Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

by Tobin T. Buhk

  “Doctor,” George Brothers asked, “from the examination that you made of John E. Peck at Grand Rapids during the autopsy which you performed there, did you find any evidence then of his death from natural causes?”

  Schultze grinned and shook his head slowly. “I did not.”

  Brothers asked what, in Schultze’s opinion, caused John Peck’s death.

  “Poisoning by white arsenic, arsenic trioxide.”150

  Swann devoted the next phase of his case to a sequence of witnesses who would prove Waite purchased the arsenic used to murder John Peck.

  Dr. Richard W. Muller testified that on March 9, Waite asked for help in acquiring a package of arsenic. “He said he had been sleepless for several nights on account of the yelling of the cats in his yard,” Dr. Muller said, “and he wanted to kill them, and I sympathized with him because I had been in a same condition.”151 Muller phoned Richard H. Timmerman, a pharmacist who agreed to sell Waite the poison.

  Timmerman followed Dr. Muller to the stand and described Waite’s March 9 visit to his pharmacy. He asked Waite why he wanted arsenic, and Waite repeated the tale about noisome cats. “So,” Timmerman said, “I suggested to the defendant: ‘Why not use strychnine?’”

  “What did the defendant say to your suggestion?”

  “He said, no, he would rather have arsenic.” There were a few gasps from the gallery. Although a more effective cat killer, strychnine would have caused symptoms that would have been harder for Waite to conceal.

  Timmerman asked his clerk, Robert Schmadel, to make the sale, which he documented in the “poison register.”

  Brothers entered Timmerman’s “poison register” into evidence and asked the pharmacist to identify the line recording the sale, including the name “A.W. Waite,” his address, “poison—arsenic” and the quantity—a dram and a half or ninety grains.

  Famed New York medical examiner Dr. Otto Schultze. Although Waite confessed to smothering John E. Peck, Dr. Schultze believed that Peck died as the result of arsenic poisoning. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  Brothers read from the book: “A dram and a half. Purpose for which it is to be used: poison sick cat. Name of dispenser: Robert Schmadel. Witness: R. Timmermann. Number of sale: 117.”152

  Richard C. Schmadel, an assistant pharmacist, took the stand after his boss. The clerk verified vital details of Timmerman’s testimony, including his boss’s suggestion that Waite purchase strychnine. He also verified that the “poison register” came from Timmerman’s Lexington Avenue shop.

  After Schmadel stepped down from the stand, the morning session ended, and Waite returned to the Tombs for lunch.

  All eyes watched as Margaret Horton, flanked by her sister Helen and two friends—Dorothy Von Palmenberg and Aimee Crocker Gouraud Mishkinoff, known throughout New York high society as “Princess Mishkinoff”—waltzed into the courtroom just before Waite returned from the Tombs.

  The Evening Telegram reporter described the curious figure: “She was pale, but did not appear worried. She smiled at some acquaintances as she entered the courtroom and quietly took a seat near the rear of the room. The gaze of spectators appeared to annoy her, as she inclined her head so that the big drooping brim of her black straw hat hid her face.”

  As soon as Waite entered the courtroom, he recognized his “studio companion,” but she gave him the cold shoulder—a gesture not missed by the Evening Telegram journalist. “Mrs. Horton, standing in the court room this afternoon, turned her back deliberately when Waite approached on his way from the Tombs, where he had luncheon. The prisoner passed within five feet of the woman for whom he hired an apartment in the Plaza, but gave no sign of recognizing her.”153

  After Dr. Jacob B. Cornell briefly testified about the icy reception he received from Waite when he came to pay his respects, Swann called the one witness who had seen Waite and Margaret Horton together.

  As Arthur Swinton rose from the gallery and headed toward the witness stand, Margaret Horton slipped out of the courtroom. A nephew of Dr. Jacob B. Cornell, Swinton was lunching at the Plaza with his sister and mother when they bumped into Waite.

  “Was he alone or accompanied?” Brothers asked.

  “No, he was with a lady,” Swinton said.

