Murder on Big Moose?

Really. On July 11th 1986 I got a couple from Cortland rented a boat and rode out on to the South Bay Area with North Lake here on the quiet Adirondack lake in a secluded that they could discuss what to do about their future. The young woman was pregnant. The couple was not married. It didn't appear they had come with a specific plan in mind. But as they drifted along the shoreline. It is not likely either one of her saw what would actually happen. By 6:30 bad enough the young woman would be dead and three days later the young man would be charged with her murder. The death of grazing ground and the subsequent trial and execution of Chester Gillette have been a normalized in film on the theater and in books. More than 80 years later the case remains a source of fascination for people who are involved in history. Grace Brown's background gave no hint to her future infamy.

She grew up on a farm in Southside ceilidh one of several children of Frank in Minerva Brown called Billy by family and friends because of her fondness for the popular tune won't you come home Bill Bailey. Grace attended a country school. Entries in a diary she kept at the time showed her to be close to family and friends. Intrigued by a long distance romance and a touch melodramatic. Thursday March 10 19 0 to talk about. We had one. Very night. Fainted for the first time in my life. The girl said I talked about J S B but I can't remember do not go to school today. Open my letter to Jim and added two more pages. I wonder what will think when he reads my letter. Monday March 17th 1992. Oh dear. I got just the sweetest letter from JSG you ever saw and he sent me for my birthday the loveliest picture of himself. It's a dandy. I answered his letter just as soon as I received it just the same as

he always does mine went off finely. Like Miss Kenyon quite well considering. Friday March 28 99 to this canyon has been just awful cross of late. She thinks she is so smart. I can't bear her. Papa went down to be a man and carried my lighter. Miss Kaye got a letter from Dr.. I guess that's what makes her so cross. I can stand it though. I have one consolation to console me. She's a Kenyan. She was a very typical farm girl of the era and era when farm girls were beginning to break away and be no longer just creatures on the farm but to wear the same kind of clothes as city girls to go and ultimately work in the city. Grace was no fool. She was she wrote a good letter she was expressive. She had a way of getting her soul out on paper.

By the time she was 18 years old Grace heeded the call of nearby Cortland left South and joined her sister Ada in the city. She had little trouble finding work there as a garment inspector in the Gillette skirt factory where she seemed to quickly make friends and settle into a new life. Chester Gillette's rode to Cortland on a job at the factory owned by his uncle came after a bit more colorful past. Arrived in town ready to live up to his motto to have as good a time as possible generally and at the young man described as dashing and fun loving by some people could also be seen as shallow and self-centered. You have to realize the way the way he was brought up he was brought up with a Salvation Army family that he resented that he didn't want to be brought up that way. He wanted to make something of himself he was somewhat ambitious not quite as ambitious as this is in the novel but he certainly wasn't didn't hear to us that strict religious sense of his parents had. And he went to this fancy prep school in Oberlin Ohio. And you know he had a taste of that life I think. And then he was a

railroad brakeman after that so you have the sort of mixed background he came from a fairly wealthy family at one point in Spokane who gave up everything to join the Salvation Army. Then he goes to this fancy prep school flunks out of it becomes a railroad brakeman. So he has this sort of up and down the social status and moral sense and very very confused background. He was perhaps a little older just a hair older than some of the people he circulated with. And he had been born in the Montana territory he had lived in the Washington Territory. His family had traveled. As missionary type people throughout the Northwest. He had lived in states or territories such as Montana Washington Oregon California Wyoming and Hawaii. And he was well traveled and I'm sure he snowballed things when he arrived in relatively preventor old town like UPS and the upstate New York town and snowed the

girls with the stories of his past. He had been around. It isn't known exactly how grace and Chester have met at the factory. Chester worked in the stockroom grace in another area but soon the couple could be seen in each other's company at work against the advice of coworkers. They also met after work hours. First to Grace's sisters Cortland home then later at the boarding house Grace moved to when Ada Brown and her husband Clarence Holley left the city. It wasn't long before Gillette as the nephew of socially prominent no wood to lead began receiving social invitations from young women in Cortland society. At about the same time 19 year old Grace Brown discovered that she was expecting Gillette's baby. Let's immediate reaction was to send grace back to her family home and self. To prepare for a trip at home Grace wrote Chester a letter after letter all

showing clearly how desperate she felt as she waited for the man she loved to help her solve her dilemma. Monday June 18 19 0 6. I can't help thinking you will never come for me. But then I saw you can't be so mean as that. And besides you told me you would come and you have never disappointed me when you said you would not. Everything worries me and I am so frightened dear. Tuesday June 19th Chester There isn't a girl in the whole world as miserable as I am tonight and you have made me feel so. Do you think I'm about crazy with grief and that I don't know just what to do. Please write to me dear. He doesn't really write her at all except when she threatens to come back to court on and expose him and then all of a sudden he writes of this nice letter and says You know I don't think you should do that. You know let's not be hasty here. I think you I think it was very selfish I think he was very much to had

