Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
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Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: In September nineteen forty three, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, prominent citizen
Speaker 2: and attorney John Knoxon Junior was arrested for the murder
Speaker 2: of a six month old down syndrome baby Lawrence. Baby Lawrence,
Speaker 2: according to Knoxon, was axe evidently electrocuted. Authorities initially accepted
Speaker 2: Noxon's account, but grew suspicious when they discovered he had
Speaker 2: burned evidence before police could examine it. District Attorney Charles
Speaker 2: Alberty and police Chief Sullivan brought a small army of
Speaker 2: scientists and medical experts to court to try to prove
Speaker 2: the death was a premeditated murder, with the sentence for
Speaker 2: first degree murder being death by electric chair. The case
Speaker 2: drew in newspaper readers from across America, and Lawrence's death
Speaker 2: was often characterized as a mercy killing at a time
Speaker 2: when euthanasia societies were publicly advocating for the selection out
Speaker 2: of mental defectives from American society. Despite the efforts of
Speaker 2: his talented defense team at the sena Sational trial, John
Speaker 2: Knoxon Jr. Was sentenced to death. Afterwards, his dedicated attorneys
Speaker 2: continued fighting for a new trial, then a commutation of
Speaker 2: his sentence. The Electrocution of Baby Lawrence is also a
Speaker 2: story of how society once considered those born with Down
Speaker 2: syndrome and how John Knoxon Junior managed to get off
Speaker 2: death row and gain his freedom. The book that we're
Speaker 2: featuring this evening is The Electrocution of Baby Lawrence, a
Speaker 2: murder that shook a New England town, with my special guest,
Speaker 2: former courthouse reporter, writer and author James E. Overmyer. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: James E. Overmeyer.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here. Dan, I'm very happy
Speaker 3: to be on your show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this book, The
Speaker 2: Electrocution of Baby Lawrence. Let's talk about the main characters introduced.
Speaker 2: The main characters in this story, and let's start with
Speaker 2: John Knoxon Junior, and a little bit about where this
Speaker 2: story emanates from, which is Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us a little about the location of Pittsfield and its
Speaker 2: character and tell us about John Knoxon's background, Junior's background.
Speaker 3: Pittsfield is in the far west of Massachusetts, almost in
Speaker 3: New York State. It's about ten miles from the New
Speaker 3: York state line, and at that time, before interstate highways,
Speaker 3: it was kind of geographically isolated. It had so it
Speaker 3: had a lot of its own structure. It wasn't near Albany,
Speaker 3: New York or Springfield, mass and so it had its
Speaker 3: own infrastructure and social structure. In that social structure, John
Speaker 3: Knoxon Jr. Was one of the leading personalities of the city.
Speaker 3: He was a corporate lawyer. He worked a lot for
Speaker 3: the General Electric Company. They had a major plant that
Speaker 3: employed twelve thousand people, the major driver of industry and
Speaker 3: income in Pittsfield. His father had been a successful corporate lawyer.
Speaker 3: John was his associate till his father was crippled in
Speaker 3: a terrible accident in nineteen twenty six. John took over
Speaker 3: the practice with a partner, and he was he sort
Speaker 3: of inherited his father and mother's connection, social connections and
Speaker 3: social prominence. Except it turned out that John Junior wasn't
Speaker 3: a very nice guy, right. He was known as a
Speaker 3: bully as a kid and sort of looked down on
Speaker 3: people as an adult and pushed them around if he could.
Speaker 3: But he also had another aspect. He had been crippled
Speaker 3: with polio in his early twenties and one leg was
Speaker 3: completely stiffly encased in a brace and he walked with
Speaker 3: two canes. So and his father they took he and
Speaker 3: his wife, Margaret, took care of his father for ten
Speaker 3: years because his father was an invalid after his accident
Speaker 3: which cost him both his legs. So there were aspects
Speaker 3: to Oxen. He had a lot of woe in his
Speaker 3: family and literally and then, but he was also a
Speaker 3: kind of guy who pushed people around and didn't seem
Speaker 3: to have a lot of regard for personal attachments. His
Speaker 3: wife had the responsibility for taking care of that. And
Speaker 3: then Lawrence comes along, born in nineteen forty three, sort
Speaker 3: of an unresponsive maybe. They have him examined by his
Speaker 3: local pediatrician and by specialists in Boston, and the verdict
Speaker 3: is that Lawrence has what now we call down syndrome.
Speaker 3: Term hadn't been invented yet, so everybody, including the medical specialists,
Speaker 3: referred to him as a mongoloid or a mongoloid idiot.
Speaker 3: There's a lot in this story about how retarded children
Speaker 3: were looked down upon in that day. In addition to
Speaker 3: everything else going on here.
Speaker 2: You also talk about at the time that euthanasia was
Speaker 2: being discussed. Tell us about what this euthanasia, what people
Speaker 2: were included in this, and just tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about the public opinion at that time.
Speaker 3: The Youth in Asia Drive started, I guess you'd say,
Speaker 3: I guess it became publicly popular in the twenties, and
Speaker 3: it was first aimed at what we would now call
Speaker 3: assisted suicide, people who were who had terminal cancer or
Speaker 3: other terminal painful diseases. But wouldn't it be a good
Speaker 3: idea if they could choose in their life? Of course,
Speaker 3: then there was absolutely no state or federal laws allowing
Speaker 3: that at all, But so that was how the drive started.
Speaker 3: But then it expanded, and wouldn't it be a good idea?
Speaker 3: I mean, the chief proponent of this in New York State,
Speaker 3: Reverend Charles Potter, went farther, he said, you know, the
Speaker 3: state of New York spends thirty million dollars a year
Speaker 3: housing and support mental defectives. Maybe they should be euthanized too.
Speaker 3: Of course, now we're getting right into the Lawrence knoxon territory,
Speaker 3: so it's very controversial. Doctors and other churches, particularly the
Speaker 3: Catholic Church all the way up to Rome, are opposed
Speaker 3: to this. It's interesting. The Gallup Pole took a poll
Speaker 3: twice in the thirties and the question was do you
Speaker 3: agree with euthanasia if it's monitored or administered by the state,
Speaker 3: And the majority of people did not agree, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't It was like in the mid fifty percent. So
Speaker 3: in the mid forty percent of the respondents of the
Speaker 3: Gallup Pole people said yeah, that would be all right.
Speaker 2: With that attitude prevalent in the public, tell us what
Speaker 2: this doctor Smith from Boston recommended when he spoke to
Speaker 2: John Knox and then his wife Margaret about Lawrence.
Speaker 3: Richard Smith, the specialist in Boston confirm the local pediatrician,
Speaker 3: doctor Hunt's diagnosis and said, well, you can do three things.
Speaker 3: You can keep the child at home. We really don't
Speaker 3: recommend that, and there were That was really the recommendation
Speaker 3: of all medical specialists at that point with Down syndrome
Speaker 3: children is just going to wreck your life, wreck your
Speaker 3: family life. Or you could institutionalize the kid. The institution
Speaker 3: in Massachusetts, a Belchertown State School, was pretty much a warehouse,
Speaker 3: and even at that time and for somebody of the
Speaker 3: Noxons level, it certainly was inacceptable. Or you could find
Speaker 3: a home, and there were people, you know, foster parents, basically,
Speaker 3: people ran group homes who would take these children in.
Speaker 3: And I can recommend at least one to you right
Speaker 3: now off the top of my head. And this is
Speaker 3: in August of nineteen forty three, late August. And then
Speaker 3: Knox said, we'll think about it, and they bundled up
Speaker 3: Lawrence from Boston and drove back down to Pittsfield. And
Speaker 3: less than a month later, Lawrence is electrocuted in what
Speaker 3: was or was not a household accident.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you also include that this doctor Smith also
Speaker 2: said that they had another child, John Knox, in the
Speaker 2: third and they said that this young child psychologically couldn't
Speaker 2: handle the disabled baby there and had some idea that
Speaker 2: there would be trouble, no doubt with the disabled child
Speaker 2: and the normal child.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was one of the It was one of
Speaker 3: doctor Smith's opinions. He was right in line with a
Speaker 3: director of the Mayo Clinic gave a speech, I don't know,
Speaker 3: late late forties, not too far after that, to a
Speaker 3: national convention. He said, a down syndrome maybe is born.
Speaker 3: It's even best if you can do it to take
Speaker 3: the child away from the mother, tell him, tell her something,
Speaker 3: keep her at bay. The child needs extra care while
Speaker 3: the family and the doctors and everyone else scurries around
Speaker 3: and finds a placement for the kid, so she'll never
Speaker 3: see the child again. I mean, the whole idea was
Speaker 3: these children should be separated as soon as possible from
Speaker 3: the family. It's just going to call it to cause divorce.
Speaker 3: It's going to cause psychological problems for the other children,
Speaker 3: if there are any. I mean, it's just one hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty degree spin from the way society sees it today.
Speaker 2: Let's get to this fateful evening in September and the
Speaker 2: call from John Knox and Junior to a doctor George Hunt,
Speaker 2: the child's pediatrician.
Speaker 3: As George Hunt had been a pediatrician at that point
Speaker 3: for almost thirty years in Pittsfield and he gets a call. Well,
Speaker 3: Noxon has to call around and track him down. It's late,
Speaker 3: it's about five point thirty in the afternoon. He said,
Speaker 3: come out to the house right away. Something has happened
Speaker 3: to Lawrence. And apparently that's what he said, and Hunt,
Speaker 3: in all of the further proceedings never made it more specific.
Speaker 3: So Hunt drives out there and Lawrence is on the
Speaker 3: floor of the house, the library of the house. This
Speaker 3: is a pretty well, the Oxen's had a lot of money.
Speaker 3: This was a pretty big and nice house. They called
Speaker 3: it the bookroom. Lawrence is on the floor and he
Speaker 3: is clearly dead. And Hunt calls the medical examiner, who
Speaker 3: is sort of like the coroner in Massachusetts. They're pointed
Speaker 3: by the governor. They're not elected. There have to be mds.
Speaker 3: And Albert England foreigner comes out and confirms this and
Speaker 3: what happened, Well, I was working on a radio and
Speaker 3: by radios is nineteen forty three to radio is about
Speaker 3: half as big as as a Volkswagen Beetle, you know,
Speaker 3: with tubes inside. And Lawrence got electrocuted. Well, Hunt and England,
Speaker 3: this is a leading citizen of the city, kind of
Speaker 3: pushy too, and so they take his word for it
Speaker 3: and they leave. They call a funeral home, they leave,
Speaker 3: Some of them from the Wellington funeral Home comes around,
Speaker 3: collects the Lawrence's body and away they go. The police
Speaker 3: aren't called and for a few hours overnight that's it.
Speaker 2: What does John Noxon do? Later he explains why, But
Speaker 2: what does he do? Soon after Doctor England and doctor
Speaker 2: Hunt leave.
Speaker 3: There's an extension cord involved, which connected to a trouble light,
Speaker 3: which is a caged light bulb that usually used to
Speaker 3: work on cars, but Noxon had it out to peer
Speaker 3: into the back of the radio. The trouble cord, according
Speaker 3: to Oxen, was the source of the electrocution. And after
Speaker 3: they leave, after the child is collected up by Wellington
Speaker 3: funeral home attendant, he throws the cord and the baby's
Speaker 3: clothes in the house's incinerator in the basement and burns them,
Speaker 3: so the cord is basically reduced to a couple of
Speaker 3: strands of burned up of black copper wire with no
Speaker 3: evidentiary value at all.
Speaker 2: Now tell us about this, Chief Sullivan and Inspector McColgan
Speaker 2: and Captain Marcel.
Speaker 3: Doctor England, the medical examiner. Apparently. I don't know if
Speaker 3: he had a sleepless night, or at least he had
Speaker 3: second thoughts in the more. He drives back out to
Speaker 3: the house and says, you know, I'd like to take
Speaker 3: another look at that cord, which he didn't take with
Speaker 3: him the night before. You thought he might have, but
Speaker 3: he'd written his case off as an accidental deaths probably immersed.
Speaker 3: He said that before. It's kind of a good thing
Speaker 3: this happened because down syndrome mongoloid kids had no future anyway. Wow,
Speaker 3: And well he didn't say that, but that's the he got.
Speaker 3: He said the first part, it's a good thing this happened,
Speaker 3: and that's why it was. He thought it was a
Speaker 3: good thing this happened. He goes back out, I'd like
Speaker 3: to take a look at that cord. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't want around the house disturbing Margaret and the
Speaker 3: baby's clothes, which had a little blood on him from
Speaker 3: leading from the nose. And John is away, John the
Speaker 3: third is away at prep school, but he's going to
Speaker 3: come home, and he's a very he's a real tinkerer
Speaker 3: and experimenter, and I didn't want him near this cord.
Speaker 3: So he burned it. England, turns around, drive downtown, findes
Speaker 3: Chief Chief Sullivan tells him the story. Sullivan is disturbed,
Speaker 3: and he's disturbed at first primarily because a potential someone
Speaker 3: died in his city and he didn't know that, his
Speaker 3: police didn't know about it. I think his institutional pride
Speaker 3: is quite affected here. So he collects his two main men,
Speaker 3: Camille Marcel, who was a captain, who's really he doesn't
Speaker 3: have this role, he's really a deputy police chief, and
Speaker 3: Daniel McColgan, Inspector McColgan, who's the head of the detective bureau,
Speaker 3: and they drive out to the Oxen house and Sullivan
Speaker 3: is a combination of sympathetic, I'm sorry this happened, though
Speaker 3: I wish you'd called this, and a little because he's
Speaker 3: top and there's the death and he's a little suspicious.
Speaker 3: But they talk about it and Oxen tells him the story,
Speaker 3: and that's pretty much in and they're done. By late morning.
Speaker 3: Stullivan and mccaugun and car Marcel arrived down to the
Speaker 3: funeral home. State pathologists has been called, but naturally, the
Speaker 3: Berkshire's being out in the moon means he's got to
Speaker 3: drive out from Boston, and it takes a little while.
Speaker 3: So he looks at the body and the body has
Speaker 3: some burns on it, as you might expect, it has
Speaker 3: a particularly deep burn on the left forearm, and knox
Speaker 3: In maintained all along. It's the trouble court caused it.
Speaker 3: The trouble court, as Hunt and the two doctors Hunt
Speaker 3: in England observed, it only had a couple of brakes
Speaker 3: in it. The biggest one was about three quarters of
Speaker 3: an inch long. And here you have a burn that's
Speaker 3: two inches by in one direction and an inch and
Speaker 3: in three quarters in the other on a baby's arm.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of burn. And they turn around and
Speaker 3: they go back out to the house and Stullivan's attitude
Speaker 3: has completely changed. He now has in his mind a
Speaker 3: homicide case and he's gonna, with his assistance of his
Speaker 3: two aides, is going to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 3: And the tough questioning starts. It gets pretty far that day,
Speaker 3: that's the twenty third, that's a Friday. On the twenty fourth,
Speaker 3: Noxen and Missus Knoxon are summoned to the police station
Speaker 3: where John L. Sullivan, who never had a fistfight with anybody,
Speaker 3: but he kind of policed, like the priest fighter fors
Speaker 3: his fights and an assistant district attorney almore code sit
Speaker 3: down for a long interview with an actions.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, let's get to this official story on
Speaker 2: how this most unlikely thing could have happened, and also
Speaker 2: that Margaret wasn't really, ever, really seriously questioned. However, John k.
