Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

by Tobin T. Buhk

  Waite, it appeared, had lied, cheated and stolen along the path to life as a bon vivant. Classmates at the University of Michigan related several anecdotes of Waite’s petit theft. He swiped money from fraternity brothers, stole dental gold from the university and pilfered money from a summer job on Mackinac Island. He even ripped off the work of fellow dental students and submitted it as his own. In every instance, Waite charmed his way out of any serious consequences.

  Somehow, Waite managed to graduate and took a job with Wellman & Bridgeman, a South African firm that recruited Michigan graduates. But the firm required its employees to pass a postgraduate course at the University of Glasgow. The course typically took two years, but to sidestep the requirement, Waite engineered his biggest scam to date. He doctored his paperwork to indicate he had already done a year of graduate work and ended up completing the course in just two months.

  Mancuso received a cable from representatives of Wellman & Bridgeman that indicated Waite’s sticky fingers continued in Cape Town. He stole dental gold from the company and even opened mail that didn’t belong to him. Wellman & Bridgeman would have fired him, but his five-year contract had expired and the war had begun, so Waite left Africa before they had the chance.

  Dr. Benjamin Masselink, a doctor from Grand Rapids, worked with Waite in Durban, South Africa. “I knew Dr. Waite was engaged to a girl while in Cape Town, but I could not say whether or not they were married. I know he got into trouble two or three times, and then came back to the United States and entered into practice in New York. Since then I know little of him.”47

  Despite all of this, Masselink said, “I considered Waite a fine man.”48

  Even though his salary over five years never exceeded $15,000, when Waite returned to Grand Rapids in December 1914, he had $20,000 in his pocket and, as Mancuso put it, went “heiress hunting.”49 It didn’t take long for him to set his sights on Clara Peck. Once she agreed to marry him, Waite hatched a grandiose scheme to acquire the Peck family fortune.

  From her bedside, Clara told Mancuso’s men a few anecdotes with sinister implications. Just days before John Peck died, when Waite noticed Clara preparing eggnog, he offered to make it instead. John Peck downed part of the concoction and then began to violently heave. Afterward, Clara spotted flecks of some unknown substance, like partially dissolved tablets, floating in the drink.

  It wasn’t the first time Clara had noticed something peculiar in a drink that Waite served John Peck. “I saw Dr. Waite put something like them in Father’s tea,” Clara recalled. “They were about as large as a penny. I don’t know what color they were. I saw one dissolving in the bottom of a cup. It changed the color of the tea.”50

  Percy Peck told Mancuso about ominous predictions Waite had made. Following the wedding, he said John and Hannah Peck looked peaked and wondered if they had much time left. Both were in good health, so Percy didn’t take Waite seriously at the time, but in retrospect, Waite had briefly showed his hand.

  There was something else that bothered Percy: Clara told him that just before Hannah died, her pupils were dilated. This, Percy learned from a doctor friend, was typical of someone who took cocaine, which led him to suspect that Waite had overdosed his mother with narcotics.51 Waite had ready access to the drug; Schindler had discovered cocaine attached to a picture frame in the Waite apartment.

  Mancuso interviewed a friend of the Peck family who asserted that when Arthur spent time with Aunt Catherine, he used whatever pretext he could to besmirch Percy. He apparently had an ulterior motive: he wanted to turn Aunt Catherine against Percy in the hope that she would disinherit him and leave her fortune to Clara instead. Aunt Catherine would then become expendable.52

  It all added up to one logical conclusion: Waite planned to murder the entire Peck family.

  The sun had just begun to drop below the horizon when Mancuso received a telegram from Dr. Otto Schultze in Ann Arbor. Professor Vaughn had finished his examination of the brain tissue taken during the second autopsy on John Peck’s remains. He and Dr. Schultze concurred: John Peck had died as a result of arsenic poisoning.

  Mancuso rushed to the nearest Western Union office and quickly jotted a message to Swann.

  Perfect case on present matter.

