The Thursday morning session of Snook’s trial began chaotically. When the public learned that the confessed killer was about to take the stand, the crowd inside the courthouse swelled to the point where the noise outside the courtroom from the curious throng made it difficult for the participants in the trial to hear. Extra deputies and bailiffs were called in to control the mob that became unruly once they realized they were missing what promised to be the most exciting part of the trial. Those who had waited overnight only to be denied entrance because the courtroom was full hurled abuse on the bailiffs and tried any means possible to get into the room. They forged press credentials, invented newspapers to work for, asserted friendships with the lawyers and judges, begged and bribed. Finally, a frustrated Judge Scarlett issued a blanket order to the deputies to arrest anyone who caused the least bit of commotion outside the courtroom. Those lucky enough to be inside knew better than to draw any attention to themselves lest they draw the ire of the judge and trade their place in the courtroom for a seat in the jail.
Once everything settled down and Scarlett gained control, Snook was brought in from the jail and took his place on the witness stand. Today, the defense planned to go over the events of June 13, 1929. Finally, the public was about to hear the story of the death of Theora Hix from the only person to witness it. Dr. Snook’s testimony was expected to be unlike anything ever heard in a Columbus courtroom, and it turned out to be everything the public wanted and more.
Dr. Snook testifies at his murder trial. Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch.
But Seyfert began the day having Snook discuss the financial arrangements he had with Theora. She was by no means a kept woman, but she did receive a great deal of money from her lover. They considered the money loans, and Snook kept track of the debits and credits in a green notebook. In July 1928, Theora repaid a six-month loan of $1,000 with interest, but by November of that year she had convinced the professor to advance her another $700.
“She felt that the relations with me might be found out and if so she wanted to get out of town in a hurry,” Snook testified. “She didn’t want to be expelled from school. She wanted money available to go without any preliminaries, and therefore she wanted this fund in her control.”
The discussion then turned to the sexual relations between the lovers. Snook said Theora was unsatisfied by his sexual performance and pressed him to engage in acts that in the 1920s were considered “not matrimonial” and “unnatural.”
Question by Mr. Seyfert: When was the first time that your relations, sexually speaking, were unnatural with Miss Hix?
Answer: Just about the first of April.
Q: I just want you to relate now, Dr. Snook, as near as you can, without going into too many details, in a generalized way, just what took place between you and Miss Hix?
A: Finally she insisted that she be allowed to satisfy it in the way she wanted to. She did so by taking my privates in her mouth.
Snook’s revelation was earth-shattering. At a time when fornication—intercourse between unmarried people—was a crime, oral sex was not only unlawful and grounds for divorce, but it was considered a sexual perversion of the highest order. But oral sex was not the only activity Theora wanted, Snook said.
“One time she said she wanted to hurt me or scratch me and referred to a statement in one of the books on sexology she had in which somebody said it always gave them a lot of satisfaction to scratch somebody else,” he said.
At last, there was nothing else to talk about but the events at the shooting range. For the most part, Snook’s testimony leading up to the actual slaying differed little from his previous statements. However, at the point where the lovers arrived at the range, Snook’s story took an unexpected turn. The courtroom was held in silent thrall as the professor explained exactly what prompted his deadly assault on his paramour. They ended up at the shooting range, Snook claimed, not because he was looking for a place to distract her from her bad mood but because they were going to make love.
“She said ‘I like to go out some place farther where I can scream,’” Snook testified.
Once they arrived at the shooting range, they decided to try to have sex inside the tiny Ford coupe. They had never attempted it in the car before, and the session was not successful.
“We proceeded to have sexual intercourse in the machine and the machine was rather cramped, and the position of the cushion was not satisfactory, and I had been using prophylactic tubes and didn’t have any along,” Snook said in a rambling explanation of the attempt. “We made the best of it and so it ended and it was unsatisfactory for both of us. We resumed our place in the machine…she didn’t say anything, sat up in position there without ever saying a word, and I looked around…and I said ‘we better go,’ and I started the engine, and she reached over and turned it off, she said ‘not now.’”
