The Girls of Murder City

by Douglas Perry

  A more promising witness for the state was the coroner’s physician, Joseph Springer, who testified that a gun “must be held within fifteen inches or so to make powder burns.”

  “From the absence of these, is it your opinion that he did not shoot himself?” Hamilton asked.

  Springer nodded. “He did not.”

  The defense, almost completely mute until now, refused to accept so definitive a statement. Nash’s associate, Michael Ahern, approached the witness and, saying he would pose as Law, asked Springer to hold the pistol at the correct angle and distance from the victim. Springer agreed, placed Ahern just so, and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked violently, drawing gasps from around the room. But Ahern didn’t even flinch.

  “There! You see,” the lawyer said, twisting his arm to show how he could hold the gun himself where Springer had it. He imitated a man holding a gun to his own head and leaning away in fear, eyes clenched in anticipation of impact. “He could have killed himself.”

  “He could not!” Springer whined as Ahern strutted back to the defense table.

  William F. Leathers, headwaiter at the Gingham Inn, was next. Belva had insisted from the beginning that she was too drunk on the night of the murder to remember what happened to Walter Law, and so the state wanted to suggest otherwise. “They ordered three bottles of ginger ale, family-size, eleven-ounce bottles. I waited on them myself,” Leathers said. “No, their steps were not unsteady. They seemed perfectly sober when they were dancing.” He added: “I wish that I had always remained as sober as they were.”

  As more witnesses took turns on the witness stand—a series of policemen followed Leathers—Maurine homed in on Belva’s “virtuous calm” during the testimony. It irritated her. She ratcheted up her attack on the woman who had sat patiently and politely for numerous interviews with the young reporter over the weeks.

  Her sultry eyes never lost their dreaminess as policemen described the dead body slumped over the wheel of her Nash sedan—the matted hair around the wound, the blood that dripped in pools—and her revolver and “fifth” of gin lying on the floor. Her sensuous mouth kept its soft curves as they told of finding her in her apartment—4809 Forrestville avenue—with blood on coat, blood on her dress of green velvet and silver cloth, and blood on the silver slippers.

  Not all of the observers present saw only steely calm. A reporter from the Atlanta Constitution, sent north specifically for the trial, declared that “Mrs. Gaertner lost her composure and trembled as the prosecution exhibited bloodstained clothing she wore the night Walter Law, an automobile salesman, was shot and killed in her sedan.” The Daily News and the Evening Post also noted signs of nervousness in Belva as she listened to testimony.

  Maurine refused to attribute such human emotions to the defendant. She worried that she hadn’t been hard enough on Beulah Annan, that she’d underestimated her and thus helped free the beautiful killer. She would make sure there was no doubt about Belva Gaertner’s guilt. This sense of mission, however, didn’t cause her to lose her sense of humor. In fact, it sharpened her wit. She would pepper her trial stories with sly digs at Belva and the jury, at witnesses and lawyers and court fans. Dr. Springer, she wrote, “identified the gin bottle which was found lying on the floor of the car. Belva’s jury, selected for their lack of prejudice in favor of the Volstead act, pepped up a bit at sight of this, and Belva herself leaned forward. But it was empty.” Maurine laughed openly at the testimony of the Gingham Inn’s Bert Brown, who claimed the establishment served “nothing stronger than ginger ale.”

  According to his statement, the Gingham Inn is matched in dryness only by the Sahara; no liquor is sold there, no liquor is brought there, no liquor is displayed there on table, floor, or under cover.

  In describing a policeman’s testimony, Maurine even managed a playful swipe at Belva’s vaunted clothes sense, skillfully insinuating along the way that the defendant was both a liar and a whore. Belva, she wrote, “couldn’t shake her head nor nod approvingly at the testimony, for she doesn’t ‘remember,’ but she could show impatience as the officer floundered in describing her clothes. But—to his relief—they were admitted in evidence; the mashed hat and rumpled coat, the ‘one more struggle and I’m free’ dress, and the flimsy slippers.”

  The trial moved swiftly. Straightforward and uneventful, it was given to the jury on Thursday, having lasted less than two days in total. Belva, to the disappointment of the crowded room, did not testify.