  “Do you know the lady?”

  “I think I could identify her, but I hadn’t seen her before that time.”

  Brothers turned to face the gallery. “Is Mrs. Margaret Horton here?”

  The room fell silent. People in the gallery searched for Waite’s Juliet, but she was nowhere to be seen. Brothers turned back to Swinton. “Could you describe the appearance of the lady?”

  Swinton described her as wearing a white suit and a large white hat and carrying “white fox furs.” Waite, Swinton testified, “told us that he had just performed a delicate operation in Bellevue Hospital, and that he had his private nurse with him, that he had come uptown in his machine and had stopped at the Plaza for a bite to eat before he performed another operation at the Astor Private Hospital.”154

  As Swinton left the stand, Margaret Horton tiptoed back into the courtroom.

  The day’s most eagerly anticipated witness took the stand in the last hour of the afternoon session.

  “Eugene O. Kane,” Penney bellowed. The embalmer stood and quickly shuffled across the floor to the witness box.

  This sketch by New York Herald artist J.C. Fireman shows notables in the gallery watching the trial drama unfold. From the Wednesday, May 24 edition of the New York Herald.

  To avoid incriminating Kane as an accomplice after the fact and to avoid marring his witness’s already-questionable credibility, Brothers carefully framed his questions. He asked Kane to detail his methods and the contents of his embalming fluid. Kane listed the ingredients.

  “Any arsenic in it?” Brothers asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Was there any arsenic in the embalming fluid that you injected into the body of John E. Peck on March 12 of this year?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Kane described the attempted bribe. After he detailed the ingredients of his embalming fluid to Waite, Waite asked, “‘Could there be arsenic put into it?’ I told him it could be, but it was against the law, and I would not do such a thing as that, and that was about all that was said in regard to that at that time.”

  Kane did not state that Waite paid him to say he used arsenic in the embalming process—which would implicate him—but Brothers scored points with the jury when Kane described the pay-off. Waite, Kane explained, handed him a check and said, “That is for you” and then told him “he could put me on easy street for life.” He tried to give the check back, but Arthur Warren Waite wasn’t one to take “no” for an answer. Kane pocketed the check, but, he said, he later destroyed it.

  Brothers then asked Kane to describe the meeting at the cigar store on Fifty-Ninth Street. Kane said he went into the phone booth and stood next to Waite. “I had on a large gray ulster unbuttoned and he came up in front of me and pushed this small bundle in my inside coat pocket.”

  “What did he push into your pocket?”

  “It was money, a roll of money.”

  Kane struggled through his answers, pausing, choosing his words carefully to avoid any hint of wrongdoing. Waite enjoyed watching the undertaker sweat.

  The New York Tribune writer studied Waite’s reaction to Kane’s testimony. Waite grinned with “the pleased smile with which a Roman Emperor of similar humorous sense might have viewed a race between a sacrificial slave and a hungry lion.”155

  “What did he say as he pressed this bundle into your pocket?”

  “‘For God’s sake, get some of that arsenic into that fluid and send it down to the district attorney’s office—as soon as possible.’ I think he said that.”156

  On cross-examination, Deuel asked the embalmer just two questions.

  “Did you ever find the other $1,200?” he asked, referring to the amount missing from the $9,000 ba
nkroll Waite stuffed into his jacket pocket.

  “I don’t know,” Kane shrugged and managed a slight smile.

  Deuel fired the second question at the embarrassed embalmer: “Were you ever convicted of a crime?”

  “Yes,” Kane blushed. The undertaker had done time following a conviction for bigamy—a prior bad act reported throughout the city’s newspapers.157

  Deuel didn’t probe. He had accomplished what he wanted: the jury heard the witness state that he had a record, which injured his credibility. “That is all,” Deuel said.

  Deuel faced an uphill battle, and he knew it. In just two days of testimony, prosecution witnesses had proven that John Peck had ingested a fatal dose of arsenic, that Waite had purchased arsenic just days before Peck’s death and that Waite had attempted to manufacture evidence through Eugene Oliver Kane.

