Fatal (30 page)

Clearly, she wanted to look her best when she appeared before the public for the first time in six months. But the crowd on the lawn outside the jail was so dense that few spectators could even glimpse her as—flanked by Jailer Cash and Deputy Sheriff Hutchins—she walked to the gray stone courthouse, less than a hundred feet away.

•   •   •

The heavy black veil obscured her features as Jane entered the hushed, expectant courtroom. After taking her place between the two high railings in the long prisoner’s dock, she tucked the fabric over the brim of her hat and glanced around.

To one observer, her face seemed “white and strained,” as though she were on the “verge of physical and mental collapse.” Most people in the room, however, saw things very differently. To their eyes, Jane seemed quite relaxed throughout the proceedings. “Very often during the progress of the trial,” wrote the correspondent for the
Boston Herald
, “she smiled and chatted merrily with Mrs. Cash, with her counsel, and with some lady acquaintances who sat near her.”

Two weeks before the start of the proceedings,
the
Barnstable Patriot
had predicted that the Toppan trial would “not last more than three days.” As it happened, that estimate was off by more than two-thirds. From the time the court opened until the jury brought in its verdict, less than eight hours elapsed.

The first order of business was the empaneling of the jury. Samuel Chapman of Dennis was the first to be called. Jane studied him closely as he strode to the juror’s box, his long gray whiskers hanging all the way down to his belt. As he leaned against the railing, he calmly returned her gaze until she lowered her eyes and whispered something to Mr. Cash, who sat directly beside her. For the next half-hour, she subjected each of the prospective jurors to the same intense scrutiny. Unlike the unflappable Chapman, some flinched visibly before her penetrating gaze.

Though Jane’s expression betrayed a clear distaste for several of the jurors, no challenges were made by either the prosecution or defense. Thirty-one minutes after the selection process began, the twelve “good men and true”—from various walks of life and from towns all over the Cape—had been chosen.

Smith K. Hopkins, the wizened clerk who had needed a full quarter-hour to read the indictment at the end of the Grand Jury proceedings, now took almost as long—more than twelve minutes—to read it again. According to the
Boston Post
, Jane “seemed as if she was about to faint” as she listened to Hopkins’s quavering voice—though whether her reaction was the result of emotional stress or of the excruciating experience of hearing the old man stammer through the document yet again was impossible to say.

Once the indictment was read, Attorney General Parker rose to make his opening statement. He briefly set forth the circumstances in the death of Mary “Minnie” Gibbs and declared that Jane had freely admitted to the murder. As a result of her confession, the “usual issue” in such trials—i.e., whether the accused had actually committed the crime—would not be contested. “The facts known to the Commonwealth, so far as they relate to the commission of the offense, cannot and will not be controverted by the defense,” he said. The only question for the jury to decide was Jane’s criminal responsibility—“whether or not the defendant was morally conscious of her acts.”

Having concluded his address, Parker proceeded to call a series of witnesses to establish the facts of the crime. Mrs. Gibbs’s cousin, Beulah Jacobs—looking exceptionally attractive in a long black dress that emphasized her hourglass figure—told the jury that Minnie had sickened and died after drinking mineral water and cocoa wine pressed on her by Nurse Toppan. Her testimony was corroborated by Harry Gordon. The third witness—Dr. Frank Hudnut of Boston, who had been called to examine Mrs. Gibbs in consultation with the late Dr. Latter—told the jurors that Minnie’s appearance was “entirely consistent” with morphine poisoning.

Other witnesses added testimony of a highly incriminating nature. Dr. James Watson of Falmouth, who had treated Minnie for a minor stomach ailment in late July 1901, asserted that she was in fundamentally sound health at the time. Certainly she had shown no sign of any condition that might have “caused her death” just a few weeks later. Mrs. Caroline
Wood of Cohasset, a family friend of the Davises and mother of General Leonard Wood, revealed that Jane had been violently opposed to the suggestion that an autopsy be performed on Minnie’s body. Jane’s old love-object, Oramel Brigham, told the jury that he had overheard a peculiar conversation between Jane and Dr. William Lathrop the previous August. “She asked him: if a person had been poisoned with morphine and atropine and then embalmed, if those poisonous drugs would be found if they exhumed the body and had an autopsy.” Lathrop himself described Jane’s suicide attempts during her stay at Brigham’s home in September 1901.

