averring that at the time her body had first entered the water, she must have been still alive, although not necessarily conscious. But as to the nature of the instrument used to make these wounds, they would not venture to guess, other than to say it must have been blunt. And no grilling on the part of either Belknap or Jephson could bring them to admit that the blows could have been of such a light character as not to stun or render unconscious. The chief injury appeared to be on the top of the skull, deep enough to have caused a blood clot, photographs of all of which were put in evidence.

At this psychological pint, when both audience and jury were most painfully and effectively stirred, a number of photographs of Roberta’s face, made at the time that Heit, the doctors and the Lutz Brothers had her in charge, were introduced. Then the dimensions of the bruises on the right side of her face were shown to correspond exactly in size with two sides of the camera. Immediately after that, Burton Burleigh, placed on the stand to swear how he had discovered the two strands of hair which corresponded with the hair on Roberta’s head—or so Mason tried to show—caught between the lens and the lid. And then, after hours and hours, Belknap, infuriated and yet made nervous by this type of evidence and seeking to riddle it with sarcasm, finally pulling a light hair out of his head and then asking the jurors and Burleigh if they could venture to tell whether one single hair from any one’s head could be an indication of the general color of a person’s hair, and if not, whether they were ready to believe that this particular hair was from Roberta’s head or not.

Mason then calling a Mrs. Rutger Donahue, who proceeded, in the calmest and most placid fashion, to tell how on the evening of July eighth last, between five-thirty and six, she and her husband immediately after setting up a tent above Moon Cove, had started out to row and fish, when being about a half-mile off shore and perhaps a quarter of a mile above the woods or northern fringe of land which enclosed Moon Cove, she had heard a cry.

“Between half past five and six in the afternoon, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And on what date again?”

“July eighth.”

“And where were you exactly at that time?”

“We were——”

“Not ‘we.’ Where were you personally?”

“I was crossing what I have since learned was South Bay in a row-boat with my husband.”

“Yes. Now tell what happened next.”

“When we reached the middle of the bay I heard a cry.”

“What was it like?”

“It was penetrating—like the cry of some one in pain—or in danger. It was sharp—a haunting cry.”

Here a motion to “strike out,” with the result that the last phrase was so ordered stricken out.

“Where did it come from?”

“From a distance. From within or beyond the woods.”

“Did you know at the time that there was another bay or cove there—below that strip of woods?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what did you think then—that it might have come from within the woods below where you were?”

(Objected to—and objection sustained.)

“And now tell us, was it a man’s or a woman’s cry? What kind of a cry was it?”

“It was a woman’s cry, and something like ‘Oh, oh!’ or ‘Oh, my!’—very piercing and clear, but distant, of course. A double scream such as one might make when in pain.”

“You are sure you could not be mistaken as to the kind of a cry it was—male or female.”

“No, sir, I am positive. It was a woman’s. It was pitched too high for a man’s voice or a boy’s. It could not have been anything but a woman’s.”

“I see. And now tell us, Mrs. Donahue—you see this dot on the map showing where the body of Roberta Alden was found?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you see this other dot, over those trees, showing approximately where your boat was?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think that voice came from where this dot in Moon Cove is?”

(Objected to. Sustained.)

“And was that cry repeated?”

“No, sir. I waited, and I called my husband’s attention to it, too, and we waited, but didn’t hear it again.”

Then Belknap, eager to prove that it might have been a terrified and yet not a pained or injured cry, taking her and going all over the ground again, and finding that neither she nor her husband, who was also put on the stand, could be shaken in any way. Neither, they insisted, could the deep and sad effect of this woman’s voice be eradicated from their minds. It had haunted both, and once in their camp again they had talked about it. Because it was dusk he did not wish to go seeking after the spot from which it came; because she felt that some woman or girl might have been slain in those woods, she did not want to stay any longer, and the next morning early they had moved on to another lake.

Thomas Barrett, another Adirondack guide, connected with a camp at Dam’s Lake, swore that at the time referred to by Mrs. Donahue, he was walking along the shore toward Big Bittern Inn and had seen not only a man and a woman off shore in about the position described, but farther back, toward the south shore of this bay, had noted the tent of these campers. Also that from no point outside Moon Cove, unless near the entrance, could one observe any boat within the cove. The entrance was narrow and any view from the lake proper completely blocked. And there were other witnesses to prove this.

At this psychological moment, as the afternoon sun was already beginning to wane in the tall, narrow courtroom, and as carefully planned by him beforehand, Mason’s reading all of Roberta’s letters, one by one, in a most simple and non-declamatory fashion, yet with all the sympathy and emotion which their first perusal had stirred in him. They had made him cry.

He began with letter number one, dated June eighth, only three days after her departure from Lycurgus, and on through them all down to letters fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, in which, in piecemeal or by important references here and there, she related her whole contact with Clyde down to his plan to come for her in three weeks, then in a month, then on July eighth or ninth, and then the sudden threat from her which precipitated his sudden decision to meet her at Fonda. And as Mason read them, all most movingly, the moist eyes and the handkerchiefs and the coughs in the audience and among the jurors attested their import: