Harvey couldn’t stop thinking about Packards. He’d seen them on the avenues, moving through traffic, as stately as carriages. Rickety black Fords, driven by commoners; splendid Packards driven by gentlemen.
Harvey had his heart set on a new one—a twelve-cylinder, bronze-and-nickel-plated beauty, the newest of the new—a Twin Six. Powerful. Commanding. His family could afford one.
His parents lived up in Wisconsin. In Adams, a county seat. Big fish in a little pond. Halfway between Oshkosh and La Crosse. They were country people. Yankee stock. Modest people. Merchant farmers. They were rich. Harvey’s father, Edwin, owned land, owned buildings. After the war, when crop prices collapsed, Edwin Church, alone, had money to loan. He bought other people’s property, other people’s debt. Everyone deferred to him.
“Among critical observers who know . . . the Twin Six stands as representative of the finest. . . . In all the years the Twin Six has been before the public, here and in Europe, its leadership has never been . . . challenged. . . . Wherever the Twin Six owner drives or in whatever company, he travels in the satisfying knowledge that his is the car of cars. . . . To speak of the Twin Six is to speak of something that is singular—something that stands apart and alone . . . the synonym for the ultimate in motoring” (Packard Motorcar Company Twin Six advertising copy).
Harvey was his father’s only son, wellborn and able. Four years of high school, one year of college; a lieutenant in the Training Corps. Officer candidate material. Leadership material. Clean-cut; collegiate. His father said Harvey had worked as a clerk and a stenographer and a typist for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. Other people said Harvey had been a brakeman. Hired during one of the strikes after the war. A scab. He’d had some close calls with people who didn’t like him taking other men’s jobs.
Harvey’s parents sent him to Chicago to buy a house. He bought one: a handsome, two-story, gray stone, with bay windows, on a good street. The house was in his mother’s name, in Eva’s name. He and Eva lived there.
Eva had had seven children, but five had died young, swept away by accident and disease. Only Harvey and his older sister, Isabel, remained. Harvey was his mother’s precious son. In his youth, he had had an awful accident, a terrible, terrible fall that had frightened everyone. He was never the same after that, Eva said. “Bashful and sullen,” Eva said. Isabel noticed something else, something odd. “He had a strange desire to butcher chickens,” she said. Maybe she was just being squeamish, but the neighbors noticed, too. They talked about Harvey, but never in public, out of respect for Edwin and out of kindness to Eva. “No one ever liked him,” they said. “A crybaby”; “full of wild stories,” they said.
All this was in the past, now.
Eva took care of Harvey. In the house he’d bought, their handsome house with its bay windows. Harvey was his family’s heir and its emissary, sent to make his mark in the city. Every day, he would go out and return and Eva would be there with his supper.
It was only proper that a family like the Churches, a family so eminent, should own a Packard. A Packard bespoke; a Packard embodied. A Packard attested.
Harvey was resolved.
He would buy one. His parents were too modest—too old-fashioned—to buy “such an extravagance” for themselves. He would buy a tonneau—devil take the expense—and drive, in dignity, where he wished. He would sit in the open, dressed in his cap and tweeds, upright, behind the wheel; his mother (or his sister or even his father) would sit in comfort in the compartment behind him—and he, their fine young man, would deliver them to their destinations.
Unfortunately: At the moment, Harvey drove a six-year-old Harroun. A four-cylinder little roadster. (Made by a company run by the fellow who’d won the first Indianapolis 500 back in 1911. Henry Ford had made a name for himself, racing cars on cinders strewn across the ice of Lake Michigan. Roy Harroun had tried the same thing: designed a single-seat, streamlined Marmon “Wasp” and then driven it, blazed it, across the finish line at Indianapolis. On the strength of that, Harroun had raised some money and started building cars in an old factory outside of Detroit. You’d think that a mechanic and inventor like Roy Harroun would have been ashamed to put his name on such a piece of junk.) Harvey had bought his because Harrouns were innovative—and rare. They were also unreliable and hard to repair.
Just last week, Harvey had gotten into a smashup while he was out for a drive. He’d had to take his car into a garage, down the street from where he and Eva lived. The place was run by a fellow named Gus—Gus Benario. Three of Harvey’s buddies worked there. One, a tightly wound guy named Leon Parks, was Gus’s night manager. The place was OK—Gus had even posted bail for another one of Harvey’s buddies, a guy named Walker, after Walker had done something stupid and robbed a grocery store. The point is: when the guys at Benario’s told Harvey it would cost $150 to fix his piece of junk, he believed them. Fixing that old Harroun would cost more than it was worth. The guys got it running—but in his mind, Harvey was already driving a Packard.
Isabel came for a visit. She was living in St. Paul. She and Harvey went for a drive. As Isabel recalled, Harvey had been very clear about his plans: A Twin Six Packard tonneau, equipped just the way he wanted, would cost $5,400. He’d trade in his Harroun, then cash some Liberty Bonds to make up the difference. The Liberty Bonds (issued by the federal government during World War I) had been presents to Harvey and Isabel from their father: Edwin had bought them, at a discount, from farmers in Adams and Marquette who were desperate for cash.
Isabel listened to Harvey’s plans. She laughed in surprise. What an idea! (What a silly idea), she said. Their folks didn’t need a fancy Packard. Harvey had his mind made up, though.
Packard’s Chicago showroom was located on the city’s downtown “Motor Row.” Big cars behind big plate glass windows. Packard’s Chicago sales staff and service staff were like all other Packard staffs in the United States: all men; well educated, well spoken, well groomed, highly trained, highly attentive. (One particular Packard Motorcar Company advertisement was illustrated with a painting of a king, dressed in ermine, knighting a handsome young man who knelt before him, armored and helmeted, surrounded by his fellows. The ad read, “Packard men bear the imprint of the organization. They are selected and schooled for but one quality of work and service . . . From skilled management to designing engineer, Packard cars are produced by men who know and love fine things. . . . From suburban dealer to manager of sales, Packard’s clientele are served by men who uphold the Packard principles: men who know that the patronage of the distinguished brooks no compromise with quality. . . .”)
The salesman who dealt with Harvey was a Harvard-educated, former U.S. Army tank corps captain named D. J. Daugherty. Daugherty had been a football star in his youth; he’d coached football at a private school before he’d enlisted. He’d been a member of the White Bear Yacht Club, where he’d raced in weekly regattas. Harvey looked like a callow youth (Harvey was small but he was strong; he’d held his own against some tough railroad men) compared to Daugherty. Harvey tried to keep a poker face when Daugherty strode over and asked if he could help. Harvey told Daugherty that he wanted to buy a car for his father. He said his father lived way up north, in Eagle River, Wisconsin, but he owned a lot of valuable real estate in Chicago—and needed a Twin Six. A tonneau. Daugherty showed him one. Harvey said it would do, but he’d have to ask his father. If his father approved, asked Harvey, could Mr. Daugherty have it ready for him by Thursday? Certainly, said Daugherty. And how, he asked, would Harvey prefer to pay for it? Packard does a strictly cash business. The only credit we extend is based on approved collateral. Daugherty quoted the price that Harvey already knew. Would Liberty Bonds in $500 denominations be satisfactory? Harvey asked. Certainly, answered Daugherty. We’ll need your name and address and so on—just for the paperwork. Daugherty filled out the forms.
As soon as Harvey left, Daugherty’s sales manager checked Harvey’s credit: the house he said was his belonged to his mother; his bank account had a balance of $500 in it; there’d been no checks written and no withdrawals made in some time. Still—Liberty Bonds were as good as cash. And—sales had been a bit off lately. Daugherty filled out some more paperwork—and waited.
While Daugherty’s boss was vetting Harvey, Harvey went shopping. Shopping for—of all things—a pair of handcuffs. He walked into a jewelry store; the jeweler referred him to a friend of his at an Army surplus store. The clerk there sold Harvey a pair of cuffs for $2.95.
Harvey waited a few days, then called Daugherty. His father had given him the go-ahead. He would pay with Liberty Bonds. Daugherty said he’d have the car ready for him. Harvey said the Liberty Bonds were at his bank. He’d feel more comfortable if Daugherty would meet him there to complete the transaction. Daugherty said he’d be pleased to do that. Harvey gave him the bank’s name and address. They set a time.
Harvey was disappointed when Daugherty pulled up: he wasn’t driving, and he wasn’t alone. Packard policy required that a licensed and insured mechanic drive any vehicle that was to be delivered. Daugherty introduced his driver: Carl Ausmus, a good-looking, able-bodied, ex-Army enlisted man, about the same age as Harvey.
Daugherty was a bit surprised when Harvey told him the Liberty Bonds were at his house. Harvey turned to Ausmus: “Mr. Daugherty and I can take care of things from here,” he said. Harvey peeled off a ten and some ones from a roll in his pocket and handed them to Ausmus. “For your trouble,” he said. Harvey knew about the art of tipping. Gentlemen knew such things. “Mr. Daugherty and I will finish up. He’ll meet you back at the office,” Harvey said. Ausmus looked at the money, then looked at Harvey. Packard, he said, paid him to deliver vehicles. That was his job. Harvey put the money back in his pocket. “Suit yourself,” he said. The three men drove to Harvey’s house.
Later, a neighbor said she remembered noticing the Packard drive up, with three men in it. She remembered seeing Harvey and another man get out and go into the house. The next time she looked, she said, the car was still parked outside, but no one was in it.
Harvey’s mother came home in the middle of the afternoon. “What’s this, Harvey?” she said. “It’s our new car, Mother.” He showed her the bill of sale. A blue bill of sale. “How on earth did you ever afford it?” Eva asked. “Isabel and I decided to surprise you and Father,” Harvey said. “We paid for it with those Liberty Bonds.”
Eva said exactly what Isabel thought she would: “It’s such an extravagance! Your father and I don’t need such a thing. We’re not that sort.”
Harvey folded the bill of sale and put it in his breast pocket. Eva clucked. Harvey opened the passenger compartment, held the door for her. She settled herself. “The seats are comfortable,” she said. “Soft,” she said.
By the end of the afternoon, Harvey had shown the bill of sale to several neighbors. He’d convinced Eva—and two of her lady friends—to go for a drive. The ladies chirped and changed their clothes. Harvey drove them to a scenic view called Indiana Point. “Lovely,” they all said.
By the time they got home, it was nearly suppertime.
Harvey went out back, to the garage, to tinker with his Harroun. Eva started cooking. Harvey was sweaty and dirty when Eva called him in to eat. “Are you all right, son?” Eva asked. “What were you doing back there?” “I had to move that old Harroun around,” he said. Then he had an idea (Harvey was always full of ideas). “Let’s drive up to Adams tomorrow, and surprise Father,” he said.
The next morning, that’s exactly what they did.
Harvey and Eva hadn’t been gone long when a boy, walking across a bridge ten miles west of the Loop (the bridge crossed the Des Plaines River), noticed a body floating, snagged, mid-river in the shallows. A man called the police. Police threw a net over the body and dragged it ashore with grappling hooks.
It was the body of a man. He hadn’t been dead or in the river for long. He was big, so the police had trouble getting him out of the water. He’d been beaten so badly that the police couldn’t tell, by looking, which of his wounds had killed him: He’d been strangled with a rope—still tied around his neck. His throat had been slashed—twice. His head had been beaten in, maybe with a blackjack, maybe with a club. Worse yet: “The man had gone to his death in handcuffs. The manacles were still locked around one wrist. . . .”1 Police found a gold watch, a fountain pen, and $27 in the dead man’s pockets. “Certainly not a robbery,” they said.
Daugherty and Ausmus hadn’t returned to the office after they’d delivered Harvey’s car. Police got a call from Daugherty’s boss about the time they hauled the corpse out of the river. They asked Daugherty’s sales manager to come to the station. He identified Daugherty, then told the police about Harvey and the tonneau. Within a day, detectives had traced the handcuffs on Daugherty to the store that had sold them to Harvey. The clerk—and the jeweler—both remembered him.
Ausmus was still missing. Police dragged the river upstream and down-stream. Detective John Norton (Carl Wanderer’s nemesis) had risen to the rank of “acting lieutenant.” The papers called him “Chief of the Homicide Bureau.” Norton sent telegrams to every Wisconsin town on the road, north to Adams. “Arrest and hold Harvey W. Church, wanted for murder in Chicago.” The telegrams described Harvey’s Packard and gave its license plate. “Wisconsin police were [asked] to be on the look out for [the car] and for Ausmus, who, police believe, may have been kidnapped and forced to drive the car.”2
Harvey was driving the Packard—with Eva in it—when he stopped at a drugstore on Main Street in Adams. The town’s marshal had received one of Norton’s telegrams. Harvey had switched plates—changed the Packard’s for the Harroun’s—but Packard tonneaus were less common than Model Ts in Adams; the marshal took note. He arrested Harvey, then telegraphed Chicago. Norton sent two detectives in a car to bring Harvey back. Then he headed straight for Harvey’s house.
What Norton and his men found in Harvey’s basement made them reconsider their kidnapping theory.
Harvey’s bedroom was down a flight of stairs. There were two bloody hats under his bed: a felt hat with Daugherty’s initials in it; a straw hat with Ausmus’s. Someone had left a bloody hatchet on a tool chest next to Harvey’s bed. Someone had also thrown documents—with Daugherty’s and Ausmus’s names on them—into the furnace, next door to Harvey’s bedroom. The furnace hadn’t been lit. The papers were intact.
The little room across from the furnace—the coal bin—looked like someone had slaughtered a young heifer in it. There was a pool of blood on the floor, smears and splatters of blood on the walls and the ceiling. Old newspapers, splotched and splattered with blood, lay piled on the floor.
Someone had left an old baseball bat leaning against the wall of the laundry room. The bat was sticky with blood. Someone had also left a bloody ax there, too.
Norton’s men cordoned off the house. A crowd gathered. A crew of detectives began digging up the backyard. Neighbors watched. The crowd grew. Police brought in electric searchlights; the men kept digging through the night. The crowd held steady. At dawn, a commissary crew carried pails of coffee through the crowd, to the men in the yard. The men dipped their cups, drank, and went back to work. By now, they’d dug up the whole backyard and the ground on both sides of the house. The crowd grew larger.
Norton told his men to start on the garage. It had a dirt and cinder floor. Harvey’s old car was parked next to one wall. A detective sergeant noticed something peculiar about the wheels on one side of the car. “Look,” he said, “the wheels . . . have sunk into the ground. The wheels on the other side are alright.”
Norton ordered his crew to move the car and start digging. Eight inches down, they hit a layer of bricks. “We’ve struck the foundation floor.” Norton knelt down to look. The bricks had been laid snug, but they hadn’t been plastered. “Pry ‘em up,” he said. As soon as they did, they saw a man’s shoe. Neighbors, reporters, cops, and Packard men pressed against the windows and crowded the doors of the garage.
After a few minutes of digging, detectives uncovered a man’s legs. The man had been bound with four coils of rope; his legs had been drawn up to his chest; he’d been buried on his side, his face to the wall. One of Ausmus’s friends leaned through a window. “That’s Carl,” he cried. “He was wearing the blue serge [suit] and shoes like that when he left the office.”
The detectives stopped digging and waited for the coroner, Peter Hoffman, to arrive. Hoffman shoved his way through the crowd, accompanied by a medical examiner named Reinhart. Hoffman had Ausmus’s friends brought in; he ordered the detectives to uncover the man’s face. Ausmus’s friends identified him, but it wasn’t easy: Ausmus had been beaten so savagely that his face had been almost obliterated. A huge discolored bruise—“caused by a terrific blow,” Reinhart said—extended from Ausmus’s left shoulder to the bottom of his rib cage. Ausmus’s Army watch was still on his wrist. Reinhart found a gold pencil and two five-dollar bills in his pocket.
Hoffman noticed a thread protruding from Ausmus’s mouth. He told Reinhart to pull it; it broke. Reinhart pried open Ausmus’s jaws. A heavy piece of cotton, a foot square, had been shoved down his throat. Whoever had done it may have meant to suffocate him. It hadn’t worked. Ausmus had been buried alive. Even after his legs had been drawn up to his chest, Ausmus was too big to fit in the hole that had been dug for him. Someone had stomped on his neck and broken it to get him down into the ground.
Reinhart spread out the wad of cloth he’d pulled out of Ausmus’s mouth. It wasn’t just a rag. “It was the front part of a woman’s brassiere.” The brassiere belonged to Eva.
Norton spoke to reporters:
“In all my years of police experience, I have never seen anything like this. This is an atrocity that is doubly brutal because it seems to have been so. . . . needless. Two men murdered for an automobile! Only a fool could have cooked up such a plan. Only a fiend could have executed it. . . . What makes it appear . . . like a one man job is that it might have been hard to find more than one with the turn of mind necessary to its accomplishment.”3
Harvey and his Packard drove back to Chicago—followed by a car of Chicago police detectives and several cars of reporters. Harvey’s mother, his father, and two lawyers, hired by Harvey’s father, sat behind him as he drove. The convoy reached Chicago at three o’clock in the morning. Harvey’s parents were escorted to a hotel. Harvey was taken to be interrogated.
Neither Hoffman nor Norton was permitted to question him. Robert E. Crowe—the new state’s attorney for Cook County—had pulled rank and intervened. The case of Harvey Church, “the handcuff slayer,” belonged to him.
(Three years later, in 1924, Crowe would make a national name for himself, when he investigated and prosecuted Leopold and Loeb. Crowe had gotten his first, local headlines in 1919 when, as a Circuit Court judge, he’d presided over the trial—and ordered the execution—of a janitor named Fitzgerald who’d assaulted, then strangled, a five-year-old girl. The Fitzgerald case led to Crowe’s being appointed state’s attorney—just in time for Harvey.)
Crowe carried himself like a prosecutor who lived and breathed the Old Testament. Scowls, frowns, and suspicious looks marked his public face. He relished guilt and punishment more than he understood innocence or reasonable doubt. Public amputations, impalements, and burnings might have pleased him. His political ambitions were as fierce as his belief in retribution. His goal was to become the Republican boss of Cook County. (To accomplish this, Crowe would ally himself with “Big Bill” Thompson, one of the most venal mayors in the besotted history of Chicago municipal government. Thompson certainly wasn’t the Devil himself, but he did collect regular paychecks that smelled of fire and brimstone.)
Crowe was sufficiently cautious to use an investigator named Newmark to do the dirty work of forcing Harvey to confess. Newmark was a big, powerfully built man who wore a derby to make himself look even more imposing. As a courtesy to Coroner Hoffman—and to Chicago Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris—Crowe permitted a detective captain named Mullen to assist Newmark in his interrogation.
A police detail escorted Harvey to Newmark’s office; reporters settled themselves outside the door to eavesdrop. Newmark and Mullen took turns shouting at Harvey, then asking him questions. Harvey either didn’t answer them or denied everything. Once, he shouted so loudly that reporters outside on the sidewalk heard him: “I’m telling you the truth,” he yelled. “I didn’t kill them!”
Newmark and Mullen were waiting for the sun to rise. They planned to take Harvey on a tour. After a few more hours of shouting, they dragged Harvey downstairs and shoved him into a car. Reporters followed.
“At high speed, the cars swept through the city to . . . Fulton Street, Church’s home. It was 9:31 when they arrived there; a crowd of several hundred murder fans were already at the house.
“Church’s arrival caused a distinct stir among the crowd. Hisses, pointed fingers, loud remarks of ‘There’s the murderer!’ [greeted him]. Then came more somber whispers—talks of lynching bees—of justice by the rope.
“Investigators . . . rushed Church inside . . . police cleared the yard of spectators. . . . Then, from the rear door of the house, the lad was taken through the yard to the garage. . . . Church staggered slightly as he walked through the garage door. In an apparently desperate effort to control himself, he straightened [his stance].
