The Truth about Belle Gunness
Page 14
Q. Now, Mr. Smutzer, did you know of Lamphere being arrested at the instance of Mrs. Gunness?
A. It was after Lamphere had come to me and told me about seeing Helgelien take the train that Mrs. Gunness caused his arrest. When Mrs. Gunness and her hired man, Joseph Maxson, came to me to have Lamphere arrested, that time Maxson brought with him a bar of iron a foot and a half long which he said Lamphere had left on the place while prowling around the night before. I thought then, and I still think, that Lamphere intended to kill Mrs. Gunness with that bar of—
Ray Lamphere’s bent head came up with a jerk. He seemed ready to jump to his feet and protest, but Worden’s loud voice forestalled him as the defense attorney shouted:
“Objection! This witness must be warned! He is trying to get matter into the record that he knows will be ruled out. He knows he must not offer his conclusions, but only the facts. He knows that conclusions are for the jury.”
The official witness knew all that perfectly well. After he had been duly warned, the prosecutor continued:
Q. Did you ever see Lamphere molesting Mrs. Gunness, Mr. Smutzer?
A. On one occasion when Mrs. Gunness came to the courthouse to complain about Lamphere, Lamphere was there and followed her around, staring at her. I asked him why he did not let her alone.
Q. What did he say?
A. He did not answer me.
Q. Now, Mr. Smutzer, you were present at the fire on April twenty-eighth?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. At what time did you get to the fire, Mr. Smutzer?
A. I was in Indianapolis on the twenty-seventh and returned home at midnight. Deputy William Anstiss was staying at the jail. We went to the fire about five o’clock.
Wirt Worden’s pencil scratched a note. Ray Lamphere’s eyes were veiled again.
Q. Did you conduct a search for the bodies of the victims?
A. Yes, sir. Fire Chief Whorwell and his men pulled down the walls, and about nine o’clock with some men whom I hired to dig we began the search. The bodies were found in the northeast corner, where the rubbish was deepest.
Q. You had charge of taking out the bodies, Mr. Smutzer?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. Describe them.
Smutzer repeated the grisly facts. Reporter’s pencils raced as the official introduced a touching detail:
“The older girl appeared to be protecting the smaller girl, for she had her arm around her. The smallest child was lying in the left arm of his mother.”
“Objection!” cut in the resonant voice of the defense attorney once more. “Another conclusion of the witness! It is not proven that the adult body was in fact the boy’s mother!”
The objection was sustained. Unruffled, Smutzer continued: “In the left arm of the adult. There was a small hole in the head of this child.”
“What was underneath the bodies, Mr. Smutzer?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Underneath the bodies were ten or twelve inches of debris. There were pieces of a mattress, and bedsprings. At either end were the head and foot of a bed, and on either side a side rail.”
Worden took quick notes as the ex-Sheriff’s testimony went glibly on. Sitting on the wall that fateful day, he had seen no such items of furniture when the bodies were found.
Meanwhile, Smutzer was looking at the state’s collection of grim relics, and identifying the rings, the bits of bone, and the watches. After he had once more detailed the finding of the bodies in the hog lot, the Wednesday session came to an end.
It was none too soon for Ray Lamphere. As they marched him back to the jail, he gulped the cold air of the November twilight as if he had come out of a charnel house.
As Wirt Worden turned over the newspapers that night, his eye must have moved unseeing over the news from Paris (where a machine built by the Wright brothers had soared to the record height of one hundred feet) to light upon good news nearer home.
The defense had already won the case for Lamphere—as far as the insurance company was concerned. The concern said flatly that they were not going to pay off on the burned house.
“We will have to be shown,” they announced, “that Mrs. Gunness did not set the fire herself!”
Worden marched into the courtroom the next morning with renewed confidence in his step. The defendant’s eyes, hollow with sleeplessness, watched him enter, and so did a jammed courtroom. The very corridors were seething with people, for the whole town was eager to be on hand for the duel soon to come. The ex-Sheriff would complete his testimony for the state that morning, and then the battle of cross-examination would begin. Worden and Smutzer had been at swords’ points ever since the very beginning of the investigation. Which one would come out on top?
