Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/111

 THE PATRICK CASE, COMPLETE*

IN WHICH AN INGENIOUS CONSPIRACY CRUMBLED, AND A FAMOUS MURDER WAS EXPOSED BY ARTHUR TRAIN ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY IN NEW YORK COUNTY ILLUSTRATED WITH FACSIMILES — Robert Burton in *' Anatomy of Melancholy." I LLIAM M. RICE, 84 years of age, died at the Berkshire Apartments at 500 Madison Avenue, New York Citv, at about half after seven o'clock on the evening of Sunday, Sep- tember 23, 1900. He had been ill for some time, but it was expected that he would recover. On or about the moment of his death two elderly ladies, friends of the old gentleman, had called at the house with cakes and wine, to see him. The elevator man rang the bell of Mr. Rice's apartment again and again, but could elicit no response, and the ladies, much disappointed, went away. While the bell was ringing Charles F. Jones, the confidential valet of the aged man, was waiting, he says, in an adjoining room until a cone saturated with fchloro- form, which he had placed over the face of his sleeping master, should effect his death. Did Jones murder Rice? If so, was it, as he claims, at the instigation of Albert T. Patrick ? These two questions, now settled in the affirmative forever, so far as criminal and civil litigation are concerned, have been the subject of private study and public argu- ment for nearly six years. An Aged and Lonely Millionaire Mr. Rice was a childless widower, living ♦ In 1906 the Governor of New York coniniuted the death sentence of Albert T. Patrick to life imprisonment, and the most extraordinary struij^frle in the legal history of the State on the part of a convicted murderer for his own life came to an end. The defendant in the *' Death House " at Slnfi^ Sinfp had invoked every expedient to escape punishment, and by the use of his knowledge even saved a fellow prisoner, '* Mike " Brush, from the electric chair. the life of a recluse, attended only by Jones, who was at once his secretary, valet and general servant. No other person lived in the apartment, and few visitors ever called there. Patrick was a New York lawyer with little practice who had never met Mr. Rice, was employed as coimsel in litigation hostile to him, yet in whose favor a will pur- porting to be signed by Rice, June 30, 1900, turned up after the latter's death, by the terms of which Patrick came into the prop- erty, amounting to over seven million dol- lars, in place of a charitable institution named in an earlier will of 1896. It is now universally admitted that the alleged will of 1900 was a forgery, as well as four checks drawn to Patrick's order (two for $25,000 each, one for $65,000, and one for $135,000, which represented practically all of Rice's bank accounts), an order giving him con- trol of the contents of Rice's safe deposit vaults (in which were more than $2,500,000 in securities), and also a general assignment by which he became the owner of Rice's entire estate. Thus upon Rice's death Patrick had every possible variety of docu- ment necessary to possess himself of the property. Jones took nothing under any of these fraudulent instruments. Hence Patrick's motive in desiring the death of Rice is the foundation stone of the case against him. But that Patrick desired and would profit by Rice's death in no way tends to establish that Rice did not die a natural death. Patrick would profit equally whether Rice died by foul means or nat- ural, and the question as to whether murder was done must be determined from other eidence. This is only to be found in the confession of the valet Jones and in the testi- 97
 * ' The Devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies."