WHEN ASSISTANT DISTRICT Attorney Vincent J. Dermody, of the Homicide Bureau, finished talking to Dr. Milton Helpern, of the Medical Examiner’s Office, on a morning in January some years back, he put down the telephone and got out the file on a man named Jerome Roberts, who was being held without bail in the Tombs on a charge of murder. He found the stenographic record of a statement Roberts had made to him a couple of weeks earlier and read it once more from beginning to end. He remembered how Roberts had sat across the desk from him that day after he was brought in by two detectives from the Tenth Precinct, on the lower West Side, and how Roberts had answered the questions promptly and politely as if he were anxious to please. Dermody is in the habit of making quick judgments of defendants and putting them into words in a journal he keeps. “Roberts’ tweed sports jacket and gray flannel slacks were rumpled and he needed a shave,” he wrote in his journal after the interview. “But there was something inescapably impressive about the expression on his face that seemed to suggest that he was, in one way or another, a distinguished man, with some kind of uncommon ability.”
DERMODY’S QUESTIONS AND Roberts’ answers at the interview went like this:
“Before we start, I want to explain something to you. This gentleman seated on your left, who is operating a machine, is a stenographer attached to the District Attorney’s Office. He is going to take down every word that is spoken in this room, every question I ask you, and every answer you make. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Your name is Jerome Roberts?”
“That is correct.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Are you married or single?”
“Single.”
“Before we go any further, I want to introduce myself to you. My name is Dermody. I am an Assistant District Attorney and I am going to question you now about the killing of a woman named Madeline Barry. This killing occurred approximately at 3:30 A.M. on December 18th. That would be yesterday, Thursday morning. It took place in the basement apartment, rear, of a building on West Fourteenth Street. Do you want to tell me everything you know about the events that occurred in the apartment at the time? Answer yes or no.”
“Of course I want to.”
“Before we go any further, I must warn you—you don’t have to say anything.”
“There is nothing to hide.”
“Anything you say now can be used against you later on. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing what I just told you, do you want to tell the truth?” “Absolutely.”
“Did you know the deceased, Madeline Barry?”
“Know her? Mr. Dermody, I have been living with her for nearly two years.”
“What time did you go to bed that night?”
“Pretty early. Around twelve o’clock.”
“Did you have anything to drink before you went to bed?”
“We had two drinks before we went to bed.”
“What did you drink?”
“Scotch whiskey and beer.”
“You were sober?”
“Yes.”
“What about Madeline?”
“She was sober, too.”
“What happened then?”
“We went to bed.”
“Undressed or wearing pajamas?”
“No, we never wore anything in bed. We just curled up and went to sleep.”
“Did there come a time when you woke up?”
“Yes. It must have been around three o’clock. It happened right after that.”
“What happened?”
“I woke her up. I don’t know—I just said, ‘This is it, honey.’”
“Now, what do you mean by you said, ‘This is it, honey’?”
“Well, I started to choke her to death.”
“How did you wake her up before that?”
“She was lying on her stomach and I just shook her shoulder a little bit.”
“Did she then turn around?”
“No, she put her face up and around, that’s all, and I kissed her.” “When you said, ‘This is it, honey,’ what did she say?”
“She said, ‘O.K.’”
“Well, before, what did you mean by saying, ‘This is it, honey’?”
“She knew what I meant.”
“There had been some discussion about you killing her before?” “Not that night. About a week ago. We had talked it over and settled it and we were waiting for the moment.”
“What moment?”
“Well, the right moment.”
“What did the discussion consist of?”
“Well, we just thought we and this particular life—We weren’t attuned to it. We’re not—This isn’t our type of life.”
“What led you to believe this wasn’t your type of life?”
“Well, it’s one of those things.”
“Had you been having difficulties with the deceased—with Madeline?”
“No.”
“Was there anything happened that made you feel you wanted to kill her?”
“Well, the idea was we were both supposed to go together.”
“Had you discussed this with Madeline?”
“Yes.”
“And what plans had you made about taking your own lives?”
“We had tried it once before—last spring, in April. We cut our wrists, but it didn’t work, so we went to Bellevue.”
“For observation?”
“Something like that.”
“At any time during the discussion a week ago did you tell her you were going to kill her?”
“Yes.”
“I ask you again, when was the last time before you strangled this girl that you talked about doing away with yourselves?”
“It was a week ago.”
“And you told her you were going to kill her?”
“Yes.”
“Did she agree to that?”
“Yes.”
“How were you supposed to do it?”
“I thought the way I wanted to do it was to turn on the gas and let it go.”
“And then?”
“And then on Thursday morning, gosh, I don’t know—it just came into my mind and I did it.”
“Well, you say you woke her up and told her, ‘This is it, honey’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“By that you meant you were going to kill her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And she said ‘O.K.’?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you turn on the gas?”
“I did that the next day.”
“I mean why didn’t you turn on the gas before you woke her up if you wanted to do away with yourself and her?”
“That’s kind of hard to explain. I just said, ‘This is it, honey’ and took her life.”
“How long were you awake before you decided to strangle her? Can you tell me?”
“I just woke up and shook her a little and woke her up and said, ‘This is it, honey.’”
“And then what did you do?”
“I strangled her.”
“How did you go about it?”
“I put my hands around her neck.”
“Did she offer any resistance?”
“No.”
“Are you sure of that? Are you telling the truth?”
“Absolutely the truth.”
“She didn’t fight you off at all?”
“No.”
“How long did you hold your hands pressed against her throat?” “That’s hard to say.”
“Can you try to tell us?”
“Well, it was at least ten minutes.”
“What happened after you released the pressure?”
“Then I knew she was dead. I felt her pulse and heartbeat.”
“What happened then?”
“I turned her over and closed her eyes and kissed her.”
“Did you notice anything about her face, her physical appearance, when you turned her over?”
“It had a kind of peculiar look.”
“What did you do then?”
“Well, I just lay there beside her.”
“Did you go to sleep?”
“No.”
“How long did you lie there?”
“I guess a couple of hours.”
“How did you feel?”
“I felt peaceful. She had gone and I was going to be with her pretty soon.”
“What did you do after those two hours?”
“I dressed and went to the White Rose Bar down the street. We always went there. It was kind of a home to us. I had a drink to her and went back.”
“And what did you do when you got back?”
“Oh, just drank some beer and said hello to my baby.”
“What do you mean by ‘my baby’? Madeline?”
“Yes.”
“What was the next thing that happened?”
“I stayed in the room all day. I fell asleep and sometime later I got up. The radio was playing and there was a news broadcast that said something about eleven o’clock. It was night. I went out and bought a fifth of Scotch at a liquor store and six beers at the delicatessen. Then I went back and drank a lot.”
“Then what happened?”
“It was dawn again and I turned on the gas. All the burners on the stove. Then I lay down again beside Madeline.”
“What is the next thing you remember?”
“The next thing I remember, the police were there.”
“Now, you say there was no argument or quarrel before you strangled this girl?”
“No, we never quarrelled.”
“No argument or fight?”
“We never argued or fought.”
“Roberts, have you made this statement of your own free will?” “Yes.”
“Has anybody forced you to make this statement?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”
“No.”
A tenant of the four-story brownstone house in which Roberts and Madeline had a one-room basement apartment smelled gas when he came downstairs around nine o’clock that Friday morning and called the superintendent, a Mrs. Larsen. She is a cheerful, deaf, ailing widow in her sixties. She lives in a basement room with a large white cat and a small brown dog and takes care of the whole building singlehanded—cleaning the corridors every day with a mop and pail, putting out the trash and garbage, collecting the weekly rents. Mrs. Larsen unlocked Roberts’ door and she and the tenant went inside, turned off the gas, opened the one window, and called the police. A patrolman from the Tenth Precinct saw that Madeline was dead and thought that Roberts was dead, too. He called the station house, and a detective came over in about ten minutes. As the detective walked in, Roberts woke up. He looked around and, putting his hands over his face, said, “Oh, no! Oh, no!” The detective asked him what had happened. He got up, put on a bathrobe, coughed for a spell, and then sat down in a chair near the open window.