“The Harroun car . . . had been returned by the police to the spot [where] it was found on the first day of the search. The grave of Ausmus below its wheels had [not] been filled in. . . . To this spot, Church was led. ‘Kneel down there,’ Newmark said. Church sank slowly.
“ ‘That’s where you buried him, isn’t it?’ Newmark shouted. Church leaned forward, peering beneath the car, his eyes half closed.
“ ‘You killed him, didn’t you—and dragged his body here and buried him. We’ve got the body! Confess! You’ll feel better if you do! . . . ’ Question after question was volleyed at him.
“Church, like a trapped man, swung his head from side to side. Tears came to his eyes and rolled slowly down his cheek.
“ ‘I—I—didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!’ he gasped. He turned his head away as if in fear of the spot.
“ ‘Look at it! Look at it! What are you afraid of?’ Newmark snapped. ‘You killed him, didn’t you? You put him in there alive—you stomped his shoulders and head down and broke his neck, didn’t you? Why are you afraid to look there now?’
“Church gasped again and crumpled. Flat on the ground, he lay for a minute, apparently in great distress. The officers picked him up and rushed him down the steps into the basement.
“They stopped just inside the door. . . .’How do you account for this?’ . . . A few steps further and there was a post on which were splatters of dried blood. . . . ’Whose blood is that?’ was shouted at him. Church wavered for a moment, then shook his head. They pushed him to the coal bin.
“In one corner was a pool of slowly drying blood. Newmark bent over it and with a sharp gesture of his hand towards it, looked full into Church’s face.
“ ‘Whose blood is that?’ he volleyed. Church shook his head.
“ ‘You killed them there! You killed them both there! You know you did! Don’t you?’ Church turned his head; his face grew pale; he didn’t say a word.
“ ‘Don’t be a coward!’ Newmark shot at him.’Fess up! You killed them there—you know it and we know it. Don’t be a coward!’ But the youth, his head still shaking . . . turned away. . . .
“. . . ’No! No!’ Church gasped. . . .’I don’t know anything about this!’
“ ‘You’ve seen the dope we’ve got on you!’ Newmark shot back.’You thought we were kidding you when we said we had the goods!’ ”4
From the coal bin, Newmark dragged Harvey to the furnace; from the furnace, Newmark dragged him up the stairs, out of the house, past the crowd, back into the car. Next stop was the Lake Street bridge. Reporters watched and listened to everything; photographers made pictures of Newmark’s gestures and Harvey’s stumbles.
“The party drove to the undertaking rooms of William Dietzel. The place was locked. An officer kicked in the door and Church was hustled . . . [into] the room where, on a slab, [lay] Daugherty’s body. . . . They stripped the sheet from it and pushed Church up in front of it. . . . ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ . . . Church broke. A gasp like that of a dying man came from his lips. He straightened up [then] began to fall.‘Grab him! Get him out of here!’ Newmark snapped.” It was noon by then. Church hadn’t slept in more than a day.
They drove back to Newmark’s office. “Church . . . slumped down in his chair.’Can I see my mother for a moment?’ he asked.
“ ‘Confess and you can . . .’ said Mullen. He asked Church, ‘Do you mean to tell us that you didn’t see Daugherty and Ausmus in your home when you were there?’ ”
Church looked around the room. He said nothing, then he broke. “Yes, they were there!” “You killed them, didn’t you?” Church looked at Mullen and Newmark again. Then in a quiet voice: “Yes. I killed them.”
Newmark rushed out of his office. “Church has come through!” he shouted to the reporters. “He killed both men. He’s confessed!”5
Newmark wouldn’t have been so relieved if he’d known how many confessions Harvey had in him. Newmark’s methods—his use of fatigue, fear, and humiliation—didn’t include the beatings that Hoffman and Norton had—probably—used to break Carl Wanderer. There was no need: Newmark’s psychological “third degree” broke Harvey as thoroughly as if he’d strapped Harvey to a rack. Emotional suffering produced the same sort of confession as acute physical pain.
Harvey told Newmark whatever Newmark wanted to hear. “I did it all myself,” Harvey said. “. . . If you check up on the way things were left in the house, you can see that I’m telling the truth.”6
The truth Harvey offered to Newmark (and to Mullen, and to two other people in the room: Assistant State’s Attorney Charles Wharton, whom Crowe had entrusted with prosecuting Church once the case went to trial, and Acting Lieutenant Norton) was this:
Ausmus drove Harvey and Daugherty to Harvey’s house. He offered Daugherty a drink. “I never say no to a drink,” Daugherty said. Harvey headed for the basement. Daugherty followed. Harvey picked up a handgun. (Police said they’d found the gun in a drawer in Harvey’s bedroom.) “Is this the gun?” Newmark asked Harvey. Harvey said it was. The weapon was a cheap .32 caliber, “dresser drawer”/“pocket revolver” called a “bulldog.” (“British bulldogs,” made by reputable British and Belgian firms, were used as personal, defensive sidearms by military officers and policemen. George Armstrong Custer had fired a few rounds from his “bulldog” before Sioux warriors hacked him to death. Cheaply made “bulldogs” were manufactured and sold by so many firms in the United States and Europe that, as a class, “bulldogs” came to mean what police, during the late twentieth century, called “Saturday night specials.”) Harvey said he’d found the gun in one of the houses his father had bought in Adams. He’d brought it with him to Chicago for the same reason, he said, he’d bought the handcuffs: He’d been involved in “labor troubles” up in Wisconsin and needed to protect himself.
Daugherty was expecting a drink, not a stickup, when he went downstairs. Harvey told him to turn around, then put his hands behind him. Daugherty did as he was told. Harvey handcuffed him.
Then—the exact order of events varied as Harvey confessed different truths to different people—Harvey either slit Daugherty’s throat, then strangled him, then beat him to death with his baseball bat. Or: Harvey didn’t slit Daugherty’s throat; didn’t strangle him; didn’t beat him to death. Didn’t. Didn’t. Didn’t.
Whatever and whoever killed Daugherty had killed him by the time Ausmus came looking for his partner. Harvey pointed his gun at Ausmus and told him to kneel. Ausmus knelt. “I know what Chicago holdups are like,” Ausmus said. “He was yellow,” Harvey told Newmark. Harvey tied up Ausmus. In fact, Harvey hog-tied him. Then Harvey beat him to death. Or, at least, he tried to beat him to death. Or, maybe, he didn’t point his gun at Ausmus. Maybe he just smashed him up as he came down the stairs. Whatever happened, Ausmus was still making noise. Which is why Harvey stuffed that piece of cloth—Harvey called it a “light colored piece of goods”—into Ausmus’s mouth. Harvey said he’d never noticed that the cloth was a piece of his mother’s brassiere. How would he know whose brassiere it was? Harvey also said that he’d never stomped on Ausmus’s neck to get him to fit in the hole he’d dug for him.
