The Bergdoll Boys, page 27
By 1895, the imposing structure was one of 10 U.S. Army posts for military prisoners. Steel cells with metal grill prison doors and spiked windows too small for a human body were constructed on the third floor for up to 80 prisoners at a time. Some cells, including number 13 used for Bergdoll, were for solitary confinement. Immediately below the cells, on the second floor, were the guardrooms, washrooms, kitchen, and dining room.2 The entire structure was nearly a full circle and 210 feet across.
The 8 by 10 feet jail cell was not what the mansion-raised millionaire from Philadelphia was used to, but it may have provided a brief respite from his two years on the run.
***
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, arising before dawn on January 8, 1920, Emma milked her cow in the barn behind the carriage house and, with the Wynnefield mansion still under police guard, prepared herself for a trip to New York to visit Grover. She was already out on $10,000 bail on the charges of assault with intent to kill and trying to prevent service of a federal warrant by barring agents from entering the house and waving her loaded revolver at them. She was not charged with having a 3-foot-high stack of German propaganda leaflets scattered about the place.
Taking the morning train from North Philadelphia, Emma arrived on Governors Island with two men (Gibboney and Judge Romig) and a bundle of clothes she hoped to give to Grover.
After breakfast of fried bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee in his cell, Grover was allowed to walk up and down the stairway from the Castle Williams courtyard to the balcony for exercise. It was here where other prisoners first glimpsed their infamous fellow inmate. Newspaper reporters were allowed in the public areas, close enough to shout questions to Grover, who refused to answer, saying only that his attorney told him not to talk. He was assigned to Army lawyer Captain Bruce R. Campbell for his military defense. His civilian attorney had yet to be engaged.
A Castle Williams jail cell where Grover and Erwin were held for draft evasion trial. Grover had access to an unlimited supply of cash from Emma, which he spent to gain favors from guards and other prisoners. Here, Grover was read his 1920 court-martial sentence of five years in prison. Afterward, he turned to his fold-down cot and wept. (Library of Congress)
Grover was charged with desertion during war, which was punishable by death. To hear the maximum punishment for such a crime must have been frightening. Still, Captain Campbell quickly assured Grover the court-martial judges could issue any sentence they wished, with review from top Army commanders in Washington. He tried to allay Grover’s fear that it would be death.
Judge Romig, Gibboney, and Emma initially hired New York attorney Frank A. Spencer, Jr. to represent Grover. Along with his bar credentials, Spencer knew a few things about courts-martial. He trained on field artillery at the remote Stony Point Rifle Range on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario while billeting in the War of 1812-era Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor. He was charged with being absent without leave from his Army post in 1917, tried at Fort Jay, and acquitted. He survived the deadly field artillery barrage of the Meuse-Argonne campaign in France and returned to New York to practice law. The judge advocates highly respected Spencer as Grover’s attorney. Still, his filing for an insanity defense led to the appointment of a medical board of review, and the last thing Grover and Emma wanted was another mental evaluation. Spencer either withdrew or was fired.3
Then Emma hired attorney Harry Weinberger, a well-known New York defender of anarchists and radicals. Weinberger was a natural adversary to the government and especially the military. In part, he was disrespected by the Army legal team for his aggressive defense of civil rights and his Jewish heritage.
A scrappy New Yorker since birth in 1886, Weinberger was a short man (at 5′4½″, shorter than Grover at 5′6″) with a prominent dimple in his square jaw and, by his admission, of the chunky build. Despite the length of his legs, Weinberger had been a championship runner in the mile relay, 100-yard dash, and 440 in his youth. Running and expertly boxing with Irish kids in his East River neighborhoods taught him how to fight a legal adversary in court by never pulling punches and never giving up. At age 12, Weinberger says he tried to enlist in the Army during the Spanish-American war, but they told him to go home. He couldn’t even get in as a drummer boy. He later became agnostic and a pacifist, deciding “all war was wrong. War only settled which side was stronger.”