  As the state completed its closing argument, Maurine saw reasons to be optimistic. Freda Law’s brief testimony, during which she identified a bloodied hat as belonging to her late husband, was so pathetic that surely even the hardest juryman’s heart broke. Lieutenant Egan, who had interrogated Belva the night of the shooting, testified that she was only “intoxicated enough to be cunning.” And there was no cynical, fanciful defense, like the one Stewart and O’Brien had put on for Beulah Annan. In fact, there was essentially no defense at all. Nash and his colleagues “refused to present evidence and waived their closing argument.”

  These reasons for hope soon suffered, however. Nash, in refusing a closing argument, declared the case purely circumstantial and asked for a dismissal. Judge Lindsay refused the request but, out of the hearing of the jury, agreed “that there was not sufficient evidence to cause the Supreme Court to uphold a verdict of guilty.” Nash had done an excellent job of playing possum, coming alive at opportune moments to punch holes in the state’s evidence. Lindsay said that he couldn’t “tell the state’s attorney what to do. But if the jury should bring in a verdict of guilty, I am confident the Supreme Court would reverse the decision, as the evidence is only circumstantial; strong enough to rouse suspicion of guilt, but not to convict.”

  Pritzker and his team ignored the judge’s warning. They were willing to take their chances with the higher court. They asked for life imprisonment, not the death penalty. Lindsay gave final instructions to the jury, landing hard on the definition of reasonable doubt. He reminded jurors “not to assume that, because the defendant might have committed the crime, she necessarily did commit it.” As the judge motioned to Belva, a reporter observed, they “turned to stare at the slim, youthfully rounded creature who’d never looked prettier.” The defendant offered a small, brave smile as twelve pairs of eyes fell on her. At four P.M., the jurors left the room.

  Belva was taken from the courtroom and placed in the adjacent prisoner bull pen, some ten feet from the room where the jurors were beginning their deliberations. Nash expected her wait to be short. Seeing as he had mounted no active defense, a swift decision would be a good sign. He’d simply asserted that the prosecution had no case—no meaningful evidence, no eyewitnesses. If the jury reached the same conclusion, they should do so quickly. There was either evidence or there wasn’t.

  So when the minutes ticked into hours, Belva’s composure began to fray. She paced in the small holding cell, wondering what the jurors could be discussing behind that door. Were some of them “narrow-minded old birds” who’d lied about their opinion of liquor so that they wouldn’t be dismissed from the jury? She knew self-righteous fanatics could be convincing when they got going; they could shame anybody. Belva chain-smoked cigarettes and, like Beulah before her, avoided chatting with the matron minding her, hoping to fight off a burgeoning hysteria. Her mind reeled with the possibilities, the rest of her life behind bars rolling out before her.

  At last, shortly before midnight, the jurors sent word that they had a verdict. It had taken them nearly seven hours to reach a decision—“much longer,” noted the Daily News, “than it takes most ‘woman-proof ’ juries.” When guards led Belva back into the courtroom, dark circles slashed under her eyes. She looked shaken, scared. She chanced a look at her sister, Malinda, who stood in the back.

  The jury entered a few minutes later, tired and grim. Tension gathered about the defendant’s table; Belva, rocking slightly, seemed prepared for the worst. A piece of paper was passed to the b
ailiff, on to the judge, and then back again. The jury foreman now unfolded it as if he had no idea what it said. When he announced the verdict—“Not guilty,” in a clear, echoing voice—Belva let out a gasp and clutched at her stomach. She “laughed and cried in one breath” and swung around to see her lawyers’ reactions. “I’m so happy,” she managed, her voice breaking. She sat, as if exhausted, and then climbed to her feet. “I want to leave this place and get some air.” Suddenly overcome by emotion, she hugged a deputy sheriff, surprising the man, who reflexively returned the embrace. She bounded over to the jury. She thanked them, tears in her eyes, reaching out to grasp their hands. As Belva posed for pictures with the jury, Walter Law’s widow once again went almost unnoticed. Freda Law cried softly, hugging herself and her sister in the back of the room. When a reporter approached, she lashed out. “There’s no justice in Illinois!” she spat. “No justice! Walter paid—why shouldn’t she?” She quickly left the courtroom. Harry Pritzker saw Mrs. Law storm out. Defeated, appalled at the verdict, he didn’t want to talk to the press. “Women—just women,” he said, shaking his head as he gathered his papers and marched from the room.