  It had been a bad two days for the defense, but the most damaging testimony was yet to be heard.

  12

  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  Wednesday, May 24, 1916

  At the onset of the trial’s third day, the key characters in the drama took their seats in the gallery. Percy Peck sat next to Aunt Catherine and Elizabeth Hardwicke, who would step up onto the witness stand and solve one of the lingering mysteries in the case. Harry Mack Horton escorted his wife, Margaret, into the courtroom, where they sat in the back row, as far from the Peck family as space allowed.

  Reporters eagerly awaited Swann’s lineup of prosecution witnesses. The first two days provided little that hadn’t made it into the papers in March, but on the third day, the women in Waite’s life would testify against him. Clara would describe life with her charlatan husband; Margaret, reporters hoped, would titillate the audience with stories about her behind-closed-door doings with Waite; and the mysterious “K. Adams,” who sent the telegram that caused Waite’s perfect murder plot to collapse like a house of cards, would be unveiled.

  Waite, perhaps more than anyone in the courtroom, realized just how damaging the upcoming testimony would be to his case. As Sheriff Whitman escorted him into the courtroom, he remarked, “Oh, what’s the use of this farce? They could have finished the whole thing in an hour.”158

  Every reporter in the courtroom turned and stared at the figure who stood when Penney announced “Elizabeth Hardwicke.”

  The niece of Dr. Jacob Cornell, Elizabeth Hardwicke’s turn on the stand lasted just two minutes—long enough to reveal herself as the author of the mysterious “K. Adams” telegram. When her uncle had returned from the Waite apartment on March 12 and described Arthur’s odd demeanor, she became suspicious. Her doubts escalated when her cousin Arthur Swinton described his chance meeting with Arthur and his gorgeous “nurse” at the Plaza. Based on intuition alone, she began to suspect foul play.

  Percy S. Peck posed for this photograph during the trial of Arthur Warren Waite. From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  “Is this the telegram which you wrote and handed in to the clerk, Exhibit 41 for identification?” Brothers handed Hardwicke the telegram.

  She read over the note carefully and handed it back to Brothers. “It is.”

  “Did anybody ask you to send that?”

  “Yes.”

  Deuel objected, and the court sustained. Brothers ended his line of questions, and Elizabeth Hardwicke stepped down without revealing who spurred her to write the “K. Adams” telegram. Nevertheless, the question of the identity of “K. Adams” had finally been publicly laid to rest.159 The irony that Waite’s grand scheme collapsed due to a female’s intuition did not escape notice by reporters in the courtroom, who would later characterize the young socialite as a true hero in the case.

  All eyes were fixed on the mysterious “K. Adams,” so no one noticed when a side door opened slightly and a slim figure squeezed inside. Clara Louise Peck took a seat behind the jury box, screened from view of the spectators.

  A few seconds later, Penney summoned her to the witness stand: “Clara Louise Peck.”

  People in the back of the gallery stood and craned their necks to catch a glimpse of Clara as she made her way to the stand. Waite, however, dropped his head and slapped his palm over his eyebrows in an attempt to shield his face. He looked like a man saluting his shoes.

  The New York Evening Telegram correspondent described Clara: “She was attired in deep mourning with a veil draped over a large hat.” The brim of the hat was so broad, noted the Sun correspondent, that it obscured Clara’s view of the entire right side of the room, including her husband.

  Clara took her seat, folded her hands in her lap and turned her gaze toward Brothers.

  Through his line of questions, Brothers planned to create a narrative of John Peck’s last few days inside the Waite apartment.

  Clara spoke in a barely audible tone. In fact, she spoke so softly that the jurors were having trouble hearing her. Juror Number Twelve, a writer named Joseph Trant, asked that she speak up.

  “Do you think if you raise your veil you could speak a little louder?” Brothers asked, but Clara shook her head. She would not unveil herself to the courtroom. “No, I think I can do all right.”

