In 1906, the Southern Pacific railway station in Stockton (today one of Amtrak’s busiest California stations) stood on South San Joaquin Street. At about 5:00 p.m. on 24 March, the Saturday afternoon train pulled into the Mission Revival–style depot for a short stop on its way to Sacramento. Baggage handler Nicholas Vizelich took the numerous bags on the platform and loaded them onto the train.
Just as the train began to pull out, workers on board tossed a large trunk back onto the platform because it lacked identifying tags. Vizelich looked closely; the trunk was indeed missing any identification. He had the rather heavy piece of luggage moved into the baggage room and told himself that he would look into the matter the next day. He weighed the item at 225 pounds and then locked it away in a safe area and went home for dinner.
Back at work later that evening, he and John Thompson, the station baggage master, began to smell a horrific odor in the station. Vizelich had been in contact with corpses before, and he knew the smell of decomposing human flesh. The two men searched the station and found the smell was quite evident near the trunk with no tags. They called the police.
At 10:00 p.m., Police Captain John Walker arrived at the station and opened the trunk. As he did, two legs, wearing no shoes on the feet, sprang out. A man, completely dressed except for his shoes, had been jammed into the trunk. His legs had been broken backwards and placed on both sides of his head, to fit him in. Blood ran from his face, and had pooled onto the floor of the trunk and had begun to escape to the outside. The man was unidentified, except for his unique moustache, a drooping mat of facial hair known as a “waterfall”—quite popular at the time. Walker had the trunk taken to the coroner, and, with the body removed, had the trunk itself impounded at the police station.
A quick investigation found that the trunk had been delivered to the railway station with a woman, estimated to be in her 30s, who had become quite upset when the trunk had not come on time for the train that was departing. Once the trunk arrived, however, she asked that it be put on the train to Sacramento, and was never seen again. Presumably she got on that train, and now her trunk—and its human contents—had not arrived at her destination.
The next morning, the police found the express man, Charles Berry, who had taken the trunk from the California House, a hotel in Stockton, to the railway station. Taken to the police station, he identified the trunk and told the police he had picked it up from room 97. The register showed room 97’s occupants to have been “A.N. McVicar and Wife, Jamestown, California.” The woman who ran the hotel identified McVicar as a tall man with a drooping moustache, and his wife as an attractive woman.
In room 97, police found a small piece of luggage with photographs inside of a man and a woman, obviously left behind in a rush to leave. The landlady of the hotel identified the people in the photographs as Mr. and Mrs. McVicar. Expressman Berry then told police that he had delivered the trunk the same day it was taken to the railway station; Mrs. McVicar had purchased it at Rosenbaum’s General Store on Main Street. She had also purchased a length of hemp rope, which was used to bind the trunk shut.
On 25 March, police positively identified the “trunk murder victim” as Albert N. McVicar, who had been employed as a timber man in the Rawhide mine located at Jamestown, in Tuolumne County, California. The identification came after two men working at Breuner’s furniture store in Stockton recognized McVicar as the man they had sold a bill of goods, to be shipped the following week to his home in Jamestown. They said the woman came in later and changed the order to be shipped to Martell’s station, near Jackson, California, and that they were to be sent to her brother, a Mr. Le Doux. She was later identified as Emma Le Doux. Police now put out an all-points bulletin for the arrest of Emma Le Doux, riding on a train somewhere between San Francisco and Sacramento. She was described as being in her 30s, with brown hair and wearing a hat.1
Such a crime would naturally become big news, even in the day when stories took days or even weeks to attract national attention. But this story was bigger than big. The Amador Ledger noted, “The case attracted unparalleled attention throughout the country at the time and the successful prosecution of the case by District Attorney McNoble, owing to the unusual circumstances of the murder and the lack of seemingly the main essentials to bring about a conviction, was heralded as one of the most brilliant achievements by way of prosecutions that has ever been recorded in this section.”2
* * *
Little is known—even in the age of Internet public records searches—about just who Emma Le Doux was and where she came from. Numerous sources give her maiden name as Head. She was born in Amador County, California, in 1871, although there is no record of her or her family in the 1880 U.S. Census. However, according to the state of California, when Le Doux died in 1941, her death certificate gave her date of birth as 10 September 1872, her place of birth as Kern, California, and her parents’ names as Cole and Gardner, with no last name given. But there is no “Cole Head” or “Gardner Head” listed in the 1870 or 1880 census for California.3
Another source says her maiden name was Cole, and we find an Emma Cole in the 1880 Census, aged 8 (born circa 1872), living with her parents Rufus Cole and Joshea Cole (and a brother, also named Rufus, aged 7), in Cottonwood, Siskiyou County. Yet it can’t be stated with any certainty that this is her actual family—if so, this may be the closest that we shall ever come to discovering Emma Le Doux’s true roots.4
The only definite document we can attach to Le Doux is the 1910 U.S. Census, where she was surveyed as a prisoner at the women’s prison at San Quentin. She reported at that time that she was 37 years of age (making the 1872 date approximate), was married, and was in fact born in California; and while the census does not list her parents’ names, she did state that her father was born in Maine and her mother in California. She also reported that her “occupation” was as a “seamstress” in the “female dept.”5
Crime historians, some of whom give her date of birth solidly as 1871, state that she was married perhaps four times. The first time was apparently to a man named Charlie Barrett, who crime historian Robert Jay Nash reports “died in Mexico a short time after the couple moved there.”6
Soon after, Le Doux apparently married a man named William Williams, who allegedly (again, with little to no information) also died under mysterious circumstances, possibly in Globe, Arizona, a town located approximately 88 miles due east of Phoenix. Emma Williams apparently collected some insurance upon his death. She vanished, and went to work in a house “of ill fame” in San Francisco.
