The Lost Pilots

by Corey Mead

  Lavender testified that Clarke’s physical condition—his syphilis—was “not good,” that “he took no means of protecting others” (that is, wearing condoms), and that he’d once said, “Somebody gave it to me, I don’t care if I give it to somebody else.”

  Clarke told Lavender that he worked for the Times-Picayune, but after three visits to the newspaper plant, he had ditched the job. In its place Clarke set off on a hitchhiking and train-riding journey to Miami from New Orleans in order to generate material for a magazine article. Lavender tagged along. The two men began their excursion with a two-day stop in Pensacola, where they did nothing but drink, followed by a day and a half in Tallahassee, where the drinking continued. In Jacksonville, Lavender picked up two checks from the Veterans’ Bureau, which, he informed Carson, Clarke had stolen to buy alcohol in Daytona Beach.

  As Lavender told it, Clarke had thought Lavender was suicidal, and so one night, as they drank in a speakeasy, Clarke had advised him that the best way to commit suicide was to shoot oneself in the head, because this led to instant death.

  Hawthorne, in his cross-examination, sought to prove that Lavender was a drunken and unreliable witness. “Who was present when the suicidal thesis was delivered by Haden?” he asked.

  “No one was present,” Lavender responded. “I didn’t pay much attention to him. I thought it was just liquor talk.”

  “Did he say he would ever commit suicide?”

  “He said if he ever got in a jam he would.”

  “Was he very drunk at the time?”

  “No, just normally so.”

  Lavender said Clarke had been generally cheerful, but that the last time he saw him, at 2321 S.W. 21st Terrace, Clarke had been depressed because one of his stories had been returned.

  “Did he have a cowardly nature?” Hawthorne asked.

  “Apparently not,” Lavender replied, indicating, to Hawthorne’s likely consternation, that he thought Clarke had committed suicide.

  Carson wasn’t finished with his parade of damning witnesses. The owner of a restaurant Clarke had frequented took to the stand to describe the young writer as chronically depressed. Then Carson brought up Dick Richardson, a playwright friend of Clarke, who reported that Clarke had indeed been a heavy drinker.

  “Did you ever hear him discuss suicide?” Carson asked.

  “Yes, at the home of Mrs. Keith-Miller, three weeks before his suicide.” Chubbie had also been in the room, Richardson said.

  “How did the conversation start?”

  “I had written a play, Rasputin, and remarked how difficult it was to kill [the main character].”

  “Did Clarke explain an easy and sure method?”

  “Yes,” Richardson answered. “He said the best way was to shoot oneself above and a little behind the right ear.”

  After Richardson stepped down, Carson turned his attention to the medical evidence for Clarke’s suicide, for which the key document was the autopsy report generated by the court-appointed medical commission. But the report itself was mute on the issue of suicide; none of the commission’s three doctors were criminologists, and they did not feel qualified to rule on the issue. Dr. Dodge, the commission member with the most relevant experience, was ill and unable to attend the trial, and so Carson was deprived of one of his most valued witnesses. In Dodge’s absence Carson called to the stand Dr. M. H. Tallman, the commission’s court-appointed representative. Tallman possessed twenty-one years of experience in five different states, and he was now chief surgeon at Victoria Hospital. Though Tallman would not offer an opinion regarding suicide, he provided the trial’s most shocking moment to date.

  “Do you have an exhibit?” Carson asked him.

  “Yes,” Tallman replied. From a box on his lap he withdrew a round, blackened object. A collective gasp escaped from the audience as they realized that the object was Haden Clarke’s skull. A female onlooker leaped up and ran from the room. But Lancaster, at the defense table, appeared fascinated, leaning forward in his seat to gain a closer look.

  Dr. Tallman produced a slide of tissue that had been taken from within an inch of the bullet wound. Though the tissue appeared to contain powder grains, Tallman said, this would have to be determined by a chemist. After entering the skull as a defense exhibit and marking the slide for identification, Carson excused Tallman from the stand.