himself first. You know ahead of anything else that and anybody that got in that way in his way had better look out you can see that on his background. Was he a bad guy. I think that probably depends upon who's doing the judging. Almost nobody in one thousand six would look upon the fact that he had. Taken this young girl's friendship taken advantage of it seemed her during the course of the winter. Then when she became pregnant began to ignore her. I think them as now this would be looked upon as not the nicest behavior in the world. Not only did he ignore her but in the month that she went home to stay with her family hiding her pregnancy and wrote voluminous letters to him and he a few to her. He not only

ignored her and left her hanging out there in limbo. But he was dating other girls around Portland to play devil's advocate for a minute with regard to Grace. We've talked about Grace being. Certainly the the sympathetic the wronged individual. But if you look at our letters could you not look at them from another angle and think grace of. Kind of whining and complaining even a nag. She did nag. And I think in defense of grace one could say she had good reason to. What other recourse did she have other than then to plead with Chester to please do something. But yes or letters do sound whiny on Monday July 9 Chester and Grey's began their Adirondack journey. There are no indications that this was a wedding trip but there are signs that Gillette had some rudimentary plan for his future. He had very little money with him but he made sure that he and Grace traveled in separate train cars and when he signed hotel registers like the Hotel Martin and Utica where they stopped for a night

he used false names for himself. Probably about the time of that when she told him that she was pregnant I think that he has to figure out some way to get out of this. His options were that he could marry or you could simply run away. I think with an option to just take it off it really have remained ties to Cortland. Or he could get rid of her. And I think he probably weighed all three of those things in somewhat and decided to over a period of time that that was what he was going to do when you look at the false names he used on the hotel registers. The various lies he told people that entire week about where he was going and what he was doing he was certainly acting very suspiciously. Two days later Gillette registered at the Glenmore hotel on Big Moose Lake sunning Grace's real name to the register but calling himself Carl Graham Gillette asked about a ride on the hotel's steamboat but was told there would not be time for that if the couple wanted to be at the hotel for dinner. That's when Gillette rented a rowboat he had his suitcase and

a tennis racket with him. Grace's things had been left behind. People would later say that the young woman appeared to be emotionally distraught when the boat and its occupants failed to return by morning. Search crews covered the lake in an area of big Moose's South Bay known as punky Bay. Searchers found the overturned boat a man straw hat floating in the water nearby. A woman's black silk jacket and at the lakes bottom the body of grace Brown. There were bruises on her face those marks coupled with the fact that her companion was missing. Convince law enforcement officials that Grace Brown had been murdered during the boat ride. The district attorney. Made his case that Chester wanted to get rid of a pregnant girl who was blocking his path to upward mobility socially moving upward into the class of normal school girls and possibly other daughters of professionals in Cortland at that time. And as a former friend who was now pregnant this would

have been a terrible incumbrance to him. The district attorney's case was that he took her deliberately out there on that lake intending to drown or hit her with an object and allowed her if she didn't die from the blow to drown subsequently. JUSTER story. Unfortunately for him I had several facets. He told different stories that she had fallen into the lake that she jumped into the lake. The duplicity as if his stories didn't help at all in doing your research. Even though we don't know what went on in the boat you must have formed some personal theory of what do you think happened. I think she was probably saying no when are we going to get married she was very depressed. She was suffering from morning sickness because she was pregnant and she wasn't feeling very well at all and I'm sure she was a bit of a meg and maybe it just got to the point he'd been out of the boat with her you remember from 11 o'clock until 5 o'clock and spent six hours with her in this boat and maybe

just got to the point where I just can't take this anymore and there's a side to the to get rid of her and I think probably something like that may have happened. Herkimer County District Attorney George Ward and Herkimer undersheriff Austin clock began tracking the missing Carl Graham immediately within just a short time they had learned Graham's true identity and follow Chester Gillette from Punky Bay to Eagle Bay where he had been seen and then on to inlet where they finally caught up to him in the lobby of the arrowhead hotel on Saturday July 14th 19 06 Gillette had spent the time between his boat ride on the 11th and the 14th visiting with two young women from Cortland who also were vacationing in the Adirondacks and climbing Black Bear Mountain with other Arrowhead guests. He's asked Did you hear about what happened to Big Moose Lake and he says he says no you know completely deadpan this is no never never heard of that as well aren't you from courtliness as you know and don't you work in that factory and he says no I never heard of this person. And he says that when he's arrested to use he said no I didn't don't no no no grace Brown. And finally admits a little

