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GRACE BROWN the Sympathetic Victim in the Case, Grace “Billy” Brown, Came from a Long-Time Chenango County-Area Family

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GRACE BROWN the Sympathetic Victim in the Case, Grace “Billy” Brown, Came from a Long-Time Chenango County-Area Family 2B OBSERVER-DISPATCH, TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2006 The Murder That Will Never Die FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE TRIAL AT UTICAOD.COM Beyond the shadow THE PLAYERS From the victim and the culprit to lawmen, writers and townsfolk, the Chester Gillette story featured a colorful of a doubt? cast of characters. Here are six of them. CHESTER GILLETTE The face on the well-circulated photograph of Chester Gillette isn’t easy to interpret. Is he con- fident? Defiant? Overwhelmed? Gillette’s family was prominent in Cortland County. His uncle hired him to work at his skirt factory. It was there, in 1905, he met factory worker Grace “Billy” Brown and the two began a rela- tionship -- at about the same time Gillette start- ed to attend more social events in the communi- ty. Brown was found dead July 11, 1906, in an Adirondack lake and Gillette, 23, was charged with killing her. He went to trial and was convict- ed by a jury. Gillette was executed in the electric chair in at the state prison in Auburn on March 30, 1908. GRACE BROWN The sympathetic victim in the case, Grace “Billy” Brown, came from a long-time Chenango County-area family. Her father rented a farm in South Otselic where she grew up. Instead of staying on the farm, she left for Cortland where she took a job at the Gillette Skirt Factory. She was 20 and pregnant when she died at the hands of fellow factory worker Chester Gillette during an outing on Big Moose Lake in the town of Webb. During his trial, her parents were seen weeping during parts of the testimo- ny. Grace’s love letters were entered into the trial record. Her final letter is a touching but complex missive about bidding goodbye to her mother and familiar hometown places as she waits to meet Gillette. GEORGE WARD HEATHER AINSWORTH / Observer-Dispatch District Attorney George Washington Ward built Chester Gillette was tried for the murder of Grace Brown at the Herkimer County Courthouse in the Gillette case on circumstantial evidence. 1906. Although no longer used as a courthouse, much of the building appears as it did then. There were no eye-witnesses and Gillette main- tained his innocence throughout the trial. Ward was many things: a teacher, reporter and lawyer, according to the history book Legal experts examine whether Gillette “Herkimer County at 200.” The 36-year-old Dol- geville resident had been district attorney would be convicted by today’s courtroom standards about three years when he began the prosecu- tion of Chester Gillette for killing Grace Brown in the summer of 1906. He called 100 people to By DAVID DELLECESE the stand and introduced scores of pieces of evi- Observer-Dispatch dence in the trial. [email protected] Evidence collection Gillette went on to the electric chair. Ward went on to become county judge, an acquaintance of Pres- ghastly courtroom n several instances Grace Gillette’s living quarters in Cort- ident Theodore Roosevelt and counsel to a U.S. senato- display designed to Brown was said to have told land without his consent. rial committee on dairy legislation. shock. The murder co-workers she hoped she “Today we couldn’t do that Ward died at home in 1918 of Spanish influenza. victim’s love letters “would not live to see the sun under the concept of the exclu- bordering on the I rise again,” or that she was leav- sionary rule. Because there suicidal. A body ing, “never to be heard from was no search warrant we would that may have been again.” not have been able to use those Adamaged during its recovery. An Even the letters she wrote to documents,” said Oneida County autopsy performed after embalming. Chester Gillette seemed laced District Attorney Michael Arcuri. Chester Gillette went to the elec- with overtones of suicidal ten- Each letter was presented as a ROY HIGBY tric chair for killing Grace Brown dencies. In one letter she wrote, piece of evidence in the trial. Roy Higby, who died in 1990 at age 97, was one after a trial 100 years ago that might “I hope I can die … and then you They were read aloud by the dis- of the last living links to the Gillette case. not have held up in today’s legal cli- can do just as you like.” trict attorney and admitted as As a 13-year-old in 1906, he worked on a mate, experts and observers