Of mobiles, ducks and mnemonics

In his continuing series, James Morton relates how a vicar's four-year-old son turned the course of a famous murder trial

The government is right to consider, albeit belatedly, the introduction of laws against the use of mobile telephones in cars.

The defence of their use seems rather surprising.

There are suggestions that there is no difference between going round a corner with your ear to your shoulder holding the mobile in place and changing a cassette or eating a sandwich.

There is.

However, there seem to be two problems with the proposals.

The first is whether there will be any police around to enforce the legislation.

The second is that there seems to be a hint that a fine of 30 should be the penalty.

This will deter few.

Just as criminals regard only a prison sentence as a conviction, so motorists who do not receive penalty points will regard the 30 as nothing to deter them.

***

Ever a defender of the jury system, I have to admit that jurors can, very occasionally, behave a bit badly.

In the celebrated 1897 Nack-Guldensuppe case - the last great defence of the renowned New York lawyer, William Howe - the jury stayed at the Garden City Hotel.

There they consumed $239.95 worth of wine and smoked cigars costing $186.20.

The account for the billiard table was $54.

25 and barbers and shoeblacks earned $59.25.

The last day's drink bill was only $1.90, for liquor one juryman ordered before breakfast.

As for the case itself, Howe's client was Augusta Nack, described with what would now be called political incorrectness as a woman of 'operatic proportions'.

It was a case which Howe believed he was on the way to winning until religious intervention caused him insuperable problems.

The story was one of the usual domestic triangles so loved by the press and public.

All participants were good-looking German immigrants.

Augusta was a midwife by trade and lived with Herman Nack, the owner of a sausage shop on 10th Avenue.

He also kept a boarding house, one of whose tenants was Willie Guldensuppe, who sported a still life tattoo on his chest and was what we would now call a masseur but was then described as a 'rubber' in a Turkish bath.

Soon Nack was supplanted by Willie in Augusta's affections and this went well until she - something of a serial adulteress - fell in love with Martin Thorn, a barber.

Augusta and Thorn leased a cottage in Woodside and killed Willie in May 1897.

They left nothing to chance.

Thorn was armed with a revolver, rope, dagger, poison, a knife and a bottle of carbolic acid.

Willie was shot, stabbed with the poisoned dagger and decapitated.

Augusta then cut up the rubber, putting him in a bathtub and left the water running while Thorn removed the head for disposal in the East River.

Unfortunately for the pair, the water and blood burst the fragile drainpipe outside the cottage and instead of disappearing into the sewage system it formed a puddle in the yard in which a duck took a bath.

The disappearance of Willie had already been reported and had caused considerable interest, so when the duck waddled home with its feathers covered in blood its owners told the police.

It was only a matter of time before two and two were added together.

The defence was a blanket denial.

The pair did not know of Willie's life or death nor, until it was proved that they did, had they known each other or rented a cottage.

The dissection had been a fine one and there were still a significant number of pieces of the body missing, including the head and particularly the tattoo.

For Howe, Willie simply did not exist.

He argued the assembled parts could have come from half a dozen mortuaries and he had a fine time making up a string of names including Gildersleeve, Goldylocks, Gludensup and, since the jurors were well educated, about 'a creature as imaginary as Rosencrantz's friend Guildenstern'.

Knowledgeable observers regarded him as being well on his way to another spectacular acquittal.

Then a local Presbyterian vicar started visiting Augusta in prison and, worse for Howe, brought his simpering, curly headed four-year-old son with him.

According to the story, the nauseating child climbed on her knee and lispingly asked her in the name of the heavenly and earthly Father to tell the truth.

Thorn received life imprisonment and she a modest nine years.

Howe wrote to his partner, Abe Hummel: 'I had the prettiest case, and here is all my work shattered.

I can still prove they couldn't identify Willie's body and that it wasn't cut up in the Woodside cottage.

Now all my roses are frosted in a night and my grapes withered on the vine.'

***

At the back of my mind, I recall being taught a sort of mnemonic at law school about the rules of evidence and hearsay.

The punch line to this was, 'And then I saw what the butler said he saw'.

Can anyone remember how the whole thing actually went?

James Morton is a former criminal law specialist and now a freelance journalist