Later, she appeared with another man in tow, Albert N. McVicar. They married in Bisbee, in Arizona Territory, on 1 September 1902. Emma McVicar then married Eugene (perhaps Jean) Le Doux on 26 August 1905 in Woodland, California—without ever getting a divorce from McVicar.7
Eugene and Emma Le Doux were allegedly childhood sweethearts, but with everything involved in Emma Le Doux’s life, this is just speculation. Sometime in early 1906, although she had not seen McVicar for some time, Emma Le Doux convinced him to give up his position in the Rawhide mine in Jackson, take his pay of approximately $160, and come to see her in Stockton, where she allegedly murdered him. McVicar, in the California Supreme Court appeal, was described as “about thirty-seven years of age, weighed about one hundred and eighty-five pounds, [and] was vigorous and in good health.”8
Facts regarding this portion of Emma Le Doux’s life come from the California Supreme Court decision on her case in 1909 (People v. Le Doux, 102 Pacific Reporter 517):
On 26 March, after a lengthy manhunt, Le Doux was arrested at the Arlington Hotel in Antioch, California, by Constable John Whelehan (some sources state that the arresting officer was Stockton Town Marshal Thomas B. Sharon). She was with another man, identified as Joe Healy.9 Le Doux told the police that McVicar had robbed her of some $6000, most of the $10,000 she had received from the life insurance payout from the death of her “second” husband, William Williams. In the meantime, her “companion,” the plumber Joe Healy, was taken into custody by San Francisco Detective Ed Gibson. After being interrogated by the police, Healy convinced them that he had nothing to do with McVicar’s death. According to one newspaper, “His examination, however, has brought out a remarkable story of his relations with the accused woman, from which it appears that he was at one time one of her intended victims. Healy lives in the Mission, where he had always been supposed to be a sort of woman hater rather than the consort of women of the type of Emma Le Doux.”10 The police who investigated the case in San Francisco said Le Doux was well known in the so-called “tenderloin district” of the city, where she was known by the name Emma Held.11
From the moment that the story broke, and Le Doux was arrested, public interest in the case exploded. One newspaper dubbed her a female “Bluebeard,” after the 17th century French folktale of a nobleman who murdered his wives.12
Le Doux told the police that a man named Joe Miller was the real murderer of Albert McVicar; she described Miller as a “sandy complexioned man with a smooth face.” Witnesses had stated that they saw Le Doux at the Stockton train station with an unidentified male acquaintance, so this part of her story seemed to check out. This man, whoever he was and whether or not he was indeed with Le Doux, or just happened to be standing where she was, was never identified and was never found.13
Immediately after her arrest, Le Doux was taken before Justice of the Peace J.P. Abbott in Antioch, where she gave the following statement:
We had all been drinking and McVicar and I were drinking. McVicar had lots of money and Joe Miller gave him carbolic acid. Then I don’t know just what happened. Miller and I put the body in the trunk and sent it to the depot. I wanted to go right away to my mother at Jackson but Miller wouldn’t let me. He made me go to San Francisco with him Saturday night and Sunday. Monday night we left San Francisco with tickets for Stockton. At Richmond Miller left me and went back to San Francisco and I got off here at Antioch. I did not kill McVicar. I went into the room and saw McVicar frothing at the mouth. He may have been given carbolic acid by Miller when I was out of the room.
Le Doux then gave the police a bottle of carbolic acid and a knife which she said belonged to Miller. She continued, “Miller got all the money. I do not know how much there was, but he got it. After McVicar was dead I went out and bought the trunk. Yes, that’s true. Then we went to the Southern Pacific station after he put the body in the trunk. I helped him do that. I wanted to go to see my mother, but Miller got mad and said no, that I must go to San Francisco. We went to the Presidio and then we started for Stockton.” Le Doux said that after she got to Stockton she sent a telegram to Joe Healy, a plumber to whom she had once been engaged, and asked him to meet her at the Royal House in San Francisco. She registered there as Mrs. E. Williams. She told Healy that McVicar was dead, but not that she had put him into the trunk. She told police that he was supposed to be shipped to his brother in Cripple Creek, Colorado, but did not think of the shock which would occur when the trunk arrived with a corpse inside.14
At first, Le Doux’s entire story was believed. In an age when women were considered second-class citizens, it was not beyond belief that a woman could be forced to do as a man demanded without his being in any legal trouble.