say. These letters, however, were, proof of the relationship to estab- steamboat that traveled Big Moose Lake. His There were no eye-witnesses, and highly inadmissible against lish time, facts and proof in the uncle owned the Glenmore Hotel, where the Gillette never admitted guilt during Gillette, forcefully retrieved from case. couple had checked in July 11. his trial. It all came down to circum- On many occasions over the years he related stantial evidence, some of it improp- his story to researchers and the curious. The erly obtained. odd thing was, he never related during Gerald Fiesinger, a Little Falls Gillette’s trial what he’d observed. lawyer, says that while the Constitu- Higby, in a 1981 interview with the Utica Daily tion has remained the same, the Press, said if he’d been allowed to take the stand, interpretation of the law that has there might not have been a conviction. He said changed. he’d seen searchers use a sharp pointed object to “From what I understand and can drag the lake for Grace’s body and that might have figure out, it was basically a fair caused the injuries blamed on the tennis racket trial,” he said. Gillette was said to have used to strike her. Still, Higby A fair trial by 1906 standards, per- believed Gillette was a murderer. haps. “By today's standards Gillette’s conviction would surely have been overturned. District Attorney George Ward broke all the modern rules about how to obtain evidence. Any of those things would have been BAT MASTERSON THEODORE DREISER grounds to toss out the conviction. Gunslinger, Indian fighter, sheriff of In 1906, the murder case against But those kinds of things were com- The caption for this Dec. 1, 1906, Utica Saturday Globe illustration Dodge City, Kansas – W.B. “Bat” Mas- Chester Gillette was front page news mon in 1906, and by those standards read “Rowboat which figured in the Gillette murder case.” terson was asked to cover a murder locally, but it also got the attention of he certainly got a fair trial,” said trial in Herkimer County for a New New York City dailies, which found Craig Brandon, author of “Murder in York City newspaper in 1906. the case irresistible. the Adirondacks.” Playing for emotions He brought gusto to the reporting Author Theodore Dreiser, who Gillette was charged with striking job. His sensationalism merely got already had written a few novels, was Brown with a tennis racket in a quiet elodrama was a com- now are asked to pick one him a slap on the wrist. intrigued by the New York City bay of the remote Big Moose Lake on mon thread in the photo, within reason, showing a According to the New York Times in accounts of the trial. In 1925 he wrote July 11, 1906, and he was arrested case. Brown’s uterus wound. December 1906, Masterson and his “An American Tragedy,” based on the two days later. Almost immediately, Mand fetus, for example, “Certainly I would say the fetus boss at the Morning Telegraph of New case. newspapers breathlessly reported were removed from her body and coming in like that is clearly, very York City were fined and paid $50 each The novel renewed interest in the on the case, coloring the trial that exhibited for the jury. Objections shocking,” Arcuri said. for contempt of court for publishing an case and spawned two movies. “An followed in November. to this display were constantly Sara Beaty, an Albany-based article about the trial that said County American Tragedy” made the rounds overruled, no doubt shocking the civil lawyer, agreed. “Under the Court Judge Irving Devendorf was in 1931 and “A Place in the Sun,” star- jury and spectators. Federal Rules, there is no way swayed by mob spirit. ring Montgomery Clift, Shelley Win- ON THE WEB “It’s like autopsy photos. We are that could get in today. It’s proba- Masterson kept up his journalism ters and Elizabeth Taylor, was the 1951 Visit www.uticaOD.com for more not allowed to use excessive tive value clearly does not out- career well beyond the trial. His end version. on the murder case: autopsy photos,” Arcuri said. weigh its prejudicial value,” she wasn’t in a blaze of gunfire he knew so The works of Dreiser, who died in Excerpts from newspaper According to Arcuri, attorneys said. well, although it was in the line of duty. 1945, continue to be the subject of coverage at the time. He died at his editor’s desk in 1921. scholarly research. A 1981 interview with Roy Higby, a 13-year-old working at Big Moose Lake in 1906. The names of the jurors Continued on Page 7B in the case. Sources: Observer-Dispatch files, Herkimer County Historical Society, New York Times.
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