“A band ring with small diamond set was found on the second finger of the right hand. On the left third finger there was a small diamond ring with this inscription inside, ‘P. S. to J. S., August twenty-seven, ’ninety-four.’ In the band ring was the inscription, ‘P. G. to J. S., three-five- ’ninety-five.’”
As the November afternoon faded, Wirt Worden rose to his stiffest job of cross-examination so far. He wasted no time on the rings. He considered them unimportant. The state never got far with the rings. How could you hope to prove that rings given to “J. S.” fourteen years ago had ever belonged to Mrs. Gunness?
As a matter of fact, the rings were Belle’s. Ray said so, Worden believed it, and Smith could have proved it at the cost of a two-cent stamp. He had only to write to Minneapolis, where Peter Gunness had married his first wife. He would have learned (as this writer did years later) that Peter S. Gunness was married to Jennie Sophie Simpson on March 5, 1895—“P. G. to J. S., 3-5-95.” When the lovers got engaged in the previous August, they had had their Christian-name initials put in the engagement ring. After Jennie Sophie’s death, poor trusting Peter Gunness plighted his troth to his murderous sweetheart with the same rings.
Worden chose to ignore the rings. The conniving murderess could easily have slipped her own rings on a dead hand before leaving it to burn. He took a last look at the half-dozen medical authorities spread open on the table, set his square jaw, and advanced to attack Dr. Gray.
Q. Now, Doctor, you say the head was missing?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You found no portions of it?
A. None I could identify.
So much for that scrap of alleged jawbone! Now how about those much thicker knots of bony structure, the upper vertebrae? Funny no trace of them should be found—unless the head had never been in the fire at all! Worden went on:
Q. How many of the vertebrae were gone, Dr. Gray?
A. To the seventh cervical.
Q. Did you find any other?
A. No, sir.
Was the head ever in the fire? Worden looked that question at the listening jurors before he went on. The rest of the going was not to be so easy. The icy little physician was fighting for the prosecution every step of the way, and every point had to be pressed tenaciously before the little doctor would give an inch. Worden looked at his notes, and asked about that hand that had been found clenched in a death grip.
Q. Dr. Gray, was the hand you found contracted still connected with the right arm?
A. Yes, sir, the hand was connected with the arm, but the arm was disconnected with the body—having been burned off.
It was a diversion, but Worden would not let it pass.
Q. Burned off, Dr. Gray? How do you know it was burned off?
A. I don’t know it.
Q. Can you say that the arm was not cut off and then charred in the fire?
A. Well, no, sir.
Now Worden could get back to the point:
Q. Very well, now, Dr. Gray. Is that clenched hand evidence of suffocation?
A. It is not of itself evidence of suffocation, but muscles are contracted that way in all cases of suffocation.
Q. Did you ever know of such a post-mortem condition being caused by suffocation in your practice?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you tell us one such case?
A. The case of a Polander, in Chicago, being suffocated by coal gas, and the case of the anarchists hung in Chicago. I saw the bodies after death, and the hands were all contracted this way.
Dr. Gray wrongheadedly kept insisting that contracted muscles were a feature of rigor mortis, and Worden had to drive him inch by inch from this position. Then the defense lawyer unmasked his batteries:
Q. Are you familiar, Dr. Gray, with the post-mortem condition of a body when death has been caused by strychnine?
A. I have seen several.
Q. Would strychnine leave the hand clenched just as this hand was?
A. Yes.
Q. It is the usual symptom, is it not?
A. Yes.
Q. Isn’t it a fact that when you made your examination and wrote a verdict, you stated it was impossible to determine the cause of death?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you make a chemical analysis of the stomach, Dr. Gray?
A. No, sir.
Q. Taking the body in the condition in which you found it, if you had found strychnine and arsenic in the stomach in sufficient quantities to produce death, what would you say was the cause of death?