  Prof. Vaughn reports plenty of arsenic

  At about the same time Mancuso wired Swann, Detective John Cunniff sat with the Waites’ maid, Dora Hillier, in Swann’s Manhattan office. Swann realized that he needed three links in a chain of evidence proving Waite murdered his father-in-law. Dr. Otto Schultze had provided the first link when he concluded that John Peck died of arsenic poisoning. Now, he needed to prove that Waite acquired arsenic and gave it to Peck with malice aforethought. He hoped Dora Hillier would make that connection.

  The pretty, young domestic nervously shifted her weight in the chair as Cunniff pulled a notebook and pen from his vest pocket. He nodded, and Hillier began her narrative. Cunniff furiously scribbled notes as the maid described some incriminating things she had witnessed in the days leading up to John Peck’s death. Cunniff relayed his conversation to Swann, who requested that Hillier meet him in his office first thing the next morning, where a stenographer could record her story verbatim.

  Back in Michigan, at about 5:00 p.m., the Wednesday, March 22 edition of the Grand Rapids Press appeared on newsstands. Newsboys across the city yelled out the headline: “POISON IN JOHN E. PECK’S BODY; WAS DRUGGIST MURDERED?”

  On the morning of March 23, the Grand Rapids Herald hit the streets with a headline running from margin to margin: “ARREST IN PECK POISON PLOT MYSTERY IS EXPECTED WITHIN NEXT 48 HOURS; SUSPECT IS UNDER CONSTANT WATCH; CANNOT ESCAPE.”

  The Herald reporter described the crime as “one of the subtlest, and at the same time, most daring poison plots that the criminal history of the country has known.”53

  The headline story included a description of the second autopsy by eyewitness Dr. Perry Schurtz.

  “Not only was arsenic found in his stomach (where, it might be argued, it found its way by being a component part of embalming fluid),” Dr. Schurtz said, “but it was found to have affected his brain tissues. That is a certain indication, according to medical men, that the poison was administered before death.”54

  Dr. Schurtz addressed the presence of arsenic in John Peck’s remains and explained that New York law forbade embalmers from using it. “Of course, that may or may not mean anything. Laws are violated every day. Arsenic may have been put in the embalming fluid in order to preserve the body. Years ago this poison was extensively used by embalmers, but it is now almost universally prohibited by law.”55

  The news coverage detailed Swann’s suspicions that the likely culprit murdered both Pecks and planned a third murder, which would leave him in control of half the Peck fortune. After describing Swann’s suspicions, the writer noted that the deaths occurred in the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Warren Waite in New York City and that Clara’s portion of the fortune was to be held in trust until she turned forty.

  The article didn’t name Swann’s chief suspect, but the implications were clear enough: Arthur Warren Waite poisoned Hannah and John Peck so he wouldn’t need to wait thirteen years to come into Clara’s half of her father’s fortune.56 Then he planned to do away with her, his third victim.

  Most of the Grand Rapids figures in the case avoided the press, but Marie Dille—a Grand Rapids Herald reporter—managed an interview with Percy Peck’s wife, Ella, who addressed the rumor that Clara made her will at Arthur’s request.

  This trial sketch by artist J.C. Fireman showing Waite (inset) and Percy Peck’s wife, Ella, appeared in the Tuesday, May 23, 1916 edition of the New York Herald.

  “Mrs. Arthur Warren Waite made her will Thursday evening at the Pantlind Hotel,” Ella explained, “just prior to her husband’s departure for New York and the beginning of her own illness.”

  “Do you know in whose favor the will was made?” Dille asked.

  “I have not been informe
d definitely, but I have every reason to believe that it was made in favor of her husband and at his solicitation.”

  “How did you learn of the will?”

  “Clara had told my husband, who informed me Sunday morning, the same day that I am told she was taken ill.”

  “Have you ever heard Mrs. Waite say that she feared she would die?” Dille asked. “Such a rumor was about town.”

  Clara’s illness had gradually worsened, which some believed was caused by the stress of having lost both her parents. But with Swann’s suspicion of a third, unnamed victim, the rumor mill in Grand Rapids had begun churning. What most people assumed was the physical manifestation of a deep grief now took on a new, sinister meaning.

  “Yes, yes,” Ella said. “A dozen times within the last few weeks I have heard her say she felt that she would be dead inside of a year. She was almost morbid on the subject.”57

  Dora Hillier arrived at the Coliseum around eight o’clock on the morning of Thursday, March 23, to do her chores. When Cunniff found her, she was standing by the door. She had rung the doorbell of the Waite apartment, but no one answered. She rapped on the door, but still, no one answered.

