University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI.

CAPT. WOODS' SPEECH FOR PROSECUTION.

Certainly no more remarkable murder trial has ever taken place in
the ancient court-room at Charlottesville. It was a remarkably foul
and revolting crime, it matters not who committed it. If the husband,
instead of being the model citizen, thoughtful, and affectionate husband
and tender father, was in reality a degenerate capable of brutally
mangling and murdering the wife of his bosom, the case gains in its
marked difference from any other ever submitted to a jury in Virginia.

The prisoner while on trial constantly vibrated from one extreme
state of mind to another. At one moment he gave way freely and
frankly to tears, making no effort to restrain them; at the next he was
indifferent, stolid and apparently unfeeling. He had tender kisses for
his little girl and other children, and seemed deeply concerned for
their welfare and happiness; he allowed, if he did not require them, to
sit through the most harrowing scenes in court.

In another respect he fixed a practice that became a daily spectacle.
He kissed his brothers on meeting them, and when his lady relatives
came into court to lend him the comfort and support of their presence,
he invariably embraced and kissed them twice or thrice. The next
moment he would look on coldly while the blood-stained garments of
his wife were displayed as accusing exhibits in the effort to send him
to the gallows.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 2d, a vast crowd assembled
at the court-house, even before the doors had been opened. By
the use of tact, and taking advantage of the courtesy which never
fails the Virginia gentleman in his conduct towards them, the ladies
all got comfortable seats in the galleries. The lower floor was speedily
crowded with men of all professions and in all stations of life, but a
large number were unable to gain entrance. It was a quiet audience,
as all the gatherings had been, for two reasons—first, a desire to
hear with respectful demeanor all that was said; and, second, because
Judge Morris' dignity dominated.

For all his thirty years of experience, Captain Woods had never
before faced a responsibility so grave and delicate, or with such high
expectations on the part of the public. His success was probably the
greatest triumph of his whole professional career. Every demand of
good feeling and good taste was met in a manner so successful that

many will remember his speech as the most powerful they have ever
heard.

"May it please the court," said Captain Woods, "and you gentlemen,
I come before you this morning to perform the most important and
the most delicate and the most responsible function that has ever confronted
me in my life.

"I feel that the responsibility that has been put upon my shoulders
this morning is almost equal to that which rests upon each one of you.
You may well conceive that, having known this accused ever since he
came to this bar long years ago, between whom and myself the relations
have always been agreeable and pleasant, between whose people
and mine there has been no difference—you may well conceive that
the burden upon my heart is a heavy one.

"I came here in no spirit of persecution. Would to God that the evidence
in this case had allowed a reasonable doubt for the escape of
the prisoner at the bar. Had this evidence relieved him, there is none
who would have more warmly congratulated him than I.

"I come here under the compulsion of the people of this section of
the Commonwealth, not to deal harshly for the purpose of victory,
but to so conduct this case that the ends of justice may be served. I
hope that these gentlemen who represent the accused will give him
the benefit of every reasonable doubt that this evidence can possibly
raise. The people of this grand old Commonwealth desire no innocent
man to be punished. However damnable the crime may be, the man
accused of it is entitled to all the safeguards of the law. I would
rather have my tongue cleave to my mouth, or my right arm wither
in its socket than think that anything I had said unjustly or unfairly
resulted in the conviction of this prisoner. With the distinguished
gentlemen who represent the other side, I beg you to give to him
the full benefit of any doubt. But, after all, gentlemen, the responsibility
is with you. To-day, under this clear sky, you are the twelve
pillars in the temple of justice."

Here the speaker in thrilling language described the crime. Then
he added: "Ever since that the one cry has been, `Discover who it is
that is guilty of this foul and unnatural murder. Discover who it is
that has slaughtered this noble and loyal wife.'

"There is not a man or woman in this land who is not interested in
the result of this case.

"You know as well as I do that the position of this accused is a terrible
one—an awful one. While I personally have a regard for the
accused which is the result of long friendship, yet I say in the presence
of my God that I shall do my duty, even though he were the richest
and most powerful man in the Commonwealth. I have no sympathy
for the fiendish and brutal murderer of Fannie Crawford McCue."

At this point, as there was some tendency to applaud the speaker,
the judge warned the audience that he would promptly check any
attempt to make a demonstration.

"The man who hit the deceased with a bat and put his murderous
fingers on her throat, and later pointed a gun at her pure bosom, is as
guilty as any dastardly murderer that ever dangled from a rope.
There can be but two issues—it is either life or death."

