American Sherlock

by Kate Winkler Dawson

  “I was always convinced of Lamson’s innocence,” said Clemence in her affidavit.

  Deputy District Attorney Lindsay was incensed and accused the defense attorneys of conjuring up a false report based on hearsay.

  “Are you calling me a perjurer?” yelled Edwin Rea.

  Minutes later the “battling barristers,” as the newspapers called them, were swinging at each other while David Lamson was led back to jail. Edwin Rea accused prosecutors of misconduct and blamed the trial judge for numerous errors, like barring Oscar Heinrich’s accidental fall experiments. The defense attorneys also charged the judge with giving “prejudicial instructions” to the jury. Rea demanded a new trial, calling the conviction “the most shocking, the most hideous verdict in the history of Santa Clara County.”

  When David arrived to court on Monday, September 25, he was upbeat. He chatted with his worried attorney and said, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right,” but as the arguments for a new trial began, David’s demeanor changed. Superior Judge Robert Syer, the same judge who had sat on the bench for his trial, rejected each of the defense team’s accusations.

  “Lamson’s once straight shoulders bowed and the smile became a frown,” reported one newspaper.

  The next day Judge Syer denied the defense’s motion for a new trial and immediately pronounced David Lamson’s death sentence.

  “On Friday, the 15th of December, 1933, you [will] be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” said Syer. “May God have mercy on your soul.”

  David gently bowed toward the judge.

  “I know in my heart that I have been a good husband to her,” he told Judge Syer. “I have done her no harm, I am innocent of her death as you yourself. That is all.”

  It was an eloquent and composed remark from a man whose calm disposition had unnerved members of his jury. They spent weeks leaning forward in their seats, hoping to glean some emotion from a would-be killer, but they learned little.

  “My boy doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve,” insisted his elderly mother, Jennie Lamson. “The public has horribly misunderstood him because of his temperament, one of which I am proud as a mother, whatever his fate may be. He can’t bear to make an appeal to sympathy.”

  Judge Syer seemed unmoved by David’s declaration of innocence, and he was soon led away by the bailiff, followed quickly by his tearful mother and sisters.

  “I did not do it,” David insisted.

  “They can’t hang my boy,” his mother cried to reporters. “You boys know that. They can’t hang my boy.”

  For four months, David’s sisters faithfully sat on the hard wooden benches behind him and pursed their lips as the prosecutor made horrible accusations. They refused to believe he would kill his wife, and now they were heartbroken because they might lose Bebe, too. Allene Lamson’s brother, Frank Thorpe, had petitioned to adopt the little girl. She was living in Palo Alto with Dr. Margaret Lamson, David’s sister, but Thorpe and his family wanted to change Bebe’s name and relocate her to Allene’s hometown of Lamar, Missouri, almost two thousand miles away.

  “Allene [when she was alive] asked me to take care of little Allene Genevieve rather than her own mother,” said David’s mother, “and that is what I am going to do as long as I am able. To me that baby is a sacred trust.”

  David’s attorneys requested that the court enter a motion to appeal the trial and its verdict to the Supreme Court of California, a panel of seven judges in San Francisco that would consider if the trial was adjudicated fairly. Oscar Heinrich felt rankled and bitter.

  “The verdict means nothing to me, except that I regard it as a terrible miscarriage of justice,” he told reporters.

  August Vollmer, Berkeley’s former police chief, was outraged. In the press, he praised Oscar’s bathroom experiments, vehemently defending his closest ally in a lab coat.

  “Any intelligent person who would visit the Lamson bathroom and see the demonstration put on by E. O. Heinrich would be convinced that the death was accidental,” he declared.

  Oscar felt sickened by the jury’s conclusion, as well as by the judge’s baffling decisions.

  “I took the stand to explain as an expert how it was impossible to establish Lamson’s guilt from those facts, which clearly proved his innocence,” Oscar said. “But objections by the prosecution prevented me from submitting my most valuable deductions.”

  Oscar had no time to grieve for David Lamson because there were other cases to solve. He lamented to Vollmer, the smartest cop he knew.

  “Instead of providing an opportunity for presenting the truth,” Vollmer said, “it is a game for lawyers.”

  Vollmer believed in justice—and he also believed in Oscar Heinrich’s sound evidence. There’s something we can do, Vollmer promised.

  * * *

  —

  His thick, wavy brown hair was gone, now lying in bits on the floor of the “fish tank,” the intake room for new inmates. It was Friday, October 6, 1933, when thirty-one-year-old David Lamson began his life on California’s Death Row. The former executive at a prestigious university press became Convict No. 54761 in San Quentin Prison.

  David exchanged his smart brown tweed suit for a dark gray prison uniform. Guards ordered him to stand against a wall by an angled mirror as a photographer snapped his mug shot. The metal board in front of him declared the day of his scheduled execution: December 15, 1933, just two months away. His fingers were black from ink. He was frightened or furious—or both. Mostly, he just seemed subdued. The press, which was always attentive at his trial, continued to report on his transition to prison. “Stoic,” noted some reporters, but also resolute.