Speaker 2: Noxon has his official story on about how the child
Speaker 2: was electrocuted? What do Sullivan and McColgan, what do they
Speaker 2: hear is the official story.
Speaker 3: He tells them. They start to question him, and he
Speaker 3: sort of takes over. I mean, this is classic John Knoxon,
Speaker 3: a trial lawyer who's also an aggressive, domineering guy, and
Speaker 3: Kote lets him the assistant DA. The DA is out
Speaker 3: of town trying a case in another city, so codey
Speaker 3: is in charge in Pittsfield and he lets him, which
Speaker 3: isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case, because Noxon
Speaker 3: says a few things that sort of trip them up. Later,
Speaker 3: he was going to fix the radio. We hadn't been
Speaker 3: working right. He pulls it out away from the wall.
Speaker 3: He gets this extension chord and the trouble light, and
Speaker 3: the whole thing becomes known as the trouble cord. In
Speaker 3: the enduring it has its own it gets it's its
Speaker 3: own terminology. It's called the trouble Cord throughout the rest
Speaker 3: of the trial in the case, So he lays all
Speaker 3: this out and Margaret says, I want to go out
Speaker 3: in the garden at a victory garden. This is World
Speaker 3: War two. Pick some corn for dinner. Would you look
Speaker 3: after the baby? And she puts them on a big
Speaker 3: chair with big arms, a wing chair. Says okay, fine,
Speaker 3: So he starts to work on the radio. He realizes
Speaker 3: he needs to pop over to the garage. You attach garage,
Speaker 3: you get a couple of tools, and he doesn't want
Speaker 3: the baby on the chair, so he wants to put
Speaker 3: him on the floor. Well, the baby's got a wet
Speaker 3: diaper and the floor has a sort of American knockof
Speaker 3: oriental carpet on it. So he goes to the pantry
Speaker 3: and he gets a metal tray. He puts the baby
Speaker 3: on the tray so the diaper won't soil the rug,
Speaker 3: and he goes out to the garage and he says,
Speaker 3: I was gone for about three or four minutes comes
Speaker 3: back in. Lawrence has gotten himself entangled in the antenna
Speaker 3: antenna wire which runs up to the roof ordinarily excepted.
Speaker 3: She's been detached from the radio and the trouble cord
Speaker 3: and he's touched the bare spots and he's electrocuted himself.
Speaker 3: And I pulled the cord off and he's not responsive.
Speaker 3: So I go to the phone and I'm making calls
Speaker 3: to the hospital and doctor England's home, and I finally
Speaker 3: track him down and he comes out to the house.
Speaker 3: That's his story. Margaret says that she had basically confirmed this.
Speaker 3: She had brought the she wanted to. She went out
Speaker 3: to the outside the house to the garden. She brought
Speaker 3: the baby into John and she got the baby's food
Speaker 3: ready and took them upstairs, and the baby wasn't there.
Speaker 3: And she came down and there's this whole scene in
Speaker 3: the bookroom and she collapses on the sofa. She did
Speaker 3: not she said she was not there when it happened.
Speaker 3: I think she probably wasn't. But the question was the
Speaker 3: question that kept arising was well, where was she and
Speaker 3: what did she know? And no one ever asked her
Speaker 3: that it's funny because I mean under Massachusetts law and
Speaker 3: I think probably all other jurisdictions, a spouse can't be
Speaker 3: forced to testify against his or her spouse. But of
Speaker 3: course you can ask them questions before that, and they
Speaker 3: can refuse to answer them, or they could say something.
Speaker 3: It might be no one everybody left her alone, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of funny. It's of course, this is a
Speaker 3: very genteel level of Fitsfield society, which wasn't very violent
Speaker 3: or disrupted to begin with. It's a small city. She
Speaker 3: was never seriously questioned. She didn't testify in her husband's behalf.
Speaker 3: She had she could even cross examined by the eight
Speaker 3: and that never happened. She's just separated from the case,
Speaker 3: and whether and what she might have known or suspected
Speaker 3: is lost the history. I will say that throughout the
Speaker 3: trial and all the things that happened after the trial,
Speaker 3: she never wavered. She stood by her husband's side, she
Speaker 3: supported him, she did everything she could to get him
Speaker 3: out of prison. Afterwards, her story is a bit mysterious
Speaker 3: in my mind.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to Chief Sullivan and this aggressive questioning
Speaker 2: of this pretty experienced defendant. Sullivan had two main questions
Speaker 2: for NOx On, why did he think it was sufficient
Speaker 2: to only call doctor Hunt? And two why destroy evidence
Speaker 2: that you know, as a lawyer, would be evidence. And
Speaker 2: what was his response to that?
Speaker 3: Knoxton said, this, just having this wire around was very disturbing.
Speaker 3: It was an accident, after all. So I threw doctor Hunt.
Speaker 3: Didn't take it with him doctor England. I mean he
Speaker 3: should have maybe, but I threw it in the incinerator.
Speaker 3: And Sullivan said, why don't you call the police? He says,
Speaker 3: I'm not a criminal lawyer. You know there's a law.
Speaker 3: There's a law that requires people to call the police
Speaker 3: in the case of the death, which there apparently wasn't
Speaker 3: I'm sure in John O'Sullivan's mind, probably in the US Constitution,
Speaker 3: but it turns out there was no such law. And
Speaker 3: at any rate, not to say, hey, I'm a civil lawyer.
Speaker 3: I never did criminal law. I didn't know that. The
Speaker 3: Sullivan by the time, because you've seen the baby, and
Speaker 3: he comes back out. He is rare to go, he says.
Speaker 3: When he leaves in the morning, he says, well, the
Speaker 3: worst I can say, John is you are very very
Speaker 3: best I can say, John, as you were very very careless.
Speaker 3: He comes back in the afternoon he said, I know
Speaker 3: you killed your son. Noxon denies it. Of course, Sullivan's
Speaker 3: completely flipped his attitude and now he's he's on a
Speaker 3: hunt to get a confession or enough evidence for a
Speaker 3: conviction or whatever.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that investigation and the arrest and how
Speaker 2: it came to be.
Speaker 3: You have two kinds of evidence. There's direct evidence, which
Speaker 3: is a confession, or eyewitnesses that there's circumstantial evidence. Well,
Speaker 3: there's no direct evidence. Noxon never confessed even came close
Speaker 3: to it. And the evidence when an incinerator, this is
Speaker 3: a Charles Alberti was the district attorney, and he and
Speaker 3: Sullivan and assistant DA's and Marcel and McColgan, they really
Speaker 3: put together a fantastic case. They went to the factory
Speaker 3: in Connecticut, a GE factory, needless to say, that had
Speaker 3: manufactured this extension cord and got fifty feet of it
Speaker 3: and then took it to divided it up into twelve
Speaker 3: foot lengths, which is the length of the cord originally
Speaker 3: was when it was sold in the store. Took it
Speaker 3: to the GE subsidiary in Rhode Island that attached the sockets.