“He didn’t seem drunk,” the detective said later. “He seemed calm and sad, but he didn’t cry or anything like that. He told me he had this suicide pact with his girl and that he had strangled her and turned on the gas to kill himself. He seemed like a refined sort of guy, but dissipated. He was keyed up, of course, but he talked in a refined way. He said, ‘This seems sordid but it was beautiful, what we had. It was a meeting of minds and bodies, but we couldn’t make a decent living, and things weren’t going well.’
“I called Homicide, of course, and while we were waiting for them, Roberts said, ‘Before they come, could I say goodbye to my baby?’ I said sure, and he went over to the bed again and knelt down and kissed her on the lips. I’ve got it in my notes here. He said, ‘I’m sorry I had to do it, honey, but we had our agreement. Oh, my baby, my baby, I wish I had gone with you!’
“We let him freshen up and rest over at the station house before we took him down to the lineup at Headquarters and then on to the D.A.’s office. He didn’t give us any trouble at all. He seems to have been a kind of black sheep of a fairly good New York family. He kept saying in a matter-of-fact way—you know, not hysterical or anything—that he wished he had gone with his girl, but he didn’t make any attempts on himself or anything like that. I kind of got to like the guy. I thought it was too bad Madeline and him couldn’t make out some way. She was a pretty girl, that Madeline. She was very small and delicate-looking and pale, and she had long black hair. Of course, we had to leave her where she was—couldn’t touch anything until Homicide arrived. She looked wonderful, lying there, and she seemed to be smiling, or almost smiling.”
After their first attempt at suicide, on April 9th, of the year be-fore, Roberts and Madeline had gone voluntarily to the Psychopathic Ward at Bellevue and, after their wrists had been treated and bandaged, they were interviewed separately by psychiatrists. A stenographer sat behind a screen and took down what each of them said.
“Ill try to make this as short as possible,” said Madeline. “I’ve led an artistic life, but I’ve never done a really stupid thing like this. I’ve been living with this chap for over a year. I’m technically married to another man. I only saw my husband for two weeks after we were married six years ago. It wasn’t a marriage at all, really. Afterward, I lost track of him I’ve never obtained a divorce, but I want one, and I want to marry this fellow. We want to make it legal. We’re very compatible. I’ve never really known a man before, and this may seem strange to you, because I’m thirty-one years old, but it’s true. I’ve been living with my mother all my life. Not that she is a domineering woman—she is a wonderful artist, a landscape painter. But lately she began interfering a little too much in our lives. We had our own home, of course, but it was in the same town she lived in—in Connecticut—so about three weeks ago we decided to lead our own lives in New York. I’ve been a music teacher since I left college—my father was a concert pianist—but I had caught the measles from one of my child pupils a couple of months before this and I hadn’t been giving any lessons since then. We sold our car for a couple of hundred dollars and planned to start all over, but instead of looking for work when we got to New York we stayed in a hotel and visited friends and drank every single day. Finally, we were running out of money and desperate and depressed from all the drinking and we decided to cut our wrists. I knew I was only playing or acting. We realized it was all the consequence of so much drinking and not eating and just all so much foolishness, so we thought the best thing to do was to go to a hospital and rest a few days, pull ourselves together, and start all afresh. As we couldn’t afford a private one, we thought of Bellevue, but I never dreamed it would be anything like this. I’ve been drinking a good deal for the last few years and he’s been drinking since he was in his twenties, but neither of us is really an alcoholic. My family always had wine at the table, but I didn’t really start drinking until a few years ago, after that two weeks with my husband. I was a virgin and he was horrible. It wasn’t really a marriage at all. These last three weeks I’ve had more to drink than I ever had before. We were terribly happy and free and compatible and we just couldn’t seem to stop, and then everything suddenly seemed hopeless, and we wanted to die together and end everything. We wanted to end all the pain.”
The psychiatrist’s notes on Madeline read, “This patient is very high intellectual level. Father was concert pianist, mother a landscape painter. She is alert, coöperative, neatly dressed, fine appearance, speaks in friendly manner. Feels rather silly about her attempt at suicide. She’s a dramatic girl with histrionic behavior pattern.” After nine days of medication and observation, the psychiatrist added, “No delusions or hallucinations, no acute or prolonged anxiety or depressions, no paranoid trends or psychotic tendencies. Character neurosis, possibly chronic alcoholism with reactive depression. Discharged to custody of her common-law husband.”
