Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (19 page)

Unfortunately for that camp, Ashley’s testimony did little to support the theory. His courtship of Freda was largely unremarkable, though it bore her trademark theatrics. She wished to conceal the correspondence from her older sister, Ada, and thus used Alice as an intermediary. This arrangement
continued until Alice read their letters and realized they were full of romantic sentiments, and increasingly serious in nature. After she refused to funnel any more of their letters, Freda broke it off with Ashley, but the explanation she offered was disingenuous. She lied and said that both Alice and Lillie had moved to Chicago, which meant that neither of her friends could serve as intermediaries any longer.

The state prodded Ashley to admit that Alice had expressed interest in him, but he denied it. There was no question, he testified, that Alice was exclusively fixated on Freda. During their conversations, she was interested in one thing and one thing only: getting Ashley to confirm or refute what Freda had told her about their relationship.

Ashley was in agreement with the prosecution on one front: Alice seemed perfectly sane. But just as soon as he had uttered those pivotal words, he cast a shadow of doubt on his assessment, recalling that, yes, she had spoken openly of a most violent act. But she did not threaten to harm Freda, or Ashley himself. The life she spoke of taking was her own.

By the time Ashley stepped down from the stand, the public was thoroughly disappointed. The next day, he was lambasted by the press. They took particular issue with the twenty-three-year-old postmaster’s appearance, ridiculing his poorly formed mustache and “round, close cropped head, and his eyes [which] do not open very wide.” His pink shirt, blue tie, and pants were mocked as ornate and unrefined. If any man was going to be able to tempt Alice Mitchell, the press agreed, it was not the foppish Ashley Roselle.
¹¹⁹

G
ANTT AND
W
RIGHT SPENT SIX MONTHS
isolating Alice from the public, and the result had been near total control of the narrative. They were not about to let her testimony be the very thing that hanged her.

It was no surprise, then, that the moment Alice Mitchell was called to the stand, the defense jumped to their feet. They implored Judge DuBose to consider the upstanding Mitchell family of Memphis, who “may not care to have her made the object of scrutiny to some sensationalists.” Indeed, Alice had arrived at the courthouse flanked by her male relations, but in comparison to Lillie, who was often described as meekly leaning on her father for support, the men of the Mitchell family appeared to be more shield than ballast.

Judge DuBose delayed the proceedings to check the legal precedent in his chambers, leaving Attorney General Peters irate. If Alice had convinced so many experts and good citizens of Memphis that she was insane, Peters taunted, her attorneys should be more than willing to let her demonstrate it on the stand.

While Peters grumbled and Judge DuBose deliberated, barely a murmur passed among the spectators. His draconian methods of courtroom control—unrelenting censure and ejection for relatively harmless infractions—now appeared to have a real purpose. The packed courtroom had waited so long for this very moment, on the most important day of the lunacy inquisition, that when it finally arrived, they remained perfectly still, spellbound by curiosity.

A
T LONG LAST, IT WAS DECLARED
:
Alice Mitchell would testify.

Her short walk from the defense table to the witness stand was complicated by the swelling crowd. She had to maneuver past those seated and standing, who were quick to move aside. They were eager to make way for the star defendant, a woman who had captured the nation’s attention, and yet, Alice had rarely been seen in public, and had hardly uttered a word aloud. After listening to people talk about her and Freda for the last six months, Alice’s voice would finally be heard.

The courtroom watched with bated breath as Alice arranged herself on the chair, shifting and smoothing out her dress. They had become quite familiar with the back of her head during the lunacy inquisition, which is not to suggest that an obstructed view had ever stopped them from analyzing her; every diminutive gesture and expression had been subject to conjecture. Many had fixated on the way she calmly fanned herself during the long, oppressively humid days in court, judging her to be startlingly imperturbable. Others declared her furiously confident, content, and even cheerful. Of course, who could really claim such insight from their seat? They were barely able to make out her features during her quick entrances, and even speedier exits.

From underneath her wide-brimmed summer hat, Alice glanced over
at the all-male, all-white jury, “selected from among the best citizens of Memphis,” showing the rapt audience her profile. They gazed upon her in full view, and opinions were predictably varied. The room became a muffled cacophony of hushed tones and whispers as the crowd debated whether her oval face was pretty, or far too small for her body. Surely her features reflected her deviant acts, and spectators made sure to remember the shape of her nose.
¹²⁰

DuBose insisted on silence, and Peters launched into his line of questioning as soon as his voice could be heard. He wasted no time getting to the subject of Freda, although his opening question appeared relatively benign: How long, he asked, had they known each other?

“For as long as I remember,” Alice said, her voice carrying to the back of the courtroom.

Of course, she had not known Freda her entire life. They had met at the Higbee School for Young Ladies, a fact she also denied. But her memory was not otherwise cloudy; she remembered every single date she saw Freda, and the many letters they exchanged.