  After the courtroom had emptied, Belva crossed the bridge of sighs to the Cook County Jail, Malinda a step behind her. She packed her “wardrobe” and said good-bye to the inmates. She waved off the reporters who followed her on this final trek to the jail. “I’m going to remarry Mr. Gaertner and forget all this on a second honeymoon to Europe,” she said, as she glided out of the building and into the early morning air.

  William Gaertner didn’t yet know that he was about to marry again. Up past his bedtime, he had gone home before the verdict came in.

  Even with the Leopold-Loeb drama gripping the city, Belva Gaertner earned prime placement on the city’s front pages on Friday. The Daily Journal trumpeted: “Belva ‘Checks Out’ of Jail.” The Daily News reported stolidly, “Jury Takes Eight Ballots; ‘I’m So Happy,’ She Declares After Verdict.” The Evening Post offered the blandest headline—“Mrs. Gaertner Given Freedom on Murder Charge”—and the blandest report. Ione Quinby, her work consistently overshadowed by Maurine’s sharp coverage of the Beulah and Belva trials, had done the unthinkable: She gave over the prized verdict story to a junior colleague.

  In the Tribune, unsurprisingly, Maurine did not hide her disgust at seeing a second murderess walk free. For the first time, a sour, humorless note dominated her prose.

  Belva Gaertner, another of those women who messed things up by adding a gun to her fondness for gin and men, was acquitted last night at 12:10 o’clock of the murder of Walter Law. “So drunk she didn’t remember” whether she shot the man found dead in her sedan at Forrestville avenue and 50th street March 12—

  But after six and one-half hours and eight ballots the jury said she didn’t.

  Maurine was angry, just like after Beulah’s acquittal. She couldn’t believe it had happened again. But she tried not to wallow in her fury. The next day, Saturday, June 7, she wrote a follow-up that showed she had managed to take a breath and find her sense of humor again. With Belva’s acquittal on Thursday night, and with Leopold and Loeb indicted for murder just a few hours later on Friday, she recognized that the women’s quarters of the Cook County Jail would no longer be the focus of the city’s attention. An era had passed. “Only four women, the fewest in years, are now waiting trial for murder—for they’re getting out even faster than they’re getting in!” Maurine wrote. “And the two who walked to freedom in the last two weeks, ‘pretty’ Beulah Annan and ‘stylish’ Belva Gaertner, robbed the women’s quarters of their claims to distinction and plunged murderess’ row into oblivion.”

  Maurine jokingly lamented that the pretty and interesting girl gunners, which the city once supplied in seemingly inexhaustible numbers, were all gone from the jail. Two of the remaining murder suspects were black women, and the other two—Helen Cirese’s clients, Sabella Nitti and Lela Foster—were middle-aged and dowdy. Makeup and new clothes surely wouldn’t be enough for any of these four to gain acquittal, Maurine wrote, for they “will lack the advice of Belva, known even in some other circles as an expert in dress.”

  18

  A Grand and Gorgeous Show

  Five days after Belva walked out of the Cook County Jail for the last time, Maurine returned to Nathan Leopold and Dick Loeb. The “boy killers” continued to rule every newspaper in the city, and correspondents began to arrive from around the country to report on the case.

  Even now, after nearly two weeks in jail, Leopold and Loeb lacked the barest semblance of remorse. These intelligent young men, brought up with every advantage, had done what they’d done purely for the “experience,” they said, as a sort of personal scientific experiment. Said Loeb, “I know I should feel sorry I killed that young boy and all that, but I just don’t feel it. I didn’t have much feeling about this from the first. That’s why I could do it. There was nothing inside of me to stop me.”

  Reading such an admission sickened people across the country, Maurine included. Sent out to cover the boys’ arraignment, Maurine attacked from the first sentence. She noted that it was Loeb’s nineteenth birthday, but “Dickie” didn’t much interest her. The good-looking boy seemed pathetic, desperate to be liked—the weak half of the malevolent duo. It was the haughty Leopold, with his slicked-back hair, swarthy complexion, and smug, half-lidded gaze, who truly repulsed her.