Weinberger quit the Republican Party in New York to join the Democrats to support Woodrow Wilson for his promise to keep the United States out of the war. When Wilson turned about, the young lawyer helped organize the National Farmer-Labor Party in July 1920, a few months after he first represented Grover in court. It mounted presidential campaigns but needed to gain more support.
Weinberger was admitted to the bar in 1908 after earning his law degree from New York University by working as a stenographer and studying at night. With borrowed money, he opened his independent law practice. Weinberger advocated civil liberties for Americans and represented aliens, immigrants, anarchists, and radicals, the most infamous of which were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, anarchists convicted of obstructing the military draft in 1917 and deported to Russia.4 Weinberger says he fought so hard for civil liberties that New York federal Judge Learned Hand jokingly called him Harry “Habeas Corpus” Weinberger.
Longtime Bergdoll family friend David Clarence Gibboney rounded out a defense trio to advise Grover on personal issues and feed Emma vital information while she was writing the checks to pay for the defense team and private investigators. Judge Romig played the role of Emma’s escort to and from the Castle Williams jail and the trial.
By February 1920, Weinberger satisfied Emma and Grover with another angle of defense. Weinberger knew that claiming insanity would have entered evidence from the 1915 Philadelphia Orphans Court trial when Charles Bergdoll tried and failed to gain control over Grover’s inheritance by declaring him mentally insufficient to handle his financial affairs.
Weinberger filed a habeas corpus brief with the federal court in Manhattan, claiming the Army did not have jurisdiction trying the charge of “desertion as a soldier” because Grover had never been inducted into the Army. Weinberger’s assigned judge in the argument was none other than Learned Hand, who quashed Habeas Corpus Weinberger, ruling that military court martial was the proper venue to hear the Bergdoll desertion charge because case law proved that a simple mailed notice for examination was enough to be considered induction into the Army.
Philadelphia attorney David Clarence Gibboney, the liquor control advocate, and Bergdoll family fixer, was a long-time aide to Emma Bergdoll. Gibboney is credited with inventing the buried gold scenario to help Grover get released from jail and escape. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania/Philadelphia Record)
Judge Hand went further when pressed for an explanation: “There is nothing to suggest invalidity in the Selective Service regulations. They have been upheld a number of times since the war started.” He said the fact that the mailed notice did not reach Bergdoll because he was on vacation holiday was of no consequence.
“The man was merely a morbid coward,” Judge Hand dismissed. He said induction into the Army begins when the notice is sent and, therefore, jurisdiction is in the hands of the Army.5
The case prosecutor, U.S. Army Colonel Charles C. Cresson, said he believed the federal court filings were an attempt to get bond for Bergdoll, who would skip out and forfeit his bond payment. It may have been part of a plan to escape when Bergdoll was taken from Governors Island into Manhattan for a federal court appearance. Cresson said he was informed by intelligence officer John Sparks, who brought Grover to New York in handcuffs, that Grover told him, “If I could only get bond for one hour, there will be no court martial trial.”6
Attorney Harry Weinberger and Grover smartly dressed for court martial trial at Governors Island, New York City, March 1920. Weinberger was a prominent New York civil rights lawyer hired when Grover’s first attorney proposed an insanity defense. Pleading insanity would have separated Grover from his fortune. Weinberger, at two inches shorter than Grover, contended that Grover was never inducted into the Army and should be tried in a more lenient civil court. (Temple University Urban Archives)
By March 1920, Grover and his attorneys settled in for the trial. It was held in a former battery built for the War of 1812 to watch over New York Harbor. It was later transformed into red sandstone and brick military-style buildings named South Battery or Half Moon Battery overlooking the narrow Buttermilk Channel, the waterway separating Governors Island from Brooklyn. Since 1885, the battery housed small low-ceiling rooms for court martial proceedings.
Each day Grover would be led across the vast parade ground from his cell to South Battery and then back to his cell in Castle Williams at the end of the day.
Inside the room where Grover’s trial began on Thursday, March 4, 1920, the bailiff arranged dark hardwood tables in a U-shaped pattern so the six judge advocates would sit with their backs to the wall in the curve of the U. Grover, Weinberger, Capt. Campbell, and Judge Romig sat at a small table at one end of the U.
