Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

by Tobin T. Buhk

  “Well, I took a lot.”

  “How did you give the arsenic to Mr. Peck?

  “It was in powder form, and I gave it to him in the original package the day I bought it.”

  Waite spoke with very little inflection in his voice and no apparent emotion—a reaction that Swann found extremely odd under the circumstances. Most suspects, in his experience, reacted to such serious accusations with emotions that ranged from indignation to downright panic. Then again, Waite was apparently still dazed from the overdose.75

  “What did Mr. Peck say when you gave it to him?”

  “He merely took it. He never said whether he swallowed any of it, and I never asked him. He wanted me to get it for him, and I did.” Waite noticed Swann’s expression. Clearly, he hadn’t convinced the DA. “Oh, I know you don’t believe me.”

  Swann studied Waite, and the two eyed each other in silence.

  “What do you think Mr. Peck was worth?”

  “I know—$1 million. He had a great deal of real estate and many securities besides.”

  “Did your wife, did anybody, know about your buying this poison?”

  “No, no, my wife didn’t know about it, and I don’t want her to know. My great regret is how this will wound her. No, no one knew about this but myself. You won’t believe me, I know, and I suppose I’ll have to go to the electric chair.” Waite paused as looked around the room. He spotted the stenographer who was standing in the corner, furiously scribbling notes on a notepad. “You needn’t stand over there,” he said to the stenographer, who briefly took his eyes off the notebook and glanced at Waite. “You can come right out here. I know you’ve got me.”

  Swann resumed his interrogation: “What about the $40,000 your aunt turned over to you?”

  For the first time during the interrogation, Waite showed some anger. “What has that got to do with the subject in hand?” he snapped.

  “You carried a speculative account, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. I bought outright—New York Central, Pennsylvania and stocks like that.”

  “Did you buy on margin at any time?”

  “Yes,” Waite said slowly, “I did buy some on margin.”

  “Did you carry your account to a loss?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Did you hesitate when Mr. Peck asked you to buy the poison?”

  “No, I didn’t. He said he didn’t want to live any longer and that he wanted me to get some poison that would kill. So I got it. Oh, I know you won’t believe me, and I suppose I’ll have to go to the electric chair.”

  Swann shrugged. He had what he needed for now. Waite had admitted to buying the arsenic. As Swann stood up to leave, Waite said, “I want you to tell me something.” Swann stopped and turned toward Waite, who propped himself up on his elbows. “What would you do if you were in my case?”

  “I can’t conceive myself in your case.”

  “Oh,” Waite said with a tone of resignation, “I was an ass; there’s no doubt about that. What are you going to do to me?” Waite asked.

  Swann said that he would leave Waite in his apartment until he was strong enough to be moved to Bellevue Hospital. Waite said he didn’t want to leave, but Swann glanced at the window next to the bed and realized that Waite could easily jump before Cunniff caught him. He didn’t want his suspect to cheat the hangman.76

  As Swann and Brothers left the room, Frank Waite asked them what Arthur had said. Frank listened, his eyes widening slightly, as Swann recounted the interview.

  The district attorney said that Arthur seemed to be under the impression that if he could establish he helped John Peck commit suicide, he would be in the free and clear. But, Swann explained, even if he had, he would still be guilty of first-degree manslaughter and facing a possible twenty-year prison sentence.

  When Swann noted that Arthur had said more than once he expected to go to the chair, Frank Waite looked like someone had just socked him in the stomach. Tears began to flow down his cheeks, and he wiped them away with the back of his sleeve in a way that moved the district attorney. It was a pyrrhic victory. Swann knew the tremendous burden such a case places on the loved ones left behind to figure out where it all went wrong.

  Back in the small room, while Swann briefed Frank Waite, Arthur made one final attempt to cover his tracks.

  He called Schindler to his bedside.

  “Do you think they will use against me what I have told them?” Waite asked.

  “Well,” Schindler replied, “you have several things you’ll have to explain. One is that you didn’t give your father-in-law the arsenic without his knowledge.”