Referring to the circumstances of the crime, the speaker added:
"It was a warm evening and at an hour when there should have been
thoughts of heaven and higher things; it was immediately after the
ministers of the land had uttered the most sacred truths."

He ridiculed the possibility that a burglar seeking booty should
await in a house until the master and mistress returned; should then,
all unarmed, walk into a lighted room and attack the man and woman;
should finally have killed the wife and injured the husband, and then
have left without touching a thing in the house.

"When you come to reason about this matter," added Captain
Woods, "you have to apply common sense—the same reason as you
apply to any personal matter of great concern. Don't you know that
if any man had any grudge against the accused, he never would have
gone unarmed to the house—entered unarmed at such an hour. No
outsider who hated Mr. or Mrs. McCue would have dared to go to a
lighted house, as people walked the streets. The assassin goes
stealthily at the midnight hour. He goes with the bludgeon in his
hand. You can't get around that fact; remember, the murder was
committed about 9:30 o'clock, and that he who killed carried no
weapon with him, but found them all ready to hand. If he had come
with such a fiendish purpose, he would never have arrived at such a
time, in the presence of such a strong, vigorous man as the accused,
and at a time when he was so liable to be aroused. No assassin draws
out such a crime with `linked cruelty.' It would have been quick and
sudden. It was after the assault with the weapon and the beating that
the shot was fired. It was to conceal the early work of anger. `Murder,
though it has no tongue, speaks with most miraculous voice.'

A person may lie, but circumstances all linked together will establish
a fact as strong as proof of holy writ. The law presumes all murder
as prompted by malice. You heard the account given by Ernest
Crawford of the domestic conditions in the McCue household, of the
quarrels and threats and accusations. To refute his statements of an
unhappy home there were brought in letters, but one of which was
written in the year 1901. Not one of you gentlemen could have failed
to have been touched by the tender sentiments of the letters of the
deceased. Those letters, for tenderness and purity and love, could
not have been surpassed.

"If I perform my duty to the womanhood of this State, to the manhood
of the State and to my conscience, I must deal with this case
fearlessly. But, gentlemen of the jury," cried Captain Woods, "you
must not fail to recall one thing. Those letters were written several
years ago. There were a number of them in 1899 and 1900, and but
one—gentlemen, observe this, but one—in 1901. Not a letter after this
date has been introduced. Were there any to introduce? I do not
know. If there were any, they offered the best opportunity for showing
to you gentlemen what were the relations between this man and
wife. Gentlemen, where are they? Not a letter has been introduced
since 1901. They were proper as evidence. If there were letters, why
were they kept back?"

With great politeness, Mr. Lee regretted to interrupt Mr. Woods.

"We did not think it would be necessary to bring in any more letters,'
Mr. Lee said. "We have a stack of them feet high. We will
read them all to this jury if you wish. Please go out after the letters,
Mr. Walker.'

"Just a minute, if you please," said Captain Woods, in effect. "The
injection of evidence at this time has been expressly forestalled by the
court. You know all along that the letters were proper as evidence.
Why did you not introduce them before?"

After a brief absence, Mr. Walker returned with a packet of letters.
Captain Woods proceeded with his speech.

"Fortunately, there is evidence in this case which throws a flood of
light upon the relations between the prisoner and his wife. Outside
the testimony of Ernest Crawford, there is abundant evidence to show
an unhappy home. What did Miss Berta Crawford say? She was a
younger sister of the deceased, had various opportunities of seeing
the relations between husband and wife, was at the home a week
before the murder. Prisoner treated his wife most unkindly; told of
absence of husband for a week, and his indifference to her and to her
illness upon his return. When she asked the prisoner where he had
been, he said she `had nothing to do with his trip.' The actions of the
prisoner were not what they should have been. They were cold and
indifferent. No greeting to the wife, the mother of his children, after
an absence of a week; only harshness and indifference. This was just
one week before the tragedy. Let us see what Ernest Crawford heard
between these persons when he was living in the house. `It was the
most unhappy home I ever saw,' said he; `the quarrels between them
were always "about other women." One of the most violent quarrels
was because of a trip down in the pasture lot with another woman.'
His wife called his attention to other compromising situations; once
when she went to his office and found him locked in with another
woman, and when he came to the door he looked `sheepish.' "

Captain Woods here referred in terms of scathing sarcasm to the
effort of the defense to picture the "happy relations" existing between
Mr. and Mrs. McCue.

He said that people of respectable station do not quarrel in public
places and on the public streets. Domestic discord is kept strictly
secret; is kept within the sacred precincts of the home, where the outside
world cannot see or hear.

