“Yes, I saw a few of these types in my business as a Madame. They tend to be violent, and I had to restrict their access to my girls because it put them in danger of physical harm.” Ah Toy nodded at the butler Hannigan who was bringing in a tray filled with the dinner’s first course of mixed green salads.
“The mental state of the killer is a key to my discovery of this person’s identity. I believe that when I confronted him or her, I immediately caused a fear to take hold. I suddenly became the person who must be killed next.” Clara smiled up at Hannigan, who was placing the salad before her on the laced tablecloth. The butler did not return the smile, as he looked concerned about what she had just said.
“Don’t you believe you might be in immediate danger? Perhaps you should seek protection.” Ah Toy picked up her fork and held it aloft. “I know some Tongs who would do the job. Just give me your permission.”
“No. That would scare off this perpetrator. In fact, it is my guess that I won’t be approached until the trial. I told each suspect I was going to reveal the killer’s identity during the trial, as a surprise. It would be reasonable to assume this megalomaniac, who may be testifying for the prosecution, will also bask in the limelight of such recognition, even though it is the light of truth.” Clara picked up the canter of olive oil and spread it over her salad.
“The truth shall set you free!” exclaimed Mary Hopkins, between bites of her salad.
“I completely disagree! If this killer has any sanity left, he will attempt to kill you as soon as possible. The sooner you are out of the way, the sooner he can kill again.” Ah Toy pointed her fork at Clara.
“No, this killer already knows he or she is a suspect. When I divulge the secret identity during the trial, it simply means I believe he or she is the real murderer. The authorities don’t believe this, so the killer will simply declare his or her innocence in public, and then I shall truly be in danger of attack.” Clara bit off a large piece of lettuce. “It is at that moment I may seek protection from your Tongs or from the police, if they’ll give it to me.”
“Hannigan! Get this poor woman some tongs. She can’t pick up her salad!” Missus Hopkins cried.
As Clara walked to the streetcar after dinner, she began to feel the danger all around her. Why had she been so bold in her effort to bring this monstrous woman-killer out of hiding? She had five children and a family who depended on her. She wasn’t a bachelor like Isaiah Lees. Perhaps her assessment of the murderer being arrogant was misplaced. It was she who was most arrogant. She believed her life was more important than those prostitutes and that the killer would treat her with respect. Why should the killer wait until the trial? Women were nothing to this person.
Clara saw that the slowly encroaching fog was making its way across the streets below Nob Hill. Clara clutched at her wrap, and pulled it down, so that it covered her top half. She had worn a thick cotton brown dress, with a large bustle, so her position while riding in the streetcar was uncomfortable. Her thoughts were even more discomforting, however. The man seated in the row across the aisle was staring at her. He was burly and red bearded, and he had a rather imposing dent in his forehead, as if someone had struck him with a hammer or other such tool. She wondered if her killer might not subcontract another murderer to get rid of her. That would be intelligent.
The fog was thick, as he followed her down Montgomery Street toward her apartment building. Clara heard the man’s heavy steps. She smelled the foul odor from the man’s cigar. As she increased her gait, he increased his, and her heart began to pound so forcefully that she felt its pulsing in her throat. She opened the top two buttons on her dress. When she looked back, she saw nothing. The fog was too dense. She took a deep breath and began to run. She felt the bustle behind her swaying back and forth like a hot air balloon in the wind. Up ahead, as the fog began to clear, she saw the red awning in front of her building. She looked back, and the hammer head was still following her. She watched, as he began to run to catch up to her.
Was this going to be the moment of her demise? No, she insisted upon living for her children. She extracted the Derringer from her purse and pointed it at the intruder. She felt the trigger on her finger, and her aim was steady. “Stop right there!”
The man raised his hands. “Whoa, Missus Foltz. I don’t mean you no harm. Name’s Sergeant O’Brien. Perry O’Brien. I work with Captain Lees. He wanted me to follow you.” O’Brien held open his coat and showed her his SFPD badge.
Clara lowered the pistol to her side. “I am sorry, Detective. The captain didn’t tell me he was ordering anybody to protect me. How long have you been following me?”
“All week. I guess when I was on the streetcar you were spooked by something. I’ve been tailing you so’s you could question all your suspects without harm. And I’ll be watching your apartment while you stay there. Officer Cameron will also wear plain clothes to switch with me so I can get some sleep.” O’Brien took off his derby and held it in front of his portly stomach. Clara saw he was a redhead. “We’ll be with you all next week during the trial. You can rest assured nobody will harm you as long as we’re on the job, Missus. Old Sherlock’d have me head in a basket if you got harmed!”
Clara smiled. “Indeed. Well, thank you very much, Mister O’Brien. I will go up to my apartment now. It’s been a long week.”
O’Brien watched her climb the front steps. When Clara turned around to see where he was, the detective tipped his derby toward her and grinned. “May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He don't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.”
Clara turned the knob of the front door, and she felt safe for the first time that week.
