Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

by Tobin T. Buhk

  After a few seconds, Clara regained her composure and was ready to continue.

  “Did you ever accompany him to any hospital?” Brothers asked.

  On several occasions, Clara said, she went along with Waite to hospitals, but she never actually went inside. She described one instance. When Hannah Peck came to visit in January, Waite took them to Cornell, “and he went inside and was gone about twenty minutes and came out and told us about a young fellow who had broken his jaw up here”—Clara pointed to a spot on her upper jaw—“and that it is so hard to heal, he said, the accident was so great.”161

  As she described the incident, Clara thought of how proud she was of Arthur. He worked so hard. Every morning, he left the house to go to work. He rarely came home for lunch and often left unexpectedly in the evening to tend to a patient. He even once asked Clara to give him a dress as a gift for a “charity patient.”

  After Waite’s arrest, it became clear to Clara that Waite wasn’t interested in philanthropy but in philander. Waite’s fictitious business provided the ideal cover for his trysts. Clara looked at the back row of the courtroom, where Margaret Horton sat next to her husband. She wondered if Margaret Horton’s trousseau once contained her charity dress.

  Deuel began his cross-examination at about 3:15 p.m. by taking Clara down memory lane. He asked Clara to recall New Year’s Eve 1914. “Did you have any conversation with him of a special nature?”

  “Well, perhaps you would call it special.”

  That, Clara said, was the night Waite proposed. The edges of Clara’s mouth curled up in a slight smile. The New York Herald correspondent captured Waite’s demeanor at this moment: “There was an answering smile on the lips of Waite, but it was almost as sad a smile as hers.”162

  “Did you give him encouragement?” Deuel nudged.

  Clara said she told Waite she greatly admired his accomplishments. Waite had “worked his way through college, for which I admired him very much,” but she just couldn’t commit to marriage at the time. Waite followed the Peck family south to Florida, where he pressed his suit. While there, Clara said, he won her affection.

  Over the next few months, they continued a torrid courtship through the mail, writing two and sometimes three letters to each other a day. They had a lover’s spat in July when Waite didn’t write for three days. Clara traveled to New York, where she bumped into him at a house party. He gave her the cold shoulder, and she offered to return his engagement ring, but they ultimately decided to carry on with their relationship.

  “What did he say about that engagement ring?”

  “What did he say to me about it?”

  Clara hesitated and looked away from Deuel. She blushed. “I do not know. Nothing—I do not recall particularly that he said anything, any more than any man would say when he presents an engagement ring to a girl.”

  After a little more prompting, Deuel managed to tease out a more specific answer.

  “He said he would save money, and that he had hoped—that he had saved money so that when he did become engaged he could buy the girl that he cared for a very handsome ring.”

  Like the others in the courtroom, Margaret Horton watched the testimony with curiosity, but Clara’s statement about the ring caused her to sit forward. The sense of déjà vu sent a chill down her spine. All of a sudden it occurred to her that she had, just a few months earlier, experienced a twisted version of Clara’s engagement when Waite gave her a diamond ring. She wondered if the thought of New Year’s Eve 1914 flashed across Waite’s mind at the time.

  Deuel shifted his line of questions to Waite’s playacting as a physician. “What did he tell you he was doing for a living?”

  “I understood when I married Dr. Waite that he was here in New York, practicing, working with other doctors.”

  As Waite listened to his wife’s answer, a wry smile spread across his face.

  “May I ask that the witness answer the question specifically, Your Honor?”

  Shearn looked at Clara. “Well, he told you that, did he?”

  “He told me he was working here in New York as a physician.”

  Clara, at Deuel’s prompting, described several incidents in which Waite claimed to have performed difficult surgeries throughout the city. Waite watched with amusement as Clara described the lengths he went to to deceive her.

  On one occasion, “he told us that he had just performed, or he had just made a bridge work for a woman of sixty years of age, and this woman had had other bridge work done, but it had not been satisfactory and that the woman was very, very grateful to him for having given her such satisfaction,” Clara said.

  Waite slapped his hand over his mouth to avoid laughing aloud.

  They lived the idyllic life, Clara said. Waite left home each morning to go to work but telephoned her every day and sometimes twice a day. He returned home for dinner every night, although he often stayed out on Thursdays.

  Deuel asked Clara about Waite’s attitude the night her father died. “Did he show emotion? Was he greatly affected by this demise and your suffering?”

  “Yes. Dr. Waite said the night my father died, after Dr. Moore had left he came in my room and went to sleep and he was very sorry about my father’s death, that he had thought so much of him himself. He was very sorry. That is all.”163

  With this last answer, Clara Louise Peck stepped down from the witness stand. It was 3:45 p.m. Her testimony consumed over three hours and spanned both the morning and afternoon sessions. She was exhausted. She slumped down in her chair next to the witness box.

  “Margaret Horton,” Penney bellowed. Everyone turned and looked to the back of the courtroom.

