As the dominant news story of the day, the Great Poison Mystery continued to inspire copycat crimes, including one whose intended victim was another man named Cornish—Adelbert D. Cornish of Lewiston, Maine, a judge at the municipal court.
In the fall of 1898, a sour-tempered landlord named George W. Pierce was arrested on an assault charge by the town marshal, Herbert Teel, and brought before Judge Cornish. A plea bargain was eventually struck, but Pierce became convinced that he had been “sold out” by his lawyer, W. H. Newell.
A few months later, Judge Cornish found a bag of sugar on his doorstep, ostensibly left there as a gift. His suspicions aroused, he turned it over to a chemistry professor named Robinson at Bowdoin College, who found so much arsenic in the sugar that “a single spoonful would kill a man.” Cornish immediately alerted Marshal Teel, who revealed that he, too, had recently received an anonymous gift—a bottle of whiskey. Fortunately for Teel, he had stuck the liquor in a cabinet without sampling any. Upon analysis by Professor Robinson, it also turned out “to contain arsenic in large quantities.”
Several juvenile neighbors of Lawyer Newell weren’t quite so lucky. Finding a box of candy on the driveway leading to Newell’s stables, they snuck a few pieces and came close to dying. In the end, the police determined that the source of all three of these lethal “gifts” was the embittered George Pierce, who was promptly arrested and charged with several counts of attempted murder.1
While the small-town judge from Maine suddenly found himself on the front pages—ANOTHER CORNISH IN POISON MYSTERY, trumpeted the headline in the World—his namesake in New York was coming under increasing attack by the Manhattan DA’s office. Any doubts that District Attorney Asa Bird Gardiner and his assistants were “ranged against Harry Cornish” (as the Journal put it) were dispelled on Wednesday, when several witnesses were called to offer damaging testimony against the athletic director.
Rumors that Mrs. Molineux would take the stand brought an extra crush of people to the courthouse that morning. They were destined to be disappointed, since neither Roland nor Blanche put in an appearance. Still, the day was not lacking in interest.
A dramatic high point occurred during the questioning of Dr. Edwin Hitchcock, the first physician to be called to Mrs. Adams’s apartment on the day of her death. According to Hitchcock, he had announced at once that “a diabolical crime had been committed” and asked Cornish if he had any enemies who might send him poisoned bromo-seltzer. This was a direct contradiction of Cornish, who was on record as stating that he had not suspected foul play until several days later. Indeed, to more than one observer, the questions addressed to Hitchcock seemed expressly designed to expose Cornish as a liar.2
Hitchcock also revealed that Mrs. Adams’s daughter, Florence Rodgers, had taken him aside that morning and asked if her mother’s death could be “kept as quiet as possible.” She seemed particularly anxious that it not be reported by the press.
For anyone closely following the case, Hitchcock’s testimony seemed to support one especially lurid theory that had been bandied about in the yellow papers: that the womanizing Harry Cornish and his attractive roommate, Mrs. Rodgers, were involved in an affair and had plotted to eliminate her disapproving mother.
It is no wonder that Cornish himself sat through Hitchcock’s testimony scowling at the witness. Or that his elderly parents—who had traveled to New York to offer their moral support—looked so exceedingly glum.
By contrast, General Molineux and his son’s attorney, Bartow Weeks, wore expressions of undiluted satisfaction. When the day’s proceedings were over, they left the courtroom together with broad smiles on their faces.3
In the following days, Osborne called other witnesses who (as one headline put it) gave “the lie to Cornish.”4 John McIntyre—Harry’s friend in the district attorney’s office—testified that he, too, had immediately suspected foul play in Mrs. Adams’s death and had said so to Cornish within hours of her murder. Dr. Hitchcock’s colleague, E. S. Potter, went so far as to suggest that Cornish had lied about drinking the poison. Potter declared that he “did not observe any signs of sickness upon Cornish while I was in the house”—a claim supported by another witness, who testified that he had seen Cornish eating an apple that morning.5
According to Potter, moreover, he had noticed two tumblers on Mrs. Adams’s dining room table when he arrived at the apartment. One contained the remainder of the deadly bromo-seltzer solution; the other was filled with what appeared to be water. Potter’s implication seemed to be that Cornish had only pretended to sample the lethal concoction, when, in fact, he had actually sipped from the water glass.6
By the end of the week, Cornish’s credibility was in such tatters that even Hearst’s Journal—which had, from the start, been relentless in its persecution of Roland Molineux—seemed to have changed its position. On Friday, the paper ran a remarkable piece, deploring the very different kinds of justice meted out to poor black residents of the city and to people like Harry Cornish.
Highlighted within a little box at the top page, the article drew a pointed comparison between two current tragedies. On the one hand, there was the pitiable case of Mrs. Mary Hubbard, a destitute “negress” who had “notified the Charity and Police departments in Brooklyn on Wednesday that she had rolled over on her baby in her sleep and smothered it to death. She alleged that it was an accident and asked for aid to bury the body.” And how had the authorities responded to Mrs. Hubbard? “SHE WAS LOCKED UP AT ONCE IN THE GATES AVENUE POLICE STATION ON A CHARGE OF MURDER,” the paper exclaimed in capital letters.
In striking contrast, there was the case of Harry Cornish, a well-connected athlete and clubman, who “gave to Mrs. Kate Adams, December 28 last, a dose of poisoned bromo-seltzer, which killed her. His claim is that the stuff had been sent to him by some unknown enemy and that the poisoning of Mrs. Adams was unintentional.” And what had happened to Cornish? “HE IS STILL AT LARGE, FIFTY DAYS AFTER THE TRAGEDY!” declared the paper in outraged tones.7
By this point, even Cornish—who belonged to the tight-lipped “never-complain-never-explain” school of manhood—was so beleaguered that he felt compelled to issue a public statement. Published in the papers under the headline CORNISH SAYS SOME THINGS LOOK BAD, BUT HE CAN EXPLAIN, the statement perfectly captured the blunt, combative style of the man:
I appreciate that there are many points brought out in the testimony that make it look bad for me, but I am not losing my head or my nerve, and don’t intend to. Remember, I have not had my chance to talk yet, but I am carefully noting all that is said, and matters will look very different when I get through telling my story.
All I want is the chance to tell my story, fully, freely, and without interruption, as Molineux was allowed to tell his. Mr. Osborne has promised me that I shall have that chance.
No, I will not tell now what I will testify to when put on the stand. What I want to do is clear up some things that now look very bad. For instance, much has been made of…the testimony of Dr. Potter, that there were two glasses on the table when he got to the Adams flat. That agrees entirely with my statement to the police and my testimony on the stand. Mrs. Adams brought in two glasses, one empty and the other half-filled with water, for me to mix the bromo-seltzer. I put the bromo-seltzer in the empty glass and poured the water in upon it.
Of course, the District Attorney has the right to proceed as he sees fit, but I promise you that when I get on that stand again and tell my story, the atmosphere will be very much cleared.8
Cornish would soon have his day in court. But first, the public would finally be treated to an impressive performance by the glamorous star witness they had waited so long to see.