more and part of that I think was trying to cover up his tracks despite original denials toward an clock that he was involved in this situation. Twenty two year old Chester Gillette was charged with first degree murder of grace Browne placed under arrest returned to the Herkimer County seat and where he would be held until his trial. An emotional Frank Browne was the first witness in the trial of the man charged with killing his daughter. His testimony in the case began on Saturday Nov. 17 19 06. It had taken a week just to seat the jury. Twelve men from Herkimer County some had admitted to reading the extensive newspaper coverage of the case coverage which included details of Gillette and Brown's personal relationship. Some jurors had daughters

close in age to the victim District Attorney George Ward working with circumstantial evidence against the defendant. Use that aspect of the jury's makeup and the strong public sentiment against Gillette to his advantage. He described Gillette with harsh words calling him a snake and a slinking Wolf who was cunning in his plotting of Grace's murder. Ward told the jury and the spectators who filled the courtroom to capacity that Gillette was an experienced man who used that experience to take advantage of an innocent country girl. Newspapers reported that sobbing could be heard throughout the courtroom. As Ward read into the record the letters that Grace had written to Gillette during her last visit home. Wednesday July 5th one thousand six. I have been bidding goodbye to some places today. There are so many next year and all of them so dear to me. I have lived here nearly all my life. First I said goodbye to the spring house with its great masses of green moss. Then the beehive. A cute little house in

the orchard. And of course all of the neighbors that have mended my dresses from a little time to save me a thrashing I really deserved. Oh dear. You don't realize what all of this is to me. I know I shall never see any of them again. Her letters became perhaps the best remembered part of the story. People later who remembered the trial reading in the newspapers remembered the letters which were printed in the newspapers word for word and their image of the trial often was of the grown district attorney who probably had children of his own at the time. Picking up typewritten copies of these letters and in his older man's voice reading to the jury probably off the top of his glasses. The words that this poor creature had put down in all innocence thinking that no one else would ever see them and say such things as my life was ruined and in a measure yours is too. Of course it's worse for

me than you. But the world and you too may think that I'm the one to blame but somehow I can't just simply can't think I am Chester. I said no so many times to do this kind of thing really. Was emotional got to the jury and so gracious to the public whether she was a nag or whether she was an innocent. It sold her to the public which read those letters and ate them up. We're talking about a little overzealous innocent prosecution. I think he tried the case in a vigorous manner. Even for the day which was very vigorous. But I don't think he went beyond that and none of the appellate courts felt that he went beyond that. Ward's aggressive style often resulted in clashes with Gillette's court appointed defense attorneys one time state Senator Albert mills and co counsel Charles Thomas.

He had two of the best lawyers of the research I've done in the lawyers show that they were one was a former state senator. The other was very well thought of. Read happened there was there were the political opponents of George Ward. And that element comes in George Ward was a Republican and both defense attorneys were Democrats. George Ward was running for election right before the trial he was elected county judge just a week before the trial began. So you have that political element that comes up in the trial where you see that these people hate each other and sometimes they're just calling each other names. And that has nothing to do with the trial that's because they really do despise each other with little evidence of his own to work with. Mills spent his time whittling away at the prosecution's case and his hands graces letters could be seen in a very different light their own letters or sort of the best defense because she says that. But she wishes he could die. She would she says perhaps if I come back home dead perhaps people won't know. Certainly a lot of suicidal things and in her letters.

June 21st Chester if I could only die I know how you feel about this affair and I wish for your sake you need not be troubled if I die. I hope you can then be happy. I hope I can die. The doctor says I will and then you can do just as you like. July 2nd. I have done my best and been as brave as possible these last weeks. But if you should not come I will do something desperate. If I had the strength dear I do believe I should walk to the river and throw myself in. It would be rather cowardly and I despise a coward but I would not be a bother to you any longer. Oh Chester the thought that I am in your way just drives me crazy how I want to die. No one but myself knows. July 6. Sometimes I think if I tell mama but I can't. She has trouble enough as it is and I couldn't break her heart like that. If I come

back dead perhaps if she doesn't know she won't be angry with me I will never be happy again dear. I wish I could die. You will never know what you have made me suffer dear. I miss you and want to see you but I wish I could die. No I think that that Mills did it did a good job he had been district attorney. I'm sure it gave it gave everything he had to it. The record to me indicates that it was a good defense a very good defense. Chester's own attorneys objected when these things came up but to no avail. The judge overrode their objections almost every time and there were inflammatory things brought up in the trial. They objected to the very reading of these long and sometimes eloquent letters graces and the judge told them and it's quite proper in a law that no they could be used to show the relationship between Chester and grace but

