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

The second trial was shorter, but no less exciting than the first. Molineux, who did not go on the stand during the first trial, was now a marvel of alertness and skill at parrying the district attorney’s gibes.

The State tried to establish a sort of Jekyll and Hyde existence on the part of Molineux. They endowed him, in fact, with three personalities, one which would undoubtedly be innocent; the second which would have wished to kill Cornish; and the third which probably, though they did not say so, would have killed Barnet for attention to the young lady who later became his wife.

The handwriting experts were given little or no consideration, though whether in the interests of justice or economy is not known.

Molineux’s defense was an alibi — he attempted to prove that he had been at Columbia University at the precise hour when the package was mailed at the post office many miles down town.

Evidently he proved it. For the jury went out November 4, 1902, and deliberated thirteen minutes, bringing back a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

Roland B. Molineux, after nearly four years of torture, was free.

It was shortly after the acquittal that his wife, who had been loyal to him throughout, went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and obtained a divorce. She later married W. Scott, an attorney of Sioux Falls.

For the first time in years he could at last feel out of the limelight. His photographs had been broadcast throughout the country, and, from a feeling of sensitiveness, he shrank from exposing himself to public view. He grew a beard and otherwise changed his appearance.

At once he began a campaign for the betterment of prison conditions. He devoted much time to reading and to writing sketches of prison life.

His father tried to awaken his interest in his old work, for the war had depleted the resources of the color business and he felt that Roland might devise substitutions, but his interest in the old work flagged, and when, after repeated attempts, he failed to find the proper materials, he dropped the work.

He wrote a play on prison life called “The Man Inside,” and, through an agent, sold it to Belasco. The play went indifferently, but Margaret Connelley, the young woman who arranged the sale, proved an interest of much importance, and in 1913, the first Mrs. Molineux having divorced him, he married her.

But even she failed to fully restore his peace of mind, although she devoted her life to trying. Born and reared in a sensitive fashion, Molineux could not accustom himself to the fate which had been his. The rough life in prison, the aspect of his father’s lost fortunes in his behalf, worried him, and he became ill.

Daily he grew less cheerful, and in spite of all that his father and his wife could do, gradually developed melancholia. Laughing and crying, now grave now gay, he became a pitiful figure indeed to those who loved him. Always interested in athletics, they persuaded him to go to Mac Levy’s Farm on Long Island for a rest.

Levy had been a good friend to him and was much liked by Molineux. But one day he attacked the trainer so savagely that it was thought unsafe to leave him without restraint. He attacked his wife and later his father, and in September, 1914, he was forcibly taken to an insane asylum.

“We can only stand by our boy and hope on.” his father declared.

But he never recovered from his malady. In November, 1917, he died at a State hospital for the insane.

The Murder at Avalon Arms by Owen Fox Jerome

This story began in Detective Fiction Weekly for September 29

Puzzling out the slain gambler’s last words, Chief MacCray discovers the first clew to the master mind behind the murder plot.

What Has Gone Before

Harry Lethrop, son of an eminent Chicago jurist, rescued a beautiful girl from the attack of a thief.

The incident was, apparently, the first step in a frame-up. Young Lethrop was drawn into an elaborate trap and accused of the murder of a Chicago gambler, Francis Keene. Evidence against him was strong.

The girl, Christine Vincennes, disappeared. Judge Lethrop, of the State Supreme Court, appealed to the police chief for aid in establishing his son’s innocence. Chief Quentin summoned Chief of Detectives MacCray.

In a few short hours, MacCray, dynamic sleuth, learned several important things. He learned that Keene, gasping out his life’s breath, had murmured an unintelligible sentence and the name Elihu.

He learned that Judge Lethrop was the jurist selected to pass on the appeal of a Joseph Crawley from conviction for the murder of his wife, and he discovered similarities between the two murders. Mrs. Crawley had also uttered the name Elihu.