Killer Colt Read online

  “Towards the prisoner,” he professed, “no one, except the brother who has stood by him throughout this case and the counsel who have so eloquently defended him, no one feels more for him than I do. My heart bleeds for him.” And yet “there are cases where we have no right to allow our sympathies to control our judgment.”

  Sounding much like a modern-day law-and-order zealot—the type who decries the judicial system for mollycoddling criminals and blames the breakdown of society on “bleeding hearts”—he claimed that crime was running rampant in the city. “We scarcely take up a newspaper but we find two or three accounts of murder therein. And this grows out of that sickly sympathy manifested by courts and juries, and the almost certainty that the murderer will go clear. The jury must discard all prejudices and sympathies—the jury box is no place for such feelings. You have solely to deal with the testimony brought before you. With the consequences of your verdict upon this miserable, this wretched man, you have nothing to do. You are sworn to do justice, not mercy, and to see that justice prevails. The people expect it of you and demand it at your hands.”

  Smith used the remainder of his two-and-a-half-hour summation to argue that Colt’s crime constituted willful and malicious murder, not manslaughter. While “the law makes allowance for any killing done in the heat of passion,” he declared, “this is not one of them.” Moreover, the sheer savagery of the crime, the “cruel and brutal manner in which it was done,” proved that there was implied, if not express, malice.

  As to motive, Smith proposed that, unlikely as it seemed, Colt intended to rob his victim—“to possess himself of the property which Samuel Adams had in his possession at the time,” meager as it was. “I admit it is the most extraordinary case I ever heard of. But what is motive for one man would not be motive for another.”

  To judge whether “such a motive as I have suggested was strong enough to make him commit the act,” it was necessary to examine “the character of Colt. If his character were extremely good, it would make a difference. Let us see the character he has displayed.

  “Why, in all this trial,” exclaimed Smith, “he has shown less feeling than any man here. When the box that once contained the dead body of Adams was exhibited before us and the bloody garments held up, the prisoner alone looked on calm and unmoved as if nothing had happened, while everyone else shuddered and stood back aghast. Therefore, I consider him of a cool, deliberate, and calculating disposition. The man that could sit here so calmly and listen to this trial could just as calmly plan and quietly execute the deed.”

  To be sure, Colt’s eyes had watered at the sight of his family mementoes: the locks of his mother’s and sisters’ hair found inside the trunk along with Samuel Adams’s pocket watch. Even there, however, Smith saw proof of Colt’s implacable nature. “If I needed evidence to prove his coldness of purpose and hardness of heart,” he asserted, “I would want nothing better than the course he has exhibited in relation to the hair of his mother. Who among you would throw such a relic in a box with his cast-off materials, placed side by side with the evidence of his guilt?

  “Will the prisoner’s counsel say that, because he exhibited feeling in this one solitary instance, we are to consider him mild, gentle, and humane?” cried Smith, warming to the subject. “Why, gentlemen, let me appeal to your feelings in this matter. Let me ask you what is the last thing a man forgets? What is that which lingers longest and sweetest upon our memory? Is it not the recollections of her who gave us being and who first taught us the lessons of virtue? The name of mother is the last uttered by the pirate under the yardarm and the murderer as he mounts the scaffold! She is the last the veriest wretch forgets! We often see the lights of genius go out one by one—vice makes inroads into the mind until almost the last traces of virtue become extinct—but while life still glimmers in the socket and a ray of reason lights the mind, man clings with fondness and reverence to the memory of his mother!”

  How the jurors reacted to this sentimental appeal is unknown, though “several of the ladies in the audience seemed greatly affected.”

