American Sherlock

by Kate Winkler Dawson

  The country’s most celebrated criminalist had successfully forced a mistrial all by himself, but few people were pleased with the result. Matthew Brady, the district attorney, was outraged but resolute—Fatty Arbuckle was a lout who deserved to be jailed. The actor was crestfallen because he wasn’t exonerated and his reputation was still dismal. There would be little rest for either side, because Fatty Arbuckle would face a second trial after Christmas.

  * * *

  —

  Privately, away from the courthouse, Oscar Heinrich sulked. He felt misunderstood by the jury and concluded that the mistrial was a failure, a condemnation of his investigative skills.

  “The ability of the defense to create a conflicting theory and support it with the testimony of Arbuckle himself aided and abetted by his lifelong training in acting gave them at least one leg to stand on,” Oscar complained to Kaiser.

  The criminalist had once blamed the modern woman for America’s crime wave. It was her sex appeal and disregard for restraint that provoked young men to violence—a conclusion much of the country shared.

  “Parents seem to think they must watch their sons and protect them from evil,” Oscar said. “But I say, ‘For God’s sake observe your daughters, too, and try to cultivate in them a little of the restraint that young women had in the days when crime waves were unheard of.’”

  Now Oscar cursed not just promiscuous women but the entire entertainment industry, blaming its deference to omnipotent stars with no self-control.

  “The case of Arbuckle and its present status reflects the acceptance by the American people of a double standard in which the woman pays for every transgression,” he wrote Kaiser, “whereas the man frequently if not always escapes.”

  While women had won full voting rights the year before, sexual assaults in America were vastly underreported; when survivors did respond to the police, many times they were blamed for being culpable. The popularity of adventurous flappers with their sexuality on display left men scared of false accusations, while women and girls continued to be sexualized.

  Christian reformers hoped a ban on alcohol would help quell domestic violence. One goal of Prohibition was national purification, a return to the traditional sexual norms of the Victorian era. But often young women were cruelly chastised in court, like when judges punished underage girls for their role in statutory rape. Some prosecutors believed that girls were willing participants in incest, and their characters were impugned on the stand. While more women were attending college and earning careers, they were also habitually harassed on the street by “mashers”—men who aggressively “flirted” or catcalled.

  “Our nation depends for its existence,” Oscar wrote to Kaiser, “the inalienable right of the woman of every stage of society to choose her partner in every matter concerning her.”

  The jury was swayed by Arbuckle’s star power, Oscar lamented, and he was incredulous that ten of the twelve jurors had dismissed his testimony. He likened Fatty Arbuckle to the doomed king Belshazzar in Babylon, who had held a feast using containers looted from a sacred Jewish temple. In the criminalist’s version of the biblical tale, Oscar represented Daniel, the wise man who was able to read God’s handwriting on the wall, which were phrases that revealed Belshazzar’s blasphemy.

  “Like Daniel in the days of Babylon I gave them the interpretation of the writing on the wall,” he declared to Kaiser.

  Oscar was certain there would be justice for Virginia Rappe, and he vowed to make sure of it during the second trial: “And I feel that just as Belshazzar who gave that party in Babylon died in the night, so will Roscoe Arbuckle die professionally and financially in the evening of this affair.”

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  —

  Christmas in 1921 was glorious for many Americans, at least those with a certain amount of affluence. There were pine trees or cedars for sale on wagons in cities, while families living in the countryside sent the men venturing onto farms with sharp axes. They hauled home the trees, soon to be heavily decorated on Christmas Eve with stringed popcorn, pinecones, red and green ropes, or homemade paper chains, while more traditional revelers (or those who couldn’t afford electricity) used candles gently secured to the branches.

  A lucky kid could sip a Coca-Cola and chew on a Baby Ruth candy bar for ten cents. Boys penned letters to Santa Claus, requesting toy Lionel trains or wind-up tin ships, while girls begged for walking and talking baby dolls on sale for $2.98.

