The Valentino Affair (44 page)

Certainly this echoed the prosecution’s view. In their eyes Blanca was a cold-blooded killer and a scheming manipulator whose high-priced legal team was threatening to subvert the American judicial system with a phony plea of amnesia. But, as Weeks well knew, verdicts aren’t delivered by prosecutors, they come from the minds of impressionable jurors, and judging from what Weeks had seen, this avuncular panel had taken the demure and vulnerable “white widow” to its collective heart.

EIGHTEEN

The Verdict

T
HE
T
RIAL,
D
AY 10

B
ECAUSE IT HAD BEEN HEAVILY TRAILED THAT TODAY WOULD SEE A VERDICT
in the trial,
the crush on the steps of the ivy-walled courthouse was heavier than ever and not even a slanting, icy drizzle could dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm. When the doors were thrown open, they surged forward, along the narrow corridor and into the court where this “sensational trial”
¹
would reach its denouement.

At a few minutes before ten o’clock, Blanca was led in. Although her face had a little more color than in previous days, her listless expression was unaltered and so was her outfit. The sailor collar of her white blouse peeked demurely over the oft-worn sweater of heather mix. Several in the jury gave her encouraging smiles as she sat at the defense table.

As soon as Justice Manning took his seat on the bench, Weeks rose and called his first witness. Judge Walter R. Jones had seen the defendant within a couple of hours after the shooting, and her actions had impressed him as rational. Chief Jailer George H. Hoffman thought so, too. He swore that early on the morning of August 4, he heard Blanca on the phone, using the name of Henry Uterhart. Significantly, Uterhart chose not to cross-examine this witness.

Mrs. Anna Mooney, employed by Blanca from March 1914 until November 1916 and currently living in Yonkers, was the next witness. “You are the nurse they call ‘Boobie’?” asked Weeks.

“I’m Boobie.”

“Do you know Mrs. De Saulles?”

“I ought to know her.”
²

Mrs. Mooney was asked about Blanca’s European trip, when she had claimed to be brokenhearted. Nothing of the kind, scoffed the witness. Blanca “went to dances, dinners and balls and had a very good time in London,”
³
culminating in her presentation to the king of England at Buckingham Palace. On another occasion Blanca went up in an airplane and frequently took trips to Paris “to buy finery.”
⁴

The judge intervened, “Oh, all ladies do that when they have money,”
⁵
a comment that brought much laughter. Mrs. Mooney said that in her experience, Blanca had always seemed very happily married. The witness had also been present in Chile when Blanca was thrown from the automobile. It was a trivial accident, she said; her mistress “took three stitches”
⁶
in her chin and that same evening attended a concert, countering defense claims that Blanca had been confined to bed for several days.

Mrs. Mooney was also able to shed some light on that
Lusitania
incident. Blanca’s tale of having canceled her ticket on the stricken liner at the last minute was total fiction, said the witness, as both she and her husband were in New York when the ill-fated ship was torpedoed. In fact, Mrs. Mooney distinctly remembered both persons saying they wished they had been aboard. In a puzzling and rare oversight, Uterhart failed to ask the witness how she squared this revelation with her earlier testimony that Blanca had been happily married. He did, however, ask if she had ever seen Blanca cry, and the nurse replied that her former mistress never shed tears. How about during that long, lonely voyage to Chile? Not once, said Mrs. Mooney; nor did Blanca seem at all depressed.

Frederick. R. Coudert, a prominent lawyer, made no secret of where his sympathies lay, pausing en route to the stand to shake hands with Blanca. Weeks had called him to demonstrate that Blanca was sufficiently rational at about eight o’clock on the morning after the shooting to telephone him at his Oyster Bay home and seek his advice concerning counsel to defend her. Coudert dug in his heels. Yes, a call had come through, but he now claimed that the voice was unrecognizable. His obduracy incensed Weeks, who was forced to produce office slips from the local telephone exchange, confirming that Blanca had indeed made the call. Only then did Coudert reluctantly concede that the defendant had, indeed, phoned him.

Weeks saved the best till last—Countess Maud Salm, wife of Count Otto Salm, the tennis player. Throughout the trial the jury had heard talk of kings and dukes, but this was the first time that a genuine royal was produced in the flesh and they paid close heed to her evidence. According to the countess, when she visited Blanca shortly after her arrest, the prisoner had joked, “It is awfully nice of you to come and see a murderess.”
⁷
A little while later, as they discussed various matters, Blanca leant forward and urged caution in what they said, “as there might be a Dictaphone about.”
⁸
If true, this statement was clear evidence that Blanca’s claims of amnesia since the time of the shooting were a sham, and that she was patently aware of her actions and the danger she was in.

Uterhart had only one question for the witness: “Are you not a cousin of De Saulles?” When she answered in the affirmative, he dismissed her with a curt, “That’s all.”
⁹
It was a reasonable riposte, but did little to dent the perception that the countess had “administered one of the hardest blows the defense had sustained.”
¹⁰

Then it was the state’s turn to read out one of those dreaded hypothetical questions. Assistant prosecutor Charles J. Wood was given the task. It lasted twenty-seven minutes and was addressed to Dr. Isham Harris, superintendent of the Brooklyn Hospital for the Insane. Like the defense hypothetical question, it boiled down to a single query—did the witness think that Blanca was sane? Uterhart objected on grounds that the question had not been properly framed but the judge waved him to his seat. Harris began, “She knew what she was doing and was responsible—” until the judge cut him off and asked him to answer the question, “Was she in sound mind?”