  According to Smith, the evidence left no doubt that the murder of Adams was “coolly and deliberately planned beforehand.” Why had Colt brought the awning and the nails to his office in advance “if not for such a purpose as this? Why was the saw previously borrowed from the woman in the house? And why such agitation and concealment in his mode of using it? We were told by witnesses that when they knocked at the prisoner’s door, the usual answer was ‘come in.’ But when Mr. Walker went to get the saw, Colt came to the door, opened it a short distance and said, ‘Go to hell.’ ”

  Colt had also been caught out in several obvious lies, most glaringly his insistence that he had hired a man to take the box downstairs—a statement flatly contradicted by eyewitness testimony. “Why, then, didn’t the prisoner say in his ‘confession’ ”—here Smith gave the word a conspicuously sarcastic inflection—“that he took it down himself?” Because, explained Smith, if someone else did the job, then the mark on Colt’s neck could not have been caused by the crate, thus bolstering Colt’s contention that the bruise was made by Adams. “If he did hire the man,” asked Smith, “why not bring him forward as a witness?” The answer was clear: Colt had lied about the man because he was lying about the source of the bruise. He had never been attacked by Adams. The murder was an act of cold-blooded premeditation.

  For every objection raised by the defense, Smith had an answer. Colt’s counsel had argued, for example, that if their client “intended murder, he would never have chosen to commit it in such a public place as the Granite Building. But I would argue that Colt chose that place precisely because of its publicity and noise and because there he would be less likely to be detected or even suspected. Adams was such a businessman that Colt could not possibly lure him out of the city. Therefore he chose to kill him in a place where the noise would prevent any scuffle or cries being heard, and he chose the noisiest time of the day to do it.”

  Perhaps most damning of all was “the subsequent conduct of the prisoner. Would any of you have acted so?” asked Smith in an incredulous tone. “Would you have sat down coolly with the dead body at your feet and sit for hours deliberating how you could best conceal it, unless you had committed a cool and deliberate murder? He who could act so deliberately after the killing could as deliberately plan the murder.

  “Again, on the Monday after the deed was done,” he continued, “we find him in that very room where he had committed the murder merrier than ever, and even singing. He goes to the very room where he committed this horrible act and there in singing and smoking he passes his idle hours. This shows that this man’s mind is singularly constituted—and therefore it is idle to say that because the motive for the deed is improbable, he could not have done it.”

  Smith also made sure to bring up Caroline Henshaw. “We do not wish to impugn a woman’s virtue,” he solemnly proclaimed. “But once she has lost that, when she comes upon the stand, we do not think it necessary to call evidence to impeach it.”

  Colt, Smith continued, represented “the only anchor that binds her to the world.” If he were to be taken from her life, she would become a permanent outcast. “Testimony from such a source requires no impeachment. Such a witness has no incentive to tell the truth but is controlled solely by her own interest and feelings. She is the mother of the prisoner’s child, and it would be strange indeed if the young mother would not come forward to testify strongly in favor of the father.

  “Gentlemen,” said Smith, approaching the end of his summation, “you must take the testimony, compare it, and weigh it perfectly. As to the murder, you have to pass upon the apparent intention. You must observe in regard to the prisoner whether he was the kind of man that would be likely to commit and premeditate the deed. It has been said that Colt is a remarkably mild and quiet man. If you believe that, is it not more conclusive that the murder was coolly done and intended for plunder?”

  Smith ended by reminding
the jurors that “the attribute of mercy does not belong to you, nor to the court, but to a higher tribunal.” Then, with a final word of lawyerly false humility—“I will now leave the subject with those more capable than myself”—he returned to the prosecutor’s table and took his seat beside District Attorney Whiting.3

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  No sooner had Smith reseated himself than John’s cousin and lead attorney, Dudley Selden, rose to address the jurors. He began by promising them that his “remarks should not extend to a length unnecessarily to trespass upon their time.”1 Despite this assurance, he would end up speaking for more than five hours: two and a half before the recess and another three afterward. Long as it was, however, his performance would be widely applauded. Even James Gordon Bennett—still smarting over Selden’s earlier call for his arrest—hailed it as a feat of “thrilling eloquence.”2

  Keenly aware that, for both the jury and the general public, John’s cold-blooded efforts to dispose of the body seemed even more shocking than the murder itself, Selden wasted no time in addressing the issue. While conceding that Colt may have manhandled the corpse—standing on its knees, for example, to force them down into the crate—he insisted that John’s actions “in relation to concealing the body” had “no bearing upon the decision as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant.” However callous his behavior, John had been acting out of sheer desperation.