  On Christmas Day, wealthy families might have dined on oyster soup, roasted suckling pig, and diced turnips in hollandaise sauce followed by a dessert course featuring small cakes and nuts. But there was also a parallel Christmas in America, one where Santa Claus rapped on the doors of poverty-stricken children across the country, courtesy of the Salvation Army. The bearded volunteer hauled modest gifts of mittens or hats in his sack. The charity organization, founded in 1865 in London, also delivered free Christmas meals, including turkeys along with imported oranges for needy families across America. Those scenes reminded Oscar Heinrich of his own childhood Christmas holidays in the 1880s.

  “When Santa Claus came to me instead of the usual red coat and white whiskers he generally had a red band on his hat with some gold lettering on it reading ‘Salvation Army’ and had a black mustache,” he wrote Kaiser in a somber, reflective holiday letter at the end of 1921. “I never have been able to reconcile these two.”

  He was still ashamed by his father’s financial failings, his willingness to abandon his family. Oscar lacked opportunities because of his father’s weaknesses. He recalled one Christmas when, as an eight-year-old, he was gifted a present from his Sunday school.

  “I, the son of the poor carpenter, got a red apple,” Oscar recalled, “while the son of the rich jeweler got three pencil boxes, two oranges and a bag of popcorn. That was thirty-two years ago and the incident still has some effect on some of my social views.”

  Oscar vowed to never welcome a Santa Claus from the Salvation Army into his home again. His fixation on money strengthened especially during the holidays. The more anxiety he felt, the more he chronicled expenses in his domestic distribution reports. One week’s worth of insurance, extra furniture, literature, carfare, meat, and tobacco had cost him $74.37. He filled out his charts weekly, sometimes daily. And he worried about how prosperous he might be in 1922.

  That year’s Christmas was almost unbearable because Oscar’s testimony had hung the jury in Fatty Arbuckle’s manslaughter trial—a horrid outcome, as far as he was concerned. And now he was being forced to feign yuletide spirit to his family upstairs instead of reviewing evidence in his laboratory below.

  “I’ll have to prime myself for a day filled with extravagant exclamations over the various things various members of my family will have received,” he wrote to Kaiser, “and which to me appear to be utterly useless to them or anybody else.”

  He could hear eleven-year-old Theodore and seven-year-old Mortimer playing loudly upstairs. The boys were both spirited children, full of enthusiasm and endless questions for Papa. They had inherited many wonderful attributes from their mother, including her straight dark brown hair, attractive faces with dark eyes, and loads of energy—though it manifested itself differently in Marion. Oscar affectionately labeled his wife the “nervous-type.”

  “If I hurry Marion too much she is liable to lose a meal and is apt to go all to pieces,” he joked to Kaiser. “This is particularly true if we are trying to make a train or something of that kind.”

  Oscar frequently felt obligated to shield his wife from his horrible cases, as well as their money troubles—not unusual for a husband in the 1920s who didn’t believe his wife could offer constructive advice on their poor finances.

  “We used to buy our Christmas presents and get them paid for about the following September,” he told Kaiser. “It has been my privilege and pleasure to carefully refrain from concerning her with
the problems of getting a living.”

  Oscar was becoming increasingly morose about the moral weight of his career, the public pressure, and its scrutiny. He carried a heavy weight—in one year, he sent eight men to San Quentin’s gallows. An insecure perfectionist who routinely disassembled the stories of criminals, Oscar felt vulnerable to embarrassing public judgments, particularly in the press.

  “I am sick and tired of sending men to jail and wish a change,” he declared. “During the past few months I have managed to release several who were falsely accused but even so the entire problem involved the strife of life and the continued contemplation of the bitter side of its failures.”

  It may have seemed melodramatic, but after a decade of criminal investigations, Oscar was still not accustomed to the heavy burden he carried. Lives were spared or condemned based on his expertise, but sometimes his credentials were not enough to satisfy juries.

  “I am not positive that I am doing yet that for which I was created,” said Oscar gravely. “Life is a series of frustrations.”