not for any content within. Which is a very fine distinction to make for the jurors sitting in the jury box of course. There were things later in the trial such as the bringing in of the boat right into the courtroom. To no particular reason but it certainly made an impact on everybody who saw the fatal boat. They certainly did everything that I think they could have done in the defense. I think they raised all the proper questions and things but a lot of they had a lot of things going against them they didn't have a very good case. Chester was a terrible witness on the stand. He just acted like he didn't care that the right in this room when they read those love letters everybody cried in the all the reporters cried and the jury cried and Chester just sat there in his chair chewing gum. And I feel like you couldn't care less. He was a he was a terrible witness Gillette's cross-examination by District Attorney. Ward often turned into a sparring match. Ward was intense asking pointed questions. Gillette appeared invasive even flippant as in this exchange

ward. Watch the jury don't watch your counsel. Jillette I was not. I was looking at you. It is necessary to keep my eye on you I think. The intriguing nature of the case quickly attracted the attention of reporters from all over the country. They immediately began pouring into the rural village of her camera and started recording every minute detail of the case the trial and the actions of the main characters. They reported how Gillette spent his days in jail who visited him what he ate at meal time and how he had decorated his cell with photos from popular magazines reporters from The New York City papers weren't above exaggerating the facts when the truth wasn't exciting enough. They detail the scene and confrontation between the victim's father and Gillette. Harriet Benedict the daughter of a prominent Cortland attorney became the other woman in Gillette's life when in truth he had dated her just once. Some stories were more than just exaggerations.

They were complete fabrications. There's a big headline. In the New York City newspaper that said the lynch mob tries to lynch Gillette prices rakes and tries to string him up if you read the Utica newspaper you find out what really happened is that here you have these New York City newspaper reporters who are used to living in the Big Apple come up to her. I mean this is Siberia there's nothing to do here they roll up the side rocks at 6:00 a.m. has nothing to do. So they borrow some old clothes from some people and go over and knock on the jail cell and say hey we want to string him up go back put on the reporter's clothes and interview the jailer and they said. Is there a lynch mob out here today and he goes yeah I think there was a lynch mob and get this big great big headlines of a lynch mob you know and it was. And the editors love that stuff. You know and they just made up things constantly you know that he was but he tried to commit suicide that that Harriet Benedict sneaking into his jail cell at night and all these kind of things were made great stories unfortunately none of them are true. The papers found a ready readership and those individuals who couldn't find space in the crowded courtroom the people's opinion of Gillette never favorable to begin with grew

even worse as the trial progressed. What you had in the newspaper in the letters to the editor for instance there were letters that said things like. Who cares whether he murdered her or not he ruined that poor girl. He admitted it and he should die in the electric chair for that. The jury was sequestered in Herkimer hotel shielded from the press coverage but the panel sentiments may have run parallel to the public's after four weeks of trial. It took jurors just five hours of deliberations before they returned their verdict guilty of murder in the first degree. You have all men on the jury. Some of them are farmers who have daughters Grace Brown's age and they would said say the same thing that he was and his mother even said that and her lectures later on that he wasn't being convicted because he murdered her. There was some doubt about that but he admitted that he had committed fornication with her and that was that was in many people's eyes it was a much greater evil in that they would fry him for that. They were mostly fathers farmers. It was easier to get farmers in November than it was to

get tradesmen on the jury or. They were men who according to the rules of that day all firmly believe that a wrong woman should be assisted helped should not be wronged in the first place. I think probably if I were had grown up in that era I might have bought the story that well if he weren't guilty of one thing. At least he was guilty of another. On December 10th 19 06 Chester Gillette walked from the Herkimer County Jail to the courthouse for the last time standing before Judge Irving R. Devendorf Gillette stated that he was innocent of the crime and so should not be punished. It was