  Waite’s “studio companion” took the stand at about four o’clock. Everyone in the courtroom watched as she stood and strutted down the aisle. The New York Herald reporter described her as a “comely woman…effectively gowned in a tight-fitting crepe de Chine princess gown, set off at the breast with a white silk yoke, which was cut very low, revealing a shapely throat and neck, about which hung a rope of pearls.”164

  The Evening Telegram reporter described her as “a decided brunette…attired in a black silk gown relieved only by a rolling white collar, cut V shaped and very low at the throat. She wore a black straw hat with a wide brim.”165 The Sun writer described her gown as “low-cut.”

  On her way to the witness stand, Margaret Horton walked past Arthur Warren Waite, but despite his best efforts to make eye contact, she refused to look at him.

  “Still waters run deep,” Ray Schindler whispered as he watched the “dove among crows” make her way to the stand. Despite appearances, it was evident Margaret Horton did not want to testify against Waite. Her body language—from a wry smirk to the way she sashayed—sent a powerful message. Schindler had learned how to read this type of body language, which paid dividends when questioning female suspects and informants.

  Brothers asked Margaret to describe how she first met the defendant. She explained that she first met him sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 1915. Clara smirked. This was when she was home in Grand Rapids, visiting her family.166

  “After meeting the defendant at the Academy of Music, you and he became friendly?”

  “Yes.”

  Brothers decided not to probe any further, to the dismay of reporters gathered in the gallery. The Sun reporter said, “Evidently Mr. Brothers was not going to be blunt in his questions,” because he immediately took a different tack.

  Brothers asked Margaret to describe her rendezvous with Waite on March 22—their tearful farewell at the Berlitz School.

  Waite, Margaret recalled, asked her to go the drugstore for him and buy some medicine. Margaret said she watched as Waite wrote out the words “trional and sulphonal” on a piece of paper. He said he wanted a package of each drug. “He gave me a dollar and I went to the drugstore.”

  She returned to the Berlitz School and gave him the packages.

  “What else did he say?”

/>   Margaret glared at Brothers for a few seconds before answering. “He then ran up and down the steps a few minutes and I sat down, and he seemed excited, and I then asked him, I said, ‘Doctor, I have seen now in the paper what they are accusing you of. You did not do that, surely, did you?’ And he said ‘Yes, I did.’”167

  Several attendees gasped, followed by murmuring that grew to a crescendo of audible conversation. People familiar with the case knew that Margaret had changed her story. In March, she told reporters about the conversation but said that Waite had denied having a hand in the murders. Irritated with the noise coming from the gallery, Shearn tapped his gavel.

  When the din quieted, Margaret went on to describe their farewell. “[Waite] gave me his ring, he threw his ring and some money in my lap.” Waite’s goodbye gift was a diamond ring. A few in the gallery turned and glanced at Harry Mack Horton, who squirmed and looked away.

  “Do you remember his saying anything at that moment about the tablets?”

  Margaret remembered that Waite mumbled “they are after me” and then “said something about doing away with himself before he allowed them to get him.” She couldn’t remember his actual words.

  “Before he left you in the hall, did he say anything about seeing you again?”

  Her voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “He said he perhaps would never see me again.”

  Brothers paused. His next line of questions was critical to smashing Waite’s insanity defense.

  “Did you receive, after he was arrested and while he was in Bellevue Hospital, any letter from him?”

  Margaret leered at Brothers. “Yes, sir.”

  After a little cajoling from Brothers, Margaret explained that she had received two letters inked by Waite from Bellevue and delivered by Walter Deuel, who requested she burn them when finished. She showed the letters to her best friend, Mrs. Von Palmenberg, and then discarded them as directed.

  “Will you try and remember, if you please, Mrs. Horton, what was in the letter, beginning at the beginning? What were the first words?”

  “‘Dear Margaret’ were the first words.” Her snide tone drew a few smiles from spectators.

  “And then what was following that?”

  “I can’t recall just what followed.”

  Brothers wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer. He couldn’t. He needed the jury to hear what Waite said in that letter.

  “Now, will you try,” Brothers asked, “and remember as well as you can the substance of that letter?”

  “He said something about having hurt the people that he loved the most.”

  “Do you remember whether anything was said about la chaise?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What was that?” Brothers asked.

  “He said he did not suppose that he would get the la chaise or la sedia.” Someone in the gallery whistled. Waite had apparently written to Margaret that the key to avoiding the electric chair—or “la sedia”—was convincing others he was insane.

  “Did he say anything about an insane institution?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said he would probably go to an institution for a while and then get out.”

  There were a few murmurs from the gallery. Shearn hushed the onlookers with a tapping of his gavel.

  “Did the jury hear?” Shearn asked. Several jurors bobbed their heads.

  Brothers continued: “What did he say about the guards at Bellevue? You told us part of it. Can you remember the rest?”

  “He said that he believed they thought he was insane.”

  “What else did he say about the guards, if anything?”

  “I do not remember anything more.” Margaret hoped Brothers would let it go, but somehow she knew he wouldn’t.

  “Did he say anything in the letter about your attitude?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said it was according to my attitude how he would act and feel.”

  “Did he explain what he meant by that in that letter?”

  “He said that if I did not care for him anymore that I was to tell him so.”

  “And what else?”

  “And that nothing would matter then.”

  “What?”

  Margaret repeated her answer. “That nothing would matter then.”