This was not a question at random. It was Worden’s reserve line of defense. Everybody knew that the state’s expert toxicologist had in fact found both arsenic and strychnine, in lethal quantities, in the burned stomachs. The expert was not yet in court. The state did not intend to call him; but Worden did. In the meantime, he would make the state’s own witnesses lay the groundwork. He had now spiked Gray’s guns, bringing out emphatically that the doctor’s findings—as far as they went—were consistent with death by strychnine.
Not that Dr. Gray was making any concessions. To Worden’s last hypothetical question about strychnine, he answered evasively, “I would not know.” Worden let it go, and went on to Dr. Gray’s calculations in identifying the burned body, making them look very much like pure guesswork:
Q. Did you weigh the body, Dr. Gray?
A. Yes.
Q. What did it weigh?
A. Seventy-three pounds.
Q. Did this include the arm?
A. Yes, everything.
Q. In computing the probable weight of the body, Dr. Gray, did you take into account this weight of seventy-three pounds?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How did you compute this probable weight, Doctor?
A. By comparing with other meat which had been cooked, I estimated that it had shrunk about two-thirds, from two hundred and nineteen pounds or thereabouts to seventy-three pounds.
Housewives in the crowd looked puzzled. Who would buy a nine-pound standing rib roast if it was going to cook down to a stingy three pounds on the dinner table? And hadn’t Belle weighed more than 219? Wirt Worden was looking amused as Dr. Gray stood down and the Friday session ended.
“Today was decidedly Lamphere’s day,” reported the Herald that night. “It is the general opinion that the state has so far failed utterly to establish its contention as to Belle Gunness’s death.”
Wirt Worden had already scored up an impressive list of reasonable doubts. Through one or another of the state’s own witnesses, he had strongly suggested that the coroner was a muddlehead, that the little girls had been murdered by blows, not suffocated in the fire, that the adult had been killed with strychnine and partially dismembered, and that Dr. Gray’s positive identification of the seventy-three-pound remains as Mrs. Gunness was close to wishful thinking.
Everybody agreed that Worden had started strong for Ray Lamphere. The question was: Could he keep it up?
The defense scored again when court reconvened on Saturday. The coroner’s notes, when produced, were no help to anybody; but then Dr. J. H. William Meyer came to the stand. Dr. Meyer was a short, sharp little man with humorous wry eyes. He arose to tell how he had performed an autopsy on the body of Philip Gunness. Steady, impassive, Mr. Sutherland questioned him, and walked right into the buzz saw:
Q. Will you describe the condition of the body of Philip Gunness, Dr. Meyer?
A. The body was severely burned. The forehead was burned through, exposing the brain. The heart was contracted, containing no particle of blood.
Q. Could you form any fixed idea of the cause of death?
A. No.
Q. What is your opinion, Doctor?
A. Contraction of the heart, like some case of poisoning. From what I have heard of the examination of the stomach, the contraction will probably have been due to strychnine.
The lawyers gasped. Here was a prosecution witness in effect testifying for the defense. Sutherland turned him over in a hurry. Worden rose bla
nd and smiling. This was one witness he had no need to heckle.
Q. Now, Dr. Meyer, on the body of Philip Gunness did you find any ecchymotic spots?
A. No, sir, none.
Q. You say, Doctor, there was a hole in the boy’s forehead?
A. Yes, sir.
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Worden graciously as Dr. Meyer stood down and departed with a grin.
The defense lawyer leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly, as Mr. Sutherland brought the next witness to the stand. The next witness was a rather truculent old watchmaker who testified that on September 11, 1907, he had repaired a large watch that Ray brought to his shop. A watch was thereupon produced and identified. It was Ole Budsberg’s watch.
Now Sutherland produced some charred watch fragments that had been found in the fire. From the number on the inside and the initials “B. G.” on the outside, the watchmaker identified the burned watch as Belle’s.
Worden didn’t mind the watches. He was still smiling as court adjourned for lunch.
Nevertheless, Ray Lamphere looked white and sick as he walked out of court after that grueling morning of corpses and bones, and he looked little better when he came back after a lunch he hardly tasted. The afternoon was to be worse than the morning for him.
