The Murder That Will Never DieOBSERVER-DISPATCH, TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2006 FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE TRIAL AT UTICAOD.COM
Beyond the shadow of a doubt?
Legal experts examine whether Gillette would be convicted by today’s courtroom standards
By DAVID DELLECESEObserver-Dispatch
Aghastly courtroomdisplay designed toshock. The murdervictim’s love lettersbordering on thesuicidal. A bodythat may have been
damaged during its recovery. Anautopsy performed after embalming.
Chester Gillette went to the elec-tric chair for killing Grace Brownafter a trial 100 years ago that mightnot have held up in today’s legal cli-mate, experts and observers say.
There were no eye-witnesses, andGillette never admitted guilt duringhis trial. It all came down to circum-stantial evidence, some of it improp-erly obtained.
Gerald Fiesinger, a Little Fallslawyer, says that while the Constitu-tion has remained the same, theinterpretation of the law that haschanged.
“From what I understand and canfigure out, it was basically a fairtrial,” he said.
A fair trial by 1906 standards, per-haps.
“By today's standards Gillette’sconviction would surely have beenoverturned. District AttorneyGeorge Ward broke all the modernrules about how to obtain evidence.Any of those things would have beengrounds to toss out the conviction.But those kinds of things were com-mon in 1906, and by those standardshe certainly got a fair trial,” saidCraig Brandon, author of “Murder inthe Adirondacks.”
Gillette was charged with strikingBrown with a tennis racket in a quietbay of the remote Big Moose Lake onJuly 11, 1906, and he was arrestedtwo days later. Almost immediately,newspapers breathlessly reportedon the case, coloring the trial thatfollowed in November.
HEATHER AINSWORTH / Observer-Dispatch
Chester Gillette was tried for the murder of Grace Brown at the Herkimer County Courthouse in1906. Although no longer used as a courthouse, much of the building appears as it did then.
Evidence collection
In several instances GraceBrown was said to have toldco-workers she hoped she“would not live to see the sun
rise again,” or that she was leav-ing, “never to be heard fromagain.”
Even the letters she wrote toChester Gillette seemed lacedwith overtones of suicidal ten-dencies. In one letter she wrote,“I hope I can die … and then youcan do just as you like.”
These letters, however, were,highly inadmissible againstGillette, forcefully retrieved from
Gillette’s living quarters in Cort-land without his consent.
“Today we couldn’t do thatunder the concept of the exclu-sionary rule. Because there was no search warrant we wouldnot have been able to use thosedocuments,” said Oneida CountyDistrict Attorney Michael Arcuri.
Each letter was presented as apiece of evidence in the trial.They were read aloud by the dis-trict attorney and admitted asproof of the relationship to estab-lish time, facts and proof in thecase.
Playing for emotions
Melodrama was a com-mon thread in thecase. Brown’s uterusand fetus, for example,
were removed from her body andexhibited for the jury. Objectionsto this display were constantlyoverruled, no doubt shocking thejury and spectators.
“It’s like autopsy photos. We arenot allowed to use excessiveautopsy photos,” Arcuri said.
According to Arcuri, attorneys
now are asked to pick one photo, within reason, showing awound.
“Certainly I would say the fetuscoming in like that is clearly, veryshocking,” Arcuri said.
Sara Beaty, an Albany-basedcivil lawyer, agreed. “Under theFederal Rules, there is no waythat could get in today. It’s proba-tive value clearly does not out-weigh its prejudicial value,” shesaid.
Continued on Page 7B
ON THE WEB Visit www.uticaOD.com for more
on the murder case:Excerpts from newspaper
coverage at the time.A 1981 interview with Roy
Higby, a 13-year-old working at Big Moose Lake in 1906.
The names of the jurors in the case. Sources: Observer-Dispatch files, Herkimer County Historical Society, New York Times
CHESTER GILLETTEThe face on the well-circulated photograph of
Chester Gillette isn’t easy to interpret. Is he con-fident? Defiant? Overwhelmed?
Gillette’s family was prominent in CortlandCounty. His uncle hired him to work at his skirtfactory.