  Because Tallman’s testimony could not fully replace that of Dr. Dodge, Carson called to the stand another expert witness, Dr. Albert H. Hamilton. Of all the individuals who appeared in the courtroom that summer, Hamilton had perhaps the most outsized reputation; over the preceding decades, he had been celebrated and vilified in equal measure. Taking the stand with his usual haughty confidence, Hamilton announced that he had forty-seven years of experience as a ballistic and criminological expert. His work had taken him, he said, from the eastern states to Arizona, and from the Dakotas to Florida and Texas. The Lancaster case, he declared, was the 296th homicide he had investigated.

  In truth, Dr. Albert Hamilton was not really a doctor. A native of upstate New York, he had started his career, in the late nineteenth century, as a maker of patent medicines. But Hamilton, a canny observer of human nature, had sensed, as forensic expert Colin Evans writes, “the public’s growing awe of all things scientific.” Realizing “that a title might be a useful marketing tool,” Hamilton had “encouraged his clients to refer to him as ‘Doctor,’ and the moniker stuck.” Hamilton’s eye for opportunity remained robust as the twentieth century dawned. With science playing an ever-larger role in criminal trials, Hamilton set himself up as a “Micro-Chemical Investigator,” charging clients the exorbitant fee of fifty dollars a day plus expenses for his trial testimony. Hamilton purchased a microscope and a camera so he would appear more “professional.”

  To promote himself more broadly, Hamilton published a booklet called The Man from Auburn. The booklet, like Hamilton himself, was an exercise in grandiosity. “When Dr. A. Conan Doyle conceived his world famous character Sherlock Holmes,” The Man from Auburn declared, “he probably little thought that there was a man in this State who was destined to be an almost exact materialization of the famous detective, both as to the method and to a great extent as to personal appearance.”

  In the booklet Hamilton claimed to be a qualified expert witness in “chemistry, microscopy, handwriting, ink analysis, typewriting, photography, finger prints, toxicology, gun shot wounds, revolvers, guns, cartridges, bullet deflection, gunpowders, nitroglycerine, dynamite, explosives, blood and other stains, human and so forth, cause of death, suicide as against homicide, embalming in fluids, determination of distance revolver was held when discharged, when a gun bullet was fired from a gun or revolver, and several other subjects.” When questioned about those claims during a 1913 trial in New York City, Hamilton bragged that he had been “permitted to qualify on those subjects by Supreme Court justices.”

  The fraudulence of Hamilton’s ballistics “expertise” was first exposed in the 1915 trial of Charles Stielow, a German farm laborer in West Shelby, New York, who was accused of murdering both his employer and the farm’s housekeeper. Stielow possessed the intelligence of a small child, and, while innocent, he was easily railroaded into confessing. Hamilton’s deceitful testimony on the stand helped to seal Stielow’s fate. Stielow was already in Sing Sing Prison, sentenced to die by the electric chair, when an optics expert from the Bausch and Lomb Company in Rochester at last stepped in to prove Hamilton’s errors. In 1918 Stielow walked out of Sing Sing a free man.

  Yet the case did little to harm Hamilton’s reputation; at the time, local trial coverage was rarely reported in other states. In 1921 Hamilton received the biggest break of his career, when he testified for the defense in the notorious Sacco and Vanzetti case. On the stand Hamilton argued vigorously that the two Italian-American anarchists were innocent of murdering a guard and a paymaster during an armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Hamilton performed an in-court demonstration involvin
g three different revolvers, but at the last minute the judge caught him illegally attempting to switch out parts of Sacco’s pistol in order to bolster his testimony that Sacco’s gun had not been used in the robbery.

  Despite this public embarrassment, Hamilton remained in demand for high-profile trials, including one for the murder of notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein. And so it was that on August 12, 1932, James Carson called Hamilton to the witness stand to testify on Bill Lancaster’s behalf. Hamilton had contacted Carson after reading an AP article about Clarke’s death; in typically high-handed fashion, Hamilton claimed the article had given him “certain information that told him considerably about the case which the local authorities might . . . have missed.” The Miami newspapers described “Dr. Hamilton” admiringly as a “ballistics expert and nationally known criminologist,” showing how robust his reputation remained.

  Upon taking the stand, Hamilton told Carson, in his usual overblown manner, that the autopsy report on Clarke was the best he’d ever seen.

