Criminal - A Ring and a Bottle

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

In 1895, Blanche Chesebrough moved into a small apartment in Gramercy Park, in New York City. She brought a portrait of her parents, a vase for flowers, and her piano. She later said, “music had been my one absorbing interest,” and that she wasn’t interested in getting married. But eventually, she agreed to anyway. When she returned home from her honeymoon, she learned her husband was suspected of murder. April White’s book is The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier Take our survey: vox.com/podsurvey Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving

homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Blanche came from a family, a large family, and her parents were not particularly well off.

Sometimes they had money, sometimes they didn't. Her father was a rather luckless inventor. And they moved around a lot. And as they moved, her older siblings sort of married and stayed where they were. And Blanche eventually, as the second youngest of the family, eventually ended up in sort of the New England, New York area, where she realized how much she loved New York City, and also that she really wanted to get a music education and be on the stage.

In 1895, Blanche Chesborough moved into a small apartment of her own in Gramercy Park in New York City. She brought a portrait of her parents, a vase for flowers, and she brought her piano. She later said, Music had been my one absorbing interest. She wasn't interested in getting married,

writing, I wanted my existence to be fervid and glowing. We're hearing about her from historian and author April White. What was her life in New York like? How was she supporting herself? At the time, she was singing, singing at churches mainly, and making a small stipend each week for being a part of the choir. And that was enough?

It was enough for her to get by in New York. It wasn't enough for her to live the life she wanted to. Her dream was to someday study music in Paris. For extra money, Blanche took jobs singing for socialites at parties. She made friends with a lot of these people, and they sometimes expressed interest in funding her education. But nothing ever seemed to come of it. Blanche was sometimes invited to join them on their yachts in the summers, where she'd often sing for everyone. She wrote that on one of those yachts, for the first time in my life, I tasted champagne. In August of 1897, Blanche was invited to sail up to the coast of Maine. When the boat pulled into the harbor in Portland,

another yacht pulled in beside them, and the skipper invited everyone over for lunch. And that's when Blanche first met Roland Molyneux. Roland Molyneux was sitting by himself reading a book. Blanche later wrote that something flashed between us and that he had a nonchalant air of self-possession, poise, and breeding. He was the son of a New York family

that had become wealthy in business, so sort of part of this new commercial aristocracy. Roland's father ran a successful paint company, and Roland was working as the superintendent and chief chemist for another company, one that manufactured dyes. He was a member of an exclusive men's club in the city, the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. He had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. And he was also the type of guy you would find, as Blanche did, on a yacht drinking champagne and eating caviar because he moved in those worlds.

And he introduces her just to this world. You know, they go to the Met and they dine at Delmonico's and they have access to this world of theater and art and food that Blanche had always watched from afar. He brought her gifts almost every day, sometimes small things like fruit or flowers, but he also brought her jewelry. He gave her a butterfly pin with a hundred diamonds on it and a custom ring from Tiffany that spelled out the word Mizpah with diamonds. It was a popular gift at the time. Mizpah is Hebrew for watchtower. The rings were a way to keep the person you love in mind, even if they were far away. It was clear that Roland was interested in Blanche, but she wasn't 100% sold on the idea of Roland. She didn't feel that she was in love with him. And he's raised the idea of marriage a couple of times, and she jokes it off.

She's right on the verge of this world and this life she wants to be a part of. But despite the fact that Roland introduced her to this, she doesn't want to marry him. She just jokes away this idea of marriage. She really believes that to become a wife is a narrowing of horizons, as she says, or a curtailment of freedom. She thinks of herself as free as air, she says, and that's what she wanted to be. She didn't want to have this traditional married relationship. But on Thanksgiving Day, 1897, Roland kneels down in front of Blanche and asks for her hand in marriage.

And Blanche says no. But they continue to see each other. One evening in November, they went to the opera. During intermission, Roland saw a friend from the Knickerbocker Club and introduced him to Blanche. The man's name was Henry Barnett. Who was Henry Barnett? He was a friend of Rowland's from the Knickerbocker Athletic Club,

and he just loved life and had these big appetites, and he was just sort of the life of the party. And although she continued to date Roland and go to the theater with him and, you know, go to dinner with him, she also felt free to pursue this other relationship now that she had made it clear that she was not going to marry Roland. And so she began a relationship with Henry Barnett. In January of 1898, they arrived at the same party near Washington Square Park. They'd come with other people as their dates. Blanche had come with Roland. She was wearing the diamond butterfly pin he'd given her.