  “I handed it to him in the original package.”

  Schindler immediately recognized an opportunity to trap Waite into making an incriminating move. “Did your wife or your maid see you do it?”

  “No, but we could say someone did. Would you do something for me? Would you see Dora Hillier and get her to say she saw me hand the package to the old man, but that she hadn’t known I knew she had seen me?”

  Schindler decided to bait the hook. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “She would if she were paid. I’d pay her $1,000.”

  “Where would I get the $1,000 to give her?”

  “I have $15,000 with Spaulding, McLellan & Co., and I’ll give you an order for $1,000.”

  Schindler couldn’t believe Waite had taken the bait. He had played it perfectly. He ripped a piece of lined paper from his notebook and handed it to Arthur.

  “I can’t write,” Waite said. “You write it and I’ll sign it.”

  As Waite dictated, Schindler wrote out the order. When he finished, he handed the page to Waite, who scrawled his name at the bottom and handed it back to Schindler. The stunned detective studied it for a few seconds.

  Ray Schindler couldn’t believe his eyes. In all his years on the job, he had never before seen anything like it—a suspect attempting to use one of the investigators in a scheme to fabricate evidence.

  Schindler carried the message to Swann, who smiled when he read Waite’s feeble attempt. Waite didn’t know that while he lay in a coma, Hillier had testified to the grand jury that she watched Waite dump some unknown substance into John Peck’s food just before his death.

  On Friday night, March 24, the best show in New York City took place behind closed doors where an Evening World reporter conducted an interview with the city’s newest celebrity. After the reporter had identified “Mrs. A.W. Walters” as Mrs. Margaret Horton, a married singer from Ohio, a new chapter to the already-twisted story began.

  “Mrs. A.W. Walters” wanted to clear up allegations floating around about her role in Waite’s scheming. Just the day before, an Evening World correspondent had reported that Swann suspected her relationship with Waite predated Waite’s marriage to Clara and wondered if Waite hadn’t planned the murders so he could run away with her. And then there was the fact that she had left the Plaza very quickly after receiving a telephone call from Arthur, suggesting that Arthur, suspiciously, wanted to keep her away from the authorities for some reason.77

  The Evening World reporter stared wide-eyed as the beautiful brunette, her husband in tow, sashayed across the room and sat down in the chair opposite him. She crossed her legs, folded her gloved hands in her lap and pursed her lips in an attempt at a smile. She was nervous. She tilted her head and waited for the first question.

  The reporter asked her to describe her background and how she had come to meet Arthur Warren Waite. Margaret cleared her throat and began her narrative.

  Juliet to Waite’s Romeo: Mrs. Margaret Weaver Horton, who spent time with Waite at the Plaza Hotel under the assumed name of “Mrs. A.W. Walters.” A Sun staff photographer snapped this photograph of Waite’s “studio companion” a few days after her six-hour interrogation with Dooling. From the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.

  She was born Otila Margaret Weaver in Ci
ncinnati, Ohio, in December 1892. The daughter of a traveling salesman, she lost both of her parents at a young age and was living at a boardinghouse when thirty-six-year-old Harry Mack Horton first met her. Just four days later—on Valentine’s Day 1914—Horton married the twenty-one-year-old “Tillie” Weaver. They later moved to New York City, where Margaret dreamed of a career on Broadway.

  Her relationship with Arthur Warren Waite, she said, began one fateful afternoon when, instead of performing dental surgery, he attended a performance at the Academy of Music, where he spied Mrs. Horton on stage. He became enamored with the stunning contralto, and she admired his passion for the arts. With similar interests in music and drama, they began to study together. Their relationship evolved, eventually leading to a room at the Plaza Hotel, where she spent many afternoons with Waite.

  Margaret insisted the relationship was platonic and said she knew nothing about the pseudonym Waite had given her at the hotel. They spent their time together studying, nothing more.

  “Dr. Waite rented a studio at the Plaza, where we studied music, singing, and languages in the afternoons. It was just the same as renting a studio in any building along Fifth Avenue. He put in a piano and brought in two bags of books and pictures. Neither of us ever spent the night in the room—in fact, there was no bed in it.”78

  Margaret stood by Waite despite the mounting evidence against him.

  “I believe in Dr. Waite absolutely. Even now I cannot believe he is guilty of the crime of which he is accused. It seems utterly unthinkable. He appeared to me so frank, so carefree. There was no concealment about our acquaintance. We went to and from the room in the Plaza as openly as if we had been walking on Fifth Avenue, for there was not a thing to conceal.”

  Margaret did everything she could to characterize Waite as a brother, not a lover.

  “Dr. Waite often spoke to me about his father-in-law and expressed great affection for him. He said Mr. Peck’s health had declined since his wife’s death and that he seemed to be suffering a good deal. He always spoke of Mrs. Waite with the greatest love and respect, and often expressed the hope that Mr. Horton and I should come to see them.”

  She paused and took a sip of water before continuing.

  “On the other hand, I was just as open and free about Dr. Waite. I told Mr. Horton of our studies together in Dr. Waite’s studio, and Mr. Horton offered no objections. Many times I urged Dr. Waite to come down to our apartment, but there was always some engagement to prevent his coming.”79

  Harry Mack Horton backed his wife’s story. “I knew of Dr. Waite and that he and Mrs. Horton were studying music and language together. Mrs. Horton told me Dr. Waite had invited her to go to his studio in the Hotel Plaza, and I gave her my full permission to do so.”

  Horton went on to describe his wife as a simple country woman—naïve and easily controlled by a schemer like Waite. “At an early age,” he said, “she lost her father, mother, and brother…In a great many respects, as anyone who knows her will agree, she is about fifteen years old in her knowledge of worldly things.”

  Horton discussed how he had found out that his wife was playacting with an infamous murder suspect: a newspaper reporter had cornered him with the possibility.

  “I know that my wife has been studying with a Dr. Waite or some name like that,” Horton told the reporter, “but I don’t connect it with this Dr. Waite in the newspapers.” Bothered, he decided to settle the question once and for all. He went to see Margaret, who was reposing at the home of her friend Dorothy Von Palmenberg, to confront her about the reporter’s allegations.

  “Why, yes,” Margaret responded, “this Dr. Waite is the man with whom I have been studying in the Plaza in his studio.”

  “My only remark to her then was that it would be well for her to be a little more careful in choosing friends, as they might get her into trouble. Up to that time you called my attention to it I had not paid the slightest notice of the Peck case, or to Dr. Waite’s connection with it.”80

  While Harry Mack Horton did his best to convince the world that his wife kept her clothes on during her afternoons with Waite at their Plaza suite, Arthur was moved to the alcoholics’ ward of Bellevue Hospital, where he would stay until well enough to enter a suite at the city jail.81

  7

  “DOVE AMONG CROWS”

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  Saturday, March 25, 1916

  Clara’s mouth dropped open as she saw the Saturday, March 25 edition of the Grand Rapids Herald. The entire front page was devoted to Friday’s revelations under the headline “‘WOMAN OF MYSTERY’ IN LIFE OF DR. WAITE TELLS STORY OF HER AFFAIR WITH DENTIST.” The article detailed Waite’s alleged tryst with Margaret Horton. Another item detailed Waite’s partial confession.

  Friends and family had kept the news from Clara out of fear that in her weakened state, she couldn’t bear the shock. By Friday afternoon, they couldn’t hide the news anymore.

  Clara found herself drawn to a front-page item, featuring a close-up of Arthur’s eyes, by Herald writer Marie Dille. In the article, Dille pondered Waite’s hypnotic gaze and its effect on women. “They’re the eyes that cause the feminine heart to flutter. They are compelling, irresistible, masterful and yet tender.”

