A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

Sitting right behind Judd and in front of the rows of journalists and the wide courtroom railing were the Gray family, including Judd’s plump sister Margaret and her husband Harold Logan and Judd’s mother, the haggard Mrs. Margaret Gray, who hitched her chair so she could fix a smoldering glare on Ruth. Also initially in the audience were his employers, Alfred Benjamin and Charles Johnes, and a few of their staff; Manhattan lingerie buyers; Elks club members from Orange; and friends from the Club of Corset Salesmen of the Empire State, plus Haddon Jones and Harry Platt, who would be witnesses for the prosecution. Isabel, Jane, and his mother-in-law stayed in Connecticut.

Mrs. Josephine Brown also was missing, having chosen instead to stay home with her granddaughter. But sitting behind Ruth in the courtroom were her familiars: Kitty Kaufman, Harry Folsom—still a friend to both defendants—and Ruth’s frail, tubercular cousin Ethel, whose divorce from Patrolman Ed Pierson had been finalized in the Bronx Supreme Court. Kitty, Harry, and Ethel would never be required to testify since both the prosecution and the defense sought a tidy narrative with none of the puzzling contradictions and tangents of real life.

Ruth was no longer a sylph. Though some journalists would still write of her beauty and shapeliness, others exaggerated her ordinariness, for the inactivity of jail had caused her to gain weight, she’d not seen a hairdresser in a month, and she was forced to manicure her nails with matchsticks. She wore on the first day of the trial Shalimar perfume and the chic, all-black outfit she’d bought at Bloomingdale’s for Albert’s funeral: the patent-leather pumps, sheer hose, a Jeanne Lanvin silk dress, as well as the jet-beaded rosary with a silver crucifix that s

he wore as a necklace. Father George Murphy chose not to correct her and each morning as she walked into the courtroom he would wink or offer a thumbs-up to gladden her spirits.

Because of the risk of disorder and pandemonium in an overburdened courtroom, off-duty policemen were given free admission, a lot of them still friends of Tommy, not a few of them drunk by noon. And there must have also been in that audience at least some of those satyrs who thought they knew what they wanted and sent the jailed dominatrix one hundred sixty-four proposals of marriage.

But the focus of attention was often on the hundreds of celebrities who attended the trial. It was a hot-ticket item and generally only the famous or connected got inside. The eleventh Marquis of Queensbury, in morning coat and spats, and his wife Cathleen were regulars. Composer Irving Berlin was there and was vexed to hear that Ruth and Judd had adopted his song “Always” as theirs. Arriving in a limousine from his mansion on Long Island was D. W. Griffith, the American director of more than five hundred silent films, including Intolerance and The Battle of the Sexes. Griffith thought there could be a thrilling melodrama in the trial, as did theater owner and producer David Belasco, who affected the soutane of clergy as the self-anointed “Bishop of Broadway” and thought of Ruth as “passionate and misunderstood and not nearly as bad as she’s made out to be.” The Telegram engaged Will Durant, the author of the surprising bestseller The Story of Philosophy, to contribute opinions because his book was, inconceivably, a favorite of Ruth’s. The Evening Graphic ironically countered Durant with the sly humor of vaudevillian Jimmy Durante. Actress and playwright Mae West had just been released from ten days in jail for Sex, the risqué Broadway farce that was shut down for indecency, and now she was assigned to act as a commentator on the Snyder-Gray case by the National Police Gazette. Short-story writer Fannie Hurst was hired for the length of the trial, as was Maurine Dallas Watkins, the playwright of Chicago, which was about two “jazz babes” who became murderesses. Accompanying Watkins was comedienne Francine Larrimore, who created the role of Chicago’s Roxie Hart, and stated in the play, “I’m so gentle, I couldn’t harm a fly.” In a pretrial interview, Ruth had stunned reporters with the variation, “Kill my husband? Why, I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

The oft-married celebrity Peggy Hopkins Joyce wrote maliciously about Ruth and Judd for the New York Daily Mirror, as did Samuel Shipman, whose play Crime was still running and whose leading lady, Sylvia Sidney, joined him in the courtroom. The magician Howard Thurston was a continuing presence, as was Ben Hecht, the screenwriter and novelist who was called “the Shakespeare of Hollywood.” Actress Olga Petrova generously posed for a host of photographers in front of the Rolls-Royce that oozed her there. Evelyn Law of The Ziegfeld Follies also found attendance a fine way to get noticed, as did so many other theater people that their general seating area was called “the Actor’s Equity Section.”

