The House on East Rasputan Drive
n their pathetic efforts to pander to the morbid tastes of a
sensation-avid public, most fiction writers persist in maligning
prosecuting attorneys as being cruel ruthless men willing to stop
at nothing - even sending innocent men and women to their
death in order to further their own greedy ambitions.
It is most fortunate indeed that in real life just the exact opposite is true. If the corrupt prosecutors exist they do so in the minority for most prosecuting attorneys are conscientious hard working men interested only in seeing that justice is done.
One such conscientious man was the prosecuting attorney for Muldoon County, New Jersey, Sir Thomas Bartholomew. A horrible miscarriage of justice was just narrowly averted because of the dedication of this man who put duty ahead of self and in the process antagonized an entire community.
On the night of April 23, 1931 a pretty young housewife named Clarice Surette was taken into custody by the Doltzville, New Jersey, police authorities and booked on a charge of suspicion of homicide. Her husband, Hubert Surette has disappeared earlier that evening under circumstances that led police to believe that he had been brutally done away with.
Contrary to popular belief, when moving for an indictment in a murder case, it is not always incumbent upon the prosecution to produce the body. If the State can, in lieu of a corpse establish a prima facie case proving that a murder has been committed, it has thus produced the corpus delecti and can then bring a suspected murderer to trial. It was just such a situation in which Clarice Surette, frightened and confused, found herself on that fatal April night.
A small news service with headquarters located near Doltzville issued a routine news release of the incident and presumably the matter, as far as the national news agencies were concerned, would have rested there had the story not broken at just this opportune time There existed at the time one of those rare lulls in criminal activities and concerned editors of newspapers and magazines eager to improve lagging circulation assigned their best men to cover the story.
The case was to exceed even the most optimistic of expectations. Aside form the inherent sadistic and lurid aspects of the case, the murder suspect Clarice Surette was breathtakingly beautiful and she became a cause celebre (whatever that means) thus assuring the success of the case.
In spite of the preponderance of evidence mounted against her it was hard upon looking at Clarice to believe that she was a depraved killer and yet there was no gainsaying the fact that this comely twenty-three year old housewife had married six men who had shortly thereafter disappeared under strange circumstances and the authorities now feared that the present incumbent had gone the way of his hapless predecessors.
Hubert Surette had been seen earlier that evening leaving the house that he shared with Clarice on East Rasputin Drive. This was the same abode that had figured so prominently in the disappearance of her six previous husbands. Clarice has inherited this now infamous home from the first of her husbands to disappear and ever since insisted upon setting up housekeeping in this very residence with each of his successors.
Hubert was in the habit of taking a nightly stroll and up until this ill-fated night nobody had thought anything about lit. However, it isn't hard to imagine the thoughts that must have racing through the minds of the villagers when they saw that Hubert Surette was carrying a load of trash.
And as if this wasn't enough to send chills of horror down the collective spines of the terrified onlookers, they must have really flipped when it became apparent that the poor sap was headed in the direction of Miller's Culvert. These villagers had witnessed the grisly re-enactment of this identical scene six times prior to that night and they no longer had to guess the outcome.
Hubert Surette, however, being a comparative newcomer to Doltzville was not cognizant of the sinister implications of his behavior that night. He had just recently met and married Clarice through a matrimonial ad that she had just place in his hometown newspaper in East Saliva Falls, Wyoming. Had he had been aware of the unknown horror that linked the trash and Miller's Culvert with the house on East Rasputin Drive he would never have set out on his ill-fated trek. All six of his predecessors, each one carrying a load of trash, had traversed this infamous path, now known as The Death Trail, and they all disappeared and were never seen or heard of again, although the load of trash in each case was subsequently discovered neatly piled in Miller's Culvert.
Aside from their disappearing and being married to Clarice, these six men shared still another matter of mutual concern with Hubert Surette. They had all been heavily insured specifically against their disappearing and each of these policies carried with them a special provision for double indemnity in the event that the insured at the time of his disappearance was en route to Miller's Culvert from the house on East Rasputin Drive and carrying a load of trash.
The police, who were nobody's fools, were beginning to suspect the something funny was going on. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Clarice Surette and she was apprehended less than an hour later wandering aimlessly in Miller's Culvert.
The police report shows that her clothes, including her wading boots and fisherman's overalls was splattered with blood. If the arresting officers were shocked, they said nothing about it at the time. As one of the arresting officers was to testify later, "If she was so stupid as to fish in the polluted shallow stream that flowed across the bottom of Miller's Culvert, that was entirely her own affair and certainly no business of theirs," and who is to say that it was.
The police were of course interested in hearing her explain why she was wielding a bloodied hatchet in her right hand. However being considerate men at heart they did not wish to embarrass her and deferred the questioning until a more discreet time, preferably when she was no longer brandishing the hatchet. They finally managed to disarm her through the clever expedient of affecting to purchase the hatchet from her at a price considerably higher than what she had paid. She was then escorted to headquarters for booking.