  “He was in terror of his situation,” exclaimed Selden. “There is no man but under such circumstances would have resorted to concealment rather than disclose what occurred. He determined upon the plan and set out to put it in execution. ‘Poor Adams is dead,’ said he, ‘and I shall have to meet the consequences or conceal what has been done by means within my power.’ ”

  The killing itself, insisted Selden, was clearly unpremeditated. That “a sudden quarrel” had sprung up between them was “borne out by the fact that Mr. Adams left Mr. Wells’s store between two and three o’clock in an angry state of mind for the purpose of going to Colt’s room.” Once the struggle began, Colt had acted reflexively. “Adams had Colt by the throat,” Selden declared, “and there was necessity of resorting to means of defending himself. The axe lay on the table, where it would necessarily be placed in that small room. Colt seized it, and in self-defense struck the blows. It was all done in an instant’s time.”

  As for the question of why Colt struck Adams repeatedly and with such savage force, Selden argued that, while the first blow may have “deprived Adams of speech,” it could actually have caused him to tighten his stranglehold—“to hold with even stronger grasp the neckcloth of Colt.” To prove that even a mortally wounded man can muster a final burst of strength, Selden cited two well-known examples: Alexander Hamilton, who had supposedly “sprung from the ground” after being shot down by Aaron Burr, and Charles Austin, the young victim in a sensational 1806 manslaughter case, who, after being shot in the head by a lawyer named Thomas O. Selfridge, had “advanced upon Selfridge and struck him some violent blows before he fell dead.”3

  Selden next turned to the issue of motive. After asserting that Colt could not possibly have been seeking revenge since “he had none to gratify,” he dismissed the charge that the murder was committed “for gain.” For one thing, “had Colt been disposed to seek money in this way, he would have picked a more wealthy victim than poor Adams.” Moreover, the fact that Colt had thrown most of Adams’s possessions down the privy proved that he had not meant to rob him.

  As for Adams’s pocket watch, Colt “was aware that it was an elegant one, of peculiar workmanship, and must be discovered in case he afterwards attempted to wear it. Is it likely that he would have plundered another of such an article as this, and have committed murder in order to do it?” Besides, if the watch was so precious, why hadn’t Colt gotten word to Caroline, following his arrest, “that the plunder was in his trunk and would be discovered by officers of the police, and bidden her to remove it”?

  Caroline herself, Selden claimed, had been unfairly impugned by the prosecution. “The learned counsel said this morning that Caroline Henshaw’s testimony was not entitled to confidence because she was living in a state of adultery with Mr. Colt. If he means to apply that to her general conduct, he is much mistaken. I have seen those who pretended virtue guilty of vice—have seen the wife whose word was no better than the mistress. She may have been guilty on one point but is entitled to credit as regards every other. Her testimony showed that she loved the prisoner but was determined to tell the truth.”

  In presenting the defense’s view of the fatal quarrel—and specifically of Samuel Adams’s role in instigating it—Selden was required to marshal all the tact at his disposal. “God forbid we should say anything against Mr. Adams, his character or his conduct,” he declared. To be sure, the prosecution had shown no such restraint in their treatment of John Colt. “He has been represented as if he had been born for blood—has been persecuted and maligned.” Still, it was not for the defense to stoop to the same level. The facts spoke for themselves.

  “The present quarrel is immersed in darkness, and who commenced it is not proved,” said Selden, “but enough is shown to convey an idea of what happened. We know that Adams went to Colt’s room in a vexed mood, having expressed surprise to Mr. Wells that Mr. Colt expected the proceeds of the sale. Mr. Colt owed Samuel Adams only seventy-one dollars, but Adams contended that he was owed more. Out of that disagreement, words came up which produced blows and terminated in death. Mr. Adams had hold of Mr. Colt in a manner to prevent him crying out and caused him to use the hatchet in self-defense.”

