A “LIFER” IN SING SING
The amazing part of my story is that I am alive to relate it. I have
often asked myself how it happened that I did not finish what I set
out to do, and I am sure that this thought must have been even more
puzzling to my friends and probably to nearly all who read this. Some
considerate persons have tried to convince me that God had a purpose in
prolonging my life, but I wonder what the purpose could be, other than
to give me opportunity for repentance. Life seems so bleak and useless
when one is in prison.
It has been said by others that after taking the life of my wife I
lacked the fortitude to kill myself. The assumption is justifiable, but
it is untrue. With nothing left to live for, it was easy to die. It
required far greater courage voluntarily to walk into a police station
and deliver myself into custody, knowing what it would mean to me and
what I must go through when once I was made a prisoner. There were two
loaded revolvers in my pocket. I had but to press the trigger of one
and in the fraction of a second I would be beyond the reach of human
punishment.
When I gave myself up to the police I realized as vividly as I ever
realized any act of my life, that I would be put in prison, placed on
trial and convicted, and that I would have to go through the ordeal of
ignominious death by legal execution. The thought that I might escape
the electric chair and spend the remainder of my life in prison, never
came to me. I believed when I walked into the police station that but
little time would elapse before I would be put to death. Had I thought
otherwise, I would surely have chosen the easier way.
Whatever my mental condition may have been a few hours earlier, my
mind at this time was perfectly clear. I had come to myself and I knew
what I was doing. At the time of the tragedy I had scarcely slept for
more than a week. My nerves were unstrung and there was a prickling
sensation as if my brain was being tortured with red hot needles. I
felt that I was going mad and I was fearful that insanity might so
twist my brain that I would be unable to carry out what I had planned
to do. What if I became insane and killed myself and left my wife alone
in the world, without relatives or friends, to suffer and starve, after
all her loving devotion through our long married life. This thought was
a constant torment. I wonder now how I ever remained sane.
My wife never knew that the man she loved killed her. She died while
peacefully asleep. That is all the consolation I shall ever have and it
makes easier to bear what I must face as long as I live. It would have
been horrible if she had known.
Had death come to her instantly, I would now be lying by her side
in Glenwood Cemetery at Washington. She lingered for two hours,
unconscious and without pain. Had I killed myself while she were yet
alive and she had survived, all that I sacrificed to save her from
penury and want would have been in vain. I did not dare end my own
life while she breathed. So I knelt by her side, her hand in mine, and
prayed that God would understand and forgive. When her life fluttered
and went out, there came to me a strange exaltation and with it all
the worries that had been tormenting me faded into nothingness. I had
nothing more to worry about. No harm could ever befall her. Then my
brain went dead.
What happened immediately afterward I but dimly remember. I have tried
to piece together what I did throughout that day and all of the night
but it is like trying to gather the elusive threads of a fast-fading
dream. I left our hotel to go into Central Park and finish there what
was in my mind to do.
Then came delusions. It seemed to me that no matter where I went there
were hundreds of outstretched hands waiting to snatch my weapon and
prevent me from carrying out my purpose. I now realize that these
fancies were vagaries of an overwrought brain. I grew numb, insensate.
All day and all night I rode about the city on elevated trains and in
the subways. I went over to Brooklyn and sat for hours in Prospect
Park, waiting for the crowds that seemed to surround me to go away and
give me a chance to die. In the blackness of the night I found myself
trying to get into Bronx Park. It was raining and at the sound of a
footstep I fled in terror, lest a policeman seize me and take away my
weapons. No thought of arrest for what I had done came to me. I thought
only that an encounter with a policeman would result in the loss of my
two revolvers and that I should then be without the means of destroying
my life.
Throughout the night I rode up and down in the subway, from end to
end and back again, crouched in a seat at the end of a car. I fancied
myself dead and that it was the shell of what once was me that sat so
silent and still in a subway train. It was as if I were in a trance. My
hands were like lumps of ice. The blood in my body seemed frozen. For
hours I couldn’t even think. I had no sensation of thirst or hunger. I
just rode on and on like a dead man might.
