Seated between his youngest and eldest sons, Cecil and Leslie, General Molineux nervously scanned the faces of the jurors as the twelve men resumed their places. For the first time, the stoic old soldier seemed overcome with anxiety. His face twitched, he tugged at his white goatee and rubbed his balding dome. He could not remain still for an instant.
To judge from their grave expressions, there was cause for concern. Not one of the jurors would meet Roland’s eyes. All kept their gazes on the floor.
The excited buzz that had filled the courtroom when the jurors reentered had subsided into a tense, protracted silence, which was finally broken by Judge Lambert.
“Upon rendition of this verdict,” he cautioned, “every person is forbidden to make any demonstration of approval or disapproval. Any person disregarding this admonition will be promptly brought to this bar and punished. When this verdict is rendered, I wish every person to disperse quietly.”
At that, the clerk addressed the jurors.
“Please rise, gentlemen,” he said, then turned to Roland. “The defendant will rise. Jurors, look upon the prisoner. Prisoner, look upon the jurors.”
Molineux shot to his feet and stood so rigidly erect that he appeared to be “almost on tiptoe.”1 He stared hard at the jurors, but though all twelve men had turned in his direction, they seemed to be looking past him.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?” asked the clerk.
“We have,” replied the foreman, gazing down at the floor.
“What say you, guilty or not guilty as charged in the indictment?”
He seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering: “Not guilty.”
Seated beside General Molineux, his business partner, Mr. Devoe, let out an excited yelp and threw out his hands so wildly that he struck the General in the face. But the old man never noticed. Leaping from his chair, he grabbed his boy’s hand and held it tightly, while Bartow Weeks leaned forward from his seat and seized Roland’s other hand.2
Roland—still standing as “erect as a West Point cadet on parade”—showed no reaction at first. All at once, a radiant smile “broadened his prison-pale cheeks and deepened the dimple in his chin,” and his eyes danced with happiness.
Intent upon obeying the formalities, the clerk addressed the jurors. “So say you all?” he asked.
The twelve men nodded gravely, then resumed their seats while—in defiance of Judge Lambert’s warning—the crowd went wild.
Men cheered and tossed their hats in the air, women clapped and squealed, and a small mob of both sexes surged toward Roland, who was already surrounded by his lawyers, brothers, friends, and other well-wishers. The scene, wrote one reporter, “resembled a football rush.” Everyone wanted to shake his hand or (in the case of more than one of his fashionably attired female fans) embrace him.
The heartiest congratulations, however, were reserved for the General; “the old warrior had spent all the savings of a lifetime, given all the energy of the last years of a long and honorable career to the defense of his son.” For every handshake Roland received, his father seemed to receive three or four.
The celebration went on for five full minutes before the pounding of Judge Lambert’s gavel and the shouts of the court officers restored order to the chaotic scene.
Addressing the district attorney, Lambert asked if there was “any further charge against this defendant.”
“There is not,” said the DA.
“Then,” said the judge, “I declare the defendant discharged.”
As the tumult around Roland resumed, jurors filed from the courtroom. Passing a dejected-looking James Osborne, several of them offered consoling remarks.
“We had to go against you,” said Foreman Young, “but you went down with flying colors.”3
Harry Cornish, on learning of the verdict, bitterly declared his belief that the outcome was inevitable, given Judge Lambert’s obvious bias. “I want to congratulate the judge on his defense of the accused,” he said with heavy sarcasm.4
Meanwhile, at the front of the courtroom, the General was besieged by reporters. What were his emotions when he heard the verdict? “Here, give me a pencil and a slip of paper,” said the General, “and I will write down just what I feel.”
Someone handed him the items and the old man, leaning down to the nearest table, quickly scribbled two lines. They appeared on the front pages the following day—a paraphrase of a famous hymn:
The strife is o’er, the battle done,
And Might has lost but Right has won.5
As Roland, his father, and their supporters left the courtroom, they were greeted by a deafening yell. The upper floors of the building, which “looked down upon the main hall like so many balconies in the opera house,” were thronged with cheering people.
Out on the street, an even more massive crowd burst into a “tremendous wave of applause” at their first glimpse of Roland and the General. People in passing trolley cars waved handkerchiefs from the windows, while, on the fire escapes of the nearby tenements, women and children joined in the general rejoicing.
A few moments later, a closed carriage drew up before the courthouse, and Roland, his father, Bartow Weeks, and George Gordon Battle climbed aboard. Immediately, the crowd closed around it. People reached inside the open windows, attempting to grab Roland’s hand, and a few men actually tried to jump inside before the door was yanked shut and secured.
As the driver applied his whip, a squad of several dozen policemen struggled to clear a way through the crowd. Several hundred men and boys pursued the carriage, cheering all the while. At every corner, more people joined the procession. By the time the carriage reached the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, an estimated fifteen hundred people followed in its wake.
On the Brooklyn side, the carriage clattered up Fulton Street and past Borough Hall, where another five hundred people had assembled. Roland leaned out the window and waved his hat in response to the cheering mob.
By the time the carriage approached Roland’s home, the news had reached Fort Greene Place. Every stoop was lined with men, women, and children. Every open window seemed to frame an excited face. As the police cleared a path on the packed street, the carriage drew up in front of the Molineux residence. Roland was the first out, his father close behind him.
“Three cheers for Roland Molineux!” someone shouted, and the crowd let out a roar.
Roland took off his hat and bowed. Suddenly, the front door opened and his elderly mother, wearing a plain linen cap, stood in the entranceway.
Bounding up the steps, Roland took her in his arms.
“My boy!” she cried, hugging him.
A reverential silence descended on the crowd, as Roland and his mother held their embrace for a full minute. By the time they parted, the General had joined them at the top of the stairs.
“Well, Mother,” he said. “I have kept my word. I told you I would bring the boy home.”
As Roland and his mother disappeared inside the house, the General turned to the crowd.
“Three cheers for General Molineux, the best father that ever lived!” came another shout. The jubilation that erupted was “such as was never heard in quiet old-fashioned Fort Greene Place.” A street band suddenly materialized and struck up a rousing rendition of “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?”6
Glowing with happiness—looking “as though he had grown twenty-five years younger in a day”—the General bowed right and left. The sheer intensity of the outpouring confirmed a belief that many commentators would assert for years to come: that “Roland Burnham Molineux was indicted and tried for murder and General Edward Leslie Molineux was acquitted.”7
Little by little, the crowd dispersed, leaving the Molineuxs to enjoy their reunion in private. But at least one observer had noticed something odd. There appeared to be “one member of the family who was not there to greet Molineux upon his dramatic homecoming,” wrote the reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle.
“It was his wife.”8