Ghosts in Court

How a Supernatural Witness Contended Against the Living Loves of a Famous Murderer

EDMUND PEARSON

WHEN ghosts get into court they meet a facetious and disrespectful audience. It used to be otherwise: there are some fine stories of spectral evidence in murder cases of two hundred years ago.

We laugh at the judge, in the Salem witchcraft trials, who rose and struck with a switch at the evil spirits that were floating in the air above the bench. But we listen with grave faces while the alienists in the Loeb-Leopold case talk about the "king and slave phantasy"; or while a psychiatrist at the Hickman trial in California practises "dermography" or skin-writing as a test of sanity.

The trouble with the clairvoyant, the dealer in ghosts, is that he is socially declasse.

One of the latest spiritualists to come before an American court, and bring her ghosts with her, was an Englishwoman, a practising medium in New Bedford. She called herself Madame Isherwood, and she was an important witness for the State, in the trial of William Crockett Howard for the murder of his wife, Ida.

At that time, in 1908, Howard was a young fellow in his twenties; a native of Tennessee; and a private in the United States Army, stationed at Fort Rodman in New Bedford harbour. He was most unprepossessing, with a sullen face, and ugly, turned-down lips.

But he had the lure of his uniform, or else he had a way with him, for he devoted his spare time, most successfully, to love affairs. He made a list of his girls—it was found in his soldier's manual—during three years at the fort, setting down the Amys and Rosas and Fredas and Evas (there were three Evas) and Mollies and Adelines whose hearts he had won.

THESE were all in addition to his wife, whom he married in Tennessee during an interval between enlistments; and in addition to two other women—his real sweetheart, a girl far above him in character and in intellect, and still another, a pert little drab who came into court and committed perjury in his behalf.

It must be the soldier's facility in these conquests, with no more expenditure for entertainment than a few nickels for ice-cream cones and chewing gum, which turns so many literary men and artists into excited antimilitarists.

During Howard's courtship of Grace Sturtevant—the one superior woman he seems to have known—the two were in Hazelwood Park one evening, gazing at the moon, when there appeared a low fellow named Dewhurst, who said or did something highly objectionable. I do not know what he did, but it was the final mistake in the life of Mr. Dewhurst. He had insulted a lady, the United States Army, and one of the Fighting Howards of Tennessee. In a few seconds—for he proceeded to violence—the soul of Dewhurst had departed to its own place, while Howard and Miss Sturtevant were refugees from the park.

It was apparent, even to Private Howard, that the testimony of Miss Sturtevant, the only witness to the fight, was necessary to his safety. Moreover, he seems to have liked her, more or less, and she assuredly loved him, and expressed her devotion in a series of sincere and pathetic letters. Nevertheless, Howard, in the six weeks between his two enlistments, returned to Tennessee, where for some mysterious reason he married Ida Williams.

He was ordered back to Fort Rodman, and when he returned he brought Mrs. Howard, whom he introduced as his sister, quartering her in the town. He seems to have been annoyed with his wife from the start. She, so he said, "gave him away" to the police, so that he was arrested in the Dewhurst affair. Grace Sturtevant, although she now learned of his marriage, testified for him and secured his release by the court. He was held to have acted in self-defence. Next, Ida Howard had her husband arrested for non-support, and caused him to assign part of his pay to her. Finally, and as a crowning mark of her irritating disposition, she was going to have a baby.

HOWARD said that he wished to get rid of his wife—legally—and marry Miss Sturtevant. It is much more probable that he did not wish to marry anyone, but that he preferred to have a number of girls at his beck and call and ready to help him out of scrapes.

At all events, on a September night he told his sergeant that he was going to fish for eels; he took a boat and disappeared. His wife, the same evening, called on Mme. Isherwood, the seeress, and told her that she had an appointment to meet her husband that night at a place on the bay, called Padanaram, where they were to look at a house they were to take for the winter. This place is three miles by water from the fort,—easy rowing distance.

Next morning, Ida Howard's body was found there, floating in the water. Some of the doctors testified that she had not been drowned, but had been strangled before being thrown overboard. Although a man and woman had been seen on the bridge, nobody had recognized either of the principals. Howard made eager attempts to get his fellow-soldiers to swear to an alibi. Altogether, it takes someone well practised in believing impossible things to put much trust in the soldier's innocence of murder.

Nevertheless, the testimony of Mme. Isherwood, as establishing Ida Howard's intention to meet her husband that night, was essential to the case for the prosecution. The prisoner's counsel, Mr. Morton (afterwards Judge Morton) made his best efforts to discredit the medium, and to ridicule her psychic faith. He afterwards told Mr. Wellman, the celebrated writer on cross-examination, that he believed that his questions saved his client from execution.

He asked the witness why she had delayed four weeks in telling about the call from Mrs. Howard. She answered that she spoke only when the spirit of Ida Howard appeared to her, and told her to reveal the story of the conversation. Mr. Morton said that a wave of credulity seemed to sweep over the court; that the jury seemed influenced; and that, for a moment, he felt his case to be desperate. Then he saw his chance, and bombarded her with questions like these:

"What kind of a spirit was it? A plump spirit, about five feet high?" "Did she have on spirit clothes?" "Did this spirit carry a harp?" "Or a halo?"

Finally, he asked: "Did it appear to you frequently?"

The reply was "Every night."

Whereupon, with the delicate humour of the court room, the attorney inquired: "Don't you take a glass of whiskey every night before going to bed?"

WHETHER it was the ridicule excited against this important witness, or because of their own timidity in dealing with a pretty clear case, the jury debated a long time, and at last found Howard guilty of murder in the second degree. One of the jurors is said to have discovered—contrary to his oath—scruples against capital punishment. When the prisoner began a life term in the State Prison, his luck was still with him, and the law, like his sweethearts, was doing better by him than he deserved.

Aside from the spiritualist, the women who surrounded Howard were of a wide variety, and the case was remarkable for their devotion. At one extreme was the girl who tried to establish an alibi for the soldier, by swearing that she was with him, in the reservation, on the evening of the murder. She was a tiny creature, named Lena Watson, but more intimately known as "Bug" Watson. Her father was a portentous character of the water-front; the proprietor of a resort which it would be complimentary to call dubious. He was known as "Devil Dan".

His daughter wrote letters to Howard, signing herself "Little Lena", but the District Attorney, with that frank realism which some of us praise in novelists, but find so detestable when applied to a criminal or his friends, dismissed her as "Little Liar."

At the other extreme was Grace Sturtevant, a girl of eighteen or twenty, rather plain of feature, but well educated, and with aspirations both to write and to paint pictures. While Howard was in Tennessee, getting married and re-enlisting in the Army, both contrary to his promises to her, she was writing to him:

"My Sweetheart Will:—I have been so lonesome and sad tonight that I can only rest my mind by writing to you . . . No truer heart ever beat for you than mine. I do love you with my whole heart . . . Oh, Will, .if you only knew how dearly I love you, you would not stay away from me so long . . . This letter is written amidst tears. Do you realize how long you have been gone? Good night, love, and God bless you. That you may come back is my only prayer. From your true and trustworthy sweetheart."