In the early morning I got off at a station and went to a lavatory. A
boy was opening a bundle of papers when I came out. I bought one and
got on a train to go to my office, just as I had done every morning at
that hour for more than twenty years. I read all of the war news on the
front page. When I turned to the inside a headline glared at me. My
eyes were fascinated with the horror it told. In black type at the top
of the page was:
“CHARLES CHAPIN WANTED FOR MURDER!”
Then it all came back. I wasn’t dead; I was alive and was wanted by the
police for murder! How many headlines like that I had written in my
forty years as a newspaper man! And now it was me who was wanted for
murder. I got off the train at the next stop and made for the nearest
police station. A voice within kept urging me to kill myself while
opportunity remained, but I deliberately walked to the station house,
placed my two revolvers before the astonished eyes of the officer in
charge and told him my name and why I was there. He looked at me as
though he thought I was crazy.
An hour later, at Police Headquarters, I made as complete a statement
as my shattered nerves would permit to an assistant district attorney
and a group of police officials. They warned me that anything I told
them might be used against me in court, but I had nothing to withhold
and no defense to offer for what I had done. I was ready to receive the
punishment the law demands and told them so. I was never more unafraid
in my life. Before night I was in a cell in the Tombs, a watchful
guard at the barred door to prevent me from cheating the executioner.
A bright light was kept shining on me throughout the night, for I was
under “observation” in “Murderers’ Row.”
Many lawyers called next day to tender their services. Some were old
friends and they generously offered me financial aid as well as legal.
I wanted nothing of them and told them so. I wanted only to be left
alone and to let the law finish me as quickly as possible. Hundreds of
letters and telegrams came. Many asked why I had not let them know of
my financial difficulties. “I would gladly have paid your debts twice
over had you come to me,” I read in some of the letters. The offers
came too late, for the one worth saving was beyond human aid and I was
a murderer.
When I was arraigned in court I asked the District Attorney if he would
obtain consent for me to attend my wife’s funeral, pledging in return
for this one favor that I would waive all formalities of trial and save
the State from further expense in expediting my execution.
It may seem strange, in view of the fact that a newspaper man is
supposed to know about such things, that I was unaware that a prisoner
charged with a capital offense is not permitted to plead guilty.
Whether he wishes to or not, a plea of “not guilty” must be arbitrarily
entered and it is then incumbent upon the prosecuting attorney to prove
him guilty. Could I have had my way, there would have been nothing to
do in disposing of my case but to sentence me. The executioner would
have attended to the rest.
When a plea to the indictment had been entered and I was remanded to
the Tombs, a newspaper friend brought Abe Levy to see me. I had known
him for twenty years as one of the ablest criminal lawyers in New York
and he and I had had many a wordy scrap when he fancied that something
our paper printed was detrimental to his client, for Levy is a zealous
champion of every man whose defense he undertakes. I explained to him
that I had no means to employ counsel and that I wished for none, as
I had no intention of making any defense when my case was called for
trial. I further told him that after the prosecution presented a prima
facie case against me, which would occupy but a few minutes, I expected
to announce to the court that I had no witnesses in my behalf and no
defense to offer.
“And then what?” asked the lawyer.
“The judge will sentence me and my troubles will soon be over.”
“And do you think there is a judge in our Criminal Courts who would
permit you to do such a thing? If there is, the Court of Appeals would
surely not tolerate it. Now, you do need a lawyer and you need one very
much, and at the request of many of your friends I am going to act in
your behalf, not for any fee, however, for I want none. I look upon it
as a sacred duty to save you from yourself.”