In the typescript of the confession Harvey made to Newmark, Harvey had—for some reason—used the word “we” when he’d talked about burying Ausmus. Harvey’s “we” upset Newmark—and Crowe—when they read the typescript. Harvey had immediately corrected himself after he’d said it. Later in his confession, Harvey had used the word “we” again—but not corrected himself.
No one noticed these slips until later. Harvey’s misuse of the personal pronoun was less worrisome than the brutal how and why of what he’d done. Since Assistant State’s Attorney Wharton had the job of convincing a jury of Harvey’s guilt, he took over the interrogation. Harvey had used a gun on Daugherty; he’d ambushed Ausmus; brutal surprise had enabled him to overcome, then kill the two. But: How in the world had Harvey managed to single-handedly lift Daugherty’s body over the parapets of the Lake Street bridge? And why—why?—did he really do what he’d done? Wharton needed to hear a plausible, believable explanation for the “how” of Harvey’s crime. He also needed to hear a relatively plausible reason for it to have happened. If a jury believed Harvey had killed two innocent men for the sake of a car they might send him to an asylum instead of the gallows.
Harvey said he’d waited until three-thirty in the morning to shove Daugherty’s body into a gunnysack, then drag it out to his car. (His new car.) Wharton was willing to accept this—but the bridge’s parapets were as high as Harvey’s chest. Harvey weighed 135 pounds. Daugherty weighed 220. “Show us how you did it,” Wharton said.
Lieutenant Norton volunteered to be Daugherty. The lieutenant weighed 210 pounds. He lay down on his back on the floor. “Show us,” said Wharton. Harvey did. He knelt down, and then, as Wharton and Mullen and New-mark watched, he lifted Norton onto a table. He didn’t do it all at once—he held Norton, propped him up, balanced him in stages. Harvey was no little Goliath, but he used his strength well. He proved he could do what he said he’d done.
But why?
Harvey explained: A few days before he’d killed the men, he’d received an anonymous phone call. A man had threatened to kill him and his mother and his father unless, said Harvey, “I obtained a car worth more than $5,400 by September 10th. . . . The caller hung up immediately. That was all he said.. . . He threatened the life of my father, mother, and myself.”
That was enough to satisfy Wharton. No ghosts, no voices, no spirits. Someone had forced Harvey to do it. Extortion, pure and simple. Who wouldn’t butcher two men to save his own family?
Mr. Crowe seemed very pleased. “Church’s statement is airtight and can not be broken-down,” Crowe declared. “Mr. Wharton deserves the greatest possible praise for the manner in which he conducted the examination of Church and his skill in arranging the confession.” Mr. Crowe announced that he himself would be “personally supervising the preparation of the case.” He promised “a new record for speed in prosecution.”7
Coroner Hoffman had a somewhat different reaction to Harvey’s confession. “A tissue of lies” was the way he described it. He prepared to convene a coroner’s inquest. No matter what Crowe believed or intended, there would be no criminal trial unless there was an inquest. Crowe could pull rank—but Hoffman controlled the beginning of the legal process.
Hoffman asked Crowe to release Harvey so he could testify at the inquest. Crowe agreed, but demanded Harvey be returned as soon as possible. Crowe had good reason to be suspicious.
Harvey’s police escort didn’t take him directly to the inquest. Instead they stopped and waited while Harvey had a quiet little conversation with their chief, Charles Fitzmorris. Fitzmorris was a big, smart, good-looking man who was used to speaking his mind and used to being right.
Fitzmorris agreed with Hoffman about the confession Harvey had made to Crowe’s people. A single, threatening, anonymous phone call, the ambush and brutal killing of two able-bodied men, the single-handed disposal of Daugherty’s body—there were too many implausible parts to Harvey’s story. Church must have had accomplices.
While Fitzmorris chatted with Harvey (“We’ve arrested your friends,” Fitzmorris said) a crowd of five thousand people gathered outside the funeral home where the inquest was to be held. “Thousands of persons lined both sides of the street for more than a block in both directions . . . several women were knocked down. There were a few, isolated cries of ‘Lynch him,’ but for the most part, the motive of the crowd seemed mostly curiosity.”8
Harvey was led past the bodies of Ausmus and Daugherty, laid out on marble slabs in a room next to the chapel where Hoffman had assembled his jury. Police led Harvey to the front; reporters sat behind him. Harvey turned around. “This is something of an experience,” he whispered to a reporter. “I wouldn’t mind it so much if you fellows weren’t always shooting off flashlights. The smoke gets in my eyes and makes me sick.”
The reporter smiled. Harvey smiled. “I never smoked or chewed or anything,” he said to the reporter. “My only bad habit was cleaning my finger nails.”
Harvey laughed politely so the reporter knew he was joking. He looked up, then he gasped. A detective sergeant was standing across the room, absentmindedly swinging the baseball bat police had found in Harvey’s basement.
“On the table beside the detective were the bloodstained [hats] of the victims and other gory bits of clothing. . . . [Church] blanched, turned away, and lapsed into silence. . . .
“[Church] arose nonchalantly in answer to the coroner’s call, ‘Harvey Church, will you stand up!’ ”
Hoffman read a statement: “Any information you give during this inquest will be used against you at trial.”
That’s when Harvey did something that no one—at least no one who worked for Mr. Crowe—had anticipated.
“I think I’ll testify at the court hearing,” Harvey said. “That would be better, I guess.”
Hoffman looked surprised. He may have been. He may also have sensed that something might be changing in Harvey. Something like his confession.
“Does that mean that you don’t want to testify here?” Hoffman asked. Newmark and Mullen thought they’d broken him. They had. Fitzmorris had patched him up.
“I’ll wait until I get a chance to be heard in Criminal Court,” Harvey answered.
Hoffman began to call witnesses: two medical examiners, Lieutenant Norton, Assistant State’s Attorney Wharton, the stenographer who’d written down Harvey’s confession.
Hoffman asked Norton to read the confession aloud. Harvey’s “I-did-it-all-by-myself” confession.
In a somber voice, Hoffman asked Harvey if the statement, just read, was correct.
That’s when Harvey said something that Hoffman—and Fitzmorris—had hoped he’d say.
“No,” Harvey answered. “That’s not the whole truth.”
The reporters were surprised. Mr. Crowe’s people began to listen very attentively.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Hoffman. “How can your words, written exactly as you spoke them, not be ‘the whole truth’?”
“I would make the statement,” Church answered, “that that is the essence of the truth of what I said, but not the truth.”9
Harvey’s fear and anger (combined with Fitzmorris’s persuasiveness) had given him just enough strength to dodge his own guilt. Newmark had hurt him. Crowe wanted to hang him. Harvey wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
2 AIDED CHURCH IN MURDERS
Pal Confesses Handcuff Slaying Plot
TWO VICTIMS LURED TO DEATH IN BASEMENT
Three Men Were to Share in Auto Sale10
“Harvey W. Church had two accomplices in the handcuff murder by which two automobile salesmen . . . met a brutal death last Thursday night.