Again the table was littered with ugly relics of the fire. The charred teeth lay there in a broken grin. Ray Lamphere turned away his eyes. The crowd stared. Smutzer mounted the stand with a volley of smiles for friends in the throng, and R. N. Smith rose to take up the thread for the prosecution:
Q. Now, Mr. Smutzer, did you make any further search in the ruins?
A. Yes, sir. After the finding of the bodies in the hog lot, we returned to sifting the ashes. Louis Schultz constructed a sluice box.
Q. Where is Louis Schultz now?
A. I do not know.
Worden noted this unfortunate fact ostentatiously, and looked at the jury. The officials ought to have known the whereabouts of so important a witness as the man who found the teeth. Smith went on:
Q. Previous to this search, Mr. Smutzer, did you have a conversation with Mrs. Gunness’ dentist, Dr. Norton?
A. Yes, sir. During this conversation Dr. Norton furnished me with a description of the bridgework in Mrs. Gunness’ mouth.
Q. During the search, did you set a guard on the ruins?
A. Yes, sir. A guard went on duty at five-thirty every evening, and remained on duty twelve hours, his term of service extending from May first to May twentieth.
R. N. Smith looked satisfied. That would take care of Worden’s insinuation that the teeth might be a plant. By this testimony, it would have been impossible for any unauthorized person to approach the sluice box to plant faked evidence or for any other purpose.
The prosecutor picked up the teeth. Ray Lamphere averted his eyes with a shudder. The ex-Sheriff’s open smile did not change. He identified the teeth, uppers and lowers. They were found at different times, he thought, the upper set about ten-thirty, the lowers about eleven thirty, on the morning of May 19. He was on the grounds when they were found, and he took them and showed them to Dr. Norton.
“Your witness,” said Mr. Smith at last.
Wirt Worden arose and faced the ex-Sheriff. In that crowded courtroom, even the wise heads did not know how much was at stake. The witness and the lawyer were enemies in a life-and-death struggle for the fate of the defendant. Hollow-eyed and tense, Ray Lamphere leaned forward to watch the two men who held his life.
The antagonists measured each other. The popular ex-Sheriff had the advantage, sitting there handsome, confident, smiling, unassailable. The bulldog defender came against him armed with secret knowledge.
Q. And when the teeth were found, Mr. Smutzer, what did you say to the miner when he handed them to you?
A. I said, “I thought you would find them in that pile.”
Q. Why did you think so?
A. Because that pile of debris came from the corner where the bodies were found.
Then why didn’t he look there first, instead of waiting a week? Some of the spectators found this puzzling.
Suddenly a shudder ran through the crowd. Worden had produced the most terrifying exhibit of all—a bare skull, eyeless and chopfallen, the lower jaw missing. Ray Lamphere eyed it coolly. The ex-Sheriff was just as cool as Worden asked:
Q. Do you recognize this skull, Mr. Smutzer?
A. Yes, sir. That is a skull that was found in an abandoned privy vault on the Gunness farm, three weeks after the fire.
Q. Were you present w
hen this skull was found?
A. Yes, sir. I went out that evening with Deputy Marr, Hutson, and Brogiski, the Polack handy man.
Q. What for?
A. For no other purpose than to search for bodies.
Q. And you found this skull?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When found, Mr. Smutzer, this skull carried a braid of long, light hair?
A. There was no hair of any consequence in connection with this skull.
Worden was stopped cold. According to his information, corroborated by the newspapers and by eyewitnesses, the skull when found wore a long braid. It was a woman’s skull. The body it belonged to was missing, the lower jaw was missing—unless body and jaw had turned up in the ashes. But Worden could make nothing of it now. He would have to prove the braid by witnesses of his own.
Meanwhile the ex-Sheriff was standing pat. As long as he kept his head, Smutzer had the advantage, and he knew it. With an unperturbed smile he parried every thrust made by Worden.