It was there, in 1905, he met factory workerGrace “Billy” Brown and the two began a rela-tionship -- at about the same time Gillette start-ed to attend more social events in the communi-ty. Brown was found dead July 11, 1906, in anAdirondack lake and Gillette, 23, was chargedwith killing her. He went to trial and was convict-ed by a jury.
Gillette was executed in the electric chair in at thestate prison in Auburn on March 30, 1908.
GRACE BROWNThe sympathetic victim in the case, Grace
“Billy” Brown, came from a long-time ChenangoCounty-area family. Her father rented a farm inSouth Otselic where she grew up. Instead ofstaying on the farm, she left for Cortland whereshe took a job at the Gillette Skirt Factory.
She was 20 and pregnant when she died atthe hands of fellow factory worker ChesterGillette during an outing on Big Moose Lake inthe town of Webb. During his trial, her parentswere seen weeping during parts of the testimo-
ny.Grace’s love letters were entered into the trial
record. Her final letter is a touching but complexmissive about bidding goodbye to her mother and
familiar hometown places as she waits to meet Gillette.
From the victim and the culprit to lawmen, writers and townsfolk, the Chester Gillette story featured a colorful
cast of characters. Here are six of them.
GEORGE WARDDistrict Attorney George Washington Ward built
the Gillette case on circumstantial evidence.There were no eye-witnesses and Gillette main-tained his innocence throughout the trial.
Ward was many things: a teacher, reporterand lawyer, according to the history book“Herkimer County at 200.” The 36-year-old Dol-geville resident had been district attorneyabout three years when he began the prosecu-tion of Chester Gillette for killing Grace Brownin the summer of 1906. He called 100 people tothe stand and introduced scores of pieces of evi-dence in the trial.
Gillette went on to the electric chair. Ward wenton to become county judge, an acquaintance of Pres-ident Theodore Roosevelt and counsel to a U.S. senato-rial committee on dairy legislation.
Ward died at home in 1918 of Spanish influenza.
ROY HIGBYRoy Higby, who died in 1990 at age 97, was one
of the last living links to the Gillette case.As a 13-year-old in 1906, he worked on a
steamboat that traveled Big Moose Lake. Hisuncle owned the Glenmore Hotel, where thecouple had checked in July 11.
On many occasions over the years he relatedhis story to researchers and the curious. Theodd thing was, he never related duringGillette’s trial what he’d observed.
Higby, in a 1981 interview with the Utica DailyPress, said if he’d been allowed to take the stand,
there might not have been a conviction. He saidhe’d seen searchers use a sharp pointed object to
drag the lake for Grace’s body and that might havecaused the injuries blamed on the tennis racket
Gillette was said to have used to strike her. Still, Higbybelieved Gillette was a murderer.
BAT MASTERSONGunslinger, Indian fighter, sheriff of
Dodge City, Kansas – W.B. “Bat” Mas-terson was asked to cover a murdertrial in Herkimer County for a NewYork City newspaper in 1906.
He brought gusto to the reportingjob. His sensationalism merely gothim a slap on the wrist.
According to the New York Times inDecember 1906, Masterson and hisboss at the Morning Telegraph of NewYork City were fined and paid $50 eachfor contempt of court for publishing anarticle about the trial that said CountyCourt Judge Irving Devendorf wasswayed by mob spirit.
Masterson kept up his journalismcareer well beyond the trial. His endwasn’t in a blaze of gunfire he knew sowell, although it was in the line of duty.
He died at his editor’s desk in 1921.
THEODORE DREISERIn 1906, the murder case against
Chester Gillette was front page newslocally, but it also got the attention ofNew York City dailies, which foundthe case irresistible.
Author Theodore Dreiser, whoalready had written a few novels, wasintrigued by the New York Cityaccounts of the trial. In 1925 he wrote“An American Tragedy,” based on thecase.
The novel renewed interest in thecase and spawned two movies. “AnAmerican Tragedy” made the roundsin 1931 and “A Place in the Sun,” star-ring Montgomery Clift, Shelley Win-ters and Elizabeth Taylor, was the 1951version.
The works of Dreiser, who died in1945, continue to be the subject ofscholarly research.
The caption for this Dec. 1, 1906, Utica Saturday Globe illustrationread “Rowboat which figured in the Gillette murder case.”
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