Blanche’s move to the little white house in Sing Sing—calculated to impress the world with her selfless devotion to Roland—did nothing to stop the press from portraying her in the most scandalous light. Little more than a week after her arrival, a highly sensationalized story appeared in newspapers throughout the country. Written by Hearst’s popular sob sister Winifred Black, a.k.a. Annie Laurie, the article purported to be a biography of Blanche—“the great puzzle mystery of the Molineux case”—based on interviews conducted with the subject herself.
Written in the floridly sentimental style Black was famous for, the article told of the “poor little one-eyed country girl” who “came to New York some ten years ago to earn an honest living by singing in a church choir,” and who had ended up leading a shocking double life: modest young lady by day, shameless voluptuary after dark:
Blanche Molineux…the woman who wore the quietest little gowns and the plainest hats on Sunday, and who dressed in gorgeousness and diamonds on week days.
The woman who thanked the Sunday school superintendent for a 10 cent bunch of wild flowers, and then went home to an apartment heavy with the perfume of hot house roses at $10 a dozen.
The woman who drank lemonade at the Sunday school picnic at Williamsburg, and who served champagne in silver buckets at her home in New York.
Even more inflammatory than this portrayal of Blanche as a woman of highly questionable morals—her luxurious life funded by wealthy male “friends”—were Black’s insinuations concerning Roland. Describing Blanche’s first encounter with her future husband on the yacht Viator, the article claimed that there were three men aboard the boat: Roland, Henry Barnet, and a “rich bachelor,” never identified by name. During that magically romantic excursion, “with its moonlight, its wealth of flowers, and its plenteous supply of champagne,” all three men fell “very much in love with Blanche Chesebrough.”
Just a few weeks later, however, two of those three died, “one of cyanide of mercury poisoning and the other of some cause that brought a quick and sudden end.” Blanche was left free to marry the only survivor—Roland Molineux.1
The widespread dissemination of the article (which appeared first in the Denver Post, then ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer before showing up in the New York Journal) brought a prompt and impassioned reply, published over Blanche’s signature, though both General Molineux and Bartow Weeks had a hand in its composition. In it, Blanche decries Black’s “villainous assault” upon her character, an act of perfidy made even more unforgivable for having been written by a woman. “It surpasses my understanding,” Blanche exclaims, “that any woman can so cruelly and falsely vilify without a shadow of foundation a sister woman on whom the shadow of affliction has already fallen so heavily.”
Denouncing the article as a collection of “baseless calumnies,” “wicked lies,” “infamous innuendoes,” she proceeds to set the record straight, denying that, as a single woman, she had ever “lived luxuriously in gorgeous apartments in upper New York,” and describing the fateful yachting party as a perfectly innocent occasion, during which she was chaperoned by her older sister.
As for the “gross and atrocious falsehoods” concerning Roland, Blanche proclaims her “absolute confidence” in her “noble husband,” who “is wholly innocent of the frightful crime with which he is charged”:
I know this, not only from the fact that no evidence save that of paid experts and venal witnesses of the lowest character has been brought against him, but also and chiefly from my knowledge of his own character. I know him to be brave, strong, and true—the last man to commit a crime of cunning, malice, and cowardice. He might strike in anger and hot blood, but the stealth and premeditation of the poisoner are foreign to his nature.
After a bitter attack on James Osborne, who had so scurrilously suggested that her relationship with Henry Barnet was “something more than an ordinary friendship,” the letter concludes with a heartfelt appeal to “the women of this land—the wives, the daughters of this American nation”:
I ask you to feel for me, for one moment put yourself in my place, and you wonder that I break the silence so long enforced upon me; that I cry against the malicious, the cruel, the wanton lies? Shall a man, because he is vested with the power of public office, because he is the prosecuting official in a charge brought against the unfortunate husband of one American woman, shall he, I say, be permitted to make that hapless wife the target of his merciless invective, his unfounded and unproven accusations? Is she to be defamed and robbed of her fair name? Is her honor, her dignity, her character, to be wantonly sullied?2
Blanche’s reply received exactly the kind of attention the General was counting on: front-page coverage in virtually every New York City daily. He himself followed up with an attack on James Osborne, a native of North Carolina who was even then visiting his aged mother in his hometown, Charlotte. Osborne, said the General in a widely reprinted statement, was a man who made a mockery of the proud tradition “of Southern chivalry. I have fought Southerners, and I know they are brave men. I thought it was always said of them that they never attacked women. I understand that Mr. Osborne is a Southerner—of what sort can now be judged, after his characterization of my daughter-in-law.
“I say to all the world,” the General vowed in conclusion, “that she is my daughter, and that I shall protect her to the end.”3
Given the public’s prurient fascination with Blanche, it was only a matter of time before the General was called upon to make good on that pledge. Not long after the appearance of Mrs. Black’s spurious biography, stories began to circulate in the papers that Blanche had returned to the city, where she was seen dining at Rector’s restaurant on Broadway and Forty-fifth Street with a male companion, clearly not her husband.
Once again, General Molineux found it necessary to issue a statement, attacking the story as “entirely without foundation.” On “the night in question,” his daughter-in-law “was at Sing Sing with my wife and other relatives.” She had not been to Rector’s restaurant “at any time since her husband’s arrest” indeed, “to the best of her recollection,” she had “never been there in her life.” After reconfirming his faith in Blanche, the General warned that we would “take prompt measures” against anyone who published such “cruel libels” in the future.4
While General Molineux did battle with Blanche’s detractors, Roland’s lawyers were engaged on another front. In early March, they filed a notice of appeal. Roland’s death sentence—officially slated for the last week of the month—was put on indefinite hold. A few weeks later, to argue the case before the Court of Appeals, they retained one of the country’s most prominent attorneys, John G. Milburn of Buffalo.
It was a canny choice. The Court of Appeals sat in Buffalo, and Milburn—a top corporate lawyer who had successfully represented many appellants (including John D. Rockefeller)—was arguably the city’s leading resident. Just shy of his fiftieth birthday, he was an imposing six-footer, famed for his “golden-voiced” eloquence and commanding presence.5
At the time he agreed to represent Roland Molineux, much of his attention was focused on a project that had dominated his life for the past several years, the great Buffalo World’s Fair (officially known as the Pan-American Exposition) scheduled to open the following May. As the head of the exposition’s board of directors, Milburn had countless details to attend to, including preparations for a planned visit by President McKinley himself.
Milburn had frequently played host to visiting dignitaries, including Vice President Roosevelt and the French ambassador, both of whom had been recent guests at his stately home on Delaware Avenue. McKinley’s visit to the Buffalo exposition was still more than a year away, and no official date had been set. But there was little doubt that, when he came to town, the president would stay at the Milburn residence.