Speaker 3: The socket, the flug socket and the receptacle socket on
Speaker 3: the other end and had them do that. So now
Speaker 3: they've got these cords and they interview England and Hunt
Speaker 3: to say, well, where were these cuts and what did
Speaker 3: they look like? And they replicated. So they replicated the evidence,
Speaker 3: and they have two eyewitnesses. The two doctors say, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's what it looked like. And they entered those
Speaker 3: into evidence and they got the state pathologist was a
Speaker 3: Harvard Medical School factory faculty member who had spent his
Speaker 3: whole career in forensic medicine. So he testifies about all
Speaker 3: of this, and he testifies to the extent he knows
Speaker 3: about electricity, the effects of electricity. He thinks. He says,
Speaker 3: if that cord was used the electric cute to cause
Speaker 3: those burns, it would have been about fifteen minutes and
Speaker 3: it had to be held onto the body, which of
Speaker 3: course Notaxen said, I was gone for maybe five minutes
Speaker 3: at the most, and I didn't even see it happened.
Speaker 3: They've got the state chemist, the State Laboratory chemist, the
Speaker 3: guy who founded the State Laboratory, who's got a PhD. Chemistry,
Speaker 3: and he does all of these tests on skin from
Speaker 3: the baby and other things and finds there's copper in
Speaker 3: these skin cell not on the surface, but down inside
Speaker 3: the pieces of skin from the burns. So it's and
Speaker 3: that didn't happen by some accidental sparking and arcing or
Speaker 3: anything like that from those wires. You would have had
Speaker 3: to held something into the skin to make it happen, which,
Speaker 3: of course rather contradicts Noxon story. The prosecution case was
Speaker 3: considering the fact that they lost that crucial first day
Speaker 3: in investigating the case because nobody told them about it
Speaker 3: was really an excellent piece of work.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about who John Knoxon gets. He's wealthy, so
Speaker 2: he can consider any attorney he would like.
Speaker 3: John was originally defended and throughout the trial as the
Speaker 3: second attorney by Walter Donovan, who was a leading attorney
Speaker 3: in Berkshire County. I presume Donovan brought in Eally, who
Speaker 3: was what were governed. He had been governor of the
Speaker 3: state for two terms in the thirties and then he
Speaker 3: left politics and got rich. He was a corporate on
Speaker 3: corporate boards. He president of a woolen corporation. He had
Speaker 3: offices in his hometown of Westfield, which is halfway across
Speaker 3: the state, and in Boston. He was extremely well known
Speaker 3: it very good lawyer too, So he had Joey e
Speaker 3: Lee and Walter Donovan the defense team, and that's a
Speaker 3: pretty stellar team, both statewide and locally. Stay lined up
Speaker 3: their own experts and their main medical expert was Milton Helpern,
Speaker 3: who New Yorkers with any sense of history will recognize him.
Speaker 3: He was the New York City Medical Examiner for many years.
Speaker 3: At that time he was the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner
Speaker 3: and took this case on the side of course, so
Speaker 3: he was the equivalent of Allan Morritz, the state pathologist.
Speaker 3: They also brought in doctor Charles Lunn, who was on
Speaker 3: the Harvard's faculty and an expert in burns. Doctor Lund
Speaker 3: had started a project for the government for the military
Speaker 3: to evaluate burns at the Boston City Hospital. In the
Speaker 3: middle of the project, in nineteen forty two, the Coconut
Speaker 3: Grove fire happened in Boston, and that was a nightclub disaster.
Speaker 3: Nightclub caught fire and there were exits were blocked, hundreds
Speaker 3: of people died, and hundreds of burn cases where shipped
Speaker 3: the hospitals all over the city. Doctor Lunt had three
Speaker 3: hundred burn cases on his hands where the hospital did,
Speaker 3: and so he had he had quite a study, so
Speaker 3: he was he was an expert in burns and so
Speaker 3: those along with some electrical engineers who were also also
Speaker 3: testified for the defense, they had a lineup that equalled
Speaker 3: the States for sure.
Speaker 2: You talk about the beginning of this case, and one
Speaker 2: incredible feature is how they would house the prisoner in
Speaker 2: the courtroom rather than sitting by his attorneys.
Speaker 3: This was gone by the time I just started covering
Speaker 3: the court and I couldn't believe it when I found
Speaker 3: out about it. The courtroom had an iron cage set
Speaker 3: up behind the defense table, and that's where the defendant,
Speaker 3: criminal defendant sat, even John Knoxen, who had crippled legs
Speaker 3: and walked with canes, because a few years before, elsewhere
Speaker 3: in the state, a defendant's brother had burst into the
Speaker 3: courtroom with a gun and a bomb shot the sheriff
Speaker 3: tried to set off the bomb before he was subdued.
Speaker 3: And somehow this was supposed to protect the courtroom by
Speaker 3: putting the defendant, who had no weapons on him. He'd
Speaker 3: been he was under supervision of a couple of deputy
Speaker 3: sheriffs in the cage. It was described by someone as medieval,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't agree more. In some part I wish
Speaker 3: I'd seen it, and a bigger part of me and
Speaker 3: I'm glad I never had to see it. I mean,
Speaker 3: it just put the defendant in such a terrible disadvantage
Speaker 3: in front of the jury.
Speaker 2: Now, Judge Penatski begins this, but let's talk about just
Speaker 2: at that time in Massachusetts. Incredibly, and you pointed out
Speaker 2: that the difference between civil cases that John Knoxon Jr.
Speaker 2: Was very familiar with, but the criminal law had different
Speaker 2: rules regarding discovery. Can you explain what the situation was
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty four?
Speaker 3: Nineteen forty four, the district attorney was not obliged to
Speaker 3: provide much of anything in the way of his evidence
Speaker 3: to these and Joseph Peely was opposed to this, and
Speaker 3: he was opposed to this even outside the knox and trial.
Speaker 3: And he had done it and filed motion after motion
Speaker 3: to try to get their hands on physical evidence, to
Speaker 3: try to get their hands on the grand jury minutes,
Speaker 3: and they were rejected and rejected and rejected. Judge Manansky
Speaker 3: finally said, at one point, what you want is for
Speaker 3: the district attorney to tell you what's in his case now.
Speaker 3: I became administrative assistant to the DA for trial preparation
Speaker 3: in that county, that in that courtroom in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: and yeah, we in fact the law then we gave
Speaker 3: them all that stuff. And I'm saying, yeah, judge, that's
Speaker 3: what he wants and you and then it's prepositive what
Speaker 3: Pinansky said. I mean, he's he's not outside the law.
Speaker 3: He's totally within Massachusetts law at the time. But Pinanski
Speaker 3: said was preposterous. But that was the law at the time,
Speaker 3: which fortunately I think changed.
Speaker 2: You have one dramatic, vivid example where you talk about
Speaker 2: that EE was in court and there was full he
Speaker 2: was asking the DA for any photos that he had
Speaker 2: not released to the defense as of yet and got
Speaker 2: him to release ones that were sitting in his attached
Speaker 2: a case. Can you tell us about this very vivid scene.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's there's clearly bad blood between Charlie Alberti, the DA,
Speaker 3: and Joe Eely, and there's I don't know that they
Speaker 3: I don't think they knew each other well at all.
Speaker 3: ELI didn't usually practice in Pittsfield. There's some class consciousness
Speaker 3: and ethnic issues involved here too. Under the surface at
Speaker 3: any rate. Eally's drive being out, very crazy, trying to
Speaker 3: get hands on evidence. So they start the case. The
Speaker 3: first evidence is the state police photographer who took pictures
Speaker 3: of the body at the funeral home. And as the
Speaker 3: pictures go into evidence, of course, now the defense gets
Speaker 3: their copies. Neally said, were there any other pictures taken there?