I was much distressed the following day to learn that my counsel had
appeared in court to ask for the appointment of a commission to inquire
into my sanity, although I was much gratified when told that Justice
Malone had appointed three men of the highest integrity to preside at
the hearing. They were George W. Wickersham, formerly United States
Attorney General; Lamar Hardy, Corporation Counsel of New York during
the administration of Mayor John Purroy Mitchel; and Dr. Jelliffe,
a famous specialist in mental diseases. I knew that these men would
not permit me to be railroaded to an asylum for the insane. I further
realized that no matter which way they reported to the court, their
finding would be above criticism. I shall always feel grateful to these
important men who gave up their valuable time and listened so patiently
to the great mass of testimony that was presented by my indefatigable
counsel.
I sat a silent spectator at the sessions of the Commission and
attentively listened to well-meaning friends and my former office
associates testify to everything they could conjure from their
resourceful memories that would help to prove me irresponsible. Every
little act of mine that could in any way be twisted into an indication
of an insane mind was dug up and elaborated, until they got me to
wondering whether I was a moral idiot, a paranoiac, or just an ordinary
unclassified lunatic.
It seemed to me that in all my life I had never heard so much
unconscious perjury. One reporter interpreted as an indication of a
deranged mind that many of his political items went into my waste
basket. Another that I would rush to a telephone booth while he was
conversing with me. I didn’t explain that I went into a telephone booth
because there was an irate creditor on the wire and that I did not
wish others in the office to hear what I said to him. A cub reporter
was sure that I was crazy because I gave him tickets to a banquet and
told him to go there and enjoy himself, but only as a guest, as another
reporter had been assigned to write about it. Four famous specialists
told of interviewing me in the Tombs on several occasions and of
their explorations into my anatomy in search of bugs. One took as an
indication of paresis that I joked with him and smoked a cigar while
he bored into my spinal column and drew from it two tubes of fluid for
laboratory analysis.
There was a doctor in the Tombs who is supposed to minister to sick
prisoners. He came to my cell and tried to win my confidence by telling
how he had hurried back from his vacation when he learned that I was
there and in need of medical attention. He bobbed up at the hearing
as a witness. I heard him proclaim himself an insanity expert and
I thought I detected a smile of derision on the countenance of Dr.
Jelliffe, one of the most celebrated of insanity experts, and if I read
his thoughts aright he was mentally exclaiming, “You poor fish!” To
the astonishment of everyone present and plainly to the disgust of the
three gentlemen who were presiding, the doctor drew from his pocket a
voluminous manuscript which purported to contain a report of every
word that had passed between himself and me during the many visits he
had made to my cell in his capacity of physician. I had always talked
freely with him. It now developed that every time he talked with me he
went straight to his office and wrote out for the District Attorney’s
use all he could recall of our conversation. He had a treacherous
memory. What he failed to remember he filled in from imagination. For
this service he earned an extra fee of fifty dollars.
When he had finished reading his manuscript he passed it over to the
District Attorney and it was put in a portfolio with other papers.
Confessedly, the doctor was less of a physician than he was “stool
pigeon” for the District Attorney. There was nothing that he could
testify to that could harm me, for I was beyond any harm he could do
and, besides, I courted the worst that could possibly befall me. But I
shudder when I think of the incalculable injury he may do to others by
prostituting his calling as he did in my case. Dr. Jelliffe took him in
hand after the manuscript had been read and interpolated with theories
and opinions, and what he didn’t do to him in the way of showing up his
ignorance and bumptious pretension, was because Dr. Jelliffe grew tired
of his own ruthlessness.
The witness who most interested me was Katie. She testified that she
had been my wife’s personal maid for eighteen years and in all that
time she could not recall having heard me utter so much as a cross
word. “He was her constant and devoted companion,” said Katie, “more
like a lover than a husband.” Katie said a lot of nice things about
me and so did the intimate women friends of my wife. Their testimony
convinced everyone present that there was no motive connected with the
tragedy other than was shown in my own frank statement.