  Clara clenched her teeth as she read the piece. “In the radius of their beams women forget to question the unreasonableness of the claims of the man accused of murder. All things are reasonable when accompanied by the flash of his glorious orbs. He won the world with the wonder of his smile and held it with his eyes.”82

  Another writer characterized Waite as a Jekyll and Hyde, not failing to recognize the similarities between the fictional character and the suspect. Like the fictional Dr. Henry Jekyll, Waite had two lives: the fantasy dental surgeon and the playboy; two wives, Clara and Margaret Horton; even two homes, the Coliseum and the Plaza.

  Clara turned her attention to the article under the headline “WAITE ATTEMPTS TO BRIBE WITNESS AFTER CONFESSION.”

  “How could he have done it? Arthur—I hate him. I want to see him punished,” she hissed as she read about Waite’s admissions to Swann in their Coliseum apartment. “He took from me my mother and my father, and they say he planned to kill me. I believe them. It is terrible.”83 She recoiled at the thought that she had just sent a message through the Waites professing her undying love and utter faith and devotion to Arthur.

  Enraged, she threw down the newspaper. For a few minutes, she paced back and forth across the room but began to feel dizzy. She fell back on the bed and watched the ceiling spin. The shock overtaxed her, so she spent the rest of the day in bed.84

  When she felt well enough to crawl out of bed later that afternoon, she decided she needed to do two things: she needed to once again change her will. If she had anything to say about it, Arthur Warren Waite had spent the last penny he would ever receive from the Pecks. She also needed to set the record straight. Reticent and humiliated, the good wife could stay mum no longer.

  Dr. Wishart arrived at the Peck place, at Clara’s request, around dinnertime. Clara greeted him, her face swollen and her eyes puffy. She had spent most of the afternoon sobbing. After offering Clara a few words of comfort, Wishart agreed to scribe a statement and send it to the press.

  He sat at a writing desk, leaned over a sheet of paper and nodded.

  Clara began:

  I feel it my duty to the public to make the following statement. No previous statement said to have been made by me is authentic. I have given nothing whatever to the press.85

  When I was informed of the serious charges against my husband I was so shocked and amazed I could not believe them true. It seemed to me impossible that a man who had been so uniformly gentle and kind to me and apparently so loyal could be guilty of the crime with which he is charged.

  My faith in him began to be shakened when it was practically proved to me that Dr. Waite was living with another woman in the Plaza hotel.

  As the evidence against him increased from day
to day I was compelled against my will and my deepest affection for him to accept the evidence as true.

  Of course I cannot and will not say he is guilty, but it certainly looks as if that is the fact.

  Clara Peck Waite in 1916. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  I cannot lay bare my feelings to the world. No one knows except those who have suffered as I have what it means to have one’s faith in a husband shattered and to be compelled to believe that in addition to disloyalty to me a great crime against my father and mother may have been committed.

  As far as I am concerned, I must and will permit the law to take its course. I will stand aside and leave the whole matter to those who have the case in charge.

  I cannot but pity a man who has apparently wasted his life and sacrificed everything that one should hold dear on the altar of selfishness.

  I have told all I know frankly and fully to the authorities and will not discuss that statement, which is in their hands to view as they see fit.

  It is all very sad and very terrible, all I ask is that I may be left alone with my friends to bear my sorrow the best I can.

  Clara had already severed a part of herself from Arthur; she signed the note “CLARA LOUISE PECK,” reverting to her maiden name.86

  She gazed at the three-carat rock on her ring finger. Dr. Waite said the gemstone came from his South African diamond mine. Was it another lie? She slid the ring from her finger and laid it on the bedroom nightstand.

  By Saturday morning, Swann had become convinced that Arthur Warren Waite had attempted to kill his in-laws by infecting them with dangerous bacilli. When the germs didn’t kill the Pecks as planned, Waite turned to the more reliable poison, arsenic.87

  With the case against Waite airtight, Swann turned his attention to anyone who might have known something about the crime or coverup and might help him further strengthen his case. One name topped his list: Margaret Horton.

  Swann told reporters on Friday night that he had no knowledge Waite had any accomplices, and he emphasized that mere knowledge of criminal intent didn’t make a person an accomplice. Nonetheless, Margaret Horton became a target in his investigation.88