Speaker 3: And the corporal says, not to my knowledge, and so
Speaker 3: he starts to bug Alberta by this in front of
Speaker 3: the jury. This is live, so to speak. Alberta says, oh,
Speaker 3: I have more photos here, take this, take this. Now
Speaker 3: he's fed up, and here's here's diagram of the blueprints
Speaker 3: at the house. You want to see those. And he's
Speaker 3: shoving all this stuff and this. They keep going back
Speaker 3: and forth, and there's a carton, a cardboard carton under
Speaker 3: the prosecution table, and it gets you know, Alberta says,
Speaker 3: I'll give you everything I've got. What else do you want?
Speaker 3: Really says, oh, do you want to deliver yourself into
Speaker 3: my hands? You know, it's just getting terribly sarcastic, right
Speaker 3: in front of the jury, in front of the judge,
Speaker 3: and Alberti reaches into this cart and pulls out this
Speaker 3: baby doll and waves it around here. You want this too,
Speaker 3: and everybody is what in the courtroom erupts, and the
Speaker 3: deputy Sheriff's QUI everybody, and Judge VENASKI you know it
Speaker 3: tells everyone somebody words to sit down and shut up.
Speaker 3: The doll was to be introduced in evidence later, although
Speaker 3: it never was. It had marks replicating the burns on it,
Speaker 3: and it's very unscientific and didn't pass in the end.
Speaker 3: It didn't pass muster. But of course that's certainly not
Speaker 3: the way you introduce evidence. So the case basically, the
Speaker 3: trial basically starts out with a big disruption in the
Speaker 3: court caused by the district attorney.
Speaker 2: I might ask that tiessus has an opportunity to stop
Speaker 2: to hear these messages.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: One of the things that Sullivan and his men routed
Speaker 2: out was a witness named Witlessy william A. Witlessy tell
Speaker 2: us what question they said that Witlessy had said that
Speaker 2: Noxon had questioned him about.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was the president of one of the banks
Speaker 3: that Noxon was attorney for, but he also was vice
Speaker 3: president of the local electric company, and he knew his
Speaker 3: father had founded the company, and he knew a lot
Speaker 3: about electricity. So Noxlan takes him aside at the bank
Speaker 3: and says, you know, I'm just curious. I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: Can a person be electrocuted killed by household current? And
Speaker 3: the answer is yeah, under certain circumstances, if he's standing,
Speaker 3: if he's standing in something wet, and yes, that can be.
Speaker 3: So that became a big deal, needless to say, that
Speaker 3: became prosecution evidence, and the question was asked roughly at
Speaker 3: the time that doctor Smith in Boston had returned the
Speaker 3: diagnosis down syndrome modolism, as I called it. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that became a big deal at the trial. Are we
Speaker 3: are we fishing for ways to kill the baby? Maybe
Speaker 3: we are. Noxon said, I was just curious. I read it,
Speaker 3: and I read about a case in the paper. My
Speaker 3: son John. The third is I likes to experiment with electricity,
Speaker 3: so I was just curious. So those are the two
Speaker 3: sides of that story.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the what was found in the wastebasket
Speaker 2: at Sullivan's home and what the prosecutions purported relevance of
Speaker 2: this evidence was.
Speaker 3: On the weekend, the police came back to the house.
Speaker 3: They were in and out of the Noxo. It took
Speaker 3: five days for Noxen to be arrested, which is kind
Speaker 3: of interesting in and of itself. In the meantime, there
Speaker 3: were questionings and the police came and took photos, and
Speaker 3: they came back for the evidence, which included half the
Speaker 3: contents of the library room, the chair, the rugs, the radio.
Speaker 3: And while they're hauling all of this away, under Captain
Speaker 3: Marcel's direction, in Spectrum McColgan and a state police detective
Speaker 3: who was assigned to the DA's office, John Horgan, go
Speaker 3: upstairs and fish around for more evidence because well, nobody
Speaker 3: another search and seizure and search warrant law hadn't evolved
Speaker 3: much either in Massachusetts, and they could do this, so
Speaker 3: they did it, and in a waste basket in the
Speaker 3: master bedroom they find all these torn up pieces of
Speaker 3: paper which went pieced together make three pieces of paper
Speaker 3: with basically an amount of briefing notes of John Knoxon's
Speaker 3: story written down in sort of shorthand short bursts of
Speaker 3: words or bullet point what we would call bullet points
Speaker 3: now on how what his story is. And the DA
Speaker 3: they piece these together, they enlarge them photographically to give
Speaker 3: them to the jury and the Da reads these to
Speaker 3: the jury, and the prosecution's point is this guy prepared
Speaker 3: his story. He's not being casual with us, he's not
Speaker 3: being you know, forthcoming like a regular person. He wrote
Speaker 3: all this down, He prepared his story to this false
Speaker 3: story to give us. Noxon says, well, I've been questioning,
Speaker 3: questioning question and I'm a good lawyer, so I'm going
Speaker 3: to write this stuff down so i can get it straight.
Speaker 3: That's what I do in my profession. And when I
Speaker 3: was done with them, I tore them up and threw
Speaker 3: them away. So that was incriminating evidence. If you were
Speaker 3: the prosecution, is just like, well, it's one of those
Speaker 3: things if I did. If you're the defense and the jury,
Speaker 3: just as the case of many other things, here can
Speaker 3: look at it, could look at it both ways.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the gist of this trial in terms
Speaker 2: of the medical experts. It was a classic battle of
Speaker 2: conflicting opinions from medical experts who were the medical experts
Speaker 2: for the prosecution that were effective. Before we talk about
Speaker 2: the medical experts for the defense and how effective they were.
Speaker 3: Alan Moritz, the Harvard to a medical school faculty member
Speaker 3: who was the state pathologist, was extremely effective. He went
Speaker 3: through the whole process of the autopsy, described the burns,
Speaker 3: and throw in a little through in a little bit,
Speaker 3: he says, well, the burn, the big burn on Lawrence's
Speaker 3: left arm, was an eighth of an inch deep. With
Speaker 3: you look at your arm and think about it is
Speaker 3: pretty deep. He said. The skin looked as if it
Speaker 3: had been cooked. Now, the regular witness could not have
Speaker 3: gotten away with that characterization, but I guess if you are,
Speaker 3: if you are a Harvard faculty member who's the state pathologist,
Speaker 3: you can slip that one in. And that was pretty effective.
Speaker 3: He also to the extent he could could and he
Speaker 3: was you know, he was very disciplined. He didn't go
Speaker 3: beyond his scope of his abilities or his knowledge. He said,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're going to use that cord as
Speaker 3: put in evidence here, the repliccord, you'd have to you'd
Speaker 3: have to hold that to the baby for about fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes to get these results anything near these results, which
Speaker 3: contradicted Noxon's story almost entirely, or maybe entirely so. Martz
Speaker 3: was the key to the case. His testimony was very solid.
Speaker 3: He didn't get overturned by the defense very much. And
Speaker 3: you know, he knew he knew when to emphasize what
Speaker 3: he knew, and he knew not to go on on
Speaker 3: a limb and speculate, which is not always the case
Speaker 3: of defense. I mean the prosecution and defense witnesses. I
Speaker 3: can tell you that. So that's that was Alan Mortz's contribution.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about just before we talk about the the
Speaker 2: medical experts, the experts for the defense. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, it's this is a big, huge national story,
Speaker 2: and there are some veteran journalists covering this, including Dorothy Weyman.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about the coverage and Dorothy Weyman.
Speaker 3: The Boston papers were on this, even if it was
Speaker 3: at the other end of the state, and they sent
Speaker 3: top level reporters out to cover the trial. Dorothy was
Speaker 3: Boston Globe reporter with a long cedigory. She eventually wrote
Speaker 3: magazine articles and books. She was a feature writer, but
Speaker 3: clearly she'd been to court before because she handled this.
