Later that day, after returning to Brooklyn from Sing Sing, General Molineux—who, on the advice of counsel, had refrained from making any public statements during the trial—released a letter to the press. Under various headlines—STIRRING PLEA OF THE OLD WARRIOR, GENERAL MOLINEUX DECLARES HIS SON’S INNOCENCE, FATHER MAKES PUBLIC APPEAL—it appeared the next morning on the front pages of virtually every newspaper in the city.1
Stories had circulated that legal expenses had driven the General—a wealthy, self-made man, though hardly a member of Mrs. Astor’s 400—to near bankruptcy. Several morning newspapers had proposed setting up a fund to assist him in defending his son, and had already begun receiving contributions from scores of old soldiers, eager to help. After expressing his thanks for the outpouring of sympathy he had received “from all sections of the country,” the General hastened to assure the public that he required no financial aid.
It was not pride, he insisted, that prevented him from “accepting such assistance, for the reason that I should not myself hesitate to offer it to any person who needed it, and I should never be ashamed to receive what I should not be ashamed to offer. But I owe no man a dollar, and I neither need nor desire any assistance of such a character. I feel, and am amply able in health, strength and in courage natural to a man, to sustain all the burdens that God has placed upon me until He wills otherwise.”
But if the General had no need of monetary support, he did need—and appealed for—“the prayers of all those of every denomination and faith who, like myself, feel that my son is innocent and the victim of persecution.” He appealed, moreover, “to every man who is a man” to assist him in his struggle to “shield and protect” his “sorely afflicted” daughter-in-law “from unnecessary and intrusive curiosity.” Though he had no intention of addressing any legal questions raised by the trial, the General could not refrain from denouncing Assistant District Attorney James Osborne, whose “vile insinuations” against Blanche had been an assault upon the very “sanctity” of “noble American womanhood.” That a “sworn public prosecutor, a man educated in an American college and associating with American men,” could behave so shamefully toward the “wedded wife of a defendant” was beyond the General’s comprehension.
If Blanche required the “heartfelt support” of “all who resent injustice and revere womanhood,” Roland himself required no “maudlin sympathy.” His son, said the General, was “a strong man, able to bear his own sorrow and responsible for his own acts”—a man “with the strength to live and die bravely.” But the charges made against his child had been so outrageous that the General could no longer remain silent on the subject.
“I have seen my son Roland asleep as a child by his mother’s side,” wrote the General, conjuring up an image guaranteed to tug at the heartstrings of all but the most callous of readers. “I have seen him asleep in his cell after the verdict of death had been pronounced. Who better able than I, his father, to judge whether that sleep was the natural sleep of innocence?” He was not alone, moreover, in these feelings. Everyone who had come into contact with Roland during his incarceration would attest to his innocence. “Ask the prison attendants,” wrote the General. “Ask those ministers of religion and of charity who serve the wants of those poor prisoners whether the behavior of Roland Burnham Molineux has been that of a brave and innocent man rather than that of a dastardly poisoner. They will, I know, speak for him.”
The very idea that his son might commit a crime as heinous as poisoning was too outlandish to entertain. Roland had “never done a despicable or a cowardly thing. It is not in him. He has always been ready to take his punishment like a man. If whipped, he has acknowledged the fact and has been ready to meet his foe face to face, without malice. Like his father he is not faultless. But he also has much of the better and kindlier nature of his mother. He a pervert, a degenerate, and a vicious poisoner? It is impossible and absurd!”2 Eloquent and moving—infused with the sense of decency, justice, and faith that had made Edward Molineux such a beloved figure—the General’s open letter was a release of long-suppressed feelings. But it was also something more: an assertion of his fighting spirit, of his refusal to surrender—the opening salvo in the old warrior’s last and most desperate battle.