Jane Simon Ammeson - How to Murder Your Wealthy Lovers and Get Away With It: Money & Mayhem in the Gilded Age

HOW TO

MURDER

YOUR WEALTHY

LOVERS

AND GET AWAY WITH IT

RED LIGHTNING BOOKS

JANE SIMON AMMESON

HOW TO

MURDER

YOUR WEALTHY

LOVERS

AND GET AWAY WITH IT

MONEY & MAYHEM IN THE GILDED AGE

This book is a publication of

Red Lightning Books

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

redlightningbooks.com

2018 by Jane Simon Ammeson

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available
from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-68435-024-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68435-055-1 (ebook)

1 2 3 4 523 22 21 20 19 18

CONTENTS

HOW TO

MURDER

YOUR WEALTHY

LOVERS

AND GET AWAY WITH IT

PROLOGUE

WHEN MINNIE WALLACE WALKUP, JUST SIXTEEN YEARS old, went on trial for poisoning James R. Walkup, her much older, very wealthy husband, there were two things the public and reporters who covered the sensational 1885 trial in Emporia, Kansas, could agree on. The first was that Minnie was exceptionally beautifula luscious, ripe southern belle with hints of Creole heritage. The second was that she was always, from the moment of her husbands death, cool, collected, and composed.

How cool was she? Think glacier-like before global warming. But dont take our word for it. Heres how a reporter described the Walkup home on the day Walkup died after the autopsy was performed in couples bedroomyes, thats where they did them back then.

The Beautys Heartlessness
Emporia Daily News, Tuesday, November 10, 1885

The doctors cut him to pieces, removing his liver, heart, stomach, in fact removing nearly everything else. The bed was in a frightful condition, the remains were scattered about the room in vessels, and the air was horrible, and yet within an hour after the body had been taken downstairs, the widow went to the room, still uncleaned, locked herself in and proceeded to undress herself as calmly as if there was no ghastly evidence of death within a hundred miles of her.

Now thats ice.

In late 1884, wealthy James Walkup, twice a widower, traveled from Emporia, Kansas, to New Orleans, ostensibly to attend the Cotton Exposition being held there that year but more likely to taste the delights of the Crescent City. He was fifty-two when he checked in to Elizabeth Wallaces boardinghouse at 222 Canal Street in the French Quarter. Mrs. Wallaces sensuously stunning daughter Minnie was only fifteen, but Walkup was thunderstruck and by the next morning had announced his intentions to marry her.

The courtship lasted longer than the marriage and required the bride-to-be and her mother to visit Emporia to check out Walkups properties and prospects. About eight months after they first met, Minnie and James were married. A month to the day of their nuptials, an autopsy showed his gruesome death was due to arsenic poisoning.

John Ketcham, a rich Chicago clubman and Minnies second groom, was in his sixties when she was twenty-seven or so. This marriage lasted somewhat longerhe made it two months after they married. Some thought his death might have been due to poison, but it was attributed to cirrhosis of the liver.

During his illness, Minnie had kept him virtually a prisoner in her home while keeping an apartment down the street where she entertained gentlemen callers.

Minnie wasnt married to her third lover, DeLancey Louderback, when he died of strychnine poisoning, though she was heir to a quarter of his once considerable estate. It was said that shed sent him the vial of the poison to use as a sleeping draught. It sure did cause a deep, permanent slumber.

Why did she marry men old enough to be her grandfather?

Their knowledge of life fascinates me, she replied to inquiring newsmen. A man must know how to woo a woman to win meand young men have not the experience.

She was less concise when asked by authorities why she bought the arsenic that had caused Walkups death. Minnie had many stories. She couldnt remember buying it. She bought it to lighten her complexion. She needed it to mix with urine to take a stain out of her dress. Or maybe, she speculated, he had bought it and poisoned himself. Memory failed Minnie about what had happened, and the members of the all-male jury, though they didnt really believe her but hesitant to condemn a woman, voted to set her free.

In John Ketchams last months, the doctors had tried to keep him from drinking. Minnie had a different theory of medicine. He needed the liquor she smuggled into his sickroom, she said when confronted with her actions, to keep him alive. When his angry relatives, sure that this black widow had killed him, asked where the will and marriage license were, she couldnt really remember.

Oh, there was so much she couldnt recall.

I dont remember, she testified over and over, remaining composed while avoiding the truth. No, she really didnt recall asking the maid to say she was going out to buy butter when she went to purchase poison instead. She forgot entire conversations with two pharmacists who inquired why she was buying arsenic.

Besides amnesia, her other weapon was alternative fiction.

Canned oysters, not the arsenic she was stockpiling, were what ended Walkups life on that hot August day. She probably had also forgotten that after he ingested the oysters, she volunteered to go downtown to buy him a soda pop, stopping at yet another drugstore. There she bought more poisonspending twenty-five cents for four ounces of a highly toxic type, though pharmacist Ben Wheldon told her that most ladies using arsenic to lighten their complexion bought Fowlers Solution, which contained less than 1 percent of the poison. She certainly forgot to sign the book stating the purpose for her purchase before she walked out.

But it didnt seem to really matter what lovely Minnie Wallace Walkupshe of the dark Madonna eyes, who was celebrated for her loveliness since she was very youngforgot. The all-male jury seemed enthralled, as did others in the courtroom, including the judge and John Jay, another older man who had promised his fortune to free her. Even when the evidence piled up against her and the courtroom crowd seemed to turn against her, Minnie was always able to win her audience back.

Sure, there was the incident with William Born, a neighbor who attended the wedding party when the new Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Walkup returned home. He developed symptoms of arsenic poisoning after accepting a beer from Walkup that Minnie had prepared for her husband. Born survived and later stated he believed he was the accidental victim of a dose meant for the new groom.

And yes, Minnie spent more time on sewing her mourning dress than in actually mourning the loss of her spouse.

When Dr. Jacobs, who had just come from the deathbed of her husband, asked to see all the powders she had collected from her many drugstore visits, she immediately agreed to fetch the box that she kept in her room.

Butoh, no!as she was carrying the box in her finely shaped hands, it slipped from her grasp, the fine powders drifting all over the dress she was wearing and down the stairs she had been descending. While she tried scraping the spilled medicines back into the box (an impossible job), Dr. Jacobs, who suspected poison, took some of the particles for testing. Would you be surprised to learn that it was arsenic? No? We didnt think so.