Druggist Benjamin Waters of Wareham testified that, during a two-week period in late July 1901, Jane had telephoned his store and ordered 120 quarter-grain morphine pills. Dr. Edward Wood of Harvard unequivocally attributed Mrs. Gibbs’s death to “morphine poisoning.” His examination had turned up “large amounts” of morphine in the liver, indicating that “it must have been absorbed from the stomach before death.” He estimated that the poison had been taken “inside of twenty-four hours before her death.”

Since the real question facing the jury was not whether Jane had committed the murder but whether she was insane, the key witness of the day was Dr. Stedman. As predicted by the press, Stedman withheld the most shocking details of Jane’s confession—the voluptuous pleasure that murder provided; the excitement of holding a dying victim tight; the thrill of taking Minnie Gibbs’s ten-year-old son to bed with her while his mother languished just a few feet away. Even so, Stedman’s testimony left little doubt as to Jane’s deeply disturbed personality.

“She told us voluntarily that she had caused the death of Mrs. Gibbs by giving her poisonous doses of atropine and morphine,” he declared in response to Parker’s questioning. “She stated that the drugs were in the form of tablets or pellets of atropine and morphine separately; that each pellet of morphine contained a quarter of a grain of that drug and each pellet of atropine contained a sixth of a grain of that drug; that she didn’t know how many she gave; that she certainly gave over a dozen pellets, and I understood her to say she gave that amount twice.”

When Parker asked the psychiatrist whether Jane had given a reason for administering the poison to Minnie Gibbs, Stedman nodded. “She did,” he said.

And what was the reason?

The dispassionate tone in which Stedman delivered his reply made it all the more chilling.

“To cause death,” he said simply.

Nothing more had to be said. In response to a final query from the Attorney General, Stedman confirmed his belief that Jane had been telling the full truth during her interviews with the three alienists. A few minutes later—just six hours after Parker made his opening address—the Commonwealth rested its case.

The remainder of the trial was speedily dispatched. After a brief recess, James Stuart Murphy rose to make the opening address for the defense. Acknowledging the “somewhat perfunctory manner” in which the trial had been conducted, he explained that the defense and prosecution, “after repeated conferences,” had arranged “that it should be disposed of in this manner.”

“Ordinarily, cases of this nature are fought out to a bitter finish,” he declared. This was no ordinary case,
however. Because of its “remarkable nature,” the defense had agreed to abide by the conclusion of the psychiatric experts, who had found “that the defendant is and has been insane.”

“We shall therefore content ourselves,” said Murphy, “with presenting for your consideration the testimony of three gentlemen, the most learned and the most eminent in their profession, in their specialties, experts in mental diseases of the highest standing.”

Murphy then proceeded to call each of the alienists to the stand, beginning with George F. Jelly, who testified that Jane was “suffering with a degenerative form of mental disease” characterized “by a lack of moral sense, defective self-control, and an irresistible impulse to criminal acts.” Stedman—recalled as a witness—repeated his opinion that “the defendant was insane and irresponsible for the crimes with which she is charged.” Hosea Quinby corroborated the opinion of his colleagues. Miss Toppan, he declared, was “incurably insane” and a “menace to society if at large.”

Following Quinby’s testimony, the defense rested its case. Less than an hour had elapsed since Murphy made his opening remarks.

Since the Commonwealth and defense were in perfect agreement, neither side bothered with a closing argument. In keeping with the preordained nature of the proceedings, Judge Braley then instructed the jurors that—in view of the testimony of the three psychiatric experts—only one finding was possible: “That Miss Toppan was not guilty by reason of insanity.”

