A True Christmas Murder Mystery, Part Three
"We will establish manifold motives for this crime."
If you’re a first-time visitor to this series, be sure to peruse Part One and Part Two before reading on. Otherwise, without further ado…
On Monday, May 25, 1908, a Jersey City courtroom filled up for the murder trial of Theodore Whitmore, accused of killing his wife and dumping her body in a swamp on the outskirts of Harrison and Newark. In the defendant’s corner sat Alexander Simpson, a former newspaper reporter and future stalwart of Hudson County’s Democratic Party machine, whose diminutive physical stature belied a ferocity in front of the witness stand. Representing the state was lead prosecutor Pierre Garven, a Bayonne native of working-class roots and a rising figure in the Republican political scene, who’d put himself through law school while toiling away as a clerk for the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Garven’s counterpart, Assistant Prosecutor George Vickers, had enjoyed a more privileged upbringing: private tutors, university abroad, scientific expeditions throughout the American west, and post-graduate studies at Harvard. He stood up, approached the jury box, and delivered the prosecution’s opening arguments. Whitmore, clean-shaven and sharply dressed, eyed him intently, sometimes averting his gaze to smile at acquaintances, survey the crowd, or whisper into Simpson’s ear.
“Theodore S. Whitmore is guilty of the crime of murder,” Vickers began, speaking with dramatic flair. “I will show you that this man, from the day he married the victim of his crime, treated her with violence and brutality. … Furthermore, we will establish manifold motives for this crime. First, there was another woman he had become infatuated with. This woman had been installed in the home of the dead woman before the body of his wife was quite cold in the Lamp Black Swamp. … When we prove all these things to you and show you manifold motives for a most sordid and brutal crime, we will expect a verdict of murder in the first degree.”
The prosecution’s case, as the newspapers pointed out, was largely circumstantial. But it was also compelling. Whether or not it was compelling enough to convince a jury would be determined in the Court of Oyer and Terminer over the course of the coming week.
The first day of testimony was largely uneventful. For starters, Irving Webster Crane described his discovery of the corpse on Christmas morning while out looking for ice to skate on.
“The body was stuck in the mud by the dump,” he recalled. “The feet were up on the bank and the head in the mud.”
Albert Thompson and Frederick Kirkman told the jury of helping Crane extract Lena Whitmore from the muck.
“Were you kept in jail for just seeing the body?” Kirkman was asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
Dr. Otto Schultz explained the results of the autopsy, and relatives of Lena’s recalled their identification of her body. These included Bessie Schmitter, who fought through sobs while recounting her visit to Walsh’s morgue. Upon the conclusion of Bessie’s testimony, she fainted while leaving the witness stand, reprising the scene that had unfolded when she first laid eyes on her dead sister.
When Bessie took the stand again one day later, she painted a monstrous portrait of Theodore, who glared at the witness with an insolent smile.
“Whitmore was very brutal in his treatment of my sister,” Bessie proclaimed. “He abused her frightfully. I was in the next room at one time and I heard him strike her. … Another time I saw Whitmore beat my sister without mercy. Lena came to my house on December 21 and had a black eye and swollen cheek.”
Bessie testified that when she went to check on her sister at the Whitmore home the day after Christmas, Theodore said Lena had gone out.
“Who was she with?” Bessie wanted to know.
“With that Harry,” Theodore replied, closing the door.
While Bessie’s portrayal of her brother-in-law was damning, perhaps even enough to suggest that Whitmore was at least capable of murdering his wife, it didn’t establish his presence at the crime scene. Another witness, a colleague of Whitmore’s from the Third Avenue El named Joseph B. Quinn, came closer to the mark, placing the defendant near Harrison between 12:40 and 12:45 a.m. on December 26. At the time, Quinn was returning from Newark following a Christmas visit to a lady friend. He was quite positive he’d spotted Whitmore at Jersey City’s Pennsylvania Railroad terminal, wearing a black derby hat and dark clothes.
“When I disembarked from the train,” Quinn said, “I saw Whitmore walking in the crowd. … I could not have been mistaken as to it being Whitmore, as I had known him so long.”
Theodore’s prospects seemed to darken further when jurors heard from a parade of witnesses who were called the following day, including Lena and Theodore’s respective extramarital companions.
“I did not know Whitmore was married until the day after Christmas, when he took me to his home and gave me his wife’s clothing,” said Georgie Dickinson, noting that Whitmore had also given her a bracelet the Monday before Christmas. “He said she would not be back. I think he said she had gone somewhere out west.”
Harry Hendrickson described a violent encounter during a visit to the Whitmore residence on December 21.
“I’ll kill you!” he recalled Theodore yelling at his wife. “Then he hit her three or four times. Then he turned to me as I was coming through the door and hit me across the face.”
A friend of Lena’s named Lillian Heidel corroborated the tensions, telling jurors Lena had spent most of Christmas Eve hiding out at the Heidel home on Lawrence Street. “She said that she was afraid of Whitmore,” Heidel testified.
And then there was “Gold Tooth” Billy Bartlett, a rather sordid character and longtime associate of the defendant’s who testified that he’d shadowed Lena and Harry at Theodore’s request. “I could kill her and no one would know,” Bartlett claimed his friend once said. Bartlett also swore that Theodore was intimately familiar with the area of New Jersey where Lena’s body was found, telling jurors he’d been there with Theodore “many times.”
For Theodore, the most problematic revelation of all came from an associate named Frederick William Elliot, who admitted he’d forged the letters to Bessie Schmitter signed in Lena’s name. As the Evening Star reported of Elliot’s testimony, the reason Theodore had given for asking him to write the letters was “so that he could prevent [Lena’s] relatives from breaking up his home.”
The prosecution’s arguments had teeth. What were the odds the murder hadn’t been committed by the man who’d beaten his wife repeatedly, who’d come to blows with her paramour, who’d brought a mistress into his house the day after his wife went missing, who’d arranged for fraudulent letters to be sent indicating she was alive and well, and who’d apparently been spotted in a town close to Harrison on the night of the fatal event?
Still, the state needed someone who could place Whitmore at the scene of the crime. Unfortunately for Prosecutors Garven and Vickers, that very someone was about to deliver a blow to their case.
On May 27, Peter Coogan, the night watchman who’d seen a woman believed to be Lena Whitmore in the company of an unidentified gentleman around 11 p.m. on Christmas, took his seat on the witness stand. Coogan’s earlier description of the mystery man hadn’t quite aligned with Whitmore’s physical appearance. But then again, the encounter had transpired under the dark of night. Maybe when confronting Whitmore face to face in the light of day, the recognition would come rushing back. Or so the prosecutors hoped.
Alas, Coogan’s testimony produced the opposite effect. Stepping forward for his cross examination of Coogan, Alexander Simpson turned to his client and said, “Come closely to Coogan and let him look at you.”
Whitmore approached the stand and, heeding further instructions from his counsel, recited the remark Coogan had heard the man utter on Christmas night.
“Is that the man, and is that the voice you heard?” Simpson asked the witness.
“No, this is not the man, nor is it the voice of the man,” Coogan replied, setting the courtroom abuzz. “The voice is not the same, and the man was much shorter. The man I saw was short and stocky. This man is tall and more trimly built.”
With a smile on his face, the accused wife-slayer walked back to the defense table and took his seat, satisfied that Coogan’s testimony had put him one step closer to freedom. The trial would soon draw to a close, but not before jurors heard from the most crucial witness of all: the following afternoon, Whitmore was scheduled to testify in his own defense.
Will Whitmore face the rope? Find out in the fourth and final installment, coming your way soon…