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The Murder That Will Never Die OBSERVER-DISPATCH, TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2006 FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE TRIAL AT UTICAOD.COM Beyond the shadow of a doubt? Legal experts examine whether Gillette would be convicted by today’s courtroom standards By DAVID DELLECESE Observer-Dispatch [email protected] A ghastly courtroom display designed to shock. The murder victim’s love letters bordering on the suicidal. A body that may have been damaged during its recovery. An autopsy performed after embalming. Chester Gillette went to the elec- tric chair for killing Grace Brown after a trial 100 years ago that might not have held up in today’s legal cli- mate, experts and observers say. There were no eye-witnesses, and Gillette never admitted guilt during his trial. It all came down to circum- stantial evidence, some of it improp- erly obtained. Gerald Fiesinger, a Little Falls lawyer, says that while the Constitu- tion has remained the same, the interpretation of the law that has changed. “From what I understand and can figure out, it was basically a fair trial,” he said. A fair trial by 1906 standards, per- haps. “By today's standards Gillette’s conviction would surely have been overturned. District Attorney George Ward broke all the modern rules about how to obtain evidence. Any of those things would have been grounds to toss out the conviction. But those kinds of things were com- mon in 1906, and by those standards he certainly got a fair trial,” said Craig Brandon, author of “Murder in the Adirondacks.” Gillette was charged with striking Brown with a tennis racket in a quiet bay of the remote Big Moose Lake on July 11, 1906, and he was arrested two days later. Almost immediately, newspapers breathlessly reported on the case, coloring the trial that followed in November. HEATHER AINSWORTH / Observer-Dispatch Chester Gillette was tried for the murder of Grace Brown at the Herkimer County Courthouse in 1906. Although no longer used as a courthouse, much of the building appears as it did then. Evidence collection I n several instances Grace Brown was said to have told co-workers she hoped she “would not live to see the sun rise again,” or that she was leav- ing, “never to be heard from again.” Even the letters she wrote to Chester Gillette seemed laced with overtones of suicidal ten- dencies. In one letter she wrote, “I hope I can die … and then you can do just as you like.” These letters, however, were, highly inadmissible against Gillette, forcefully retrieved from Gillette’s living quarters in Cort- land without his consent. “Today we couldn’t do that under the concept of the exclu- sionary rule. Because there was no search warrant we would not have been able to use those documents,” said Oneida County District Attorney Michael Arcuri. Each letter was presented as a piece of evidence in the trial. They were read aloud by the dis- trict attorney and admitted as proof of the relationship to estab- lish time, facts and proof in the case. Playing for emotions M elodrama was a com- mon thread in the case. Brown’s uterus and fetus, for example, were removed from her body and exhibited for the jury. Objections to this display were constantly overruled, no doubt shocking the jury and spectators. “It’s like autopsy photos. We are not allowed to use excessive autopsy photos,” Arcuri said. According to Arcuri, attorneys now are asked to pick one photo, within reason, showing a wound. “Certainly I would say the fetus coming in like that is clearly, very shocking,” Arcuri said. Sara Beaty, an Albany-based civil lawyer, agreed. “Under the Federal Rules, there is no way that could get in today. It’s proba- tive value clearly does not out- weigh its prejudicial value,” she said. Continued on Page 7B ON THE WEB Visit www.uticaOD.com for more on the murder case: Excerpts from newspaper coverage at the time. A 1981 interview with Roy Higby, a 13-year-old working at Big Moose Lake in 1906. The names of the jurors in the case. Sources: Observer-Dispatch files, Herkimer County Historical Society, New York Times CHESTER GILLETTE The face on the well-circulated photograph of Chester Gillette isn’t easy to interpret. Is he con- fident? Defiant? Overwhelmed? Gillette’s family was prominent in Cortland County. His uncle hired him to work at his skirt factory. It was there, in 1905, he met factory worker Grace “Billy” Brown