Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

They talked of size, shape, spacing, general proportion, shade and speed. They repeated and upheld each other, and suggested that had Molineux not been fundamentally a courteous gentleman, that, after all, he might have got away with it — they all had tripped him up on the words “please” and “oblige.”

“Only one man in a million, in my opinion,” said Tyrell, Kinsley’s assistant, “could have written the word oblige in just that way, and in my opinion that man is Molineux.”

The “A. B. Case”

Experts for the defense made the State’s experts admit that there were differences in the writing in question and in the admitted handwriting.

“How do you account for the breaks which appear in the admitted handwriting and do not occur in the writing on the package?” asked Carvalho, for the defense.

“In my opinion the defendant was coached when he wrote the admitted handwriting,” replied Tyrell coolly and gazing steadfastly at Carvalho and his assistants.

Cornish could not have written the address on the package, the State’s experts said, and proceeded to show why to the tune of several thousand dollars.

The Barnet tingle of the affair had been ruled out, nevertheless the State found occasion to drag it in by the heels on every occasion. The defense naturally objected, the prosecution apologized for bad technique and promised to be good in the future.

But how that case came cropping up, and when Recorder Goff insisted that they stop referring to it, the State ingenuously suggested calling it the A. B. case instead of calling it by name.

Now, as it happened, the doctor who had rushed to the aid of Mrs. Adams had been the assistant of Dr. Douglass, who attended Barnet, and, accordingly, he was at liberty to refer to any similar case in his past experience.

Sing Sing

“Can’t you say all there is to say about it and then stop?” asked the Recorder in despair, when he had expostulated half a dozen times.

“I apologize,” said Osborne, the assistant district attorney, “but I want to give the jury the benefit of the evidence of one of the best analytical chemists in the country.”

The attorneys for Molineux attacked the handwriting experts and insisted that they had failed to show that the defendant had written the poison package address; they insisted that the prosecution had failed to show any connection between the letter boxes and the case, and had utterly failed to show any motive for attempting to take the life of Cornish, which was obviously the idea behind the poison package.

“There is the motive, gentlemen!” the prosecution kindly explained to the jury, and pointed to Mrs. Molineux, But even then it failed to make the connection between the lady and Cornish at all clear.

But the testimony from Stearns of Detroit, the matter of the egg blue paper had its effect. There was wide variance of opinion as to what the verdict would be.

As many were amazed and stunned to hear that the jury, after deliberating eight hours, had found him guilty as were prepared for that word.

Molineux, guilty of murder in the first degree, was sentenced to the chair.

“I am not afraid, because I am not guilty,” he said when he heard it, but his face was ashen.

He went to Sing Sing’s death house at once.

Now in those days the State did not give a man warning as to the time of his execution. Every man there might expect to be taken at any time. Every step along the corridor brought a chill to every man’s heart. He might be the next. The time might be now! It must have been a rather terrible period.

Molineux read a great deal, and while he declined to join in the sociable games of checkers which the other condemned men played by calling their moves across the tiers or to join in conversation, he was liked, even admired, by those around him.

The Second Trial

“He seems a very affable gentleman,” the diary of one of these men set forth, “but finds more pleasure in his own society than in that of other people. I don’t think that this is because he is haughty, in any way, but because his mind is more highly cultivated than most murderers. He likes to do gymnastics in his cell.”

After Molineux’s incarceration the fight for the new trial began. General Molineux had spent his fortune — more than one hundred thousand dollars — but friends eagerly made up the rest of the huge sum required.

And then the Court of Appeals brought a unanimous decision and set aside the verdict on the ground that the Barnet case had been improperly introduced in the first trial.

This meant that Molineux was automatically released from Sing Sing and taken to the Tombs. He declined to go out on bail.

“Nothing but acquittal will satisfy me now,” he said. “I would rather remain in my cell than walk out with suspicion still against me.”

His family furnished his cell in the Tombs with his own bed, chairs, lamps, tables, books. It was cozy and homelike.