The jurors then retired, presumably to deliberate. Under the circumstances, it took them a surprisingly
long time to arrive at a decision—more than twenty minutes.

At 5:12
P.M.,
they filed back to their places to deliver the verdict that they had been instructed to reach: “not guilty by reason of insanity.” When Judge Braley asked the prisoner if she wished “to say anything concerning the order which the court is to make upon this verdict,” Jane declined. She was then sentenced to pass the “term of her natural life” under confinement at the Taunton Insane Hospital.

The trial had been so lacking in drama or suspense that no one in the courtroom displayed the slightest surprise at the outcome. Only Jane showed any emotion at all.

“Miss Toppan heard the verdict read with a broad grin on her face,” wrote the reporter for the
Boston Herald
. “When Clerk Hopkins read the order of the judges which sends her to Taunton Insane Hospital for life, she turned to her friends with a look of absolute happiness on her face and laughed aloud. When it was all over, she almost danced out of the courthouse behind Jailer Cash and a deputy sheriff to wait in the county jailhouse before being taken to Taunton on Wednesday.”

•   •   •

The outcome of the Toppan case was a big story, covered in papers throughout the northeast, including the
New York Times
(“NURSE TOPPAN DECLARED INSANE”). Still, the trial itself had been—as James Stuart Murphy admitted—an utterly perfunctory affair. The verdict was a foregone conclusion, the testimony a dry recitation of facts already widely reported in the press. There were no sensational new disclosures. As expected, nothing had been said about
Jane’s sexual pathology—about the “revolting passions” that incited her crimes. The public had heard all the lurid details of the case it ever would; there were no more shocking revelations in store.

At least, that was what everyone believed on Monday, June 23. But everyone, it turned out, was wrong.

Behind the majority of murders there lurks some sex-interest: jealousy, freedom from a discarded lover, the blood-lust of the sexual degenerate.

—H
AROLD
E
ATON
,
Famous Poison Trials

J
ANE’S SENIOR COUNSEL
, F
RED
B
IXBY, WAITED UNTIL
the trial was over before divulging the unbelievable truth. He had heard it from Jane during his first interview with her, six months earlier.

He had arrived at the Barnstable jail back in January, intending to speak to his client about the eleven victims she was widely suspected of having murdered: her foster sister, Elizabeth Brigham; her old friend, Myra Conners; her elderly patient, Mrs. McNear of Watertown; her former Cambridge landlords, Israel and Lovey Dunham; Oramel Brigham’s sister, Mrs. Edna Bannister; and his housekeeper, Florence Calkins; and the four members of the Davis family.

During that first meeting, Jane had been totally forthcoming with Bixby, freely admitting to all of these killings. She had described, in the most chillingly matter-of-fact way, how she had murdered her friends and family members with “doses of morphine and atropine tablets dissolved in mineral water and sometimes in a dilution of whiskey.” Occasionally she had supplemented these lethal drinks with deadly injections. Bixby had been stunned by Jane’s utter nonchalance
as she recounted the grim details of her crimes.

“Have you no remorse?” he finally asked.

“None at all,” Jane coolly replied. “I have never felt sorry for what I have done. Even when I poisoned my dearest friends, as the Davises were, I did not feel any regret afterwards.”

She staunchly denied that she committed any of her killings out of mercenary motives. “Whatever else I have done,” she insisted, “I have never stolen a cent. I did not care enough about money to steal it.”

It was pleasure that drove her to kill—the “exultation” she experienced as she “kissed and caressed her helpless and insensible patients as they drew nearer and nearer to death.”

It took the plump, smiling woman nearly an hour to recount all eleven killings. By then, Bixby was feeling “satiated with homicidal details” (as he later put it) and deeply relieved that she had finally reached the end of her awful confession. He was taken aback, therefore, when she suddenly added: “But that is not all.”