Ralph N. Smith had saved his strongest and most unassailable medical evidence till last. Maybe Mrs. Gunness could have removed her watch and her rings to plant them in the fire, but something of hers was found in the fire that she could not have removed—her teeth; not only the false ones, but the teeth that” were rooted in her jaw.
To prove this staggering fact, Belle’s dentist, Dr. Ira P. Norton, was called to the stand. Dr. Norton had a confident chairside manner, and was impressive even without his forceps. The prosecutor himself took this important witness in hand, questioning him in a sharp, incisive voice:
Q. Dr. Norton, did you do dental work for Mrs. Belle Gunness?
A. Yes, sir. She came to my office about a year ago, perhaps five months before the fire, to have some teeth attended to. I extracted three lower teeth. I then made a bridge for her lower jaw. It consisted of six dummies in porcelain, and was of unusual construction. There was eighteen-carat-gold solder used to reinforce this. Afterwards I drilled through one of the dummy teeth and placed two platinum pins, riveted in the end. I hung this bridge upon the two natural eyeteeth remaining in Mrs. Gunness’ jaw. I crowned them with gold, and fastened the bridgework to the crowns so that four dummy teeth were inside and the remaining teeth outside of the natural teeth.
Q. Is this a diagram of the teeth?
A. It is.
Q. When and under what circumstances was this diagram made?
A. I made this chart of Mrs. Gunness’ teeth on May seventh, so that Sheriff Smutzer might recognize them if they were found in the ashes.
Mr. Smith offered the diagram in evidence. That done, he began to prepare for the production of his next and most telling exhibit through a series of careful questions:
Q. Now, Dr. Norton, did the Sheriff bring to your office some teeth?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When was that?
A. May nineteenth, 1908.
Q. I now hand you some teeth. Are these the teeth the Sheriff gave you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you ever see the teeth before, Doctor?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Where?
A. I constructed them.
Q. For whom?
A. For Mrs. Belle Gunness.
Mr. Smith paused and eyed the jury. Having offered the teeth in evidence, he went on to ask questions intended to convince the jurors that these teeth were no fakes or plants, but the actual teeth that had been fixed in Mrs. Gunness’ head.
Q. Doctor, how could these teeth have been removed?
A. By splitting the gold crowns.
Anybody who examined the teeth could see for himself that the gold crowns had not been split. Mr. Smith went on:
Q. Could they have been pulled, Dr. Norton?
A. No, sir. Not even a dentist could have pulled the natural teeth from Mrs. Gunness’ jaw still attached to the crowns, as these are.
Q. I hand you another set of teeth. Can you identify them?
A. Yes, sir. Mrs. Gunness wore this set in her upper jaw when she came to me to have the lower bridgework put in her mouth. She told me then that she had had the upper set for about a year. In this set three gold crowns and three porcelain teeth remain. In the crowns are portions of the natural teeth they had surrounded.
Q. Where are the other teeth and the portions of the natural teeth missing from the crowns?
“Object!” shouted Worden. “This witness cannot possibly know what became of the other teeth!”
“I will permit the witness to answer,” ruled Judge Richter.
A. They were destroyed by the fire when the head was burned.
Q. Do these upper teeth fit the lower set, Dr. Norton?
A. Yes, sir. I am positive that both sets were worn by Mrs. Gunness.
Dr. Norton took the uppers and lowers in his hand and fitted them together in a ghastly disembodied Cheshire-cat grin. People could see that they fitted, and the color matched, reasonably well.
Ray Lamphere, slumped in his chair, turned white as a sheet. He had not blanched at the rings or the watch, but he could not face those grinning teeth. They seemed to be having the last laugh. He gulped and gripped the arms of his chair convulsively. Would those dreadful teeth laugh him onto the gallows?
Wirt Worden gave his client a reassuring glance as the prosecutor produced another gruesome relic.