David Dewhurst first murder case since taking the bench. He had no options when pronouncing the death sentence. This is a very young judge in the state's first murder case in this the first time he had to send somebody to the electric chair. But the law kind of helped him in that case because once the jury finds him guilty of first degree murder he doesn't have any choice it was automatic sentence to them to die in the electric chair so sort of left him off the hook in a sense. Gillette was to spend the time between his sentencing and the execution 16 months in the maximum security prison at Auburn. His attorneys filed an appeal based on objections made towards tactics during the trial. His mother Louisa came from Denver to appeal directly to the public and then to New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes. She and other supporters of her son's cause raised the issue that Grace Brown had suffered from epilepsy and could have had a seizure that day in the boat. It is curious that it didn't come out earlier. It might have accounted for a fall if it had been a case I think the charges of the LEP

epilepsy were based upon. Evidence of coworkers who claimed that they had seen her have seizures or something something they had never mentioned earlier. I have no way of knowing if that's correct or not. The only family member the closest family member I've been able to contact. It would be a nice Grace who's still alive. And when I asked her that very question Was there a story of epilepsy. She very quickly said no. In the end all legal rulings as well as public opinion and in a sense politics won against Gillette of the letters which were a very important part of the case. It took out of his room in Cortland without a search warrant. In this room he brought in the fetus from the autopsy it was in a glass bottle in a paper bag and brought up and showed it to the jury. All those things would throw the case out today. An appeals court would look at that and they were just dismissed it right right out of hand and what happened is the court of appeals looked at that and they said Well certainly Chester's civil rights were

violated that's true and certainly there was a lot of angry things that in the courtroom that were certainly out of line. But on the other hand the guy certainly looks guilty. So we're going to we're going to find him guilty. Governor really you had tremendous power then I mean he could have postponed the execution he could have ordered a new trial he would have could have commuted the sentence. And he looked at all all of it too he was a former Cornell Law School professor and he looked at great detail in this case and he decided to that it really was and. Wasn't worth saving that he was really guilty and deserved to go to the electric chair but once again you have politics come into it because Charles Evans Hughes who's already been mentioned as a presidential candidate and have been very unpopular to let Chester Gillette off because all over the country people knew who he was and there's a lot of bad feelings about him. Chester Gillette was awakened at 4 o'clock on the morning of March 30th 19 0 8. He ate a piece of cake for site of the 23rd Psalm with a minister with whose help Gillette claimed to have

found God and walked to the electric chair at 6:14 a.m. The executioner pulled the switch sending eighteen hundred volts through the wires attached to Gillette's body at 6:18 am. Twenty three year old Chester Gillette was pronounced dead. It's hard to find sympathetic things about Chester. He did not appear to care about other people he wasn't a caring person. Even his mother apparently I suspect that drives or is fictional character based upon Chester. Ultimately responded better to his mother than Chester did. Chester must have caused his mother quite a bit of grief in Chester's defense. No not a no no. I think he was a he was a sleaze. As near as I can determine. And had very very little redeeming features that he was that did because of his

upbringing is what made him what he was. Have to say that I think he had a most unusual childhood and difficult. But a lot of people get around that. No one knows exactly where Chester Gillette is buried though there are photographs purporting to be the grave site. What is known is that his grave is in Auburn seul cemetery and that it is on a marked Grace Brown isn't tared in cell 5 C-like with other members of her family. Her grave is marked by a plain stone with a simple message Grace Brown at rest. Progress may not be entirely peaceful however south of C-like residents say the curious come from all over the country to view the family plot and to see firsthand the Old Brown family homestead and to record their trip in photos. The visitors want to see the actual sites to help them sort the facts from the fiction that has confused the real story that kept it alive for years. This story of grace Brown and Chester Gillette first found its way into fiction at the hands of Theodore

Dreiser a 35 year old magazine editor at the time of the trial dries or told a friend that he thought the case would make an interesting novel what he was interested in it was not simply that this was a these were cases that people like to hear about but that somehow it kind of reversed. The normal kind of myth of success of the Horatio Alger myth of the time which are really rich which suggest that the it was perfectly legitimate said this about his own. Clive Griffiths in the American press perfectly legitimate to do what Clyde did as a lawyer to murder somebody. OK but what drives eclipsing was if there was a connection between this kind of algae here or was given the young woman the highest status and more wealth as a reward at the end of his career. The drawings I was interested in was. On the side of this that as most people who felt that the American society didn't really see the connections between. Crime. And these kind of murderous acts and what they really really recommended

and moderate in in the in the Alger myth the myth of success the dream of success the American Dream part of the American dream in those days was well you could marry a wealthy woman. And therefore make your way up. It was the first begin to point out that there was a darker side to this that that society loves so much wealth and led to this kind of grotesque crime. In an article for mystery magazine drys or wrote that as a young newspaper man he saw case after case where a man murdered a young woman whom he feared would keep him from climbing the social ladder. Dr. novel based on such a case would argue that society made the murder necessary even acceptable drives the research several cases before selecting Gillette Brown some time in one thousand twenty kids really fitted some of his personal. Background himself was a Midwesterner for instance. He himself