Roberts said to his psychiatrist, “When I first met this girl, I wanted no part of her, because of her drinking, but we couldn’t get along without each other. It was a meeting of minds and bodies. We were getting along pretty well in Connecticut, but her mother interfered with her all the time, so we gave up the house we had rented, and sold the car, and then, after we had finally spent all our money, we just decided to give up life. We had come to New York and stayed at a hotel near Times Square for a week, drinking every day and very happy but knowing it had to end. We couldn’t pay our bill, so we went out without our baggage and checked into another hotel, just down the block. We had dinner and went to the movies. Then we bought a single-edge razor. We went to bed, and when we woke up, she slashed her wrists and I slashed mine. There was very little pain from the razor. We lay in bed bleeding and then we went back to sleep in each other’s arms and we thought we wouldn’t ever wake up again, but when we woke up we had stopped bleeding, and we didn’t feel so depressed—we felt sort of exhilarated—and we decided to come here. I was here once before. My wife put me in for drinking. I was married when I was twenty-one and divorced some years later. I have a son of seventeen. He’s in the Marines. My wife was an actress and still is. She wanted a career and I wanted a home. I left school after two years of high school and worked as a clerk and a messenger for law firms for five years. Then I was a professional photographer for four years and did pretty well, but I got to drinking and everything went to pieces. After that, I worked as a timekeeper for a trucking company for a year and a half and then I really began to go downhill. I worked as a bellhop in hotels in New York, Miami, Savannah, and New Orleans. For a few years, I was a common seaman on merchant ships. I’m one of ten children—the oldest. Mother died of cancer of the breast. She was one of the most wonderful people in the world. I guess I was the apple of her eye. Because I was the oldest, she pampered me. I always had good clothes. Grandmother gave us presents all the time. When I was older, I used to take Mother to the theatre and things like that. Father remarried less than a year after Mother’s death. I haven’t seen him or any of my brothers or sisters for about three years.”
“This patient does not appear anxious,” the psychiatrist wrote in his report. “He repeats again and again that the suicidal attempt was all foolishness and feels it was the influence of alcohol that made him do this. He does not appear to blame anyone else for his troubles. He is well oriented in all spheres. His fund of knowledge, for his education, is good. Memory is intact, ability to concentrate is poor, insight and judgment poor. Patient is relevant, coherent, does not fabricate. Impression: Neurotic character disorder, with chronic alcoholism and reactive depression.” Before discharging Roberts, the psychiatrist noted, “No evidence of psychosis. Does not appear to be seriously suicidal. Patient is quiet and friendly and follows ward routine.”
What Dr. Helpern had told Assistant District Attorney Dermody on the telephone that morning of January 7th, before Dermody got out the Roberts file, was that, in the final and official opinion of the Medical Examiner’s Office, Madeline had not been strangled but had died of a heart attack. Dermody received a written report dealing with this half an hour after he had spoken to Dr. Helpern. Most of the report had already been prepared. Dr. Helpern had been waiting only for the results of some conclusive tests, having to do with Madeline’s brain, before completing it and sending it over to Dermody.
“There is absolutely no question about it,” Dr. Helpern said to Dermody. “This girl wasn’t strangled. There isn’t any evidence at all that anybody even attempted to strangle her. She died of occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis and acute alcoholism. There was three-plus ethyl alcohol in the brain. No barbiturates and no other soluble poisons. I guess the poor guy just had been planning all those days to kill her and himself one way or another, and maybe had been planning to strangle her without telling her he was going to do it that way, and when he saw she was dead, he thought he had strangled her.”
In his official report, Dr. Helpern dictated to a secretary as he was performing the autopsy, “The body is that of an adult white woman, scale weight ninety-five pounds, five feet and one inch tall, slender frame, slight build. Black hair, few gray hairs. Black eyebrows and brown eyes. The breasts are small. The hands are small. The fingers are slender. The ears are small. The lobes are punctured for earrings. No hemorrhages in the conjunctivae.