“Early last evening [following the coroner’s inquest], Church admitted that his confession, made on Sunday, was, in detail, untrue; that his horrifying crime was a plot in which he and two others had equal share.
“A few hours later, Leon Parks, 24 years old . . . confessed to State’s Attorney Crowe, Chief of Police Fitzmorris, and Chief Investigator Newmark that he—and one other man—were the accomplices of Church in the commission of the double crime.
“The third man, he said, was Clarence Wilder. . . . Parks is the night manager of the Benario garage on West Lake Street. Wilder was an accomplice and former roommate of Church, who had been connected with the garage as an accessory salesman. . . .
“For the first time, Parks’s confession bared the real motive of the crime. It wasn’t just the love of a fine car that inspired the killings, he said. The three had planned to steal the car from Daugherty and Ausmus, sell it, and split the $5000 they expected to receive for it. . . .
“The breakdown of the garage mechanic followed his being brought face to face with Church. Church repeated the story he’d told Newmark a few hours earlier, implicating Parks. . . .
“ ‘Well,’said Parks, ‘if you’ve squawked, I’m going to squawk.’ ”
Everyone—Fitzmorris, Hoffman, Norton, Crowe, Newmark, Wharton—was eager to know who did what to whom. But: In the same way that Norton had been delighted when he’d learned about Carl Wanderer’s seventeen-year-old girlfriend—At last! A familiar, carnal, sane motive!—so everyone was relieved to learn that Harvey wasn’t a crazy loner. Harvey was just greedy. He was nothing but a common car thief. An ordinary—normal—car thief.
Harvey himself had called Norton to tell him he’d lied. “Norton,” he said, “I’m as happy as I can be. I’m going to open up and tell the truth.”
“The truth” was that it was all Parks’s idea.
A few nights after Harvey brought in his old Harroun, Harvey said, “Parks . . . he says to me, ‘Wouldn’t you like to make some easy money?’ I says, ‘How?’ He says, ‘By stealing a car and selling it.’ I says, ‘Could you get away with it?’ He says, ‘Don’t worry about that. . . .’
“I thought it over in my mind. On Wednesday, September 7, I met him in the garage and told him I was going down to the Packard Company and get a Twin Six car the next day—and he said he would be over at my house with a man when I got there . . .
“I asked him what he was going to do. He said he was going to bind the gentleman that brought the car—and also my hands, leaving my feet free so that [later] . . . I might get up and make an alarm . . . I told him I could do that. . . .”11
Wilder was the man Parks brought along to help him. They both had guns. They stuck up Daugherty. They told Harvey to handcuff him. They were the ones who killed Daugherty. They did the same thing to Ausmus. The only difference was that, instead of handcuffs, they told Harvey to tie up Ausmus with some rope. Then they killed Ausmus. The two of them—not Harvey—were the ones who buried Ausmus. The next morning, it was Wilder who helped Harvey throw Daugherty over the bridge.
Attorney Wharton was thrilled when he heard all this.
“Church is not a man with a disordered mind,” Wharton told the press. “The fact that he evinces interest in greater and lesser degrees shows that his mind functions normally. . . . Throughout the questioning, Church carried an air of conviction. He impressed me with his desire to be truthful. He manifested a strong desire to purge his conscience and soul of consequences of his crime. Throughout the inquisition, he . . . seemed to want to describe the killing as accurately as possible and without omitting any essential fact.”
In fact, Wharton told reporters, Church’s new confession was the “most wonderful demonstration of memory and concentration I have ever seen in an untrained mind. When one reads [Church’s new] statement, one marvels that such a person could remember the details of so atrocious a crime in as perfect a sequence as his recital shows.
“Church has great resistant power, both physical and mental. He shows . . . the strength of a country boy who had not yet been weakened with the diseases of city life.”12
Unfortunately:
Parks’s version of events didn’t match Church’s. When police leaned on Parks, he repudiated everything he’d just said. Police sat him down at a table across from Church. For three hours, Church read, reread, and initialed each typed page of his new, one-hundred-page confession. Parks watched him and trembled. Church taunted him: “Watcha waiting for? Are you yellow? You know it’s true—if you say it isn’t, you’re a liar.” Parks sank down in his chair. Then he grabbed a pen.13 “It’s no use,” Parks said. “I thought if I could get my confession thrown out, I might have a chance to keep from hanging. But—they’ll hang me anyway. I might as well sign up.”
Too bad.
“The puzzling features of the murder were not cleared up with the revision of Church’s confession and the supplementary statement of Parks. Some investigators were inclined to discredit the story that the principals in the murder had hoped for no reward other than a share of the $5000 to be obtained from the sale of the car. . . .”14
Police arrested Clarence Wilder—the third man implicated in the “handcuff murders.” They arrested him the same day Parks wilted and “signed up.”
Wilder produced an alibi: “He said he was at work, all day Thursday, the day of the murder, in the Levi Shoe Factory at West Van Buren and South Loop Streets. His employers deny this.”15
While police checked Wilder’s alibi, Harvey changed his new confession—the one he’d just spent three hours initialing; the one that Attorney Wharton had hailed as proof of Harvey’s prodigious memory and his rock-solid sanity. Parks was still part of “Confession #3,” but the identity of the third man changed.
It wasn’t (said Harvey) Clarence Wilder who’d helped Parks kill the two. It wasn’t Clarence Wilder who’d helped Harvey throw Daugherty over the bridge. No, no. It was Milton Walker.
Harvey had changed his mind after police presented Walker to him in a lineup. “Which one of these guys was with you and Parks?” Church picked Walker. “It was him,” Church said, “not the gentleman I referred to.”
“What made you think that the man’s name was Walker instead of Wilder?” Mr. Crowe asked Church. “Just what Parks told me,” said Church. “When we were disposing of Daugherty’s body . . . Parks said to me that his name was Walker.”
Crowe winced when he heard this:
“In his second confession, Church had declared emphatically that Parks was not present when the body of Daugherty was taken [to the bridge].”16
More problems ensued. Denials, corrections, and befuddlements unfolded like a vaudeville routine:
“Walker asserted that he had never seen Church.
“Parks declared that he knew Walker as Walker but had had no dealings with him.
“The identification of Wilder was similarly muddled.
“When Wilder was arrested, he admitted that he knew Church and had roomed with him [at a place on West Monroe Street] a year ago. Church in his [first] confession had referred to his acquaintanceship with Wilder. Today, however, he repudiated all that with the flat declaration that he does not know Wilder and never was acquainted with him.