Chapter Seven: The Trial
San Francisco City Hall Courthouse, San Francisco, February 23-27, 1884
On the first day of the trial of George Kwong, there were thousands of demonstrators, mostly women, assembled outside the courthouse on Market and Van Ness Streets. Clara noticed that her friend from the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Ellen Clark Sargent, was outside speaking to the assembled and handing out membership flyers. Clara often attended meetings of the Century Club at Ellen’s home on Folsom Street.
The City Hall itself was a metaphor for public corruption. Its construction began in 1871, originally planned in the French-style, on the triangular space of the former Yerba Buena Park, which had previously been a cemetery. So many different contractors made a profit from the years of construction that they were fired, and others, even more corrupt, took their place.
The cheap, Greek-style structures that resulted had walls filled with sand, and the City Hall buildings had two entrances, one of which faced North toward Van Ness and Nob Hill, where the wealthy could drive-up to the carriage entrance to do their business. The South-facing entrance to the City Hall structures was where Clara and the demonstrators were. This was the Market Street side, which included the infamous “Sand Lots,” where the labor unrest and Chinatown riots had begun.
As Clara passed by the suffragette group, on her way up the steps to the courthouse, Ellen Sargent waved. “You are our standard bearer, Clara Foltz! Portia of the Pacific, representing the rights of the underclasses, including women, is on her way to victory over the patriarchal powers. Just last year, this male-dominated system terminated the jobs of all the women inside San Francisco’s City Hall and replaced them with men. Why? Not because the men were more competent at the jobs. No, they were replaced because men could vote. That’s why we need to get that voting rights power, once and for all time!”
Inside the courtroom, the atmosphere and populace that made-up the ingredients of this so-called fair trial were diametrically opposed to the women outside demonstrating. As she had deduced earlier, Mayor Bartlett had hastily ordered a kangaroo court against Clara’s client, George Kwong.
She had only one week to prepare her case, and during that week she had to
assess the tangible evidence, appear at the all-male Voir Dir jury rejection (she had to reject those jurists who were blatant racists), and bring George to the pre-trial hearing, where she argued for most of two hours, with the Judge, Randolph Hoffman, a man she had never before seen, to allow testimony from Chinese witnesses. She believed it was a pyrrhic victory when Hoffman permitted the testimony, because he warned her that her Asian witnesses could not be used as expert witnesses or eyewitnesses to a crime.
Now, as the trial docket was set, and she moved to her defense table on the left side of the courtroom, she noticed with satisfaction that Captain Lees and Detective Vanderheiden were seated directly behind her and not on the prosecution’s side of the room. The two men would be testifying for her during the trial.
Ah Toy had been permitted to act as the court’s translator and her personal legal assistant. Clara could smell the cigar and cigarette smoke coming from the visitors’ gallery, and she smiled to herself when she realized that most of the visitors were male as well. The patriarchal hordes. Just the way she liked it.
District Attorney Matthew C. Welles, Jr., was her adversary. He had a contingent of two other lawyers on his team of prosecutors, and they all dressed like pall bearers at a funeral. Black suits and ties, white shirts, and the collective demeanor of funeral directors. She assumed it was George Kwong’s funeral they were going to prosecute.
“All rise!” the bailiff announced, standing next to the American flag. “The Honorable Randolph Charles Hoffman presiding in the case of the State of California versus George Bai Kwong.”
Clara felt a lump in her throat, as she always did whenever she had to try a case. She had never graduated law school, and there was a voice inside that made her remember that fact. Even though she had made many male graduates look ridiculous, when she took the oral Bar Examination, as her photographic memory could recite most of the California Codes and Criminal Procedures verbatim.
Welles gave his opening statement to the 12 members of the jury. Unlike Clara, he was not a pacer. He spoke from his position of authority behind the prosecution’s rostrum, but his voice was a deep baritone, and it was loud, so he need not visit each jurist the way Clara did when she addressed the panel.
“Gentlemen, I represent the people of the State of California. They have appointed me today to show you how the accused, George Kwong, was jilted by the victim, Miss Mary McCarthy, and in response, Kwong did knowingly and willfully attack her in the residence at 814 Sacramento Street at approximately seven in the evening of February 12, 1884. The State has a witness you will hear who will testify that George Kwong had a fight with the victim on the day before her murder, and another witness will explain how Kwong had learned to autopsy corpses while working as a coroner’s assistant for a summer in Oakland. The victim, Miss McCarthy, who was trying to become an honest woman, was pulled back into prostitution by Kwong and his father, Andrew, who are well known to profit from such illegal enterprises in Chinatown. We will show that McCarthy was keeping money from such prostitution for herself, and that this enraged Kwong so much that he murdered her and stripped her corpse down to a mere skeleton, using the post-mortem kit he obtained from his job in Oakland. Kwong wanted to make Miss McCarthy an example to other women who would attempt such independence in the future.”
There were several gasps and groans from jury members during his speech and a few shouts from the audience.
