by Corey Mead
The key physical clue to Lancaster’s guilt came, Jones said, from the angle at which the bullet had torn through Clarke’s skull. Despite Hamilton’s testimony, “When you get out there in the jury room, lie down on the floor and see if you can shoot yourself through the head where this man did.” As forensics expert Colin Evans notes, “A .38 Colt revolver is a long-barreled, heavy weapon, with a trigger pull of eight to fourteen pounds.” Given the bullet trajectory found in his skull—the bullet entered the front temple from right to left and exited above the left ear—Clarke “would have had to lie down and balance the gun against his temple; then, unless he was extraordinarily flexible, he would have had to depress the trigger with his thumb.” This was an “implausible and unlikely” scenario. However, the bullet trajectory was “exactly what one might expect had the shot been fired by someone standing between the two beds.”
During the lunch break that followed Jones’s statement, Haden Clarke’s mother, Ida, entered the courtroom for the first time. Although she had been subpoenaed as a witness, she was not called to the stand. Instead, she sat at the prosecution table next to her son, Dr. Beverley Clarke. She followed the afternoon’s proceedings closely but kept her expression neutral.
Jessie, who had previously appeared only when she was required to give testimony, also slipped into the packed room, where she remained for the rest of the day. She stood inside the rail that separated the attorneys from the spectators. Like Ida Clarke, Jessie followed the arguments intently but with no outward signs of emotion.
At 4:28 p.m., Carson started his closing argument, which would continue into the following day. Despite his folksy courtroom manner, Carson adopted a tone of high rhetoric to make his final pitch.
“When I was a boy attending Osceola High School in my hometown of Kissimmee, I learned a declamation,” Carson began, “concerning . . . General Robert E. Lee. I wish now to quote to you the sentence that I have never forgotten: ‘Just as the oak stripped of its foliage by the wintry blast, then and then only stands forth in solemn and mighty grandeur against the wintry sky, so Robert Lee, stripped of every rank that man could give him, towered above the earth and those around him in the pure sublimity and strength of that character which we can only fitfully contemplate when we lift our eyes from earth to see it dimmed against the Heavens.’
“If you will permit the paraphrase,” Carson continued, “William Newton Lancaster, four thousand miles from his home, facing an American jury upon a charge of murder in the first degree; having gone through periods of financial distress, deprivation, and almost starvation; and having for many months paced the narrow confines of his lonely cell, deserted by many, but not by all of his friends, stands forth above those who have surrounded him in such pure sweetness, strength, unselfishness, and sheer nobility of character, so that we can only begin to appreciate it when we see it shine like a brilliant diamond, against the muck and dirt and filth which form the sordid background of this trial.”
The next morning the number of courtroom spectators was the largest yet. So intense was the demand from local attorneys for viewing space that Judge Atkinson ordered the entire area within the rail that divided the spectators’ benches from the remainder of the courtroom to be cleared, thus making room for the additional lawyers. On previous days of the trial about seventy-five spectators, nearly all of them women, and most of them friends and relatives of court attachés and county officials, had filled this space. Now these spectators were forced to leave. A number of the women grew angry and argued with the bailiffs, but Judge Atkinson’s order was enforced.
Among the remaining onlookers was Jessie, who again betrayed no emotion at the surrounding events. “I am interested only in freeing old Bill,” she told reporters. “Nothing else matters to me.”
As he had done in his opening statement, Carson attempted to prove Lancaster’s innocence by freely admitting his wrongdoing: “There are certain circumstances in this case . . . that standing alone and unexplained are suspicious. I think you will bear me out that there has been no attempt upon the part of the defendant, nor of the defense, to deny the existence of those circumstances which were true.” The prosecution’s case, Carson said, rested on five circumstances: Lancaster’s tremendous love for Jessie; the “so-called” threats made to Tancrel and Russell; Lancaster’s purchase of a pistol in St. Louis; the forgery of the suicide notes; and Lancaster asking whether Clarke would speak again. But the defense had rebutted each of those circumstances one by one, leaving the prosecution at a loss. “Where is the State’s case?” Carson asked. “They have utterly and completely failed.”
In fact, Carson argued, Assistant State Attorney Jones’s theory of the shooting was completely backwards. The reason for the bullet’s right-to-left trajectory through Clarke’s skull was that Clarke wanted to kill himself without endangering Lancaster. Clarke had lain flat on his back and turned his head “so that the bullet would not hit the whitest man he had ever met.”
Much of the drama in the case, Carson argued, stemmed from its subject matter. “We all know, and we all regret, that there have been many sickening and unusual and sordid details concerning sex (more than we like) brought into this case,” he said, “but it is your duty to deal with it.” Carson unloaded the blame for the case’s squalidness directly onto Jessie’s shoulders, reinforcing her role as the trial’s scapegoat. “There are women, all doctors know it and the books show it,” Carson said, “who, due to some pathological condition, are utterly unable to live up to the standards of virtue and chastity which you and I have been taught to believe constitutes the crowning virtue of the sex to which our mothers belong.” Jessie’s bravery and courage as an aviator had made her an admired figure, but because of “some peculiar physical or mental . . . defect” she possessed, her deepest secrets had now been broadcast “to be read, to be condemned, to be gloated over by those of sordid minds in the far corners of the world.”
Carson claimed that the case had become intensely personal to him, so great was his responsibility, given Lancaster’s heroic background and worldwide reputation, to restore his client’s good name. In emphasizing this point, Carson drew easily on the vicious racism that marked his time and place, so much so that his comments went utterly unremarked upon by the newspapers. “I may have gone further than my ordinary duty in an ordinary nigger murder case,” Carson admitted. “There was a story told . . . about one nigger coming into the courtroom, after another one had been convicted. The one entering the courtroom was, of course, nervous and tremulous; the one who had just been convicted had had mercy recommended for him. That was all he wanted, and as he went out and this other nervous nigger was coming in, he said, ‘Well, boy, how you coming along?’ and the nigger who had been convicted said, with a grin all over his face, ‘Fine, but I got to go to jail,’ and the other nigger asked, ‘For how long?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘just from now on.’ ” But in Lancaster’s case, Carson stressed, “acquittal alone would not be performing my duty to this client.”
Lancaster had proved his strength of character on the witness stand by acting “cool, calm, courteous, and collected.” He was, Carson noted, “scrupulously fair to the State Attorney . . . and to all others who had questioned him. He also was scrupulously fair to the memory of Haden Clarke.” Lancaster had even resisted the urge to fully condemn Tancrel and Russell.
“Weigh the character of the witnesses on the one side and on the other,” Carson instructed the jury, before ramping up for a grand conclusion. “Compare the jail-birds of the State with the war-birds for the defense, and have your verdict find the defendant ‘Not Guilty,’ and send word back to old England from whence we get our Common Law, that in American courts justice is administered in the high, fair, and solemn fashion that our ancestors won on that soil by their blood.”
Carson’s speech, with its soaring calls for justice and its celebration of Lancaster as a brave and humble war hero and record-breaking aviator, captivated the crowd, which day by day had vi
ewed Lancaster with increasing sympathy and admiration. Now Hawthorne, in the prosecution’s final argument, sought to bring the case back down to earth. Clarke hadn’t been some meek, pathetic figure living in Lancaster’s shadow, Hawthorne said. He had become, in Lancaster’s absence, the “cock of the walk” at the Coral Gables house.
“Haden Clarke most certainly was not depressed or had suicidal tendencies,” Hawthorne told the jury. “To the victor belongs the spoils—and Haden Clarke was at the top that night, Haden Clarke was in the driver’s seat that night at the Keith-Miller home. Haden Clarke had told Chubbie not to speak alone to Lancaster, and she obeyed. Haden Clarke in a fit of rage at the dinner table showed he was not a coward—and only cowards commit suicide—told Lancaster he was the head man at the house that night. Lancaster, realizing this, said he would leave the house, go to a hotel, and start back to St. Louis in the morning. Lancaster foresaw trouble; Haden Clarke expected it.
“At the airport Lancaster meets the man who alienated the affections of the woman he loved more than anything in the world and he doesn’t speak to him. He doesn’t even shake hands. The meeting was not friendly.” At the house Jessie had told Lancaster, in no uncertain terms, that she loved Clarke. When Clarke angrily forbade her from speaking with Lancaster alone, she obeyed. When Clarke told her to lock her bedroom door, she obeyed. “Don’t you see where the poisoned arrow points?” Hawthorne exclaimed.
“The gun goes off and he thinks, he says, a window slammed.” Hawthorne’s tone was dismissive. “I submit that the report of a .38 caliber pistol, held less than three feet away from your head, would burst your eardrums.
“There is not a single fact or circumstance when the rule of common reason is applied that does not point to the guilt of this defendant. Every page in his diary points to his guilt. His own testimony that he bought a gun while Chubbie was hungry and that he loaded the gun the night before he arrived in Miami points to his guilt. A guilty conscience needs no accuser, and the fact that he wrote those notes when Clarke was dying doesn’t sound so good. Lancaster asked Huston if he could say the death gun was his. Over and over again he asked if Clarke would be able to speak again. These things point to his guilt.”
Haden Clarke’s head had been lying on his pillow when the fatal shot was fired. But to create a “sealed contact” wound the pressure between gun and head had to be intense. “Why lie down and then rear up to meet the gun?” Hawthorne asked. “But if someone else should suddenly, while the victim is asleep, bury a gun in his head, his subconscious mind would make him come up, not dive through the pillow.
“Finally, let me say this, before this case is put away: you are a trial jury, not a pardon board. Do not let sympathy or emotions play a part. Decide simply if Haden Clarke committed suicide or if William Newton Lancaster killed him.”
At 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, August 17, 1932, Hawthorne concluded the state’s case.
After a brief recess, Judge Atkinson summarized the case for the jurors. He elucidated points of law and outlined the jurymen’s specific duties. And while he did not analyze the evidence, Judge Atkinson made his own feelings abundantly clear: “It has been my privilege to see into the depths of a man’s soul through his private diary, which was never intended for anyone’s eyes but his own,” he stated. “In all my experience, which has been broad, I have never met a more honorable man than Captain Lancaster.”
For four hours and fifty-nine minutes the jurors debated the case. While their sympathies lay with Lancaster, the myriad incriminating circumstances—especially the forging of the suicide notes—were simply too egregious for the jurors to dismiss. They attempted an early ballot, but the effort went nowhere. As the hours ticked by, the jurymen’s arguments eventually centered on a single issue: Were their suspicions weighty enough to offset a reasonable degree of doubt? They reached out to Judge Atkinson for clarification. The jurors also requested another viewing of the exhibits, but Carson, sensing victory in the wings, and employing a legal privilege, anonymously denied their request.
Though the jurors strenuously debated the forged notes, another suspicious element of the case escaped their attention. The defense claimed that the right-to-left trajectory of the fatal shot was the result of Clarke’s attempt to aim the bullet away from Lancaster. But there were two other beds on the opposite side of the sun porch, well away from where Lancaster lay sleeping. If Clarke were truly concerned about Lancaster’s safety, wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to lie on these? Or, at the very least, sit up straight in his bed before pulling the trigger? For that matter, why not go to a different room entirely to perform the deed?
A few minutes before 5 p.m., the jurors reentered the courtroom. The buzz of anticipation was palpable. The jury foreman handed a note to E. B. Leatherman, the circuit court clerk. In a booming voice, Leatherman announced the verdict:
“Not guilty.”
An ecstatic wave of cheers, screaming, clapping, and foot-stomping swept over the courtroom. Fashionably gowned women broke down in tears, shrieking their delight, while others gasped in gleeful astonishment, scarcely able to catch their breath. The courtroom presented a carnival-like scene, with bailiffs, deputies, sheriffs, and police officers vainly striving to contain the crowd as people surged forward in a desperate effort to shake Lancaster’s hand. Lancaster himself nervously clasped and unclasped his fingers, eventually stepping forward before the jurors, who remained in their box.
When the noise in the room finally began to subside, Lancaster shook hands with his lawyers and gamely posed for photographs. “I have been convinced all along that my innocence would be established,” he announced to the reporters. “My trial has been eminently fair and I have been treated cordially and courteously at all times.”
Turning to the jury, Lancaster said, “Gentlemen, you have been very patient with your time. I want to give you my heartfelt thanks for exonerating me.” He clicked his heels, gave the jurors a brisk bow, and tried to return to his chair at the defense table, but the crush of well-wishers prevented this. “I am delighted at my acquittal,” he called to reporters.
Hawthorne, presenting a brave face, uttered a brief statement: “The performance of my duty to the best of my ability is sufficient compensation. The jury, the only agency provided by law to determine the issue, has rendered its verdict, and I accept it without regret.”
But the newsmen’s attention was all on Lancaster. “Do your present plans include Mrs. Keith-Miller?”
“Please don’t ask me to answer that,” Lancaster wearily responded. “I don’t now know what my answer would be.”
Jessie herself had been in an office adjoining the courtroom when the verdict was announced. The earsplitting cheering and clapping had told her all she needed to know. As she walked out into the hallway, hoping to slip out of the building, a lone reporter blocked her path. How did she feel? he asked. “I am delighted,” she responded. “I knew old Bill would come through.”
22
A TRAGIC FIGURE
I must start life all over again,” Jessie told The New York Times before she departed from America. Lancaster’s trial had ended nine weeks earlier, but reporters were still pestering her with questions about whether she and Lancaster would now wed. Lancaster’s parents clearly wished otherwise, telling the press they hoped Lancaster and Kiki would be reconciled. But Jessie hinted that reports about her and Lancaster getting married at some future date might not be off base.
On October 14, 1932, Jessie boarded the American Merchant liner American Banker in New York for the voyage back to England. Although the assistant immigration commissioner announced that Jessie was leaving of her own free will, officials at American Merchant said she was being deported. According to The Baltimore Sun, the Department of Labor had agreed to drop deportation warrants against Jessie and Lancaster in return for an agreement that both would leave the country within a week. Deportation measures had been pending against the two since the conclusion of Lancaster’s trial.
Lancaster went to the docks to see Jessie off, but by mistake he initially boarded the wrong boat. After he realized his error, he accidentally left behind a rug he was carrying for Jessie in his haste to find the correct ship. A swarm of reporters followed him as he searched for the American Banker. To the gathered journalists, Jessie expressed considerable relief at getting out of the country, and a great deal of bitterness toward the American press, which she said had not treated her fairly. She also expressed fear that the stigma of Lancaster’s trial would follow her always, and admitted that she was nervous about what the public’s reaction to her and Lancaster in England would be. “I have been hiding out around New York for a month, not seeing anybody except a few friends,” Jessie said sadly. “Do you think I’ll ever live this thing down? Will people and the press forget it? Can I do anything—fly the Atlantic, or anything like that, which will make them put a new tag on me?”
Several hours later, Lancaster himself sailed for England on the Cunard liner Scythia. An immigration officer accompanied him to the ship.
When she arrived in London, Jessie found an immediate opportunity to make money by selling her story to the Daily Express, which ran a series of installments, in late October and early November, featuring her version of Haden Clarke’s death and her subsequent ordeal with the police. Jessie used the money to move into a one-room apartment in Oxford Terrace.
Lancaster disembarked in Liverpool on October 24. “I have not yet decided when I shall make my next flight,” he announced to reporters, “and I shall have no other pilot than [Jessie].” He stated that he had received the fairest possible trial and been accorded the most generous and sympathetic treatment by the American people.