had parents who were religious. Excessively so we thought just came from that kind of background. The parents were. As the parents are in the novel. Parents were religionists they were wandering evangelists of the Midwest with its territory. There were also a number of things in his personal history for instance the drys I could identify with psychologically emotionally story of Chester and Grace serves simply as a framework for the fictional novel drives are altered and changed and more of the facts of the original case than he retained the manipulation was necessary. If his manuscript was to make its intended point because the light surges. He makes it a much larger community than Courtney really was quite it was a community of maybe 50000 people rather poor. This factory and the people in the area were not

high society by any means. Wasn't the density drives a Mega Drive to make a larger place in fact moved 100 miles east. Into the Mohawk Valley which is much more much more. Much wealthier much more prominent area for factories and big businesses and so forth. And he does that to suggest that Clyde a poor boy coming to this area will be overwhelmed by this. By overwhelmed by the materiality of it. Chester Gillette became Clyde Gryphus under driver's pan Grace Brown was Roberta Auld and the real Gillette's relationship with Cortland society girl Harriet Benedict was cursory at best. But in driver's account it blossoms into a full fledged romance. Harriet Benedict became drys or Saundra financially the wealthy young woman for whom the Gillette based character commits murder. Created again the attraction of a different kind of ideal will again the old theme of the poor boy being attracted by

a wealthy marriage and how that often leads to the sort of crime drives or does not commit murder by an action he takes but rather by failing to act at the critical moment. The scene in the boat on what drives or calls a big bitter and lake is another of the authors necessary manipulations. Where does responsibility really lie. One of the attractions the book you know it was revealed here wasn't it. And he had to create scenes not like the original test case where it was unclear he had the intent of doing it but then he couldn't do it. It was too much for coward. But that's the only bit it gets up out of the boat and sees him distracted. And comes to him to touch him and he has a camera in his hand and he just want to push you away with the camera accidentally. She stumbles. Backwards. He gets up and she doesn't swing by the way. She can't swim. She stumbles. He gets up to help her and ask apologetically to her and see

what's wrong. Turns over the boat the boat hits her in the head. Both caps as. He looks at her. The one moment where he could possibly save her. He doesn't do anything. But the natural. Unlike the direct action scene of the murder turns into a scene in which we must ask the question. Did he do it. Dries or is painstaking research included extensive reviews of the trial transcript some of which he included in the novel without extensive alterations and visits to actual locations took a trip to Cortland New York with his then girlfriend later wife Helen Richardson. And they took a trip to the area and he was just absorbed by the area by the physical presence of the air in fact he got on a rowboat with her. On a very lake. On Big Moose Lake which became big lake in the novel. And in a rowboat with her and she recalls in a book later years after he died. He got a strange looking almost like hypnotized. They moved to the middle of the lake and she was almost

frightened that he was going to redo the cross hairs with her as the victim. He said he just was totally absorbed in. The experience. The novel appeared in final form in 1925 editing had whittled it to half its original length but at 400000 words it was still long. It also was an immediate hit with the reading public so popular that it inspired a contest the contest was a writing contest. In which the public the general public had to argue one side or the other wasn't your thing was privately or wasn't. So it. Had that kind of appeal. You know in draws or writing in the ambiguity of it all. As we talked about before touch something that was also very much a popular interest. The novel also inspired other literary efforts. Less than one year after its publication a play written by Patrick Cairney and based on the drives or book was produced in Long Acre New York there were French and German theatre versions of the story helping to spread the legend of the boat ride on Big

Moose Lake across the Atlantic. A review of the 1936 theatrical production of the case against Clyde Gryphus at the Ethel Barrymore theatre said that it revived interest in the original case. The synopsis of the Gillette Brown case which followed however showed that fiction already had become fact. It stated that Gillette had killed his pregnant girlfriend to clear the way for his romance with a wealthier woman by 1931 drives her story had attracted the attention of Hollywood drives or praised the original script for the film of his novel drafted by Sergei Eisenstein. But the version was shelved. He was not pleased with the movie that was made eventually by Director Joseph von Sternberg using a script by Samuel Hoffenstein time the Paramount film An American Tragedy starred Phillips Holmes Sylvia Sidney and Frances de Paramount's 1951 version of the story crediting both drivers book and county's play was a major Hollywood production. A place in the sun starred Montgomery Clift as the Gillette character now known as George Eastman who falls in love with society girl Elizabeth

Taylor. He soon learns that his factory coworker girlfriend played by Shelley Winters is pregnant and demanding action. You're going to marry me tomorrow. I'll tell you I still though there were changes the film's story line remains true to dries her and the social theory espoused in his novel. As it is in the book Eastman begins to plot Alice Tripp's murder but her death actually results from his failure to save the young woman when the boat capsizes accidentally. But Alice is quickly forgotten and with hope the viewer sympathies with Raymond Burr as the prosecutor who wants to avenge Alice Tripp's murder but has political

motivations to do so is made to be the villain. Coming up defenseless in the back of the boat in. The lake. Watch to address. That truth. You know. You can still see who is Ironside standing in the film you know the big hulk looking like an ape acting the part of the prosecutor. It wasn't like that at all. I don't believe he had to be very careful you always have to be careful enough in a murder case if you go too far. The appellate courts will knock it right down in this one all the way through the appellate courts and the district attorney was commended by the court of appeals so he did get a bum rap from Drs or.

He makes Mason a poor boy. Originally. It immediately sympathizes with the poor girl the victim. Roberta. Who sees because of Clyde's connection to the GRIFFITHS The wealthy family of four who came to work by sergers sees him as a rich boy. His first response when he hears about the crime is all that that bastard that rich rich kid seducing a poor girl. So it really prejudices the case but drives or drives and then adds that element if you will in order to emphasize. How. Justice in these particular cases is not a simple matter of the letter of the law or that there is a private psychology involved every step along the way. Even if the fictional accounts didn't get the story exactly right they did serve a useful purpose.

They help to keep the mystery alive because the bottom line about what happened on that boat ride it big news like is that it is a mystery even to this day the only person who knows exactly what happened in that boat at Chester villa. There is this continuing mystery of what really happened on the lake at big moves. Of all the evidence and a hundred witnesses that marched through the courthouse in nineteen six no one actually saw what event happened on the late no one. And the newspapers were very aware of that from the time the trial started until it ended. They would have died I think for an eyewitness of what happened in the boat and that never really dies the mystery of wondering what really happened out there. The other thing is the fictionalization of the story. However much a mystery it might have been it probably would have died a natural death as most violent stories of that era did.

Unless. Drivers are as a novelists and filmmakers subsequent to that novel had not cast the story and its characters into fictional dress padded out to make it even more of a story and thus more attractive to the public. Joseph Brownell is a professor of geography at the state university of Cortland. His interest in the case dates back almost to his first day on campus. I was at coffee one morning and someone asked the question in idle question of someone sitting next to me where did the girl drown. I wasn't listening too well but I heard the answer and a few days later someone asked almost the identical question and got a different answer. And to a geographer who was interested in place. This was on tenable I had to hunt it down and see which was the right answer. So I started clipping News Notes which come in frequently frequent leave they are the anniversary dates of the death every 10 years or five

years or units after the 906 death sometimes in anniversary dates of the execution which occurred in 1988 and such a file grows slowly for the first 10 years or so I accumulated just one little folder from the 60s into the 70s and then when I began digging myself I found. There are bunches of stuff to put together and one for big game 2 3 and now somewhere down there there's a full drawer of it and the stuff that's too big for the drawer goes in another set of drawers and I'm running out of space. The results of Brownell's research can be seen on the walls of his office where copies of newspaper clippings and photographs and even a tracing of grace Brown's gravestone hang the files of notes and newspaper clips eventually evolved into a book that Brian now coauthored with a Syracuse resident and 1986. It has all the elements of a really classic story have a love story in a murder and a sensational trial and then you have the ultimate penalty and

ultimate drama when it goes to the electric chair. Greg Brandon became interested in the story while working as a reporter for you to a newspaper. His five years of part time research resulted in a factual account of the case that Brandon feels helps clear the confusion that people feel after years of reading the fictional versions. There's probably a lot of stories like this floating around. But because you have this famous novel that was written about it. And you have basically a fictional account of a true story that was very accessible to people people could read the novel. And they assume that that was what really happened and the driver changed a lot of things because we didnt know the answers and because of. What he wanted for his plot reasons he wanted to change some things and there was really no version of the true story around there was no nothing for people to go to to find out what really happened. And I think thats the need that the book seems to feel was a lurid case it was a sex case. It had enough draw to get every newspaper in New York to make the trip up here

to report on it. Masterson Bat Masterson came up and was. Convicted of contempt former Herkimer County District Attorney Henry Blumberg was interested in improving the image of prosecutor George Ward. His re-enactments of the trial in the original courtroom using the trial transcript and followed by a showing of the 1951 film played to packed houses his Gillette memorabilia includes the original exhibits one and two from the trial maps of the Adirondack country. They come in with this incredible. Feeling that they just discovered something that no one else has ever discovered that the Gillette trial is fascinating. They read it drys your book or they heard about it. The Herkimer County Historical Society houses a large collection of Gillette artifacts including photographs and newspaper clippings. The requests for information come in a steady stream. They come from all over this country. I think of one woman that called. Came from Las Vegas Nevada and

not only ask to have all the trial minutes Xeroxed and we told her it would be about a $700 job she sent the check for $700 just because this was just something that she got obsessed with. She went out and copied all the pictures that she could find anywhere went all over the country with looking for AP pictures you pee pictures and it goes all the way from that to a student who will has decided to do maybe a graduate. Thesis or we get high school students who thought it was a great idea and could we please write their paper for them. There they come from a variety of things. Recently we've had several from Europe that. One from France. A couple from England people have read the story and can we give them any more facts. Part of our biggest problem is trying to help them learn the difference that the details that we have are different than the

story and a lot of times they're not about to accept our version. They really are convinced that that drives their had the right facts. There is no permanent Gillette exhibit on display at the museum but one is set up periodically. A traveling exhibit took the story of one of her most notable events to area school children Gillette cell in the former jail is being restored as part of the structure's transformation to a museum. We sort of enjoyed the limelight in a way and I think it's always interesting to hear different people's reactions to them or what a figure in the trial they have the most empathy for. Whether it's Grayson and the poor sweet youngster that was taken advantage of or what was Chester like I think that discussions are always interesting because a lot of them are making you look at your own values and and your own looking at what's happening. So I I don't know I think it doesn't get boring. Put it that way.

Even with all of the continuing research into the case it doesn't seem likely that there are any new facts yet to be uncovered. But that still doesn't mean that all of the questions surrounding the death of grace Brown have been answered to everyone's satisfaction. The main question remains. Did Chester Gillette premeditated the murder of grace Brown or did it happen as it did in the novel that he simply did not save her. If you look at the evidence I think that is that he had some idea certainly by the by the time he left Cortland I think that he had to but I don't think he had it developed in his mind exactly what he was going to do. I think that he waited until he got in the Adirondacks when he was alone with her and realized that he could get away with this and I think that's when you finally decide exactly how he was going to do it. I think I think the idea that he brought the tennis racket all the way from Portland so I could use it as a murder weapon I think is absurd I think that was George words ideas so he could bring that tennis racket into the jury and slam it down in the jury box and have something to show them that this was the way he killed her I really don't think it was anything like that at all. There's all kinds

of little things if you look at the fact that when he went to rent the boat for instance we know that he was so short of money that he didn't pay his hotel bill in Utica he was only had a few dollars with him. He went and rented the boat and and went out in the lake. But the boat keeper remembers very specifically that he didn't ask how much the boat costs. Now if you're short of money you want to know how much everything costs but you're not going bring the boat back. It really doesn't matter how much it cost does it. The district attorney made a strong case for. Premeditation. And that. He fought in the trial followed Chester and grace in their journey up through the Adirondack station by station hotel by hotel pointing out that every time he registered at a hotel he registered under assumed names Mr. and Mrs.. Usually from New York City. And almost always with Chester's own initials but a different name. Until the day that they stopped at the Glenmore hotel at big moose and at that point Chester went up and wrote in the book

although I doubt that it was necessary because they were not registering for the night contract. Contrary to most people's opinions they were there at about 11 o'clock in the morning and they intended to leave before night. But in those days two people tended to write in the book when they stopped for dinner anywhere but he wrote down this time. Her own name quite accurately Grace Brown and her address out at sea like but for himself he wrote on a separate in line a fictional name Colonel Graeme Albany that pattern and that change in pattern the district attorney claimed was evidence of premeditation that he was setting this up deliberately. I don't think he went to he decided he was going to murder I think the reason he used a different name is it wasn't very gaunt to take the lady away that you weren't married to.

And. I don't really think he premeditated this. I think he was one of those people that thought. The situation would take care of itself. But the idea that he chickened out at the end when she was in the water all he did wrong was not savor. The testimony of the doctors which I think is the key testimony in the case a must have carried the most weight with the jury. They testified that the blow to the head. They couldn't. Guarantee that it would cause death but they say they testified that it could have caused death just the blow alone. So that or being in the water was not necessarily material. Nor that I think that he didn't. He planned it he went to one lake. There were too many people there he came to another lake and that Eleanor Franz and her report out of

it says you know nobody nobody sits with the black flies for several hours on an island in a hole waiting for something that. You've got to be determined. I think he was determined I think he had an opportunity to move on and I think that this this girl was a millstone around his neck. The debate about whether it was murder on big moose will rage on as long as the mystery attracts attention to the eternal frustration of those individuals who simply need to know. Most historians have one moment in time where they'd like to go in and and witness something and my mind certainly would be about 6:15 on July the eleven thousand nine hundred six on the shore of South Bank vigorously. I'd love to be able to stand in those bushes there and just see what really happened.