Henry Barnett asked Blanche if she'd like to leave the party for a little while. He said, let's get out of this. I know where we can have a moment together. April White says that Roland and Henry Barnett were very different. Roland was reserved and aloof. Henry Barnett was always smiling, cheerful, and friendly. Blanche called him Barney. And it takes a couple of weeks before Roland discovers this relationship. He first goes and confronts Barney about it. But Blanche is unhappy that he would go to Barney. This is an argument between

her and Roland. So she summons Roland to her home to have this out with him. And she is not going to apologize for what happened. She's angry about his confrontation with Barney. Blanche took off the Mizpah ring Roland had given her. And she flings it across the room. And Roland scrambles to retrieve it. He's going to hold on to this ring. And that's when he storms out and he yells, Tell Barnett the coast is clear. He wins. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. We'll be right back. Trives gets to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. Verge to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts.

Blanche and Henry Barnett continued to see each other. And it's not going as well as Blanche had imagined. And a big part of that is that Henry Barnett does not have the wealth that Roland had. They cannot have the same sort of dinners and theater outings, which is something that Barney wasn't all that interested in anyway. And in fact, he's so stingy with his money that Blanche begins to wonder if maybe he's seeing someone else. So she decides that she's going to step away from New York for the summer and she's going to go and stay with friends outside of the money, but she manages to leave the city

and vacation elsewhere for the summer and return at the end of the season. And when she comes back, she finds that there is no message at all from Barney waiting for her, but there is a letter from Roland. The letter, written on Roland's eggshell blue stationery, said he'd just returned from a vacation in Europe and asked if she might like to come to the Waldorf Astoria for lunch some Thursday. Blanche at this point begins to get pretty practical and realize that the European vacation that Roland just returned from is not something she'd be able to have in her life with Barney. The musical education, preferably in Europe, that she'd like to have is not something she will be able to afford in a life with Barney. But it is something that Roland can offer her. Blanche replied to Roland's invitation and agreed to meet him for lunch. So she, you know, sits down and she's back in this world that she loved.

And, you know, she's dining on Filet of Soul and drinking white wine and, you know, a great table at the Waldorf Astoria with a view of Fifth Avenue. And so Roland makes his play. He reached across the table with the Mizpah ring he had given her before, the one she had thrown across the room. And she makes her choice. She decides that she will be engaged to Roland.

It's not clear to me that he realized how little Blanche's mind had really changed. She didn't love him. She didn't want to be married, but she'd made a really practical decision here. And she thought that she could like the life. So she thought they could build a good life together. It just wasn't the things that she wanted, and she didn't love him.

And it's not clear to me that he recognized that. Blanche needed to tell Henry Barnett about her decision. She left messages for him at the Knickerbocker Club, but he didn't respond. She didn't hear from him for a long time, until finally he called her and said he'd already heard about the engagement from someone at the club. She asked to meet and he came to her house, angry. He told her that she'd created a barrier between them. Blanche said,

That's silly. There are no barriers. Can't we remain friends? Henry Barnett walked out. And shortly after, she learned that he was very sick. And he is vomiting, and he has an inflamed throat and tongue, and he can't eat. And doctors don't know what's going on with him. They can't figure out what the problem was. He had been a little under the weather prior to this sudden illness. He had overindulged the night before. And so he had taken a medication, a medication called CutNow's Improved Effervescent Powder. And it was just something that treated hangovers.

So he had decided he was going to have some of that. But he suddenly gets incredibly ill. They cannot figure out what's happening to him. They think that possibly it's diphtheria, which they did have the means to treat at this point, but he is not responding to any of the treatments they give him. What did Blanche do when she found out that Henry was sick? She wrote him a note and sent some flowers saying how much she wants to see him and how much she wants to mend their relationship. And a couple of days later, he's dead.

Henry Barnett died on November 10, 1898. By the end of the month, Blanche and Roland Molyneux were married. For their honeymoon, they spent an entire month in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. They went shopping on Fifth Avenue and attended a party at the Opera Club. Roland gave her expensive presents. But she later wrote that during that time, secretly I grieved. She said she thought about Barney all the time. There were persistent thoughts of him, sad and tender, full of grief. At one point, she asked Roland why he was so strange and indifferent about Barney's death.

You knew him so well and for so long, she said. I think when one dies, any little difference should be forgotten. Roland changed the subject. She said his mood during their honeymoon was distracted and remote until just before Christmas. He surprised her with what she described as a pile of little Christmas gifts, elaborately hidden in layers and layers of tissue paper. He was in a good mood. That Christmas Eve, the athletic director at the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, a man named Harry Cornish, received a gift. There was no card, and he didn't know who it was from. Inside was a blue Tiffany box with what looked like a decorative holder for a medicine bottle, made of silver, and a bottle of powder labeled Emerson's Bromo Seltzer.

Emerson's Bromo Seltzer was often used for hangovers. Mary Cornish assumed it was some kind of joke from a friend. And then, a few days later, when Harry's cousin, Kate Adams, said she had a headache, he offered some to her. She complained that it tasted bad. Harry Cornish tried a little and agreed, but he said that medicine wasn't supposed to taste good. And then, within a few minutes, Kate Adams got very sick. By the time the doctor arrived, Harry Cornish was very sick too. The doctor described Kate Adams' face as having a kind of dark bluish color and said that her skin had a cold, clammy feeling.

He put ammonia under her nose, gave her an injection of a heart stimulant, and then performed Sylvester's artificial respiration, a process of raising and lowering a patient's arms to try to manually fill and empty their lungs. None of it worked, and Kate Adams died. The doctor tried to help Harry, who'd ingested much less of the medicine powder. And then the doctor tasted it himself.

He put a little bit of the powder from the bottle on his tongue and said he smelled almonds. He later said, Then I knew I was in contact with the most deadly poison that I'd ever heard of. We'll be right back. a different approach. According to Noom, losing weight has less to do with discipline and more to do with psychology. Noom is the weight loss management program that focuses on the science behind food cravings and building sustainable eating habits. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach. Noom takes into account your unique biological factors, which also affect weight loss success. The program can also help you understand the science behind your eating choices and why you have those specific cravings.

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One of his doctors at the Knickerbocker Club realized that he'd seen these symptoms before, in another patient he had treated about a month earlier, Henry Barnett. Before he died, Barney had told the doctor that the hangover powder he'd taken just before he got sick had arrived in the mail. But his symptoms looked like diphtheria. And that was listed as his cause of death. Now, we sort of have this revelation that maybe, maybe Barney was murdered. Because this woman had died in very similar ways after taking a sample of medication that had arrived in the mail. Within a day, newspapers began reporting on the possible connections

between the two deaths. One headline read, Double Murder Mystery in a New York club, and called it one of the most mysterious crimes of recent occurrence in New York City. The New York Times quoted the district attorney saying that he thought the poisoner was a woman. That, quote, history shows that poisoning is a woman's method of action. Woman's nature is essentially subtle. The next day at 6 a.m., Blanche and Roland woke up to someone pounding on their door. It was Roland's father, holding a copy of the New York Journal.

And there's a headline that says, Police want Roland Burnham Molyneux in the poisoning case. And this is the first moment that Blanche learns that her husband is suspected to be a murderer. Roland knew Harry Cornish from the Knickerbocker Club. Harry was the athletic director at the Knickerbocker, and Roland and he really just disagreed on how the club should be run. In one instance, Roland placed an order for gymnastics

equipment for the club from a company he liked. Harry apparently went behind his back and changed the order, which Roland didn't know about until the wrong equipment arrived. In another instance, Roland learned that Harry had written a letter insulting one of Roland's friends using Knickerbocker Athletic Club stationery and complained to the club's board. The board told Harry to stop using the stationery, but Roland couldn't let it go.