“There are no evidences of traumatic injury on the surface of the neck. The lungs are rather large and heavy. The heart lies free in the pericardial sac. The aorta is narrow in calibre.
“The neck organs are removed and dissected. No hemorrhages found in any of the soft tissues of the neck or in any of the muscular structures. The tongue is normal, tip is dry. The larynx is small. No hemorrhages noted in any of the intrinsic muscles of the neck or any fracture of the components of the laryngeal or hyoid bone. No injuries to the spine, ribs or to the bones of the extremities.
“The heart is dissected and removed. The heart is small. Arteriosclerosis. Occlusion. Anatomical diagnosis: Segmental occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis.
“No anatomical evidence of traumatic asphyxia.
“Cause of death: Occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis and acute alcoholism.”
Dermody had been preparing a first-degree murder case against Roberts, for presentation to the grand jury. Instead, he had Roberts brought from the Tombs to Felony Court that afternoon and, after conferring with a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society who was representing Roberts, recommended that Roberts be committed to Bellevue for observation. The Legal Aid lawyer agreed with Dermody that it would be best not to tell Roberts about the Medical Examiner’s report until after the psychiatrists had examined him. Dermody’s idea was that the psychiatrists might find out something from Roberts that wasn’t already known.
At Bellevue, Roberts told the psychiatrists what he had told them before. He also talked to a psychologist. Being a prisoner charged with murder, he was given a more thorough examination this time. It included various oral and written tests. One of these was the word-association test, and a psychiatrist noted, “For ‘lonely’ he says ‘frightened,’ and for ‘woman’ he says ‘Madeline.’” He told the same story of Madeline’s death that he had told to the detective and to Mr. Dermody. He said that he had been working as a counterman in a cafeteria for the past several months and that he hadn’t been able to earn enough to give Madeline a decent life. “I was in love with the girl,” he said at one point. “We couldn’t get along in the world and we wanted to escape, that’s all.”
The psychologist’s report tended to corroborate Dermody’s original impression that Roberts had elements of distinction. “His score is superior,” the psychologist wrote. “Some slight obsessive doubting about his ability hampers his functioning, or otherwise he would score within the very superior range. Dynamically, there are suggestions that his relationship to his father is a relatively healthy one, while that toward his mother shows some fear reaction, some feelings of hostility combined with guilt over these feelings. It is possible that his relationship with the girl he strangled was, in a sense, a rebellion against a threatening mother figure while at the same time his ‘standing by her’ when she continually went off on drinking bouts was an attempt to make restitution for his hostility.”
The psychiatric report said, “No delusions, hallucinations, or other psychotic trends. Superior intelligence. His may be classified as an inadequate, immature, unstable, and schizoid type of personality, with a rather deep-seated character neurosis, an individual subject to alcoholic excesses and depressions. In summary, there is no evidence of a psychosis or mental deficiency at the present time. He is not in such a state of idiocy, imbecility, or insanity as to be incapable of understanding the charge of murder that is against him, or understanding the proceedings, or making his defense.”
Roberts was under observation for three weeks, and was then discharged and sent back to the Tombs.
When Dermody got the report from Bellevue, he conferred with District Attorney Frank S. Hogan and Assistant District Attorney Alexander Herman, chief of the Homicide Bureau and it was decided between them that Roberts ought to be a free man. Dermody called up the Legal Aid lawyer and told him of their decision, and it was arranged to have Roberts brought to Felony Court immediately. It had been about six weeks since Madeline’s death. In the Tombs, Roberts had given no trouble, and his file there says he was “friendly, quiet, coöperative, and cheerful, in spite of the fact that he expects to go to the electric chair.” He had written no letters and had not asked to be allowed to use the telephone. The Legal Aid lawyer hadn’t been to see him, because the usual procedure is to commence the preparation of a defense in such a case only after the prisoner has been indicted by the grand jury.
From the Tombs, Roberts was taken over to the detention pen adjoining Felony Court where prisoners wait for their cases to be called. There the Legal Aid lawyer said to him, “Roberts, you’re going to get the surprise of your life. You’re a free man. In a minute, the D.A. will make a motion to dismiss the charge against you, and that will be that.”