  “And did you make a conclusion, Dr. Hamilton?” Carson asked.

  “Yes, I did. There was but one conclusion, and only one conclusion that could be arrived at from this examination, and that was that this shot was a self-inflicted, close, hard-contact shot at the instant the gun was hard against head and head hard against gun.”

  “Was it suicide or homicide?”

  “Absolutely suicide. There is not a scintilla of evidence to support a theory of homicide or murder.”

  Hamilton said he based his conclusion of suicide on the fact that no powder burns had been found on the wound’s exterior, and that subcutaneous ballooning had occurred. This, Hamilton claimed, pointed to “sealed contact,” meaning that the gun was pressed so tightly against the head that explosive gases were prevented from escaping. This happened only in cases of suicide, he said.

  Hamilton testified further that bloody residue and tissue, along with human hair, were visible through a microscope at the front sight of the “death pistol.” At the bullet’s exit point Hamilton said he had found at least fifty microscopic pieces of lead. These had been thrown off, he claimed, as the bullet rotated rapidly through the skull, indicating the gun had been fired at extremely close range. Hamilton said the bullet had traveled from right to left across the head and slightly backwards. To explain his point, he brought out rough diagrams he had made of the bullet’s course. As he talked, Clarke’s skull was passed among the jurors, causing a ripple in the courtroom.

  When the time for cross-examination arrived, Hawthorne challenged Hamilton on his qualifications as an expert. Because Hamilton’s contention of a “sealed contact” wound was backed up by the medical commission’s report, Hawthorne focused on proving that Hamilton’s claim of suicide was an opinion, not a fact.

  “If you were asleep,” Hawthorne asked, “and subconsciously felt a gun barrel against your head, would you try to push your head out against the gun?”

  “I’d say it was impossible.”

  “If a man is struck or touched while lying in bed, isn’t his tendency to rise?”

  “No, dodge away.”

  Hawthorne appeared incredulous: “You claim it would be impossible to hold the head of a man lying down asleep and kill him by shooting him with a pistol and produce similar exhibits as at this trial?”

  “Impossible.”

  Hoping to rattle Hamilton’s confidence, Hawthorne tried a different approach: “How did you acquire the title of doctor?”

  “Lawyers started that,” Hamilton replied dismissively. “I am not a doctor.”

  Before Hawthorne could press the point, the court recessed for the day. As the long line of spectators filed from the courtroom, the jurymen, along with Lancaster, were taken to 2321 S.W. 21st Terrace to examine firsthand the location of Clarke’s shooting.

  The next morning, Saturday, August 13, the Miami Daily News featured a front-page photograph, taken years earlier, of Jessie with her hair and makeup done and wearing a fancy dress. “Here’s ‘Chubbie’ All Dressed Up!” the headline exclaimed, illustrating how far the trial coverage had blurred the lines between tragedy and entertainment.

  Judge Atkinson allowed Lancaster to begin the day’s proceedings with a special statement. “The position of Haden Clarke’s bed at the house yesterday,” Lancaster said, “was not the same as on the night of the tragedy. I remember distinctly that the window-winder came through the rails of the head of the bed so that the windows might be closed by the person in bed. Yesterday the bed was a considerable distance from the wall.” The beds had been much closer together on the night of the shooting, as well.

  Following Lancaster’s statement, the first experts called to the stand were the remaining two members of the court-appointed medical commission, Drs. Gowe and Jones, neither of whom could state with certainty whether Clarke’s wound had been self-inflicted. But their caution was offset by the return appearance of Albert Hamilton. When “The Man from Auburn” took the witness seat, Hawthorne attacked him from all angles, attempting to expose his testimony as a sham. He mocked Hamilton’s supposed credentials, and questioned his analysis of the autopsy report. But Hamilton proved unflappable, doubling down on his claims: “I found nothing to support anything but suicide,” he said with his usual bluster. “I say this not as an opinion, but actual knowledge.” Hamilton’s confidence, however unfounded, clearly impressed the jury, who watched admiringly as he left the stand. But the prosecution didn’t give up: Hawthorne moved that the whole of Hamilton’s testimony be expunged from the record. Judge Atkinson overruled him, and the court recessed for the Sunday break.