Apparently it remained only for the police and the county prosecutor to join forces in preparing their case for trial. Her guilt was generally accepted and feeling ran high in favor of a quick conviction and execution. The one man who held some doubts was oddly enough the official whose duty it would be to direct the prosecution.
Sir Thomas Bartholomew, the Muldoon County prosecuting attorney (or Old T.B. as he was affectionately referred to by his admiring colleagues because of his convenient hacking cough which would develop coincidentally just as his adversary would begin his summation to the jury and continue to the end) was known as a man who insisted always upon determining the truth regardless of whether it would lead to conviction or vindication.
Throughout his entire legal career Sir Thomas Bartholomew subscribed to the precept that the primary duty of a lawyer exercising the office of public prosecutor is not to convict but to see that justice is done. "It goes without saying," he would repeatedly tell his associates, "that it is just as important for a state attorney to use the powers of his great office to protect the innocent as it is to convict the guilty." Needless to say that upon more than one of these occasions this great and gifted prosecutor was pelted with a fusillade of rotten eggs and vegetables hurled at him by his tormented associates who were sick and tired of listening to this constant and officious harangue.
With the approaching trial of Clarice Surette he as once more to put these words into practice. Right from the start, Sir Thomas suspected that the girl was the unfortunate victim of circumstantial evidence. Bartholomew, with the keen perception of a brilliant lawyer, probably felt that the case against Mrs. Surette might have been too perfect and the deeper he delved into the case the more convinced became that Clarice was innocent, or at least innocent of murdering her husbands.
Sir Thomas Bartholomew was recognized as a master in the art of interrogation. The Transcript of his interrogation of Clarice Surette conducted in his office soon after her arrest has proved to be one of the most amazing documents ever recorded and has been preserved and often referred to as an outstanding example not only of Bartholomew's rare talents as a prosecutor but as an illustration of his firm belief that law enforcement officers must seek the truth whether or not it leads to a conviction. Though years have passed since this notable interrogation took place, it has been reprinted in most legal volumes and is considered in many of our law schools today.
He subjected Clarice Surette to a grueling two hour session of incessant questioning and at the end proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that she could not possible have been implicated in the disappearance of her husband, Hubert Surette.
The interrogation was conducted in his office with the room in complete darkness, except for a powerful beam of light that was shining in the eyes of Sir Thomas. If the gifted advocate had a failing, it was in his inability to get it straight as to whether the light was supposed to shine in the eyes of the griller or the grillee.
Sir Thomas began his interrogation cautiously, treating Clarice with the utmost kindness and consideration, patiently asking his questions until he felt convinced that he had gained her confidence. From then on he changed his tactics and trying to catch Clarice off guard he fired his questions in rapid fashion.
In as magnificent a piece of interrogation as has ever been recorded, Sir Thomas cleverly tricked the unsuspecting girl into admitting that she had absolutely nothing to do with the disappearance of her husband Hubert Surette. Sir Thomas also shrewdly elicited from Clarice through her own testimony a confession that she did not remember how the blood got on her clothes and hatchet.
In response to questioning concerning her whereabouts during the hours between six and nine that evening, when Hubert Surette was alleged to have disappeared, she answered that she had during that entire time been at the library reading. Narrowing his eyes in a cold steely glare Sir Thomas calmly informed Clarice that the library had closed down for repairs five years before and it had not yet reopened and nobody knew when it would reopen as building materials were scarce.
This information produced a stunning effect upon Clarice and for the first time that evening she appeared to be wilting under the strain of the night's events. She had a wild look in her eyes and began to flounder about in a frantic effort to find any plausible explanation.
Finally, in desperation, she blurted out that what she really meant to say was that she was outside of the library reading a newspaper by the light of the street lamp. A squad of detectives was dispatched to the library to check her story. They returned with the information that there was a street lamp outside the library just as she said, and Sir Thomas Bartholomew had no alternative but to order her immediate release from custody.
This unfortunately is the end of the recorded part of the interrogation for at this point the police stenographer, Miss Elvira J. Smootche, president of the local decency and morality league, complained about Clarice Surette sitting in Sir Thomas' lap. Sir Thomas, in a fit of rage, ordered officer Smootche from the room telling her to take her blasted pencil and notebook with her.
He later explained before a board of inquiry that it was all a misunderstanding and everything was completely innocent and above board. It was simply, he claimed, that the light from the lamp was hurting his eyes and not wishing to inconvenience anybody he had innocently accepted Mrs. Surette's gracious offer to share the chair with him.
While he conceded that he might have been somewhat imprudent, nevertheless he continued, it was all perfectly harmless and if there were those with minds so dirty as to think the worst then he felt sorry for them. Needless to say nobody was sap enough to be taken in by this cock and bull story and the eminent barrister was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. Clarice Surette left town the next day for Acapulco, Mexico where she was shortly thereafter joined by her insurance agent. As for Hubert Surette and his six predecessors, no trace of any of them was ever found and the case ranks as one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time which is probably just as well.
