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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.
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THE MURDER TRIAL OF JUDGE PEEL
BY
JIM BISHOP
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
Dedicated to
William Randolph Hearst, Jr.,
who found this story
first.
FOR THE RECORD:
Murder is a fairly common concomitant of civilization. One of the weaknesses of the coat of varnish we call culture is that it tends to crack. When it does, man becomes disorderly and violates the social rules in any number of waysmurder, if hes a citizen of a nation; a declaration of war, if he heads the nation.
The greatest murderer of all time is, of course, Adolf Hitler who, when he decided to send three German Armies into Poland in the cool autumn of 1939, became responsible for the 30,000,000 persons who in time died as a result of his action. The least of the murderers is the elderly man who, in a New Jersey bungalow, sat holding his sick wifes hand as she writhed in the agonies of cancer, and when he could bear it no longer, killed her, wept over her, and walked bareheaded to the nearest police station.
Between these are the killers for profit, for passion, for fear, for revenge, for freedom, for love, for a variety of reasons from the trivial to the enormous and compulsive. As a writer I have sometimes chronicled the trials of the big murders, and of them all I consider this the weirdest and most complex.
A charming and respected municipal judge of Palm BeachJoseph A. Peelwas charged with the murder of a superior court judge, C. E. Chillingworth. Peel not only denied the crime, he was outraged by the charge. On the day that the jury deliberated his innocence or guilt, he and I sat at breakfast in the St. Lucie County Jail.
I asked him what would happen. He was a handsome charmer, and when he smiled the whole detention pen lit up. Its going to be a hung jury, he said, I felt that he was wrong. I said so.
He asked what I thought would happen. I shrugged. There was no point in saying: Under the rules of evidence, I think that they will come in with a verdict of guilty with no recommendation of mercy.
Matters were difficult enough for Peel without adding my amateurish prophecies to his problems. Still, what happened was, to my way of thinking, a shock.
To preserve the storytellers art, I will not tell you now. However, I suggest that if you fancy yourself a reasonable human, one equipped to judge innocence and guilt, the complexity of this case will keep you engrossed. The cast of charactersranging from the spitting contempt of Prosecutor Phil OConnell for his one-time friend, Judge Peel, to the venom of the professional killer, Floyd Holzapfel, on the witness standcould have come out of a motion picture.
The role of the witness neither side desired to callMrs. Floyd Holzapfelwill, I suppose, remain a mystery. It was said in court that the lady met Judge Peel in New York for a weekend to discuss the case. If this is so, and there is no reason to doubt it, then why did Mr. Holzapfel bristle and roar with rage every time her name was mentioned in conjunction with Judge Peel? And why did another witness, P, O. Wilber, claim that he planted a seed of jealousy in Holzapfels mind?
I do not know. There is much that I do not know about this case. However, every facet of it that is a part of the public record is here for your perusal. And your judgment Think carefully, and tell me your verdict.
Jim Bishop
Sea Bright, New Jersey
PART ONETHE PROSECUTIONS CASE
The Prosecutions Case
There was a morning heat mirage on Route A1A. It was a little lake that wasnt there and it hung about 300 yards ahead of the car. The driver and his partner moved south, not talking much and not seeing much except the white line in the road and the mirage.
There was a beauty and elegance all around them. They passed the gorgeous beach mansions of the Wrightsmans, the Phippses, the Kennedys, the Hales, and their eyes reflected the neatly trimmed hibiscus, the poinsettia, the lawns like big blue rugs, the flaming orange orchids and the stately palm trees, but they saw them not.
Frank Ebersold and Robert Force were carpenters. They were due at Judge Curtis Chillingworths beach house to repair a window frame. Judge Chillingworth was a meticulous, humorless man. In the circuit court at West Palm Beach he used to stand outside the door at 9:29 A.M. studying his watch, the charge case in his other hand, waiting for the stroke of 9:30 to step into court and rap for order. He looked like a crane in rimless glasses.
The judge lived by the clock and the law books. Some say he had exactly seven friends.
Ebersold passed through Palm Beach and came to the super-exclusive little community of Manalapan. It bad twenty-seven registered voters. The car turned left, toward the sea, into a small gravel drive. Dead ahead was a two-car garage. One car was in it.
Ebersold and his partner took their toolboxes and walked up the back stairway to the beach house. They knew their place and they knew the people. The judge had a town house at 211 Dyer Road, and in the wintertime he rented this beach house for a fat sum. Now it was summerJune 15, 1955and Palm Beach was back down to its 2,500 permanent residents, and West Palm Beach, across Lake Worth, had 60,000 people.
The beach house had a flat roof and an open breezeway in the middle. It sat high on the sand dunes, facing the Atlantic. There was a rickety, one-banister stairway down to the beach. The house was done in gray deck paint and hanging from the porch was a ships bell with a rope on the clapper. This was a memento of the days when the judge had been a navy commander stationed in Jacksonville.
The carpenters knocked. There was no doorbell. They could look through the glass jalousie of the door and see the small living room with its beige straw rug, the little bridge table for breakfast, and the blue china dishes on the wall. There was a modern kitchen, and a nine by twelve bedroom in this wing. Here there were a night table, twin beds and a cream-colored phone. They knocked again. No answer.
There must be someone around, they figured, because Chillingworths car was in the garage. They turned toward the other wing and stepped on broken glass. It came from an overhead spotlight on the porch. The light had been broken.