However, the evidence found in the trunk was contrary to the tale that Le Doux told. One newspaper bleated out, “Her statement does not account for the bruises on the head, and as for carbolic acid, the autopsy surgeons did not discover any trace of it…. A bottle with some whisky in it was found in the room, and the woman may have given him poison in a drink…. A person taking carbolic acid would not be immediately incapacitated from putting up a hard struggle, and there was no sign of a struggle.”15
In an interview with the Oakland Tribune, Marshal P.B. Shine stated, “We have the woman all right and she admits her connection with the murder. She has her nerve with her and is willing to tell all about the story and implicates the mysterious Joe Miller. In fact, she charges that he was the man who did the dirty work.” He added, “She is a woman of prepossessing appearance … and, perhaps, from indications, she has followed the red light district for some time.”16
Then, on 29 March, newspapers reported that
Dr. John F. Dillon of [San Francisco] was called by Mrs. Le Doux on March 12th to treat McVicar for alleged ptomaine poisoning. The woman later tried to purchase cyanide of potassium at Dillon’s drug store on Fourth Street, but was given an order for its purchase at the Baldwin pharmacy, as Dillon did not have the deadly drug in stock. Dr. Dillon says, “I am at a loss to know where it was found out that I had anything to do with Mrs. Le Doux or McVicar, as I have been keeping quiet and trying to stay out of the scandal. For many years past I have known the Head family, and have been their family physician. I am well acquainted with Emma McVicar’s two sisters in this city, and have known Emma for a long time. Monday evening, March 12th. I was summoned to the Lexington Hotel at 212 Eddy Street, by Emma, and there I found McVicar in their room in a terrible condition. It was evident at once that the man had been poisoned. Emma seemed very much concerned and worried about him and hastened to explain that they had been out to dinner and had eaten some shellfish and drank some beer, and she thought that this had poisoned McVicar. She impressed this on me several times. The man was retching and was as weak as could be. He was in a deplorable condition, and I diagnosed the case as ptomaine poisoning and gave him an emetic and applied restoratives. He vomited freely and then seemed to improve, although he was still very weak from his spasms. I did all I could for him and left. The next morning I went around to the Lexington and found McVicar better, although still very weak. I gave him a strong tonic and he seemed to improve and I left. The first night when I called to help McVicar, Emma came up and asked me for some morphine. She said she could not sleep without it and that she was in the habit of taking the drug. I gave her a small vial containing twenty-five half-grain hypodermic tablets.”
When Le Doux wanted additional medications, Dillon sent her to the pharmacy of E.J. Baldwin, who apparently gave her what she needed. Le Doux and McVicar then departed for Stockton. By the 24th, McVicar was dead.17
Over the next several days, additional evidence arose that cast major doubt on Le Doux’s tale. On 30 March, a coroner’s jury released its official findings—no carbolic acid was found anywhere in McVicar’s body. The jury stated, “We believe that Albert N. McVicar came to his death from the combined effects of having been drugged with morphine and chloral [hydrate] and in a dazed condition having been forced into a closed trunk, where there was not sufficient oxygen to sustain what life there was present.”18
According to one report, “Dr. J.P. Hull, one of the autopsy surgeons, stated that the presence of a large quantity of blood in the trunk showed conclusively that the man must have been alive, though probably in a stupor, when he was placed in the trunk, as the breaking of a blood vessel after death would have caused little or no hemorrhage. No blood was found in the room…. The condition of the lungs and other organs gave evidence of asphyxiation, and the report of the chemist showed evidence of chloral hydrate and morphine in the stomach.”19
The jury also found that “one Mrs. Emma Le Doux was responsible for the death of Albert N. McVicar and … that she was unaided.”20 There was no “Joe Miller.”
San Joaquin County District Attorney Charles Willis Norton took the bottle that Le Doux had with her when arrested, and gave it to Dr. R.R. Rodgers to analyze its contents. On 1 April, he found that the six-ounce vial that Le Doux had with her when she was arrested had no cyanide in it, and that the “fluid” in the bottle was probably morphine.21
And then on 31 March, police made a frightening discovery: Le Doux had purchased a meat ax in San Francisco before she left the city with McVicar to his ultimate rendezvous with death. The San Francisco Chronicle asked, “Just what the purpose of the woman was in including the meat ax among the more refined implements of murder with which she had prepared herself, is difficult to state with conviction; she herself refuses to commit herself more than to remark that it was ‘for her mother.’ But the inference that naturally presents itself is that she had intended to use the cleaver to cut up the corpse after she had arrived with it at her destination….”22
Albert McVicar’s brother, J.E. McVicar, and his uncle, Albert M. Sullivan, visited Le Doux in her prison cell on 2 April. When introduced to them, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “she offered her hand, and, after shaking hands with them, sat down and talked for a short time. Sullivan, as well as McVicar, told her that they hoped she could prove her innocence, but they said that they would do all they could to convict the murderer. She replied that she did not blame them in the least and asked that they withhold their opinion until the case was presented to a jury.”23
* * *
On 3 April, a little more than a week after her arrest, Le Doux was quietly taken from her jail cell to the courthouse in a closed carriage and arraigned for the murder of Albert N. McVicar. Her attorneys were informed of the proceedings only moments before they occurred, and told reporters that they had been told that the arraignment would not happen until the following day. There were fewer than a dozen people in the court, and, according to a newspaper account, “when Mrs. Le Doux stood up and listened to the reading of the indictment against her … she did not show the slightest sign of nervousness and kept her eyes on the clerk without so much as closing an eyelid. When asked if she was guilty or not guilty her attorneys asked that the case be postponed until April 16th. In the meantime, they may ask that the indictment be quashed or file a demurrer.”24
The case was docketed for trial. Selected to preside was Judge William Bronson Nutter.25 Born in Nevada County, California, in 1859, the son of a veteran of the Mexican War, Nutter was admitted to the state bar in 1885. Elected city attorney for Stockton in 1888, he rose to become a leading judge in the city.26
Trying the case for the state were District Attorney Charles Willis Norton27 and Assistant District Attorney George F. McNoble. Norton was a native son of California. Born on his father’s ranch near Lodi in 1861, he was admitted to the California bar in 1889, served as deputy district attorney of San Joaquin County from 1899 to 1902, and district attorney from 1906 to 1916. The Le Doux case would make him famous.
