Adirondack Murder Anniversary
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A Spaulding tennis racket sat in a glass display case in Herkimer, N.Y.,a town between Albany and Syracuse. It looked fairly ordinary, but it was no everyday piece of sporting equipment.The handle bore the exhibit number “42,” relating to a lurid, century-old murder case in which – despite no eyewitnesses and no confession – Chester Gillette was convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, in 1906. The couple was in a rowboat on Big Moose Lake, 140 miles northwest of Albany, with the tennis racket aboard, when she drowned. In this love story gone awry, Brown was a 20-year-old factory girl and Gillette was a 22-year-old playboy who would later be sentenced to the electric chair.
The case might have been less well remembered had the novelist Theodore Dreiser not not written “An American Tragedy” based on the case.
On Saturday, a journalism professor at Keene State College, Craig Brandon, author of “Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited,” delivered a talk at a centennial conference examining the legal, historical, and literary facets of the case. During the presentation, at Herkimer County Community College, he showed clips from two movies based on the crime: 1931’s “An American Tragedy,” and the more famous 1951 film “A Place in the Sun,” starring Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, and Montgomery Clift. Mr. Brandon also played a clip from a Marx Brothers film in which Groucho, seated in a rowboat, makes a quip relating to the tragedy.
While the case gained national attention, Mr. Brandon showed how some of the press headlines were not true. He said local newspapers disclosed that the out-of-town journalists dressed up as locals, went to the jail, and demanded that Gillette be lynched. They then got back into their journalist clothes and contacted the jail for comment, writing up the story that a crowd demanded a lynching. These kinds of shenanigans resulted in a former Dodge City sheriff, William Barclay “Bat” Masterson, who was writing for the New York Sunday Telegraph, being subpoenaed and fined.
One entertaining anecdote relates to how a journalist for a Syracuse newspaper was the first to report the content of the famous love letters of Grace Brown, as they were released during the trial. The journalist did this by keeping a telegraph line open; she had a colleague recite the Constitution over the line and then break in when the letters were made known.
One panel discussion examined the Gillette case in light of modern procedural and evidentiary rules. There would probably be a plea bargain today, a Tompkins County Court, Family Court and Surrogate Court Judge, M. John Sherman, said: “A prosecutor would probably not take a chance on the circumstantial evidence.” Mr. Brandon also noted some techniques that would not be allowed today: The Prosecutor acted as detective, proceeding without a search warrant and gathering evidence by ripping pages out of hotel guest books where Gillette had signed in (sometimes under a false name).
There were other features of the case that would not happen today: Mr. Brandon said visitors lined up at the jail to view Gillette like a “caged animal” in a zoo, he said.
Outside the lecture hall in an adjacent room was a display of photos, love letters, books, and other artifacts. Sue Perkins of the Herkimer County Historical Society said the owner of the tennis racket wished to remain anonymous. Mr. Brandon said over the years there were a few tennis rackets whom some claimed was Gillette’s, but this one had “the best pedigree,” having once been in the possession of the prosecutor, George Ward, and having the exhibit number of evidence used at trial.
Whether Gillette used the racket to hit Brown is one of many unresolved issues. Other mysteries remain. Why did Brown bring an entire trunk with her on the trip? Perhaps she was contemplating a longer stay, and she and Gillette were looking for a home for unwed mothers, Mr. Brandon said.
The Herkimer County Historical Society president, Jeffrey Steele, who helped plan the conference after contacting the International Theodore Dreiser Society, said a number of activities were planned this summer to commemorate the anniversary date of Brown’s death. Next month, there are four re-enactments of the trial; three historic markers also will be placed relating to the case.
