The reader need not agree. He may even find solace in the accident theory. According to this school of thought, Rose slipped on the stairs as she came to the door to let in her lover. She fell on the little bottle which was in her hand, thereby cutting her throat in two places and wounding herself in the chest: the lamp dropped from her hand and broke on the floor, setting fire to the paraffin. The lover entered and fled in horror, presumably leaving behind his old copy of the East Anglian Daily Times.
There is also the detective story solution. I have always assumed that it was in reference to the Peasenhall case that ex-Detective Sergeant Leeson wrote:
A sequel … may be found in the evidence given at a murder trial some years ago. The victim had been done to death in her own house by someone who had visited her, and the evidence on which the prosecution relied to prove the case consisted of footprints which they endeavoured to prove were made by the accused man. There was no doubt that the boots produced belonged to the prisoner, and fitted the prints, but he was acquitted for want of substantiating evidence.
It is true that the footprints were made by someone passing to and from the prisoner’s home, but to my mind the evidence, had it been weaved differently, would have proved the prisoner’s wife to have been the guilty person.38
It is true that it was theoretically possible for Georgina Gardiner to have carried out the murder, but her demeanour in the witness-box hardly fits her for the role of Lady Macbeth. She may have had the will to destroy the viper that threatened to destroy her home, but she would hardly have borrowed her husband’s knife for the purpose: nor, in the broadest sense of the word, was the murder of Rose Harsent a ladylike operation.
THE HOOPLA MURDER TRIAL
(Jessie Costello, 1933)
Sydney Horler
To everyone’s surprise, Jessie Costello was cleared of murdering her fireman husband by dosing him with a poisonous compound used to burnish her kitchen boiler. The American Edmund Pearson, who was at the trial in 1933, put the comely Mrs Costello’s acquittal down to twelve male jurors “as helpless as twelve rabbits under the influence of those glittering ophidian eyes”. This account is by a British author, Sydney Horler (1888–1954), a former Daily Mail reporter who wrote dozens of thrillers in the 1920s and 1930s in the style of Edgar Wallace. Never one to mince his words, Horler described Mrs Costello’s acquittal and subsequent Broadway career, as “the most astonishing crime-farce within living memory”.
In these days of highly-publicized crime, murderers often get newspaper space which might well be devoted to more worthy individuals. At least, that is the plaint of the moralists, the high thinkers and the what-nots generally. Well, they have this consolation: if things are bad enough in this country, they are very much worse in America. Every now and then in that continent of fierce turbulence of one kind and another, there springs up a crime possessing so many bizarre features that something like 120 million people are held enthralled, fascinated, or repelled according to the nature of their mentality.
Having delivered ourselves of this brief homily, let us now examine in some detail the truly astonishing case of Jessie Costello. This woman may be said to have run the whole gamut of human emotions, not through her own merits but through the stark fact that she was accused of murdering her husband by means of cyanide of potassium poisoning. During her trial she became the most important figure in all the Americas: immediately after the trial she was besieged by film and music-hall agents with dazzling offers—and, final and most bewildering phase of all, two months after her acquittal from an ordeal which a spirited writer in the New Yorker called “as luscious a trial as any in the gaudy annals of American jurisprudence,” she stood beside Mrs Aimée Semple Macpherson, the hot-gospeller revivalist, and sang “The Old Rugged Cross”, maybe with fervour, but certainly with an eye to the main chance.
If ever a woman can be said to have determined to capitalize the notoriety due to having stood in the dock on a charge of murder, it was Mrs Jessie Costello. She had believed—and hoped—that she would find her inevitable way to the Bright Lights of Broadway as a result of having been placed in the pen; but when the wheel of Fate turned about and landed her instead by the side of that other truly remarkable character, Aimée Semple Macpherson, she felt not only bewildered but reproachful. As the writer in the New Yorker so ably put it, “as she faced 8,000 devout people in Boston’s Arena, even the ecstatic amens and hallelujahs that greeted her throaty blues-singer’s voice did not completely banish her resentment. Her trial had brought her to God instead of to Broadway, and if she was a bit rebellious who can blame her?”
All things considered, I am of the opinion that the Costello trial—practically unknown in this country, let it be added—and what followed it constitutes the most amazing piece of criminal jurisprudence within the last fifty years. If any should doubt this assertion, and it is very possible, all I ask is for that sceptic to read on.
The remarkable Jessie was a Maid of Salem. Before her great advancement she strutted on the meagre stage of Peabody, Massachusetts. Peabody is a small, drab, entirely undistinguished factory town of 20,000 inhabitants, distant some thirty miles from Boston. Born in 1902, Jessie had always disliked school, and at the age of fourteen had refused ever to return. She is said to have resembled her father, a breezy, blunt, go-to-hell type of a fellow, with a temper to match his ham-like hands. From an early age—but here I must borrow again the inimitable prose of the New Yorker writer:
Jessie was destined for higher things. The success she achieved at the Salem Courthouse was perhaps no surprise to those connoisseurs of seductiveness who, lolling against corner lamp-posts, had watched Mrs Costello’s provocative and rather hefty sensuosity wriggle off into the distance. Frequently, in the past, they had given her dark, intense figure, whose ample torso bent a little forward from burgeoning hips, that accolade of approval expressed by the phrase “get a load of that!” In their way, they were pioneers. Perhaps, too, those of Mrs Costello’s neighbours who had engaged with her in certain fierce debates were not surprised by the fire and dash she later revealed. She had a certain masculinity of expression, rich, varied and yet precise, which she occasionally employed in the heat of combat.
From the above, a very good impression will be gathered of the type of woman this was.
She could not settle down to any ordinary employment; perhaps the visions of her future greatness prevented it. In any case, she tripped, in a single year, from a bakery shoppe, to the operation of an adding machine, and from this on to a Peabody Corset Emporium, where she was the chief salesgirl. (With her impressive bust she made a good model, no doubt.)
Well, there Jessie was—an opulent-breasted, big-hipped wench, full of zing, craving for life, never able to stay put for very long in one place, attracting the attention of all the males in the neighbourhood, seeing all the movies, attending all the dances, reading all the highly-spiced sex magazines in which American journalism abounds. It was, we are told, “a rich, full life”—and it was to be infinitely richer and infinitely fuller.
When she was seventeen—that was in November 1919—Jessie, looking at least ten years older in spite of the short skirts which were the fashion in those times, attracted the attention, whilst standing on a street corner selling poppies for the disabled veterans of the world war, of a tall, bleak-faced young fireman of Celtic cast, who was walking swiftly by. In the ordinary way, William J. Costello, himself a veteran of the war, and now an employee in the Fire Department of the Peabody Corporation, did not pay any attention to females; he was not that type. Sex meant nothing in his austere life. But this girl was different: when Jessie, reaching out, nabbed him by the arm, passers-by smiled; it was such a characteristic gesture of this go-getting wench. To those who were not beset with arid puritanism, the picture might have been a pleasant one—these onlookers could not have seen the shadow of death hovering in the distance.
Shortly after Jessie pinned a poppy on the coat lapel of William J. Costel
lo, they began courting. Four years later they were married.
Now it does not require a skilled psychologist to opine that a girl of Jessie’s characteristics and mentality was a piece of human dynamite to which to be hitched—unless the husband could manage her with a firm hand.
Bill Costello, we are informed, was a bit on the staid side. Compared with his exuberant bride, he looked like one of the Pilgrim Fathers. He had not told the life-loving Jessie beforehand that he spent several hours every day on his knees; that he was given to brooding not only on his God but on his stomach: for Bill, the fireman, was both religious and suffered from chronic indigestion. Furthermore, Bill was not much of a one for talking. In this he clearly resembled the late President Calvin Coolidge who, when asked by his wife what the Sunday sermon was about, briefly answered: “Sin”, and when further asked what views the preacher had expounded, coughed up the laconic rejoinder: “He didn’t approve of it.”