  He fretted over another trial in January that would feature Arbuckle’s haughty, expensive attorneys, so there was little joy that Christmas for Oscar Heinrich. But there was one exception, a gesture he had adopted as a nod to his childhood sorrow during the holidays. Once each of Marion’s family gifts were mailed and the boys’ toys were wrapped, Oscar drove down the hill to downtown Berkeley, where the Salvation Army collected its money, and he offered the volunteers a donation.

  * * *

  —

  There was far less fanfare in the press for the retrial of Fatty Arbuckle in January 1922—no surprise witnesses and no fresh rumors purporting to be facts. Brady’s case against Arbuckle was faltering because witnesses were now less certain and there was little new evidence. The press predicted a speedy acquittal. While Brady rearranged his strategy, Arbuckle’s defense attorney plotted to humiliate Oscar Heinrich on the stand on January 27.

  “The right hand of the man clutching the hand of the woman,” the criminalist explained while pointing to large photos. “The position of the woman’s hand on the door appears to have been due to pressure exerted by the man’s hand.”

  No one in the court was shocked by the allegation at this point—it had been a centerpiece of the prosecutor’s evidence in the first trial. But Arbuckle’s defense attorneys had since developed a shrewd strategy by using an anecdote from a police officer assigned to guard the suite. The cop claimed that Oscar and his female assistant Salome Boyle had made a startling entrance when they first arrived to examine the rooms in September.

  “Is it not a fact that you introduced yourself to the assistant manager of the hotel as Sherlock Holmes and your secretary, Miss Boyle, as Dr. Watson?” barked Gavin McNab. The audience snickered.

  “Not that I remember,” Oscar calmly replied.

  He was slightly amused, because any glib comments he made about his Holmesian tendencies were quips, not delusions. McNab was determined to embarrass him, but then the defense attorney stepped across a very tenuous boundary.

  McNab hinted at inappropriate behavior between Oscar and his assistant—it was enough to elicit a roar of laughter from the courtroom. The defense attorney insinuated that Oscar had locked the suite’s doors to ensure privacy with his attractive young secretary.

  “[I locked the doors] in order not to be disturbed, as I was being shadowed,” Oscar explained.

  He shifted in the chair. He was a devoted husband, a God-fearing man. The criminalist fumed because his career and his reputation depended not only on his skills but also on the public’s belief in his integrity. McNab was trying to tarnish his reputation.

  Oscar stayed composed, silently waiting for the next ridiculous allegation, and McNab offered it quickly. The defense attorney claimed that the two overlapping handprints on the suite’s door did not belong to Rappe and Arbuckle but to Oscar and his assistant. The criminalist denied those charges, and he even offered his own handprint samples, along with Boyle’s, as proof. McNab sneered. Oscar had been publicly dressed-down, while jurors stared at him from their nearby box. And now Fatty Arbuckle might be acquitted because of McNab’s trap.

  Oscar’s stomach churned. But then he watched August Vollmer, his favorite cop, stride past him and slide into the witness chair. The criminalist listened to the police chief’s confident, measured responses. Vollmer confirmed each of Oscar’s theories about the handprints on the door—indeed, they belonged to Arbuckle and Rappe. At least Oscar could always count on August Vollmer.

  His wife, Marion, didn’t appear to be particularly concerned about him during the trial, but his elderly mother worried. By 1921, Albertine Heinrich (now Roxburgh) was remarried to a Scottish man and living in Eureka, California; she had written Oscar letters for years, always penned in her native German. Oscar had sent her money at least once a month for decades, an obligation the forty-year-old proudly accepted as a teenager but one that now placed a greater burden on his own struggling family. In fact, Oscar’s personal finances were in such dire straits that vendors and lenders regularly hounded the criminalist, even threatening him if he refused to pay up.

  “Permit me to say that this remittance is not being made to answer to your boorish threats,” Oscar wrote to a building materials supplier. “You are probably aware by this time that I don’t scare easily and I would suggest to you that your best interest lies in refraining from writing letters to me which don’t read well after they have left your hands.”