Roland thought he had the power and the sort of social standing to push Harry out of the club over this disagreement and get him fired. But instead, Harry got Roland forced out of the club. On his way out, Roland said to Harry, You win. After Harry's cousin, Kate Adams, died, there was a coroner's inquest to determine whether a crime had been committed. The inquest was only called to examine the death of Kate Adams. Barney's body had been exhumed and was being analyzed,

but his death hadn't originally been investigated like a murder. It was attributed to diphtheria. There was less to go on in terms of evidence. But there was more to go on in terms of motive. So even though Barney's death wasn't the purpose of the inquest

The love triangle between Barney, Roland and Blanche Was brought up over and over How was the connection made between Henry Barnett and Kate? So there were lots of sort of overlaps That would come up in these particular cases And so they made the connection between these pieces of physical evidence. And of course, during the inquest, it was just so much easier to explain the potential motive for Barney's death than it was to explain Kate Adams' death,

that you really saw these two cases be intertwined. So the prosecution has two deaths, and one doesn't have a very good explanation. They look the same, but the other does. And so they kind of say, well, let's prosecute the easier case here and talk about Henry Barnett and Blanche, and hopefully that will translate to the other. Yeah, so they're prosecuting Kate Adams' death, but they're trying to use the motive, the potential motive in Henry Barnett's case to explain how this might have all happened.

Blanche was called to testify about her relationship with Barney. She denied that it was anything more than a friendship. A handwriting expert was called. He'd studied the label on the package that Harry Cornish had received and compared it to a handwriting sample

Roland had provided. He said it was a match. Not only was it a match, but both the label and the sample contained the same small error. The number 40 in the address for 45th Street, written out as a word, was spelled with a U. F-O-U-R-T-Y. Six other handwriting experts agreed that the handwriting was a match. Investigators had gone through order letters requesting medicine powders from drug manufacturers, looking for handwriting matches, and they found several, linked to rented post boxes. And some were written on eggshell blue stationery, just like the kind Rowland used.

Newspapers followed the case closely and reported any detail about Rowland they could find. That he'd smoked opium, that he owned pornography. Newspapers described him as a moral degenerate, a roundabout way to suggest that he was gay, and implied that it was suspicious how much he enjoyed decorating his room at the Knickerbocker Club. Blanche was staying with Roland's parents. Newspapers weren't allowed in the house. She later wrote, the news sheets were not even unfolded in my presence.

After the inquest, Roland was arrested and taken to the Tombs Prison. He was charged with first-degree murder for killing Kate Adams. The trial began almost a year later, in November 1899. Jury selection took more than two weeks. 504 men were considered. One paper reported that everyone in New York wanted to come watch. Quote,

Men of wealth tried to bribe their way in. Men about town tried to get in by pull. The women used every art of persuasion they knew. The policeman on duty told them that women would not be admitted under any circumstances. Two did get in. A man with long hair wanted to get in to collect material for a tragedy he was writing. An elderly man in the garb of a clergyman wanted material for a sermon. A drama critic covered the trial for the New York Herald.

In his opening statements, the prosecutor spoke for more than four hours. He told the jury, Today there is a fight between society and poisoners. Every poisoning case is supposed to be an improvement on its predecessor. Every poisoner tries to improve on old methods. Now in this case, the murderer adopted what he thought was a very fine method. He selected cyanide of mercury,

a poison that some of our greatest druggists live all their lives without ever seeing. He went on to say that cyanide of mercury had been discovered by a German chemist who was experimenting with a color called Prussian blue. He said, no other person except a chemist or a color maker would have used such a poison. Roland was a chemist who worked at a company that manufactured pigments. And cyanide of mercury was found in the medications that both Harry Cornish and Henry Barnett received in the mail.

The prosecutor said, What role did Blanche play in the trial? for her relationships. So they're prosecuting Kate Adams' death, but they're trying to use the motive, the potential motive in Henry Barnett's case to explain how this might have all happened. The prosecutor said, you must remember, gentlemen, that the defendant was married on November 29th, 1898. Barnett died on November 10th, 1898. Barnett died on November 10th, 1898.

The defendant has testified that he wanted to marry Blanche Chesborough since January of that year. She refuses to marry him. The plain cold facts are that she would not marry him while Barnett was alive. But when Barnett was cold in his grave, she marries the defendant, and marries him immediately. And then the prosecutor

said, It is not often in life that a motive assumes a real-life concrete presence, full of personality, endowed with flesh and blood. Then he pointed at Blanche and said, And there the motive

sets. We'll have the rest of Blanche's story next time. Thank you. Divorce Colony, How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier. If you like the show, tell a friend or leave us a review. It means a lot. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

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