Wearing an odd Buster Brown necktie was the Reverend John Roach Straton, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, the first hellfire preacher to broadcast his Sunday sermons over the radio and the man who would campaign against the Catholic Al Smith as the presidential “candidate of rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Revivalist Billy Sunday skeptically looked in on the trial one day, and in nightly columns for the Evening Graphic, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson railed against “Sex Love,” “demon alcohol,” “red-hot cuties,” and the multiple sins and vices on exhibit in the trial.

It was mid-April and getting hot in that third-floor room, but flashy ladies still displayed their sealskin coats and muskrat furs. They carried opera glasses. And though playwright Willard Mack would negatively review the trial—“The plot is weak. The construction is childlike. The direction is pitiful. The principals are stupid”—each performance was standing-room only.

Justice Scudder introduced the situation and accusations for the jury on the first morning, noting that the defendants were jointly on trial for the crime of murder in the first degree, that each was presumed to be innocent, that the burden of proof could never shift from the prosecution to the accused, and if the jury entertained a reasonable doubt of guilt, both must be acquitted. And then Justice Scudder critically indicated that “if two persons with malice aforethought and with a deliberate and premeditated design join hands to kill a third person, and accomplish the act, the law does not concern itself as to how much of the act of inflicting death was done by either one; the fact that they both participated in any degree makes them equally guilty.”

Stout, short, silver-haired Richard Newcombe calmly presented the government’s strong case against the couple in just thirty minutes, deftly organizing details and chronology and giving evidence that the murder was premeditated by noting that Henry Judd Gray initially intended to kill Ruth’s husband on March 7th. “Whether it was an act of Providence that left that poor devil, Albert Snyder, to live a few more weeks I don’t know, but the crime was not consummated that night.”

Employment of that vaguely salacious phrase—“consummated that night”—was not accidental. Adultery and homicide were linked throughout the trial. One journalist quoted Shakespeare’s Pericles in writing, “‘One sin, I know, another doth provoke; murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.’” Judd had admitted exchanging “caresses” with Ruth before and after she strangled Albert, and because a full three hours were exhausted between the killing and Judd’s getaway, it was gossiped that they had engaged in congratulatory intercourse when Albert’s body was not yet cold. The district attorney hinted at that in his opening statement by noting the three-hour gap and saying they could only have been filled with “planning and conceiving and scheming and God knows what else—I don’t want to know.”

Warren Schneider stated that the corpse he’d identified was that of his brother; Dr. Howard Neal of the medical examiner’s office testified about Albert Snyder’s cause of death; a toxicologist noted Albert’s extreme drunkenness; the office manager at the Waldorf-Astoria testified that over fifty registration slips were signed in the names of “Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Gray”; and Leroy Ashfield, who’d justifiably lost his job with the Prudential Life Insurance Company, wanly maintained that there was no intent to deceive Mr. Snyder in having him affix his signature to a blank form that would result in a forty-five-thousand-dollar policy with a double-indemnity clause.

Confessions were read; Queens detectives and assistant district attorneys recollected their actions, observations, and conversations; a German waiter at Henry’s said he’d frequently seen Ruth and Judd together there; Dr. Harry Hansen, the first physician at the homicide scene, said he’d found no injuries to Ruth’s skull that would cause unconsciousness. And put into evidence were picture wire, a gold Cross mechanical pencil, Albert’s handgun, the towel and necktie used in tying him, the blue cotton handkerchief soaked in chloroform, Judd’s half-pint of poisoned rye whiskey, and the bloodstained pillowcase found hidden in the Snyders’ laundry hamper.