In this connection, Captain Woods quoted the testimony of W. W.
Brand, a respected Charlottesville citizen, who swore he had heard the
accused address his wife in the roughest language—"like he would
have killed her in a second."

"If you are gentle and kind to women," added the speaker, "you
will have little trouble, but if you are rough, their hearts are wrung.
Tell me this man had any love in his heart for that frail little woman,
his wife, when he spoke to her `as if he would have killed her in a
minute.'

"Gentlemen, this loving wife, this mother of his children and mistress
of his home, had gone to the bourne from which no traveller returns.
Her spirit had winged its way to a celestial home. Her body
was cold and still in death. And what did he do? Did he strike down
the one that spoke slightingly of her? Did he refer to her with tenderness
and love? No, gentlemen of the jury, he called her `that woman,'
and he called her jealous. Gentlemen, he said, that four or five years
his life had been a `perfect hell'!"

McCue was straining forward in his chair. His eyes were fixed intently
upon Captain Woods. He moved uneasily from place to place on
the chair.

When Captain Woods had finished this picture of the relations of
the couple, he proceeded to vindicate what he called straws that
pointed to other phases of the relations between McCue and his wife.
Looked upon as isolated facts, they meant little; reckoned in connection
with what had gone before and what came after, they meant much.
Among these straws were a half-dozen little incidents—the failure of
McCue to walk to church that night with his wife; their attitude
toward each other afterwards; the depression of Mrs. McCue while on
her way back home, and other things.

"Mr. McCue had been away from home from Thursday or Friday
before and reached home in the afternoon of that Sunday. His wife,
with her little daughter Ruby, had also been on a visit to Mrs. Anderson,
near Red Hill, in this county, and had reached home an hour or
so ahead of her husband. Mark you, they had been absent, and he had
before been on one of his trips (sarcastic tone here).

"Living on this earth there is no one who knows what happened
but husband and wife in that interval—up to the time of the supper—

but we have had testimony in this case as to what happened just after
that supper. Here was this man, who has since stated that his life
was a hell on earth with `this woman,' as he called her. Here was
dark night, and it was nearly 8 o'clock. What do you find at that
house then? The evidence has indicated that this husband permitted
his wife to leave that home all by herself to walk up the street in the
dark. She was seen alone. She wandered along alone and without the
protecting arm of her husband. They had been separated for days,
and yet that lady went from that house alone on that street—a dark
night and nearly 8 o'clock—without her natural protector and her
guardian. I care not what may have happened. It is one of the elements
in this case that have to be considered. Think of it, this frail
woman leaving her home by herself ahead of her husband. There
must have been something wrong there at that time. I know not how
it may be at the McCue home, but I know how it is in other homes in
this Commonwealth. Women are not permitted to go alone squares
and squares in the dark to worship their God."

After this Captain Woods went on to picture the happenings of the
night of the homicide. He pointed to the husband and the wife entering
the house together. It was the last time she was seen alive. He
called attention to the significance of this interval between the time
McCue and his wife entered the house and the time his brother, the
physician, was seen to enter. What did it not mean to the woman?
It meant life itself. And what of her husband?

"There under the roof with his wife he was her sole protector and
guardian. He must be held responsible for her safety. Gentlemen,
unless he was senseless from a blow, unless his physical condition
was such that he could not go to her aid; gentlemen, unless body and
mind were alike insensible, then he murdered her himself as certain
as the sun rose or God created the earth."

Captain Woods read the testimony of Charles Skinner, the negro in
the Moran lot, who heard the screams and later the shot. This, he
contended, proves that Mrs. McCue did not come to a sudden death;
that she begged and pleaded for her life.

"Is it conceivable that a burglar would linger over his victim in this
way—torture her, and risk detection and the recovery of the man said
to have been insensible upon the floor? No; a husband, in the privacy
of his own home, was inflamed by wrath. To him had come the
thought that he could now rid himself of this woman, who had by her
jealousy made his `life a hell.' He had struck her—cruelly struck her.
His murderous fingers had closed about her tender throat. Leisurely
he went about his task. She pleaded for mercy, but in vain. With
a full purpose still unsubdued, he followed her to her hiding-place and
then shot her down. The gun was his own. Loaded or unloaded, when

he picked it up it was his, and he had fired it. The man who killed
Mrs. McCue that night had gone to a point from which he could not
retreat, and shot her to conceal the evidence of his brutality, since
no man would believe him, a person of the standing and respectability
of the accused, guilty.