  “Did he say anything in that letter that you recall about having them all guessing at Bellevue?”

  “Yes, I think he said that.”

  “Did he say he was having lots of fun with the guards?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he said, ‘They all think I am crazy’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything about making a fight to live if you assured him that you still loved him?”

  Margaret paused before answering. “Yes.”

  “Was the word ‘Egypt’ used in any of those letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was said about Egypt?”

  “He said he supposed I had laughed at it.”

  “Laughed at what?” Brothers wanted the jury to hear it again.

  “At ‘the man from Egypt.’”

  Shearn interrupted. The wording was vital, and he wanted a clarification for the jurors. “That you had laughed at it, or that you would laugh at it?”

  “That I had laughed at it,” Margaret answered, emphasizing the word “had.”

  “Was there anything said in any of the defendant’s letters received by you from Mr. Deuel about four or forty years?”

  “Yes,” Margaret said, averting her eyes from the gallery.

  “What was that?”

  “I had said that to him.”

  “What did you say to him in your letter?”

  “I do not recall just what I said, but I said something about waiting four or forty years.”168

  Again, several people in the gallery glanced to the back row, where Harry Horton sank lower in his seat.

  With this last response, Brothers ended his direct examination, and Deuel stood to begin his cross. Deuel wanted to undo the impression that he had aided Waite in a scheme to engineer testimony by delivering Waite’s letters. So he asked Margaret to describe the context of the letters. She explained that she had insisted on seeing Waite in Bellevue, but Deuel thought that it would bring negative publicity, so he suggested they communicate through notes that he agreed to deliver.

  Deuel also wanted to quash any impression that he had helped to destroy evidence by telling her to burn the letters. Margaret explained that Deuel never ordered her to burn them; he said she could either destroy them or give them to him.

  Under Deuel’s questioning, Margaret rehashed her various interviews with John T. Dooling of the district attorney’s office, including the six-hour marathon of March 25. Despite seemingly endless volleys of questions, Margaret said, the authorities still were not satisfied with her answers. They seemed hell-bent on a scenario in which Waite, after disposing of the Pecks, planned to whisk her away to a fairy tale life in an Italian castle. It didn’t matter how many times she denied it; they just didn’t seem to listen.

  “Did you and Dr. Waite ever talk about going away together?”

  “Never.”

  Then Deuel asked the one question on everyone’s mind: “Were your relations with him purely platonic?”

  Margaret nodded. “Yes.” She went on to describe his behavior while at the Plaza as polite and mostly jovial, although he periodically suffered from fits of melancholy, particularly when she sang. In fact, she said, Waite cried every time she sang. For the most part, though, he was happy. He often said, “We are nothing but two children.”169

  Margaret’s testimony—at an hour and twenty minutes—had consumed the remainder of the afternoon session. Her appearance—from her stunning, low-cut gown to her tone of voice—provided plenty of front-page fodder. “She used several accents before she finished her testimony,” wrote the Sun reporter. “Starting wit
h the broad ‘a’ she finally returned to the sharper twang of the middle West.”170 Margaret Horton, the Sun writer hinted, had used her time on the stand to showcase her talents.

  The court adjourned for the day. Deuel managed to keep out of the record any references to Waite’s procurement of dangerous disease germs, but Horton’s testimony, particularly her recollection of Waite’s love letters from Bellevue, was devastating. The next morning, Deuel would begin his case and do his best to keep Arthur Warren Waite off death row.

  13

  THE MORAL IMBECILE

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK

  Thursday, May 25–Friday, May 26, 1916

  Walter Deuel had planned an insanity defense from the outset of the trial, but at the beginning of his case, he had to somehow undo the impression that Waite was merely feigning insanity to avoid a long prison sentence and “la chaise.”

  The only way to convince the jury that Waite wasn’t faking was to put him on the stand, where he would give an elaborate confession of his misdeeds. The alienists in the audience would then surely label him insane, and the jury would send him to Matteawan, not Sing Sing. Waite’s life now depended on his ability to act the part of a “moral imbecile.”

  Deuel first called Waite’s father, Warren, and brothers, Frank and Clyde, to the stand. Warren Waite detailed Arthur’s lifelong struggle with sticky fingers. He also hinted at the possibility that mental health issues ran in the family when he testified about Arthur’s cousin Lillian Jackson, who died during a stint in an insane asylum, and another cousin who was presently institutionalized. Clyde Waite described an incident when his brother drowned a cat, but he couldn’t remember any other acts of cruelty.

  About midway through the afternoon session, at just after 3:00 p.m., Penney summoned the defendant: “Arthur Warren Waite.”

  The clerk’s booming voice jarred Waite out of a nap. He stood, tugged on the tail of his coat jacket, smiled and walked to the witness stand. Several women in the crowd stood to see the infamous lady-killer.

  Penney swore in the defendant. “Do you swear to tell the whole truth?”

  Waite cocked his head slightly and grinned. “I do,” he said in a teasing tone. He sat back in the chair, propped his arms on the armrests and crossed his legs. He didn’t even glance at Clara, who sat just a few feet away. Clara dropped her head so the wide brim of her hat concealed her face.