  Brothers continued. “What was your father’s health when he arrived at your home on that visit?”

  Clara cleared her throat and did her best to speak loud enough for the jury to hear. “He had a slight cold, but that was all.” About ten days before he died, Clara explained, John Peck’s cold turned into a serious stomachache that climaxed when, on March 7, he collapsed on the bedroom floor.

  Clara Peck Waite (right) poses alongside Elizabeth Hardwicke (left), aka “K. Adams.” From the Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

  Then, suddenly, on March 8, his condition improved. As the day progressed, he appeared to grow stronger.

  The next day, Dora Hillier’s day off, Clara prepared a meal of pea soup, oysters, beefsteak and potatoes. Waite helped by carrying the soup and oysters to the table.

  Brothers paused, and the spectators fell silent. This, they realized, was when Waite spiked John Peck’s soup with arsenic.

  After dinner, John Peck felt sleepy and went to bed. The next morning, he woke up feeling fine, so that afternoon, Clara went out to do a little shopping. When she returned about five o’clock, she discovered that “he had a bad spell” and had begun vomiting. As the evening progressed, his “vomiting spells” increased.

  On Saturday morning, March 11, Clara went to her father’s room as soon as she awoke “to see if he had had a good night.” She described his condition. “He looked very weak, and he had had several spells in the night. He said he had a very bad night.” Nonetheless, Peck managed to climb out of bed and dress, but he spent most of the day on a divan in the front room. Both Clara and Arthur stayed home all day to watch over him.

  At one point—at about three o’clock in the afternoon—John Peck became so weak, he returned to his bedroom to lie down. After napping a few hours, he returned to the sofa in the front room.

  Brothers asked Clara what her father had to eat that day. “Saturday noon I made my father an eggnog.” Peck took a few sips but couldn’t down the entire mug, so Clara put it in the icebox. That was the only eggnog she had prepared, Clara testified, and she gave him the eggnog just that one time, at noon.

  Peck was too sick to eat dinner, and at about five o’clock, he returned to his bedroom. As Clara helped him along, Peck complained about bitter stomach pains. “My father told me that he had had the eggnog and not to give him any more, it had made him sick.”

  Tears rolled down Clara’s cheeks. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

  Deuel vigorously contested John Peck’s statement about the eggnog, and after several objections, Shearn struck it out. Despite the judge’s ruling, however, the jury heard about the remark. Clara said she didn’t give her father the eggnog that evening, and John Peck was too weak to help himself. There was only one logical conclusion: Waite gave Peck t
he eggnog, which probably contained a large amount of white arsenic.

  Brothers resumed his questions. “What time did you go to bed?”

  “About ten o’clock.”

  “Before going to bed, did you say good night to your father?”

  Clara choked back a tear. Brothers handed her a handkerchief, which she used to wipe her nose. “I did.”

  It seemed like a good time for a break, so Justice Shearn decided to adjourn for the noon recess.160

  News leaked from the courthouse that Margaret Horton would take the stand after Clara, and a crowd of mostly women gathered outside the courtroom. The special detail of police tasked with keeping curious onlookers outside held back the throng and admitted only witnesses, family members and reporters.

  Clara returned to the witness stand, this time with her veil removed. She kept her face partially hidden by her broad-brimmed hat.

  Summoning all of her strength, Clara resumed her testimony by recalling the events the night her father died.

  Waite, Clara testified, suggested that he spend the night on the sofa, which he had placed outside of John Peck’s bedroom. “[H]e said I have been through so much that I needed a good night’s rest, so he would be near my father, if he wanted anything.”

  “Do you recall waking up during the night?”

  “Yes, sir. Dr. Waite came and woke me up about half past one.”

  “And when you were aroused, you found Dr. Waite by your side. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  Clara took a deep breath in an attempt to keep from crying. “He said that Mr. Peck had had a very bad night.”

  For the first time during her testimony, Clara’s emotions spilled over. Her lips quivered and tears welled up at the corners of her eyes, spilling down her cheeks and forming lines across her face. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed.