Anticipation ran high on the morning of Tuesday, February 6. Once again, extra chairs had to be set up in the aisles to accommodate the crowd, which included an unusually large number of lawyers who had come to see what sort of defense Roland’s highly paid attorneys would mount.
There had already been much speculation on that subject in the press. Citing an anonymous informant, the World confidently predicted that the defense would last between six and eight weeks. In what promised to be a “savage assault” upon the prosecution’s case—and particularly its star toxicologist, Dr. Rudolph Witthaus—a “long list of experts” would be called to testify that Mrs. Adams’s death had not been caused by cyanide of mercury at all. Instead, the defense intended to prove that the bromo-seltzer alone, if allowed to go stale, could degrade into a noxious substance capable of producing “very serious and possible fatal results.”
To bolster this argument, Roland’s defense team intended to call a “fifteen-year-old girl of good family,” one Ida Halporn of East Fifty-fifth Street. The previous March, this “healthy and full-blooded girl” had taken a dose of bromo-seltzer from a bottle that had been sitting on a shelf for more than a year. Within minutes of drinking the effervescent mixture, she had fallen so seriously ill that even now, nearly twelve months later, she remained “frail and weak in comparison with her former self.” A $50,000 lawsuit brought by her parents against the Emerson Drug Company was presently pending in the United States District Court.
The sensational possibility had also been raised that Molineux himself might be put on the stand. In any event, there seemed little doubt that, after two months of remaining “supine”—of “awaiting attack and repelling it as best it could”—Roland’s defense team was now ready to launch a fierce attack of its own.1
Given the lurid picture the prosecution had been allowed to paint of Blanche’s relationship with Barnet, it was hardly surprising that, once again, she was dragged into court for another conspicuous show of conjugal devotion. She and her mother-in-law arrived with the General at 9:30 A.M. on Tuesday. A half hour later, Roland entered, eyes “dancing with merriment” and “lips quivering,” as though he were struggling to suppress his amusement at some private joke.
Spotting his wife and mother at the defense table, he made his way down the aisle with a “quick, springy stride,” then threw himself into Blanche’s welcoming arms. As he bent his face to hers, she kissed him repeatedly on the mouth—a charade intended to make a mockery of the state’s contention that sexual rivalry had driven Roland to poison Barnet. Clearly, no woman so passionately in love with her husband could ever have given him the slightest cause for jealousy.2
Goff appeared a few moments later. Everyone rose and remained standing until the recorder bowed and took his seat on the bench. The jurors were then polled. All were in attendance, including Manheim Brown, who sat with his lower body swaddled in a woolen lap robe.
Then, clutching a sheaf of papers in one hand, Roland’s chief counsel, Bartow Weeks, got slowly to his feet.
His eyes were bloodshot and his face unusually pale. Afterward, he would confess that he had spent a sleepless night debating the wisdom of the startling course of action he was about to take.
In a solemn voice that betrayed the slightest hint of a tremor, Weeks looked at Goff and said, “If Your Honor please, after making a thorough study of the evidence in this case, I am convinced that the prosecution has utterly failed to prove its charge against the defendant. Therefore, we are content to rest the case of the defense upon the evidence offered by the state.”
He then stepped back to the defense table and reseated himself.
There was a stunned silence in the courtroom that lasted for more than a minute. When the full import of this statement finally sank in, an excited murmur erupted from the spectator section. Goff rapped his gavel for order, while Roland, arms folded across his chest, looked on with a satisfied smile. At the prosecution table, Osborne exchanged astonished looks with his associates.
Roland’s counsel had sprung the most shocking surprise of the trial.
After all the speculation about their intended strategy, Weeks and his partner—with the full approval of the General—had opted for a tactic that no one had foreseen. Not a single witness would be called to testify on their client’s behalf. Roland Molineux’s lawyers had chosen to rest their case without offering a defense.3