Speaker 3: She handled us like a veteran. He covered the case
Speaker 3: from beginning to end, and as the case went along,
Speaker 3: she became convinced sitting in that courtroom that John Noxon
Speaker 3: was innocent, and she became emotional support and a friend
Speaker 3: of Margaret Noxon, who was in the courtroom nearly every
Speaker 3: day after the trial was over. Dorothy not in print.
Speaker 3: I can only find one story of hers, which is
Speaker 3: clearly biased towards the defendant. But behind the scenes, she
Speaker 3: was a great supporter of the Noxen family and in
Speaker 3: her opinion, helped get Noxen out of prison eventually. Well,
Speaker 3: she did help. In her opinion, she helped a lot.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure she helped a lot, but she was
Speaker 3: working hard at it. And it's a real I mean,
Speaker 3: I was a newspaper reporter for several years before I
Speaker 3: went to work for the DA. I mean, I find
Speaker 3: her behavior by the journalistic standards of my day in
Speaker 3: current days just outrageous, although I have to say she
Speaker 3: managed somehow to keep her reporting and her personal beliefs separate,
Speaker 3: which is one thing in her behalf.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to the defense's medical experts. Who they
Speaker 2: chose and what aspect they decided to focus on, and
Speaker 2: how effective were they.
Speaker 3: Milton Helpern, the New York City medical examiner, who was
Speaker 3: the chief defense medical witness, had this theory that Lawrence
Speaker 3: had a wet diaper and it was diaper with diaper pins.
Speaker 3: In those days, and that he had entangled his arm,
Speaker 3: his right arm in the cord, and his left arm
Speaker 3: had come down and rested against the diaper and the
Speaker 3: diaper pin, and this caused a current to go through
Speaker 3: his body. And actually, you know, you can't get from
Speaker 3: the right arm to the left arm without going through
Speaker 3: the heart area, and that stopped his heart and electrocuted him.
Speaker 3: And there was a burn on the left arm. In
Speaker 3: addition to the deep burn, there was a sort of
Speaker 3: burn that everybody eventually described as dumbbell shaped, a thin
Speaker 3: two thin lines in the middle and larger burns on
Speaker 3: the end. And the district attorney eventually said that's that
Speaker 3: was the result of jabbing with a live wire. But
Speaker 3: the defense said, look, that's where the that's where the pin,
Speaker 3: the diaper pan contacted the skin. That's all that that
Speaker 3: burn shows that this happened. That was their theory. And
Speaker 3: doctor Lund, the burn experts, said yeah, that could have
Speaker 3: been in So that's very different from obviously from the defense,
Speaker 3: I mean, from the prosecution aspect that supported there had
Speaker 3: explained the dumbbell shape burn and explained how it was
Speaker 3: an accident.
Speaker 2: Now you're right that John Knox and Junior wasn't compelled
Speaker 2: to testify whatsoever, but right from the beginning Joseph eely
Speaker 2: Was had stated that he was. It was his attention
Speaker 2: to testify. So let's talk about that testimony and some
Speaker 2: of the things that went on in that testimony that
Speaker 2: were newsworthy for the public and also relevant to this trial.
Speaker 3: Knocks on detective stand and he testified really very well
Speaker 3: in his own defense. He told his story again. He
Speaker 3: told his life story, how he been gassed in World
Speaker 3: War One in Europe, and how he'd been crippled, and
Speaker 3: how he became a lawyer and he took care of
Speaker 3: his father and all these simply building things, and then
Speaker 3: he tells he tells the story of the accidental equatrocution
Speaker 3: yet again. And at the end, Walter Dunovan is doing
Speaker 3: the examination. He says, did you love your son? He said,
Speaker 3: I loved him so dearly, you know, and all of that.
Speaker 3: And then, of course, once you testified, the other side
Speaker 3: gets to cross his avenue and ALBERTI, this is first
Speaker 3: murder trial, this first and only murder trial as far
Speaker 3: as I know, and he tears into him and noxon
Speaker 3: from this sort of suave sounding composed fellow starts to
Speaker 3: be the kind of attorney, to be the kind of
Speaker 3: witness that knocks on the attorney would probably hate to
Speaker 3: put on a stand. Well, I can't remember, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Is that what you said to the folice at the time. Well, yes,
Speaker 3: and that's as best as I can remember. And he's
Speaker 3: stumbling and he's halting, and then Alberti pulls out the
Speaker 3: sort of secret weapon he'd been called after the first
Speaker 3: trial ended in a mistrial and one of the jurors
Speaker 3: got sick and started over. And in between, somewhere along
Speaker 3: the line, he'd been called at home in the evening,
Speaker 3: at dinner time by someone who worked at the ss
Speaker 3: Kretsky at Kresky department store and said, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know if this is important, mister Alberty, but mister
Speaker 3: Knoxon was in our store shortly before Lawrence died invought
Speaker 3: extension court. So Alberti starts to grill him about the
Speaker 3: extension cort. Well, I don't know. I bought a lot
Speaker 3: of extension courts. I may have bought that. You buy
Speaker 3: one inside August. I don't know if I went in September.
Speaker 3: I don't really know. Yeah, I may have what store,
Speaker 3: I don't remember. So he has Noxon's attorneys produce an
Speaker 3: extension cord from the house and they do it kind
Speaker 3: of has them over a barrel. Doctn's given permission for
Speaker 3: this court because he doesn't really have a choice. I
Speaker 3: guess the cops are going to go in and find
Speaker 3: it anyway, and Ilian Donovan, you know, they're members of
Speaker 3: the Massachusetts bar they can't suppress evidence. They're both very
Speaker 3: credible people. So they bring this cord in and it's
Speaker 3: attached to a soldering iron in a sort of amateur
Speaker 3: now semi amateurish way. You take the soldering iron off
Speaker 3: and there's this cord and they measure it and it's
Speaker 3: nine inches short of what it should be. They bring
Speaker 3: the witness from the Rhode Island plant back and he says, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be twelve feet long and now it's
Speaker 3: only eleven feet two inches or something like that. So
Speaker 3: he confronts them about the ALBERTI confronts NOx And about
Speaker 3: the cord, and it's just, well, you know, I did
Speaker 3: this for the soldering cord because the other core, the
Speaker 3: original cord, is too short, and how come all of
Speaker 3: this insulation is missing off the end of you know
Speaker 3: he did was attach this soldering iron to it as well?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't really know. I stripped some
Speaker 3: of it off for this, and I don't know what
Speaker 3: happened to the rest. Couldn't you have used this? Now
Speaker 3: you can do this across the examination. You can badger
Speaker 3: the witness relief. Didn't you use this to push these
Speaker 3: wires into your son an electric edom? No? No, I didn't,
Speaker 3: But it's there. It's there. All of a sudden, you've
Speaker 3: got a credible murder weapon, whereas you didn't before. You
Speaker 3: had knocks on in the room along with the boy,
Speaker 3: you had electricity, you had his story that didn't really
Speaker 3: add up, and you probably had sufficient evidence for a conviction,
Speaker 3: but you didn't really have the well, not the smoking gun,
Speaker 3: but the hot wire. And now you do. That's where
Speaker 3: that's that's where the testimony concludes. Basically, no one ever
Speaker 3: accounted for the missing nine inches of wire, but the
Speaker 3: question is left sort of hanging in the air over
Speaker 3: the jury's heads. As the testimony ends.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: So now you say that the jury goes out, and
Speaker 2: relatively soon they come back with one question, and it's
Speaker 2: regarding whether first degree or the distinction between first degree
Speaker 2: and second degree murder doesn't seems to bode too well
Speaker 2: for the defense. Tell us about the verdict and then
Speaker 2: the public react and a little bit about Margaret and
Speaker 2: just the people that were supporters.