“We shall also show that this planning against independent prostitutes was well known by the police, especially the Chinatown Squad, and that the Kwongs kept a strict business practice and detested any such absconding of money by women like Miss McCarthy. In fact, their Tong enforcers, the San Ho Jui, or Triad Society, made certain these women were kept in line and paid the Kwongs regularly for their work in the flesh trade. We know this murder can be the tip of an iceberg of corruption in Chinatown, and these criminals, left unchecked, will continue to import and kidnap innocent women to continue their business. Miss McCarthy’s murder is perhaps the beginning of a widespread conspiracy to plant terror in the minds of women who would think about going against the dictates of the criminal element in Chinatown. Mister George Kwong, who is guilty of enforcing the will of his elders, must pay for his criminal act, and we are here to prove his murderous guilt beyond any reasonable man’s doubt.”
“Thank you, Counselor. Missus Foltz? Would you like to give your opening statement?” Judge Hoffman turned to Clara. She rose from her chair, spread out the front of her conservative, dark-blue dress with the medium-sized bustle in the rear, and walked over to stand in front of the jury.
“Shall we get the rather obvious facts out of the way first, Gentlemen? I am a female representing another minority, a Chinese man by the name of George Kwong. I have no obligation by law to prove that Mister Kwong did not commit this heinous murder. No, the only requirement to defend him, since he is not guilty in the eyes of the law up until that moment when Mister Welles proves his accusations to you, is to show you the number of ways my client may have not reasonably committed the act in question. This horrible act was done to a woman, Miss Mary McBride, who was in love with my client, and he was in love with her.”
A few men in the audience laughed. Clara began to pace, moving from one juror to the next and looking each in the eyes.
“In fact, the defense will show through testimony and evidence that George was attempting to get her out of her sinful profession and not into it, as the prosecution alleges. I will not argue that Andrew Kwong is innocent of taking money from the Tongs, who run the prostitution and other illicit enterprises inside Chinatown. Instead, I will show how these illicit businesses have come about because of many years of racism and restriction of basic human rights. The Chinese in San Francisco came to our city with the hope of eventually becoming citizens. However, their overlords in southern China, the Manchu, and their overlords in this country, the owners of the railroads, conspired together to prevent these innocent workers from gaining any civil rights in these United States. Instead, they were attacked and some were murdered by mobs. They were not allowed outside of their ghettos to mingle with their fellow workers and citizens, and they needed protection just to exist. The Tongs became that protection, and they were often independent from the Six Companies because they threatened men like the Kwongs with violence if they did not submit. Did the authorities help them gain respect and citizenship? No, instead, they appointed a special Chinatown Squad to harass and to subject them to demeaning searches and, in some cases, even killing babies with deadly fumigants and sprays.”
Several of the jury members said “No!” Others frowned and coughed.
“Counselor Foltz. Please stay on the topic of murder in the first degree.” Judge Hoffman admonished her by striking his gavel.
“It’s all related, Your Honor. The Kwongs were two men who worked the most to show they were part of our community. Andrew learned to speak fluent English, and he even converted from his natural-born faith to become a Methodist. His son, George, worked with him on the only permitted newspaper, The Oriental, so they could spread the good, Christian news of redemption and hope to his fellow Chinese. These were not men who detested our culture. These were men who loved our city and our citizens. Why would George want to jeopardize his future by killing a white woman? We women have so few rights as it is. Why would a good, upstanding Chinese man want to kill the woman he loved and to whom he had devoted his time in order to save her from the world’s oldest profession? This is a profession which women have been forced to enter, when their rights were violated, when men have raped them and then gone unpunished. George Kwong wanted to save his lover, Mary McBride, not kill her. Love does not kill. Love preserves. It preserves our human dignity, and it returns our basic human rights to us if we earn them, just as the Kwongs have earned them. Thank you, kind Gentlemen of the Jury.”
“Mister Welles, you may call your first witness,” Judge Hoffman pointed to the Bailiff to swear in the summ
oned person by the witness stand.
“Your Honor, I call Stanley Boscombe to the stand.”
The young journalist from the San Francisco Examiner walked over to stand before the uniformed Bailiff. “Please raise your right hand, and place your left hand on the Bible,” the Bailiff instructed. Boscombe, as well as all the other witnesses that day, did so. “Do you solemnly swear, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” Boscombe said.
“You may be seated,” the Bailiff said.
Stanley Boscombe sat down in the witness chair next to the judge’s raised platform. Clara cross-examined three witnesses that day. Boscombe, whom the prosecution attempted to use as a witness to George Kwong’s being present before the murder took place, was rebutted by asking him questions about the purpose of journalism. “Isn’t it the job of a journalist to be on the scene of a crime in order to transcribe what occurred? Could my client have been there to take a photograph of the crime scene? Did George Kwong have a weapon on him?” These interrogatives were all answered in the affirmative, except the last, which was a “no.” Clara knew it was her purpose to put a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors, nothing else, and this was what she did.
The second witness for the prosecution was Rachel Benedict, the teacher at the Methodist Home for Wayward Women in Chinatown. She was on Clara’s list of prime suspects, even though Clara doubted that she had performed the actual murders. Captain Lees explained that the strength required to flay a woman the way those victims had been dissected, most definitely required the force of a male. Of course, Benedict could still be guilty as an accessory.
Welles’s line of questioning attempted to prove that the personal relations between George Kwong and Mary McCarthy had been toxic and that when George left the mission that day before the murder, he was especially angry at McCarthy.
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