“Mr. Crowe ordered Walker and Wilder to be kept in custody until their alibis could be further investigated.”17 (Walker’s alibi was unassailable: he was still in jail—for robbing a grocer—on the day Daugherty and Ausmus were killed.)
“I am convinced,” declared Mr. Crowe, “that both Parks and Church are trying to shield Walker, whether in this case or some other. I believe [Church] may be induced to tell a straight story, yet.”18
Fitzmorris and Hoffman had been sure they were right (about Harvey having accomplices) and that Crowe and Newmark were wrong (about Harvey being a loner). They’d used Harvey against Crowe, but they hadn’t anticipated that Harvey would use the four of them against each other. Crowe had deferred to the coroner and the chief; Crowe had taken credit for their ideas. Now Harvey’s newest “tissue of lies” was falling apart in Mr. Crowe’s hands—while everyone was watching.
“All our men are working steadily, harmoniously, and in coordination in this case,” Crowe told the press. “There is no friction—and there isn’t going to be any. We are working for purposes of prosecution—not for purposes of publicity. We are examining all witnesses to determine the value of their stories in a trial court. . . .”19
As a result:
Wilder was released. His alibi held. Parks was released because Crowe, Newmark, and Fitzmorris all knew that they’d threatened Parks, then put words in his mouth.
Crowe was back to where he’d started. Or, as Norton first said: “Only a fool could have cooked up this plan. Only a fiend could have carried it out.” Harvey had told people what they wanted to hear—what he kept calling “the truth”—once, twice, three times. Crowe asked Harvey to tell him the truth, once again.
“Parks told me Wilder was in Philadelphia,” Harvey explained. “I thought if I named him—or any one—the detectives would let my father and mother go.” (Harvey’s parents were still in a Chicago hotel. Not under arrest, but not free to go.) “That was the reason I gave Wilder’s name. He really didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Crowe replaced State’s Attorney Wharton with another assistant state’s attorney named Edgar Jones. Jones was prepared to believe that Harvey did it all himself. Ben Newmark, chief investigator, “still clings to the theory that the murderer had accomplices.”20 “Parks and Church are both guilty,” Newmark said. “There is a third man. . . . We are after him now. . . . We do not know who he is.”
Crowe was tired of other people’s theories. Late one night, he ordered police to pull Harvey out of his cell in the county jail and take him to an outlying police station.
Norton, Newmark, Wharton, an investigator named Smith, and Crowe himself took turns questioning Harvey. They let one reporter—a reporter from the Chicago Tribune—watch and listen. Hours passed.
“Church was obdurate and sullen. Then . . . shortly after dawn, he calmly said, ‘I killed him. . . . The police wanted an accomplice, so I gave them one. They insisted I couldn’t do it alone, but I did.’ ”21
Harvey’s interrogators asked him the same questions Wharton had first asked: How could a little guy like Harvey have overwhelmed a big guy like Daugherty? How could he, all alone, have lifted Daugherty’s deadweight up and over the parapets of the Lake Street bridge?
“Give me a chance and I’ll show you . . .” Harvey said. “Give me a man as big as Daugherty and I’ll pick him up and show you.”
“Detective Sergeant ‘Billy’ McCarthy stepped forward. McCarthy weighed 190 pounds.” (The coroner had changed Daugherty’s weight from 220 to 188.) “It was just after 7:00 AM when handcuffs were handed to Church. In the winkling of an eye, he had snapped the cuffs on McCarthy and laid him on the floor. The detective let his body go limp . . . Church wrapped his arms around him and began to lift.
“In amazement, the watchers saw him slowly lift McCarthy from the floor. The only sound was the labored breathing of the murderer. . . . Before [anyone] realized it, Church had raised . . . McCarthy to the level of his waist and placed him on the table.
“Church stepped back. ‘See,’ he jerked out,’I did it.’ ”22
“I did it myself,” Harvey said. “I didn’t intend to kill him at first. Things just moved too fast for me. . . .
“Daugherty came to the house. I didn’t have the money. I invited him to the cellar. I covered him with the revolver and snapped the cuffs on him.
“Then something came over me. I don’t know what. . . . I hit him with a ball bat. Then I just went ‘nutty’ I guess. I grabbed up an axe and I cut his throat. I pounded him, again and again.
“Then Ausmus came. I hit him and he died. I left the bodies and took Mother for a ride.
“Later, I returned and buried Ausmus. I was all heated up and perspiring. Mother noticed it. . . .
“I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. At 3 o’clock, I got up and took Daugherty’s body to the river and threw it in. . . .
“I told the truth when I first made a confession. No one would believe me. The police seemed to think that someone else was in on it. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that if I dragged another one in, I’d go free. . . .
“Leon Parks never had anything to do with it. Neither did Milton Walker . . . Police said Parks had confessed. I decided to change my story. That’s all there is to it.”23
There was more to it, though. Much more.
Harvey had killed two Packard salesmen for the sake of a tonneau. Carl Wanderer had killed his pretty, young, pregnant wife and a perfect stranger because he wanted to reenlist in the Army.
Wanderer hadn’t been immediately arrested after he’d done what he’d done (and once Wanderer had been arrested, he was labeled as crazy), for the same reason that experienced men like Chief Fitzmorris and Coroner Hoffman had refused to believe Harvey after he’d confessed (the first time). Harvey told his interrogators what he’d done and why he’d done it, but the most experienced police professionals in the city thought he was lying. Harvey might as well have been trying to convince sixteenth-century churchmen about the solar system or fourteenth-century physicians about microbes.
Harvey inhabited a state of mind—an early-twentieth-century state of mind—in which advertising had begun to turn water into wine. Anyone with common sense would think that a man who butchered two other men because he wanted a Packard—or a man who would kill his wife and a stranger because he loved the Army—anyone would think that people like that had to be crazy. Because if they weren’t crazy, if they were normal, then they presaged a state of existence in which water ran uphill and darkness shone like the sun.
Harvey was more than a little crazy. His craziness made him receptive. His receptiveness made him ahead of his time.
State’s Attorney Crowe understood. He decided Harvey was sane. Sane enough to be punished. Sane enough to be hung.
Harvey’s trial began on the last day of November 1921.
The weeks in jail had changed him.
“ ‘The People of the State of Illinois versus Harvey W. Church . . .’
