Among the spectators in the crowded courtroom were the two men who had loved and married the murdered tango dancer.
Spencer lighted a cigar as he sat at the defense table, a red ribbon in the lapel of his coat.
The judge rapped his gavel and ordered him to stop smoking.
“I won’t,” he said, and continued puffing until a bailiff took the cigar from him.
When a lawyer began a plea, talking of “irresponsibility” and “mental weakness,” Spencer stood and shouted:
“Cut out all this red tape! Get twelve men to say I killed my pal Millie and then take me out and hang me. Don’t waste all this time. Send somebody out to build a scaffold. String me up!”
He gripped his throat to illustrate the hanging.
Spencer was a prophet. Twelve men did rule that he killed Mildred Allison Rexroat, and that he was guilty of murder in the first degree.
“I’ll appeal,” his lawyer said.
“Cut out the appeals,” yelled Spencer. “Let’s get this rope party over!”
He turned to the spectators and said:
“I hope you people all enjoyed this trial, and got what you came for. I want you all to come and see me swing!”
The judge decreed that Spencer must hang on December 21st.
Defense counsel appealed to the Supreme Court, and there was a reprieve after Wheaton officials objected to a hanging during Christmas week.
Hanging was scheduled for January 22nd, but a new delay was granted for review of the evidence. Then the Supreme Court ruled that Spencer must die for his crime.
On July 31st, 1914, Spencer stood on the scaffold, a red flower pinned to his shirt. The white cap was fitted over his head and the noose adjusted.
He was dead a minute later, his body on the ground — a few miles from the place where he shot Mildred Allison Rexroat and placed her body on the railroad track.
Bruno Fischer
From the late 1940s until about 1960, publicity-shy Bruno Fischer was one of the most successful mystery writers in the field. Along with top-shelf talent like Jim Thompson, Lionel White, Day Keene, Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, Charles Williams, James M. Cain, John D. McDonald, and David Goodis, Fischer’s books were a mainstay in the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback line, his stories a fixture in Manhunt, the finest of the postwar crime fiction digests. And he was good. Read More Deaths than One, Her Flesh Was Cold, or The Girl Between, and you’ll know what I mean. Today, one must search dusty shelves at secondhand bookstores and flea markets to find his books. But the effort is worth it. His lean, pared-down writing style, his somber, often-brutal observations about small-town America, and inventive storytelling techniques (check out his 1947 More Deaths than One, a novel presented through the eyes of seven people: six suspects and a detective) make for powerful reading indeed. This little lost gem is from earlier in his career. It is about a radio singer’s mysterious death — and the clues detectives pieced together to bring her unlikely killer to justice.
The Footprint in the Snow
Dawn was trickling through the frosted bedroom windows when the persistent jangling of the telephone awoke Chief of Police Edward K. Herrick. His wife stirred, muttered, “Who can that be at this hour?” and snuggled deeper under the covers. Reluctantly Herrick left the warmth of his bed and groped his way drowsily downstairs to the telephone.
Patrolman Michael Rossi, who was on duty, said excitedly, “Chief, there’s been a murder.”
Abruptly Herrick was wide awake. For nine years he had been Chief of Police of Marvin Center, an incorporated village of Long Island, New York, and during that period the nearest thing to a homicide had resulted from automobile accidents. He had, as a matter of fact, never in his life been on a murder case.
“Did you identify the body, Mike?” Herrick asked.
“No trouble about that, Chief. She was found right outside her house. Did you know Vivian Lahey, the radio singer?”
The picture of the bright-eyed brunette with a charming, heart-shaped face leaped up in Herrick’s mind. In a place the size of Marvin Center, there weren’t many of the older families he didn’t know. He had never spoken a word to Vivian Lahey, but he had been casually acquainted with her father before he had died several years previously, and he had heard her voice on the radio.
“Will Hitch, the milkman, found the body about fifteen minutes ago,” Rossi was saying. “She was struck over the head by an empty milk bottle and—”
“Not by Hitch!” Herrick broke in.
“No, no,” Rossi said. “Miss Lahey lived with her sister and brother-in-law, George Engleberry, at 37 Oak Lane. Hitch found the body near the back door when he was delivering milk. What do I do now, Chief?”
“Keep Hitch there. See that nobody touches the body or goes anywhere near it. And get somebody to call the rest of the force. I want every man there.”
As Herrick hung up, he felt a sense of inadequacy. Every man on the Marvin Center police force meant exactly five men, including himself. Up until now, that many had sufficed to uphold law and order and enforce traffic regulations in the placid community fifty miles from New York City. But this was murder. He could count on the full cooperation of Arthur Simms, the District Attorney, and the State Police, but crime in Marvin Center was essentially his responsibility.
Mrs. Herrick was wide awake and curious when he returned to the bedroom. As he dressed, he told her of the murder.
“Vivian Lahey!” she exclaimed. “Well, I’m not surprised!”
With one sock dangling from his hand, Herrick turned sharply to his wife. “What’s that?”
She bit her lip, as in regret over her outburst. “That was a foolish thing for me to say. But when an attractive girl like that runs around with a married man like John Shanken—”
“Shanken?” The Chief frowned. “You can’t mean the haberdasher on Division Street?”
“All I know is what I’ve heard. Of course it may be only idle gossip, and even if it isn’t, it probably doesn’t mean anything.” She added somewhat contritely, “I suppose in a terrible thing like murder it’s unfair to get anybody in trouble by repeating rumor.”
“You never can tell,” Herrick said slowly.
Daylight was complete when he took his car out of the garage. It was a bitingly cold morning. A thin sheet of ice had formed over the five inches of snow that had fallen two days before.
Oak Lane was a two-block-long street consisting of neat gray-brick suburban houses, each detached from the other by a driveway which ran between them. Patrolman Michael Rossi’s bulk was planted solidly at the head of the driveway between Numbers 37 and 39; he kept back the gawking crowd which, in spite of the early hour, had already gathered. Herrick spoke briefly to Rossi and started up the driveway.
“Watch where you walk, Chief!” a voice shouted in warning.
Sergeant Raymond Sperling had arrived a few minutes before. He leaned against the far corner of the house, and then ducked back. Herrick looked down at his feet. His galoshes made deep imprints in the snow, but many feet had come and gone along the driveway in the last two days, in addition to the two icy ruts that the car had formed. Gingerly he walked the rest of the way in one of the car ruts.
When he turned the corner of the house, he saw the dead girl. She wore a fur coat, and at first sight that huddle of fur gave the appearance of an animal lying in the snow. But arms and legs protruded from the coat. Somebody, probably Rossi, had placed a towel over her head.