McNoble was born in Calaveras County in 1866, but moved to Stockton for his education and graduated in 1889. He was soon elected principal of the Weber School, a post he held for several years. Little is reported on his legal career.28
Called in to defend Mrs. Le Doux were Charles H. Fairall of San Francisco and Charles Crocker of Jackson. Fairall was a noted San Francisco attorney who also operated in the San Joaquin Valley. Although most of the sources listed him as the lead defense counsel, in fact he was brought onto the case by Crocker. A 1909 biography of leading lawyers in California noted
Book agents are the bane of Charles H. Fairall’s life. The well-known attorney who has built up an enviable reputation for force and shrewdness in famous criminal trials dodges the gentlemanly book agent or the young lady who seeks to secure his subscription for a magazine as though they were trying to hand him a dynamite bomb warranted to go off as soon as he touched it. “If it were not for the book agents I believe I would be perfectly happy,” said Fairall the other day. “I turn down nine propositions that have some merit to them and then some benevolent old gentleman comes along and stings me for a de luxe [sic] edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Every time I listen to one of these agents I buy something that I don’t want or subscribe to some new thought periodical.”29
When Fairall died in 1915, he was in the midst of another high-profile criminal trial, and it had to be put off because of his passing.30
Little can be found on Charles Crocker; we need to look to a biography of one William E. Hopping, an original “Forty-niner” in the gold fields of California; of him it was written, “He subsequently went to Big Cañon and he and Charles Crocker mined there together.”31
The case against Emma Le Doux seemed open and shut … but with a closer glance, it wasn’t. Even after a lengthy investigation, prosecutors admitted that they could find no clear motive for Le Doux to murder her husband. Could it have been so that she could steal McVicar’s pay that he had with him? It seems questionable for a murder to happen over $160—perhaps $4000 in today’s money—but people have killed for less. Maybe Le Doux had wanted to rid herself of a husband whom she had never divorced, making her a bigamist? The Sacramento Union reported, “The prosecution has been unable to find a motive for the alleged murder, but it will get over that difficulty by urging that the defendant desired to rid herself of McVicar. The defense will probably seek to show that McVicar took his own life or that the poisoning of him was an accident.”32
The lawyers for Le Doux soon gave notice as to their argument in defense of their client: Albert McVicar came to his death at his own hand, either by design or by accident. This was revealed by lead defense attorney Charles Fairall during voir dire, the questioning of potential jurors. This became apparent when Joe Miller, whom Le Doux accused of murdering McVicar, turned out to be nonexistent.33 Defense attorney Fairall used this gambit in his opening statement to the jury when the trial opened: Albert McVicar killed himself, probably intentionally, through the use of poison.34
* * *
The murder trial of Emma Le Doux opened in department No. 3 of the Superior Court in Stockton on 5 June 1906.35 Jury selection began, and took several days. When court adjourned on 8 June, twelve men had been picked to hear the case. Judge Nutter admonished them and told them to refrain from reading or talking about the case.36
In his opening statement, District Attorney Norton told the jury that Emma Le Doux killed her husband, Albert McVicar, because of her love for Eugene Le Doux, and to rob him of his pay, which she had convinced him to take from his final employer. The defense objected to any testimony tying Emma Le Doux to the deceased without first proving that she had killed him, but the judge overruled the objection.37
By the end of the prosecution’s case, there was a belief that the case against Le Doux was far weaker than first presumed. The Call of San Francisco noted, “The spectators who have crowded Judge Nutter’s court-room from day to day hoping to hear something sensational in the Le Doux murder trial have so far been disappointed. The evidence up to this point has to a great extent been a recital of physical facts, and none of it has as yet pointed directly to the accused as far as her actual connection with the death of McVicar is concerned.”38
On 13 June, the prosecution called its final witness: chemist R.R. Rodgers, “who testified that a man could live in the trunk in evidence … indefinitely, except for food and water, in the condition in which the trunk was found.” On cross-examination, Rodgers admitted that that very morning he had been able to stay in the trunk for forty minutes, “without inconvenience.” Rodgers had his pulse and respiration taken every three minutes.39
Prosecutor Norton then presented to the jury a series of letters, as it was reported, “which Mrs. Le Doux had written to Eugene Le Doux after her marriage to McVicar and before the bigamous marriage to Le Doux. These letters were replete with endearing terms and declarations of undying love. They had been read to Le Doux by his brother [Frank], a nineteen-year-old boy, the man being unable to read or write. The letters all went in under persistent objections on the part of the defense, which were renewed when the noon recess was taken, on the ground that the evidence was illegally secured by the prosecution.” The prosecution then rested.40
The defense, from the start, took two tracks: McVicar killed himself; and he was already dead when someone—not their client—put him into the trunk. All of this was in opposition to the final prosecution witnesses, doctors who conducted the autopsy on McVicar and testified that bruises on his head were ante mortem, or done previous to death, that he was alive when put into the trunk, and that he bled for some period of time in that space.41
The defense opened its case in chief on 19 June. One newspaper wrote, “Physicians testified regarding the relative actions of various poisons, ante and post mortem bruises, the blood and other matters of a like character. The testimony was introduced to support the contention of the defense that the deceased came to his death from cyanide poisoning, self-administered, and that he was dead when placed in the trunk.”42
During the first day of the defense, Le Doux’s mother fainted during the testimony, and her daughter “sprang to her aid and gave her some water from a glass, after which the prostrate woman was carried from the courtroom by a bailiff and others. As Mrs. Head groaned, Mrs. Le Doux burst into tears and was almost beside herself. She was soon herself again, however, and assumed the air of unruffled calm which has characterized her demeanor throughout the trial.”
Mary Head later took the stand. According to one report, “She testified that her daughter had been a user of morphine at different times for the past four or five years, and that McVicar had tried to have her (the witness) coax her daughter to marry him again, thus indicating a divorce.”43 On cross, the prosecutor got Mrs. Head to admit that she had said something completely different when questioned by the district attorney. He later called a witness on rebuttal who stated that Emma Le Doux had had no morphine while in jail, and that she had never asked for any.
Although Emma Le Doux never took the stand, she was deeply involved in assisting her attorneys with her defense, as one newspaper noted: “Mrs. Le Doux was in constant communication with her attorneys during the labors of the day. Her time was taken up in comparing the testimony of witnesses with the actual facts as she knew them, and she advised her attorneys at all times that they might be able to intelligently cross-examine. She is very cool and self-composed, and does not seem to fear or to be affected by testimony along general lines. An examination of the bloodstained trunk or an exhibition of discolored and wrinkled clothes alone cause her distress.”44
On 21 June, the defense rested, and closing arguments were then delivered. Assistant District Attorney McNoble spoke for some five hours in the first prosecution close. One newspaper stated, “His address to the jury was a very plain and direct statement of the case, as viewed by the prosecution, without any bitterness or flights of oratory, and it was listened to with evident interest by the twelve men. He showed that a great many of the statements of the woman to the officers after her arrest were entirely at variance with the known physical facts, and contended that the murder had been premeditated for at least two weeks, the motive being to get McVicar out of the way that he might not meet her other husband, Eugene Le Doux, as such a meeting would expose her double life and result in her arrest for bigamy and perjury.”45
The defense closing was done first by Charles Crocker, followed by Charles Fairall. Crocker’s close lasted from noon until 4 pm; it was reported that during the defense’s arguments “[t]he courtroom and corridors were blocked with people and hundreds were turned away.”46 Fairall’s closing consumed the remainder of the day on 21 June and concluded on the following day. One newspaper reported, “Fairall … created a sensation in court this afternoon by taking up certain portions of the testimony presented by the prosecution and showing that Mrs. Le Doux must have been in two different places at the same time on two or three separate occasions. One witness told of having heard a thud when McVicar’s body was supposed to have been rolled into the trunk, yet two other witnesses testified that for several minutes prior to and after that particular time the woman was purchasing a hat in a millinery store. Another time she was alleged to have been in the room with McVicar, but a clerk testified [that] Mrs. Le Doux was purchasing a large bill of lady’s apparel from her at that time.” Fairall held the court transcript before the jury and read the alleged conflicting testimony to the jurors.47
In his final closing argument, prosecutor Charles Norton told the jury that Le Doux killed her husband because she was afraid of being sent to prison for bigamy. Her planning was diabolical: she lured McVicar to the hotel room, poisoned him, then purchased the trunk and rope, and pushed him into the trunk and then prepared to ship him home so that she could be rid of the body and the evidence of her crime.48
On 23 June 1906, following fifteen days of trial testimony, Judge Nutter instructed the jury on the law and sent them off for deliberations. These lasted only until 8:55 p.m. that night, when “all of the jurors voted for guilty on the first ballot, but that two of them stood out for a recommendation of mercy, which would have made it optional with the judge as to whether he would give a life sentence or order the extreme penalty.” The ten on the panel who wanted death then argued for hours with the two who were opposed, until a few minutes before 9 p.m., when a cheer could be heard from the jury room.49
The jury then returned and convicted Le Doux of first-degree murder. According to one newspaper, “The defendant was apparently prepared for the worst, for she did not show great emotion when the verdict was announced, only uttering a guttural exclamation and then regaining her remarkable composure. She afterward made light of the situation and seemed to smile as she discussed the case with her counsel and friends who were with her throughout the trial. She shook hands with her attorneys and thanked them for their hard fight for her and seemed to have no fear for the future.”50
Other newspapers took note of Le Doux’s “steel” and “hardness” during the reading of the verdict. One used the headline “strictly tough.”51
* * *
Behind-the-scenes, Emma Le Doux was a medical disaster. One newspaper reported on 26 June, just after her conviction, that she was a “morphine fiend,” firmly addicted to the drug, and that she had “turned over to her attorney in the visiting room of the county jail six quarter-grain tablets of morphine, at his request, and he in turn gave them to the sheriff’s office, with the exception of a quarter grain, which fell on the cement floor of the jail and broke [open]. Mrs. Le Doux told the sheriff on Sunday that she had a grain and a half of the poison, but refused to disclose its hiding place. The sheriff demanded the poison, but she refused to give it up without seeing her attorney. Fairall advised her to give it up, which she did. She said it was morphine which kept her up during the trial.”52
Not long after Le Doux was convicted, shocking developments struck the core of the case. On 9 July, while arguing for a new trial for his client, attorney Charles Fairall presented to the court two affidavits, which stated that juror August C. Ritter had made statements during the trial that put his objectivity into question. Ritter allegedly told one man, identified as Charles F. Murphy, “I will hang the bitch.” To another, Ritter allegedly said, “I believe the woman is guilty, and she ought to have her neck broke.” Angered at the allegations, Judge Nutter issued citations for the two witnesses to appear before him, to get their side of the story, perhaps under oath.53
First, however, on 7 August, Nutter sentenced Le Doux to death by hanging, setting her execution for 19 October. One newspaper account noted, “Standing erect, without a tremor or the slightest indication that she was to receive the death sentence, Mrs. Emma Le Doux … heard Judge W.B. Nutter deliver the words which will mean her death unless something intervenes between now and October 19th, when she is to be hanged at San Quentin Prison.”54
Le Doux’s attorneys asked the court for a new trial, based on the unfairness of the jury selection process—that the sheriff, who had an obvious and open bias against the defendant, had selected the potential jurors instead of the court, and that one, if not two of the jurors were also biased before they were selected. A hearing on this opened in early August 1906 before Judge Nutter. The defense presented affidavits from one W.H. Smith, listed as “colored,” and Charles F. Murphy, described as a “youth,” in which they swore that juror A.M. Ritter had declared to them during the trial that he would “hang the defendant.” The prosecution entered affidavits that Smith was an ex-convict, and that Murphy was “a weak-minded, untruthful and unreliable boy.”55
Fairall then declared that the court had not given him sufficient time to prepare counter-affidavits to those attacking the mental capacity of Charles Murphy; Nutter then granted him additional time to prepare these counter-affidavits. Fairall then filed an affidavit signed by thirty-three persons, headed by Father W.B. O’Connor and other clergymen of the Catholic Church, who declared that Murphy was of good character and would not tell an untruth.56
Nutter did not believe the two affiants: he charged them with contempt of court and ordered them to serve two days in jail each. When Fairall asked that Ritter be also held for contempt, Nutter refused, but demanded that he be in court on 3 August.57
Ritter then appeared in court and denied that he had made such statements to either man.58 The following day, however, the affidavits of thirty witnesses as to Charles H. Murphy’s “good character” were admitted. One newspaper noted, “Murphy is an Irishman and his Irish blood is up.” When the prosecution introduced affidavits calling Murphy “locoed” [sic] and “half-baked,” attorney Fairall objected, angrily.59
Despite this evidence, on 7 August Nutter held against the defense and denied the motion for a new trial. It was at that time he formally sentenced Le Doux to death by hanging.60
Even after being convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Le Doux never lost her bravado in the face of such events. On 22 August, the Los Angeles Herald reported that Le Doux was received into the Catholic Church on Sunday, 19 August. “She sent for a Catholic priest about two months ago and was instructed and baptized by the Jesuit father, the Rev. Joseph C. Sassia of St. Mary’s Church, Stockton,” the paper said.61
* * *
In November 1909, months after her conviction, The Amador Ledger followed up with a update on Le Doux: “Carefully guarded within a secluded cell, away from the ‘staring morbid crowds’ and the distasteful notoriety, Mrs. Emma Le Doux, half contented with and half indifferent to her fate, is spending the passing days of her life, obtaining what solace she can from the religion she has so recently imbibed, pausing only now and then in her meditations to rouse up the old hope that might again be free and not called upon to surrender her life on the gallows in expiation of the great crime of which she was convicted.”62
Two years after her sentence, from her jail cell in the county jail in Stockton, she “expressed the belief that the higher court [the California Supreme Court] would give her a new trial and she expects ultimately to be acquitted of the murder of McVicar. The woman has never at any time given the least sign of breaking down and had always maintained that she was innocent of the crime charged against her.”63
And while Le Doux waited, her attorneys worked to get her a new trial. One newspaper reported, “The lawyers for the defense of Mrs. Emma Le Doux, now under sentence of death for murder in the first degree, are diligently employed in compiling a monster bill of exceptions preparatory to perfecting an appeal to the supreme court [sic] of California. This bill will probably be the largest ever presented in a like case in the courts of this county and the expense for printing the briefs alone will reach a sum close upon $1300.”64
In January 1907, a reporter from the Stockton Independent was able to get into the jail and interview Le Doux. Another paper picked up the story: “She stood without a railing and quietly surveyed her small audience, remaining quite still until Sheriff Sibley offered an introduction to the reporters, of the afternoon papers, who had never before talked with the woman. She shook hands with all present…. At the invitation of the sheriff, Mrs. Le Doux stepped inside the railing and took her seat amongst the small group of reporters.”
The story continued, “She entered into a general conversation with her auditors and attempted to impress upon them the fact that she had been treated with greatest respect by all the officials. Neither did she want anyone, official or other person, to believe that she worried over her misfortune—the sentence of death. She said she was satisfied, she looked the part, and acted it well.” The sheriff said that he allowed the interview due to several rumors involving Le Doux, one of which was that she was “enceinte”—pregnant—and that he wanted the press to see that they were untrue.65
In January 1908, the California State Supreme Court heard arguments on whether or not to grant Le Doux a new trial.66 On 13 January, Le Doux attorney Charles Fairall argued before the justices that the jury selection process was illegal, mainly because the man who selected the prospective jurors was openly for her conviction, and that the jurors were influenced by newspaper accounts of the crime and its aftermath.67
On 19 May 1909, the Supreme Court of California struck down Le Doux’s conviction, remanding the case back to the court in San Joaquin County for retrial. In an opinion by Justice Frederick W. Henshaw, and concurred by Chief Justice William H. Beatty and Justices William G. Lorigan and Henry A. Melvin, the court held that Nutter had erred in not allowing the defense to challenge the special venire of 75 men chosen for jury duty, because they had been summoned to court by the sheriff and he may have been prejudiced against the defendant. For this solitary reason, Le Doux was given a new trial. The justices wrote, however, “It is not contended that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict and judgment…” In short, they believed that Le Doux was guilty, but that she had not gotten a fair trial.68
The district attorney’s office in Stockton was not happy with the reversal. Now–District Attorney George F. McNoble wanted to secure a rehearing before the high court; he decided to ask the state to petition the court for a rehearing.69
The California State attorney general, Ulysses S. Webb, filed a petition before the court, asking for a rehearing.70 The court ordered a rehearing, but, on 24 June 1909, ultimately upheld its decision, specifically because the sheriff who called the potential jurors admitted in an affidavit that he had, in fact, been biased against Le Doux.71
The decision of the State Supreme Court had an immediate effect: when another murder trial, that of Samuel Axtell, opened in Stockton in October 1911, a group of potential jurors was selected by the court instead of the sheriff, reflecting the impact of the decision.72
Le Doux’s second trial was scheduled for 2 February 1910. However, even as the state prepared to retry her, Le Doux was spreading the word that she was dying of tuberculosis, and that a second trial was unnecessary and would be cruel to her.73
On 30 November 1909, physicians appointed to examine Le Doux reported to the district attorney that she did not have tuberculosis, or any ailment associated with it.74 With this finding, the court was set to proceed with the trial in February.75 Despite the diagnosis, Le Doux and her lawyers continued to tell reporters that she indeed was dying of consumption,76 or they acted as if she were dying of some unknown disease, looking for sympathy wherever they could find it. Her attorney, Charles H. Fairall, reported that Le Doux was “failing fast…. [and] expressed fears that she would not survive the winter in jail.”77
As she faced retrial and a possible second conviction, Le Doux made a deal with prosecutors: in exchange for dropping the death penalty, she would plead guilty to murder and receive a life sentence. Thus, on 25 January 1910, she stood before the court that had originally found her guilty and admitted her guilt. She was then sentenced to life.78
Le Doux made a final request: she asked permission to see her mother to bid her farewell.79 She then prepared to be moved to her permanent home at San Quentin. Police expected large crowds at the train station to see her off, “as hundreds have been anxious to get a view of the woman who for months created no end of talk here and throughout the West.”80
Emma Le Doux arrived at San Quentin from Stockton on 2 February 1910, accompanied by Sheriff Walter F. Sibley and Mrs. George Shepherd, the matron of the county jail at Stockton. The inmate, seeing her new surroundings, was impressed: “It is a far nicer place than I expected,” she told the matron.81
For the next several years, nothing was heard from Le Doux—she served her time quietly. Then, in 1913, her name reappeared in the news: she was again claiming to be sick and dying of tuberculosis, and was seeking parole.82 The following year, she asked Stockton District Attorney Edward P. Foltz to support her claim for a pardon from Governor Hiram W. Johnson. Foltz told reporters he would not discuss the matter. It does not appear that he ever signed such a recommendation.83
Parole was ultimately turned down, but this did not deter Le Doux. In 1917, she again asked Foltz for a recommendation, and put her name before the State Board of Prison Directors. Foltz, once again, told reporters that he would make no recommendation for her to be released. The board ruled against parole a second time.84