  Maurine had little interest in imparting any actual news with her report; she was out simply to ridicule, to hit the two wealthy criminals where she knew it would hurt them most: their egos. (The approach apparently worked. Even twenty-five years later, Leopold would profess a deep hatred for the Chicago Tribune.) The reporter, taking a shot at Leopold’s atheism, snorted that “it was a big day in itself to Mr. Nathan Leopold Jr., that gentleman who first won fame because ‘he loved the birdies so.’ How it must have delighted his egocentric soul—your pardon, Leopold!—his egocentric mind, to know that the crowd had begun gathering before 7 o’clock that morning. By 9—an hour before the performance—there were S.R.O. signs and the hallway to Judge Caverly’s court was jammed with sturdy determinists who broke down the door for a chance glimpse.”

  The crowd, in fact, astounded Maurine almost as much as Leopold did. She watched as court fans, even more than had turned out for Beulah and Belva, jockeyed for position in the hallway of the Criminal Courts Building three hours before the arraignment, and then, when the doors opened, rushed for seats as if fleeing a tornado. She scrutinized men and women “packed in separate quarters like a Quaker meeting”: “gum-chewing flappers” and “housewives sentimentally inclined” on the right, men “with loud ties and shifting eyes” on the left. Even courthouse professionals, who dealt with degenerates every day, wanted to see these killers: “Lawyers and stenographers from other courts lined the walls and filled the benches. Reporters sat—or stood—on tables and chairs, and cameramen formed an impregnable line back of the ‘bench.’ ” Leopold’s father, Nathan Leopold Sr., found himself surrounded by reporters. He had nothing to say to them. “Why come to me?” he croaked, tears in his eyes, still unable to fathom what his son had done and what had happened to his family. “What did I do? Why come to me?”

  For weeks Maurine had been tinkering with an idea for a stage play based on the Beulah Annan case. She wanted to create a deeply cynical satire of the celebrity mania that she saw as the dominant feature of twentieth-century urban life. The sight before her only confirmed that she had chosen the right subject. Maurine didn’t bother approaching the senior Leopold like the other reporters. By now supremely confident in her satiric style, she remained an observer and posed the whole scene as the equivalent of a play. Labeling Leopold “the Master” and Loeb “his dutiful friend,” she wrote, “The judge entered; Superior Court, criminal branch No. 1, was opened. Camera men poised their flashlights. All turned breathless to the door that leads from the ‘bridge of sighs.’ ”

  The stage was set. “The Master
” entered. Accompanied by his dutiful friend and their two attendants—faithful attendants chained to their wrists by “come-ons.”

  Still poised and self-possessed. And prison life, where they’ve done without wine, women and song, has helped them physically. Both were carefully groomed, and Dick wore a brand new suit for the “party.” His brown eyes searched the crowd half fearfully for his brother, Allan, and the weak, sensuous mouth half parted.

  But the “hypnotic” eyes of Nathan, with the whites gleaming ’neath the pupil, sought no one. He swept the crowd with a glance; just a mob, important only because they wanted to see him.

  The boys’ guards—their “faithful attendants”—had to put their shoulders down like halfbacks to ward off the pushing, grasping spectators. The guards pulled the boys down the aisle to the bench. Judge John R. Caverly glowered down on them. He reminded them that they had been indicted for murder and then asked if they pleaded guilty or not guilty.

  “Not guilty, sir,” said Leopold, followed by Loeb, straining to match his friend’s tone of cool indifference: “Not guilty, sir.” (“They never forgot the ‘sir,’ ” Maurine pointed out. “Millionaires are bringing etiquette to our courts!”) With the pleading out of the way, State’s Attorney Crowe requested a trial date of July 15. The redoubtable Clarence Darrow, however, demurred. “We need time to prepare the case, and time,” the defense attorney said, indicating with a flick of his eyes the mob behind him, “for public sentiment to die down.” Darrow got a promise of time, and then Leopold and Loeb were led out of the courtroom and back to the jail. “The crowd,” wrote Maurine, “filtered out slowly. Satisfied: they had seen the millionaire murder confessors.”