Q. What is this, Dr. Norton?
A. It is a lower jawbone from the left side of an adult jaw. From the structure of the bone, I think it is the jawbone of a female person twenty-five to thirty-five years old, or perhaps older. Here are marks on it indicating that the left lower molars have been extracted, as those of Mrs. Gunness had been.
All this was very positive guessing to base on one small fragment of bone. Worden noted it for cross-examination. But when he attacked Dr. Norton on that point and on every other point he could think of, he found no chink in that armor of certainty.
Q. Dr. Norton, did you keep a record of your work for Mrs. Gunness?
A. No, sir, it was a cash deal.
Q. You made a diagram from memory?
A. I made two.
Q. What did you do with the other?
A. Gave it to Sheriff Smutzer.
Q. When was that, Doctor?
A. May nineteenth.
What did Smutzer want with a second chart? What had he done with the first one? Given it to someone to use in constructing a fake set? Worden did not ask this positive witness any such question. He would only have elicited a resounding denial. But he let the possibility of fakery hang in the air as he went on:
Q. Which is most inflammable, Dr. Norton, a tooth or a jawbone?
A. A jawbone, in my judgment.
Q. I show you the natural tooth, Doctor, and ask if you think the upper maxillary would be destroyed before this tooth in passing through the fire?
A. Yes, sir, it would.
Q. Do you think a fire intense enough to destroy a skull would not destroy the tooth also?
A. It would not.
Q. Why, Doctor?
A. Because of being protected inside the mouth.
Q. Would not dental gold melt before a skull would burn?
A. No, sir.
As dusk drew in, Worden gave up and let the witness go.
The first week of the Lamphere trial was nearing its end. In the past two days the jurors had had a concentrated dose of medical evidence. Prosecutor Smith tactfully chose to close the week and clinch the identification of the body with more appealing testimony. To the open gratification of the feminine contingent crowding the front and one side of the courtroom—and no doubt of the all-male jury as well—he put on the stand his first woman witness. She was Mrs. Frances J. Flynn, for some years a near neig
hbor of the Gunness family. Mr. Smith questioned her soothingly:
Q. Please tell us, Mrs. Flynn, did you ever know Mrs. Gunness in her lifetime?
A. Yes, sir, from the time she first came here, seven years ago.
Q. Did you know her well?
A. Yes, sir. I visited her at least twice a month up until the time Jennie Olson went away.
Q. When was that, Mrs. Flynn?
A. About November thirtieth, 1906.
A jut-bearded juryman knitted his grizzled brows and leaned forward to listen intently as the prosecutor went on interrogating Mrs. Flynn:
Q. Describe Mrs. Gunness, please, Mrs. Flynn.
A. She was about thirty-eight and weighed some two hundred pounds.
Q. (showing the rings) Do you recognize these rings, Mrs. Flynn?
A. I recognize two of them, the wedding ring and one diamond ring. I have seen them on Mrs. Gunness’ hand. They looked to be so tight on her finger that they would have had to be filed off.
Q. (showing a blackened gold chain) Do you know this chain, Mrs. Flynn?
A. I can’t be sure, but Mrs. Gunness had a gold chain something like it.
Q. Now, Mrs. Flynn, did you see the bodies found after the fire?
A. Yes, sir. I could recognize them as they were taken out. There was a sort of a bed and mattress under them. The little boy lay upon the woman’s body as if he had been wrapped in her arms.
Q. Well, were the arms about him?
A. It did not seem to me that there were any arms.
A gasp shivered through the dusk-filled courtroom. On that macabre note the week ended. Lamphere was led out white and shaking. His attorney rose with a satisfied smile. He liked to see the jurors withdraw for the week end with that picture of a dismembered cadaver before their eyes.
As the courtroom crowd dispersed into the November dusk, everyone was saying that it had been Lamphere’s week. Wirt Worden had done wonders for his client. Only Ray Lamphere, perhaps, carried with him into the long week end of waiting the unanswerable grin of those enigmatic, disembodied teeth.
The Truth about Belle Gunness Page 10