  After assuring Hillier that she wasn’t in any sort of trouble, Cunniff escorted her to Swann’s office, where she repeated the story she had told the detective Wednesday night. The district attorney listened without interrupting.

  “I had been cooking dinner. I had just poured out the soup when Dr. Waite came into the kitchen. He had something in his hand—it was a vial. I had poured out three plates: one for Mrs. Waite, another for her husband and the third for Mrs. Waite’s father, Mr. Peck. While I was putting two plates on the tray, Dr. Waite got near the table where the tray was and holding the vial in his hand, poured something from it in the third plate of soup. I did not know what to make of it and I said nothing. With that he—I mean Dr. Waite—said to me: ‘This is some medicine for Father.’ Then he waited a second or so and said to me: ‘Dora, you taste that soup and see whether it is too hot or not. We can’t give it to him too hot because his mouth is sore.’ I tasted the soup. No, I didn’t taste anything funny at all. No, I didn’t get sick either. There was nothing peculiar, to my mind.

  “After that, I took the tray with the two plates of soup in the dining room and put one plate in front of where Mrs. Waite was seated and the other in front of her husband’s place. Then I got the other plate, in which Dr. Waite had poured what I call the prescription from the little bottle I had never seen before, and I put that plate in front of old Mr. Peck. I can’t tell whether he tasted the soup or not. He didn’t while I was in the dining room.

  “About twenty minutes later, Dr. Waite came to the kitchen the second time during the dinner. Shortly before this, I had heard Mr. Peck say in the dining room that he wanted a cup of tea. I was pouring out the tea for the old gentleman already to take into the dining room, when I saw Dr. Waite take the same bottle, or vial, with the stuff in it from somewhere, and he poured some of it into the tea I had just poured out for Mr. Peck.

  “‘Dora,’ said Dr. Waite, ‘Father did not like this soup so I will have to put some more medicine in his tea.’ And he did so. After Dr. Waite had finished his pouring I put some cream into the tea for Mr. Peck and placed the cup in front of Mr. Peck in the dining room. I don’t know whether he took any of the tea or not. I was pouring a second cup of tea for Dr. Waite. His wife did not care for any that evening. That is all I know about that.”

  Hillier, though, had never seen Waite spike Hannah Peck’s food. “Mrs. Peck had a nurse,” Hillier explained, “and Mrs. Waite was with her mother all the time and looked after her herself. I guess that is why I didn’t see anything.”58

  Dora Hillier couldn’t help Swann make a case for Hannah Peck’s murder, but she had provided an important link in a chain of evidence connecting Waite to John Peck’s murder. Peck died from arsenic poisoning, and Hillier saw Waite spiking John Peck’s food with some unknown substance. Although Hillier hadn’t identified the substance as arsenic, Swann was sure he could convince a jury if he could find evidence that Waite had purchased the poison. That left just one missing link: Swann needed to prove Arthur had purchased arsenic. He had to find the pharmacy.

  Mancuso unfurled the December 11, 1914 edition of the Grand Rapids Press that one of his investigators had unearthed in the newspaper back files. The paper contained an article detailing the successful dental career of Arthur Warren Waite, published when Waite returned from South Africa. The assistant DA smirked as he read the interview in which Waite gloated about his academic success at Harvard and London Universities before he attended the College of Royal Surgeons in Edinburgh, Scotland, on a scholarship. It was a tissue of lies.

  By midmorning on Thursday, March 23, Mancuso had done about all the digging he could in Grand Rapids. He had unmasked Arthur Warren Waite as a charlatan and uncovered evidence of a twisted plot that, if it wasn’t for the “K. Adams” telegram, would have certainly spelled doom for Clara and possibly Aunt Catherine and Percy Peck.

  Before Mancuso returned to his suite at the Pantlind to face the press, he needed to send one final telegram to Swann. Mancuso penciled in the message and handed it to the Western Union clerk.

