The Body in the Reservoir: Murder and Sensationalism in the South

6. The Public Suspense Is Over

6 THE PUBLIC SUSPENSE IS OVER WE WERE INTERESTED IN OBSERVING THE STATE OF THE PUBLIC MIND ON THE MORNING OF THE [1911 BEATTIE] EXECUTION AND IN CONTRASTING IT WITH THE CONDITIONS WHICH PREVAILED ON THE MEMORABLE DAY IN JANUARY, 1887, WHEN ANOTHER NOTED MURDERER [CLUVERIUS] PAID THE PENALTY OF HIS CRIME. ON THAT DAY THE HILLS OVERLOOKING THE JAIL WERE BLACK WITH A DENSE AND MOTLEY THRONG, EAGER TO GET A GLIMPSE OF THE CONDEMNED MAN AS HE PASSED OVER THE OPEN BRIDGE FROM THE PORTION OF THE CITY JAIL IN WHICH HE WAS CONFINED TO THAT WHICH GAVE IMMEDIATELY ON THE YARD WHERE THE SCAFFOLD STOOD. THAT WAS ALL THEY COULD SEE, A BLACK-ROBED FIGURE, ESCORTED BY OFFICERS AND WITNESSES AND THE MINISTER, PASSING FOR A MOMENT FROM ONE PART OF THE BUILDING TO ANOTHER—THE SCAFFOLD WAS NOT IN SIGHT. YET, WHEN THEY GOT THAT GLIMPSE A YELL OF DELIGHT RESOUNDED THROUGH ALL THE CITY. THE POIGNANCY OF THAT INCIDENT, NOT TO SPEAK OF ITS HIDEOUS AND REPULSIVE IMPLICATIONS, MADE AN IMPRESSION ON OUR MINDS THAT CAN NEVER FADE. SURELY IT WAS FAR BETTER THAT THE SOLEMN AND AWFUL JUDGMENT OF THE LAW SHOULD BE EXECUTED AS IN THIS CASE, IN SILENCE AND DIGNITY. Richmond Religious Herald, 30 November 1911 182 P U B L I C S U S P E N S E I S O V E R Well before the 1886 Christmas holidays, the Richmond Dispatch and other papers again carried daily front-page articles about Thomas Cluverius. In June of 1885, the local hustings court had convicted the prisoner of Lillian Madison’s murder, and in recent months, the Virginia Supreme Court rendered a four-to-one decision against his appeal. Would the governor commute his sentence of death, these papers now asked? Doubtful. Would Cluverius confess? Hard to say. What did the jurors now feel about his impending execution? Nine thought he should hang, and three were not so sure, wrote the Dispatch. The papers reviewed the trial, witnesses, and evidence and retold the story of the crime over and again. A last-minute twist entered the case as well. Cluverius stated that he had been with another woman the night of the murder; honor forbade him from revealing her identity and forcing her forward into publicity and shame in order to save his life. The story was discounted.Yet, 299 Richmonders—2,713 Virginians overall—wrote to the governor or signed petitions asking for clemency in his case. These petitioners cited the fallibility of circumstantial evidence—the same argument employed by the one Supreme Court of Virginia justice who believed the conviction should be overturned. These petitions also brought up a recent change in law that they thought might have affected Cluverius’s case: Virginia now allowed accused criminals to testify on their own behalf.1 By late December 1886, the fascination with the Cluverius case was coming to a boil once more. On 14 January 1887, virtually the entire issue of the Dispatch recapitulated the case, described the state of the last-minute appeals to the governor , and painted the scene at the newly erected gallows inside the jail walls.2 On the eastern end of the long and narrow jail yard, an eight-foot square platform rose eleven feet above the dirt and sawdust. The pine scaffold supported a crossbeam of black walnut, from which dangled a bright rope of woven multicolored silk. Built in 1828, the jail was situated at one of the lowest points in the city, in the valley of the Shockoe creek between Broad and Marshall Streets downtown. Buildings and hillsides rose to the east and west, and by nine o’clock hundreds of the curious collected in the neighborhood. By midday, the streets, hills, and houses were covered with thousands of people. The execution of Cluverius was to be a private affair; as of 1879, Virginia law limited spectators to necessary attendants and twelve respectable witnesses. But the location of the jail made the event perforce a public one. In addition, Sergeant Smith allowed up to three hundred people to enter the jail yard with passes either forged or illegally distributed. The sergeant was later fined fifty dollars for contempt of court 183 P U B L I C S U S P E N S E I S O V E R in violating the judge’s direct order...