Speaker 3: Tell us the jury is out after almost a month
Speaker 3: of trial. The jury's out for five hours and they
Speaker 3: come back with this. Part way through, they come back
Speaker 3: with the question, judge, can you explain to us again
Speaker 3: the law between first and second degree murder? And at
Speaker 3: that point, you know, there are always these people, everybody
Speaker 3: I was one of them. You'd sit around you try
Speaker 3: to read the tea leaves of the jury's questions. Whoa
Speaker 3: which way they had it? Which way are they going? Well,
Speaker 3: this case is pretty clear. They've got murder on their
Speaker 3: they got murder on their minds his first degree, which
Speaker 3: is punishable at that time only by death and the
Speaker 3: electric chair, or second degree, which is punished by life.
Speaker 3: So that pretty much tells you which way it's going.
Speaker 3: They're not out for law, and the judge explains this
Speaker 3: to them, and they go in and they're not They're
Speaker 3: back pretty soon first degree murder. The jurors heeded the
Speaker 3: judge's instruction and our advice not to blab to the public.
Speaker 3: Apparently no one ever gave an interview or anything. But
Speaker 3: of course they had pieces of paper left behind which
Speaker 3: were their vote their ballots, and of course the deputy
Speaker 3: sheriff's who I soon wore the leaks, scooped these up
Speaker 3: and disseminated the information to the press, and there was
Speaker 3: They took foot ballots and there was never a not
Speaker 3: guilty vote. There was one abstention on the first ballot
Speaker 3: for some reason. It was all first degree or second degree,
Speaker 3: and finally the one holdout for second degree came over
Speaker 3: and they had a first degree conviction, and the next
Speaker 3: day he was sentenced to the electric chair. Public reaction
Speaker 3: was very mixed. There were letters. Letters started flowing in
Speaker 3: to the governor of Massachusetts at the time, Levertt Saltonstall
Speaker 3: seeking clemency for an accent don't elect acute him. Many
Speaker 3: more than were in favor of the sentinels being carried
Speaker 3: out local people, so there was some reporting about local attitudes,
Speaker 3: not really quoting anybody, and people were surprised he was convicted.
Speaker 3: They figured that a guy at his stature and wealth
Speaker 3: would get off. As I always said, there were three
Speaker 3: camps here in this case. There was the camp that
Speaker 3: convinced it was murdered at the beginning, There was the
Speaker 3: camp they was convinced it was an accident. And there
Speaker 3: was a big camp in the middle the people said, well,
Speaker 3: it may have been a crime, but it was for
Speaker 3: the best, it was a mercy killing, and this guy
Speaker 3: should not get the death penalty, or he should not
Speaker 3: be in jail for very long, or whatever. So there
Speaker 3: was a lot of a lot of that attitude. Margaret
Speaker 3: never publicly said anything other than my husband is not guilty.
Speaker 3: Eally was distraught at the verdict. He's visibly distraught in
Speaker 3: the courtroom and immediately without further fee, I might add,
Speaker 3: because Chris lost his livelihood, took the case up. There
Speaker 3: was getting the governor at the time where he's tobin
Speaker 3: to hopefully commute the sentence from death to life. Then
Speaker 3: there was an attempt at getting a pardon from the
Speaker 3: next governor to clean get him out of prison and
Speaker 3: clean the record completely.
Speaker 2: You talk about the rule that Dorothy Wyman had at
Speaker 2: that time, You say she was an objective journalist during
Speaker 2: the first two trials, but now she does get involved
Speaker 2: along with you said that Eli was continuing along with
Speaker 2: Donovan with no fee to continue this fight because they
Speaker 2: really did believe that Noxon was innocent. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, Noxon is a lawyer and starts filing motions
Speaker 2: from behind bars that concerned his case.
Speaker 3: Well, there were motions immediately post trial to get the
Speaker 3: verdict over, get the verdict overturned, get the judge to
Speaker 3: overturn the verdict Judge Bananski, and most of them were waterplate. Really,
Speaker 3: they always could file. They was get tonight. There was
Speaker 3: once one motion that was fascinating, and the gist of
Speaker 3: it was that John Knoxon was so disliked in his
Speaker 3: hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts that he could not get a
Speaker 3: fair trial. And their evidence was when he was arrested.
Speaker 3: This is per state law, and I still is. There's
Speaker 3: a mental examination of the defendant in case there's an
Speaker 3: insanity flea that the state wants its witnesses, its psychiatric
Speaker 3: doctors to weigh in. Well, there's no question of insanity.
Speaker 3: But at the same time they said a social worker
Speaker 3: from the state nearest state hospital to do to question
Speaker 3: people in Pittsfield and do a report. And she talked
Speaker 3: to some obvious people, Margaret Knoxen, Michael Eisner, and John's
Speaker 3: law partner on a few other people identified as who
Speaker 3: were family friends. But then they talked to people that
Speaker 3: she didn't name, a city official, and no one ever figured.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have some ideas, but nobody knows who
Speaker 3: that was. Members of the police department. Oh really, I
Speaker 3: wonder what they thought. And they came away and she
Speaker 3: wrote up this Danning report, which was the basis of
Speaker 3: John Knoxen was a terrible person. He was a bully.
Speaker 3: As a kid, he stole things from the Pittsfield Country Club.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately his father was a member and they brushed in
Speaker 3: under the rug. And then as an adult he made
Speaker 3: passes at both young men and young women, and he
Speaker 3: was known not a town on business to consortative prostitutes.
Speaker 3: Now there's no proof of any of this, but you
Speaker 3: but you hear it a lot, and you know there's
Speaker 3: probably I can't you wouldn't want to vouch for any
Speaker 3: single thing, but there's a lot of trend here. And
Speaker 3: then they also bring in a Afidavid from a conductor
Speaker 3: from who worked the route from Pittsfield to Albany to Boston,
Speaker 3: which came in through Pittsfield, obviously, And he's a chatty guy.
Speaker 3: He loves gossip. Heays, yeah, I talked to people on
Speaker 3: the train from Pittsfield and they said NOx is a
Speaker 3: terrible person, and they corroborate and a lot of the
Speaker 3: things that the social workers report has turned up. And
Speaker 3: now the defense is introducing all of his terrible stuff
Speaker 3: about their client, which sounds crazy, except, of course, the
Speaker 3: alternative is to go to the electric chair, so maybe
Speaker 3: that's not so bad. They're just saying, you know, he's
Speaker 3: an awful person. How could you have ever gotten a
Speaker 3: fair trial? And that doesn't work. Next, now they've got
Speaker 3: people start coming forward who knew two of the jurors,
Speaker 3: and they said, well, long before he was expressed, after
Speaker 3: he was arrested, before he went to trial, which, of
Speaker 3: course before they were picked his jurors, they expressed the
Speaker 3: opinion that he was probably guilty. One of them did
Speaker 3: so on a car ride to his job with another
Speaker 3: fellow employee, and it was sort of a passing comment
Speaker 3: that was never repeated again, and that was sort of
Speaker 3: not very important The other guy was a guard at
Speaker 3: a defense plant that made magnesium nearby, and he couldn't
Speaker 3: stop talking about the case to his fellow guards, about, man,
Speaker 3: this guy is guilty. He ought to be hung. I
Speaker 3: add to that, that's a little different. So a out
Speaker 3: of their emotions to overturn the jury because the verdict,
Speaker 3: because the jury was prejudiced. Well, Howard Brown, who made
Speaker 3: this kind of often common on the way to work,
Speaker 3: It was one thing. But Harvey Crittenden, Chittenden was on
Speaker 3: this all the time. And three of his fellow guards
Speaker 3: came forward and you know, testified that he said all
Speaker 3: these things. And the judge said, you know, they were
Speaker 3: examined under oath. They said they didn't have any prior prejudices,
Speaker 3: And he says, what can I say? They I asked
Speaker 3: them these questions under oath, and they said, since vav
Speaker 3: good jurors. I don't know. Today it's hard to imagine
Speaker 3: Chittenden's outverse not caring more weight if someone asked for
Speaker 3: a new trial. But then that was you know, then
Speaker 3: it was pretty strict Massachusetts law. You think of Massachusetts
Speaker 3: as a progressive state as far as criminal law. It
Speaker 3: had a long way to go in nineteen forty four.
