The handcuffed Hains brothers leave court in Flushing in the 1908 trial for the murder of William Annis.
THE shoreline of Little Neck Bay, off northeast Queens, offers some of the most idyllic scenery in the city, particularly on weekend afternoons during summer when the breeze billows through an endless savannah of sails.Strolling under the sprawling catalpas and dense sycamore maples in Crocheron Park in Bayside, one might easily imagine oneself stepping back into an earlier and more innocent century. There are no markers to announce that 100 years ago — on Aug. 15, 1908, to be precise — the coast of Little Neck Bay witnessed one of the most brazen murders in New York’s history, and one that would have unexpectedly broad implications.
Even in hardened Gotham, where brazen crimes are nearly the norm, the murder of William Annis rivaled the 1972 mob hit on Joey Gallo for its sheer audacity, probably consumed as much newspaper ink as the Mad Bomber’s 16-year spree, and sparked a communal soul-searching that the city would not again see until the killing of Kitty Genovese more than half a century later. When the gates of Sing Sing finally closed on one of the accused, fields as far-ranging as matrimonial law and forensic psychiatry had been transformed.
The brothers behind the crime were sons of Gen. Peter Conover Hains, the engineer whose achievements included draining the Tidal Basin in Washington. Peter Hains Jr., a 36-year-old captain stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, traveled the New York social circuit as one of the most handsome and promising young officers in the United States Army. His rakish and hard-living brother, Thornton Jenkins Hains, was a successful novelist of sea adventures, a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, and the self-styled heir to Conrad and Melville.
While on assignment in the Philippines in 1907, Peter received a letter from Thornton informing him of “orgies” at the fort that involved Peter’s young bride, a stunning debutante named Claudia Libbey.
Although Mrs. Hains denied any infidelity, her husband kept a close watch on his wife over the next two years, and finally assured himself that she was indeed having an affair. In the best spirit of high tragedy, her lover turned out to be William Annis, a high-profile magazine editor and one of Captain Hains’s closest friends.
Then the captain did what any self-respecting, red-blooded American husband of 1908 would have done when confronted with an unfaithful spouse: He and his brother took a taxi out to the lover’s yacht club in Bayside on the afternoon of its celebrated regatta and waved off the hundreds of society couples decked out in their summer finery. With Thornton standing guard, Peter Hains gunned down Annis as the editor climbed out of his sloop. Once Hains was certain that Annis was dead — eight shots point-blank did the trick — he sat on a bench and waited calmly for the police to arrive.
WHEN the case came to trial in December 1909, in the Flushing Courthouse, the brothers’ defense rested on two unconventional psychiatric diagnoses. The first was “Dementia Americana” — also known as “the unwritten law” — said to derange American husbands just long enough for them to take revenge upon their wives’ lovers.
This Victorian-era insanity plea had been used most recently and successfully by the coal baron Harry Thaw in his trial for the murder of the celebrated architect Stanford White. Only two years earlier, in another spectacular trial, a variation on this defense had helped acquit a teenage Bronx beauty named Josephine Terranova for the stabbing of her abusive uncle.
Despite the fact that this defense had no grounding in the penal code, Captain Hains believed he was on safe ground. Meanwhile, his brother, Thornton, offered an even more novel diagnosis — “dual insanity,” or folie à deux, in which one man’s temporary derangement becomes momentarily contagious.
An array of psychiatrists were paraded past jurors during months of testimony, each challenging the others’ qualifications. Finally, jurors convicted Captain Hains, despite his “Dementia Americana” claim, while acquitting Thornton for having suffered the madness vicariously.
The verdicts provoked an instantaneous outcry. The New York Times used the acquittal of Thornton Hains to condemn appeals to “the unwritten law” in the justice system. The Times also reported “many letters” in support of its stance.
This shift of opinion had its impact on the legal world. Thornton Hains was probably the last man in New York State acquitted on the grounds of “the unwritten law,” albeit vicariously. His brother was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter.
Over the next decade, rules governing psychiatric testimony were reformed to prevent nonexperts from advancing novel conditions inside the courtroom. Most important, after the conviction of Peter Hains, the lovers of married women, after more than 50 years without protection, could once again place their confidence in the rule of law.
Yet the most powerful impact of the case may have been evinced by William Annis’s final words, as he lay dying on the quay. “Tom, do they have such cowards in your country?” Annis demanded of his Swedish boatman. Maybe he meant cold-blooded murderers like the Hains brothers. Or, as The New York Times suggested the following week in an editorial, maybe he was referring to the hundreds of witnesses who stood by without intervening as his body was riddled with bullets.
Jacob M. Appel has published short fiction in The Missouri Review, The Threepenny Review and StoryQuarterly.
By JACOB M. APPEL
Published: August 9, 2008