“The bailiff droned on, but the people in the crowded courtroom of Judge John Caverly had eyes and ears only for the figure of the youth, slumped down in [a] cane-bottomed chair, his coat and trousers ragged, dirty, misshapen; long, dirty locks of his black hair, uncut for weeks, partly concealed his eyes, set and glassy, as he stared . . . at something that [seemed to have] hypnotized him. . . . A short, black beard could not hide the deep lines in his face. . . . The boy who had entered the prison debonairly, a few weeks ago, boasting that he would soon be free, is ‘paying the penalty.’ . . . His eyes with their haggard, mesmerized stare, never left the floor. . . .He was led away, stumbling, shuffling. . . . An attorney for the defense indicated that the plea will be that [Church’s] confession was obtained . . . through beatings and coercion. The defense also asked prospective jury men about dementia praecox, katatonia, and hebrephrenia, indicating the possibility of a plea of insanity.”24
(Three years after Judge John Caverly presided over Harvey’s trial, he presided over the trial of Leopold and Loeb. Caverly was a British immigrant who’d paid for his legal education by working as a water carrier in the steel mills outside of Chicago. Early in his legal career, he’d devoted himself to building a juvenile court system for Cook County. He had a reputation for showing sympathy for “youthful offenders.” He would show none for Harvey, but his decision not to execute Leopold and Loeb was based largely on their age. Their youth.)
As the prosecution began to present its evidence—crime scene evidence, forensic medical evidence, the testimony of such witnesses as the jeweler and the surplus store clerk—Harvey began to sink deeper into his chair, and deeper into himself. From the day he’d been arrested (September 11) to the day (September 18) he’d confessed, the second time, to killing both men himself, Harvey had dressed and acted like a wisecracking college boy—articulate, ironic, and argumentative. Then, at his arraignment on October 6, he’d simply stopped talking. On December 1, he refused to leave his bed. On December 2, he began what soon became a hunger strike. Guards carried him, upright, into court; there he sat, hunched, mute, and filthy. On Christmas Eve, the day he was convicted, Harvey no longer stood or walked on his own, no longer responded to language, gesture, sudden movement, or sudden sound. The press—and the public—attributed Harvey’s physical collapse to guilt, remorse, and fear. Fear of death, they said, had sucked the life out of him. The prosecution—Mr. Crowe in particular—thought Harvey was faking.
Harvey must have known there was no escape. Except one. He knew he was locked in jail, but he also knew he didn’t have to be present when they hung him. Harvey withdrew and withdrew and withdrew. Slowly, incrementally, in plain sight, Harvey left.
Since the prosecution knew that every one of Harvey’s confessions, true and false, had been forced out of him, the state based its case, entirely, on circumstantial evidence.
Harvey’s defense called his mother and his sister. They recited the long list of his accidents, head injuries, horrific falls, and strange behaviors.
Next came the defense’s mental health experts—three “alienists” who each testified that Harvey was insane. One of them was Dr. William Hickson, chief of the city’s Psychopathic Laboratory—the same man who had quickly diagnosed Carl Wanderer as a latent homosexual who suffered from dementia praecox.
The jury could see there was something wrong with Harvey, but they thought it was guilt. The jury spent five hours reviewing the evidence. One ballot was all that was needed.
Two bailiffs carried Harvey into court. Two bailiffs held him upright as the verdict was read. Harvey was out of range. He’d pushed off from shore the day his trial had begun. He was out of sight of land when the jury sentenced him to death.
Mr. Crowe was gratified.
He made a short speech, appropriate to the holiday season.
“Cook County is extremely fortunate in having twelve men who, despite the sentiment of Christmas, had the courage to find Harvey W. Church guilty of murder and fix his penalty at death. The courtroom was filled with the spirit of Christmas during the trial. During its entire three weeks, the ‘Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men’ sentiment grew and reached a climax. . . .”25
A date was set for Harvey’s execution. His defense had learned a lesson from Carl Wanderer’s defense: It filed a motion for a sanity trial.
Harvey no longer left his bed. His jailors had begun to force-feed him. He seemed so profoundly withdrawn—so obviously catatonic—that his defense wanted him carried into court each day and deposited there, so he might serve as his own “Exhibit A.” The prosecution objected. The press couldn’t resist the chance to take a look.
“A reporter accompanied a physician and a psychiatrist to [Church’s] death cell . . . ‘Exhibit A’ lay on a hospital bed . . . on his back. The examining physician applied a [‘deep pain,’ sterile needle, puncture] test. Such a test, the physician said, ‘would revive a patient from the deepest state of normal coma.’ There was no reaction.
“ ‘There has been a complete mental, moral, and physical degeneration,’ said the physician. ‘One cannot think of him in terms of human kind. What lies here is merely a lump of flesh.’ ”26
“Church is dead, mentally,” a psychiatrist said. “I don’t think he would live were he turned loose. I think he’s past the stage of consciousness. Hanging him will extinguish the spark of life—the other side is gone, now.”27
Harvey’s sanity trial lasted two days. He wasn’t in court. His defense called three of the same alienists who’d testified on behalf of Carl Wanderer at his sanity trial. The prosecution called three others. One of them had also testified (on behalf of the prosecution) during the Wanderer trial. (Three of these six “expert medical witnesses” would testify, three years later, during the trial of Leopold and Loeb.)
The jury deliberated for two hours. Its second ballot was unanimous: Harvey was sane. “Stupefied by fear” said one juror—but sane enough to die.
A pair of physicians examined Harvey in his cell one last time. They took his pulse, tapped his elbows and knees with rubber mallets, checked his pupils. His eyes had rolled over, backwards, in their sockets. They applied what they said was an “infallible test to determine whether or not one is feigning a state of coma.” Ether-soaked cotton was held under Harvey’s nose, like smelling salts. “It would, as one physician put it,’awaken the seven sleepers of Ephesus.’ It did not awaken Church.”28
On the wall above Harvey’s bed, someone had hung a framed page of verses:
The bounty of the house is order
The beauty of the house is contentment
The glory of the house is hospitality
The crown of the house is godliness.
At three-thirty the next afternoon, two guards tied Harvey to a kitchen chair. They handcuffed his hands behind him, then strapped his arms to his body.
Carpenters had built gallows in a courtyard. Cells facing the courtyard had been evacuated. Seventy-five witnesses sat on pine benches.
Guards carried Harvey, backwards, in the chair, up the steps to the scaffold.
Harvey’s heart beat for fifteen minutes after the trap was sprung. The witnesses waited.
Coroner Hoffman tried to convince Harvey’s parents to have him autopsied.
“I wish to determine,” Hoffman said, “whether Church was really in a comatose condition through willpower.
“I still believe,” he said, “that Harvey Church did not commit the two murders, unaided. I suspect that there was at least one more person implicated in the double crime . . . Church’s lips were sealed for weeks and he went to the gallows mentally dead.
“I believe that there is but one way to explain this and that is that Church had been drugged while in his cell to keep him from talking.”29
Harvey’s parents refused Hoffman’s request.
They shipped Harvey back home by train. They unloaded his coffin a few stops before Adams to avoid the crowd that had gathered there. They buried him in a cemetery twelve miles out of town.
Eva died, five years later, in December.
A car hit her. While she was crossing a street in the town of Friendship.