  “I am innocent,” he told the press. “I am sure exoneration must come.”

  David joined seven other men on the Row, all awaiting capital punishment. His cell, No. 22, had recently hosted a convicted killer who proclaimed his innocence and spent several years dragging out his death sentence until the courts denied his final appeal. Two weeks earlier, guards led the twenty-three-year-old man from No. 22 and executed him. This was not a lucky cell.

  David placed a photo of Allene and his daughter on his table. He examined his wife’s wedding ring, one of the few personal items he was allowed to bring inside. His mother and sisters continued to fight with Frank Thorpe over the custody of Bebe—the families agreed to pause the court battles until after David had exhausted his appeals. His mother was weary from the emotional angst of losing her son.

  But there was one bit of optimistic news—the list of prominent public supporters for the convicted killer had grown longer, and the Lamson Defense Committee was created, led by August Vollmer. One of the nation’s most respected cops was determined to prove David’s innocence. The committee quickly expanded to dozens of members, including professors, writers, journalists, physicians, and clergy. Vollmer collected donations for more research. Oscar remained quietly in the background—it would be improper for an impartial scientist to join such a vocal group. But he encouraged Vollmer to not give up. The members published a persuasive report called The Case of David Lamson, a 119-page indictment of the prosecution’s case against an innocent man.

  “It exemplifies the frightful potentialities of a complex machinery of law when set in motion by persons over-zealous, injudicious, and incompetent to control what they have started,” read the report.

  And then David Lamson’s outlook shifted from cautious optimism to true hope. His defense team filed a six-hundred-page brief that, along with the committee’s report, convinced judges with the California State Supreme Court to delay his execution until they could consider his controversial case. David Lamson’s life now depended on the judgment of seven learned men in San Francisco.

  * * *

  —

  It was a cool, sunny October day in 1934, Saturday the thirteenth, when David heard the news from his attorneys, one year an
d one week from the day he had entered San Quentin. He was dazed. California’s State Supreme Court justices had made a wonderful finding in his favor.

  “Every statement of the defendant, capable of verification, tends to support his claims,” read the statement representing the principle decision. “Where in the case before us is there evidence of a preparation for commission of a crime? Where is the plan by which the death was to become known? Where is the effort to prevent detection or for concealment? Where are the bloody or missing clothes? Where is evidence of a seizure in order to inflict the blows?”

  It was a circumstantial case, believed the panel, one that did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that David Lamson had killed his wife.

  “The macerated areas of these lacerations form a distinct pattern,” they wrote. “How could an iron be wielded with such precision?”

  A pattern had swayed their decision—not a bloodstain pattern, but a wound pattern. The judges overturned David’s murder conviction and immediately ordered a new trial. It was a tremendous victory, but not quite vindication.

  “It is true that he may be guilty, but the evidence thereof is no stronger than mere suspicion,” they said. “It is better that a guilty man escapes than to condemn to death one who may be innocent.”

  The decision illustrated the contradiction of the justice system, then and now. The majority of the seven judges suspected David was guilty, but it was more important to preserve the integrity of the legal system than to convict a potential murderer. If the prosecution couldn’t prove its case, then a guilty man should walk free—a difficult concept to accept. But regardless of his innocence or guilt, several of the judges concluded that Oscar’s experiments would have helped offer David Lamson a fair trial.

  “We brought into our chambers the wash basin and the pipe, as well as other exhibits and examined them,” said Chief Justice William H. Waste. “Justices Shenk, Spence and I felt a serious error had been committed in not allowing experiments that might, in the jury’s mind, have eliminated the question of Lamson’s guilt.”

  The Supreme Court judges couldn’t resist conducting their own uneducated experiments. Could pretending to fall actually replicate a deadly accident? Three judges believed it would, but the other four justices did not.

  “The other justices did not concur in this view on the grounds that the circumstances could not be faithfully reproduced in an experiment because they argued you would have to kill the subject,” said Waste.

  And that was the central problem with those types of demonstrations in court, even when they were conducted by an expert like Oscar Heinrich. The state’s highest court couldn’t agree.

  The Lamsons were elated that he would receive a new trial, no matter the reasoning behind the decision. While David’s mother was euphoric, his three-year-old daughter had no idea what was happening. Jennie Lamson refused to tell Bebe that her mother was dead and that her father was condemned to die for her murder.

  “She still believes that her mother has ‘gone away for a long time,’” said one paper, “and that her father is ‘in the hospital.’”

  Allene Lamson’s family in Missouri was still fighting for custody of the little girl, and when they learned of the court’s decision in David’s favor, they were infuriated.

  “We have never changed our opinion of Lamson’s guilt,” wrote her brother and their parents. “We believe that the granting of a new trial will result only in a more positive conviction.”

  David’s defense team requested that the district attorney drop the charges and release him, arguing that there was no new evidence. Superior Judge Robert Syer, David’s original trial court judge, denied the request and ordered a new trial—and then denied David bail. He would have to return to the jail in San Jose, back to where he had started the fight for his life.