"Suppose he had been knocked temporarily senseless? There was
necessarily but a few minutes which could have elapsed before he recovered.
The first impulse of every true man would have been to
raise an alarm. Why was there no hue and outcry? Why this secrecy,
if those in the house were guiltless of any crime? The neighbors
were upon their porches. The night was warm and the windows were
open.

"A single outcry for help would have brought a dozen strong arms
to the rescue. The first instinct of human nature, if innocence were
there, would have been to cry down the felon, to summon the friends,
who would gladly have come to their aid.

"Was it done?" asked Captain Woods, in effect. "No! I tell you,
gentlemen, that to me this is the strongest and most remarkable feature
of this case if the accused is not guilty. I tell you—it is my duty
to tell you, and I do not care where the blow will fall—that if he had
been innocent that night the threat of cannon or the stare of death
itself could not have stopped him from crying aloud to those who
would help him find the murderer of his wife.

"If his brother had found the conditions testified to—his brother
struck and his sister killed—unless he had found that the brother had
stained his hands in his wife's blood, you couldn't have stopped him
from raising a hue and cry—from seeking to catch the infernal felon
who had slaughtered a noble woman."

After the recess for dinner, Captain Woods resumed. Every inch of
space in the court-house was again filled by eager listeners.

"I must remind you that I was talking of the conditions at that house
immediately after the tragedy.

"You will remember in that connection that soon after the first person
reached the house after Mr. Grady had arrived and the hue and
cry had been raised, Willie McCue arrived. You will remember that
Mrs. Massie came about this time, and also others, and that Willie
McCue, on hearing that the mother who had nurtured him was dead,
gave way to grief. I do not intend—I would not if I could—do my
conscience the injustice to stand here before this public and make any
attack on that boy.

"On fourteen important matters he has been contradicted by independent
witnesses. I do not count the detectives. He, indeed, was
`fighting the battle of his life,' as he has well said. By a stronger one
than I—by a mind perhaps more quick, by one with a greater sense

of the dramatic than I—he perhaps was told that his father was standing
on the scaffold near the trap-door, and that if he were to repeat
what he told the Baldwins and Ernest Crawford, he would spring the
trap and would send the father to his death.

"It was a dark and terrible and an awful position for Willie McCue.
His mother was gone beyond recall. No human power could vitalize
her body. The one dearest to him in life, the mother who loved him
better than she loved her own life, had been taken away by a foul and
felonious hand.

"I think that what he may have done in this case should provoke
sorrow and pity rather than abuse and vituperation. I believe that in
that final hour, when he shall be judged at the bar of the Creator,
the recording angel will drop a tear upon this incident of his life, and
I trust he may be forgiven. He wrote what came from his heart to
that aunt in Atlanta. Surrounded by his uncles, he was fighting the
battle of his life, for he loved his mother better than his life, and when,
according to the testimony of Jailer Nat Martin, he was in the prison
with his father, and the latter sought to induce him to deny that he
(Willie) had seen the accused pursue his wife with pistol, then, too,
the battle of his life was upon him.

"His father's life was involved in the answer, and yet at that time
he was under the control of the influence of a better spirit, and stuck
to the truth."

Willie McCue heard Captain Woods as nonchalantly as his father;
indeed, he was the more untouched of the two.

"Now, gentlemen, there is the fact testified to by an independent
witness, Jailer Martin. I make no comment on what the brothers of
the accused said about this colloquy.

"If I had been there I would have tried to hear so vital a statement.
It seems to me that I would have prayed to the great God who resides
above to arouse the memory of that conversation. I make no attack
upon them, but it is my duty to bring your attention to this condition
of things. I will say that this accused behind the bar has as respectable,
as honorable kinsmen as any that walk the soil of the Commonwealth
of Virginia. They are friends of mine. But I must do my
duty, and do it regardless of consequences, and look to my people and
my God to vindicate men.

"If the accused was in his senses, he was charged with the responsibility
of his wife's protection," said Captain Woods. "Let us see if he
was insensible. Dr. McCue says he was dazed when he got there.
Yet the accused had sense enough to `'phone to his brother' instead
of giving a public alarm, and Dr. McCue went to the house of the accused
that night without telling any one of what had happened. The
accused had sense enough to call his brother, and not the police, and
to call an old man, half a mile away, over the 'phone.

"But wait. Through a telephone girl the police had been notified.
Grady at the head of his men burst into the house and took them by
surprise. `The cat was out of the bag.' The scheming and preparation
was stopped half-finished. In his confusion the murderer told
a half dozen different tales. His brother tried to make him go upstairs
before he talked too much."

Captain Woods read seven different accounts given by the prisoner
of the occurrences in the house on the night of the murder.

"An innocent man," declared the speaker, "would at once have
stated the truth—the plain, unvarnished tale—and this would have
been his story from first to last. He would have needed no preparations."

He held up the bloody shirt and pointed to the blood spots on the
back. He drew a vivid picture of the wife fighting for her life and
leaving on the shirt the tell-tale marks of blood. He called attention
to the broken finger-nail and the incident of the scrap torn from the
shirt. He also remarked upon the fact that the accused did not go
near the body of his wife until she was in her coffin.

He read from the testimony of Mrs. Massie that when she saw McCue
on the night of the murder the sleeves of his shirt were rolled above
his elbows. The speaker declared that the blood of his wife stained
those hidden wristbands; that the murderer had even then just come
from the bath-tub, where he had tried to wash them away.

"You might say, if in the transport of grief, he had taken the body
of his murdered wife in his arms, that in this way the blood got on
his shirt; but the evidence is unanimous on the point that not once
did he go to where the body was until it was in the casket. Cruel and
indifferent when in life, he was equally indifferent after her death."

In concluding, Captain Woods made a strong, earnest, noble appeal
to the jury. He said: "Now, gentlemen of the jury, I think in justice
to the accused and taxing your patience, also, that I have given this
case a fair opening. The issues of life and death are involved here.
Here was one of the noble women of the Commonwealth, entitled to
the shield of every honest hand and every gallant heart; she had been
taken rudely and foully by practically an assassin's hand—not only
taken with a sudden blow, which would have sent her to her God, without
any of those horrible features of suffering and the horrid anticipation,
but as a feline catches and nurses the poor helpless mouse
in its claws; she was played with about the throat, she was struck
about the head; she was then, after an interval, shot with her husband's
gun. Murder, at best, is bad, is foul; but this was most foul,
strange and unnatural, and I but voice the feeling that must stir in
every honest bosom; I but voice the feeling of every citizen of this

Commonwealth when I say that with such circumstances as these—
pointing with all the concentrated rage towards the prisoner at the
bar—that you cannot escape your duty.

"The great public of Virginia ask for nothing but justice—they ask
that you take this case and conscientiously consider every question
and every point pertaining to it. It is the highest function and the
gravest duty of your life. The great Commonwealth that we love,
with our brave people, ask in no spirit of vengeance for one of its citizen's
blood, but it asks that murder shall be punished. The great King
of Kings upon the tablets, which have come to us from remote ages,
from Mt. Sinai, wrote in living words, "Thou shalt not murder; thou
shalt do no murder," and all that is asked of you, gentlemen, is, without
prejudice against the accused, without bias, one way or the other,
to hold in your consciences and in your minds, the scales of justice.

"Figure and think, and as sensible men passing upon one, perhaps
the gravest of all subjects that your mind was ever drawn to, if you
shall reach a conclusion in your minds, beyond a reasonable doubt,
that this accused is guilty, I say to you in behalf of the women of this
Commonwealth, one of whom has been stricken and murdered; I say
to you in behalf of the men of this State, who shiver with horror at
such an outrage; I say to you in behalf of humanity itself, that he
deserves the highest and most condign punishment that human hands
can inflict.

"I am about to leave this case in your hands, and I feel deeply the
responsibility—I feel for each one of you. I have felt this strain beyond
measure; I feel almost that something has gone out of my very
life in the management of this case, and yet I have been taught, and
I have tried to act in my life that when a duty was imposed upon me,
and that when I undertook to perform it, I did so fearlessly, and boldly,
and broadly, and freely in the presence of man and God. Gentlemen,
all that we ask is justice in behalf of the people, and I trust that, when
you retire and have given consideration to all the eloquence and all
the views that will be presented to you, that you will remember that
facts are stronger than theories, that justice is stronger than mercy,
and that, though the heavens fall, you should do your duty. I trust
that you may be blessed by God in your deliberations, and that when
you bring in your verdict, your conscience will say, `Faithful,' and
that when you all go to meet your God and give a last account of your
works, that God will say, `Well done, faithful and true.' Gentlemen,
I thank you."

At one time in the course of his argument Captain Woods, under the

guise of paying a handsome compliment to the rhetorical ability of Mr.
Coleman and the persuasiveness of Mr. Lee, found opportunity to anticipate
the supposed arguments of the defense, and then, with a merry
twinkle in his eye, Captain Woods slyly added that Mr. Lee could
swim in the blood of all the innocent people whose deaths had gone
unavenged through his eloquence.

G. BURNLEY SINCLAIR,
Of Counsel for Defense.