and the two began a rela- tionship -- at about the same time Gillette start- ed to attend more social events in the communi- ty. Brown was found dead July 11, 1906, in an Adirondack lake and Gillette, 23, was charged with killing her. He went to trial and was convict- ed by a jury. Gillette was executed in the electric chair in at the state prison in Auburn on March 30, 1908. GRACE BROWN The sympathetic victim in the case, Grace “Billy” Brown, came from a long-time Chenango County-area family. Her father rented a farm in South Otselic where she grew up. Instead of staying on the farm, she left for Cortland where she took a job at the Gillette Skirt Factory. She was 20 and pregnant when she died at the hands of fellow factory worker Chester Gillette during an outing on Big Moose Lake in the town of Webb. During his trial, her parents were seen weeping during parts of the testimo- ny. Grace’s love letters were entered into the trial record. Her final letter is a touching but complex missive about bidding goodbye to her mother and familiar hometown places as she waits to meet Gillette. From the victim and the culprit to lawmen, writers and townsfolk, the Chester Gillette story featured a colorful cast of characters. Here are six of them. GEORGE WARD District Attorney George Washington Ward built the Gillette case on circumstantial evidence. There were no eye-witnesses and Gillette main- tained his innocence throughout the trial. Ward was many things: a teacher, reporter and lawyer, according to the history book “Herkimer County at 200.” The 36-year-old Dol- geville resident had been district attorney about three years when he began the prosecu- tion of Chester Gillette for killing Grace Brown in the summer of 1906. He called 100 people to the stand and introduced scores of pieces of evi- dence in the trial. Gillette went on to the electric chair. Ward went on to become county judge, an acquaintance of Pres- ident Theodore Roosevelt and counsel to a U.S. senato- rial committee on dairy legislation. Ward died at home in 1918 of Spanish influenza. ROY HIGBY Roy Higby, who died in 1990 at age 97, was one of the last living links to the Gillette case. As a 13-year-old in 1906, he worked on a steamboat that traveled Big Moose Lake. His uncle owned the Glenmore Hotel, where the couple had checked in July 11. On many occasions over the years he related his story to researchers and the curious. The odd thing was, he never related during Gillette’s trial what he’d observed. Higby, in a 1981 interview with the Utica Daily Press, said if he’d been allowed to take the stand, there might not have been a conviction. He said he’d seen searchers use a sharp pointed object to drag the lake for Grace’s body and that might have caused the injuries blamed on the tennis racket Gillette was said to have used to strike her. Still, Higby believed Gillette was a murderer. BAT MASTERSON Gunslinger, Indian fighter, sheriff of Dodge City, Kansas – W.B. “Bat” Mas- terson was asked to cover a murder trial in Herkimer County for a New York City newspaper in 1906. He brought gusto to the reporting job. His sensationalism merely got him a slap on the wrist. According to the New York Times in December 1906, Masterson and his boss at the Morning Telegraph of New York City were fined and paid $50 each for contempt of court for publishing an article about the trial that said County Court Judge Irving Devendorf was swayed by mob spirit. Masterson kept up his journalism career well beyond the trial. His end wasn’t in a blaze of gunfire he knew so well, although it was in the line of duty. He died at his editor’s desk in 1921. THEODORE DREISER In 1906, the murder case against Chester Gillette was front page news locally, but it also got the attention of New York City dailies, which found the case irresistible. Author Theodore Dreiser, who already had written a few novels, was intrigued by the New York City accounts of the trial. In 1925 he wrote “An American Tragedy,” based on the case. The novel renewed interest in the case and spawned two movies. “An American Tragedy” made the rounds in 1931 and “A Place in the Sun,” star- ring Montgomery Clift, Shelley Win- ters and Elizabeth Taylor, was the 1951 version. The works of Dreiser, who died in 1945, continue to be the subject of scholarly research. The caption for this Dec. 1, 1906, Utica Saturday Globe illustration read “Rowboat which figured in the Gillette murder case.” THE PLAYERS 2B