Q. Mr. Smutzer, you went to Texas on May twenty-second?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What for?
A. To investigate a clue.
Q. What clue, Mr. Smutzer?
A. A confession which implicated Ray Lamphere.
Q. Was it a true confession?
A. No, sir. It was proved to be a fake.
Q. During your absence in Texas, who was in charge at the farm?
A. Mr. Hutson was in charge.
No loophole there. Desperate, Worden continued to probe for a chink in that smiling armor with questions that got more and more insistent and personal:
Q. Have you any special interest in this case?
A. No, sir, no more than anyone else. My only interest in the case is to get to the bottom of matters and discover the truth.
Q. Aren’t you trying to prove some special theory?
A. No, sir.
Q. Aren’t you trying to prove in spite of everything that Mrs. Gunness is dead?
A. No, sir.
Q. Come, Mr. Smutzer, have you done anything to find Mrs. Gunness? Have you followed up all the clues to her whereabouts after the fire?
A. I did all I could to unravel the mystery, even to calling in the Pinkertons for ten days, and going all the way to Texas myself.
Q. Did you investigate reports of an automobile going through Hobart and Valparaiso on the night of the fire?
A. I had not heard such reports.
Q. (significantly) Have you an automobile?
A. Yes, sir, a red Ford runabout.
Worden had gone as far as he dared, and Smutzer had not flinched. The defense lawyer sat down exhausted.
Ralph N. Smith, rising to re-examine, dropped his eyelids innocently as he asked the questions that would quash all this talk about red automobiles:
Q. Were you ever out at the Gunness farm before the fire, Mr. Smutzer?
A. No, sir, never.
Q. Was your automobile ever standing at the farm before the fire?
A. No, sir, it never was.
Q. Is there another automobile in town that looks like yours, Mr. Smutzer?
A. Yes, sir. Wirt Worden has one!
With a broad grin, the ex-Sheriff rose and retired victorious. The crowded courtroom let out the tension of the long duel in a stir and a murmur. This clear-eyed, smiling witness must be an honest man, they whispered. He must be maligned by the whispers of gossip and the innuendoes of the defense. If Smutzer thought Ray was guilty, then very likely he was, they told each other.
It was late Thursday afternoon when the Sheriff left the stand. In the week just ending, the prosecution, after proving the corpus delicti to its own satisfaction, had proceeded to show that Ray had abundant motive to burn up Mrs. Gunness, and means handy in the shape of the kerosene can under the stairs.
Prosecutor Smith had tried to show opportunity by placing Ray at the scene of the crime, but that attempt back-fired. He found only one man who would testify that he had seen someone fleeing from the scene. That man had known Ray for twenty years. When he came to testify, he would not say that the man was Ray.
There had been plenty of evidence about Ray’s doings later. At six A.M. he appeared at his cousin’s farm, four miles away, to borrow a broadax. He refused to eat any breakfast.
“As I was coming along,” Ray remarked to his cousin, “I saw the Gunness farm on fire.”
“Then,” observed his cousin, “you will probably be pulled by the police.”
“If I am,” replied Ray rather strangely, “then I hope the straight of it will come out.”
At six-thirty Lamphere appeared at Wheatbrook’s. He told about the fire; at first he thought it was Diesslin’s, but as he came closer he decided it was Mrs. Gunness’.
“Did the folks get out?” asked Wheatbrook.
“I don’t know,” said Ray, “but as I was coming along I thought I heard somebody holler.”
At eight-thirty Ray was on the job at Warwick’s farm, building a barn. He worked calmly enough until dinnertime came near. At eleven-thirty he threw down his tools, complaining that he felt ill, and took himself off.
In the middle of the afternoon he came back.
“What about the people in the burned house?” he asked Wheatbrook.
“Maxson got out all right,” replied Wheatbrook, “but I don’t know about the others.”
All this had been testified to by Ray’s friends when they were on the stand. To round out the story, Prosecutor Smith now called to the stand the officers who at five-thirty that afternoon had arrested Ray Lamphere.