  Monday’s session began with a last-minute witness: Joseph Ince, an old friend of Lancaster’s from the Royal Air Force. Ince’s flight to the trial had been paid for by the Detroit Times, which had notified him he was wanted as a witness. Ince and Lancaster had fought in the same squadron during the war, and had shared a hotel room in El Paso during Lancaster’s Latin-American Airways expedition. Under Carson’s questioning, Ince, wearing a gray suit and sporting a tiny brown mustache, reported a conversation in El Paso during which Lancaster, speaking with Tancrel, had seemed reassured that Haden Clarke was taking care of Jessie in Miami. Lancaster had been worried financially, Ince said, but he had exhibited no resentment toward or doubt of Clarke.

  Hawthorne’s cross-examination focused on Ince’s status as a war buddy and longtime friend of Lancaster. The inference was that Ince’s testimony was unreliable—any old comrade would want to help his close friend out of a jam. After Ince was dismissed, Hawthorne turned to the matter of Haden Clarke’s temperament, which Carson had portrayed as morose and unsteady and subject to wild swings. Hawthorne called to the stand an old bridge-playing companion of Clarke’s, Latimer Virrick, who had been at the party at 2321 S.W. 21st Terrace during which Lancaster had phoned from California, and who said he had never seen Clarke depressed. Virrick testified that Clarke had seemed troubled after hanging up, saying, “I think there’ll be trouble, damn it. He’s coming.”

  Another party attendee, Paul Prufert, told much the same story, claiming that Clarke had said, “There’ll be trouble—that son of a bitch is coming back here.” Prufert also testified that he had never seen Clarke act moody or glum. Hawthorne then called four more friends of Clarke, all of whom reported the same thing: they had never seen Clarke “depressed or downhearted.” Two friends described him as “happy-go-lucky,” with one saying that Clarke “never thought of yesterday or tomorrow.” To round out his argument, Hawthorne brought to the stand a mechanic from Viking Airport who had witnessed Lancaster’s return to Miami on April 20. The mechanic reported that Lancaster had acted coldly toward Clarke, neglecting to shake his hand.

  Lastly, Hawthorne called on three medical experts who challenged Albert H. Hamilton’s analysis of the evidence found on the death pistol’s barrel. What Hamilton had identified as human hairs were in fact, the three experts testified, cotton fibers.

  After the final expe
rt stepped down, Hawthorne declared that the state had completed the witness phase of its case.

  21

  THE VERDICT

  Shortly before noon on August 15, Assistant State Attorney Henry Jones began closing arguments. “You men are reasonable men,” he told the jurors. “Will you be guided by self-serving professions of innocence or by facts presented to you?” Lancaster would say or do anything to save himself from the electric chair, Jones said, while Jessie was a fallen woman, “a poor thing, weaker by far morally than physically.” Looking mournful, Jones added, “When a woman loses her virtue, she loses all. She also, it seems, loses the power to tell the truth.”

  The truth, Jones said, was that the supposed reasons for Clarke’s suicide didn’t hold up under scrutiny. “If every man who drank to excess, who ran after a woman, was short of money, or had a violent temper committed suicide,” he exclaimed, “we’d have a list that would reach around the world.” Instead, as in every murder case, one had to look at motive—and who possessed a greater motive than Lancaster? “Sex, if you please, was the motive,” Jones said. “You have but to scratch the veneer of civilization to get down to the animal that is in all of us. The greater a man’s love for a woman, the greater his motive for killing a rival.” Every word of Lancaster’s diary proved how all-consuming was his love for Jessie. “When Haden lay sleeping that night this man like a coward sent a bullet through his head,” Jones charged, pointing at Lancaster. “It was the most dastardly and ignominious murder ever committed.”

  After Clarke was shot, Lancaster “didn’t call a doctor, he didn’t call the woman in the house,” Jones scoffed. “Was there anything more cold-blooded and calculated than that? What would you do if you were awakened in the middle of the night to find your roommate shot and dying? Sit down and forge his name to some notes you wrote, or would you call a doctor?” Lancaster may have seemed honest and amiable on the stand, but that was only because he was “a supreme actor, shrewd beyond degree.”