The judge advocates wore olive drab winter wool button-down blouse coats with flap pockets, shoulder straps, and wool riding breeches with spiral puttees and black knee boots, shined smooth. Each wore a service cap with a brown leather bill over his close-cropped hair until seated at the tables when the caps were hung. The only adornments on their uniforms were company insignia on their caps, rank sleeve patches, and collar discs.
All but one wore a short, close-cropped brush mustache.
Grover was allowed to discard the prisoner-numbered denim blouse and baggy trousers he wore in jail and dress smartly for his trial in a thick gray or brown pin-striped and tailored wool three-piece suit with a five-button vest, tie, and Murray Hill celluloid collars, all delivered from the cleaners by Emma. He was slim from eight weeks in jail. His wool trousers were expertly pressed with a crease from the inseam to the cuff. His dark hair was trimmed short, and his mustache was shaved thin and short for a professional and respectful appearance before the tribunal. His race car crash scar made his chin appear like a half-moon protruding bump.
Weinberger also dressed in heavy wool suits for trial, but they seemed unpressed and roomier than Grover’s fine tailoring.
The public and press, including Emma and Judge Romig, were provided hard, dark wood and form-fitting fanny chairs just beyond a bar separating them from the court martial. The trial staging, in a room that would later become a basketball court, did not resemble a traditional civilian courtroom with an elevated bench, sidebar, jury box, and witness stand.
Grover’s siblings did not attend the trial. Louis lived apart from the family in Manhattan. Still stinging from his 1915 court loss in trying to gain control of Grover’s assets, Charles was estranged from Emma and Grover and lived at his Broomall mansion. Elizabeth was with her husband, Albert Hall, mainly at their farm in New Jersey. And Erwin was still on the run between Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio.
Grover was on his own.
***
Philadelphia Department of Justice agent Todd Daniel took advantage of the renewed press interest in Grover’s pending trial and issued a warning for Erwin. He said Washington special agent John Joseph O’Connor would remain in Philadelphia to lead the hunt for the draft-dodging automobile racing champion, and it would be wise for Erwin to surrender.
It was still cold in New York in March. Emma was often observed in the court-martial room in thick flowing dresses, scarves, heavy wool overcoats, and her gray hair tucked inside felt hats adorned with flowers and feathers from a bygone era. Her hands were often burrowed into a fox fur muffler. Unwilling to stay in New York hotels, she traveled back to Philadelphia each night on a late train.
Delayed by Weinberger’s rejected pleadings, opening statements finally began on Saturday, March 6. However, the opening formalities were overshadowed by the revelation that two Burns Company private detectives were charged the previous day with conspiracy to impede justice by trying to bribe two clerks of Philadelphia Draft Board #32, Margaret, and Gertrude Ruane, for testimony favorable to Grover. With Captain Campbell’s approval, it was later determined that Judge Romig had hired the detectives to gather intelligence on the primary target of Grover’s defense, draft board secretary John Dwyer. Emma paid for them.7
Then, there was an embarrassing revelation for Romig. Escorting Emma into the court-martial proceedings, Judge Romig was identified by the Hotel Vivian clerk brought to New York from Hagerstown, Maryland, to testify against Grover. She recognized Romig as the man who signed into the hotel on August 1, 1918, under the alias H. Watt, alongside Grover signing in as James Carson.8
Soon after prosecutor Cresson made the accusation in court, Romig hurriedly left the room and returned by train to Philadelphia. He had regularly visited Grover in the Castle Williams jail, delivering Philadelphia newspapers and stacks of books and literature about ancient Egyptian history. These details were leaked to the press by jail guards who said Bergdoll read every bit of the newspapers “except the theatrical advertisements.” After Romig’s embarrassment, however, he laid low, and Emma attended the trial alone. The press reported that she fled the room only once, in tears, when Col. Cresson denounced Grover’s desertion as worse than murder.