By 1920, Le Doux had been a model prisoner and, even though she had received a life sentence after being spared the death penalty, she was considered for parole and release. As the State of California prepared the process to release her, a complication arose: her third (or fourth?) husband, Eugene Le Doux, asked for an annulment of their marriage, forcing her parole to be set aside until the legalities could be straightened out.85
Le Doux refused “to assume responsibility for the care of the woman he married, should plans for her release on parole be carried through.” This threw a kink into the law covering the release of prisoners, because, as it was noted, “Efforts are being made now to obtain the release of Mrs. Le Doux on parole. In order to do this it is necessary to show that there is someone who will care for her. Under the law this responsibility falls on Le Doux. He has refused to accept it, and before another person can be appointed the couple must be legally separated. The first step toward this separation is the filing of the annulment suit by Le Doux.”86 At some point this controversy was cleared up: the annulment or divorce was granted, and, on 20 July 1920, Warden James A. Johnson announced that Le Doux had received parole, and would be released shortly.87 She was released ten days later.88
If authorities had hoped that paroling Le Doux would somehow turn her from a life of crime, they were dead wrong. In 1931, the 57-year-old murderess, now known as Emma Crackbon, was arrested in Berkeley, California, for passing worthless checks. Taken into custody with her was 38-year old Albert R. Thompson, also a former convict, charged with being her accomplice.89
Because she had violated parole, Le Doux was sent back to San Quentin. Before long, she was again complaining of her surroundings, and broke out the same sympathy-seeking tactics she had always used. In April 1931 she claimed she was going blind and needed to be released. One eye was blank and the other was dimming, she said. “I need only this to complete the heaped-up tragedies of my life,” she told her jailers, to no effect. “I’ve never had a chance from the beginning. I want to go home to my mother.” Of her new cell, she said, “I don’t like it here. I like the old place better.” The “old place” was the former women’s prison, now used as part of the main male facility. Again, parole was denied.90
Yet even if she could be somehow released from her latest incarceration, the San Francisco Chronicle noted, “Emma Le Doux presents a grave complex for which the law has no solution, say her jailers. Twice released from jail on a promise to be good, she has each time violated the promise and been brought back. And the reason on each of those occasions was the same as that which brought her originally to San Quentin’s somber gates—men.” After her first parole,
She told her keepers that men no longer intrigued her, that she could go out into the world and lead a life of usefulness—if only she had a chance…. [Then] it was the same old story—this time on a bigger scale…. She was the feminine correspondent who answered the letters of the lovelorn males, and men with money in their pockets who were seeking a wife, were writing to her. An investigation followed. The parole office uncovered an odd situation—a woman of almost 58 who had all the lure and fascination of a girl of 18, still attracting gullible men, wealthy bachelors, widowers with bank accounts, and doing it by a few well-turned phrases in a letter. One man came to see her, they found, with $3000 in his hand. There were others.91
When she had been arrested for vagrancy in 1931, Le Doux was using the pseudonym “Mrs. Grace Miller.” It was not until she appeared before a judge in Oakland that she properly identified herself as Emma Crackbon—her new “married” name.92 In 1933, she was moved to the new California Institution for Women, located at Tehachapi, which had opened the previous year. As with her other periods of incarceration, she played to the sympathies of her jailers and the public. In 1933, she asked for a pardon from Governor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph, claiming that her mother, now known as Mrs. Mary de Long, 77 years of age and in declining health, needed her aid. Rolph refused the request.93
Le Doux’s last and best hope was if a parole board granted her release. In November 1934, parole was given to the only male prisoner at Tehachapi, a Chinese forger—but Le Doux was denied.94
In 1937, Le Doux joined other female convicts at Tehachapi in asking the new board of trustees, established under an initiative enacted by California voters in November 1936, for parole. The board, consisting of four women and one man, considered the cases of Le Doux, Hazel Glab, Luella Pearl Hammer, Betty Kocalis, Ann Hall, and Lorene Norman. It was noted that Le Doux, 63, was one of the oldest prisoners in point of time served.95 Despite her age, parole was again denied and she remained behind bars. In February 1940, prison directors of the California Institution for Women at Tehachapi postponed a hearing to parole Le Doux, although the reason for the delay was not given.96
Emma Le Doux never got paroled again. On 6 July 1941, she died at the Tehachapi Institute for Women, at age 69. There were few reports of her passing. The Oakland Tribune called her “a gray and forgotten figure.”97
She was buried, in an unmarked grave, in the Union Cemetery, in Bakersfield. She rests in the Oakdale section of the graveyard, under plot I-4.