To be fair, as every historian should be, I must say that Bill Costello could not have been by any manner of means a lovable character—he was too grim, too rugged, too introspective for that. Apart, altogether, from his unfashionable habit (in these days) of praying for hours on end, his indigestion, and his introspection, he had a somewhat nauseating habit of taking his boots off when he got home from duty and propping his socked feet on the radiator. It does not require much imagination to agree with the New Yorker writer already quoted, Mr Richard O. Boyer, that “Bill had little of the tender sparkle of the heroes Jessie read about in True Stories.”
But whatever failings the Peabody fireman possessed, he must have satisfied—at least, for the time being—his wife’s requirements as a husband. He did his duty—perhaps grimly, perhaps introspectively, but he did it: after the marriage, we are told, “there were four children in a sequence almost as swift as biology would allow”.
But children bring diapers—and diapers weren’t much in Jessie’s line. She regarded them as an unpleasant adjunct of modern civilization. What was more, four young children, all requiring a mother’s loving care, cramped her style; she was now no longer the admired girl on the sidewalks; marriage had caught her fast in its toils, and she was buried and lost amidst the multitude of other young housewives of Peabody. It was a melancholy reflection—especially as she had gained forty pounds in weight and had now passed her thirtieth year. Oh, dear!
In a word, Jessie was ripe for mischief when Fate sent across her path the man who was destined to become nationally known as the “kiss-and-tell-cop”.
This shortly-to-be-blazoned-abroad personage was a pouty-mouthed and tow-haired patrolman (constable, in this country) called Edward J. McMahon. This ornament to the Peabody Police Force moved through life in the typically lethargic manner peculiar to his kind; he could aptly, we are told, be described as both mawkish and moon-calfish; nevertheless, he was a great favourite with the ladies. There was, no doubt, a reason.
Almost immediately after our heroine made the acquaintance of McMahon, she was seen to undergo a renaissance. Questioned on the matter, she said—only in plainer, blunter terms—that the relationship between her and the patrolman (“Big Boy”) was entirely spiritual, and that she admired McMahon only in a platonic way. When this statement is compared with the astonishing confessions of lecherous intimacy, which McMahon, surely one of the strangest self-accusers who ever stepped into a witness-box, made at the trial, Jessie’s love of the truth was, with some degree of fairness, questioned.
But the main thing is that “Big Boy’s” admiration and adoring tactics provided a much-needed tonic for Jessie. She might have posed at this stage of her life, as a “before” and “after” witness: if the patrolman had had some rejuvenating pills named after him, his testimony would have sold a wagon-load at every street corner.
Yes, Jessie bloomed again. Once again she came to the forefront, glorying in the limelight. Leaving her dishrags and diapers, she set out to “go places and do things”. She sold tickets for Policemen’s Balls; she participated in Penny Bazaars; she collected funds for the Unemployed, and was a member of several committees. Altogether, a remarkable recrudescence was hers.
“Love had planted roses in her heart,” the newspapers later said. The newspapers would …
And then came that fatal February. Up to this time, any thought of a hand of the Law—that same Law with which she was at this time so intimately connected—reaching out to grab her, was unthinkable, but—
The actual date of Jessie’s arrest was 17 March 1933. This was exactly a month after the death of her husband, who—poor man!—a long, lank, lugubrious corpse, as in life he had been a long, lank, lugubrious fireman—was found sprawled outside the bathroom of his home on Fay Avenue, a rosary lying near it.
In her dim, fumbling way, Jessie had always dreamed of Greatness—and now the newspapers thrust this dubious quality upon her with unstinting hands.
Disregarding the fact that she had passed the age of physical perfection (remember the extra forty pounds motherhood had thrust upon her) it pleased the US journalistic world to portray her as “Beauty in Distress”. We are informed that “reporters unable to talk to the widow because of gaol rules, were forced to create their own version of her.” Thus, they thrust upon her all the seductiveness of Helen of Troy, one paper going demented and declaring that “all the modest sex appeal of Lady Godiva plus clothing but minus horse was hers”. For a few hectic weeks, Jessie thrust all the fashionable film stars away from the front page; she became the shopgirls’ ideal. Photographs in abundance were published: “Male members of lonely hearts’ clubs all over the country went to bed thinking of Jessie!”
The Boston Press, usually reflecting the real New England modern puritanism, cast aside all its former restraint and went stark, raving mad. Here was a chance to cash in on their own special sensation, and they did so with such wild abandon, that their confrères all over the American Continent followed suit. To quote the spirited Mr Boyer once again: “The Boston Press beat the tomtoms so wildly that their echoes were heard by the journalistic brethren from coast to coast and brought them on the run. Perhaps some genuine aficionados of the murder trial ran a bit reluctantly. One might not have expected to find the perfect American trial, with all the hoopla and idiocies the genre require, in austere New England. Salem, where the House of the Seven Gables39 still casts its bleak Puritan shadow, seemed to lack the lavishness of temperament that was needed.”
When the alleged murderess (for the charge against Jessie was the specific one of poisoning her husband by means of cyanide of potassium) made her appearance in the dock, she was seen wearing a black dress, ornamented simply with white collar and cuffs. This dress soon became as well known as her smile. (She smiled throughout the trial, let it be added.) The jury, we are told, did not at first display that goggling undisguised admiration that they were to evidence later. They were coy to respond; the Costello magic took time to cast its spell. The bailiff who shortly was to send a bouquet of roses to the prisoner each day, on the opening morning behaved as official decorum dictated; in other words, he looked straight ahead of him and concentrated purely on his duty. Nor did the crowd, who were to cheer Jessie wildly each day as she made her triumphant progress from gaol to courthouse, develop these maniacal tendencies until later. In short, the opening morning of the trial gave small indication of the tempest of excitement which was to follow.
Indeed, had it not been for the striking personality of the accused, this might have been just another murder trial. But, and here again I have resource to Mr Boyer,
facing a possible death sentence, Jessie bloomed like a rose. Her personality dominated the proceedings. Even dull moments seemed to contain a certain breathlessness, a certain lilt, derived, perhaps, from the cadenced hop, skip, jump, wave and smile with which Jessie, four times a day, streaked to and from her limousine through the cheering crowd on her way in and out of the courthouse. Then she would pant up the stairway, the fortunates in the building racing in the
wake of her broad and straining buttocks. Gaining the second floor, she would stand at the window and wave to the crowd in the street beneath. One day a retinue of vaudeville midgets stood below and received Jessie’s wave as if it were a benediction. Their manager henceforth advertised them as The Troupe That Had Been Waved At By Jessie!
Word of the wonderful things that were to be witnessed at the Salem courthouse soon got abroad; with his finger characteristically on the American reading-public’s pulse, that overlord of the printed word, W.R. Hearst, began to press buttons. He sent such notable United States writers as Will Irwin, Katharine Brush and Adela Rogers St John thither to write their flowing cadences. The Hearst papers, we read, “were full of typographical aphrodisiacs. Every phrase describing Jessie as a glamorous siren, irresistible to men, seemed to increase the irrelevancy of her guilt or innocence.”
Stimulated by reading such purple prose, was it any wonder that the crowd panting to get into the courthouse increased every day—indeed every minute? Once the populace, led by the Press, had firmly come to the opinion that Jessie was the most lovely feminine creature that had been reared in New England for a decade, was it any wonder that the jurors caught the general infection? After all (as Mr Boyer so sapiently points out), they were only men, and Jessie was merely a woman.
Sentiment—mawkish, heavily-scented, sex-pulsating, dreamy-eyed—ruled the camp. Justice went overboard—and who can wonder at it amidst such an atmosphere? It is recorded that one of the jurymen actually inquired if he could send the prisoner a box of candies as a slight gesture of his esteem! So crazy had become the atmosphere of the courthouse that, during the recesses, the jurors formed a male voice quartette, and the hot summer air vibrated to their renderings of such songs as “Sweet Adelaide”, “My Wild Irish Rose”, and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”.
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Page 56