Much was expected of these witnesses. A rumor was buzzing around town that when first quizzed by the police, Lamphere had actually confessed to the crime. Worden must have regarded the police witnesses with grave misgivings. What had Ray babbled out? Nothing was impossible.
The officer who actually arrested Ray was Deputy Leroy Marr. Marr temporarily dropped his duties as court bailiff and came to the stand to be sworn.
With his medium build, medium face, and medium voice, Marr did not look like the man to arrest a desperate criminal singlehanded. For that matter, Ray Lamphere, gnawing his knuckles with a worried look, did not look like a desperate criminal; nor had he acted like one when arrested, as Prosecutor Smith soon elicited from the deputy.
Q. Mr. Marr, did you see the defendant on the day after the fire?
A. Yes, sir. That afternoon I rode out in an automobile with Deputy William Anstiss to get Lamphere at John Wheatbrook’s. The roads were muddy. About a mile from the place I got out and walked on alone. Lamphere came to the door just as I got to the gate. I said, “Ray, get on your coat and come to town with me.”
Right away he said, “Did those three children and that woman get out of the building?”
I said, “What building?”
“That building near town,” he replied.
Q. Was anything further said, Mr. Marr?
A. Yes, sir, I asked him where he was when he saw the fire. He said, “When I got along by the house the smoke was coming out of the windows and around the roof.”
I asked him, “Did you see anyone around the place?” and he said no. Then I said, “Why didn’t you yell?”
“I didn’t think it was any of my business.”
Q. When did you see the defendant next, Mr. Marr?
A. I saw him next after Lamphere had sent for the prosecutor on the evening of his arrest.
Q. What did he say?
A. I heard the prosecutor ask him if he had slept with Nigger Liz, and Lamphere said, “Yes, but for God’s sake, Smith, don’t put that in any statement!”
Ray Lamphere looked down at his clenched hands, and a dull flush crept up his thin cheeks under the contemptuous stares of the righteous. What if the old voodoo woman was stouthearted and stanch? She was neither law-abiding nor respectable, and for all her protective affection and wish to help him, she could only do him harm in his ordeal. She could not even be present to give him moral support. Feelin
g the tide of public disapproval, Worden renewed his decision not to call Nigger Liz to prove an alibi. It was worse than useless.
Satisfied with his effect, the prosecutor went on:
Q. When did you see Ray Lamphere again, Mr. Marr?
A. About one week later. I asked him how he came to quit work for Mrs. Gunness. He said he got fired, and that Mrs. Gunness wanted him to go back, but he wouldn’t, because he was afraid. When I asked him what he was afraid of, he wouldn’t tell. He said it was not fair to his lawyer to talk any more.
Ray’s lawyer was wishing his client had talked less. When his turn came to question Deputy Marr, Worden chose to prepare the ground for a little red-herring chase.
Q. Mr. Marr, did you and Attorney Smith take a cab and go out to the farm one night after the fire and force the lock on the shed and get a trunk and bring it to town?
A. Yes, sir, except that I can’t say the lock was forced.
Q. What was done with the trunk?
A. It was delivered at Mr. Smith’s office.
Q. Why did you go out at night?
A. We had just heard of its being there late that afternoon.
What was in the trunk? The general curiosity had to go temporarily unsatisfied as William Anstiss came to the stand.
Anstiss was a good officer, tall, well built, courageous, always on the job. “He was more sheriff than Smutzer was,” people said in La Porte. At the time of the fire he was Smutzer’s chief deputy, and now he had just succeeded him as sheriff. Anstiss was a slow talker. His tight mouth had a sardonic quirk. Every measured word he said tightened the noose around Ray Lamphere’s neck.
Mr. Smith began by eliciting from him what he knew about Lamphere’s shenanigans that winter, saying Helgelien was wanted for murder, and then coming back to report that he had left town. Anstiss then went on to confirm Smutzer’s story of how they went to the fire, and told of his part in the arrest.
Anstiss had had Ray in charge after he was arrested, and had quizzed him repeatedly. It was when Smith brought up that topic that the noose began to tighten:
Q. Did you have any conversations with the defendant?