  * * *

  —

  It was such an odd feeling—the thrill of returning to his old cell. But a month after the California State Supreme Court’s decision, David Lamson walked out of San Quentin clean-shaven and wearing the same brown tweed suit he had worn on his first day about fourteen months earlier.

  “I’m so happy,” David told reporters, “I don’t care what happens now. When I passed this way before, I thought it was to be a one-way trip. It is good to see the water again, from the deck of a boat. I don’t mind the rain. It seems like a pretty good day to me.”

  Hours later he walked through the doors of the Santa Clara County Jail and into the arms of his two sisters and their mother. They had a special dinner, which concluded with pie a la mode in a private dining room, but Bebe was still missing. David was reluctant to see her—it would be too painful to leave again if he had to return to prison. Bebe had hoped that her father would return from the “hospital” in time for Christmas next month. At night, David sat in his cell near a borrowed typewriter. The keys clicked by lamplight.

  The defense attorney shoved papers at the prosecutor, some insurance company statistics that showed that thirty thousand people a year died from injuries after bathtub falls. David’s team hoped the prosecutor would decide to release him because of a lack of new evidence, but the district attorney refused. He was determined to send David Lamson to the gallows.

  Jury selection began on February 18, 1935, and immediately after the trial began, the defense was delivered a gift, almost like divine intervention. One juror actually slipped and fell in the hotel bathtub, leaving bruises across his body. David’s defense attorney quickly capitalized on the news.

  “McKenzie immediately—and by no means silently—arranged for the hotel to install safety mats in the tubs of all the bathrooms of the jurors,” said one newspaper report.

  Oscar Heinrich smiled at the wonderful news from the judge. He was finally able to present his slip-and-fall evidence and bloodstain pattern analysis without interruption. And he could also build a replica bathroom in the courtroom to help explain his accident theory.

  “In rolling off, she slid into a position hanging across the rim of the tub,” Oscar explained, using his assistant. “We repeated the procedure three different times, and each resulted in exactly the same way. The position is very close to the same position which I had found was the focal point of the blood spray.”

  His testimony was convincing, but not convincing enough. The jury deadlocked 9–3 for conviction. David was devastated but hopeful, because perhaps now the district attorney would realize that a retrial would be pointless. But no—there would be a third trial. Oscar was fatigued, and for the sake of his health, this case had to end soon.

  As David sat in his jail cell waiting for his November court date, he edited the rough draft of his manuscript. It was a 338-page nonfiction book about the condemned men of San Quentin, those convicts who waited for the noose alongside him for more than a year. Months earlier Charles Scribner’s Sons, a major New York publisher, bought the rights and now newspapers across the country printed large excerpts containing tight prose crafted by a convicted killer.

  “They say that when a high-velocity bullet strikes you, you feel no pain for a time—only numbness,” David wrote about the day he learned his verdict. “This was like that. I could feel the muscles of my face stiffen. I don’t believe I thought at all, beyond willing myself to keep my face and body still, no matter what. To sit still and take it.”

  In September 1935, as David awaited his third trial, his book was published. We Who Are About to Die: Prison as Seen by a Condemned Man became a bestseller, and public opinion seemed to sway his direction. Readers were fascinated by a narrative that lambasted a corrupt judicial system but also humanized the men on the Row.

  “The frog at the bottom of the well thinks that there is only four feet of sky, because that’s all he can see,” David wrote. “I have neither the desire nor the ability to write a positive book. I stayed in Quentin too long for that.”

  Literary reviewers acros
s the country praised his writing, especially his candor. The Los Angeles Times gushed over his vivid descriptions. Critics valued a fresh point of view that was offered in a uniquely eloquent way.

  “It is really an appeal to consciousness not to mercy,” read the New York Times. “It is a hard lance, aimed at our shields of ignorance, and it is to be hoped that it will break through.”

  Alexander Woollcott, a legendary book critic for The New Yorker magazine and a literary icon, called the book “profoundly important. It is the book to which my thoughts have gone back oftener than to any other book I’ve read this year.”

  Instead of traveling from city to city on a book tour, the most popular debut author in America spent weeks staring at the bars attached to his window. David Lamson had little time to enjoy his literary success.

  In November 1935, a third trial was scheduled, but there was an error with jury selection, so the judge declared another mistrial. Undeterred, the prosecutor ordered a fourth trial, and by this time Superior Court Judge Robert Syer had recused himself. David had now spent more than a year in the jail in San Jose and more than two years behind bars. And he had still not seen his daughter, even though she was just a few miles away with his mother and sisters.

  In March 1936, almost three years after Allene’s death, a fourth trial was held, proceedings that repeated essentially the same evidence and the same witnesses from previous trials. The jury deadlocked once again, 9–3 for conviction. Jurors still didn’t fully believe the new scientific techniques, but they also were not convinced by the prosecutor’s case. Thirty jurors across four trials had believed that David Lamson was guilty—and the prosecutor considered that when he debated trying him for a fifth time. But in April 1936, after spending almost $70,000, the district attorney relented.