  But Oscar refused to let bullies discourage him from supporting his ailing mother.

  “Please don’t feel backward about getting wood and coal or any other thing that you may need to make yourself comfortable,” Oscar assured her. “I am perfectly ready to supply everything you need except a desire to put money away.”

  But money troubles were the least of his mother’s concerns. While Oscar had been barraged by loads of publicity from Arbuckle’s two trials, little of it was encouraging. She sent him a worried note about his safety—and he responded with assurances.

  “Don’t be worried about anybody you may think may be an enemy of mine,” he told her. “I have no enemies except those few to whom perhaps I owe money. Don’t be worried if people talk about me. That’s merely advertising.”

  Oscar’s confidence was peppered throughout letters to everyone in his life except one—his intellectual equal in scientific cases, John Boynton Kaiser. Arbuckle’s two trials had alarmed Oscar and tested his faith in the judicial system. Kaiser rarely judged him and his decisions. He refused to harshly criticize the criminalist and offered only unwavering support and kindness. With Kaiser, Oscar could buckle . . . if only just for a moment.

  The criminalist privately confided to the librarian that he felt utterly beaten, like a mule kicked by his callous owner for weeks. Fatty Arbuckle’s defense team had insinuated that Oscar was arrogant despite his humble background, a useless scientist bent on convicting an innocent man, and a moral degenerate on top of it all.

  “Can a spirit humbled by adversity be pompous and bombastic?” Oscar asked Kaiser. “Is someone who has been whipped a braggart? No!”

  Oscar was gutted by the reaction of the jury, the cruelty of the press, and the venom from other forensic experts. The verbal flogging delivered by Arbuckle’s defense attorney traumatized him, like so many incidents from his youth.

  “In childhood and youth, I have been challenged, pilloried, stripped, flogged and crushed,” he told Kaiser. “Crushed by those around me.”

  Oscar brooded as jurors began deliberations on February 1, 1922. After less than forty-eight hours of debates, the panel was deadlocked, just like the first jury. Two months of additional trial prep work had meant nothing, Oscar lamented.

  Frustration turned to fury when the jury was polled—ten to two to convict for manslaughter. Oscar had been just two ballots away from sending Arbuckle to pri
son. The jurors offered some clear reasons. The defense had decided against putting Arbuckle back on the stand during the retrial, which was clearly a mistake. Gavin McNab was so confident in an acquittal, in fact, that he had refused to make closing arguments. The defense attorney’s bravado alienated jurors, they revealed, so they punished Arbuckle. The jurors concluded that they didn’t have enough information to make a uniform decision. Oscar was incensed.

  “Mr. Arbuckle came within an ace of being convicted,” he complained to a friend. “There was nothing more than a friend on the jury that saved him in this case.”

  * * *

  —

  On March 13, a third jury listened to essentially the same evidence, the same witnesses, and the same arguments. The defense changed tactics and called Fatty Arbuckle back to the stand and then issued a strong closing argument. Jurors were handed the case on April 12 at 5:08 p.m. They returned five minutes later with a stunning verdict, considering the case’s history: not guilty.

  “One ballot, no talk,” said juror W. S. Van Cott.

  The state had failed to convince this jury of Arbuckle’s guilt.

  “From the time the state’s case was completed,” said juror May Sharon, “I felt it wasn’t enough.”

  Arbuckle was elated, thrilled the ordeal was finally over. And he was hopeful he could return to Hollywood films.

  “If the public doesn’t want me, then I’ll take my medicine,” said Arbuckle. “But, after the quick vindication I received I am sure the American people will be fair and just. I believe I am due for a comeback.”

  He might have been officially cleared, but his movie career remained ruined. Fatty Arbuckle’s films had been banned for months, and movie executives, wary of the star’s scandal, posted letters around movie studios in Los Angeles in June. The edicts demanded a return to morality in movie theaters—an embargo of any film material that wasn’t wholesome. The studios had begun censoring Tinseltown.