Alice recalled visiting her ex-fiancé twice since her move to Golddust, once alone and on another occasion with Lillie. She offered small, insignificant details, like meeting a boarder in the Volkmar home during her first trip, along with far more consequential episodes, like her introduction to Ashley Roselle during the second visit. She denied having feelings for him, confirming Ashley’s testimony; she had sought him out for the sole purpose of deducing his intentions with Freda.

“Did you know if he was in love with Miss Freda Ward?” Peters asked.

“Yes, I think he was,” she answered, eyes watering.

Crimes of passion were rooted in jealousy, and Peters saw Alice’s possessiveness and mistrust as integral to his argument. In his view, she was sane, and should be tried as a man would be in the same situation. “What made you think so?” the attorney general pressed.

“By the way Freda spoke of him and the letters I saw,” she explained, handkerchief in hand.

Alice remembered this betrayal well. Freda had been afraid that her brother-in-law, the postmaster in Golddust, would notice that she was receiving letters, and tell his wife. Alice was happy to hold the letters for her beloved until the day she decided to open them, and learned Freda and Ashley were moving toward an engagement.

As tears streamed down her face, Alice told Peters of Freda’s repeated flirtations, and explained how they drove her to extremes. She divulged details of the laudanum incident, and how she had tried to convince Freda to take it as well. She confirmed Lucy’s account of another suicide attempt when she tried to turn the family’s rifle on herself, but accidentally shot off a round in the process. And there was the incident before the murder, when Freda ignored her outside the photography gallery. The snub had so overwhelmed Alice that her shaking hands could not fetch the razor from her dress pocket in time.

“You intended to kill her?” Peters finally asked. The jury already knew much of what she had recounted, but premeditation was an important part of the prosecution’s case.

“Yes.”

“Why?” he quickly followed, hoping to finish the line of questioning before the defense could raise another objection.

“Because I could not have her.”

At that, the
Commercial
, which had cast a shadow of doubt over the insanity plea from the beginning, was greatly affected by her testimony.

The spectacle of a girl who has not yet reached her 20th birthday—one born of refined and [C]hristian parents, reared with the tenderest of care, amidst surroundings whose every influence was good—calmly and nonchalantly admitting the
perpetration of an awful crime, is rare enough and sad enough in all conscience. But that was not all. Into every horrid detail she entered with apparent relish.
¹²¹

The paper’s confusing portrayal of Alice—claiming that she was “nonchalant” about the crime but allegedly discussed it with “relish”—contradicts not just itself, but more importantly, the many reports of her crying on the stand. Had she flipped so wildly between emotions, from cool indifference to flagrant enjoyment, multiple sources surely would have noted it—with relish. Instead, a wealth of reporting indicates that Alice, still but a sheltered young woman, offered unflinchingly honest answers, to the best of her recollection, throughout the emotionally charged testimony. She had committed a terrible crime, to be sure, but she seemed far from the coldblooded, self-satisfied villain depicted in the
Commercial
’s pages.

“Do you miss her now?” Peters continued.

“I have missed her every day since last summer,” Alice said, her voice quivering. The season she named was not winter, when she had murdered Freda, but the previous summer, which she had hoped would represent the beginning of their life together as husband and wife in St. Louis. Instead, it had marked the start of their forced estrangement.

In stark contrast with earlier testimony from the Mitchell family, Alice made it perfectly clear that she did, in fact, understand that Freda was dead, and that she longed to see her beautiful face.

“Attractive?” he pressed, to which she answered yes.

Peters would have probably preferred to go further with this line of inquiry, but he would not have gotten far.

The
Commercial
praised DuBose for barring “revolting” details and “depraved, sensuous or degraded” interludes, and on this point, the
Appeal Avalanche
was in complete agreement.
¹²²

There has been a very close observance of proprieties and no disposition has been shown to harass the defendant, or to go to a line of investigation which, because of its suggestiveness, might have compromised her moral character.
¹²³

Peters yielded the floor to the defense, who approached Alice with caution. It had gone relatively well so far, and Wright was intent on keeping it that way. He played it safe, relying on topics that would remind the jury that Alice, at that very moment, was expressing the sentiments of an unsound mind. The obvious tact, then, was to ask his client open-ended questions about her plan to wed Freda, and what she imagined married life in St. Louis would be like.

Wright’s approach worked on the
Appeal Avalanche,
who emphasized the marriage plot as the most salient indicator of her insanity. They compared the intention of one woman to marry another to “those of a child who would be capable of forming plans without taking into consideration the responsibilities of life.”
¹²⁴

When Wright concluded—relieved, no doubt, if not optimistic about the public testimony his team had worked so hard to avoid—he was met with even better news: Peters declined further cross-examination. Alice’s testimony had ended on just the right note for the defense. She made a quick exit from the witness stand, and began walking toward her father.

“Hold on, there! Come back!” Judge DuBose bellowed.

“Gentleman of the jury,” he continued, once she had resumed her place on the stand, “do any of you wish to ask the defendant any questions, to examine her touching the condition of her mind?”

Major Fleece, one of the jurors, seized the opportunity, but he had heard enough about love and marriage. He was after macabre details, with a specific eye toward two of Alice’s most distressing preoccupations.