The hearing dragged along for nearly four months. Sometimes there
would be an interruption for several weeks, because of the illness of
someone, or some other would be importantly engaged elsewhere. Nearly
a thousand pages of typewritten testimony were taken. I was on the
witness stand for seven hours, telling as connectedly as I could all
of the circumstances that led up to the tragedy. I made no attempt
to justify my act or to give my hearers the impression that I was in
any way irresponsible. On the contrary, I did everything I could to
defeat what my able and resourceful counsel was so ingeniously trying
to accomplish. And I succeeded. When I had finished telling my story
the District Attorney was so well satisfied that out of my own mouth I
had proven my sanity that he announced that he would call no witnesses.
He didn’t even review the testimony that had been given or address
the Commission. Mr. Wickersham personally wrote the report of the
Commission, which I was afterward privileged to read. It was an ably
constructed document of nearly forty pages and summed up my case with
remarkably clear understanding. It was fair, logical and not without
sympathy. I marvel that anyone could have come so close to my own
appraisal of what I did. The finding declared me legally responsible.
Dr. Jelliffe injected into it an inference that although legally sane
I was medically insane, a distinction without much difference. These
dear old doctors, bless their souls, whenever they delve profoundly
into psychiatry, get so they “kid” themselves into believing that
almost everyone except themselves is a “bug.”
I recall one question that Mr. Wickersham put to me while I was
testifying that perplexed me beyond reply. It was: “You believe in God
and in His watchful care and mercy. If you had killed yourself and not
your wife, haven’t you enough faith to believe that God would have
looked after your wife and provided for her wants?”
When the question was asked there flashed through my mind the vivid
picture of the little old woman in black who tremblingly stretched
out her hand for alms that last Sunday morning when my wife and I
were starting for Brighton Beach. No doubt she had faith in God and
often went on her knees to Him for help and strength, yet there she
was in her dire extremity of keeping body and soul together, a poor
little beggar in the streets of a cold and pitiless city. Truly, the
inscrutable working of the Divine mind is beyond human comprehension.
I falteringly attempted to reply to Mr. Wickersham, but grew confused
lest I be misunderstood and simply told him it was the only question
for which I was unable to frame an answer. I believe he understood what
was in my mind.
A day was set for my trial and Justice Bartow S. Weeks of the Supreme
Court was chosen to preside. Just a week before the trial was to begin,
Lawyer Levy came to see me in the Tombs, accompanied by one of my
friends. It was his first visit since the day, four months before, that
he applied for a commission to inquire into my sanity. All through the
hearing almost the only words exchanged between us were when I asked
about his son, sick with a fever at one of the army encampments. All
feeling of resentment had long since been merged in the admiration
I felt for the lawyer when I watched his masterly method of piecing
together testimony to support his theory. His shining bald pate
conceals a magnificent intellect.
Mr. Levy informed me that he had just come from the District Attorney.
The latter had sent for him, he said, and had told him that the
complete testimony taken during my insanity hearing had been submitted
to five Supreme Court judges and that after going over it they had
given a unanimous opinion that I could not be convicted of first degree
murder. The District Attorney had proposed that I consent to plead
guilty to a lesser degree, saving myself from a trying ordeal and the
State from the expense of a trial by jury.
“I promptly told the District Attorney that I would agree to nothing
in the way of compromise,” declared Mr. Levy, “and I further told him
that I am confident of acquitting you at the final trial of your case.
But, after a conference with some of your friends, they have asked me
to explain what you will probably have to go through if you are placed
on trial. I am reasonably certain that no jury would ever convict you,
but it is very doubtful if twelve men could agree on a verdict. This
would mean another trial, with perhaps the same result, and the trials
that would follow would perhaps run through more than a year, possibly
two or three years. If the jury should agree and found you guilty, it
would be at least a year before the Court of Appeals could act upon it,
and if a new trial was ordered many months more would probably elapse
before it could be reached. All this time you would be confined and
closely guarded in the Tombs or in the condemned cells at Sing Sing.
The case might drag along for several years and in the end, unless
there was an acquittal, we would be back to where we are to-day. Your
friends insist that you have not the physical strength to stand such an
ordeal. I will not attempt to advise you what course we shall pursue.
You must now decide that for yourself.”
It was appalling the way he described it. I already had spent four
months in the dreadful Tombs, surrounded by vicious and depraved men.
I witnessed and heard things that made my blood run cold. The horror
of it no pen can describe. Dante’s conception of hell made of it a
paradise as compared with the iniquities of that bedlam of a prison. I
realized that if I had to endure it much longer a commission wouldn’t
need to waste much time in finding me stark mad. God, what a hole to
stick men in!
To Mr. Levy, I replied: “Let me make clear to you that I have no wish
to dodge my fullest responsibility to the law for what I have done.
My desire is for the quickest possible finality. I feel now, as I
have from the day I came here, that I can go to the execution chamber
without fear. If the choice is left to me I would prefer the electric
chair to imprisonment. But I am not unmindful of all that you and
my friends are doing for me, and I am greatly distressed at what it
all means to the newspapers with which I was associated for so many
years. If what the District Attorney has said about not being able to
convict me is true, and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity, I am
willing to do as he suggests, providing that it is made clear in open
court that my plea of guilty to the lesser degree is offered only to
save further trouble and expense, and because the District Attorney
is convinced that I cannot be convicted of the crime for which I am
indicted. A life sentence to State Prison at my age is to be preferred
to even one year in the Tombs.”
The following morning I went before Justice Weeks, accompanied by
Sheriff Knott, and was sentenced to serve at hard labor not less than
twenty years or more than natural life. The entire proceeding that
terminated forever my activity in the world outside of prison walls was
over in three minutes and a few days later I was brought to Sing Sing.
For many months after I put on the gray garb of a felon, I was so
ill and dazed that much of the time I could scarcely realize my
surroundings. I wanted to crawl out of sight of everyone and cry.
And there was the almost constant dread that I would soon break down
completely and be transported to that far away asylum in the mountains
of the North for the criminal insane.
Gradually the nervousness and apprehension wore away and my health
began to improve. Fear of insanity has now almost entirely left me. I
have been treated with great kindness and consideration, not only by
prison officials but by my associates in gray. My closest friends of
bygone days could not have been more kind than these unfortunate men
who are serving long sentences of imprisonment. There is so much good
in the worst of them, so much sympathy and generosity among them all.
I expect to be here as long as I may live and I am trying to serve God
and be helpful to my fellow men as best I can. The past is behind me.
What I have done I cannot undo. I give no thought to what may come. The
yesterdays are gone, the to-morrows will take care of themselves. I try
to get as much as I possibly can out of each day as I live it.
Almost two years have passed. In the solitude of my cell I have
subjected myself to a more searching examination than the most
analytical prosecutor could put me through, and the verdict that is
firmly fixed in my mind is that I did the only thing that was left me
to do. There was no other way of saving my wife.
Transcriber’s Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation and spelling have been
retained as in the original publication except as follows:
Page 16
An Autobigraphy of a Hotel Office Chair _changed to_
An Autobiography of a Hotel Office Chair
Page 22
burlesque actresss, put _changed to_
burlesque actress, put
Page 24
ever line in it _changed to_
every line in it
Page 62
Mrs. Garrigle was as _changed to_
Mrs. McGarrigle was as
Page 102
I telegraphed five colums _changed to_
I telegraphed five columns
Page 144
It was the _Decameron_ of Bocaccio _changed to_
It was _The Decameron_ of Boccaccio
Page 147
ticket to Chicago They _changed to_
ticket to Chicago. They
Page 155
I was familar with _changed to_
I was familiar with
Page 156
the additional informaation _changed to_
the additional information
Page 279
Riley, told me _changed to_
Riley told me
Page 282
During that winter months _changed to_
During the winter months
Page 288
I I bought stocks _changed to_
If I bought stocks