Snook said Theora went into one of “those kind of spells [where] there is nothing much I can say to her, she just waits until she says something else.” After a bit, he said they needed to get going.
“You are not going,” Snook testified that Theora said. “You are not going home over the weekend.”
On the stand, Snook began to break down as he told how Theora then threatened his mother, wife and child.
The professor had reached the point in his story where the courtroom observers expected to hear him describe how Theora had reached for her purse and Snook was afraid she was going for the Derringer. No one could have anticipated what he said next.
Then she said I simply have got to do something for her. She said “you have got to help me out,” and with that, she grabbed open my trousers which had been buttoned up, and went down on me then, and she didn’t do it very nicely and she bit me and grabbed the right hand and got a hold of the privates and pulled so hard I simply could not stand it, and I tried to choke her off, and I couldn’t get her loose that way, and then I grabbed her left arm and gave it a twist, and finally pulled her loose, partly and she grabbed back again and all I could do was to hold her head close up to keep her from hurting me, and turn around and got something, and I got hold of something out of this kit and hit her with it, and I didn’t hit her very hard; I finally got her loose and twisted her away, very nearly twisted her arm off, I thought, to make her get up in the machine, and she sat up there a little bit and she said, “Damn, you. I will kill you, too.”
Snook went on to describe to the stunned courtroom that Theora then reached for her purse and he feared she was going for the gun. As he was doubled over in pain, Snook saw Theora take the purse and slide out of the car.
“I had so much pain and I tried to straighten up,” he continued. “All at once it flashed in my mind that she was getting out and I knew if she got out she would shoot me. That is what I expected her to do and she grabbed her purse and slid out of the machine.”
Snook testified that he hit Theora with the hammer four times before he blacked out. “I am sure I didn’t hit her but three times in the machine and once when she got out, and I can’t imagine any more licks with the hammer than that,” he told the court. “I couldn’t straighten up, and next thing I knew I was sitting on the running board of the machine, doubled over with my elbows on my knees.” At this revelation, Snook broke down again, prompting a call for a recess.
The hammer and knife used in the murder of Theora Hix. Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch.
When the court resumed, Snook continued his story. “I was sitting there stooped over and crying, tears running down my face. I saw the girl lying there and I spoke to her and I didn’t get any reply, and I raised up and looked around, and that is the first time I realized that somebody might come around there—I don’t know just how I got in the machine, but I got in and hurried away.”
With that, Seyfert turned the witness over to Chester. The prosecutor did not immediately go into the events of June 13 but instead began his cross-examination with the letters from “Janet.” In particular, he wanted Snook, who admitted writing them, to explain the significance of the missive where he wrote that he had been “wanting to snip them both for some time.”
“Some little time previous, sexual intercourse had not been satisfactory to Miss Hix, and she complained of my general condition,” Snook replied. “She said that I needed some kind of treatment to improve my general health and that she was not as satisfied as she had been.” Snook said he knew of such a treatment, called a “Steinach Operation.”
In the beginning of the twentieth century, Dr. Eugen Steinach of the University of Vienna advocated a form of vasectomy not as a means of birth control but to restore sexual vigor and enhance pleasure. Experimenting on the testes of mice, Steinach cut the sperm-transporting vas deferens, which increased blood flow to the testes and caused an enlargement of endocrine-producing cells, resulting in “insatiable interest in sexual activity,” Steinach believed.
To appease Theora, Snook decided on a radical solution—one that ranks as one of the most shocking in a case of never-ending surprises: in an effort to improve his sexual performance, Professor Snook performed the Steinach Operation on himself. In his testimony, Snook described the procedure as “somewhat successful.”
The reporters made no mention of Snook’s self-administered treatment and, unable to share the exact details of Snook’s testimony with their readers, were forced to write that Snook killed Theora because “she mistreated me terribly and I couldn’t stand the pain.”