“But I’m guilty of first-degree murder,” said Roberts. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“You didn’t strangle Madeline,” the lawyer said. “You just thought you did. Probably some kind of hallucination, or a dream. The Medical Examiner’s Office has made a thorough study of Madeline’s remains and there is absolutely no evidence of strangulation or attempted strangulation. Madeline died of a heart attack. That is the official diagnosis of the cause of death.”
Roberts was sitting on a bench with other prisoners. He got up and walked a few steps toward the far end of the corridor, and the lawyer followed him and put a hand on his shoulder. Then Roberts began to cry. “He didn’t make any noise,” the lawyer said later. “He just cried silently, the tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t talk, and I didn’t try to make him talk. Then the case was called and we started into the courtroom. He’d more or less got control of himself by the time we got there.”
In the courtroom, Dermody gave the judge a summary of Roberts’ confession and of the Medical Examiner’s report, and then made the motion to dismiss the charge against Roberts. Without further discussion, the judge did so. Both Dermody and the Legal Aid lawyer shook hands with Roberts afterward, and Roberts asked Dermody if Madeline’s mother had arranged for the funeral. He was told that she had not, and that Madeline had been buried in Potter’s Field, on Hart Island, off Pelham Bay. The lawyer rode down in the elevator with Roberts and asked him how he felt. Roberts hesitated and then said, “I really don’t know.” The lawyer went with him to the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building, shook hands with him again, and wished him luck. “It was hard to tell whether he was happy or not about getting off,” the lawyer had said. “He just thanked me and said goodbye and walked out into the world.”
That same afternoon, Roberts went to the house on West Fourteenth Street and saw Mrs. Larsen. She had rented the basement room to another couple but had saved Roberts’ small store of belongings. She had sent Madeline’s things to her mother by parcel post; first, though, she had written to Madeline’s mother, telling her she would send them as soon as she could, but that she was having an attack of arthritis and might not be able to get to the post office for a few days. She showed Roberts two letters from Madeline’s mother.
“You need not try to send Madeline’s things until you are feeling better—if it will make it easier for you,” the first letter read. “It may be easier for me to get them a little later, too—right now I am not up to meeting much more. Time can only soften the ache, but never heal it. Thank you for your kindness. It helps.” The second letter read, “The box came yesterday. Thank you so much. I do appreciate your kindness and the time and effort that I know went into sending me the things. I am so sorry you had to know Madeline as she was while at your place, for that was not the real Madeline. When not drinking, she was fine and lovely, but this terrible affliction which got hold of her made her a changed person. I have tried so much and when she was with me it was all so different. I consented to her relationship with Mr. Roberts because I hoped it would make her happier and perhaps keep her from giving in to her affliction. Thank you again, and I do hope this finds you feeling better. I will be so grateful when I can feel that I want to go on. Enclosed is one dollar for the expenses of mailing the box. Please let me know if it does not cover all that you have spent.”
Roberts read the letters and handed them back to Mrs. Larsen without comment. After a moment, he asked, “Is there anything at all of Madeline’s left?”
Mrs. Larsen said there wasn’t. Then she remembered a note Madeline had sent her on Thanksgiving Day after she had brought them a platter of turkey as a good-will gift. She gave it to Roberts, who read it and put it in his pocket. “Thank you not only for the turkey but also for the beautiful thought of offering it,” the note read. It was signed, “The Robertses.”
“I asked him where he was going to live,” said Mrs. Larsen later, “and he smiled—he had a nice smile—and then he said, ‘I really don’t know,’ and left.”
The bartender at the White Rose Bar still remembers Roberts and Madeline, but he hasn’t seen Roberts since he stopped in there on the morning of Madeline’s death. “They were hard drinkers and sad drinkers, but they weren’t mean drinkers,” he said recently. “They just sat close together at the end of the bar and looked at each other all the time and didn’t talk much. Madeline drank more than he did, and sometimes she would cry and he would put his arm around her and take her home. He sure seemed to be in love with Madeline.”
Two weeks after this, Roberts turned on all the burners in a basement room he had rented in Manhattan and was dead when the police arrived. He was buried in Potter’s Field—a long distance from Madeline’s grave. The plots fill up fast in Potter’s Field and nobody can reserve one in advance.