  The clerk’s mouth dropped open as he read the message:

  Arrest Waite immediately

  Evidence of guilt overwhelming

  Obtained substantial amounts of money on false pretenses

  Check up bank accounts and hold up all deposits

  Swann smiled as he reread the first two lines of Mancuso’s telegram.

  “Arrest Waite immediately. Evidence of guilt overwhelming.”

  He ordered Detective Cunniff to find Waite and arrest him for murder. Cunniff made a beeline to the Coliseum.

  Frank Waite answered the door. About an hour earlier, he had entered the apartment and found Arthur groggy and fading fast. He had downed a handful of sedatives. Frantic, Frank raced to the phone and called Dr. Moore, who arrived a few minutes later.

  Frank described the scene as Cunniff eyed Waite lying motionless on a bed in a backroom of the palatial apartment.

  “A stomach pump! A stomach pump!” Arthur had wailed in agony as the sulphonal and trional began to overwhelm his system.

  Moore then asked him when he took the drugs.

  “At eleven o’clock this morning, I began,” Waite managed to squeal in between gasps. “I had to get some sleep.”

  “How much have you taken?” Moore asked as he fished in his bag for something to counter the overdose.

  “Plenty,” Waite mumbled as he fell back into a semicomatose state.59 He had been in that condition for over an hour when John Cunniff came to arrest him.

  By Thursday evening, March 23, Catherine Peck found herself in the midst of a media frenzy.

  As the story progressed, it became evident that Aunt Catherine had unwittingly financed Dr. Waite’s playboy lifestyle. With her money, he funded his affaires de coeur, cavorting with showgirls and cohabitating with “Mrs. Walters.”

  Reporters also alleged that Aunt Catherine had narrowly missed becoming the first Peck poisoned by Arthur Warren Waite. After transferring her funds into his accounts, it appeared, Waite began to systematically plan for her death. No one would question the sudden illness of an elderly woman, and her demise would serve two purposes: he could use her as an experimental dummy, and he could avoid any possible questions about the purloined $40,000.

  Reporters, hoping to interview Waite’s benefactress, swarmed the Park Avenue Hotel. One of them finally managed to eke out a statement. Aunt Catherine found the malignant plotter imagined by the press to be so incongruous to the Arthur Warren Waite she knew that it was impossible to believe.

  “All I know about our transactions is this: that I gave him the money and securities—I should say that $100,000 was too high perhaps—and asked that he invest them. I considered him perfectly trustworthy and reliable, and when he said he had invested my money I took it for
granted that he had. I did not question him or ask him to show proof of his statements. Some of the securities I gave him to find out their value, and not invest.”

  The reporter listened as Catherine Peck discussed how Arthur had managed to fool the entire Peck family. With the news leaking out of Grand Rapids, Aunt Catherine was embarrassed by how in the dark she was about Waite’s duality.

  “I always thought Dr. Waite was one of the purest-minded men I ever knew. I never heard one foul or mean word fall from his lips. No one was so astonished when I found that he had been living with a woman at the Plaza. I have also heard that he has been frequently seen with other young women about town. But he kept all this side of his life well hidden from his family. His wife never had the slightest suspicion that he was not faithful to her. Why, she was as happy as the day was long. She was always going around the apartment singing and dancing. She was so sure of his entire love.”

  Aunt Catherine shook her head. “I can’t understand this at all. If Dr. Waite had needed money he could have had it for the asking from his wife’s family. We were all very proud of him. We considered him a brilliant man and were proud of his successes.”60

  With reporters camped out in the lobby of the Pantlind, Francis X. Mancuso realized he had to issue some type of statement, so he invited them to his suite on the evening of March 23. Newspaper reporters from both the Grand Rapids Press and the Grand Rapids Herald joined three correspondents from New York and another three from Chicago who had followed the story to Michigan. By this point, Arthur Warren Waite had become big news.

  Mancuso paced the room as he spoke, choosing his words carefully. The reporters jotted down his every word in their notebooks.

  “Arthur Warren Waite is guilty of the murder of John E. Peck. We have positive proof against him and in all my experience in criminal matters,” Mancuso added, “I have never been more confident of a conviction than in this case.” To readers of the mid-sized midwestern metropolis, this was a startling statement coming from the head of New York City’s homicide department.