Weinberger objected to everything in the trial, causing Col. Cresson to call him “a human jackal skulking along the east side of New York, like a Judas Iscariot, to do anything to combat the law for a few pieces of silver.” When Weinberger objected to the personal attack, the court overruled it since Cresson did not mention Weinberger by name. Col. Cresson may have overreached a bit, not realizing Weinberger’s reputation and abilities as a boxer when he suggested the short-legged civil liberties lawyer “could find me outside anytime on the island after the trial is over.”9 It was all hyperbole. They never came to blows.
Col. Cresson pointed to draft board secretary Dwyer, proclaiming he “gave four sons to the service, and now this man Bergdoll wants to escape his just punishment by the free use of his money.” Cresson advised the judge advocates that other draft dodgers had been sentenced to 25 to 40 years in prison. He wanted Bergdoll to get 30.
“He has beaten the law for the last time. Don’t let him get away with his crime,” the prosecutor demanded. He said Bergdoll’s trial was being watched worldwide by people who felt that draft-dodging penalties were only severe against the poor.
The case against Grover, however, appeared ironclad from the beginning. One of the first witnesses called by the prosecution was a handwriting expert who testified
that Grover’s cursive and signature on his 1917 draft registration card matched the many taunting postcards he sent to Dwyer, federal agents, and newspapers. He compared the writing with that on Grover’s fat canceled bank checks.
Col. Cresson and his assistants presented to the court martial Grover’s prior criminal arrests and convictions for assault and battery, recklessness, attempting to kill a police officer, speeding, property damage, and minor traffic infractions. They also presented a one-page document showing Grover’s arrest, trial, and acquittal in Mosbach, Germany, “for enticing a minor [girl].”
The judge advocates analyzed the answers to 27 questions presented to Emma through medical doctors who examined Grover for mental stability. Emma confirmed her significant blood loss during pregnancy for Grover from a plate-glass window accident. Also, when doctors grasped his skull and shoulder with forceps, Grover’s arm was broken during delivery. His paternal grandmother was sent to a sanatorium; he often suffered from dizzy spells and had six severe injuries to his skull caused by falling from a pony cart, a carriage–trolley collision, a 1911 airplane accident, car collisions in 1912 and 1914, and the race car crash in San Francisco in 1915, leaving the scars on his scalp, neck, and chin.10
The trial court even heard from Grover’s childhood companions, who said he would lock them in closets and blow sulfur smoke into them, and he injured them by placing explosive chemicals and mercury on coins.
Despite Emma’s many claims that Grover suffered from injury-induced mental issues, the court-martial medical board of doctors declared Grover sane and fit for trial. He was “normal, acceptable physically and mentally” to be a soldier.
Although he had witnesses ready, Grover’s military defense attorney, Captain Campbell, focused on Dwyer as the culprit in Bergdoll’s complicated case. He suggested a conflict of interest for the editor of an influential newspaper “spreading community vile” against Bergdoll while simultaneously serving as the federal agent inducting him into the regular Army.
Campbell claimed that Dwyer fomented the “vile” with his newspaper, the Record, scooping other newspapers with the first stories that Bergdoll failed to appear for an examination and attempting to negotiate with Bergdoll to return to Philadelphia when his only responsibility was to send out draft notices and document them for the state adjutant general in Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg.
Weinberger continued with a defense position that Grover’s notice for examination was not adequately prepared, was improperly authorized by a rubber stamp instead
of an ink signature, may have been out of turn, was misnumbered, was knowingly issued when Grover was off traveling around the country and failed to provide the required 10-day period for a response.
From defense notes written in longhand, Weinberger was prepared to cite a previous draft dodger case when an American man obtained a passport from the federal government to move to Brazil as a dealer in cattle hides. After the American consulate in Brazil renewed the man’s passport, creating another national document of his new address in Brazil, the man received a war draft notice at his former American address. Without the benefit of time to respond to the mailed examination notice, the man was charged with desertion and listed as a fugitive. However, Weinberger’s attempts to demonstrate the shortcomings of the Selective Service Act were futile. The courts previously ruled that a mere notice meant an induction, no matter where you lived or what you were doing. Once inducted, the man whose name appeared on the notice was automatically in the Army, no matter whether he was home to receive the notice or not.