  For each of the points raised by the prosecution to incriminate Colt, Selden offered an alternative—and more convincing—explanation. Much had been made, for example, of Colt’s having borrowed the saw prior to the murder, as if that proved he had planned the crime beforehand. But “Mr. Colt was publishing a book,” said Selden. “Is it too much to suppose that he was building the box to send them off?” The prosecution had also maintained “that the mark on Colt’s neck was caused by getting the box down the stairs. But a man receives a weight on his shoulder, not on his neck—and the mark seen by Caroline Henshaw was on the jugular vein.”

  In closing, Selden permitted himself a rare display of anger, upbraiding the prosecution for actions that had no other purpose than to inflame the prejudice of the jurors. “When Mr. Adams’s wife was here,” he exclaimed, “one of the officers was directed to bring up the bloody garments and shake them under her very nose. Even the grave was opened and the head severed from the trunk. The physicians said they could examine it in another room. But no—the prosecution found it necessary to place the head upon a table here in open court, so that you, gentlemen of the jury, might be influenced by the feelings observable among the spectators.”

  Selden knew he had more to worry about than the feelings exhibited by the spectators inside the courtroom. Community opinion was violently inflamed against his client, and—despite the jurors’ seclusion—they were well aware of it. Every morning, as the twelve men entered City Hall, the mobs gathered outside the building had barraged them with cries for Colt’s conviction. Afraid that they might bend to such pressure, Selden now reminded the jurors that their courage must not falter. “If there is a doubt, you are bound to present a verdict of acquittal. Indeed you must give a verdict of acquittal, even if you do so at the risk of your life in passing through the crowd.

  “We leave his cause with you,” concluded Selden, “requesting you to bear in mind that justice as well as mercy is a portion of the attributes of the criminal law.”4

  • • •

  It was already a few minutes past 7:00 p.m. when Selden returned to his seat. District Attorney Whiting was on his feet at once. Initially, said Whiting, he “supposed that he could complete his remarks in two short hours.” Selden’s argument, however, had “ranged so widely that it is now impossible to say how long it will take. If the Court will hear me through in my argument, I will proceed now.
Otherwise I would ask to have an adjournment until the morning.”5

  Although he had hoped to get through all three remaining summations, Kent had no choice. With a bang of the gavel, he adjourned until 10:00 the next morning, when the trial would enter its climactic day.

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  Touted from its opening day as the most riveting show in town—a spectacle of “unsurpassed interest”—the Colt trial had more than lived up to its billing. Now that it was nearing the end of its run, James Gordon Bennett took the opportunity to offer an appreciative look back at “this extraordinary drama.”

  In a lengthy editorial published on the morning of Saturday, January 29, he enumerated the features that had made it so special, beginning with some raw statistics: three full days to “procure a jury from three hundred persons”; six days “in hearing the evidence”; ninety witnesses examined, seventy-nine for the prosecution and eleven for the defense; a day and a half “consumed by three of the counsel to sum up.” Still to come was the closing of Mr. Whiting, expected to “occupy the whole of five hours this morning till the recess. After that, Judge Kent will deliver his charge and the case will go to the jury about dusk this evening.”

  What really made it memorable, however, were its many dramatic highlights. “Altogether,” gushed Bennett, “this has been one of the most singular trials that ever took place in this or any other country.” A year earlier, the city had been transfixed by another shocking murder, this one perpetrated by a New Jersey carpenter named Peter Robinson. On Thursday, December 3, 1840, Robinson had lured a creditor, a banker named Abraham Suydam, to his house in New Brunswick. After knocking Suydam out with a mallet, Robinson dragged the unconscious victim into the cellar, bound him, gagged him, and left him lying there for three days. Early Saturday morning, Robinson “went to the house, dug a grave three feet deep before his still living victim, threw him into it alive, then struck him over the head with the spade, dashing in his skull.” His trial in April 1841 had “excited a great sensation” and his subsequent hanging “was a gala event in New Brunswick.”1