It was ascertained that Judd was seen waiting for a bus in Queens Village on Sunday, March 20th, that a taxi took him from Jamaica Station to Manhattan, and that he was seen on the New York Central run to Syracuse that Sunday morning. Then Haddon Jones and Harry Platt were called to testify about Judd’s prevarications that night. And suddenly, just after noon on April 28th, Richard Newcombe stood to announce, “The people rest their case.”

Attorneys for the accused were so surprised that the state had halted its prosecution at that juncture that they sought, and were granted by Justice Scudder, time to stall, prepare motions, and organize their defense.

And then the fifteen hundred in the jammed courtroom, the vast majority of them women, finally were rewarded with the chilly testimony of Mrs. Ruth Snyder, the fiend they already loathed. Writing of her courtroom demeanor up until then, Damon Runyon noted, “Whatever else she may lack, which seems to be plenty, the woman appears to have nerve. She has never for a moment cowered like her once little pal of those loving days before the black early morning of March 20th. She has been cold, calm, contemptuous, gusty, angry, but never shrinking, save perhaps in that little walk to and from the court between the recesses. She then passes before the hungry eyes of the spectators. That seems to be her most severe ordeal.”

She was called as a witness on the afternoon of Friday, April 29th, hastening to the stand with both hands clutching the front of her jet-black coat, a felt, brimmed helmet hat hiding much of her straw hair, and her frosty eyes avoiding all others.

Those hundreds who’d just been listening over the hallway loudspeakers outside all but rioted in trying to jam into the courtroom, and policemen got out their nightsticks to force the onrush back.

When there was a little peace, Justice Scudder tilted left toward Ruth and in his rich, theatrical voice cautioned, “Now, madam, you are not required to take the chair as witness. The law privileges you, and you can testify only of your own free will and accord. If you do take the stand, you are subject to the state’s cross-examination as is any other witness. The court now affords you an opportunity to decide whether you would prefer to avail yourself of your privilege.”

“I’ll take the stand, please,” she said in that soft, velvety, affectionate soprano that few there had ever heard. Half the thousand in the room stood to see more of her and realized that she was in fact prettier than the venomous depictions of her in the press, with a face of luminous, ivory skin and riveting, starry, Delft-blue eyes. Some writers even compared Ruth to the shy, stately, tranquil women in paintings by Alessandro Botticelli or Jan Vermeer.

Edgar Hazelton began the questioning with some background on Mrs. Snyder’s relationship with her husband, extracting from her that she and Albert were continually arguing within three months of their marriage and that whenever Albert got irritated with his wife, he contrasted Ruth with the late Jessie Guischard, “the finest woman he had ever met.” His motorboat was even named the Jessie G until Ruth forced him to change it. She admitted she’d secretly undergone surgery in order to conceive a child, and that just angered Albert more, and he was nettled further that Lorraine wasn’t a boy.

Ruth’s mouth quivered as she mentioned Lorraine and she cried into her handkerchief, only recovering composure when Justice Scudder handed her a glass

of water.

Hazelton established that she’d been a good wife and mother, teaching Lorraine prayers and hymns, sewing curtains and the baby’s clothes, stocking the cellar with fruit preserves. And then he asked, “You were unfaithful to your marriage vows with Henry Judd Gray, were you not?”

She shied from his stare. “Yes.”

“Was this the only man except your husband who ever knew you carnally?”

“Yes.”

She said she did not drink much, she never smoked, she insisted on extra insurance only because Albert seemed so accident-prone: there had been incidents in the garage when the jack gave way and the Buick fell on him, or when the motor was running and the garage door swung shut. And he was sleeping on the sofa and she’d reached to switch the radio off and she’d accidentally kicked the gas pipe off its floor cock, then gone on an errand. She returned to find Albert was almost asphyxiated. She’d mentioned that in a letter to Mr. Gray, who shocked Ruth with his wish that Albert had died.

“Was that a typical response from him?”