Speaker 2: You say despite this state at that time, in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four and afterwards, that there were significant changes because
Speaker 2: of this, and we haven't mentioned that this ending, and
Speaker 2: you had alluded to it, is that there was a
Speaker 2: further movement towards taking him from death row to life imprisonment,
Speaker 2: and then they chipped away at the sentence to the
Speaker 2: point where instead of a pardon, there was a very
Speaker 2: effective compromise where he would be let out on parole
Speaker 2: and not given a full pardon, which would dismiss any
Speaker 2: criminal charges and criminal record. So there was a movement,
Speaker 2: and Margaret was active in this as well, meeting with
Speaker 2: two governors over the years to see if she had
Speaker 2: any influence in speaking to them personally. But that was
Speaker 2: the weight of her influence that she was able to
Speaker 2: get an interview with the governor, an audience with the
Speaker 2: governor for twice.
Speaker 3: The first step. The Supreme Judicial Court denied his appeal
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty six. So now it's the electric chair
Speaker 3: unless something happens. Governor really, yeah, former governor really led
Speaker 3: the charge to get the first step. You got them
Speaker 3: off the death row, get the death sentence commuted to life,
Speaker 3: and that happened, and that was not that unusual. I mean,
Speaker 3: the death penalty was a political hot potato in Massachusetts
Speaker 3: for forty more years. But in reality, from the time
Speaker 3: John Knoxon was the sentence was commuted, only three more
Speaker 3: people were electrocuted, and everybody the day were involved in,
Speaker 3: you know, straightforward vicious crimes involving firearms and a robbery
Speaker 3: and a mob rubout the death penalty. Future governors always
Speaker 3: found way to commute those sentences to life, and in
Speaker 3: the late forties, statute was passed allowing juries to recommend
Speaker 3: the life sentence instead of the electric chair in the
Speaker 3: first degree case. So in reality, commuting knox on sentence
Speaker 3: to life wasn't that unusual. But he's still in prison
Speaker 3: and the next step is to file for a pardon.
Speaker 3: And by now Governor Tobin has been what was essentially
Speaker 3: a revolving door between Republicans and Democrats equally represented in
Speaker 3: the state at the time. Tobin is out and a
Speaker 3: guy named Robert Bradford is in. He's the Governor Robert Bradford.
Speaker 3: John Doxon's family had come to the United States from
Speaker 3: England in the late sixteen hundreds. Joe Eely's family had
Speaker 3: come to the United States. His original ancestor in the
Speaker 3: United States in nine sixteen thirty six or something like that,
Speaker 3: and they were both newcomers to Robert Bradford's family. He
Speaker 3: was directly descended from William Bradford, the second governor of
Speaker 3: the Plymouth Colony who came on board in sixteen twenty
Speaker 3: with the Pilgrims. People used to refer to him after
Speaker 3: he got elected as the second governor Bradford, and the
Speaker 3: pardon is before Bradford. But there's he's the kind of
Speaker 3: guy who might want to grant the pardon because you know,
Speaker 3: the Noxon's and the Eli's are in his social strata,
Speaker 3: ancestral strata. But he's the kind of guy who couldn't
Speaker 3: either because before he became got into politics as an
Speaker 3: elected official, he worked for a governor and the governor
Speaker 3: was Joe Eally. When Eally left office, they formed the
Speaker 3: law firm together and Bradford was still on the firm's
Speaker 3: letter had he was on a leave of absence. In fact,
Speaker 3: the pardon petition to Governor Bradford came under a letter
Speaker 3: The letter had was the law firm of Elie Bradford,
Speaker 3: et cetera, etcetera, etcetera. So he's kind of hung up
Speaker 3: and he denies calls to abdicate the case and pass
Speaker 3: it on to his lieutenant governor, but he also sits
Speaker 3: on it for like months and months and months, and
Speaker 3: then he gets defeated. The swinging door swings again. He
Speaker 3: gets defeated by a Democrat. He's leaving office in January
Speaker 3: nineteen forty nine, and he comes up with this solemonic solution,
Speaker 3: and he says, I could never grant a pardon because
Speaker 3: I really don't think he's innocent. He'd been a da
Speaker 3: in his day. I don't think he's innocent. But I'll
Speaker 3: tell you what I'm going to do, and you can
Speaker 3: you can sort of feel the mercy killing breeze wopting
Speaker 3: through the executive chamber. Here. I can commute his sentence again,
Speaker 3: and I can make it. I'll make it six years
Speaker 3: to life. From Massachusetts law then now was after two
Speaker 3: thirds of your minimum sentence for a violent crime, you
Speaker 3: can be eligible for parole. Well, Doxon at that time
Speaker 3: was over four years, so he's eligible for parole. Now.
Speaker 3: The parole Board's got to come around and it's split.
Speaker 3: The chairman, Matthew Bullock says, I will never go for this.
Speaker 3: One of his other members says, I always thought he
Speaker 3: should be out. So you've got a guy in the
Speaker 3: middle named Bradley, who's Dorothy Weyman describes as a Harvard
Speaker 3: former Harvard athlete, lots of money and not so many brains.
Speaker 3: But he's in business with a social, social, and political
Speaker 3: friend of hers. There's usually not a lot of difference,
Speaker 3: and they work him over, she says in her private papers,
Speaker 3: which unfortunately we're available in a college archive. They work
Speaker 3: him over, and I'm not sure they only convinced him,
Speaker 3: but I'm sure they had something to do with it.
Speaker 3: And he jumps off the fence and jump and votes
Speaker 3: for parole. So Knoxen, after less than five years in prison,
Speaker 3: who eventually who originally was headed for the electric chair,
Speaker 3: is out, still convicted a first degree murder, still on
Speaker 3: parole the rest of his life, although no one the
Speaker 3: prole board never seems to have spent much time supervising him.
Speaker 3: To see fifty seven year old guy on Caynes is
Speaker 3: not likely to go out and rob a convenience to
Speaker 3: or murder anybody else.
Speaker 2: Yes, you go on to say at the end of
Speaker 2: this book that he lives a long life. They moved
Speaker 2: to Connecticut cottage and they for privacy and basically travel
Speaker 2: the world. And importantly Dorothy Wyman associates with them and
Speaker 2: friends with these people, especially Margaret, but also with John
Speaker 2: Noxlan as well. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 2: for coming on and talking about the electrocution of baby Lawrence,
Speaker 2: a murder that shook a New England town. For those
Speaker 2: that might want to take a look another further look.
Speaker 2: Do you have a website or do any social media I.
Speaker 3: Have a website Jamesovermeyer dot com and I am on
Speaker 3: Facebook as a regular person as Jim Overmeyer and also
Speaker 3: has James Overmeyer author.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Jim. The electrocution of Baby Lawrence,
Speaker 2: a murder that shook a New England town. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for this interview, and you have a great
Speaker 2: evening and good night.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you,