“She was.”

“Did she know the nature and quality of the act she was committing?”

“She did.”

“Did she know that her act was wrong?”

“She did.”
¹¹

Uterhart then cross-examined, attempting to show that Harris had seen few cases of hypothyroidism. “No, I haven’t, because they do not often reach insane asylums, and that is where I have had most of my experience,”
¹²
was the terse reply,

Dr. Charles Pilgrim, a longtime specialist in mental illness and president of the State Lunacy Commission, had also listened to the question and his answer was broadly similar to his predecessor. His only concession on cross-examination came with an admission that a full examination of a patient was necessary for a sure determination of mental soundness, together with observation covering a period of a week or more.

George H. Kirby, director of New York State’s Psychiatric Institute, who had been advising the prosecution throughout the trial, concurred in the opinion of the other two mental health professionals: When Blanca shot her husband, she had been in sound mind. After Kirby left the stand, Weeks announced that the state had completed its case. Justice Manning checked his watch. The time was 11:40 a.m. Rather than begin the final addresses now, he decided to adjourn early, thereby allowing the defense to present their plea to the jury without interruption.

Blanca, who had shown more animation during the testimony dealing with her sanity than at any other time of the trial, stood and walked steadily from the court, attended by her constant companions, Mrs. Seaman and Dr. Wight.

The court was heaving at one o’clock when Justice Manning took the bench. Moments later, Blanca was led in. As she passed the jury box, there was the customary nod to the jury, several of whom bowed graciously in return. Five minutes later, Uterhart began the most important speech of his life. He sensed that in recent days sympathy for his client had been waning, certainly since her performance on the witness stand, and he now embarked on a mission to rebuild Blanca’s character in the eyes of the only people who really mattered—the jury.

He leant toward the twelve men, one hand on the counsel table, the other resting on his hip, and said, “I want to thank the district attorney for the fair way he has presented this case, though I am going to say many mean things about him.”
¹³
He then delivered an all-out assault on the so-called promises that the DA had made at the trial outset and had not been able to fulfill. As he spoke, Uterhart punctuated his words by pounding the defense table, an action that instinctively drew the jury that bit closer. The testimony of Julius Hadamek, he said, was critical. “The prosecution’s case starts with a lie. John De Saulles told his valet to say he was not at home when he really was.”
¹⁴
Indeed, “had it not been for that lie, Jack De Saulles would have been alive today.”
¹⁵
Uterhart sighed. “What did Mrs. De Saulles do? She said to the valet, ‘Don’t say anything about my ringing up, for I’ll be right over.’ Gentlemen, is that premeditation?”
¹⁶
A general shaking of heads in the jury box suggested that Uterhart had successfully made his point.

Blanca was, said Uterhart, everything a doting wife could be. In a voice trembling with emotion, he spoke of her youthful love for her husband and with a flourish produced a picture of a smiling Blanca taken in Paris, the day before her wedding. “Gentlemen, I want you to keep the picture of this defendant before you as you deliberate this case. I want you to keep in mind the way she looked the day she married De Saulles.”
¹⁷
Then he invited them to compare this joyous photograph to the downcast defendant they now saw before them. Blanca’s forlorn expression was perfectly judged.

On the night of the shooting, Blanca had been “a distressed and distracted mother expecting her boy, worrying because he did not come, setting out to get him.”
¹⁸
And she was scared. That was why she grabbed the revolver. “It is uncontested that her husband bought the pistol for her in Larchmont in 1912 for her to carry because she was alone and unprotected. On August 3 she had to drive through one of the loneliest spots on Long Island and in a strange taxi cab with a strange man. Was it extraordinary that she would put a revolver in her pocket? Would you jurors think it strange if your daughters did the same thing under such circumstances?”
¹⁹
More nods of agreement in the jury box. “Every act and move she made that night shows her dominating thought was to get over to The Box before De Saulles returned and get her boy. She offered the driver $1 if he would get her there on time. ‘On time’ means nothing except before De Saulles got back.”
²⁰

Advocacy is all about persuasion and few could rival Uterhart at this masterly art. Slowly and inexorably, he bent the jury to his will. “No matter how the district attorney may twist the facts, the evidence all shows that the dominant purpose in her mind was not murder, but to get her child and bring him home and put him to bed.”
²¹

All through this speech, Justice Manning listened alternately from his chair and on his feet, framed by the large Stars and Stripes, hands clasped behind his back, taking in every word. A few feet to his left, the jurors sat transfixed as Uterhart blasted prosecution claims of premeditation. “If she had gone there to kill him what reason would she have for stopping 200 feet away from the house? She did that because she thought he was away and she could slip in and get the boy and hurry away undetected. Isn’t that more reasonable?”
²²
Nor did he see anything peculiar in her asking “Where is Mr. De Saulles?” if she had just seen his car in front of the house. When de Saulles told her, “You will never get your boy,” a great silence settled over her. Blanca, he said, fell victim to “the maternal instinct, the strongest thing in the world,”
²³
and she had acted according to her instincts. Mercifully, the mind’s protective mechanism meant that the horror of that dreadful night had now been scrubbed clean from her memory.